Turkish Gambit

Chapter Two IN WHICH MANY INTERESTING MEN APPEAR

Varya did not immediately grasp the meaning of what had been said. Out of inertia she first nodded, then shook her head and only after that did she open her mouth wide in amazement.

'Don't be surprised,' the strange peasant said in a dull voice. 'The fact that you are a g-girl is immediately obvious - a strand of your hair has crept out from under your cap on that side. That is one.' (Varya furtively tucked the treacherous curl back into place.) 'The fact that you are Russian is also obvious: the snub nose, the Great Russian line of the cheekbones, the light-brown hair, and - most importantly - the absence of any sun-tan. That is two. As for your fiance, that is equally simple: you are p-proceeding on your way surreptitiously, so you must be on private business. And what private business could a young woman of your age possibly have with an army in the field? Only romance. That makes three. Now for number f-four: that moustachioed fellow who brought you in here and then disappeared was your guide? And, of course, your money was hidden among your things? F-foolish. You should keep everything of importance about your p-person. What is your name?'

'Varya Suvorova, Varvara Andreevna Suvorova.' Varya whispered in fright. 'Who are you? Where are you from?'

'Erast Petrovich Fandorin. A Serbian volunteer. I am making my way home from Turkish captivity.'

Thank God! Varya had already decided he must be a hallucination. A Serbian volunteer! From Turkish captivity! Glancing reverentially at his grey temples, she was unable to refrain from asking, and even pointing impolitely with her finger: 'Is that because they tortured you there? I've read about the horrors of Turkish captivity. And I suppose that's what caused your stammer too?'

Erast Fandorin frowned and replied reluctantly. 'Nobody tortured me. They plied me with coffee from morning till evening and conversed exclusively in French. I lived as a guest with the K-Kaimakam of Vidin.'

'With whom?'

'Vidin is a town on the Roumanian border, and a kaimakam is a governor. As for the stammer, that is a c-consequence of an old concussion.'

'So you escaped?' she asked enviously. 'And you are on your way to the active army to continue the fight?'

'No, I have done quite enough fighting already.'

Varya's face must have expressed extreme bewilderment. In any event, the volunteer felt it necessary to elucidate: 'War, Varvara Andreevna, is abominable and disgusting. In war no one is right and no one is wrong. And there are good and bad on both sides. Only the good are usually k-killed first.'

'Then why did you go to Serbia as a volunteer?' she asked heatedly. 'Nobody drove you to it, I suppose?'

'Out of egotistical considerations. I was unwell and in need of treatment.'

Varya was astonished. 'Can people be healed by war?'

'Yes. The sight of others' p-pain makes it easier to bear one's own. I found myself at the front two weeks before Chernyaev's army was routed. After that I had more than my fill of wandering through the mountains and shooting. Thank God, I don't th-think I hit anybody.'

He is either trying to strike a pose or is simply a cynic, Varya thought, rather annoyed, and she remarked caustically: 'You should have stayed with your kaimakam until the war was over. What point was there in escaping?'

'I did not escape. Yusuf-pasha let me go.'

'Then what on earth brought you to Bulgaria?'

'A certain matter,' Fandorin replied curtly. 'Where were you heading yourself?'

'To Tsarevitsy, to the commander-in-chief's headquarters. And you?'

'To Bela. Rumour has it that His Majesty's staff is located there.' The volunteer paused, knitted his narrow eyebrows briefly in displeasure and sighed. 'But I could go to the commander-in-chief.'

'Really?' Varya exclaimed in delight. 'Oh, let's go together, shall we? I really don't know what I should have done if I hadn't met you.'

'There is really nothing t-to it. You would have ordered the landlord to deliver you into the custody of the nearest Russian unit, and that would have been the end of the matter.'

'Ordered? The landlord of a korchma!’ Varya asked fearfully.

'This is not a korchma, but a mehana.'

'Very well, a mehana. But the village is Moslem, surely?'

'It is.'

'Then they would have handed me over to the Turks!'

'I have no wish to offend you, Varvara Andreevna, but you are not of the slightest interest to the Turks, and this way the landlord would m-most certainly have received a reward from your fiance.'

