Twelve (36 page)

Foma was almost parallel with me. I was running level with the hind legs of the horses. I drew my sabre, knowing there was little I could do with it to fight the Oprichniki, but with one hope in my mind. I slashed at the hind leg of the creature that was racing alongside me. My sword bit deep, just above the hock, and with a startled neigh, the poor, lame animal instantly pulled up. As the heavy coach ploughed on into the two unfortunate horses, I lost my balance and fell to the ground, rolling over off the road and then into the adjacent field.

I turned to see what had happened to the coach. It had tipped over on to one side and was just coming to rest in the ditch on the far side of the road. One of the horses lay motionless in the road; the other was in the ditch, trying to get up under the weight of the coach to which it was still harnessed. Foma had been thrown off and lay dazed in the field beyond. The side door of the carriage, now facing upwards, flipped open like a trapdoor and Iuda emerged. He hauled himself out and then bent back in to help those remaining inside.

I left them to it and ran across the snowy field. The edge of the field was not far away, marked by a hedgerow. Once beyond that, I felt I was safely hidden, so I turned to look back at the Oprichniki. Through my spyglass I could see them making attempts to right the coach. Iuda was taking a supervisory role, evidently issuing instructions to the other three, but not himself participating. They soon abandoned the idea and began to remove from the coach a number of items of baggage. They then started to trudge purposefully through the snow, back towards the crossroads, Iuda still clutching his arm where I had cut him.

I shadowed them from a distance. The moon had now set and at times it was almost impossible to see them, but they were talking loudly and angrily to one another and, although I could not make out any of the meaning of what they said, it was enough to let me know where they were without ever getting a clear sight of them. Back at the crossroads they paused for a while. Stare as I might, I could see no sign of Filipp. I had not had a chance before to make certain that he was dead, but the fact that there was no sign of a body left me happy that I had indeed killed him. Pyetr knelt down in the snow next to the post where I had tied Filipp and lifted up a handful to examine. I inferred that he was holding the dust that was typical of a
voordalak
's earthly remains.

They continued over the crossroads, back along the road from which they had come. I continued to follow, though the snow in the fields was waist deep in places and my trousers were by now cold and sodden. Eventually, we came to the coppice from which the coach had emerged. To go round it would take me too far from the road, so I had to cut into the woods to keep close with them. While the voices of the Oprichniki had carried clearly across the open fields, once we were amongst the dense trees, they became muffled and soon faded to complete silence. I knew that it was from somewhere around here that they had set out in their coach towards the crossroads, so if they stopped and I continued on parallel to the road, as I was heading, there was a good chance that I would overtake them and lose track of them completely.

I changed direction, heading now towards the road instead of keeping level with it. In the dense woodland, there was no light at all. Looking up, I could just make out the stars through the canopy of branches which, although denuded of leaves, were clung to by sufficient snow to ensure that only patches of sky were visible. Without being able to see the pole star, it was difficult to know whether I was heading the right way. I had turned left to head back towards the road, but even after a few paces, I could have wandered a long way from that chosen path. Vampires are creatures of the night, and although I did not know for sure, I could only presume that they would be able to see far more clearly than I in this light. I could walk straight into the waiting arms of any one of the four of them and not know it until I saw the gleam of their fangs.

At least there was in that some morsel of comfort; there were now only four of them – one fewer than there had been when the night began. A part of me insisted that it was achievement enough for the evening; that I should return to rest and safety and leave the others for another day. It was an academic issue. More in question was whether I would make it out of these woods at all. Vampires were not my most pressing enemy. Wolves or even the icy cold itself were a more present danger.

I pushed on in the direction that I hoped would lead me back to the road. When I had entered the coppice, I had been only half a verst away from the road, and yet I had now been pacing through the woods for over a quarter of an hour without finding it again. Clearly I had not been sticking to a straight line. At last, a little way ahead of me I saw a light through the densely packed tree trunks. As I drew closer, I saw that I was coming to a clearing, opening on to the road but hidden by the trees so that I had not seen it from the crossroads. In the clearing was a small farmhouse and next to it a barn. The light I had seen was coming from the barn. There were no lights at the windows of the farmhouse. The sight of those lonely, snow-covered buildings looming out of the dark woodland gave me the sensation of being the child protagonist in some gruesome fairy story.

