Crashing across the rough terrain, Ezio continued to haul himself up the rope. He was within two feet of the wagon’s tailgate when the two riders behind him closed in. He ducked his head, waiting for a blow, but the horsemen had been too hasty, and concentrated more on their quarry than their riding. Their mounts collided sickeningly inches behind Ezio’s heels, and fell, in a pandemonium of screaming horses, cursing riders, and dust.
Straining hard, Ezio forced his aching arms to make one final effort, and, breathing heavily, he wrenched, rather than pulled, himself the last foot onto the wagon, where he clung for a moment, motionless, his head swimming, catching his breath.
Meanwhile, the second wagon had drawn abreast of the first, and the captain was frantically signaling the men aboard to bring it in closer. But as soon as they had done so, the captain leapt from his wagon to theirs, pushing its driver from his seat. With a dull cry, the man fell to the ground from the speeding vehicle, hitting a rock and ricocheting off it with an appalling thud, before lying inert, his head twisted round at an unnatural angle.
Gaining control of the plunging horses, the captain raced forward and away, as Ezio, in his turn, scrambled to the front of the wagon he was on and seized the reins, his arm muscles yelling in protest as he hauled on them to steady his own team. His two horses, foam-flecked and wild-eyed, blood gathering at the bits in their mouths, nevertheless kept up their gallop, and Ezio remained in the chase. Seeing this, the captain steered toward an old open gate across the road, supported by crumbling brick columns. He managed to sideswipe one of these without hindering his onward rush, and the column smashed down in a welter of masonry, directly in front of Ezio. Ezio heaved at the reins, drawing his team to the right in the nick of time, and his wagon bumped and crashed off the road into the scrubland at its edge as he struggled to bring his horses back around to the left, to regain the beaten track. Dust and small stones flew everywhere, cutting Ezio’s cheeks and making him squeeze his eyes into slits to protect them and keep focused on his quarry.
“Go to hell, damn you!” screeched the captain over his shoulder. And now Ezio could see that the soldiers hanging on precariously in the back of the first wagon were preparing bombs to hurl at him.
Zigzagging as best he could to avoid the explosions, which went off on both sides of him and behind him, Ezio fought hard to keep control of his terrified and, by now, all-but-stampeding team. But the bombs had failed to find their mark, and he kept on track.
The captain tried a different tactic and a dangerous one.
He suddenly slowed, falling back, so that Ezio, before he could make a countermove, drew level. Immediately, the captain caused his team to swerve so that his wagon crashed broadside into Ezio’s.
Ezio could see the whites of the captain’s half-crazed eyes, the scar livid across his strained face, as they glared at each other through the swirling air.
“Die, you bastard!” yelled the captain.
Then he glanced ahead. Ezio followed his gaze and saw, up ahead, a guard tower and, beyond it, another village. This village was larger than the one at Masyaf and partially fortified. An outlying Templar stronghold.
The captain managed to coax one more burst of speed from his horses, and as he drew away with a cry of triumph, his men threw two more bombs. This time one of them exploded beneath the left-hand rear wheel of Ezio’s wagon. The blast threw the vehicle halfway into the air, and Ezio was thrown clear as his horses made sounds like banshees and plunged away off into the scrubland, dragging the remains of the ruined wagon behind them. The land fell away sharply to the right of the road, and Ezio was pitched twenty feet down into a gully, where a large outcrop of thorny shrubs broke his fall and hid him.
He lay prone, looking at the unforgiving grey ground inches from his face, unable to move, unable to think, but feeling that every bone in his body had been broken. He closed his eyes and waited for the end.
FIFTEEN
Ezio heard voices, far away, as he lay in a kind of dream. He thought he saw the young man in white again, the man whom he’d seen at the time of the ambush and again when he was on the makeshift scaffold, but he couldn’t be sure. Who had neither helped nor hindered him, but who seemed to be on his side. Others came and went: his long-dead brothers, Federico and Petruccio; Claudia; his father and mother; and-unbidden and unwanted-the beautiful, cruel face of Caterina Sforza.
The visions faded, but the voices remained, stronger now, as his other senses returned to him. He tasted soil in his mouth and smelled the earth against which his cheek lay. The aches and pains in his body returned, too. He thought he’d never be able to move again.
The voices were indistinct, coming from above. He imagined the Templars were leaning over the edge of the little cliff he’d fallen down but realized that they couldn’t see him. The thick shrubs must be concealing his body.
He waited awhile, until the voices finally receded, and silence fell. Then, tentatively, he flexed his hands and feet, then his arms and legs, as, gratefully, he spat out the dirt.
Nothing seemed to be broken. Slowly, painfully, he wormed his way out of the bushes and got to his feet. Then, cautiously, and keeping to what cover there was, he clambered back to the road.
He was just in time to see the Templar captain passing through the gate in the walls of the fortified village, a couple of hundred yards away. Keeping to the side of the road where bushes grew and he could conceal himself, he brushed himself off and started to walk toward the village, but it seemed as if every muscle in him protested.
“This used to be so easy,” he murmured to himself, ruefully. But he willed himself onward and, skirting the wall, found a likely place to climb it.
Having stuck his head over the parapet to check that he was unobserved, he pulled himself over and dropped into the village. He found himself in the stockyard, empty except for a pair of heifers which shunted off to one side, eyeing him warily. He took time to wait, in case there were dogs, but after a minute, he passed through the wicket of the stockyard and, following the sound of raised voices, made his way through the apparently deserted village toward them. Nearing the village square, he caught sight of the captain and stepped out of sight behind a shed. The captain, standing on the top of a low tower at one corner of the square, was berating two unhappy sergeants. Beyond them, the assembled villagers stood mutely by. The captain’s words were punctuated by the chop-chop of a waterwheel on the other side, worked by the rivulet that ran through the village.
“I seem to be the only one around here who knows how to handle a horse,” the captain was saying. “Until we’re sure he’s dead this time, I command you not to drop your guard for a moment. Do you understand?”
“Yessir,” the men answered sullenly.
“How many times have you failed to kill that man, hmn?” the captain continued angrily. “Listen up and listen close: If I do not see his head rolling in the dust at my feet within the hour, yours will take its place!”
The captain fell silent and, turning, watched the road from his vantage point. Ezio could see that he was nervous. He fiddled with the cocking lever of his crossbow.
Ezio had made his way into the crowd of villagers during the captain’s tirade, blending in with them as best he could, which, given his battered and downtrodden appearance, wasn’t difficult. But the crowd was breaking up, returning to work. The mood among the people was nervous, and when a man in front of him suddenly stumbled, jostling another, the second turned on him irritably, snapping: “Hey, get out of my way-get a move on!”