'I would much rather go with you,' Varya implored him. 'Oh, please!'

'I have one old nag, on its last legs. It cannot take two of us. And all the money I have is three kurus. Enough to pay for the wine and cheese, but no more . . . We need another horse or at least an ass. And that will require at least a hundred.'

Varya's new acquaintance paused while he pondered on something. He glanced across at the dice-players and sighed heavily once again: 'Stay here. I shall be back in a moment.'

He walked slowly over to the gamblers and stood beside their table for five minutes, observing. Then he said something (Varya could not hear it) at which all of them instantly stopped casting the dice and turned towards him. Fandorin pointed to Varya and she squirmed on her chair under the stares that were directed at her. Then there was a burst of general laughter - quite obviously ribald and insulting to Varya, but it clearly never even entered Fandorin's head to defend a lady's honour. Instead he shook the hand of some fat man with a moustache and sat down on the bench. The others made room for him and a knot of curious observers rapidly gathered round the table.

It seemed that the volunteer had ventured a bet. But with what money? Three kurus? He would have to play for a long time to win a horse. Varya began to worry, realising that she had put her trust in a man whom she did not know at all. He looked strange, spoke strangely, acted strangely . . . but on the other hand, what choice did she really have?

There was a murmur in the crowd of idle onlookers -the fat man had thrown the dice. Then they clattered once again and the walls shook as the crowd howled in unison.

'‘I-twelve,' Fandorin announced calmly in Bulgarian and stood up. 'Where are my winnings?'

The fat man also leapt to his feet, seized the volunteer by his sleeve and started speaking rapidly, his eyes bulging wildly.

He kept repeating: 'Another round, another round!'

Fandorin waited for him to finish then nodded decisively,- but his acquiescence apparently failed to satisfy the loser, who began yelling louder than before and waving his arms about. Fandorin nodded again, even more decisively, and then Varya recalled the Bulgarian paradox, by which if you nodded it meant 'No'.

At this point the loser decided to move from words to actions: he drew his arm well back and all the idle onlookers shied away; but Erast Fandorin did not budge, except that his right hand, seemingly inadvertently, slipped rapidly into his pocket. The gesture was almost imperceptible, but its effect on the fat man was magical. He wilted instantly, sobbed and uttered some plaintive appeal. This time Fandorin shook his head, tossed a couple of coins to the landlord, who had appeared beside him, and set off towards the exit. He did not even glance at Varya, but she had no need of an invitation - she was up from her seat and at her rescuer's side in an instant.

'The second l-last,' said Erast Fandorin, squinting in concentration as he halted on the porch.

Varya followed the direction of his gaze and saw a long row of horses, asses and mules standing along the hitching rail and calmly munching hay.

'There he is, your B-Bucephalus,' said the volunteer, pointing at a small brown donkey. 'Not much to look at, but then there's not so far to fall.'

'You mean you won it?' Varya asked in sudden realisation.

Fandorin nodded without speaking as he unhitched a scraggy grey mare.

He helped his travelling companion into the wooden saddle, leapt up on to his own grey with considerable agility and they rode out on to a country road brightly illuminated by the midday sun.

'Is it far to Tsarevitsy?' Varya asked, jolting in time to the short steps of her fluffy-eared mount.

'If we do not g-go astray, we shall reach it by nightfall,' the horseman replied grandly from above her.

He had become totally Turkicised in captivity, Varya thought angrily. He could at least have seated the lady on the horse. Typical male narcissism! A preening peacock! A vain drake, interested in nothing but flaunting himself before the dull grey duck. I already look like God only knows what, and now I have to play Sancho Panza to the Knight of the Mournful Visage.

'What have you got in your pocket?' she asked, remembering. 'A pistol, is it?'

Fandorin was surprised: 'In what pocket? Ah, in my p-pocket. Nothing, unfortunately.'

'I see, and what if he had not been frightened?'

'I would not have sat down to play with someone who would not be frightened.'

'But how could you win a donkey with a single throw?' Varya asked inquisitively. 'Surely that man didn't bet his donkey against three kurus?'

'Of course not.'

'Then what did you bet?'

