Twelve (30 page)

As Andrei turned back towards me I grasped my sword and, with a single backhand motion, drew it and struck him across the front of the throat. Ever since Iuda had mentioned it, I had been itching to try decapitation as a method for despatching one of these creatures. It was not, as I knew from battle, an easy thing to achieve. The blade slipped over the top of his Adam's apple and, severing his windpipe, buried itself about halfway through his neck. With a swift tug I extricated it. The wound was not fatal. Andrei bent forward, his hands clutching at the long, deep gash in his throat as a torrent of blood flowed out between his fingers. He was incapacitated, and his death was not my immediate concern. I dashed towards the window once again, this time stepping first on to the seat and then the back of the armchair that stood near to it and leaping as high as I could. I thrust the tip of my sword hard down into the wooden planks to give me a little more upward momentum. My left hand just grasped the top of one of the floorboards that covered the glass and with my two fingers I hung there above the room for five or even ten seconds, viewing the scene beneath me.

On one side of the room, Dmitry, Iuda and Pyetr stood stock still, not in shock, but unable to make any move until they could see what would happen next. On the other, Andrei stood quite upright with his back to the wall. His left hand pressed against the wall behind him for support, while his right was held ineffectually across his throat, having little effect on the flow of blood from it. Near him crouched the soldier, covering his head in fear – fear either still of the icon, or of the horrific injury I had inflicted upon Andrei.

My entire weight was held on my two fingers, and they began to scream at me that they could not hold on. Beneath me, Iuda and Pyetr were almost licking their lips in anticipation of my fall. I felt my body gradually begin to descend. But it was not my fingers that had given way, it was the board itself. With the screeching sound of nails being drawn out of wood, the floorboard I was holding yielded. As its tip etched out a quarter circle across the room, moving horizontally at first and then smoothly bending round to its final, rapid, vertical descent, I fell with it.

I landed on my feet, but immediately fell on to my side, managing to keep hold of my sword. Where the wooden plank had been, now sunlight could penetrate as a beam which sliced across the room, bisecting it with an area of light about the thickness of a brick wall. For the vampires, it was just as impassable. I had landed on the wrong side of the division, being at the feet of Iuda and Pyetr, but for me the barrier was as impenetrable as mere air. I rolled across to the other side of the room and got to my feet.

Iuda was enraged. He leapt towards me with a look of unutterable malevolence on his face, and it took the combined strength of both Pyetr and Dmitry to keep him from crossing through the intrusion of light that would so certainly have meant his death.

I smashed the hilt of my sword into Andrei's stomach and he doubled up in pain, his hands leaving his throat to clutch at his belly. The back of his neck was now fully exposed to me and I brought the blade of my sabre down on it with the strength of both hands. Still it was not enough to sever it. I could feel my sword trapped tightly between two vertebrae, unable to move forward or backward. I flicked my wrist and gave the blade a sharp sideways twist. I heard the popping sound of whatever ligaments remained to hold Andrei's head upon his shoulders and felt the blade come free.

Andrei's head was dust before it ever hit the ground. His body straightened up and his hands went to where his face had once been. They too never made it, desiccating and then crumbling to nothing as his body fell to its knees. It was a falling motion that was never stopped. By the time he had reached his knees, his whole body was no more than a fine powder which settled, rather than fell, to the floor. At some moment during the descent his coat, his shirt and his breeches ceased to be carried down by his body and began to fall of their own accord as a heap of laundry – as a marionette whose strings had been suddenly cut.

The looks of horror on the faces of Pyetr and Iuda were nothing compared with that of Dmitry. Theirs were angry and vengeful. His was a genuine shock to see his friend Andrei slaughtered before his eyes and to see his friend Aleksei carrying out the butchery with such evident satisfaction.

'Take him, Dmitry Fetyukovich!' growled Pyetr. 'You're the only one who can.'

Dmitry approached the wall of light, but even he seemed reluctant to cross it. There were tears in his eyes as he spoke.

