Sun stood pale in the overcast sky, appearing more like the moon. It shone down on the buildings squatting at the sides of a hill. Patches of snow clung to their sloping roofs. Icicles edged the white woodwork around the small windows—they had to be small, for in the dead of winter warmth mattered more than light. Besson led me to somewhere in the North.

I didn't recognize the town; I didn't know the date, but it was a tragic day in history. Black smoke lay below the clouds and even the gilded domes of the churches had the heaviness to them, same as the jaws of the fighting man.

Of those men, there were two kinds before me.

The first group—clad in black—rode horses.

The other group walked beaten, barefoot, with little to cover their naked bodies. Men bled from their mouths, spitting saliva, blood, curses or whatever was left of their tongues. They bled from the stumps at elbows or shoulders, where their sword arm should have been. Yet, this wasn't the worst.

Women and children clung to the defeated men. Women bled down their legs and down their bellies from the raw circles left by the sliced off breasts. And children... there were children. They filled the icy air with sounds of inconsolable grief, because they were too young to be used to cruelty and march in silence, like their parents.

What crime did their fathers commit? Their mothers? Themselves? What crime is so abhorrent to God, that earthly powers punished it by walking like this?

They walked, and dogs weaved round their frostbitten legs. The biggest of the hounds dared to jump and rip chunks of human flesh, chewing with frothing jaws. Bitches, who hadn't yet tasted human flesh, howled in hopes to become the man-eaters.

For when men want to become dogs, their dogs become like men.

Severed dog-heads snarled from the saddles of the black riders until their snarls rotted away and only skulls remained. The men in black—the tsar's hounds—wore this emblem willingly. They seemed like an invention of a dark fantasy, but the most terrifying thing about them was that they were perfectly real.

In my timeline, we called Putin's police 'orcs'. We needn't have borrowed the name from Tolkien! We had a word for them as Russian as vodka: the Oprichniks, our first secret police. Ivan the Terrible created it to grab lands from his own subjects and kill with impunity—anyone he wanted. Anyone at all. The tradition continued...

Blessed are those who hadn't seen a man tortured... blessed, no matter what other burdens the Almighty placed upon their shoulders, Besson prayed.

I shuddered. Is this your memory?

No. No. Not this. He choked. I could feel through our bond that he'd seen other things for real, no less horrid. This must be the massacre in Novgorod... I wasn't born yet.

You understand that we're witnessing something from the past? In this timeline he was like me, a bodiless spirit.

Aye. It's a vision.

On this occasion, Besson's sixteenth century mind coped easier with the surreal facts than my modern one. Despite that, I wished we both had our bodies, so I could hug him. Poor guy had seen too much cruelty, and no one was safe from it in his time.

If my world didn't end and I went to Ukraine, I wouldn't be safe either. The fate worse than being gunned down waited for me there—to serve as the tsar's hound.

The Oprichniks herded the poor knot of humanity down the muddy track to the ice-bound River Volkhov. Judging by their outriders, their ultimate destination seemed to be a place where the bank had a shallow slope, providing easy access onto the ice. There, large holes were cut through for water supply. Frozen mist rose above the water in these hollows.

My stomach roiled. They don't mean to... Please, don't tell me they mean to...

Besson didn't answer, because that was what I had asked, or because he couldn't speak.

Bound by tetrachromacy, we stood witness to the terrible event.

One man stood out to me.

He wore a monk's hood, shadowing his face, but no other parts of a monk's habit. His tormentors also left him his underpants and his personal cross. A silver cross of a Greek design, with two arms of equal length, glittered on his chest. Is it the same cross?

Aye, it's like the one I saw next to Dmitrii's body, Besson said.

I squinted at the hooded man even harder. So did Besson.

Despite the torture, the man's back remained straight. He was built sinewy, with bruised skin stretching over muscles every time he moved until veins popped into view. The hair on his arms was so blond, it nearly looked white. Despite the color, I didn't think he was an old man.