'You,' Fandorin replied imperturbably. 'A girl for a donkey - now that is a worthwhile wager. I beg your gracious forgiveness, Varvara Andreevna, but there was no alternative.'

'Forgiveness!' Varya swayed so wildly in the saddle that she almost slipped over to one side. 'What if you had lost?'

'Varvara Andreevna, I happen to possess one unusual quality. I absolutely detest games of chance, but whenever I do happen to play I am sure to win without fail. Les caprices de la f-fortune! I even won my freedom from the pasha of Vidin at backgammon.'

Not knowing what reply to make to such a flippant declaration, Varya chose to be mortally offended, and therefore they rode on in silence. The barbarous saddle, a veritable instrument of torture, caused her a host of discomforts, but she endured them all, from time to time shifting her centre of gravity.

'Is it hard?' Fandorin asked. 'Would you like to place my jacket under you?'

Varya did not reply because, in the first place, his suggestion seemed to her not entirely proper and, in the second place, on a point of principle.

The road wound on for a long time between low wooded hills, then descended to a plain. In all this time the travellers encountered no one and Varya was beginning to feel alarmed. Several times she stole a sideways glance at Fandorin, but that blockhead remained absolutely imperturbable and made no further attempt to strike up a conversation.

Wouldn't she cut a fine figure, though, appearing in Tsarevitsy in an outfit like this? It wouldn't matter to Petya, she supposed: she could dress up in sackcloth as far as he was concerned - he wouldn't notice; but there would be the headquarters staff, society people. If she turned up looking like a scarecrow . . . Varya tore her cap off her head, ran her hand through her hair and felt really depressed. Not that her hair was anything special in any case: it was that dull, mousy colour which is called light brown, and her masquerade had left it all tangled and matted. It had last been washed over two days ago in Bucharest. No, she had better wear the cap. A Bulgarian peasant's outfit was not so bad after all; it was practical and even striking in its own way. The chalvars were actually rather like the famous 'bloomers' that the English suffragettes used to wear in their struggle with those absurd and humiliating drawers and petticoats. If only she could draw them in round the waist with a broad scarlet sash, like in Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail (she and Petya had seen it last autumn at the Mariinsky Theatre), they would actually be rather picturesque.

Suddenly Varvara Suvorova's musings were interrupted in a most unceremonious fashion. The volunteer leaned over and seized the donkey's bridle, the stupid animal came to an abrupt halt and Varya was almost sent flying over its long-eared head.

'What's wrong with you, have you gone mad?'

'Whatever happens now, do not say a word’ Fandorin said in a quiet and very serious voice, gazing forward along the road.

Varya raised her head and saw an amorphous throng galloping towards them, enveloped in a cloud of dust: a group of riders, probably about twenty men. She could see their shaggy caps and the bright spots of sunlight glinting on their cartridge belts, harnesses and weapons. One of the horsemen was riding ahead of the rest and Varya could make out a scrap of green cloth wound around his tall fur hat.

'Who are they, Bashi-Bazouks?' Varya asked in a low, tremulous voice. 'What will happen now? Are we done for? Will they kill us?'

'I doubt it, as long as you keep quiet,' Fandorin replied, somehow not sounding very confident. 'Your sudden talkativeness is rather ill-timed.' He had completely stopped stammering, which alarmed Varya greatly.

Erast Fandorin took the donkey by the bridle once again and moved over to the edge of the road; then he tugged Varya's hat right down over her eyes and whispered: 'Keep your eyes on the ground and don't make a sound.'

However, she was unable to resist darting a furtive glance at these famous cutthroats about whom all the newspapers had been writing for more than a year.

The one riding ahead (probably the bek), with the ginger beard, was wearing a tattered and dirty quilted beshmet, but his weapons were silver. He rode past without so much as a glance at the wretched pair of peasants, but his gang proved less stand-offish. Several of the riders halted beside Varya and Fandorin, talking among themselves in guttural voices. The Bashi-Bazouks wore expressions that made Varvara Andreevna want to squeeze her eyes tight shut - she had never suspected that people could have such horrible masks for faces. Then, suddenly, in among these nightmarish snouts she caught a glimpse of an entirely normal human face. It was pale, with one eye swollen and bruised, but the second brown eye was staring directly at her with an expression of mortal anguish.

