Twelve

'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.

I managed to free my sword from its scabbard and we swung around in a wide ellipse with Iuda at its centre. He was crouched and ready; in his right hand he held the double-bladed knife that once, long ago, he had been so keen for me not to see. He made a few thrusts at me as I passed, but could not seem to get the measure of the irregular motion of the human pendulum confronting him. I had no control over where we were going, but I waited until we swung close enough for me to strike. In the distance, the other Oprichniki had seen what was happening, and the coach broke into a gallop.

One swing brought us close enough to Iuda, and I struck. I knew from Maks' experience that stabbing would be to no avail, so instead I used the edge of my blade. I caught Iuda across the upper right arm and he yelled as he put his hand up to the wound. At the same moment, I heard the sound of splintering wood and Filipp and I came thudding to the ground as the gallows above us gave way under our combined weight. As we hit the snow, Filipp lost his grip on me and I felt the coils of the rope which had supported us snaking down on to me. I rolled aside just in time to avoid being hit by the wooden beam to which the other end of the rope was tied.

Filipp was not so lucky. The heavy beam hit him hard in the chest, knocking the breath out of him, but doing him little serious damage. Still clutching my sword in my right hand, I now took my wooden dagger in my left and began to back away, looking to see which, if either, of the two Oprichniki would pursue me. Iuda was hanging back, unable now to use his knife because of the wound to his arm. Filipp, however, was almost instantly on his feet and advancing towards me, the noose still trailing from his neck.

The coach was less than a minute away now. I backed behind the vertical post of the gibbet as Filipp came towards me. Iuda shouted something to him and he replied scornfully, clearly not needing advice in the matter. He lunged at me to one side of the post and I dodged round the other, running for all I was worth until a depression in the ground, hidden beneath the snow, tripped me and I fell. I quickly rolled on to my back and saw Filipp's bulky form looming towards me, his jaws wide open in readiness for the attack.

Suddenly his head jerked back and his body came to a halt. His hands reached up to his neck. The broken beam at one end of the rope had become embedded like an anchor in the snow. Wrapped round the post, the rope had become taut and Filipp could move no further. I sheathed my sabre and, grabbing the other end of the rope, began to pull. Rather than let himself be hauled off his feet, Filipp trotted along with the rope. Meanwhile, as well as pulling the rope, I began to cut across in front of him. Iuda was screaming instructions at his fellow Oprichnik, but Filipp was in no position to obey. As his back thudded against the wood I jerked the rope fast across his chest and ran twice more round him, pinioning him against the post.

Realizing the imminent danger, Iuda began to approach through the snow. The rope would not hold Filipp for long, but it was not my intention that he should be alive for long. I lunged at him with the dagger, straining hard on the end of the rope so that he was squeezed still tighter against the post and giving me even greater force against him. The wooden blade paused momentarily as it came up against his overcoat, but the cloth soon yielded and I felt the blade separate his ribs and slide into his heart.