Foma was lying on his front. A nodule which protruded from his back at about the level of his hips I took to be his hands, tied behind his back by Dmitry when he was captured. It surprised me that his body could exist at all outside in the daylight. I had seen the effects of the sun on Pyetr and Iakov Zevedayinich, and knew that little should remain. I could only surmise that the snow provided sufficient protection for his body from the sun's rays, or alternatively that once he had died of the cold and his body had frozen solid, then it was impossible for the sun to have any further effect upon it.
The body was some way away from Dmitry's, back towards the burnt-out house. It looked as though Foma had been crawling – or rather wriggling, with both his hands and his feet bound – away from Dmitry and towards relative safety. Perhaps Dmitry had yielded to the cold sooner than Foma and he had been taking the opportunity to escape, though to where he could escape I did not know. It did not matter. Foma too had become a lump of solid, icy flesh before he had got any distance.
I poked Foma's remains through the snow with the tip of my sword. He was quite solid, like stone or ice. Two days outside in this weather could turn to rock any living thing that did not keep moving. I rolled the lifeless corpse on to its back and leaned over it, wiping a little snow away from the face to verify that it was indeed Foma. It most certainly was. He had died with his eyes open, and looking into them I recognized the blackness that in life had been no more expressive than it now was in death.
The eyes flicked suddenly to the left and then to the right. I started with surprise and then looked again. He repeated the action twice, with a pause in between. Foma was not human, he was a vampire. Just as a stab wound that would kill a mortal man had no effect on a vampire, so it was impossible that a vampire could freeze to death. Though his whole body had cooled to the temperature of the world around him at tens of degrees of frost, though every fluid that had once flowed within him had now turned to solid ice, still life, or the vampire equivalent of life, could not be extinguished.
Only his eyes remained movable, though they themselves must have been tiny, hard balls of ice. They now moved rapidly in all directions through the only gap in the outer skin of snow that he had acquired, like the eyes of a man peering through a frosty window at a cosy, warm, firelit room. I was reminded of how I had seen him once before, standing frozen against the wall of an alleyway in Moscow, only his eyes moving as he inspected the potential prey that walked past him. Then his immobility had been voluntary, to help him in his concealment. Now it was forced upon him.
I do not know what it was, if anything, that Foma had been trying to communicate to me. Perhaps he had not been thinking at all, or had not even recognized that it was I who had discovered him. Perhaps they were just the eye movements of his dreams, revealed to the world now that he was unable to shut his frozen eyelids. He could be harbouring no hope that I would save him, but he might perhaps be hoping that I would kill him quickly, that he would die now rather than remain in this state of limbo until spring, when the warmth of the strengthening sun would obliterate both the winter snow and the vampire that lay shrouded within it.
As it was, his death was immediate, but by no intent of mine. I cleared a little more of the snow from his face, to see if he was capable of any further movement beyond that of his eyes. My shadow may have protected him before, but as the first blush of sunlight hit his cheek, it began to smoulder. I leapt back away from him, realizing what was about to happen. What I witnessed was strangely beautiful, not just in that I could take pleasure at the death of another of these creatures – I was becoming too jaded for that – but also in the spectacle of the display. It was as good as any show of fireworks I have seen in Moscow or Petersburg. Through the small patch of skin that I had cleared, the sun began to burn the vampire. This in turn melted more snow and even incinerated his clothes, exposing more flesh for the sun to work upon. A sparkling line of flame radiated out from Foma's head and ran in seconds down the length of his whole body, the heat melting ever more snow and the melted snow revealing ever more fuel for the combustion. A sound like the roaring of a fire combined with the whistling of the wind was emitted, following the line of flame down his body. For a moment, there was only a glow of blinding white in the shape of a man's body – reminiscent of the image I have always had of our Lord's ascension – but it quickly faded.
Soon, nothing remained but a pool of melted snow, some of which was warm enough to steam slightly. Within minutes, the winter had reasserted itself and the pool had frozen back to a gleaming sheet of ice.
I would have liked to bury Dmitry. He had been a friend for a long time; seven years. We had never been as close as Maks and I had been, but that was merely a result of our personalities, not of our hearts. He and I had trusted one another – we all had – and though, as with Maks, my trust had faltered for a moment, it had returned. I was blessed to have had the opportunity to be sure that Dmitry was aware of that. I hoped that somehow Maks was now similarly aware.
But to bury Dmitry was impossible. Even if I had had tools, the frozen earth was as hard as rock, and I would not have been able to dig deep. The best I could do was to cover him with snow and make a cross out of a couple of charred pieces of wood from the house. I hoped I would have the opportunity to return before spring and lay him to rest more properly.
I headed back to Yurtsevo. The wind, which had been against me as I had travelled away from the village, had contrived to change direction so that it was still against me as I went towards it. The snowy gale once more bit into my face, but the return journey was easier for the fact that I knew how far it was to my destination.
Once in the village, I knocked on the door of my saviours. The younger man answered.
'Did you find him?'
'No,' I replied, keeping it simple.
'I told you,' said his father, coming up behind him. 'I suppose you'll be wanting to stay here tonight as well?'
'No,' I said. 'I think I should be able to make it back to Orsha today.'
'You don't want to get lost like you did last night.'
'I'll try not to.'
'Show him his horse,' the man said to his son. The son, accompanied by the two huge wolf-like dogs, padding faithfully by his side, led me to a stable, where I found my horse fed and rested. We walked back to the house and the father handed over my bags.
'Thank you for your help,' I said to them both, as warmly as their gruff demeanours allowed.
'We're Christians,' said the father, the implication being that it was a duty, not a pleasure. I handed him some money. He looked at it with contempt – whether because it was too little or because I offered it at all, I could not tell – and then slipped it into his pocket. Their door was closed even before I had mounted my horse.
The journey back to Orsha was easy enough in daylight. The snow had already covered any traces of my journey the previous night, and though I tried to see where I had gone off the road, I could not. The sun was beginning to set as I entered the town. I gazed at it in the western sky, knowing that in that direction lay what was left of the French and with them, to the best of my knowledge, Iuda – the sole remaining Oprichnik. Back in the other direction, along the same road, was Moscow and in it Domnikiia. To the north was another road that stretched all the way to Petersburg – to my wife and my son. I returned to the same inn that I had been in two nights before. Any decisions about the day – and the days – to come could be deferred.
I ate and bathed and sank into an untroubled sleep.
When I awoke, I had come to a decision. The fine decision, the one in which would lie soul-searching and angst, was between Moscow and Petersburg, and so I chose the third path, to head west and rejoin the body of the army. It was the basis on which I knew many other soldiers had made their decisions to join up – to escape the complexity of trying to live their lives by opting for a world where they could simply pass the time trying to avoid their deaths. There was little chance, I thought, that I would be able to find Iuda (though some chance that he would find me), but even so, I could do some good helping to rout the French using the traditional methods of soldiery with which I felt the need to be reacquainted.