Oliver Bowden - Assassin's Creed - Renaissance

But other guards were closing in. Ezio, his instinct for survival taking over, sped away from them, towards the comparative safety of the narrow streets beyond the square. To his dismay, he saw two more guards, swift of foot, rushing to cut him off.

They confronted each other at the edge of the square. The two guards faced him, blocking his retreat, the others closing in behind. Ezio fought them both frantically. Then an unlucky parry from one of them knocked his sword out of his hand. Fearing that this was the end, Ezio turned to flee from his attackers - but before he could find his feet, something astonishing happened. From the narrow street he was making for, and was within a few feet of, a roughly dressed man appeared. With lightning speed he came up on the two guards from behind, and, with a long dagger, cut deep under the pits of their sword arms, tearing through tendons and rendering them useless. He moved so fast that Ezio could scarcely follow his movements as he retrieved the young man's fallen sword and threw it to him. Ezio suddenly recognized him, and smelled once more the stench of onions and garlic. At that moment, damask roses couldn't have smelled sweeter.

'Get out of here,' said the man; and then he, too, was gone. Ezio plunged down the street, and ducked off it down alleys and lanes he knew intimately from his nightly forays with Federico. The hue and cry behind him faded. He made his way down to the river, and found refuge in a disused watchman's shack behind one of the warehouses belonging to Cristina's father.

In that hour Ezio ceased to be a boy and became a man. The weight of the responsibility he now felt he carried to avenge and correct this hideous wrong fell on his shoulders like a heavy cloak.

Slumping down on a pile of discarded sacks, he felt his whole body begin to shake. His world had just been torn apart. His father. Federico. and, God, no, little Petruccio. all gone, all dead, all murdered. Holding his head in his hands, he broke down - unable to control the pouring out of sorrow, fear and hatred. Only after several hours was he able to uncover his face - his eyes bloodshot and run through with an unbending vengeance. At that moment, Ezio knew his former life was over - Ezio the boy was gone for ever. From now, his life was forged for one purpose and one purpose alone - revenge. Much later in the day, knowing full well that the watch would still be out looking for him relentlessly, he made his way via back alleys to Cristina's family mansion. He didn't want to put her in any danger, but he needed to collect his pouch with its precious contents. He waited in a dark alcove that stank of urine, not moving even when rats scuttled at his feet, until a light in her window told him that she had retired for the night.

'Ezio!' she cried as she saw him on her balcony. 'Thank God you're alive.' Her face flooded with relief - but that was short-lived, grief taking over. 'Your father, and brothers.' She couldn't finish the sentence, and her head bowed.

Ezio took her in his arms, and for several minutes they just stood holding each other.

Finally, she broke away. 'You're mad! What are you still doing in Florence?'

'I still have matters to attend to,' he said grimly. 'But I cannot stay here long, it's too big a risk for your family. If they thought you were harbouring me -'

Cristina was silent.

'Give me my satchel and I'll be gone.'

She fetched it for him, but before she gave it to him said, 'What about your family?'

'That is my first duty. To bury my dead. I can't see them thrown into a lime-pit like common criminals.'

'I know where they have taken them.'

'How?'

'The town's been talking all day. But no one will be there now. They're down near the Porta San Niccolo, with the bodies of paupers. There's a pit prepared, and they're waiting for the lime-carts to come in the morning. Oh, Ezio - !'

Ezio spoke calmly but grimly. 'I must see to it that my father and my brothers have a fitting departure from this earth. I cannot offer them a Requiem Mass, but I can spare their bodies indignity.'

'I'll come with you!'

'No! Do you realize what it would mean if you were caught with me?'

Cristina lowered her eyes.

'I must see that my mother and sister are safe too, and I owe my family one more death.' He hesitated. 'Then I will leave. Perhaps for ever. The question is - will you come with me?'

She drew back, and he could see a host of conflicting emotions in her eyes. Love was there, deep and lasting, but he had grown so much older than she since they had first held each other in their arms. She was still a girl. How could he expect her to make such a sacrifice? 'I want to, Ezio, you don't know how much - but my family - it would kill my parents -'

Ezio looked at her gently. Though they were the same age, his recent experience had made him suddenly far more mature than she was. He had no family to depend on any more, just responsibility and duty, and it was hard. 'I was wrong to ask. And who knows, perhaps, some day, when all this is behind us -' He put his hands to his neck and from the folds of his collar withdrew a heavy silver pendant on a fine chain of gold. He took it off. The pendant bore a simple design - just the initial letter 'A' of his family name. 'I want you to have this. Take it, please.'

With trembling hands she accepted it, crying softly. She looked down at it, then up at him, to thank him, to make some further excuse.

But he was gone. On the south bank of the Arno, near the Porta San Niccolo, Ezio found the bleak place where the bodies were arranged next to a huge gaping pit. Two sorry-looking guards, raw recruits by the look of them, patrolled nearby, dragging their halberds as much as carrying them. The sight of their uniforms aroused Ezio's anger, and his first instinct was to kill them, but he had seen enough of death that day, and these were just country boys who'd stumbled into uniforms for want of anything better. It caught at his heart when he saw his father's and his brothers' bodies lying near the edge of the pit, still with their nooses round their scorched necks, but he could see that, once the guards fell asleep, as they surely soon would, he could carry the corpses to the river's edge, where he had prepared an open boat which he'd loaded with brushwood.

It was about the third hour, and the first faint light of dawn was already bleaching the eastern sky by the time he had completed his task. He stood alone on the riverbank, watching as the boat bearing his kinsmen's bodies, all aflame, drifted slowly with the current towards the sea. He watched until the light of the fire flickered away into the distance.

He made his way back to the city. A hard resolve had overcome his grief. There was still much to do. But first, he must rest. He returned to the watchman's shack, and made himself as comfortable as he could. Some little sleep would not be denied; but even as he slept, Cristina would not leave his thoughts, or dreams.

He knew the approximate whereabouts of the house of Annetta's sister, though he had never been there, or indeed met Paola; but Annetta had been his wet-nurse, and he knew that if he could trust no one else, he could trust her. He wondered if she knew, as she must, of the fate that had befallen his father and brothers, and if so, whether she had told his mother and sister.

He approached the house with great care, using an indirect route, and covering the distance where he could by running at a crouch over rooftops in order to avoid the busy streets where, he was sure, Uberto Alberti would have his men searching. Ezio could not rid himself of the thought of Alberti's treachery. What faction had his father referred to on the gallows? What could induce Alberti to bring about the death of one of his closest allies?

Paola's house lay in a street just north of the cathedral, Ezio knew. But when he got there, he didn't know which it was. There were few signs hanging from the fronts of the buildings here to identify them, and he could not afford to loiter in case