pleasant of journeys. He’d travelled by similar means before; nailed into a crate and then shipped as freight, but usually of his own volition and to a destination of his own choice. Today, he didn’t know where he was going to end up – though he could take a good guess – and in addition to being in the crate, the other constraints that Dmitry had placed on him rendered him quite immobile. It wasn’t painful, but he despised the sensation of being unable to move his hands, and the halter at his neck really did interfere with his breathing, and the metal tongue of the scold’s bridle poking into his mouth tasted of someone else’s saliva.
He felt himself being lifted, and then carried, and then dropped on to a hard stone floor. He was picked up again and placed on a wagon, which began to trundle slowly across the snowy ground. He felt sure he was close to the end of his journey, and would soon discover his fate.
Anything would be better than the three years he had spent imprisoned in Geok Tepe. It had been his own fault. He’d overplayed his hand, and underestimated his opponent; Ibrahim Edhem Pasha was a subtle man.
After the escape from his own dungeons in 1858, Iuda had been forced to remake his life. He could no longer wander down the corridors of the Third Section, rubbing shoulders with the powerful and pretending that his every action was bent towards the protection of the tsar. For a start, he’d been doing that for too long. Soon enough, someone would notice how he never seemed to age, and then someone else would look into his history and it would all be over. He returned to his earlier way of life – the life he had led before becoming a vampire. He became a traveller, a mercenary of sorts, but always with an emphasis on persuasion rather than brute force. It wasn’t that he lacked the ability to overpower his enemies, but it always seemed like less fun – cheating almost, especially now that he was so much stronger than any mortal. He preferred to use the faculties of brain which he had been born with to those of brawn which he had acquired. That wasn’t to say he didn’t enjoy the pleasures of the flesh as much as any other voordalak, but such occasions were made far sweeter if the victim had first been manoeuvred into a situation from which death was the only escape.
But he had to be circumspect. He had his enemies, and they would recognize the signs if he left too many mysterious deaths strewn across Russia and Eastern Europe. The Romanovs were an enemy, though he felt sure they would leave him alone if he did the same for them. There was Lyosha’s daughter, Tamara, but she had vanished without trace. Perhaps she was dead; perhaps she had chosen to live out her life in quiet contemplation. But of all people, she was the one who must hate Iuda most, out of love for her father. But then shouldn’t Dmitry feel the same? Iuda had never been quite sure where Dmitry stood – he still wasn’t. But it was none of these who truly made Iuda feel afraid.
Zmyeevich was the real enemy. Once they had been allies, but they had never trusted each other. They had gone their separate ways, and Iuda had twice managed to defeat Zmyeevich, or at least thwart him in some minor way, and Zmyeevich was the sort of creature who would repay even a small inconvenience a thousandfold.
He had almost caught Iuda, in 1877. Once again Russia and Turkey had been at war, and this time Russia was winning. Iuda had allied himself with the tsar’s troops at Plevna, just south of the Danube. It was familiar territory. The city was besieged for over four months. Each night Iuda would climb its walls – walls unassailable by man, but simple for him – and feast inside the city. It helped Russia’s cause, but it was mostly Iuda’s own pleasure that brought him there.
But then the Romanians entered the fray – under Prince Carol – and among them the Romanian that Iuda feared most.
One night in September, after returning from another successful sortie, he had been summoned, along with several other Russian officers, to meet a newly arrived Romanian commander – a Colonel Flaviu Stanga. They assembled in a clearing by the light of flickering camp