Twelve

'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.

Fear begged me to just leave Vadim's body where it was and get out into the light as soon as I possibly could, but that would not have been decent. He needed to be buried and this cellar was as good a place as any. Even so, we worked quickly, and as we first dug and then filled in the grave, it was with a wary eye over our shoulders towards the dark breach in the wall, in case the vampires returned the way they had left.

CHAPTER XX

WE RETURNED TO THE INN. THE INNKEEPER WAS, IN KEEPing with the hospitability of his profession, overjoyed to see Dmitry. He showered him with questions as to where he had been and what he had been doing – questions which I too hoped soon to have answered. Dmitry's responses were noncommittal.

'Oh, Captain Danilov,' called the innkeeper after me as I made my way up to my rooms.

'Yes?' I replied.

'Your young lady was round last night. I had to tell her you weren't here.'

'What time?'

'Gone midnight, sir.'

'Did she say anything?'

'Nothing, sir. She just went home again.'

'Thank you.'

I was abominably tired and my first thought was that a few hours' delay in seeing her would not be too significant. I continued up to my room and lay on my bed. My head had scarcely hit the pillow when I realized what Domnikiia must be thinking. She knew what creatures I was up against and that I was out looking for them. Coming here to find I wasn't back at that late hour, she would have concluded either that I had found them or that they had found me. (I still wasn't too sure myself exactly which had been the case.) The longer I delayed seeing her, the more worried she would be that they had been the victors. I hauled myself off the bed and set out to find her.

It was still early, and the brothel was not yet open for business. I hammered on the door and it was answered by Pyetr Pyetrovich.

'We're closed,' he told me.

'I've come to see Dominique,' I said, pushing my way in.

'Oh, it's you,' he said. 'This is a place of business, you know. You can't just call when you please. Not without paying.'

I walked past him, pulling my coat to one side to make sure he got a clear view of the sword I was wearing, and headed up the stairs.

'If you like Dominique so much, we could come to some more permanent arrangement,' he called after me.

Domnikiia was still in bed, but awake. She sat up as I entered. I sat on the bed beside her. She looked intently at my face, but said nothing, her eyes searching my expression for some clue as to what had been happening.

'We found Vadim,' I told her.

'Really?' She sounded pleased. For a moment I didn't realize how ambiguous I had been.

'No, it's not like that. He's dead.' I rested my head on her shoulder and tears ran down my cheek, though I just about managed to keep my voice steady. 'Dead since just after I last saw him.'

She stroked my hair and murmured soothing words. Though it had not been my intention when I entered the room, I pushed her down on to the bed and made very selfish love to her. There was little pleasure in it for me, and less for her, but it fulfilled in me merely the need to obliterate for a moment every higher thought and every human emotion, to descend to the level of an animal where nothing but the moment matters. Considerations of the future, of my responsibilities, of those around me, all could be forgotten just briefly – all too briefly. It was the way a soldier screws a woman he has never met before and knows he will never see again. He might pay for it – he might not have to. Although I had paid Domnikiia many times before, I had never had such disregard for the person beneath me. It was not about her. It was about allowing me to forget her along with everything else.