I looked at the package in my hands. The word 'Aleksei' in Dmitry's hand was all that was written on the outside. It was very thin – it might only contain a single sheet, but I was desperate to read it.

'Do you think?' asked Natalia.

'Think what?'

'That there are still French spies in Moscow.'

'Probably not,' I said distractedly. 'But Dmitry is always cautious.'

'You want to read that, don't you?'

I nodded.

'I thought you would. That's why I brought it straight here. I'll let you get on with it.'

'Thank you,' I said with a smile. I kissed her hand and said goodbye.

'Will you come and visit us?' she asked.

'Of course.'

'That's what Mitka said.'

'Then that's what he'll do.' And that was one thing concerning Dmitry of which I felt sure.

I opened the letter as soon as I got back to the inn. It was dated the third of November, three days previously, and was typically succinct.

Aleksei,

I think I have tracked down Iuda and Foma. They have infiltrated the French army and are retreating with them. While my every instinct is to leave them to it, I know you will disagree, and I think it is time that I deferred to you on this. I am staying in Smolensk, at the hostelry by the Dnieper where we stayed last time we were here (Я8). Please join me here with all speed,

Your friend and comrade,

Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko.

I no longer had the excuse of my arm to keep me in Moscow – it had almost healed. I no longer had the excuse of not knowing where I should go – Dmitry's letter told me. There was no way that I could avoid setting out once again, nor did I want to.

I showed the letter to Domnikiia. She read it swiftly. 'How long do you think it will take?' she asked.

'Who says I'm going?'

She pulled a face to tell me that I was fooling her no more than I was fooling myself. My fear required excuses, and the letter left me with none.

'You think I should go, after all Dmitry's done?' I asked her.

'No, but you think you should.'

'And you don't mind?'

'Would it make any odds if I did?' She was probably right.

I rushed downstairs and ordered a horse to be prepared, then returned and began to pack, with Domnikiia's help. I was soon ready. I wrote down a list of names of people that I knew in Moscow who might employ her, along with a hasty letter of recommendation. I held both her hands as I stood at the doorway. It suddenly felt more like adieu than au revoir.

'You'll have a job by the time I get back,' I told her.

'Maybe,' she said quietly, then she gazed intently into my eyes. 'Please don't go, Lyosha,' she implored. I considered for a moment, but no longer than that.

'I have to.'

She smirked. 'You see,' she said. 'No odds whatsoever. You're so easy, Lyosha, you prostak.'

I smiled broadly and embraced her tightly.

'I will be back,' I whispered.

I went out into the winter street, mounted my horse and set off westwards once again, this time in pursuit not of the French, but of the last two remaining Oprichniki.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SMOLENSK ROAD WAS SCARCELY RECOGNIZABLE COMPARED with when I had last seen it. The hot, hazy warmth of summer had been replaced by a deep blanket of snow. The road itself was well trodden and the snow often gave way to slush and in places even to mud. I too had changed. Twelve weeks before, four of us had set out, confident and comradely, eager to defend our land and trusting of our new allies, the Oprichniki. Now only Dmitry and I were left, and the trust between us was fragile. Vadim and Maksim both lay silent in anonymous graves. The French had come to Moscow and they had gone. Had we or the Oprichniki played any significant part in that? I doubted it. Bonaparte's fate was sealed the moment he stepped across the border from Poland. In the west they simply don't understand how much east there is. Warsaw is a long, long way from Paris. If Bonaparte could get that far, could Moscow be much further? In reality, it's as far from Warsaw as Warsaw is from Paris, and the journey is a hundred times more dangerous.

Along the road were various signs of the devastation brought by the armies that had marched back and forth over the past weeks. In villages along the way, buildings had been destroyed by fire or, sometimes, by simple, brute force. This may have been caused by the French as they advanced, but more likely by the Russians as they retreated – not just the Russian army but also the very Russian peasants who lived in those villages. The policy of destruction that had been so effective in Moscow was also enacted wherever Bonaparte's army chose to march.

Beyond Mozhaysk, a new and horrible feature began to decorate the landscape, increasing by degree with every verst that I covered. Bonaparte's original plan had been to return by a different route from that by which he came, travelling to the south of the main Moscow to Smolensk road. But at Maloyaroslavets, the battle from which the French captain hanging at the crossroads at Kurilovo had fled, General Kutuzov had forced Bonaparte to turn from that path, back to the north. Mozhaysk was where the French had rejoined the main road, and there began the debris of an army in flight.

Horses – French horses – lay dead beside the road in their hundreds. Exhaustion, starvation and the freezing cold might have been to blame for some of them, but many were down simply to the ignorance or laziness of the French blacksmiths. The horses' shoes lacked the three calkins that a Russian smith would have instinctively added in winter to stop the shoe slipping on ice. Once a horse had lost its footing on the ice-covered road, there would have been little that it, or its rider, could do to raise it. I heard later that the starving French soldiers fell upon each stumbling horse even as it struggled hopelessly to regain its footing, hacking it to pieces in order to feed themselves. Only a fraction of the horses' bodies exhibited the kindness of a bullet to the head.

Even so, men succumbed to the same environment as did their mounts. The reason that the bodies only of horses and not men lay abandoned in the snow was probably not so much that men were dying in any few numbers, but that their comrades had made some effort to bury them. As their journey – and, following in their footsteps, my journey – continued, they had begun to forget such sensibilities. The bodies of men lay ever more frequently beside the bodies of fallen horses.

As I passed each body – be it of a man or a horse – a flurry of birds would launch themselves into the air, frightened by my passing. Once I had gone by, they would return to peck at what flesh still remained. Soon after Mozhaysk, I caught sight of huge flocks of crows circling some way in front of me. While the sound of birds may herald hope – the new dawn – the sight of them is so often an indicator that death is nearby. I soon realized that I was approaching the field of Borodino. I had seen little of the main battlefield on the day, though I had heard much of its horror from survivors. But now as I approached, almost three months later, I saw for myself for the first time how great the death toll had been.

There had not been a moment to pause for breath – certainly not for my country – since that battle, and so little effort had been made to clear away the dead; at least, little human effort. Dogs, wolves and scavenging birds had picked what they could from the thousands of bodies, yet still enough remained to make it clear where each man had fallen. The road ran for about eight versts through the battlefield, with the village of Borodino itself marking the mid-point. On either side, the bodies of the dead spread outwards as far as I could see. The French, from what I could see, had at least made some attempt to bury their dead after the battle, but they had not been thorough; many that had been hastily buried had subsequently been disinterred by the heavy rain. It was impossible – not to say repellent – to count, but the carcasses numbered in their tens of thousands. It was as though some extraterrestrial giant had chosen to slap his hand against the surface of the earth at that point, flattening with one blow all those men who stood beneath it. But no such unworldly explanation was needed. Each man that had died here had died in the way that most men die – at the hands of others. I spurred my horse and rode through as quickly as I could. Even beyond the battlefield, there was no let-up in the accompaniment of the dead. Now, though, it was once again not the bodies of those who had died in battle but of those who had died in retreat. It was not worth a debate as to which was more sickening.