Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood Read Online Free PDF

guns.” He leaned on Ezio as he got his breath back. “You don’t know what it’s like—some of these soldiers, they got no respect for artillery. Newfangled stuff for a lot of ’em, of course, grant you that—but I ask you! They expect a gun to work like magic, just like that! No sense of coaxing a good performance out of ’em.”
    “Can we talk as we walk?” said Ezio. “Time isn’t standing still, you know.”
    “Mind you,” the master-armorer continued, “these things we’ve got here, and I mean they’re in a class of their own—nothing but the best for Captain Mario—but they’re still pretty simple. I’ve got hold of a French design for a handheld gun. They call it a ‘wrought-iron murderer.’ Very clever. Just think—handheld cannon. That’s the future, chum.”
    By now they were approaching the group around the cannon.
    “You can call off the hunt,” said Ezio cheerfully. “Here he is.”
    The master-sergeant eyed the armorer narrowly. “Up to it, is he?”
    “I may be a little the worse for wear,” retorted the armorer, “but I am a peaceful man at heart. In these times, encouraging the sleeping warrior in my gut is the only way to stay alive. Therefore, it is my duty to drink.” He pushed the sergeant aside. “Let’s see what we’ve got here…”
    After examining the cannon for a few moments, however, he rounded on the soldiers. “What have you been doing? You’ve been tampering with them, haven’t you? Thank God you didn’t fire one—you could have got us all killed. They’re not ready yet. Got to give the bores a good clean first.”
    “Perhaps with you around we won’t need cannon after all,” the sergeant told him. “We’ll just get you to breathe on the enemy!”
    But the armorer was busy with a cleaning rod and wads of coarse, oily cotton. When he’d finished, he stood up, easing his back.
    “There, that’s done it,” he said. Turning to Ezio, he went on, “Just get these fellows to load her—that’s something they can do, though God knows it took ’em long enough to learn—and you can have a go. Look, over there on the hill. We set some targets up there on a level with this gun. Start by aiming at something on the same level; that way, if the cannon explodes, at least it won’t take your head off with it.”
    “Sounds reassuring,” said Ezio.
    “Just try it,
Messere
. Here’s the fuse.”
    Ezio placed the slow match on the touchhole. For a long moment, nothing happened, then he sprang back as the cannon bucked and roared. Looking across to the targets, he could see that his ball had shattered one of them.
    “Well done,” said the armorer. “
Perfetto!
At least one person here apart from me knows how to shoot.”
    Ezio had the men reload and fired again. But this time he missed.
    “Can’t win ’em all,” said the armorer. “But come back at dawn. We’ll be practicing again then and it’ll give you a chance to get your eye in.”
    “I will,” said Ezio, little realizing that when he next fired a cannon, it would be in deadly earnest.

FIVE
     

    When Ezio entered the great hall of Mario’s citadel, the shadows of evening were already gathering, and servants were beginning to light torches and candles to dispel the gloom. The gloom accorded with Ezio’s increasingly somber mood as the hour of the meeting approached.
    So wrapped up in his own thoughts was he that he did not at first notice the person hovering by the massive fireplace, her slight but strong figure dwarfed by the giant caryatids that flanked the chimney, and so was startled when the woman approached him, touching his arm. Immediately he recognized her, and his features softened into an expression of pure pleasure.
    “
Buona sera
, Ezio,” she said—for her, a little shyly, he thought.
    “
Buona sera
, Caterina,” he replied, bowing to the Countess of Forlì. Their former intimacy was some way in the past, though neither of them had forgotten it, and when she had touched