Amongst the bandits, seated facing backwards in the saddle, was a Russian officer in a dusty, tattered uniform. His arms were twisted behind his back, there was an empty sabre scabbard hanging round his neck and there was caked blood at the corner of his mouth. Varya bit her lip in order not to cry out. Unable to bear the hopeless despair that she read in the prisoner's gaze, she lowered her eyes. But even so terror forced a cry, or rather a hysterical sob, from her dry throat; for strapped to the pommel of his saddle one of the partisans had a light-haired human head with a long moustache. Fandorin squeezed Varya's elbow hard and said a few short words in Turkish - she could distinguish the words

'Yusuf-pasha' and 'kaimakam' - but they made no impression on the bandits. One of them, with a pointed beard and an immense crooked nose, pulled back the upper lip of Fandorin's horse, baring the long, rotten teeth. He spat contemptuously and said something that made the others laugh. Then he lashed the nag on its crupper with his whip and the startled beast shied away, immediately breaking into an uneven trot. Varya struck at the donkey's bloated sides with her heels and trudged after it, afraid to believe that the danger was past. The world was swirling around her; that nightmarish head with its eyes closed in suffering and the blood caked in the corners of its mouth tormented her. Cutthroats are people who cut throats -the absurd, delirious phrase kept running round and round in her head.

'No fainting, if you please,' Fandorin said quietly. 'They could come back.'

It was tempting fate. A moment later they heard the drumming of hooves approaching from behind.

Erast Fandorin glanced round and whispered: 'Do not turn round, f-forward.'

Varya, however, did turn round, although it would have been better if she had not. They had ridden about two hundred paces away from the Bashi-Bazouks, but one of the horsemen - the one who had the severed head - was galloping back again and rapidly overtaking them, with that terrible trophy bouncing merrily against the flank of his steed.

Varya glanced despairingly at her companion, but his customary presence of mind seemed to have deserted him. He had thrown back his head and was nervously quaffing water from a large copper canteen.

The accursed donkey plodded along in melancholy fashion, absolutely refusing to walk any faster. A few moments later the impetuous horseman drew level with the unarmed travellers and reared up his bay. Leaning down, the Bashi-Bazouk grabbed Varya's cap from her head and burst into rapacious laughter when her light-brown hair came tumbling down.

'Kadin!' he cried with a gleam of white teeth.

In one swift movement the gloomily preoccupied Erast Fandorin snatched off the bandit's tall shaggy hat and swung the heavy canteen hard against the back of his shaven head. There was a sickeningly moist thud, the flask glugged and the Bashi-Bazouk went tumbling into the dust.

'To hell with the donkey! Give me your hand. Into the saddle. Ride for all you're worth. Don't turn round!' Fandorin rattled out in staccato fashion, once again without any stammer.

He helped the numbed Varya up on to the bay, pulled the rifle out of its saddle holster, and they set off at a gallop.

The bandit's horse went hurtling forwards and Varya pulled her head back down into her shoulders, afraid that she would not be able to keep her seat. The wind whistled in her ears, her left leg slipped out of the overlong stirrup at just the wrong moment, shots rang out behind her and something heavy thumped painfully against her right hip.

Varya glanced down briefly, saw the mottled, blotchy skin of the severed head jostling up and down and gave a strangled cry, letting go of the reins, which she should not have done under any circumstances. The next moment she went flying out of the saddle, describing an arc through the air and landing heavily in something green, yielding and rustling - a bush at the side of the road.

This was just the right moment for her to slip into unconsciousness, but somehow it did not happen. Varya sat there on the grass, holding her scratched cheek, with broken branches swaying around her.

