Dmitry's typical arrogance and his recognition of it relaxed the four of us with a ripple of silent laughter that passed around the table, but it quickly evaporated.
'You really think it's as bad as that?' It was Vadim Fyodorovich, our leader, or at least the highest-ranking of us, who asked the question.
'Don't you?' replied Dmitry.
Vadim was silent for a moment. 'Yes, yes I do. I just wanted to hear it out loud.'
'I wouldn't have believed it before Smolensk,' I said.
'Perhaps that was the problem,' said Vadim. 'Perhaps none of us really believed what Bonaparte was capable of. That we do now gives us some… hope.' He rubbed his face, his fingers running through his thick, black beard. 'Anyway,' he resumed, with a little more energy than before, 'Dmitry, tell us about these people.'
'A small group,' explained Dmitry, 'expert in working behind enemy lines. Always attacking when they are least expected. Always causing maximum disruption at minimum risk.'
'They sound like Kazaki,' I said.
Dmitry sucked his bottom lip, choosing his words. 'Like Cossacks, yes – in many ways.' He again thought carefully before speaking. 'But not Russian.'
'And how do you know them?' From Vadim's tone, it seemed clear that he knew the answers to his questions already. He and Dmitry had had plenty of time to talk on the grim ride from Smolensk back to Moscow. It was natural – certainly natural for Dmitry – to make sure he entered a debate with half of us already on his side.
'They helped us against the Turks.' Dmitry's eyes fell on my diminished left hand as he spoke. My two missing fingers had long since rotted away in the corner of a prison cell in Silistria, severed by a Turkish blade. It was a wound that people seemed particularly sensitive about, although I had long since got used to it. The physical scars were the least of the horrors that the Turks had visited upon me.
'So does this mean that you know these people too, Aleksei?' asked Maksim Sergeivich, turning to me. Maksim was the youngest of the four of us. Just as I had noticed that Vadim was already on-side with Dmitry's plan, Maks was afraid that a three-to-one vote was a foregone conclusion. And that would be a big problem for Maks. He had a thing about democracy.
'No, no. This is as new to me as it is to you, Maks,' I replied cautiously. I looked at Dmitry; this was all new to me, and it was odd – to say the least – that Dmitry had never mentioned it. 'Dmitry and I never crossed paths in Wallachia. They seem to get about though, these… "people".' I stuck with Dmitry's original word. 'Fighting on the Danube and then travelling all the way to Moscow to help us. Where do they call home?'
'They're from around the Danube; Wallachia, Moldavia – one of those places. They fought there from patriotism, to defend the land of their forefathers. Fighting the Turks is something of a tradition down there.'
'Well, the whole thing's out of the question then, isn't it?' said Maks, his eager face lighting up at being able to point out a logical flaw. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose as he spoke. 'The Danube is as far away from us as… Warsaw. Even if you sent word to them today, Napoleon would have taken Moscow and would be warming his hands by the fire in Petersburg before they…'
Maks stopped before he finished his sentence. He was, more than any man I knew, able to detach himself from his own world. Most of us would find it hard to describe so glibly the realization of the horror we were all fighting, but Maks could conceive the inconceivable. It was a useful and at the same time sometimes frightening trait. But today, even he understood the potential reality of what he had said.
Vadim bridled at the image. 'If Bonaparte were to make it to Moscow or Petersburg, then the only fires he would find would be the smouldering remains of a city destroyed by its own people rather than allowed to fall into the hands of the invader.'
At the time it sounded like tub-thumping bravado. We little knew how true his words would turn out to be.
'Maks does have a point though,' I said. 'The whole thing is academic now. If we were going to use them, we should have sent word a long time ago.'
'Which is why I did,' said Dmitry.
He looked round the room, into each of our eyes in turn, daring one of us to object. Vadim already knew. Maks saw no logical argument against a fait accompli. I was tired.
'There was a letter from them waiting for me when we got back here today,' continued Dmitry. 'They've already set off. They expect to be here by the middle of the month.'
'Let's just hope they don't get caught up in the French lines along the way.' My comment sounded cynical, but it was a serious issue. Half of the Russian army had been dashing back from a rushed peace settlement with the Turks and had only just made it ahead of Bonaparte. Dmitry's friends would be running the same risk. But none of the others cared to take up the point, so I let it lie.
'How many of them are there?' asked Maks.
'That depends,' said Dmitry. 'Twenty if we're lucky – probably fewer.'
'Well, what use is that?' I asked. I sounded more contemptuous than I had intended to, but no more than I felt.
'Davidov performs miracles with just a few Cossacks,' Vadim pointed out.
It was below the belt; Denis Vasilyevich Davidov was something of a hero of mine. But the comparison was unfair.
'A squad from a Cossack voisko consists of eighty men or more; not twenty. Are your friends worth four Cossacks each?'
Dmitry looked me square in the eye. 'No,' he said. 'They're worth ten.' I felt the sudden urge to punch him, but I knew it was not Dmitry that I was angry with.
'Perhaps you should tell us what makes them so remarkable,' said Vadim.
'It's hard to describe,' said Dmitry, considering for a moment. 'You've heard of the Oprichniki?'
Vadim and I both nodded agreement, but Maks, surprisingly, had not come across the term.
'During the reign of Ivan the Fourth – the Terrible, as he liked to be called – during one of his less benevolent phases, he set up a sort of personal troop of bodyguards known as the Oprichniki,' explained Dmitry. 'The job of the Oprichniki was internal suppression, which is obviously not what we're talking about here, but the method of an Oprichnik was to use absolute, unrestrained violence. Officially, they were monks. They rode around the country wearing black cowls, killing anyone that Ivan deemed should die. Although they were monks, they weren't educated, but their faith gave them the fanaticism that Ivan needed.'
'And these are the guys that are going to help us?' asked Maks dubiously.
Dmitry nodded slowly. 'There are similarities. My friends understand that violence is of itself a weapon. They are unhindered by scruple or fear.'
'And are they religious?' I asked. 'Monks, like the original Oprichniki?'
'They're not monks' – Dmitry paused, as if considering how much to tell us, then continued – 'but they have their own fanaticism. Where they come from, on the borders of the Ottoman world, Christianity has always been an adaptable concept.'
'Are they controllable? Trustworthy?' asked Vadim.
'As trustworthy and controllable as a musket or a cannon – in the correct hands. They just need pointing in the right direction and they get on with it.'
'And you're sure they don't expect payment?' Vadim's question clearly referred to a conversation he and Dmitry had had in private.