He turned away and the eyes of the other two vampires in the room followed him. I took my chance. I raced across the room towards the window, brushing aside the relaxed arm of Varfolomei's 'offspring' and playing hopscotch over the pitiful corpses which were lined up across the floor. My best guess was that by now it was dawn outside. I grabbed hold of one of the curtains and wrenched at it, pulling it away from its fixings high above me at the top of the window. Andrei took a step towards me as I tugged, but he was too late. The curtain rail gave way and the curtain came tumbling down over my head, blocking my sight completely, but revealing the window behind it.
I quickly wrestled the heavy material off me, the darkness of its covering giving way to the still dim, lamp-lit room. Around me stood the three vampires – two of them utterly impassive at the futility of my action, Iuda with the trace of a mocking smile on his lips. I turned back to the window to see that, behind the curtains, it had been boarded up with the floorboards that had been taken from downstairs. Through the occasional chink I could see that outside it was just daylight, but not enough of it could get inside to do any harm to my captors.
In happier times, parties held in a house such as this would have carried on long into the night and on to the following morning. Sometimes the zealous host would ensure that the windows were shuttered and the clocks stopped so that no guests would realize that dawn had broken and spoil the atmosphere by considering that it might be time to depart. My hosts – the new, undead occupants of this house – had a similar desire to obscure the light of the new day, but with very different motivation.
With a flick of his head, Iuda indicated to the soldier that I should be held fast once again. The soldier pushed me back against the wall and pressed his hand firmly against me.
'So,' I said, feeling the depressing reaction to my failed action sweeping over me, 'I suppose you're going to kill me now.'
There followed a brief conversation between Iuda and Andrei in their own language. I think that Iuda wanted me to die there and then, but Andrei disagreed. He mentioned Pyetr a number of times. It was odd that they referred to him as Pyetr even amongst themselves. Did they not know his real name, or were they taking caution to the extreme – making sure that no one could ever find out who they were and use that knowledge to track them down? From their discussion, I presumed that they were waiting for Pyetr to arrive. Any delay was a moment more for me to enjoy life, and any moment was time for me to think how I might escape.
'It's going to be a bit cramped for the three of you all sleeping in that one coffin, isn't it?' I said.
Iuda looked away from his conversation with Andrei to answer me. My attempt to escape seemed to have knocked his earlier good humour out of him. He was now quite dismissive in his mood.
'We don't need coffins to sleep in, any more than you need beds. How do you suppose we spent all those days out there on the Smolensk road?'
It was a good question. 'How did you?' I asked.
'We'd just dig a hole and bury ourselves in it. All we need is to keep the sun off. It doesn't need to be very deep.'
Before I could reply, we heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The door to the landing opened and in walked Pyetr. He was quickly followed, to my consternation, by Dmitry.
Pyetr and Iuda began talking furtively in their own language. Dmitry spoke directly to me.
'You shouldn't have killed them, Aleksei. I know we couldn't help Ioann, but Matfei and Varfolomei – that was just murder.'
'I suppose you told them about Matfei and Varfolomei,' I said.
'I told them you followed Matfei. They knew he was dead. It didn't take much to work it out.'
'How did Pyetr get here?' I asked. 'It's light outside, isn't it?'
'We came underground. The sewers run right under this street. With a bit of work you can get into any of the cellars. It's dark as night down there.'
'I presume they've agreed to spare your life,' I said bitterly.
'And yours, Aleksei. They have no quarrel with us. They understand you killing them. If we'd told you the truth from the start, you wouldn't have over-reacted.'
He was utterly deceived; deceived by himself as much as by the Oprichniki into the conviction that because their cause – our cause – was right then they themselves must be righteous; deceived into the belief that because they were righteous, anything that they did to support our cause must be to the good. And yet through it all, the thought popped into my head that there was something I had been meaning to tell him next time I saw him. It wasn't relevant, unless Dmitry was in an even greater state of self-delusion than I could possibly believe, but there was little else to discuss.
'Did you hear that Yelena Vadimovna has had a little boy?' As I spoke, my thoughts went to Marfa and an idea began to form.
'That's nice,' said Dmitry. 'Vadim will be pleased.' I was shocked that he did not know, but also relieved that his present attitude was based upon ignorance.
'You have no idea, do you?' I said to him, as I slipped my hand inside my shirt.
'What do you mean?'
'Vadim Fyodorovich is just over there,' I said, gesturing towards where the rotting corpse hung, as yet unnoticed by Dmitry. 'They…'
Iuda had been listening and interrupted me. 'We have decided what we are going to do,' he announced loudly.
We never heard his plans. As he spoke I withdrew my hand from my shirt with a jerk. I felt the chain snap around my neck, leaving me free to pull out the icon that Marfa had given me. I held it up to the soldier's face and ominously shouted at him, 'Keep back!'
In the face of the Saviour's image, the voordalak's entire strength began to wither away. He released his grip on me and covered his eyes, backing away from me across the room.
The reaction of the other vampires was quite different.
'You fool!' shouted Pyetr at the terrified creature.
'Don't be so damned superstitious!' added Iuda. Pyetr gave a brief hand signal to Andrei, who marched across the room and, without fear, grabbed the icon from me and cast it into a corner. Evidently, there was nothing real for them to fear in the religious symbol, but the young, inexperienced vampire believed that there was, and that was enough to make him afraid. Fortunately, the moment's distraction gave me time to place my hand on something which could have a very real effect on them.
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.