The People's Will (6 page)

On the other hand, drunkenness was as likely a cause. Osokin
had seen enough of it in Bulgaria against the Turks. It was the men, not the officers, but the officers did little to discourage it. Some thought it inspired a foot soldier to be braver, but in truth it just served to quieten their consciences. There was nothing brave about many of the killings that had taken place during the battle. It was not just enemy soldiers; the old, the young, women too – there was no sector of the population that did not have its losses. Some of the women had been raped first – even some of the children.

And there had been looting, of course. Osokin couldn’t object to that, up to a point. It wasn’t like the old days, when an army had to finance itself as it marched, but any little extra picked up along the way could help. But you couldn’t leave the enemy destitute, otherwise they’d turn to crime and half your troops would be busy just keeping the peace, instead of marching on to greater victories.

General Skobyelev – the White Pasha, as the Turks called him, thanks to the colour of his charger and matching uniform – decided to take things a step further. On the day after the battle he commanded the women of the city – the surviving women – to hand over all their gold and silver jewellery by way of a war contribution. There was a tradition among the locals that at a woman’s wedding she should be decked with so much jewellery that she could not stand unaided under its weight, so there was plenty to be taken, even from the poor. At first the women resisted, but then they looked at the bodies of their mothers, sisters and daughters.

Osokin saw the loot for himself. Two large carpets had been laid out to receive the offerings, but had disappeared from sight, obscured by piles of jewellery that stood taller than a man’s height – and still the women came to pay their tributes.

Some brave staff officer, lower in rank but higher in nobility than Skobyelev, asked what it was all supposed to achieve. Wasn’t victory enough? But for Skobyelev, this was not about war; it was about the permanence of the ensuing peace.

‘The harder you hit them,’ he explained, ‘the longer they stay quiet.’

Osokin had the dressing on his arm changed and then returned
to the tunnels and to the strange conical chamber with its solitary captive. At least now the bodies of the dead had been cleared away – particularly the awful headless torso that had lain in the middle of the place. But bloodstains still marked the point at which each man had fallen, and one didn’t need to venture too far along the corridor outside to discover them all, stacked up, awaiting a mass burial.

‘Take an hour or so,’ he said to Lieutenant Lukin. ‘You might as well see what we’ve conquered.’

‘I’ll be all right, sir,’ Lukin replied.

‘Just do as you’re told!’ The boy – that’s all he really was – didn’t deserve to escape the consequences of what they had done. However brilliant he might be at digging tunnels and laying explosives, he needed to learn that it was about more than just making precise mathematical calculations. He needed to see the result.

Lukin reluctantly obeyed.

Otrepyev’s men had achieved little success in drawing the shutter back into place above them. They’d managed to reach the dangling rope, but in pulling it they had only opened the gap a little further. There was no obvious mechanism to reverse the process. The whole contraption had been devised to be used just once – to open the roof, which would never then need closing.

One of the soldiers had managed to shin his way up the support for the swinging blade that had so efficiently beheaded his comrade the previous day. But its pivot was not close enough to the skylight. He reached out as if expecting his arm to suddenly grow in length and bridge the gap, but it was hopeless. His fingers lost their grip and he fell with a cry, landing at the feet of the prisoner, still in his chair, who glanced down with an expression of contempt. Even if he’d escaped breaking any bones, the fallen man must have been horribly bruised, but he looked up into the eyes that stared down upon him from the chair and in an instant was scrambling away like a startled crab. He huddled against the wall, nursing his aching limbs.

It was all very peculiar: the prisoner himself, the two strange contrivances – one to open up the roof, the other to behead the prisoner. It was clear that the man was not meant to be captured
alive. What reason could there be for that? And if he needed to be killed, why not a simple bullet or a blade? There was one answer that crept into Osokin’s mind, but it came from the past – from childishness and superstition. The Turcomans though were a backward people; a hundred or more years behind Russia. At the time of Empress Yekaterina, might not many of even her most rational subjects have taken such myths for truth? There were tales from as recently as the Patriotic War, of monsters preying on Russians and French alike. It would be the same for the Turcomans today. But if it was just these primitives who believed it, why had Colonel Otrepyev been so keen to cut that rope?

