Assassin's Creed: Revelations

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

SHOOT TO KILL

“You will not leave this place alive!” the captain bawled, firing again. This time, the bolt stuck harmlessly in a wooden doorframe, which Ezio had ducked behind. But there was very little wrong with the captain’s shooting. So far, Ezio had been lucky. He had to get away, and fast. Two more bolts sang past him.

“There’s no way out!” the captain called after him. “You might as well turn and face me, you pitiful old dog.” He fired again.

Ezio drew a breath and leapt to catch hold of the lintel of another doorway, swinging himself up so that he was able to get onto the flat clay roof of a dwelling. He ran across it to the other side as another bolt whistled past his ear.

“Stand your ground and die,” hollered the captain. “Your time has come, and you must accept it, even if it is far away from your wretched kennel in Rome! So come and meet your killer!”

Ezio could see where soldiers were running around to the back of the village, to cut off his line of retreat. But they had left the captain isolated, except for his two sergeants, and his quiver of bolts was empty.

The villagers had scattered and disappeared long since.

Ezio ducked behind the low wall surrounding the roof, unstrapped his bags from his back, and slipped the pistol harness onto his right wrist.

“Why will you not quit?!” the captain was calling, drawing his sword.

Ezio stood. “I never learned how,” he called back in a clear voice, raising his gun.

ASSASSIN’S CREED: RENAISSANCE
ASSASSIN’S CREED: BROTHERHOOD
ASSASSIN’S CREED: THE SECRET CRUSADE
ASSASSIN’S CREED: REVELATIONS

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ASSASSIN’S CREED
^®
REVELATIONS

 

An Ace Book / published by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd.

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Ace premium edition / December 2011

Copyright © 2011 Ubisoft Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. Assassin’s Creed, Ubisoft, and the Ubisoft logo are trademarks of Ubisoft Entertainment in the U.S. and/or other countries.

The Divine Comedy: Inferno
by Dante, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2006). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2006. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio
by Dante, translated and edited by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2007). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

The Divine Comedy: Paradiso
by Dante, translated by Robin Kirkpatrick (Penguin Classics 2007). Translation and editorial matter copyright © Robin Kirkpatrick, 2007. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.

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At one point midway on our path in life,
I came around and found myself now searching
through a dark wood, the right way blurred and lost.
How hard it is to say what that wood was,
a wilderness, savage, brute, harsh and wild.
Only to think of it renews my fear!

–DANTE,
INFERNO

ONE

An eagle soared, high in the hard, clear sky.

The traveler, dusty, battered from the road, drew his eyes from it, pulled himself up and over a low, rough wall, and stood motionless for a moment, scanning the scene with keen eyes. The rugged snowcapped mountains fenced in the castle, protecting it and enclosing it as it reared on the crest of its own height, the domed tower of its keep mirroring the lesser dome of the prison tower nearby. Iron rocks like claws clung to the bases of its sheer grey walls. Not the first time he’d seen it—a day earlier he’d caught his first glimpse, at dusk, from a promontory he’d climbed a mile west. Built as if by sorcery in this impossible terrain, at one with the rocks and crags it joined forces with.

He’d arrived at his goal—at last. After twelve weary months on the journey. And such a long journey—the ways deep and the weather sharp.

Crouching, just in case, and keeping still as he instinctively checked his weapons, the traveler kept watching. Any sign of movement. Any.

Not a soul on the battlements. Scuds of snow twisting in a cutting wind. But no sign of a man. The place seemed deserted. As he’d expected from what he’d read of it. But life had taught him that it was always best to make sure. He stayed still.

Not a sound but the wind. Then—something. A scraping? To his left ahead of him, a handful of pebbles skittered down a bare incline. He tensed, rose slightly, head up between ducked shoulders. Then the arrow whacked into his right shoulder, through the body armor there.

He staggered a little, grimacing in pain as his hand went to the arrow, raising his head, looking hard at the skein of a rise in the rocks—a small precipice, maybe twenty feet high—which rose before the front of the castle and served as a natural outer bailey. On its ridge there now appeared a man in a dull red tunic with grey outer garments and armor. He bore the insignia of a captain. His bare head was close-shaven, and a scar seared his face, across from right down to left. He opened his mouth in an expression that was part snarl, part smile of triumph, showing stunted and uneven teeth, brown like the tombstones in an unkempt graveyard.

The traveler pulled at the arrow’s shaft. Though the barbed head snagged on the armor, it had only penetrated the metal, and the point had scarcely penetrated his flesh. He snapped it off the shaft and threw it aside. As he did so he saw a hundred and more armed men, similarly dressed, halberds and swords ready, line up along the crest on either side of the shaven-headed captain. Helmets with nose guards hid their faces, but the black eagle crests on their tunics told the traveler who they were, and he knew what he could expect from them if they took him.

Was he getting old, to have fallen into a trap so simple? But he’d taken every precaution.

And it hadn’t succeeded yet.

He stepped back, ready for them as they poured down to the rugged platform of ground he stood on, fanning out to surround him, keeping the length of their halberds between themselves and their prey. He could sense that despite their numbers, they feared him. His reputation was known, and they were right to be wary.

He gauged the halberd heads. Double-type: axe and pike.

He flexed his arms and from his wrists his two lean, grey, deadly hidden-blades sprang. Bracing himself, he deflected the first blow, sensing that it had been hesitant—did they want to try to take him alive? Then they started digging at him from all sides with their weapons, trying to bring him to his knees.