Meanwhile events were proceeding on the road. Fandorin was lashing the unfortunate nag with the rifle butt and it was giving its all, desperately flinging its large-boned legs forward. It had already almost reached the bush where Varya was sitting, still stunned from her fall; but galloping along in pursuit in a thunderous hail of rifle fire at a distance of about a hundred paces was a posse of horsemen, ten of them at least. Suddenly the grey mare faltered in its stride, flailing its head piteously to the left and the right, and staggered sideways a little, then a little further, finally collapsing smoothly to the ground and pinning down its rider's leg. Varya gasped out loud. Fandorin somehow managed to extricate himself from under the horse as it struggled to get to its feet and drew himself erect. He glanced round at Varya, shouldered the rifle and took aim at the Bashi-Bazouks.

He took his time before firing, getting a good aim, and his pose was so impressive that none of the bandits chose to be the first in line for a bullet; the partisan detachment spilled off the road and scattered across the meadow, forming a semi-circle round the fugitives. The shooting subsided and Varya guessed that the bandits wanted to take them alive.

Fandorin backed along the road, aiming the rifle first at one horseman, then another. Little by little the distance between them was shortening. When the volunteer was almost level with the bush Varya shouted: 'Shoot, why don't you!'

Without looking round, Erast Fandorin hissed: 'This particular partisan's rifle isn't loaded.'

Varya looked to her left (the Bashi-Bazouks were there), then to her right (horsemen in tall fur hats loomed into view on that side as well); then she glanced behind her - and through the sparse brush she saw a truly remarkable sight.

There were horsemen galloping across the meadow: at the front, racing along - or rather flying through the air - on a powerful black stallion, his elbows held out jockey-style, was an individual in a wide-brimmed American hat,- ambling along in pursuit came a white uniform with gold-trimmed shoulders; then came a tight pack of a dozen or so Kuban Cossacks scurrying along at a fast trot; and bringing up the rear at a considerable distance, bouncing up and down in the saddle, was a perfectly absurd gentleman in a bowler hat and a long redingote.

As Varya gazed, mesmerised, at this bizarre cavalcade, the Cossacks started whistling and hallooing wildly. The Bashi-Bashouks also began making a fearsome din and bunched together into a tight group - the remainder of their number were hurrying to their rescue, led by the ginger-bearded bek. Varya and Fandorin were forgotten now; the terrible men had lost interest in them.

Bloody slaughter was imminent, but Varya forgot all about the danger as she turned her head first one way and then the other to observe the fearsome beauty of the spectacle.

The battle, however, was over before it had even begun. The horseman in the American hat (he was very close now, and Varya could make out his sunburnt face and little tuft of beard a la Louis-Napoleon and his light moustache with the ends curled up) pulled hard on his reins, coming to a total standstill, and out of nowhere a long-barrelled pistol appeared in his hand. Bang! Bang! - the pistol spewed out two angry little clouds of smoke and the bek in the tattered beshmet swayed in his saddle as if he were drunk and began slumping over to one side. One of the Bashi-Bazouks grabbed hold of him and threw him across the withers of his steed, and instead of joining battle, the entire horde galloped away in retreat.

The pursuers streaked past Varya, past the weary Fandorin leaning on his rifle - the magical marksman, the horseman in the snow-white uniform (one general's gold shoulder strap glinted brightly) and the Cossacks with their lances bristling.

'They have a Russian officer!' the volunteer shouted after them.

In the meantime the last member of the miraculous cavalcade, a civilian gentleman, had ridden up and halted - he did not appear to be interested in the pursuit.

His bright, round eyes peered sympathetically at the rescued couple over the top of his spectacles.

'Chetniks?' the civilian gentleman asked with a strong English accent.

'No, sir,' Fandorin replied in English, adding something else in the same language that Varya did not understand, since in her high school she had studied French and German.

She tugged impatiently at the volunteer's sleeve, and he explained apologetically: 'I s-said that we are not chetniks, but Russians on our way to join our own people.'

'What are chetniks?’

'Bulgarian rebels.'

'Oh, yoor a laydee?' The Englishman's fleshy, good-natured face mirrored his astonishment. 'My, my, what a masquaraid! I didn't know Russians uses wimmin for aspionage. Yoor a haroin, medam. What is yoor name? This will be vcree intrestin for my reedas.'

He pulled a notepad out of his saddlebag, and it was only then that Varya spotted the three-coloured armband on his sleeve with the number 48 and the word 'Correspondent'.

