This book… is the most amazing book… of all the amazing books… on the planet…
AND I QUOTE!
- Ezio was busy directing aim when a nearby saker was hit. It exploded, flinging red-hot bronze in every direction. Ezio’s gunner, who was inches away from him, had his head and shoulders sliced off by shards. The man’s arms fell to the floor, and the remains of his body followed suit, spewing blood like a fountain.
- Ezio watched as Caterina’s troops moved in swiftly to wipe out the wounded and bemused Borgia survivors. She herself was at the head, her silver breastplate flashing in the cold sunlight. Ezio saw her plunge her sword straight through a Borgia captain’s right eye and into his brain. The soldier’s body squirmed in the agony of death for a long moment, pivoted by its point, his hands uselessly trying to clutch the firmly held blade and pull it out.
- Ezio gave chase, gouging the thigh of one of his would-be assailants, while another fell under the hooves of his horse, only to have his back broken. Overtaking a sixth, Ezio leant down and, turning backwards, ripped the man’s stomach open so that his guts spilled onto the ground and he stumbled over them as he fell and died.
- Whimpering, the creature reached out a skinny left hand, grubby and bony, and plucked at the end of an iron bar, which was stuck in the fire. Its other end was red hot, and, tremblingly, the creature drew it out and, bracing itself, applied the end to the bloody stump of its other arm, stifling a shriek as it did so, in an attempt to cauterize the wound.
It was the wolfman Ezio had maimed.
- Catching his breath and kicking the iron bar away, Ezio said, “What the fuck are you?”
“Urgh,” was all the reply he got. Ezio slapped the man hard round the head with his other fist, which was still sheathed in a mailed glove. Blood spurted close to the man’s left eye and he moaned in pain.
“What are you? Speak!”
“Ergh.” His open mouth displayed a broken, greyish set of teeth, and the smell that came from it made that of a drunken whore seem sweet.
“Speak!” Ezio drove the point of his sword into the stump and twisted it. He hadn’t time to mess about this wreck of a person. He was worried about his horse.
“Aargh!” Another cry of pain, then a rough, almost incomprehensible voice emerged from the inarticulate grunting, speaking good Italian. “I am a follower of the Secta Luporum.”
“The Sect of the Wolves? What the hell is that?”
“You will found out. What you did tonight—”
“Oh, shut up.” Tightening his grip, Ezio stirred up the fire to gain more light and glanced around….
…”My brothers will return soon, and then…”
Ezio dragged him to the table, pointing with his sword at the papers. “And these? What are these?”
The man looked at him and spat. Ezio placed his sword point close to the bloody stump again.
“No!” wailed the man. “Not again!”
This book. I love it. Mix with that Niccolò Machiavelli, Leonardo da Vinci, the awesome that is Caterina Sforza, a good deal of Renaissance history, a lot of Latin and Italian, and you get pages filled with win. (:
