it stretching out from Senate Square on the day of the Decembrist Uprising, but it had long since been moved upstream. Iuda disappeared beneath it, under one of the central spans.
Dmitry was close to him now, and the three soldiers who had come down on to the river were not far behind, but the men who had remained on land had made far quicker progress, running over snow rather than ice. Soon though they would have run out of land as they came to the fork at which the Great and Lesser Nevas split. Instead, they turned on to the pontoon bridge itself, running across it at almost the moment Iuda darted beneath.
Seconds later, Dmitry was under it too, and he saw Iuda ahead of him, heading out to the middle of the widest part of the river, trying to leave as late as possible the choice of which branch to take. But out there, the ice was at its weakest and he might easily fall through. Perhaps that was his plan, to return once again to the water, where his capture would be impossible.
From the bridge above him Dmitry heard shouting. Shots rang out and Iuda fell. Dmitry looked and saw the three soldiers on the bridge, their rifles still aimed. The bullets would do little permanent damage to Iuda, but they had knocked him down and left him scrabbling on the slippery surface, trying to regain his footing. Within seconds Dmitry was upon him.
The two voordalaki slid further out across the ice, carried by Dmitry’s momentum. He looked into Iuda’s face – a face which he had in his time regarded with both love and indifference. Now he felt only hatred. It was almost a separate part of his mind, that fragment of Raisa that remained in him. It was she who wanted revenge, and Dmitry was happy to comply.
It was a rare thing for one voordalak to kill another. Dmitry had never seen it done, but he had heard talk of it. He and Zmyeevich had discussed it, aware of the fate that eventually must befall Iuda. There were many ways, but in present circumstances one seemed obvious.
Iuda was lying on his back, his head towards Dmitry. Dmitry pressed his knees against Iuda’s shoulders and then took his head firmly in his hands, one under his chin, one at the back of his skull. Decapitation would kill a vampire, but it did not have to be the neat, clinical severance of a sharpened blade. Iuda writhed and struggled, but Dmitry knew he had the strength; together he and Raisa had the strength.
But then he stopped. He could not say why. It was as though some third presence in his mind had said ‘No’ – and that third voice held sway. Dmitry tried to ignore it, but already it was too late. A semicircle of three soldiers had formed beside them. The other three had climbed down off the pontoon bridge, and were already approaching.
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ barked one of them, a captain, before adding ‘sir’ as an afterthought.
Dmitry rose to his feet, gazing down at Iuda with loathing but trying to appear calm and dignified. His heart beat fast from the chase and the cold and the lack of air, and his head still reeled, pulled in different directions.
‘This man is in my custody,’ he said, aware of how heavily he had to breathe. ‘My commendation for your help in his recapture, but I’ll take it from here.’
It was a sign of the times that a captain would dare question a colonel, even in these strange circumstances. It would not have happened in Dmitry’s day.
‘Sir, are you really sure?’ he said. ‘You’re wet through and frozen. God knows you could be wounded and you wouldn’t feel it.’
‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you, Captain.’ Dmitry emphasized the man’s rank.
‘Sir, look,’ the captain persisted, pointing across the ice. ‘The fortress is just there. What better place for him, if only overnight?’
Dmitry looked. The captain was quite right. There stood the Peter and Paul Fortress, the stronghold at the heart of Pyotr’s city, and also its prison. There was no need for him to comply. He could easily deal with these six and do with Iuda as he chose. But that would mean six corpses, and he knew that his and Zmyeevich’s presence in the city would be better kept secret. And still his mind was in turmoil.
‘Very well,’ he growled.
One of the soldiers hauled Iuda to his