'I think your wife enjoyed it more than you when I did that to her.'
The man raised his head and attempted to meet Iuda's eyes. Had he the strength, he might have spat at him, but his head merely fell back as the exhaustion of his suffering overcame him.
Foma asked a question that could only be interpreted as 'What did you say to him?' Iuda's reply was, I presume, an honest answer to the question. The Oprichniki laughed again that same laugh.
Iuda took a step back and made a further suggestion. This time it was to Pyetr. I did not need to understand the details of it to comprehend that Pyetr complied readily. Whatever power struggles Dmitry might have perceived within them, it was clear that at this moment Pyetr was utterly subservient to Iuda, as were both of the other surviving Oprichniki. There was no laughter at Iuda's latest idea, but an intake of breath and an anticipatory licking of lips on the part of the two vampires who were not to be its implementers.
Pyetr opened his mouth wide and put his lips to the man's chest, totally encompassing his nipple. He left himself there for a moment mimicking a suckling baby and glancing slyly sideways at Iuda. Iuda smiled an appreciative smile and the other two exchanged their own glances, communicating solely in appreciative grunts, like a couple of dogs who knew that their master was about to feed them a titbit.
With a cocky smile, Iuda uttered a single word of encouragement to Pyetr, to which Pyetr's response was simply to bring his jaws together and then to pull back, shearing away the flesh that he had clasped between his teeth. The man's scream, momentarily so loud, exhausted him, fading into a croaking plea. Pyetr lay on his back on the floor of the barn with his hands behind his head, chewing contentedly at the flesh between his lips. It was as a red rag to the other two.
They pounced upon the farmer and began tasting the blood of old wounds and creating new ones with their sharp, probing teeth. Iuda's voice became firmer and his utterances became orders rather than ideas. He took a step forward and jerked Foma away. On seeing this, Iakov Zevedayinich meekly stepped away from the farmer as well, but it was too late – too late for them, but nothing like soon enough for their victim, or indeed for me. The farmer was dead, whether through the accumulation of unendurable pain or the happy accident of a thoughtless bite at a vital artery, it did not matter. He was released to join his so recently departed wife.
I slipped back into the surrounding woodland just in time to see the farmer's body ejected from the barn to lie alongside his wife in the snow. Crouched behind a tree in the freezing cold, I waited. If all four chose to sleep there through the following day, then it would be their last sleep. In daylight I had no qualms about confronting them and disposing of each as I had done others before them. But I would not go and face them in the dark. The fear that I had seen in Dmitry now became a solid presence in my chest. It stifled me and stiffened me, making me incapable of either advance or flight. It was as a conduit for the cold around me to enter my heart and freeze every sensation, every concept except for the most volatile instinct of all – that of self-preservation.
But at least the cold and the terror combined had one positive side effect – they kept me awake. Much as I would have liked to surrender to oblivion as I stood sentinel outside that barn, I could not. I waited and I wondered, thinking of all that had taken place since I had first met the Oprichniki, thinking of my memories, both happy and sad, of Vadim and Maks, thinking of Marfa and Dmitry Alekseevich, and thinking most of all of Domnikiia. The most ridiculous thing was the way that I attempted to combine my thoughts of those last three together – to see Dmitry playing happily with Domnikiia and to see the youthful Domnikiia chatting carelessly with the wise Marfa. I did not want them to merge. I did not want a single creature with the best aspects of both any more than I wanted a single great city of Russia, combining all that was fine in both Petersburg and Moscow. The result would be nothing – a synthetic perfection that could appeal only to the blandest of palates. I would enjoy it no more than if I were to take half a glass of red wine and another half of white and mix them together to produce the ideal beverage. My task was not only to keep them separate, but also to keep them balanced – to ensure that neither bottle became empty and also that neither came to taste so good to me that I would forget the other.
I may not have been at my most lucid, but at least I was wakeful when, some hours after their hideous feast, Iuda and Foma emerged from the barn. At the roadside they exchanged a few words and then Foma headed south while Iuda turned north. Foma's journey south would not have taken him far. He would soon hit the main road that could take him either east to Serpukhov or west to Mozhaysk. The latter seemed more likely. That would take him back to the path along which Bonaparte was retreating. As for Iuda's course, there was only one major city to the north.
I waited. There were good reasons for me not to rush in and surprise the two remaining vampires in the barn. One was that Iuda and Foma might yet return. The other was that, under the veil of night, even two Oprichniki might prove to be able opponents. I knew that I should wait – wait until midday when they would both be at the nadir of their consciousness and would be able to offer no opposition to the wooden stakes that pierced their chests. But in their consciousness lay the only satisfaction I could derive from their deaths. I had seen that they loved to keep their victims alive – that their only pleasure came in the pain of others. My reasoning went beyond that. I wanted them to suffer, but moreover I cherished a desire for them to know why they died, and at whose hand. In all honesty, I felt the same desire in myself. To perceive and comprehend the moment of one's death must be the final act of understanding, be the perception good or ill. I had failed to be present at the moment of Maks' death and before that, at my father's. I did not want to miss the occasion of my own mortality, nor did I see why these two vampires should miss theirs. Thus, even if it had not been to punish them, I would have wanted them to be sentient of their own deaths. It was merely that that was how I felt it ought to be.
Hence it was not long before dawn, but most certainly before it, that, to the sound of the first birds welcoming the new day, I crept back up to the barn and looked inside once more.
It was empty. I slipped inside. Two lanterns, hung from beams in the ceiling, lit the space within. The rope by which I had earlier seen the farmer suspended was still there, both ends roughly severed where his body had been cut down. Beneath it, the ground was stained with blood; two patches, side by side – one for the man, one for his wife. There was little else. In one corner was a collection of farm tools, and near to them an overturned manger, not big enough to hide a man. A ladder led up to the hayloft. There was no sign of any Oprichniki, not even of their coffins.
Above me I heard the sound of rats scuttling across the hayloft – their tiny claws clattering and their tails slithering over the wooden floorboards as they either scoured for food or clambered to see if I was any threat to them. Or was it rats? Was it a different breed of vermin? The hayloft provided a low flat ceiling for about a third of the length of the barn. From it sprouted a thick beam that ran across to the far wall. This was the beam from which the rope still hung. Smaller shafts sprung outwards from the central beam to support the walls and upwards at angles to hold up the roof.