CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SMOLENSK ROAD WAS SCARCELY RECOGNIZABLE COMPARED with when I had last seen it. The hot, hazy warmth of summer had been replaced by a deep blanket of snow. The road itself was well trodden and the snow often gave way to slush and in places even to mud. I too had changed. Twelve weeks before, four of us had set out, confident and comradely, eager to defend our land and trusting of our new allies, the Oprichniki. Now only Dmitry and I were left, and the trust between us was fragile. Vadim and Maksim both lay silent in anonymous graves. The French had come to Moscow and they had gone. Had we or the Oprichniki played any significant part in that? I doubted it. Bonaparte's fate was sealed the moment he stepped across the border from Poland. In the west they simply don't understand how much east there is. Warsaw is a long, long way from Paris. If Bonaparte could get that far, could Moscow be much further? In reality, it's as far from Warsaw as Warsaw is from Paris, and the journey is a hundred times more dangerous.

Along the road were various signs of the devastation brought by the armies that had marched back and forth over the past weeks. In villages along the way, buildings had been destroyed by fire or, sometimes, by simple, brute force. This may have been caused by the French as they advanced, but more likely by the Russians as they retreated – not just the Russian army but also the very Russian peasants who lived in those villages. The policy of destruction that had been so effective in Moscow was also enacted wherever Bonaparte's army chose to march.

Beyond Mozhaysk, a new and horrible feature began to decorate the landscape, increasing by degree with every verst that I covered. Bonaparte's original plan had been to return by a different route from that by which he came, travelling to the south of the main Moscow to Smolensk road. But at Maloyaroslavets, the battle from which the French captain hanging at the crossroads at Kurilovo had fled, General Kutuzov had forced Bonaparte to turn from that path, back to the north. Mozhaysk was where the French had rejoined the main road, and there began the debris of an army in flight.

Horses – French horses – lay dead beside the road in their hundreds. Exhaustion, starvation and the freezing cold might have been to blame for some of them, but many were down simply to the ignorance or laziness of the French blacksmiths. The horses' shoes lacked the three calkins that a Russian smith would have instinctively added in winter to stop the shoe slipping on ice. Once a horse had lost its footing on the ice-covered road, there would have been little that it, or its rider, could do to raise it. I heard later that the starving French soldiers fell upon each stumbling horse even as it struggled hopelessly to regain its footing, hacking it to pieces in order to feed themselves. Only a fraction of the horses' bodies exhibited the kindness of a bullet to the head.

Even so, men succumbed to the same environment as did their mounts. The reason that the bodies only of horses and not men lay abandoned in the snow was probably not so much that men were dying in any few numbers, but that their comrades had made some effort to bury them. As their journey – and, following in their footsteps, my journey – continued, they had begun to forget such sensibilities. The bodies of men lay ever more frequently beside the bodies of fallen horses.

As I passed each body – be it of a man or a horse – a flurry of birds would launch themselves into the air, frightened by my passing. Once I had gone by, they would return to peck at what flesh still remained. Soon after Mozhaysk, I caught sight of huge flocks of crows circling some way in front of me. While the sound of birds may herald hope – the new dawn – the sight of them is so often an indicator that death is nearby. I soon realized that I was approaching the field of Borodino. I had seen little of the main battlefield on the day, though I had heard much of its horror from survivors. But now as I approached, almost three months later, I saw for myself for the first time how great the death toll had been.

There had not been a moment to pause for breath – certainly not for my country – since that battle, and so little effort had been made to clear away the dead; at least, little human effort. Dogs, wolves and scavenging birds had picked what they could from the thousands of bodies, yet still enough remained to make it clear where each man had fallen. The road ran for about eight versts through the battlefield, with the village of Borodino itself marking the mid-point. On either side, the bodies of the dead spread outwards as far as I could see. The French, from what I could see, had at least made some attempt to bury their dead after the battle, but they had not been thorough; many that had been hastily buried had subsequently been disinterred by the heavy rain. It was impossible – not to say repellent – to count, but the carcasses numbered in their tens of thousands. It was as though some extraterrestrial giant had chosen to slap his hand against the surface of the earth at that point, flattening with one blow all those men who stood beneath it. But no such unworldly explanation was needed. Each man that had died here had died in the way that most men die – at the hands of others. I spurred my horse and rode through as quickly as I could. Even beyond the battlefield, there was no let-up in the accompaniment of the dead. Now, though, it was once again not the bodies of those who had died in battle but of those who had died in retreat. It was not worth a debate as to which was more sickening.