'I am Varvara Andreevna Suvorova, and I am not involved in any kind of espionage. My fiance is at the general headquarters,' she said with dignity. 'And this is my travelling companion, the Serbian volunteer Erast Petrovich Fandorin.'

The correspondent hastily doffed his hat in embarrassment and switched into French.

'I beg your pardon, mademoiselle. Seamus McLaughlin, correspondent of the London newspaper the Daily Post.'

'The same Englishman who wrote about the Turkish atrocities in Bulgaria?' asked Varya, removing her cap and tidying her hair as best she could.

'Irishman,' McLaughlin corrected her sternly. 'Which is not at all the same thing.'

'And who are they?' asked Varya with a nod in the direction of the swirling dust and rattling gunfire. 'Who is the man in the hat?'

'That peerless cowboy is none other than Monsieur Charles Paladin d'Hevrais, a brilliant stylist, the darling of the French reading public and the trump card of the Revue Parisienne.'

'The Revue Parisienne?’

'Yes, one of the Paris dailies. With a circulation of a hundred and fifty thousand, which is a quite remarkable figure for France,' the correspondent explained rather offhandedly. 'But my Daily Post sells two hundred and forty thousand copies every day. How's that?'

Varya swung her head to and fro to shake her hair into place and began wiping the dust off her face with her sleeve.

'Ah, monsieur, you arrived in the nick of time. Providence itself must have sent you.'

'It was Michel who dragged us out this way,' the Briton, or rather Irishman, said with a shrug. 'He has nothing to do here, attached to the general HQ, and the idleness drives him wild. This morning the Bashi-Bazouks were getting up to a little mischief in the Russian rear, so Michel set off in pursuit of them himself. Paladin and myself are like his lap dogs: wherever he goes, we go. In the first place, we're old friends from back in Turkestan, and in the second place, wherever Michel is, there's always bound to be a good story for an article . . . Ah, look, they're coming back. Empty-handed, of course.'

'Why "of course"?' Varya asked.

The correspondent smiled condescendingly but said nothing, and Fandorin, who so far had taken almost no part in the conversation, answered for him: 'You must have seen, mademoiselle, that the Bashi-Bazouks' mounts were fresh, but the pursuers' horses were exhausted.'

'Precisely so,' McLaughlin agreed with a nod.

Varya gave them both a cross look for conspiring so outrageously to make a woman look like a fool. However, Fandorin immediately earned her forgiveness by taking an amazingly clean handkerchief out of his pocket and applying it to her cheek. Oh, she had forgotten all about the scratch!

The correspondent had been mistaken when he declared that the pursuers were coming back 'empty-handed' - Varya was delighted to see that they had managed to recover the captive officer after all: two Cossacks were carrying the limp body in the black uniform by its arms and legs. But had he - God forbid -been killed?

This time the dandy whom the Briton had called Michel was riding in front. He was a young general with smiling blue eyes and a rather distinctive beard -bushy, carefully tended and combed to both sides like a pair of wings.

'They got away, the scoundrels!' he shouted from a distance, and added an expression that Varya did not entirely understand.

'There's a lady present,' said McLaughlin, wagging his finger. He removed his bowler hat and ran a hand over his pink bald patch.

The general drew himself erect and glanced at Varya, but immediately lost interest, which was natural enough, considering her unwashed hair, scratched face and absurd costume.

'Major-General Sobolev the Second of His Imperial Highness's retinue’ Michel announced and glanced inquiringly at Fandorin.

But Varya, thoroughly vexed by the general's indifference, asked: 'The second? And who is the first?'

Sobolev was astonished. 'What do you mean? My father, Lieutenant-General Dmitry Ivanovich Sobolev, commander of the Caucasian Cossack Division. Surely you must have heard of him?'

'No. Neither of him nor of you,' Varya snapped; but she was lying, because the whole of Russia had heard of Sobolev the Second, the hero of Turkestan, the conqueror of Khiva and Makhram.