I crept close to the barn and listened. From within came the guttural, laughing voices of the Oprichniki. They seemed to be in a good mood again. Something had cheered them after their defeat at the crossroads. I quietly worked my way round to the door, looking for some crack in the woodwork through which I might observe them.

I put my eye to the narrow gap at the door's hinge, but before I could look in, the door was flung open, outwards at a huge speed. I would almost have been crushed as it slammed against the side of the barn had I not rolled out of the way. I pressed my back to the barn, coiled to fight, but not knowing whether the door had been opened because of my arrival or for some other, coincidental reason.

From the open doorway, something was hurled into the snow outside, carrying almost as far as the trees. It was large and bulky and sank into the snow where it landed. I glimpsed the two Oprichniki who had thrown it, but they did not venture outside and saw nothing of me. Having completed their task, they went back in. I heard more laughter and chatter in their language and what I made out to be a Russian cry of '
Niet!
' in a voice that certainly did not belong to any Oprichnik. Then Iuda's voice barked some instruction, and the barn door was closed again.

Rather than going straight over to the object that they had thrown out, which would have taken me straight past the door and hence possibly through the vampires' line of sight, I went back into the coppice and skirted around the edge of the clearing until I was as close to it as I could be. I crawled out to examine what the Oprichniki had so carelessly discarded.

It was, in accordance with the expectation that I had desperately tried to deny, a body. I wiped the snow away from the face and recoiled in brief shock, raising my hand to cover my mouth. It was a woman, middle-aged and most certainly dead, but none of that was of especial horror to me. Clearing more snow from her naked body, I saw repeated almost everywhere what I had seen on her face. Beyond the usual wounds to the throat, the Oprichniki had gone far further with this victim.

There were bites everywhere. Not just bitemarks, but actual missing pieces of flesh, torn away by the vampires' hungry teeth. Both her cheeks were missing, along with parts of her throat, her breasts, her belly, her buttocks, her thighs and her calves. They had not been thorough in their devouring of her. There was plenty of flesh still remaining. From the look of torment on her face, I could imagine only one reason why they had decided to stop eating. It was that she had died.

T
HE OPRICHNIKI HAD NOT HAD LONG IN WHICH TO CAPTURE
their victim. I had lost sight of them as I entered the woods, and that had been barely twenty minutes before. The only conclusion was that they had come across the woman earlier and left her imprisoned in the barn as they came after me. They may even have found her in the farmhouse just there. If she was the farmer's wife, then there must also be a farmer. I remembered the Russian voice I had heard from inside the barn.

I stole my way back over to the barn and peered through the crack at the side of the door. The scene within was unspeakably gruesome. The farmer was in the centre of the room. His wrists were tied together by long rope which had been slung over a beam in the ceiling. His arms stretched up above him, leaving his near-dislocated shoulders to take his full weight. His toes barely brushed against the floor as his body swung from one side to the other. Of all the devices medieval torture invented in the west as Catholic and Protestant each tried to bring the other closer to God, the rack was the most famously effective, but manacles were just as agonizing to their victim and far simpler. But this was only the first level of the suffering that the Oprichniki had created.

The man was stripped to his waist. His head hung limply backwards, but occasionally he tried to raise it. This, and the alternating groans and screams that emanated from his throat, told me that he was still alive. More importantly, they told the Oprichniki that he was alive. In what could be considered a twisted sexual parallel, the vampires' pleasure came not simply from the sensations which they experienced, but in the knowledge of the pain that they bestowed upon others.

Pressed close in around his body stood three of the four Oprichniki. They too were naked from the waist up – their appetites evidently requiring satisfaction through touch as well as taste. The three were Pyetr, Foma and Iakov Zevedayinich. Iuda stood a little way back from the action. He remained fully clothed and I saw on his bloodstained lips a sadistic smile that both shared and despised the gratification of the other three.

Iuda spoke. I could not understand what he said, but I could make out that it was addressed to Foma, and it had the tone more of a suggestion than of an instruction. Foma turned his head towards Iuda and grinned in pleasurable agreement. The other two watched Foma as he raised the palm of the man's right hand to his mouth and bit hard into the fleshly part at the base of the middle finger. The man screamed, not the shrill cry of shock that I would have expected, but the low weary howl of a man for whom pain has all too quickly become the only sensation he has left in his existence. The other wounds that I could see on his body told me that the Oprichniki had already indulged their appetites to quite an extent that night.

