But what will I find when I arrive? Who will greet me? A host of eager Templars, as I fear most strongly? Or nothing but the whistling of a cold and lonely wind? Masyaf has not been home to the Assassins for almost three hundred years now. Does it remember us? Are we still welcome?
Ah, I am weary of this fight, Claudia . . . Weary not because I am tired but because our struggle seems to move in one direction only . . . toward chaos. Today I have more questions than answers. That is why I have come so far: to find clarity. To find the wisdom left behind by the Great Mentor, so that I may better understand the purpose of our fight and my place in it.
Should anything happen to me, dear Claudia . . . should my skills fail me, or my ambition lead me astray, do not seek revenge or retribution in my memory but fight to continue the search for truth, so that all may benefit. My story is one of many thousands, and the world will suffer if it ends too soon.
Your brother, Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Al-Scarab, in the course of fitting out for his own new ventures, had also seen to it that Ezio had the attention of the best doctors, the best tailors, the best chefs, and the best women Acre could provide. His blades were honed and sharpened, his kit was fully cleaned, repaired, replaced where necessary, and thoroughly overhauled.
As the day approached for Ezio to leave, Al-Scarab presented him with two fine horses—“A present from my uncle—he breeds them—but I don’t have much use for them in my trade”—tough little Arabs, with soft leather tack and one fine, high-ended, tooled saddle. Ezio continued to refuse any escort but accepted supplies for his journey, which from now on would carry him overland, through what had once, long ago, been the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.
And now the time of parting had come. The last leg in a long journey, and whether it would it be completed or not, Ezio had no way of telling. But for him there was only the journey. It had to be made. Old men ought to be explorers. At its end, he would see.
“Go with your God, Ezio.”
“Barakallah feek, my friend,” Ezio replied, taking the big pirate’s hand.
“We’ll meet again.”
“Yes.”
Both men wondered in their hearts if they were telling the truth, but the words comforted them. It didn’t matter. They looked each other in the eye and knew that in their different ways they were part of the same fellowship.
Ezio mounted the larger of the two horses, the bay, and turned her head around.
Without a backward glance, he headed out of the city, north.
NINE
Masyaf was two hundred miles—as the crow flies—away from Acre. The seemingly gentle desert land that lay between the two points was very far from gentle in fact. The great Ottoman outward thrust from its original core had been going on relentlessly for two hundred years, and had culminated in the taking of Constantinople by the twenty-year-old Sultan Mehmed II in 1453. But still the Turkish tentacles extended, reaching westward as far as Bulgaria and beyond, and south and east into Syria and what had once been the Holy Land. The eastern coastal strip of the White Sea, with its vital ports and its access by water westward, was a jewel in the crown, and the Ottoman grip on it was as yet fragile. Ezio was under no illusions about what battles he would have to face as he made his lonely way north. He followed the coast for most of the way, keeping the sparkling sea in view to his left, riding the high cliffs and the tattered scrublands that topped them, traveling in the hours of dawn and dusk, hiding for four hours when the sun was at its highest and resting again for four hours at night under the stars.
Traveling alone had its advantages. He could blend in far more easily than would have been possible if he’d had an escort, and his keen eyes discerned danger points ahead well enough in advance either to skirt them or wait until they had passed. This was bandit country, where half-disciplined gangs of unemployed mercenaries roamed, killing travelers and each other for what they could get, surviving, as it seemed to Ezio, merely for the sake of it, in a countryside still reeling in the aftermath of centuries of war. Men turned feral and no longer thinking, no longer hoping or fearing; men who had lost any sense of conscience. Ruthless and reckless, and as callous as they were remorseless.
Fights there were, when they could not be avoided, and every one of them pointless, leaving a few more dead for the vultures and the crows, which were the only creatures truly to thrive in this wasteland forgotten of God. Once, Ezio saved a frightened village from marauders, and once, a woman from torture, rape, and death. But for how long? And what would become of them after he had passed by? He was not God, he could not be everywhere; and here, where once Christ had trodden, God showed no evidence of looking after His own.
The farther north he rode, the heavier Ezio’s heart became. Only the fire of the quest kept him on the path. But he tied brushwood to his horses’ tails to eradicate his tracks as he passed, and at night, he spread branches of thorn to rest on, so that he would never quite sleep. Eternal vigilance was not only the price of freedom but of survival. Though the passing years might have robbed him of some of his strength, that was compensated for by experience, and the fruit of the training which had been drummed into him by Paola and Mario so long ago in Florence and Monteriggioni had never rotted. Though Ezio sometimes felt that he couldn’t go on, that he wouldn’t go on, he went on.
Two hundred miles as the crow flies. But this was a harsh winter, and there were many detours and delays along the road.
Finally, Ezio saw the mountains rearing ahead of him.
He drew in a deep breath of cold air.
Masyaf was near.
Three weeks later, on foot, both horses dead in the frozen passes behind him, and on his conscience, for they had been more stalwart and loyal companions than many men, Ezio stood in sight of his goal.
An eagle soared, high in the hard, clear sky.
Ezio, 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.
Masyaf. After many 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, Ezio 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, coming from nowhere, whacked into his right shoulder, through the body armor there.