As he spoke, Mario was scanning the tall towers, built close together, of San Gimignano. The square-built structures seemed almost to scrape the sky, and Ezio had a strange sense of having seen such a view before, but it must have been either in a dream or in another life, for he had no precise memory of the occasion.
The tops of the towers were each aflame with torch-light, and there were many other torches visible on the battlements of the town walls, and at its gates.
'He's well garrisoned,' said Mario. 'And to judge by the torches it looks as if Vieri may well be expecting us. It's a pity, but I'm not surprised. After all, he has his spies just as I have mine.' He paused. 'I can see archers on the ramparts, and the gates are heavily guarded.' He continued to scan the city. 'But even so, it looks as if he hasn't got enough men to cover every gate sufficiently. The one on the south side looks less well defended - it must be the place he expects an attack to be least likely. So that is where we'll strike.'
He raised an arm and kicked his horse's flanks. His force moved forward behind him. Ezio rode beside him. 'This is what we'll do,' said Mario, his voice urgent. 'My men and I will engage the guards at the gate, while you must find a way over the wall and get the gate opened from the inside. We must be silent and swift.'
He unslung a bandolier of throwing-knives and handed it to Ezio. 'Take these. Use them to dispatch the archers.'
As soon as they were close enough, they dismounted. Mario led a group of his best soldiers towards the cohort of guards posted at the southern entrance to the town. Ezio left them, and hurried the last hundred yards on foot, using the cover of bushes and shrubs to conceal his progress, until he found himself at the foot of the wall. He had his hood up, and by the light of the torches at the gate he could see that the shadow cast by his hood on the wall bore a strange resemblance to an eagle's head. He looked up. The wall rose sheer above him, fifty feet or more. He couldn't see if anyone was on the battlements above. Slinging his bandolier securely, he began to climb. It was hard, as the walls were of dressed stone and gave few opportunities for footholds, but embrasures near the top allowed him to gain a firm place to lodge himself while he peered warily over the battlements' edge. Along the rampart to his left, two archers, their backs to him, were leaning over the wall, bows drawn. They had seen Mario's attack begin, and were preparing to fire down on the Assassin condottieri. Ezio did not hesitate. It was their lives or those of his friends, and now he appreciated the new skills his uncle had insisted on teaching him. Quickly, concentrating his mind and his eye in the flickering semi-darkness, he drew two knives and threw them, one after the other, with deadly accuracy. The first struck an archer in the nape of the neck - the blow fatal in an instant. The man slumped over the crenellations without a whisper. The next knife flew a little lower, catching the second man full in the back with such force that, with a hollow cry, he pitched forward into the blackness beneath.
Below him, at the foot of a narrow stone stairway, lay the gate, but now he appreciated that Vieri's force was not enough to guard the city with absolute efficiency, for there were no soldiers posted on its interior side. He bounded down the steps three at a time, seeming almost to fly, and soon located the lever that operated the heavy iron bolts which locked the solid, ten-foot-high oak doors. He pulled it, needing all his strength to do so, for it was not designed to yield to the force of just one man, but at last the job was done, and he hauled on one of the massive rings which were set into the doors at shoulder height. It gave, and the gate began to swing open, revealing as it did so that Mario and his men were just completing their bloody task. Two Assassin men lay dead, but twenty of Vieri's force had been sent to their Maker.
'Well done, Ezio!' Mario cried softly. So far, no alarm seemed to have been raised, but it would only be a matter of time.
'Come on!' said Mario. 'Silently, now!' He turned to one of his sergeants and said, 'Go back and bring the main force up.'
Then he led the way carefully through the silent streets - Vieri must have imposed some kind of curfew, for there was no one to be seen. Once, they almost fell foul of a Pazzi patrol. Shrinking back into the shadows, they let it pass, before rushing up from the rear to attack the men and bring them down with clinical efficiency.
'What next?' Ezio asked his uncle.