People said various things about the general. Some idolised him as a warrior of matchless bravery, a knight without fear or reproach, calling him the next Suvorov or even Bonaparte, while others derided him as an ambitious poseur. The newspapers wrote of how Sobolev had single-handedly beaten off an entire horde of Turkomans, standing his ground even though he was wounded seven times; how he had crossed the lifeless desert with a small detachment of men and crushed the forces of the fearsome Abdurahman-bek, who had a tenfold advantage in numbers; but one of Varya's acquaintances had relayed rumours of a very different kind - claims that hostages had been executed and the Treasury of Kokand had been plundered.

Gazing into the handsome general's clear blue eyes, Varya could see immediately that the stories about the seven wounds and Abdurahman-bek were perfectly true, but the tales of hostages and the khan's treasury were obviously absolute nonsense, the inventions of envious slanderers - especially since Sobolev had now begun paying attention to Varya again, and this time he seemed to have noticed something interesting about her.

'But how on earth, madam, did you come to be here, where the blood flows in streams? And dressed like this? I am intrigued.'

Varya introduced herself and gave a brief account of her adventures, an infallible instinct assuring her that Sobolev would not betray her secret and have her despatched to Bucharest under armed escort.

'I envy your fiance, Varvara Andreevna,' said the general, caressing Varya with his eyes. 'You are an extraordinary young woman. However, allow me to introduce my comrades. I believe you have already made the acquaintance of Mr McLaughlin, and this is my orderly, Sergei Bereshchagin, the brother of the other Bereshchagin, the artist.' (A slender, good-looking youth in a long-waisted Cossack coat bowed awkwardly to Varya.) 'By the way, he is an excellent draughtsman himself. During a reconnaissance mission on the Danube he drew a picture of the Turkish positions - it was quite lovely. But where has Paladin got to? Hey, Paladin, come over here; let me introduce you to an interesting lady.'

Varya peered curiously at the Frenchman, who had ridden up last. The Frenchman (the armband on his sleeve said 'Correspondent No. 32') was impressively handsome, no worse in his own way than Sobolev: a slim aquiline nose, a sandy moustache with the ends curled up, a little gingerish imperial, intelligent grey eyes. But the expression in those eyes was angry.

'Those villains are a disgrace to the Turkish army!' the journalist exclaimed passionately in French. 'They're good for nothing but slaughtering peaceful civilians, but as soon as they even smell a battle -they're off into the bushes. If I were Kerim-pasha I'd disarm every one of them and have them hanged.'

'Calm down, my bold chevalier, there's a lady present,' McLaughlin interrupted him jovially. 'You're in luck: you have made your entrance in the guise of a romantic hero, so make the most of it. See the way she is looking at you.'

Varya blushed and hurled a furious glance at the Irishman, but McLaughlin simply burst into good-natured laughter. Paladin, however, behaved as a genuine Frenchman should: he dismounted and bowed.

'Charles Paladin, at your service, mademoiselle.'

'Varvara Suvorova,' she said amiably. 'Pleased to make your acquaintance. And thank you all, gentlemen. Your appearance was most timely.'

'And may I know your name?' Paladin asked with an inquisitive glance at Fandorin.

'Erast Fandorin,' replied the volunteer, although he was looking at Sobolev, not the Frenchman. 'I have been fighting in Serbia and am now on my way to general headquarters with an important message.'

The general looked Fandorin over from head to toe. He inquired deferentially: 'I expect you've seen your share of grief? What did you do before Serbia?'

'I was at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A titular counsellor.'

This was a surprise. A diplomat? To be quite honest, all these new impressions had rather undermined the immense (why pretend otherwise?) impact produced on Varya by her taciturn companion, but now she looked at him with newly admiring eyes. A diplomat going off to war as a volunteer - that certainly did not happen very often. Yes indeed, all three of them were quite remarkably handsome, each in his own way: Fandorin, Sobolev and Paladin.

'What message?' Sobolev asked with a frown.

Fandorin hesitated, evidently unwilling to say.

'Come on now, don't go making a Spanish court secret out of it!' the general shouted at him. 'After all's said and done, that's simply being impolite to your rescuers.'

Nonetheless the volunteer lowered his voice, and the correspondents pricked up their ears. 'I am making my way from Vidin, G-General. Three days ago Osman-pasha set out for P-Plevna with an army corps.'