From people I spoke to along the way, I learned that it was not just frost and starvation that was killing the retreating French; it was the Russian peasantry as well. When the French passed through a village they were welcomed with open arms, given food and brandy and put into a warm bed, only to have their throats slit or receive a bullet to the head as they slept. I recalled the hanging body of the French captain who had been lynched at Kurilovo. There was no reason that the serfs should have any sympathy for the invaders. Even if they did, they would still follow their master's orders and kill them without pity.

It took me three days to get to Smolensk. Fresh horses and accommodation were not plentiful along the way, but they were sufficient. It had been two weeks since the French had passed along that road. What had been a hostile trail through an unfriendly foreign land for them had, of necessity, become a vital supply line for the Russian forces that pursued them. Horses and victuals that had been moved away from the road during the French advance had surged back in after their retreat, as though Napoleon were Moses leading his army of Israelites across the Red Sea, except that what was drawn away in advance of him and returned behind him would have brought life, not death to his army.

Smolensk was changed in much the same way that Moscow had been – it was ruined and burnt. And whereas Moscow had been freed from French hands after only five weeks, Smolensk had been held for three months. The final days of the occupation had seen a complete breakdown in discipline as the cold, beleaguered, frightened remains of Bonaparte's army had ransacked the city that they passed through in their retreat. There had been less than two weeks for rebuilding to take place. It was in a worse state than I had ever seen Moscow.

I went to the inn from where Dmitry had sent his letter. I had stayed there earlier in the year, but I did not recognize the proprietor. A brief conversation with him revealed that his predecessor, a cousin of his, had been killed in the first French attacks. There was a letter for me from Dmitry, dated two days before.

Aleksei,

Sorry for not staying to wait for you. It's not that I'm impatient or doubt you will come, but I have discovered the precise whereabouts of Foma. He and Iuda had been together, but now I cannot find any trace of Iuda. If I can capture Foma alone, then I may be able to use him as bait to tempt Iuda into the open. If not, I will have at least reduced their numbers by one. In either case, I would appreciate your help. Out here, our list of places to meet has become very sparse. I will try to make it to the farmhouse north of Yurtsevo (U1) and wait there as long as possible.

As ever,

Dmitry.

Yurtsevo was another two or three days' journey to the west. I was cold, tired and saddle-sore. I spent a long, well-earned night in Smolensk before continuing after Dmitry. His plan was at best foolhardy. Capturing Foma might not be impossible, but were I to catch him, I would not keep him alive for long enough for Iuda to come to his aid. I would kill him within seconds. Better yet, I would kill him before he even knew I was there. Whatever desire I might once have had to allow these creatures to be aware of their deaths was now lost in the pragmatic expediency of my own fear.

The idea that Iuda would put his own life at any risk for any of his fellows was the most laughable part of Dmitry's scheme. Of all the Oprichniki, Iuda was the least human – the least likely to be swayed by any sense of camaraderie or partnership. But Dmitry had asked for my help, and I had to give it. I had little interest in small fry like Foma, but if he or Dmitry had any clue as to where I might find Iuda, then that would be of help to me.

Early the next day, I set out west once again. The ground was still frozen to iron and the wind still blew a blizzard that would cover with snow anything or anyone that remained unmoving for more than a few minutes. Yurtsevo was only a few versts north of the city of Orsha. The going that far was relatively easy, always downhill along the Dnieper valley, with plenty of places along the way to get a meal and a fresh horse.