'Why, Aleksei?' he said. 'You of all people are an enlightened man. You don't have to wallow in the prejudices and superstitions of our grandparents. They came here to help us, to fight against our enemies as though they were our brothers. Throughout their lives they've had to face the hatred of the ignorant and now you – even after they helped us to throw out the French – even you can offer them no thanks but death.'

He drew his sword and took a step towards me, standing in the middle of the very barrier that split the room, his face and his scars and his tears illuminated by the sunlight.

'Kill him, Dmitry!' snarled Iuda from behind.

'I don't want to fight you, Dmitry,' I said, dropping my sword to my side, but not being so foolish as to sheath it, 'but I will if I have to, and if I do, I will win.'

'I don't believe you would kill me, Aleksei, but having seen what you did to Andrei, what do I know of you?'

'Take a look around you, Dmitry,' I insisted. 'Look at the corpses on the floor. They're not French; they're Russians – innocent Russians. These creatures don't kill to help liberate our country. They kill to eat, and they'll eat whatever they find there is the greatest supply of.'

Dmitry began to look about him, taking in the truth of what I said. Almost beneath his feet lay the body that I had briefly mistaken for Natalia. With his boot, he turned its head to one side so that he could see its face. If he had suspected it was Natalia, he showed no sign of relief on seeing that it wasn't. Perhaps like me he realized that it might just as well have been.

Behind him, Iuda came to the conclusion that Dmitry was losing the argument. He took a step towards Dmitry, but at the same time Dmitry took a step forward and entered my side of the room.

'We have to live, Dmitry,' Pyetr called plaintively after him. 'These few peasants were just so that we could survive until we left the city.'

'And what about Vadim?' I called out to Pyetr.

'Vadim?' asked Dmitry.

'Over there,' I said with a jerk of my head.

Pyetr and Iuda could find no more words to say as Dmitry inspected the remains of his commanding officer, comrade and friend. He put a hand to Vadim's face and let out a cry of deepest sorrow. Vadim's dead eyes stared back at him and offered no forgiveness.

Dmitry raised his sword and began to advance upon the two vampires who stood on the other side of the room from us. I restrained him before he could cross back into their half.

'You promised you'd control yourselves this time,' he said, addressing Pyetr, whom he had known longest.

'I did,' replied Pyetr ambiguously.

'It's too late to pretend to be surprised, Dmitry,' said Iuda in a more determined tone. 'You chose to sup with the Devil. You knew what we are – what we do.'

I think his words were directed more at me than at Dmitry, and I agreed with them. If the reality of the deaths of innocent Russians and of Vadim had come as a surprise to Dmitry, then he had only been fooled by himself, not by the Oprichniki. It could never be said that Dmitry was one to see only the good in people, but in this case he had only seen the benefit to himself, and to his country, that could be gained from working with them.

However, if Iuda's words were intended to make me mistrust Dmitry, it was also clear that Dmitry would no longer be wise to trust the Oprichniki. They might have had better reasons to kill Vadim or to kill me, but if he stuck with them, Dmitry's time would eventually come.

'I'm sorry, Aleksei,' muttered Dmitry. It was hopelessly inadequate, but it was all that could be said.

'I think you had better go,' I said, addressing the two vampires.

'Go?' said Pyetr. 'Why should we go? It's you that's trapped.' This was ostensibly true. The two doors to the room were both in their half. While they could leave if they wanted, we would not be able to reach an exit without crossing the divide and risking attack from them.

'All we have to do is wait until it's dark again,' continued Pyetr. Iuda, however, was glancing nervously around at the narrow window, at the ray of light and at the doors.

'I'm not sure,' I said, 'whether you creatures still believe that the sun revolves around the earth or that the earth revolves around itself. Either way, the sun travels from east to west once a day. And that means that that beam of light is going to travel from west to east – towards you. By noon, you'll only have one door to exit by. By mid-afternoon, you'll have none. You'll slowly be backed into the corner, until the sunlight hits the corner, and then you'll be gone.' Unless, of course, it turned cloudy. I didn't know whether the indirect sunlight of a cloudy day would be enough to kill them. That's why I played my card then, hoping to force them to leave, rather than risking the scenario being played out.

