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.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE 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.