Free Twelve by Jasper Kent Page A

mercy of whoever was out there. If I was to die, I would die while conscious.
    I headed out towards roughly where I believed him to be and relieved myself against a nearby tree. I stood there longer than I needed to, taking the time to let my eyes adjust to the darkness away from the fire, letting the cool air prime my body for action. Walking back, I caught a glimpse of him directly in my path, pressed into a hollow in the ground, trying not to be seen. I stepped over the figure as if I hadn't noticed him, but immediately I had passed him, I turned and gave him a heavy kick in the side of his stomach.
    He groaned and rolled quickly away, but not so quickly that I didn't have time to place another boot in his ribs. By the time he had got to his feet, my sabre was drawn. In the vague light of the distant fire, there was still little to see of him, but I caught the glint of a knife in his hand. My sword seemed no deterrent to him and he threw himself at me, knocking me to the ground and pinning down my sword arm with his left hand as he raised his knife to strike. Only when he was this close did I recognize him as the Oprichnik, Iuda. His eyes showed no recognition of me, only the intensity of a man intent on another's death.
    My knee connected with his groin and I managed to throw him off.
    'Iuda!' I shouted at him, rising to my feet, but he still seemed not to recognize me and lunged once again with the knife. I smashed the flat of my sword against his wrist and the knife flew into the darkness. My boot in his chest forced him to the ground and I held the point of my sabre to his throat.
    'Iuda! It's me. Aleksei Ivanovich.' The frenzy gradually began to fade from his eyes, to be replaced by recognition. At the same time I felt a chill of fear. The last time I had seen Iuda, he had not been alone. On his own I may have beaten him, but where were Matfei and Foma? In the dark woodland, they could have been feet away and I would not have known until it was too late.
    'Get over to the fire!' I indicated the way with the point of my sword. He sat down beside it and rubbed his injured wrist.
    'I'm sorry, Aleksei. When you attacked me, instinct just took over.'
    Such an instinct to kill seemed to me to be inhumanly strong, but I let it pass. 'Why were you following me?'
    'I only caught sight of you just before you made camp. There are French soldiers around here. Your fire might have caught their attention. I thought I'd better keep an eye on you.'
    'Keep an eye on me?' I laughed. 'And then try to kill me.'
    'It was you that attacked me.' He sounded genuinely offended. 'If we wanted to kill you, don't you think we would have done it while you lay there unconscious back at Gzatsk?'
    It was a fair point, but his 'we' had reminded me of another issue. I looked as deep as I could into the darkness around us, but saw nothing. 'Where are Matfei and Foma?'
    'I left them this morning,' he said. As he did so, he too flicked his eyes from side to side about the woodland, as though expecting to see his friends. 'They're making a few attacks on the French.' He looked straight back at me, his expression giving the slightest hint that he was merely teasing me. 'We're supposed to meet up again tonight.'
    'Where?'
    'Further on.' He nodded his head to the east.
    I knew I wouldn't discover anything if I tackled him directly. 'The countryside here must be very different from what you're used to,' I said.
    He considered for a moment, as if he'd never thought of the question before. 'In some ways. We come from the mountains, but down in the lowlands, things aren't so different.'
    'You must have seen a lot of our country on your journey here.' He seemed talkative, certainly by the standards of the other Oprichniki, so I hoped a few general questions might elicit a little more of their background.
    'We came by boat, so there wasn't much to see,' he said. In talking of his homeland, I thought I had perceived some hint of affection in his voice, but now he