smackenzie

Not whether or not the Czar's war with France would kill him, but if Russia herself would.

Captain Nizharadze lay on his cot in his clothes and thought about that and how he could, avoid it. He didn't want to be like his father Badry, a Georgian who'd come to the Ukraine to go into business with his cousin, and who'd also served his military time, complaining bitterly about the Czar all the while.

(Badry would have been a Bolshevik if he'd lived in 1917, although to be fair some of the venom he directed at Czar Alexander was personal. He just didn't like the man. They'd never met and never would meet, but Badry knew the Czar was not a man he could like.)

Ruslan did not understand his father, and he definitely didn't understand his father's traditionalism and patriotism (to a point) and his sentimental love for soil he hadn't seen in at least twenty-five years. Ruslan could also be a sentimental fool and a romantic, but he saved it for places he'd never been and things he'd never seen and people he wanted to be.

He didn't feel eyes on his tent (how could he? He was inside and the eyes were outside), he couldn't know that there was someone out among the men of the Czar's army, watching him. Waiting for a chance.

* * * *

Two days later, on the 16th, the two halves of the Russian army joined together despite their antagonistic generals and fought the French outside Smolensk. Thwy only skirmished, but the next day, the 17th, the armies attacked each other in the streets of the city's suburbs, fighting hard and close. It was the first time that Napoleon got to fight the Czar's army since invading Russia.

In the streets of suburban Smolensk, Captain Nizharadze shouted orders and followed orders and parried and slashed and fired on the Grande Armee, and when he had to he fought hand-to-hand. He was pulled from his horse at one point and forced to fight on foot, then managed to drag a French officer from his saddle and commandeer his stallion. The horse bucked him off. He hauled himself into the saddle again, got control of the beast, and plowed through the battle until his mount was shot from underneath him and he fell into the street.

He did not want to die. Not here, not now, not like this. He did not want to die a soldier of the Czar, covered in blood (some of it his) and having lost two horses and half his men in a war he only barely supported. He did not want to die fighting the French and their occasional allies in the streets of Smolensk.

Mostly, though, he did not want to die at all.

A knot of French foot soldiers bore down on him and he took refuge behind a cart, frantically reloaded his rifle, and shot at them. They were fifteen feet away when someone grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him into an open doorway. The French soldiers thundered past him. He got himself loose from the grip on his coat and turned to either demand from the stranger what they thought they were doing, or thank them, but there was no one there.

Ghosts, the captain thought. I've been saved by ghosts. He straighened his jacket, loaded his rifle again - he was almost out of bullets - and went back out to do his duty, distasteful as it was to him, and kill Frenchmen.

By evening the city was on fire and the Russian army had lost more men than the French. So much for their grand attempt to repel Napoleon. Captain Ruslan Nizharadze was still alive, although he'd lost half his men, and word was they were going to retreat still further, towards Moscow.

(Let the Czar fight his own battles, Ruslan's father would have said. Let him take on Napoleon in his own city.)

(Never mind that the Czar's own city was St Petersburg, not Moscow. Badry Nizharadze had no use for the geography of the Russian Empire. Any city in Russia proper belonged to the Czar.)

Smolensk was ablaze and Ruslan was alive, and while he could be grateful for that, he could only see death ahead of him. He'd seen men killed right in front of his eyes. He'd killed some of them himself. Who knew he had a bear inside him, a snarling beast that ripped out of his civilized veneer when threatened, that growled and bared its teeth and could tear men's heads off at the neck? He'd fought with his own hands, thrown punches and kicked and blocked blows with his arms. He'd very nearly been killed several times, and he knew he was lucky to be alive.

He just didn't know why he was alive.

He walked through the army morosely, tired and sore and unable to sleep. Someone stopped him, put a hand on his arm.

"Come with me, Captain," the someone said. Ruslan looked up into yellow-green eyes and red hair, flickering like flame in the unsteady light of cooking fires. The face looked faintly wolfish, sharp and predatory and somehow comforting.

"What do you want?" Ruslan asked.

"Come walk with me and I will explain." The redheaded someone led him off away from the army, into the trees far from the burning city and the remains of the Czar's fighting men.

"You fought well today," the man said when they were far enough away that Ruslan could not hear the muttering of demoralized men and the groaning of injured men. "I only had to interfere once."

"That was you? Pulling me into that house? You may have saved my life."

They had stopped in the shadow of tall trees, and in the darkness Ruslan could not make out any more of the stranger's clothes or features than he saw before. He couldn't tell if the man was from the Russian army, although he doubted it, and he couldn't tell if the man was French, or possibly Prussian or Austrian or even one of the Cossacks who had joined up.

