'I headed straight out for Desna and arrived here today. I travelled through daylight, so I don't think that the Oprichniki could have followed me here, but still I fear that they will find me. I do not want to die, but if I must, I would prefer it to be with the relative honour of a Russian firing squad than at their hands. Perhaps it is for the better that I never listened to the stories I was told about vampires as a child, otherwise I might fear even more what is to become of me now.
'If you are reading this, Aleksei, then it must be that I could not wait long enough for you and have moved on. Perhaps I am already in France by now. My hope is to settle in Paris, although I have learned that fate has little inclination to consider what my hopes may be. Should you one day come to Paris, either at the head of a conquering army, or as a visitor in more pacific times, then perhaps you will try to come and find me.
'To anyone else who finds this letter (or to whom you, Aleksei, choose to show it) I must make a plea that no suspicion of treachery should fall upon any of Vadim Fyodorovich, Dmitry Fetyukovich or Aleksei Ivanovich. Just because I am a French spy, it in no way follows that they are. I am reminded of a discussion we once had, Aleksei, about the Bible. Just because some things in it are true does not make the whole of it true. And (you will see that I stick to my guns to the last) just because there are vampires doesn't mean there is a god. I may soon know for sure.
'Please convey my apologies and regards to Vadim and Dmitry, and also my warmest affection to Marfa Mihailovna and young Dmitry Alekseevich.
'I remain, I hope, your friend,
'Maksim Sergeivich Lukin.'
Though some were more explicit than others, Maks' letter contained many condemnations. Most obvious was Maks' condemnation of himself in his confession of treachery against his tsar and his country. What it told of Dmitry and of the Oprichniki was once shocking, but by now it was nothing new. To that, though, there was one exception – Andrei's arm. I was not surprised that the flesh and blood of a vampire was close enough to that of a human that it was possible to sever one of their limbs. I had myself already seen that I could sever Andrei's head. And that was just the point. When I had destroyed Andrei, both his arms had been intact. Somehow since his meeting with Maks, Andrei had… recovered.
But that was a minor distraction. The worst thing in Maksim's letter was its condemnation of me. When I had spoken to Maks in this very building, all those weeks before, I had given him no chance to explain what he had now told me so clearly in his letter. I had been so blinded by my rage at his betrayal of our country that I had never even paused to consider that there might be some issue of greater importance which he had to tell me. I could blame Maks himself for not forcing me to listen to him and I could blame the Oprichniki for arriving to cut short our conversation, but I was the true culprit. With the Oprichniki there I might not have been able to save him, but at least he could have died knowing what he wanted to know above all – that I was still his friend.
CHAPTER XXII
I LOOKED OVER TO DMITRY. HE HAD RISEN TO HIS FEET AND WAS eyeing me suspiciously, calculating whether there was anything I had read in the letter that might tip the balance of my trust away from him. With self-defensive instinct, his hand reached for his sword.
'Don't worry, Dmitry. There's nothing much in there about you that I didn't know already.' I spoke with the intention of being more dismissive than comforting. There were a few details of Dmitry's involvement that had not been clear to me earlier, a few he had twisted to avoid revealing the nature of the Oprichniki, but nothing that substantially changed the nature of his attitude towards them or to anything else.
'He was an enemy of Russia. I knew that. That's what he died for,' Dmitry pleaded.
'You're a patriot, Dmitry,' I told him – a patriot and nothing more.
We found a few old tools behind the hut and between us we dug a grave for our fallen comrade. Two shards of wood formed a simple cross to mark his final resting place. For reasons that I am unable to explain – certainly not to Maks' level of satisfaction – I took off his spectacles before we placed him in the ground and slipped them into my pocket. One of the lenses was shattered, no doubt from a blow to Maks' head, but the other remained intact. Apart, perhaps, from the metal buttons on his jacket and his ancient, unidentifiable bones, they were all that would remain of Maksim, long after the rest of him was consumed by the earth in which we had buried him. I preferred that they would survive in the possession of someone who remembered the man who had once worn them.
It was dark by now, and so we decided to spend the night in the hut. It was cold. Once the sun had gone down, the temperature began to plummet. At the coldest during the nights at that time there were several degrees of frost, and it was usual to discover a covering of snow on the ground each morning that could be stirred up into a blizzard when the wind was high. We lit a fire in the stove, which would keep us in some comfort through the night.
'The difference this time is that it's my country,' said Dmitry. It broke a silence which had descended upon us after we had turned away from the grave of our friend.
'Your country?' I asked, failing to comprehend what he was saying.
'Our country, obviously, but I meant as opposed to theirs – the Oprichniki's – where I first met them.'
'So they were better behaved when they were at home – smart enough not to piss on their own doorstep?'
'No, not that,' said Dmitry resignedly. 'I just meant that my perception of it was different. They were just the same.'
Dmitry paused, but it was evident that he had more to tell. 'The same?' I prompted.
'When I told you before, about Wallachia, about meeting Zmyeevich, there was something I missed out.'
He stopped again. 'So tell me now,' I said.
'You remember I said that Pyetr, Andrei, Ioann and Varfolomei were the only ones still left from when I first met them.'
I nodded.
'Well, that wasn't quite true. After that first night, when Zmyeevich and the others had saved us from the Turks, we began to work together. We'd search the mountains by day, finding out where the Turks were and then telling Zmyeevich so he and the others could deal with them at night – just like we did in Moscow.
'But then after a few days, one of the Wallachians went missing; two days later, another. In less than a fortnight, there were only two left, from almost a dozen originally. I never saw the vampires take them, but somehow I knew – things they said; things Zmyeevich said. I couldn't really be sure, until this year back in Moscow when I first met Foma. I knew I recognized him, but I knew that he hadn't been one of the vampires who rode alongside Zmyeevich back then. Then I realized. He'd been one of the Wallachians who'd ridden alongside me; the one that went up to the castle door and called out to Zmyeevich. He'd been turned into one of them. I don't think any of the others were lucky enough to join the predators – they were just prey.'
'I'm not sure you should call either fate "lucky",' I said bitterly.
'No. No, you're right, of course. But as I said, it didn't seem so bad then. Who was I to argue if Wallachian vampires chose to kill Wallachian peasants? Mind you… When I left Zmyeevich and rejoined the army, the last thing I remember as I walked away was the look of fear and betrayal in those last two Wallachians' eyes.'
I was horrified. Until then, I had thought that Dmitry had been deceived, that despite what I knew, he had never had reason to suspect what they were doing behind our backs. Now I knew that he had been deceiving himself.
'Why didn't they leave too?' I asked. It was a mundane question.
'I don't know. They respected Zmyeevich as well as fearing him. Who knows, maybe they're alive and well even today.'