Foma pulled his mouth away from the hand and swallowed what he had bitten off displaying the same extravagance with which I might swallow an oyster in front of a charming dinner companion whom I wanted to impress. As he did so, the others all let out sounds that I took to be not part of their language but simple vocalizations of appreciation that could be understood in any tongue.

Foma moved to the next finger and took a deeper bite. This time, as well as the farmer's scream, I heard the crackle of splintering bones. The tip of his finger dropped to the floor, but Foma still managed to get a mouthful. He spat something out across the room, which bounced off a wall and fell to the ground. I could not see what it was, but it must have been in some way significant, since it got a tremendous laugh from the others; tremendous, but not hearty. It was the same laugh I had heard from them when I had first met them, the dirty laugh of those who want to be seen to laugh by those around them. Iuda joined in convincingly, but it was obvious that he mocked as much as he partook. Even later, when I discovered what Foma had spat out, it was difficult to fathom where the humour lay.

It is not easy to say now, nor was it then, why I stayed to watch the scene played out before me. But it was inevitable that I would. The fact that the farmer had just lost two of his fingers took me back to that prison in Silistria, three years before, but the strongest resonance was not with the farmer, not sharing his pain, but with those who stood and watched – with myself today, peering through a crack in the door and, worst of all, with Iuda who watched, smiled and, like me, did nothing.

The Turks had known that at least one of the seven of us was a Russian spy. They could just have killed us all, but they wanted information, and they could only get that if they could identify which one of us to concentrate their efforts on. They had kept us awake until late into the night, asking us questions, laughing at us, jeering at us. Eventually they lined us up; made us face the wall. I was in fifth place. Then they took the first man. I heard a strange crunching sound that I could not interpret, accompanied by a scream. It was the same sound I had just heard as Foma's teeth splintered the bones of the farmer's finger.

I had still not been able to see what was happening as our Turkish captors worked their way along the line, but each time I heard the same unfathomable combination of sounds. Then they came to me. I saw the blood on the table – not a huge amount, but four small, separate stains. When they grabbed my wrist and held it down I thought I understood what was happening – that they were going to sever my whole hand. I tried to pull away, but couldn't. The blade was a mundane thing, not one of the
palas
with which they fought, just a meat cleaver they had found somewhere. They tucked my other fingers in and the blade fell. I don't know whether I screamed. I don't really remember the pain, but I do remember feeling the blood that ran from the stump of my little finger dripping off my other fingers to the floor.

Those of us who had already visited the table were returned to position, but facing away from the wall. Once the element of surprise had been lost, it was far better torture for us to see what was going on. They explained to us it would stop if the spy confessed; that it would end not only his suffering, but all of our suffering. I was unmoved. I had little concern for my fellow captives – Bulgarians who had been happy to fight with the Ottomans against fellow Slavs – and I had no doubt as to just how permanently our captors would end our suffering.

Then they went round again. The fear in all of us was greater this time. Even though I cannot remember the pain, I can remember being afraid of it. The sound was the same as before as each man in turn lost a second finger. Most of the men against the wall turned their heads away to avoid seeing what was happening – what would soon happen to them – but I did not. I stared at the table, saw the cleaver fall each time, saw the agonized face of the victim and saw the indifferent faces of the Turks as they brushed the severed finger aside. I don't know why I looked; perhaps it was the hope that I would become numb to it by the time my next turn came. It worked, but it worked too well. The numbness persisted – increased over the years. It was that numbness, I realized, that meant I was now able to – needed to – stand at that barn door near Kurilovo and watch the torture that went on within.

In Silistria, only one of the other victims had looked on as I did. He was the second in the row – a young man, scarcely more than a boy. He too did not scream as the blade came down and took away his finger. When they came to me, I certainly did scream. I have no idea why the second cut hurt so much more than the first. Perhaps it was the anticipation. I was not at the point of confessing, but I wondered how many fingers I would be prepared to lose before I did give in. I could face, I thought, the loss of my whole left hand, but how many fingers of my right could I lose before I became useless as a man? But why did I care? – they would kill me anyway.

Again I felt my own blood running over my other fingers. It would not be fast, but the blood loss itself would eventually be enough to kill me. One of the soldiers indicated that we should hold our hands above our heads. It reduced the flow, but it was not an act of kindness. They had done this before, and this was experience showing. Raising our arms to reduce the blood flow prolonged our lives, and added a new, throbbing pain as our numbed arms began to ache. I felt the warm trickle of my own blood now running down my arm and on to my chest.