His contemplations were interrupted by a sudden sound; a heavy crash of wood against stone. He turned to see that the prisoner, and his chair, had fallen backwards. Both lay there, in much the same position as when Otrepyev had kicked them over. None of the soldiers was nearby. Osokin could only guess that it was the prisoner himself who had managed to rock the chair over as part of some failed attempt at escape. But there was no way he would be able to free himself of those bonds – whatever he might be.

‘Get him up!’ instructed Osokin.

Two of the men rushed forward and pulled the chair back upright for a second time. Osokin supervised. He ran his eyes over the prisoner to check his condition.

‘You injured?’ he asked, forgetting for a moment his earlier failure to communicate.

‘No,’ replied the prisoner, and then, after a pause, ‘Thank you.’

Osokin said nothing, merely nodding an acknowledgement. It was no real surprise to discover that the prisoner was well able to understand.

‘I wonder,’ the prisoner continued, his Russian still flawless, ‘if I might ask one favour.’

‘What?’

‘Could you turn the chair a little? The light hurts my eyes.’

In falling and being righted again, the chair had moved a little way across the chamber. It was now closer to the area of sunlight that shone in through the roof. It was bright, but not so bright as to be uncomfortable, not for Osokin at least. But it fitted into
the picture that he was, against his better judgement, building of the situation. Or perhaps the prisoner was just toying with his suspicions. Osokin considered for a moment, and then nodded his assent at the soldiers. They began to rotate the chair.

‘That’s perfect. Thank you,’ said the prisoner meekly, after he had been turned through a right angle. He was now roughly side on to the line marking the boundary between sunlight and shadow and facing directly towards the mangled doorway. Was he planning something? Osokin could not imagine what. Anyway, Otrepyev would return soon, and then it would be his problem.

At least Osokin hoped it would be soon.

It was a tricky choice, after so little acquaintance: to appeal to the bad in him, or to the good? To say ‘Please don’t throw me into that briar patch,’ or just the reverse? For most Russian officers, and even more of the men, Iuda would have asked for what he didn’t want, and got what he did. But in this major – Osokin was what Dmitry had called him – he’d detected a little more sentimentality. He’d seen the look of disquiet on Osokin’s face as he’d returned to the prison chamber, having presumably surveyed the aftermath of the battle above. It would make him more sympathetic to the well-being of a prisoner of war. At least, so Iuda had hoped.

Luck was on his side, and not just in Osokin’s agreeing to turn his chair. The first stroke of luck had been that Dmitry had departed. It was to be expected; his hunger was obvious, certainly to another vampire such as Iuda. His ageing skin would be noticeable even to a human. Dmitry must have been so dedicated to his pursuit of Iuda that he had neglected to sustain himself. Now his hunger would have become overwhelming. He’d been forced to leave and seek blood among the defeated Turcomans, even if it meant leaving his captive alone. It was understandable, but a mistake nonetheless.

The very fact that the chair had fallen was not part of Iuda’s plan. He’d been moving himself oh so gradually, inch by inch, his only means of locomotion being his toes and heels. Until yesterday it would have been impossible, with the chair bolted to the floor, but now it could be done. It took every ounce of his inhuman strength, but it could be done. But then he had become stuck –
the chair leg caught in a ridge in the flagstones, he guessed. He’d pushed hard, beginning to rock the chair to what extent he could, trying to free the leg, but had gone too far. He felt himself falling, then came to a halt with a crash.

And then came more luck. In resurrecting him, the soldiers had moved him to almost precisely the spot where he desired to be. Once Osokin had had him turned it took only a few fine adjustments with his toes for him to be within inches of where he wanted.

Now he waited, and allowed the Earth to continue its inexorable rotation. He remembered a room in an abandoned house in Moscow in 1812 and the sun’s slow progress across the floor, creating a tightening trap for any vampire. That was when he had first wondered whether Lyosha might prove a worthy opponent. Lyosha had proved more than worthy. Dmitry was a disappointment, as much to Iuda as an adversary as he would have been to Lyosha as a son, if only Lyosha had known the truth.