'Who is this Osman? And where in the blazes is Plevna?'

'Osman Nuri-pasha is the finest commander in the Turkish army, the conqueror of the Serbs. At the age of only forty-five, he is already a m-mushir, that is, a field-marshal. And his soldiers are beyond all comparison with those who were stationed on the Danube. Plevna is a little town thirty vyersts to the west of here. It controls the road to Sophia. We have to reach this strategically important point before the pasha and occupy it.'

Sobolev slapped a hand against his knee and his horse shifted its feet nervously. 'Ah, if I only had at least a regiment! But I am not involved in the action, Fandorin. You need to go to headquarters, to the commander-in-chief. I have to complete my reconnaissance, but I'll provide you with an escort to Tsarevitsy. Perhaps you will be my guest this evening, Varvara Andreevna? It can be quite jolly at times in the war correspondents' marquee.'

'With pleasure’ said Varya, casting a nervous glance towards the spot where the freed prisoner had been laid on the grass. Two Cossacks were squatting on their haunches beside the officer and doing something to him.

'That officer is dead, isn't he?'

'Alive and kicking,' replied the general. 'The lucky devil, he'll live for a hundred years now. When we started chasing the Bashi-Bazouks, they shot him in the head and high-tailed it. But everyone knows you can't trust a bullet. It shot off at a tangent and only tore off a little scrap of skin. Well then, my lads, have you bandaged up the captain?' he shouted loudly to the Cossacks.

The Cossacks helped the officer to get up. He swayed, but stayed on his feet and stubbornly pushed away the Cossacks, who were trying to support him by the elbows. He took several jerky, faltering steps on legs that seemed about to buckle under him at any moment, stood to attention and wheezed in a hoarse voice: 'Captain of General Headquarters Eremei Pere-pyolkin, Your Excellency. I was proceeding from Zimnitsa to my posting at the headquarters of the Western Division, where I had been appointed to Lieutenant-General Kriedener's operations section. On the way I was attacked by a unit of hostile irregular cavalry and taken prisoner. It was my own fault ... I simply did not expect anything of the kind in our rear ... I did not even have a pistol with me, only my sword . . .'

Varya was able to get a better look at the poor victim now. He was short and sinewy, with dishevelled chestnut hair, a narrow mouth with almost no lips and stern brown eyes - or rather, one brown eye, because the second one was still not visible,- but at least the captain's gaze was no longer full of anguish or despair.

'You're alive, and that's splendid’Sobolev said magnanimously. 'But an officer must always carry a pistol, even a staff officer. Otherwise it's like a lady going out into the street without a hat - she'll be taken for a loose woman.' He laughed, then caught Varya's angry look and hemmed as if he were clearing his throat. 'Pardon, mademoiselle.'

A dashing Cossack sergeant approached the general and jabbed with his finger, pointing to something. 'Look, Your Excellency, I think it's Semyonov!'

Varya turned to look and suddenly felt sick: the bandit's bay on which she had made her recent inauspicious gallop had reappeared beside the bush. The horse was nibbling on the grass as if nothing had happened, with the loathsome trophy still suspended, swaying, on its flank.

Sobolev jumped down and walked over to the horse with his eyes screwed up sceptically and turned the nightmarish sphere this way and that. 'That's not Semyonov, surely?' he said doubtfully. 'You're talking nonsense, Nechitailo. Semyonov's face is quite different.'

'It certainly is Semyonov, Mikhal Dmitrich,' the sergeant said heatedly. 'See, there's his torn ear, and look here' - he parted the dead head's purple lips - 'the front tooth's missing as well. It's Semyonov all right!'

'I suppose so,' said the general, nodding thoughtfully. 'He must have had a pretty rough time of it. Varvara Andreevna,' he said, turning to Varya to explain, 'this is a Cossack from the Second Cavalry Squadron who was abducted by Daud-bek's Meskhetians this morning’

But Varya was no longer listening: the earth and the sky somersaulted, exchanging places, and Paladin and Fandorin were only just in time to catch the suddenly limp young lady as she fell.