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.