'Or we could just pull down all the other floorboards from the window right now,' suggested Dmitry. It was practical, but somewhat less elegant.

Either way, it was enough to persuade the Oprichniki. Pyetr was already out of the room. Iuda clicked his heels together and gave a mocking formal bow. 'We shall meet again, Aleksei Ivanovich,' he said, and then left.

Dmitry made to pursue. 'We had better wait a little,' I told him. 'Give them time to get out.' Dmitry nodded. 'Let's get some more light in here,' I suggested, going over to the window.

Before we could start work on any of the remaining boards, we both heard a whimpering noise emanating from underneath the oriental screen that I had knocked over. I drew my sword and used it to lift up the edge of the screen and flick it aside. Underneath was the crouched figure of the soldier-vampire, curled almost into a ball, his hands covering his head. He was shaking with fear. He had been there all the time, forgotten by us and, had he been capable of it, he had been in a position to reach out and kill us. Perhaps Iuda and Pyetr had been counting on that, or perhaps they, like us, had forgotten him.

I poked him with my sword and he looked up, his eyes showing that he was still inexperienced enough as a vampire to remember the sensation of terror.

'What's your name?' I asked him.

'Pavel,' he stammered. In his eyes I saw a new emotion; hope – the vaguest conception of the possibility that this day might not be his last.

Iuda, it turned out then, was correct. I did have scruples which held me back from killing. If Pavel had resisted, or simply remained bravely silent, I might have had the stomach to kill him. But now, though I knew him to be a vampire, he had such shades of his recently lost humanity about him that I found myself incapable of any action against him.

The decision was taken from me.

With a whoosh of displaced air, my wooden dagger came down upon Pavel's curled back, driven by Dmitry, who clutched it with both hands. The dagger buried itself deep between the vampire's ribs. Pavel let out a gasp and knelt upright, his hands reaching behind him to try to pull out the weapon. Dmitry gave it another thrust and then twisted it. The wooden blade broke in two, leaving Dmitry with only the handle. A trickle of blood appeared at Pavel's lips and his eyes became glassy as he slumped forward.

I nudged the body with my foot. It still felt like flesh and blood. Unlike the others, there was no instant collapse to ashes and dust.

'He hadn't long been a vampire,' said Dmitry, reading my thoughts. He evidently knew, as I had already deduced, that a vampire's body could only decay to the extent that it would have if he had never become one.

'What shall we do now?' I asked.

'Pyetr told me they would be leaving Moscow.'

'Back the way they came?'

'No. Just like the French, they won't retreat by the same lines that they advanced along,' explained Dmitry.

'So which way will they go?'

'South-west. Pretty much the same way that Bonaparte is going – at least for a while. It will give them a food supply of French soldiers.'

'Or Russian,' I added. Dmitry did not reply. 'Do you believe what Pyetr said about them leaving?' I asked.

'I think so. It's what I would do.'

'So we follow them?'

'I suppose,' said Dmitry, nodding thoughtfully, 'or just let them go.'

I went over to the corner of the room and bent down.

'What are you doing?' asked Dmitry.

'My icon,' I said. I tied a knot in the broken chain and put it back over my head. It felt a little unusual, resting against my chest slightly higher than its accustomed position, but I would quickly get used to it.

I turned again to Pavel's body. Though slower than in the other vampires I had seen, his body's decomposition was still quicker than that of any human. As we had been speaking, he had decayed enough to be indistinguishable from one of the older corpses in the adjacent room, whose deaths must have occurred only a short time after his. Only the untidy placing of his body distinguished him from them.

We went down into the cellar, carrying Vadim Fyodorovich's body with us. The broken-down wall into the next cellar I now realized, and Dmitry confirmed, was part of the route that he and Pyetr had used to get to the building without venturing out into the daylight. It was then also the exit through which Pyetr and Iuda had left. I peered through and once again caught the polluted stench of the sewer below, a stench which I now realized consisted of not just a miasma of human waste, but also that of bodily human decay. I could just hear the sound of water flowing somewhere down there, but the darkness was total. It was the habitat of the Oprichniki and I chose not to follow them.