The road to the west was still lined with the bodies of horses and men. Many of the men had been stripped of their possessions and even their clothes. I was not chauvinistic enough to believe that such desecration of the French dead could not have been perpetrated by Russian peasants or even by Russian soldiers, but it would have been their fellow Frenchmen who had the first opportunity to plunder the bodies of their fallen comrades, and they too who were in the direst need of extra clothing.

I was in Orsha in two more days, and after resting the night there, I set out on the final leg of my journey, to Yurtsevo. This was no longer a route of well-trodden roads between large, populous towns. When we had drawn up our list of meeting places, we had had little idea whether we would be meeting under the benign reign of Tsar Aleksandr or under the occupation of the invader Bonaparte. Moreover, it had been under a glorious summer sky that we had made our plans. Then the road from Orsha to Yurtsevo would have been a pleasant one through verdant woodland. Had we known the eventual circumstances, we would have chosen to meet by the largest fireplace inside the warmest tavern in Orsha. As it was, we had chosen a place where a man could die in November and be discovered in a state of perfect, frozen preservation the following March. But at least the road was no longer one that had been trod by the French, and so too it was no longer paved with carcasses of horses and of men. Even so, this slight recompense was soon forgotten in the face of the gnawing cold.

I began to doubt whether there was any point in my continuing when the depth of the snow reached up to my knees – and taking into account that I was still mounted on my horse. I had tried dismounting and leading my horse through the great drifts of snow, and for a while we had made swifter progress. But in places the snow was so deep that it would have been above my head. The prospect of me reaching the rendezvous was bleak, and even if I did, I was in grave doubt as to whether Dmitry would have made it there too. On the other hand, I believed that I was now nearer to Yurtsevo than I was to Orsha, and so to advance was the most sensible option.

The snow grew deeper. There were times when the drifts were so high that we had to plough through them like a ship frozen fast in the icy Baltic. The top of the snow was higher than my horse's head and it was only down to the sense of either trust or fear that she held for me that I was able to coax her to walk onwards along a path she could not see. Through half a dozen layers of clothing, the cold bit into me with a carnivorous aggression. How my horse bore it, I cannot tell.

It was after nightfall when I first saw the lights of the village. On any normal night they would have been a beacon to guide us home, but through the blowing snow they were but a glimpse, to be seen one moment and gone the next. Having first seen them, though they then disappeared, I headed towards them. Five minutes later I saw them again, this time to the left and further away. I spurred the horse and she grudgingly turned towards the lights. The wind and snow lashed against the tiny gap between my hat and my collar from which my face peeped out. It would have been more comfortable to be whipped across the eyes than to endure that frozen blast.

It was another ten minutes before I saw the lights of the village again. This time they were closer, but still to the left, at right angles to the direction in which we had been heading. I tried to turn my horse once again, but she would not move. It was no stubbornness on her part, she was simply stuck fast. She tried to neigh, but the sound was muffled by the insinuating snow that filled her mouth and nostrils. I dismounted and found that I could no longer see the village lights. I was in a snowdrift of which the top was way above my head. I scrabbled through the mountain of snow before me, tearing out handful after handful and casting them aside, but new snow built up far, far more quickly than I could disperse it. Soon, I could move neither my legs nor my hands. With each movement I made, the snow froze even harder to ice and tightened its grip upon me. I would be moving no further that night, and if I did not move that night, I would never move anywhere again. With hope gone, the cold seemed to double in its intensity, and I knew that I would quickly succumb.

I chose in my last moments to turn my mind to pleasant things. Images of my wife and my son came to me, but were quickly dismissed by thoughts of Domnikiia. My mind's eye became detached from my body and flew back to Moscow to observe her. It dwelt on her large eyes, her lips, her pale earlobes. I observed her closely, though she was unaware of my presence. I brought to mind the chatter of her voice, and even though I could make out no individual word, the sound of it was a perfect rendition of the real Domnikiia. It would have been hard to discover a more contented frame of mind in which to die.