'We need to locate the captain of the guard here. His name's Roberto. He'll know where Vieri is.' Mario was showing more stress than usual. 'This is taking too long. It'll be better if we split up. Look, I know Roberto. At this time of night, he'll either be drunk in his favourite taverna or he'll be already sleeping it off in the citadel. You take the citadel. Take Orazio and a dozen good men with you.' He looked at the sky, which was just beginning to lighten, and tasted the air, which already carried the coolness of a new day in it. 'Meet me by the cathedral before cock- crow to report. And don't forget - I leave you in command of this gang of hooligans!' He smiled affectionately at his men, took his own force, and disappeared along a street that led uphill.
'The citadel's in the north-west of the town - sir,' said Orazio. He grinned, as did the others. Ezio sensed both their obedience to Mario, and their misgivings at having been entrusted to the command of such an untried officer.
'Then let's go,' Ezio replied firmly. 'Follow me. At my signal.'
The citadel formed one side of the town's main square, not far from the cathedral and near the top of the small hill on which the town was built. They reached it without difficulty, but before they entered it Ezio noticed a number of Pazzi guards posted at its entrance. Motioning his men to stay back, he approached them, keeping to the shadows and silent as a fox, until he was close enough to overhear the conversation which was going on between two of them. It was clear that they were unhappy with Vieri's leadership, and the more vehement of the two was in full flow.
'I tell you, Tebaldo,' the former was saying, 'I'm not happy with that young puppy Vieri. I don't think he could aim his piss into a bucket, let alone defend a town against a determined force. As for Capitano Roberto, he drinks so much he's like a bottle of Chianti dressed in a uniform!'
'You talk too much, Zohane,' cautioned Tebaldo. 'Remember what happened to Bernardo when he dared to open his mouth.'
The other checked himself, and nodded soberly. 'You are right. I heard Vieri had him blinded.'
'Well, I'd like to keep my eyesight, thank you very much, so we should end this talk. We don't know how many of our comrades feel like us, and Vieri has spies everywhere.'
Satisfied, Ezio made his way back to his own troop. An unhappy garrison is rarely an efficient one; but there was no guarantee that Vieri did not command a strong loyal core of Pazzi adherents. As for the rest of Vieri's men, Ezio had learned for himself how strong a commander fear itself can be. But the task now was to gain access to the citadel. Ezio scanned the square. Apart from the small force of Pazzi guards, it was dark and empty.
'Orazio?'
'Yessir?'
'Will you engage these men and finish them off? Quickly and silently. I'm going to try to get up on the roof and see whether they've got any more people posted in the courtyard.'
'It's what we came here to do, sir.'
Leaving Orazio and his soldiers to take on the guards, Ezio, checking that he still had sufficient throwing- knives in his bandolier, ran a little way into a side street adjacent to the citadel, climbed to a nearby roof, and from it leapt to the roof of the citadel, which was built round its own interior courtyard. He thanked God that Vieri had evidently neglected to post men in the high towers of the houses of the dominant local families, which punctuated the town, since from that vantage point they could have surveyed everything that was going on. But he also knew that gaining control of those towers would be the first objective of Mario's main force. From the roof of the citadel, he could see that the courtyard was deserted, leapt down to the top of its colonnade, and from there dropped to the ground. It was an easy manoeuvre to open the gates, and to position his men, who had dragged the bodies of the defeated Pazzi patrol out of sight, in the shadows of the colonnade. To avoid suspicion, they had reclosed the citadel gates behind them.
The citadel seemed, to all intents and purposes, deserted. But soon afterwards there came the sound of voices from the square beyond, and another group of Vieri's men appeared, opening the gates and entering the courtyard, supporting among them a thickset man, running to fat, who was clearly drunk.
'Where've the gate guards buggered off to?' the man wanted to know. 'Don't say Vieri's countermanded me and sent them off on another one of his bloody patrols!'
'Ser Roberto,' one of the men supporting him pleaded. 'Isn't it time you got some rest?'
'Whaddyew mean? Made it back here just fine, didn't I? Anyway, night's still young!'
The new arrivals managed to seat their chief on the edge of the fountain in the middle of the courtyard and
