TEN

The dawn was cold and grey. In its stillness, Ezio roused himself from his memories and snapped all his concentration to the present as the heard the footfall of guards’ boots on the flagstones of the castle, approaching his cell. This was the moment.

He’d pretend to be weak, and that wasn’t too hard a thing to do. He was thirstier than he’d been in a long time, and hungrier, but the beaker and the food still stood untouched on the table. He lay on the floor facedown, his hood pulled low over his face.

He heard the door of his cell crash open, and the men came in. They reached under his shoulders and half lifted him, dragging him out and along the bare grey stone corridor outside. Looking down at the floor as he was dragged over it, Ezio saw marked on it, laid out in a darker stone, the great symbol of the Assassins, their insignia since time immemorial.

The corridor gave way at length to a wider space, a kind of hall, open on one side. Ezio felt keen fresh air on his face, and it revived him. He raised his head slightly and saw that beyond him there were tall openings demarcated by narrow columns, and beyond them a wide-open view of the pitiless mountains. They were still high in the tower.

They pulled him to his feet, and he shook himself free of them. They stood back slightly, halberds at the ready, lowered but pointing at him. Facing him, his back to the void, stood the captain of the day before. He held a noose in his hand.

“You are a tenacious man, Ezio,” the captain said. “To come all this way for a glimpse inside Altaïr’s castle. It shows heart.”

He gestured to his men to stand farther back, leaving Ezio standing alone. Then he went on: “But you’re an old hound now. Better to put you out of your misery than see you whimper to a sad end.”

Ezio turned slightly to address the man directly. That tiny movement, he noted to his satisfaction, was enough to make the halberdiers flinch and steady their weapons on him.

“Any last words before I kill you?” Ezio said.

The captain was made of sterner stuff than his men. He stood firm. He laughed. “I wonder how long it will take for the buzzards to pick your bones clean, as your body dangles from these parapets?”

“There’s an eagle up there somewhere. He’ll keep the buzzards away.”

“A lot of good that’ll do you. Come forward. Or are you afraid to die? You wouldn’t want to have to be dragged to your death, would you?”

Ezio moved forward slowly, every sense taut.

“That’s good,” said the captain, and Ezio immediately sensed his slight relaxation. Did the man really think he was giving in? Was he that vain? That stupid? If so, all the better. But perhaps, after all, this ugly man, who smelled of sweat and cooked meat, was right. The moment of death had to come sometime.

Beyond the wide window between the columns, a narrow wooden platform projected over the void, perhaps ten feet long and four wide, constructed of six rough planks. It looked ancient and unsafe. The captain bowed in an ironic gesture of invitation. Ezio stepped forward again, waiting for his moment, but at the same time wondering if it would come.

The planks creaked ominously under his weight, and the air was cold around him. He looked at the sky and the mountains. Then he saw the eagle coasting, fifty or one hundred feet below him, its white pinions spread, and somehow that gave him hope.

Then something else happened.

Ezio had noticed another similar platform, projecting from the tower at the same level some fifteen feet to his right. And now, on it, alone, walking fearlessly forward, was the young cowled man in white he had glimpsed in the battle. As Ezio watched, his breath suspended, the man seemed to be turning toward him, to be making the beginning of a gesture . . .

And then, again, the vision faded, and there was nothing but the wind and the occasional scatter of gusting snow. Even the eagle had disappeared from sight.

The captain approached, noose in hand. Ezio fleetingly noticed that there was plenty of slack in the rope that trailed behind it.

“No eagle here that I can see,” said the captain. “I wager it’ll take the buzzards no more than three days.”

“I’ll let you know,” Ezio replied, evenly.

A knot of guards had come up behind the captain, but it was the captain himself, now standing close behind Ezio, who pulled down his hood, slipped the noose over his head, and pulled it tight around his neck.

“Now!” said the captain.

Now!

At the very moment that he felt captain’s hands on his shoulders, ready to shove him into oblivion, Ezio raised his right arm, crooked it, and drove his elbow violently backward. As the captain fell back with a cry, stumbling into his companions, Ezio stooped and took up the slack of the rope where it still lay on the planking, and, dodging between the three men, spun round and looped the slack round the stumbling captain’s neck. Then he himself leapt from the platform into the void.

The captain had tried to recoil, but too late. He was slammed to the planks under the impact of Ezio’s weight as he fell, and the planks shuddered as his head struck them. The rope snapped taut, all but breaking the captain’s neck as it did so. Turning blue, his hands went to his neck as he kicked and struggled against death.

Uttering all the oaths they knew, the guards drew their swords and moved forward fast, hacking at the rope to free their officer. When the rope was cut, the accursed Ezio Auditore would plummet to his death on the rocks five hundred feet below, and as long as he was dead, what did the manner of it matter?

At the rope’s end, twirling in space, Ezio already had both hands between the noose and his neck, straining to keep it from cutting into his windpipe. But as he did so he was already scanning the scene below him. He was dangling close to the walls. There had to be something he could catch to break his fall. But if there wasn’t, this was a better way to meet death than going to it meekly.

Above, on the dangerously swaying platform, the guards at last succeeded in severing the rope, which by now was drawing blood from the captain’s neck. And Ezio found himself falling, falling . . .

But at the moment he felt the rope go loose, he swung his body closer to the walls of the castle. Masyaf was built for Assassins by Assassins. It would not forsake him.

And he had seen a piece of broken scaffolding projecting from the wall fifty feet below. He guided his body toward it as he plummeted downward. He caught it, wincing in pain as his arm was wrenched almost free of its socket. But the scaffolding held, and he held and, grinding his teeth with effort, hauled himself up until he could get a grip with both hands.