Through the whistling of the wind, I heard the howl of a wolf, which was soon accompanied by a second. I prayed that the cold would render me insensible before the wolves got to me. At the same time, I remembered the folklore that the voordalak could transform itself into a wolf. I modified my prayer. If the cold could not save me, at least let the howling come from regular, respectable wolves.

I remember being dragged across the snowy ground, and the sound of voices shouting all around me. I also remember the impression of mouths and sharp teeth close to my face, the repellent smell of half-digested flesh rising from a carnivorous gullet and the curiously pleasant sensation of my face being licked

.

When I awoke, the one concept that cut its way through an abundance of feelings was that of warmth. I was wrapped in a heavy fur, and near me a fire blazed in an iron stove, filling the room with heat. I tasted brandy on my lips, which must have been forced between them while I was unconscious. Beside the fire, breathing heavily, their tongues lolling from the sides of their mouths, lay two huge dogs. They could well be mistaken for wolves. Their fur was a mixture of grey and white and their grey eyes looked towards me with a blank curiosity. One of the dogs raised an eyebrow as it turned its gaze away from me towards the source of a sound.

'Drink some more brandy!'

The voice came from just behind me. A tall, bulky man stood a little away from the fire, staring into its dancing flames, breathing in its warmth through large, hairy nostrils. On the table beside me was a glass of dark liquor, with a bottle beside it. I drank and the man refilled it for me.

'Thank you,' I said, drinking again from the replenished glass.

'You're a long way from the rest of the troops,' he said.

'How did you know I was a soldier?' I asked.

'You carry a sword, even though you wear no uniform.'

'How did you know I wasn't French?'

'I didn't until you spoke,' he explained, placing a cocked pistol gently on the table beside him, 'but I do now.'

The fact that we both spoke Russian was as reassuring to me as it was to him. This far west, I could just as easily have found myself in a Polish household, where a Russian soldier might have encountered a less friendly welcome.

The dogs turned their heads across the room to the door. Another man entered, younger than the first, but still of the same powerful build.

'He's awake then,' said the newcomer.

'Yes,' replied the other, 'and he seems to be on our side, although he still hasn't told me what he's doing here.'

'I'm supposed to be meeting someone,' I explained. 'This is Yurtsevo?'

'It is,' said the older man.

'There's a farm about a verst north of here,' I went on, 'towards Mezhevo.'

'Not any more. It burnt down.'

'The French?' I asked.

'Not even the French. It burnt down more than a year ago.'

'I see. I think my friend will still try to meet me there.'

'We haven't seen anyone. Mind you, in this weather, they could walk past the village and never see it – or walk through the village and we'd never see them. You were lucky the dogs caught your scent.'

'There was that smoke we saw from over there the other day, Pa,' said the younger man.

'When?' I asked.

'Yesterday, or the day before.'

'I must go and find him,' I said, rising from my chair.

'Not tonight, you don't,' said the older man. He put his meaty hand on my shoulder and pushed me back into my seat with an enormous, casual strength that reminded me of the force that the vampire Pavel had used to hold me against the wall. As the man moved, his dogs rose swiftly to their feet and silently bared their teeth. 'You go in the morning,' he told me firmly.

I spent the night in the chair where I had been sitting, revelling in the warmth given to me by the furs and the fire. I was woken early when a woman – I presumed from her age that she was the older man's wife – came in to refuel the fire. Later, she beckoned me into another room, where I shared a silent breakfast with her and her husband and son.

Soon after dawn, the head of the household turned to me.

'You're still planning on going out to the farm?' he asked.

'I have to,' I replied.

'Well, I won't offer to come with you, but I'll show you the road. It's not far, but in this weather it's treacherous. You should leave your horse here and go on foot.'

'My horse is alive?' I asked in surprise. I hadn't even thought to consider it.

'Why shouldn't she be? She was in a lot better state to survive the weather than you were when we found you.'

