'Kill him, Dmitry!' snarled Iuda from behind.

'I don't want to fight you, Dmitry,' I said, dropping my sword to my side, but not being so foolish as to sheath it, 'but I will if I have to, and if I do, I will win.'

'I don't believe you would kill me, Aleksei, but having seen what you did to Andrei, what do I know of you?'

'Take a look around you, Dmitry,' I insisted. 'Look at the corpses on the floor. They're not French; they're Russians – innocent Russians. These creatures don't kill to help liberate our country. They kill to eat, and they'll eat whatever they find there is the greatest supply of.'

Dmitry began to look about him, taking in the truth of what I said. Almost beneath his feet lay the body that I had briefly mistaken for Natalia. With his boot, he turned its head to one side so that he could see its face. If he had suspected it was Natalia, he showed no sign of relief on seeing that it wasn't. Perhaps like me he realized that it might just as well have been.

Behind him, Iuda came to the conclusion that Dmitry was losing the argument. He took a step towards Dmitry, but at the same time Dmitry took a step forward and entered my side of the room.

'We have to live, Dmitry,' Pyetr called plaintively after him. 'These few peasants were just so that we could survive until we left the city.'

'And what about Vadim?' I called out to Pyetr.

'Vadim?' asked Dmitry.

'Over there,' I said with a jerk of my head.

Pyetr and Iuda could find no more words to say as Dmitry inspected the remains of his commanding officer, comrade and friend. He put a hand to Vadim's face and let out a cry of deepest sorrow. Vadim's dead eyes stared back at him and offered no forgiveness.

Dmitry raised his sword and began to advance upon the two vampires who stood on the other side of the room from us. I restrained him before he could cross back into their half.

'You promised you'd control yourselves this time,' he said, addressing Pyetr, whom he had known longest.

'I did,' replied Pyetr ambiguously.

'It's too late to pretend to be surprised, Dmitry,' said Iuda in a more determined tone. 'You chose to sup with the Devil. You knew what we are – what we do.'

I think his words were directed more at me than at Dmitry, and I agreed with them. If the reality of the deaths of innocent Russians and of Vadim had come as a surprise to Dmitry, then he had only been fooled by himself, not by the Oprichniki. It could never be said that Dmitry was one to see only the good in people, but in this case he had only seen the benefit to himself, and to his country, that could be gained from working with them.

However, if Iuda's words were intended to make me mistrust Dmitry, it was also clear that Dmitry would no longer be wise to trust the Oprichniki. They might have had better reasons to kill Vadim or to kill me, but if he stuck with them, Dmitry's time would eventually come.

'I'm sorry, Aleksei,' muttered Dmitry. It was hopelessly inadequate, but it was all that could be said.

'I think you had better go,' I said, addressing the two vampires.

'Go?' said Pyetr. 'Why should we go? It's you that's trapped.' This was ostensibly true. The two doors to the room were both in their half. While they could leave if they wanted, we would not be able to reach an exit without crossing the divide and risking attack from them.

'All we have to do is wait until it's dark again,' continued Pyetr. Iuda, however, was glancing nervously around at the narrow window, at the ray of light and at the doors.

'I'm not sure,' I said, 'whether you creatures still believe that the sun revolves around the earth or that the earth revolves around itself. Either way, the sun travels from east to west once a day. And that means that that beam of light is going to travel from west to east – towards you. By noon, you'll only have one door to exit by. By mid-afternoon, you'll have none. You'll slowly be backed into the corner, until the sunlight hits the corner, and then you'll be gone.' Unless, of course, it turned cloudy. I didn't know whether the indirect sunlight of a cloudy day would be enough to kill them. That's why I played my card then, hoping to force them to leave, rather than risking the scenario being played out.

'Or we could just pull down all the other floorboards from the window right now,' suggested Dmitry. It was practical, but somewhat less elegant.

Either way, it was enough to persuade the Oprichniki. Pyetr was already out of the room. Iuda clicked his heels together and gave a mocking formal bow. 'We shall meet again, Aleksei Ivanovich,' he said, and then left.

Dmitry made to pursue. 'We had better wait a little,' I told him. 'Give them time to get out.' Dmitry nodded. 'Let's get some more light in here,' I suggested, going over to the window.

Before we could start work on any of the remaining boards, we both heard a whimpering noise emanating from underneath the oriental screen that I had knocked over. I drew my sword and used it to lift up the edge of the screen and flick it aside. Underneath was the crouched figure of the soldier-vampire, curled almost into a ball, his hands covering his head. He was shaking with fear. He had been there all the time, forgotten by us and, had he been capable of it, he had been in a position to reach out and kill us. Perhaps Iuda and Pyetr had been counting on that, or perhaps they, like us, had forgotten him.

I poked him with my sword and he looked up, his eyes showing that he was still inexperienced enough as a vampire to remember the sensation of terror.

'What's your name?' I asked him.

'Pavel,' he stammered. In his eyes I saw a new emotion; hope – the vaguest conception of the possibility that this day might not be his last.

Iuda, it turned out then, was correct. I did have scruples which held me back from killing. If Pavel had resisted, or simply remained bravely silent, I might have had the stomach to kill him. But now, though I knew him to be a vampire, he had such shades of his recently lost humanity about him that I found myself incapable of any action against him.

The decision was taken from me.

With a whoosh of displaced air, my wooden dagger came down upon Pavel's curled back, driven by Dmitry, who clutched it with both hands. The dagger buried itself deep between the vampire's ribs. Pavel let out a gasp and knelt upright, his hands reaching behind him to try to pull out the weapon. Dmitry gave it another thrust and then twisted it. The wooden blade broke in two, leaving Dmitry with only the handle. A trickle of blood appeared at Pavel's lips and his eyes became glassy as he slumped forward.

I nudged the body with my foot. It still felt like flesh and blood. Unlike the others, there was no instant collapse to ashes and dust.

'He hadn't long been a vampire,' said Dmitry, reading my thoughts. He evidently knew, as I had already deduced, that a vampire's body could only decay to the extent that it would have if he had never become one.

'What shall we do now?' I asked.

'Pyetr told me they would be leaving Moscow.'

'Back the way they came?'

'No. Just like the French, they won't retreat by the same lines that they advanced along,' explained Dmitry.

'So which way will they go?'

'South-west. Pretty much the same way that Bonaparte is going – at least for a while. It will give them a food supply of French soldiers.'

'Or Russian,' I added. Dmitry did not reply. 'Do you believe what Pyetr said about them leaving?' I asked.

'I think so. It's what I would do.'

'So we follow them?'

'I suppose,' said Dmitry, nodding thoughtfully, 'or just let them go.'

I went over to the corner of the room and bent down.

'What are you doing?' asked Dmitry.

'My icon,' I said. I tied a knot in the broken chain and put it back over my head. It felt a little unusual, resting against my chest slightly higher than its accustomed position, but I would quickly get used to it.