He also remembered an escape, by a
voordalak
named Ruslan, who’d later gone by the name of Kyesha – the very creature that had eventually turned Iuda into a vampire. He had been Iuda’s prisoner, the subject of his experiments. He had been manacled in a cave in Chufut Kalye and exposed daily to sunlight so that Iuda could measure his reactions. And then, one day, he had vanished. It had taken Iuda hours to imagine how he might have done it, but once understood it had been obvious. Today Ruslan’s method needed only a little modification.

The line between light and shade moved closer. Iuda could not perceive its movement directly, but every time he glanced down it had taken a step towards him. He felt a cold, visceral fear of it and became filled with the urge to flee, but even had he yielded to it his bonds would have held him in place.

For nearly three years he had not moved from that chair. How would it feel to be free? He knew that the muscles of a vampire did not atrophy to the same degree as those of a man, but he would still be below his peak. He was well fed, at least. The Turcomans had been told to keep him alive, and they were too afraid to disobey. It was always the same procedure. They would loosen
the restraint to his head, allowing him some little movement, and then the victim would be held close and he would feed. It was, and was intended to be, a humiliation – being hand-fed like a baby rather than using his own arms to hold his prey close. But it kept him strong. He would need his strength for what was to come – regrowth demanded the greatest strength of all. Usually it had been some criminal that they gave him, who would have died anyway. The thought made it even less enjoyable. More recently they had brought him captured Russians. That had been enough for him to know that an attack was imminent. His last feed had been only the day before the assault.

He felt a stinging pain in his ankle and tried to pull it away. The sunlight had reached him. If his foot were to burn, so be it, but it was not intended as his primary sacrifice to Apollo. The sunlight worked its way up the wooden chair leg, like a slow incoming tide, ready to engulf him as he sat, commanding the waves to go back. But he knew it would not engulf him, and he would not command it to stop. It would reach him, do its work and then recede. He had calculated its path, and seated himself accordingly.

He felt a prickling in his leg as the sunlight squeezed through the weave of his trousers. He wondered how much damage would be caused. Would it be like sunburn? He wished he could look. Later he would experiment. Now the light had turned a corner. It crept stealthily along the top of the chair’s arms. Soon it would reach his hand.

He braced himself and then watched, fascinated, as his fingers and then his hand and then his arm began to dissolve.

Osokin sniffed and looked around. Whether it was the stench of the thousands of rotting corpses above or the few out in the corridor mattered little. He had smelt the aftermath of battle many times before, though this was a little different; not the usual miasma of putrefaction, but something more like mildew, mixed with burning – burning hair. He glanced around the room, but saw nothing. The soldiers were sitting or standing idly, awaiting the return of their commander. The prisoner remained in his chair. The light of the setting sun was close to him now. If Osokin’s preposterous imaginings had been true, then the prisoner would
not have happily sat there. Unless it was that he sought death. If so, thought Osokin, let him die.

‘Everything in order, sir?’

Lukin had returned. He too sniffed the air, and paled.

‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant, you’ll get used to it.’

Lukin looked at him, puzzled. ‘Has something happened with the prisoner?’

‘He managed to knock his chair over, that’s all.’ Osokin glanced over, but the figure sat immobile.

‘Best give him a quick inspection, don’t you think, sir?’

Without even showing his superior the respect of waiting for a confirmation, the lieutenant flicked his fingers to attract the attention of one of the men. There was no response and so he repeated the gesture, at last gaining some reaction. He pointed to the prisoner and the soldier strode towards him, Lukin a few paces behind. Osokin felt the urge to reprimand him, but he was curious to see how the lieutenant would deal with the taciturn captive. He sauntered after them.

‘Shit!’

The one, explosive word came from the lips of the soldier an instant before he was hurled across the room, slamming into the sloping wall opposite. Lukin took a step back and Osokin broke into a run. Even as he approached, he could see what had happened. Somehow the prisoner had freed his right arm. Osokin drew his revolver and stood at a safe distance, holding it out in front of him in both hands. Even so he could see it shaking, his right arm still too weak and painful to keep it steady. The prisoner’s arm threshed from side to side, almost wildly, but the look of calm concentration on his face told Osokin that the action was quite deliberate.