Read Online Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden - Free Book Online

his head reeled.
    “I cannot fight like this.”
    “Oh, God, here they come again,” bellowed the sergeant as a siege tower crashed into the upper crenellations of the citadel, disgorging yet another fresh troop of Borgia soldiers.
    Ezio turned to face them, his head slowly clearing from the darkness, his steely self-control overcoming the searing pain of the gunshot wound. But his shoulder was so damaged that he could not raise his sword. Assassin
condottieri
quickly surrounded him and fought off Cesare’s men. They managed to beat a retreat with very few casualties, but as they made their way back into the inner vastness of the castle Claudia shouted from a doorway, eager to hear of her brother’s well-being. As she stepped into the open, a Borgia captain rushed toward her—bloodied sword in his hand. Ezio looked on in horror, but recovered his composure enough to yell to his men. Two Assassin fighters ran toward Ezio’s sister—only just managing to put themselves between her and the flashing blade of the Borgia murderer. Sparks shot from the contact of the three blades—both Assassins raising their own swords simultaneously to block the killing blow. Claudia stumbled to the ground—her mouth open in a silent scream. The stronger of the Assassin soldiers, the master-sergeant, pushed the enemy’s sword skyward—locking the hilts at the hand guards—as the other Assassin pulled back his blade and stabbed forward into the guts of the Borgia captain. Claudia regained her composure and rose slowly to her feet. Safely in the fold of the Assassin troop, she rushed toward Ezio, ripping a strip of cotton from her skirts and pressing it to his shoulder, the white cloth quickly blooming with red from the wound.
    “Shit! Don’t take risks like that!” Ezio told her, thanking the sergeant as his men pushed the enemy back, hurling some from the high battlements, while others fled.
    “We must get you inside the Sanctuary,” cried Claudia. “Come
on!
”
    Ezio allowed himself to be carried again—he had lost a lot of blood. In the meantime, the remaining citizens of the town who had not yet been able to escape crowded around them. Monteriggioni itself was deserted now—under the complete control of the Borgia force. Only the citadel remained in Assassin hands.
    But now they had reached their goal—the cavernous fortified room beneath the castle below its northern wall, linked to the main building by a secret passage leading off Mario’s library. But only in the nick of time. One of their men, Paganino, one of the Venetian thieves once under Antonio de Magianis’s control, was in the act of closing the secret door to the stairwell as the last fugitives passed through it.
    “We thought you had been killed,
Ser
Ezio!” he cried.
    “They haven’t got me yet,” returned Ezio grimly.
    “I don’t know what to do. Where does this passage lead?”
    “To the north, outside the walls.”
    “So it’s true. We always thought it was a legend.”
    “Well, now you know better,” said Ezio, looking at the man and wondering if, in the heat of the moment, he had said too much to a man he knew little of. He ordered his sergeant to close the door, but at the last moment, Paganino slipped through it, back to the main building.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I have to help the defenders. Don’t worry, I’ll lead them back this way.”
    “I must bolt this door behind us. If you don’t come now, you are on your own.”
    “I’ll manage, sir. I always do.”
    “Then go with God. I must ensure the safety of these people.”
    Ezio took stock of the crowd gathered in the Sanctuary. In the gloom he could make out, among the rest of the fugitives, the features of not only Claudia, but his mother. He breathed an inward sigh of relief.
    “There is no time to be lost,” he told them, jamming the door shut behind him with a sizable iron bar.

ELEVEN
     

    Quickly, his mother and sister dressed and bandaged his wound properly and