Twelve

'I see you have come alone. Did Dmitry Fetyukovich not care to join you?'

'This is between you and me,' I replied.

'That is indeed true, Aleksei Ivanovich, although some of the others do have issues with Dmitry. But I agree with you – it is best to save those separate squabbles for a separate occasion. You will see that I too came alone. We will only be able to talk if we trust one another.'

'I don't trust you, Iuda,' I said bitterly.

'I'm sorry, my friend,' said Iuda with a sincerity that anyone who did not know him would have taken for genuine. 'I am unfamiliar with the nuances of your language. Of course you don't trust me. Why should you? I have not earned that privilege. But you do trust your eyes. I have chosen this place well, I hope. You can see that there is no one else here.'

'I can see that.' The wind blew up a little more fiercely. A light shower of snow had begun which, combined with the wind, reduced the distance I could see down the roads. As we spoke, I rarely looked directly at Iuda, keeping my eyes instead always prowling for signs of a distant attack. 'So what do you have to say?' I asked.

His face pulled an expression of mild anguish, as though what he had to say was distasteful, but had to be discussed – like a man ' about to confess to his wife his infidelity. 'You have now killed three of our comrades – the same number that Maksim Sergeivich succeeded in destroying.'

'I've killed more than three,' I said, attempting to twist the knife.

He pressed his lips together as though he had tasted something sour. 'We have chosen to be gracious over the death of Ioann in the cellar. Though you were there at his death and did nothing to attempt to save him from the flames, he was probably beyond salvation. To kill by omission cannot be counted as murder. As for the Russian soldier – Pavel, I believe he was called – I would not count him amongst our number. He was a useful foot soldier, but not a loss to grieve over. So we will leave the tally at three.

'We cannot but be impressed by the martial skills that you have shown as you have killed,' he continued. 'I do not know precisely what you did with Matfei and Varfolomei, but they were strong fighters, so you did well to defeat them. I saw in close detail what you did to Andrei. That was truly inspiring – not just in the skill you showed with your sword but in the relish you displayed in finishing off an already incapacitated victim. It was a pleasure to see your hatred surging forth in that way – so much more manly than your friend Maksim, sending his friends off to a remote death in which he need not participate directly.'

'I'm glad to have you as an admirer,' I said, 'but if you wanted to compliment me, you could have done it all by letter.'

'I could. I could. And that would have meant that dear Dominique could also have read my praises of you and then she would warm even more to the image of her dashing hero. But perhaps I will yet have the chance to tell her in person. The poor girl must be in something of a quandary. On the one hand she sees your bravery and heroism as you do battle with us. On the other she must see that we with whom you do battle were once your friends. She must wonder if she will ever make some similar tiny mistake that will turn you against her.'

'The only mistake you made, Iuda, was not a tiny one,' I said, responding with the anger that he had clearly hoped to instil. 'Your mistake was to willingly turn your back on humanity when you became a vampire. It was foolish of you to let me know that only willing victims become vampires. It erased the last trace of pity that I might have had for any of you.' Behind him, back along the road he had come from, I thought I saw a slight movement through the buffeted snow. 'I presume there is a point that you're going to come to? Some sort of deal between us?' I asked, trying to move things along.

'A man of directness, I see,' smiled Iuda. He began to walk as he spoke, almost as if trying to outflank me, and I realized that he was moving my attention away from the road down which he had come. I stepped closer to the centre of the crossroads, ensuring I still had a good view in all directions.

'But you are right,' he continued. 'We must come to some sort of accommodation. When one comes up against a strong and powerful enemy there are two possible ways to deal with it. The first is to attempt to destroy it, to wipe it off the face of the earth so that it can never again irritate one with its persistent aggression. We have both already attempted this; we have both failed.'

'I don't seem to be failing too badly. There's seven of you dead already.'

Iuda smiled, not unlike a father delighting in the premature wisdom of his child. 'Such camaraderie, Lyosha. You are right, you personally are doing well – you are alive. But taken as a group, I think the four of you have fared little better than the twelve of us.'

The flurry of snow had subsided and whatever movement I had perceived in the distance behind Iuda had gone. For as far as I could see in the silver haze of the moonlight reflected by the glistening snow, there was only stillness. I looked around again at the other roads. They too were empty. Behind me, the hanged French captain continued to swing gently with the momentum picked up from the earlier breeze.

'But there is also a second way,' continued Iuda. 'That is accommodation. A creature does not need to be an enemy just because it is powerful. Wolves do not attack bears and bears do not attack wolves. It is not that the wolf loves the bear, it is that he knows he has little chance of winning. So which would your choice be, Lyosha? Shall we continue to fight and see which of us survives, bloodied and maimed? Or shall we leave each other to go in peace and continue the comfortable lives we enjoy?'

I remained silent. I had known my answer when I spoke to Dmitry just before we parted. Such a deal would fail because I did not trust the Oprichniki. And even if they were to keep their side of the bargain, I would not have kept mine. Iuda read my thoughts.

'But I do us an injustice to make comparisons with wild animals. If the wolf and the bear seem to trust each other, it cannot be because they are wise, so it must be because they are fools. The path to personal safety does not come by hoping that one's enemies will not attack one. It comes by ensuring it – by destroying those very enemies. We both know, Lyosha, how much each one of us yearns to kill the other – how much we dream of the pleasure we will take in it. Neither of us could walk in safety with that knowledge. The only safety lies in knowing that the other is truly dead, in being sure that he can never rise again to harm one.'

His voice was rising now. The patina of civility fell away and his every expression was filled with wrath and hatred. 'Much as one can be sure that a hanged French captain, whose body one inspected in the afternoon, cannot come back to life and attack one.' He stared into my eyes just long enough see that I had fathomed what he was talking about. 'Unless of course one goes away to drown one's sorrows in vodka, allowing one lifeless carcass to be exchanged for another.'

At the same time as he spoke, I was grabbed from behind. The arms of the body hanging behind me wrapped themselves around my neck and the legs around my waist.

'You remember Filipp, of course, don't you, Lyosha?' asked Iuda, his overplayed politeness returning, but accompanied now by a look of maniacal victory in his eyes. I heard a snigger from Filipp, and he held me tighter as he continued to hang, unharmed, by the noose around his neck.

Over Iuda's shoulder I saw movement. A coach emerged from the coppice from which Iuda himself had earlier come into view. Iuda turned and saw it too.

'And soon the others will be here, and then we can all go away to some nice, quiet, secluded retreat and have dinner. Oh, I know you're a brave man, Lyosha, and your own painful death will mean little to you, but it will give me the deepest satisfaction to know that you understand exactly how much Vadim and Maks suffered as they died.'

The coach was moving only at a canter and would take several minutes to reach us, but if its driver chose to break into a gallop, it would be with us in less than two. I had to act there and then. I lifted my feet into the air, so that Filipp now supported my whole weight, and kicked hard at Iuda's chest. The impact merely caused him to take a step backwards, but it sent me and Filipp swinging back on the rope. Filipp could do little but hang on to me. He tried to tighten his grip around my neck, but his initial aim had been to hold, not to throttle, and so it was to little effect.