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.'
I let out a short laugh.
'Maybe not,' he muttered.
Dmitry was up before me and I was woken by the sound of him harnessing his horse.
'You're in a rush to get going,' I said to him.
'I'm not coming with you.'
'I see,' I said.
'I'm scared, Aleksei.' His voice quavered as he expressed the terror inside him. 'They'll not show any mercy to me – or to you. Come with me, Aleksei, back to Moscow. You don't have to face them. We can't bring back Vadim or Maks. All we can do is die like they did. They wouldn't ask us to.'
His diffidence was quite reasonable. Maks would not have seen the logic in taking revenge – in threatening it, yes, but not in taking it. Vadim would have understood the instinct, but would have counselled restraint. But I was motivated not by reason, but by hatred. I could no more rationalize the passion which drove me to pursue and erase the surviving Oprichniki than I could that which drove me to make love to Domnikiia when I had a loving wife at home. Hatred is a most powerful emotion. Leaders use it to stir up aggression in their armies and men use it to force themselves into actions that they would not contemplate without it. Hatred was the inseparable companion of the very thing that Iuda had said made me weak. While scruple could make me spare a man when every rational voice screamed to kill him, so hatred could make me kill when the arguments and reasons for doing so had long been forgotten. To divide them was impossible. Iuda might despise me for having one, but he would learn to regret my possessing the other.
'Do as you wish, Dmitry,' I said. 'I'm going to face them.'
'If they were French, or Turks, you know I'd be with you,' he tried to explain.
'We owe each other nothing, Dmitry. You know it doesn't work like that.'
'I want to help you, Aleksei, but I know them better than you do. I've seen what they do.'
'So have I. Remember?'
'You've seen nothing. What they did in Moscow? A fragment of what I saw them do to the Turks. Even side by side, the two of us could never beat them.' There was an edge of panic in his voice as he tried to convince both me and himself that what he intended to do – to desert – was in some way less than totally dishonourable.
'If it helps, Dmitry, I'm not convinced that I'd want you by my side.' It was more hurtful than I had intended it to be. Dmitry fell into an immediate silence. There was truth in what I had said on two counts. One was that, even after his apparent change of heart, he was still too close to the Oprichniki for me to trust, and the other that in his state of panic he would be of little use to anyone in a tight situation. But I had said it to try to help his decision; to make it me that decided he should not stay, rather than him.
'Thank you for that, Aleksei,' he said at length, without bitterness. 'I'm not much of a soldier any more, I know. Better to hear it from you, I suppose.' He was like a spurned lover, holding back his tears and clinging pathetically to the last vestiges of his pride. I took a step towards him, to embrace him before he left, but he raised his arms to fend me off. 'I'll just go,' he said with attempted nobility. 'You have things to do.'
He mounted his horse and began back towards Moscow at a gentle trot. Standing in the place where I had last seen Maksim alive and watching Dmitry depart, I was filled with the premonition that this would also be the last time I saw Dmitry. I recalled the miscommunication of my last words with Maks and the casualness of my farewell to Vadim. I knew that I could not let Dmitry leave quite like this.
I climbed on to my own horse and caught up with him. Perhaps if I had pleaded with him then, I would have been able to persuade him to stay with me. His joy at knowing I wanted him would have overcome his fear. But the truth was, I didn't want him with me. I just wanted him to leave on better terms.
'Take this,' I said, taking the icon from around my neck and handing it to him.