"Who are you?" he asked. "Where are you from? Why do you want to talk to me, and why all the way out here?"

"You may call me Jan," the man said, and now Ruslan could hear that he spoke good Russian, but with an accent. "I am a Magyar. I have been watching you. I believe I know what you want."

A Magyar? The Hungarians were not allies of France, at least not that he knew. Nor were they allies of the Russian Empire.

"Again, I ask why. What do you think I want?"

"I know you do not want to die." Jan was very close now. "I know you are afraid of dying in Russia. I know you are afraid you will never see any of the world. I know you wish to be a western European man. Am I right?"

"...Yes." His mind whirled. Who had he mentioned those things to? Had he admitted to being afraid of death recently? Had he told many people he did not like being Russian and he felt neither love nor loyalty for his country or his czar? Had he been too clear on his dislike of this entire war?

"I know from watching you," Jan went on, his voice soft and low and soothing. "I watch the way you carry yourself, Captain Nizharadze. I can see it in your eyes. I can help you."

"How?" Their faces were so close now, noses nearly touching. Ruslan felt his heart pounding and he had a sudden and completely unexplained desire to kiss the man.

"Do you want to live forever? To be young and beautiful and at the peak of perfection for eternity? The Russian Empire will be dust and the men who built it dust, before you see your last moon. Do you want that?"

"How?"

"How." The Magyar chuckled, his voice deep now and knowing. Ruslan felt that if he didn't kiss Jan now, or if Jan didn't kiss him, he might go mad. He'd always been attracted to men as well as women - one of his biggest secrets - and to be so taken with someone so soon after meeting them was nothing new for him, but this felt almost as if he had no say in the matter, as if Jan had cast some folk spell on him to gain his attentions. It was hard to concentrate on the words when the lips were so close.

"How indeed," Jan went on. "Answer me with truth and I shall show you. Do you wish to escape a human death? Do you wish to remain as you are, always? Young and strong and beautiful, and free of the chains that bind you to this country and this land and these people? I can set you free, Ruslan Nizharadze. I can give you immortality."

"Yes," Ruslan whispered. "Make me immortal. Set me free. I do not wish to die."

"Do you want it? A deathless life?"

"Yes, I said. Make me someone else."

Jan laughed then, a genuine laugh. "Ah, my dear captain, I cannot make you someone else. You have to create that man yourself. I can show you the door and give you the key, but I cannot change who you really are. That is for you to accomplish." Jan laid a gloved hand on his cheek and looked at Ruslan almost fondly. "But I can give you centuries in which to make yourself new. Do you want that?"

"Yes. Yes. I do. Show me the way. Save me from death."

And now Jan did kiss him, leaning close and pressing cool lips to his. It was an oddly chaste kiss, and Ruslan put his hands on either side of the Magyar's face, held him close, and pressed the kiss deeper, opening his mouth and forcing his tongue. He sighed in relief as Jan returned it, as the other man nipped at his lip and encouraged him on.

Ruslan felt something building inside him, some anticipation he'd never felt, and then Jan's mouth moved off his, trailed along his jaw and down his neck, and then he felt teeth grazing his skin, felt Jan's hand close on the back of his skull, and suddenly those teeth broke skin and he yelped, surprised and pained and oh, god, the man had lied, he was going to die after all.

His yelp died into a soft moan as Jan greedily sucked the blood from his neck, from his body. The world began to fade around the edges, the darkness of tree-shadowed night fuzzing into a deeper black. He felt it in his neck, where Jan's teeth were fastened on his skin, and he felt it in his chest, where his heart pounded frantically, and he felt it in the tingling in the ends of his fingers and he felt it pulling on his cock - everything, everywhere, losing its lifeblood, draining and dying.

And then those teeth retracted and Ruslan nearly fell. Jan caught him and held him while he bit into his wrist and held it to Ruslan's mouth, and the man who so recently had been so close to dying and so afraid now latched on to the bleeding flesh and sucked greedily like a baby at its mother's breast, and he knew. This was life. This would save him.

He drank until he thought he would pass out, until the world came back into focus and he could feel his fingertips and his toes and could hear the blood rushing in his ears. He drank, not knowing what he drank, only knowing that it would stave off death and protect him. He drank until Jan pulled his head away.

"Now you will feel it," the Magyar said softly. "You will feel your body changing, will feel it reject those parts of you that would wither and die. It will hurt, but not for long, and then you will sleep, and when you wake you will be a new man. You will be immortal."

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