It was after they had moved on to third fingers that the confession came – but not from me. It was from someone who, to all my knowledge, had no connection with the Turks' enemies at all: the boy who was second in the line, who had not turned his face away from the table. There had been silence after he spoke; relief on the faces of the captives – even of the boy – satisfaction on those of the captors. I remember hearing the quiet chirping of birds through the high window. We had been in the prison all night.

The odd thing was that the boy had confessed just after, not before, it had been his turn to have his third finger severed. Had the pain broken his spirit? It didn't look like it. I could only guess that he had done what I would not have dreamed of – he had decided to spare the rest of us. If that was the case then he was a noble fool, but a fool nonetheless. If he'd made up the fact that he was a spy – as he surely had, unless there were two of us – then they would soon work it out. And then the torture would resume for the rest of us – perhaps some new, even worse torture. Only at that point was I truly tempted to confess, but even then I did not.

All seven of us were led out into the early, pre-dawn light, to be thrown back into the two small cells where we had been previously kept. It was at that point the boy made a run for it. He was up on to the prison wall in a flash and about to jump over when a shot rang out. I just saw him fall, but then I was off in the other direction. My left hand first stung as it gripped the top of the wall, and then slipped on the greasy blood that still oozed from it. But by then, my right hand had got a grip, and I pulled myself over. The Turks had now realized their mistake in all pursuing the one escapee, and shots whistled over my head, but they were too late. I was lucky to escape the city and lucky not to bleed to death, but I survived. I do not know what happened to the others whose torture I had both witnessed and shared, and at the time I did not care.

Now, staring into a similar scene inside that barn, I did care. But there was nothing I could do. To engage in a fight that pitted the four of them against just me would have ended in such a pointless death as to be immoral. I knew that I had to wait for better chances – to wait for the Oprichniki to become separated and to wait for daylight – before I could risk an attack. But the more difficult question was why I stayed to watch. I did not need to see any more to appreciate the vile nature of the Oprichniki, nor to find any aspect of their behaviour which might reveal a weakness in them. Part of what I needed was fuel for my hatred. It was a facet of myself of which I had long been aware. I am, or at least I perceive myself to be, a man of many passions, but all of those passions are difficult to kindle. I arrive at them in small steps, not in giant bounds. I would not go to the trouble of taking a lover, unless that lover was so available that her selection cost me but a few roubles. Moreover, I would not go to the trouble of falling in love unless it was with someone who was already my lover; it was only through the intensity of sex that I had discovered my depth of love for Domnikiia.

And similarly, it was only through the nauseating wrath of seeing what the Oprichniki actually did that I could stoke the fires of loathing enough to know that I would carry to the end my determination to destroy them. Iuda's words to me had struck home. I was a shallow, fickle, comfort-loving man. De-sensitized by what had happened in Silistria, and by what I had already seen of the Oprichniki, I had to remain there with my eye glued to what went on within the barn in order to corral the strength and determination that I would later require to defeat the accursed creatures. And yet, though it would give me that determination, would watching also not desensitize me further? The next time – though I prayed to God there would be no next time – I saw such horrors, would I dismiss them as commonplace, needing ever greater depths of corruption to raise my righteous passion? Whatever the risk, I stayed and watched.

Iuda issued another suggestion; this time it was to Iakov Zevedayinich. The vampire knelt before the man's stomach, gazing at it as if preparing to bite. The man already had several wounds to his belly. One on the side was long and deep and still bled profusely. Into this Iakov Zevedayinich swiftly jabbed his fingers, and the man's whole body convulsed with pain. Again a wave of laughter rippled through the Oprichniki. Foma grabbed the man's feet and Pyetr his chest so that he could not move. Iakov Zevedayinich twisted his fingers in the wound once more and this time the man's contortions, though more intense, were absorbed by the two vampires that held him fast.

Iakov Zevedayinich poked the wound again and again, learning from each jab how to make his victim's pain more intense. Each time, he exchanged glances with the other two, seeking their approval and relishing with laughter the approbation that he found. Pyetr called out to Iuda in a tone that might in normal life have said, 'Come on in, the water's fine.' Iuda strolled over to them. He had in his hand a small stick of wood. He may have picked it off the floor or ripped it from some tree or bush as he passed, but it was long and probing and had a jagged, uneven point. Iuda rammed it into the wound in the man's side and at the same time turned it like a gun worm. The man screamed in agony and Iuda spoke to him in Russian.

'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.