I lifted my foot and he snatched his hand back towards him. His screams stopped, but his breathing was irregular. He breathed out with hard, grating pants, but his in-breaths were short and snatched. He was coping with both pain and fear.

'Where have Iuda and Foma gone?' I asked again, shouting this time. He made no reply. It was hard to tell whether he had even heard my question. I was about to press his arm back into the light when, just as I had glimpsed with his nail, I saw the whole of his hand beginning to regrow. The bone that had fallen from his middle finger had already been replaced and lumps of healthy new flesh were forming before my eyes around each of his fingers. A new layer of skin was smoothly advancing from the undamaged half of his hand. Within five minutes the whole thing would be back to normal. This explained why there were no lacerations on his hands from my sword, and even further, explained why Maks could claim to have severed Andrei's arm when I had subsequently seen Andrei with the full complement of limbs. These creatures were (in this and in other ways) like spiders. The loss of an arm or a leg could be a temporary inconvenience, but they could be sure it would grow back. I shuddered as a thought crossed my mind that made me hope that they were merely like spiders. For a vampire to grow back an arm was one thing, but I prayed that the arm, once detached, could not grow back a new body, as is the case with an earthworm or a sorcerer's broomstick. If that were the case then there could still be another Andrei out there to deal with.

To my more immediate ends, however, this was an interesting turn of events. The aim of the torturer is to inflict the greatest pain on his victim whilst doing the least damage – the Turks had taken fingers, not arms or legs. The motivation is not out of any sympathy for the victim, but simply lies in the understanding that, once a body has been damaged too much, it is no longer able to feel pain – or indeed much of anything. But the vampire was a torturer's dream. Continuous pain could be inflicted because the body would be continually refreshed. I could take Pyetr up to the very point of death and then let him revive, only to do the same thing again the next day and the next. It was tempting, but I was not that much a follower of de Sade. I could not be sure it would work, anyway. When I had been tortured, although the physical pain had been excruciating, half of the terror had been in the knowledge that I would be maimed, that I would forever be missing those two fingers. Had I known that, whatever the degree of pain, I would still leave with my hand as intact and whole as it had ever been, the physical pain might perhaps have been bearable.

Pyetr did not seem to view it so philosophically. The pain to him was very real. And yet still he had not answered my question. I stamped my foot down on his arm again. The sun had moved a little and so this time the whole of his hand was exposed to the light. He screamed again as the centre of his palm split and peeled open to reveal the roasting flesh beneath. I held it down there until his entire hand was almost gone, and even then, I only let go to alleviate the sickening smell.

'So are you going to tell?' I asked.

He nodded, trying to catch his breath. 'Yes,' he panted. 'Yes.'

'Well?'

'They've gone after the French. They're trying to get back home to the Carpathians, but they'll stick with the French as far as they can – for food.'

'Both of them?' I asked.

Pyetr nodded. I placed my boot on his arm again, but did not push down.

'So why did I see Iuda heading towards Moscow?'

'I don't know,' he replied, trying to shrug his shoulders. I pressed his arm down once more, just briefly letting his raw, bleeding wrist touch the light before releasing him.

'All right,' screeched Pyetr. Then he smiled the self-satisfied smile of a man who in death foresees the ultimate retribution that will befall his killer. 'He's gone to see your whore. Dominique – that was her name. He's going to make her into one of us. He thinks she is just the sort who could be persuaded. And if not – well, you can look outside if you want to see how much we get out of a single human body. Either way, you won't get to fuck her again.' He forced out a laugh that reflected no amusement in him, but which he hoped would contribute to my pain.

I marched purposefully to the door. As I approached it, something glinted at me from the floor. Seeing what it was, I wondered how it might have got there. Then I realized. This was precisely the place where Foma had spat something after biting off the farmer's finger the previous night. I could now see what the thing was that had caused so much mirth amongst the Oprichniki. It was the man's wedding ring.

I continued to the door and flung it open. Behind me I heard the broad, whooshing explosion that had accompanied the destruction of Iakov Zevedayinich. I turned to see no sign of Pyetr, but only the pitchfork tottering to the ground now that its support had vanished. A rectangle of light shone through the door casting a shape akin to a coffin around where Pyetr had been lying, the lingering smoke his only memorial.

I wrenched my sword out of the door and set off on my way.

CHAPTER XXV

MY HORSE WAS STILL IN KURILOVO. THAT WAS ALMOST TWO versts away. I ran for all I was worth down the snowy road, slipping and stumbling as I went. I paused at the crossroads, exhausted, gasping for breath. The rope still lay coiled around the broken post where I had tied Filipp, but otherwise there was no hint of the previous night's adventures. I carried on, so out of breath that I ran probably slower than I could have walked. When I came to it, the coach still lay overturned in the ditch. The dead horse remained in the road, but the other one was gone, cut free from the wreckage either by some Good Samaritan or by some horse thief.

I carried on to the village. In the street I passed the red-haired man I had spoken to the previous evening. He recognized me and called after me.

'Hey! Was it you who stole Napoleon? Did you see what happened to that coach?'

I didn't pause to answer. I carried on back to the tavern, paid the ostler and, without waiting for change, mounted my horse. It had been almost fifteen minutes since I had left the barn. I spurred the horse into a gallop and allowed myself my first real opportunity to think.

My one hope lay in the fact that Iuda could not travel by day. He had left about three hours before dawn. That could never be sufficient time to reach Moscow. I had eight hours of daylight – slightly less now – to overtake him and get to Domnikiia before he could reawaken into the darkness and reach her. The journey ahead of me was around eighty versts over treacherous icy roads. It was achievable but it would be tight. I would not manage it at all if I killed my horse. I reined him back a little and we continued at a less breakneck speed.

If I did not get to Moscow in time, then my outlook was bleak – that of Domnikiia hopeless. The prospect of her suffering as she died, in the way that I had seen that farmer and his wife die, in the way that I now knew Maks and Vadim and so many others must have died, filled me with a nauseating rage. Were that to happen, then there would never be any peace for me until Iuda was destroyed. I would hunt him across Russia, across Austria, across the whole of the Ottoman empire if need be. I would climb every damned mountain in the Carpathians if I had to, but I would find him and he would die. I would not make him suffer physically too much – that would be to descend to his level – but he would know that it was I who took his life and why it was I who had done it.

I filled my journey with fantasies of discovering him in the dungeon of some mysterious Wallachian mountain castle, perhaps ten or twenty years from now; of pulling back the heavy stone lid of his coffin and raising my lantern to see the still-youthful face of the monster I had been stalking for so many years; of seeing his eyes open wide and peer into my world-weary face; of seeing the look of recognition in those eyes as he saw in me the face of the man he once confronted years before; of the memory returning to him of what he had done to Domnikiia at the very instant my stake plunged into his heart and terminated his putrid existence for ever; of seeing his earthly body collapse to dust under the weight of the corruption that it had borne over his long, repellent life.