I put my overcoat and hat back on and we went outside. The village was not large and the buildings seemed to huddle together for warmth in the winter cold. It had stopped snowing and the wind was lighter than it had been, but it was still bitterly cold. We walked along the single main street to the edge of the village.

'That's the road to take,' the man told me, pointing to a path that could only be discerned as a vague gap in the trees. 'It's only about a verst. There's still enough of the buildings left for you to recognize it, unless the snow's covered it.'

'Thank you,' I said.

'If you're not back in three hours, I won't be coming to look for you, because you'll be dead. I'll bury you in the spring, if the wolves leave anything of you.'

I offered him my hand, but he preferred not to take his out of his deep pockets. I headed along the road he had indicated. I turned back to wave to him, but he had already turned and I saw only his stooping back as he trudged towards the warmth of his home.

The wind blew up again soon after I set off, directly against my direction of travel, making each step more tiresome and whipping sharp flecks of snow across my face. It seemed preposterous that Dmitry had ever got here, let alone that he would have stayed here, and yet being so close, it would be ridiculous for me to turn back. The same thought might well have passed through Dmitry's mind. If he had got this far, he would have gone further, and that could be said of him even if 'this far' had only been a single step. Besides, there had been smoke, so someone had been there and that was most likely Dmitry, though it was still improbable that he had stayed.

It was thanks only to a lucky break in the wind that I didn't walk straight past the ruins of the small farmhouse. The snow had not completely covered the charred remains, which still bore some resemblance to the basic shape of the building, but shrouded in the blizzard they would have been hard to spot. Walking through the blackened timbers, I saw on the far side of the structure the remains of a more recent fire – this time a campfire. The gnarled shapes of snow-encrusted logs that had been pulled up to sit on partially ringed a wide patch of burnt wood and cinders. I put my hand to it and felt that the fire was now completely cold. It had been more than a day since it had been burning. However, I was now certain that Dmitry had been here. No one would cast more than a passing glance at this cold, deserted place, let alone stop and make a fire, unless they had reason to be there. I too had made it to the appointment, but I was too late.

I searched around the ruins of the farmhouse, looking for a message from Dmitry in the code that had served us so well, hoping to discover where he had moved on to. It did not take me long to find it. A blackened, half-burnt tabletop had been leaned against what was once a door post. It was plastered with drifted snow, but as I wiped it clean I found Dmitry's message scratched firmly into its surface:

Three days ago. Unquestionably, it had been too long to wait in this overwhelming cold, but there was no further message to indicate where he might have gone. I brushed off the rest of the snow from the tabletop and then did the same on the other side, but there was nothing more. I went back over to the place where Dmitry had made his fire and sat on one of the logs. Its hard, twisted knots dug into me and its coldness seeped into my flesh.

What was I to do now? Dmitry clearly had been here, but where had he gone? Had his plan to capture Foma succeeded, or was he yet to carry it out, or had Foma somehow turned the tables on him? Worse still, had Dmitry's plan gone even further? Had he successfully used Foma as bait, only to find himself defeated by Iuda? That could mean that Iuda was still somewhere hereabouts, waiting for my arrival. I thanked the Lord that I had arrived in the daytime.

I could only act on the assumption that Dmitry was still alive, otherwise anything I did would be futile. If I were in his circumstances, then what I would have done would be to attempt to join up with the regular army. From what I had heard in Orsha, they were heading for Borisov in an attempt to prevent Bonaparte from crossing the Berezina. That was only a couple of days' ride away. My best guess was that that would be where Dmitry would go, and so that was where I would follow.

The decision made, I drew in my feet to stand up. As I did so, I disturbed the snow beside the log I was sitting on, revealing something that glinted in the sunlight. I bent forward and cleared away more snow to discover that it was a fine silver chain, of the sort used for a necklace or bracelet. I pulled it out of the snow and found that it was caught under one of the stunted branches that protruded from the log. As I cleared the snow further, I suddenly leapt to my feet with a startled gasp.

This was not a branch; it was a human hand.

I had not been sitting on a log, but on a frozen, rigid, human corpse.