In his arms, this man carried a girl. Her pointed features seemed to be made of wax, but her eyes stared, extinguished. By his posture, I could tell that this girl wasn't his daughter; that he didn't doubt she was dead; and that he carried her, regardless.

He did it for the sake of a woman, stumbling next to him. Whatever she once was, a princess or a serf, the woman was oblivious to her station now. Oblivious to the pain in her blackened toes or the approaching doom. She brushed hair out of her little girl's face, and that preoccupied her completely.

The hooded man with a Greek cross carried the dead girl so that a stranger could console the child who would never cry again on the way to her own death.

I shook, and Besson... Besson prayed under his breath.

The solemn calm of the procession broke at the brink of the black water. Even those with their tongues ripped out, cried out in protest, because everyone fights death before the end. Some do it sooner, others—later, with conscious effort or mindlessly... Survival sits too deep in our nature to go down without a struggle.

The dogs and their black riders closed in, pushing the tightening knot of bodies down the slope, into the river, and under the two-feet thick ice with boat hooks, oars and halberds. They broke the ice where they could to create more room. Its chunks bobbed on the water, soaking up red from it.

The hooded man sat the dead child onto the steaming water like she was a maiden's bridal wreath in springtime. He did it without haste, and nobody dared to interrupt.

The boss of the Oprichniks, the giant man with hair the color of rust, spotted this irregularity. He rose in his stir-ups, yelling for axes and guns to speed up the slaughter.

When the man with the Greek cross straightened from this task, the hood slipped down, exposing the ruined face underneath. No wonder someone tried to pound his eyes off of his face! One hid behind an angry swelling left of his nose and socket, but the other... my God! It glinted with a dagger's precision, pointing at the red-headed butcher.

The boss stammered mid-shout into a fit of cough.

I searched his features for a glimpse of a human emotion. Pity, remorse, horror—anything. All I saw was that his hair wasn't the only lush thing about him. His lips were red and thick, his neck was red and thick, even his fingers were like that. He twisted precious rings onto them, but it didn't impart beauty or elegance to his hands. Gold rings were like nuts on bolts.

The man with the Greek cross scoffed and spat with relish. His saliva came out tinged with blood—by then red smeared the ice for yards from people crawling onto it before being dragged back into the river—so his spit landed red on red.

The man turned, also unhurriedly, and waded into the water. No henchman would touch him.

Before he had gone under, he turned again, and a tiniest glance passed between him and the only woman among the black riders. It could have been an accident, because she sat astride her horse right next to the boss. But if so, why did she lift the sable collar of her jacket to shield her angular features?

Besson noticed the woman in sable furs as well. His heart skipped a beat in recognition, only to end in a disappointed sigh. Couldn't be her, he mumbled in a way of explanation. This is long in the past.

The woman whirled her horse and crushed through the Oprichniks, galloping downstream.

The red-haired boss twisted in the saddle to watch her go.

"You Tatars should mind your daughters better, not let them run wild," he said to the man who flanked his other side. "This ain't proper behavior. You want me to send men after her?"

His companion shrugged, dark eyes placid. "You mind your own daughters, Maluta, I'll mind mine."

Maluta scowled into his blood-red beard.

The name had the effect of a punch to the guts. Maluta! Maluta Skuratov! Of course, it had to be him! An odious man, a monster, a top dog among the hounds, the leader of the Oprichniks.

The woman disappeared down the track, not looking back and not slowing down, as if the black-clad riders could do nothing but step out of her way.

Watching this incident, I lost the man with the Greek cross in the horrible smoothie of ice, blood and body parts.

Besson? Do you have eyes on our guy?

I didn't have to explain which one, because he immediately replied. No.

I have this weird hunch... just please, don't call me a demon, okay? I think this might be Dmitrii's assassin.

How is it possible? He had died. He had to have d— Besson gasped before finishing his sentence.

The blond head emerged from the river, bearded chin held above the dead and the dying. Steely gaze, alive and burning with hatred, locked onto Maluta Skuratov one last time.

Skuratov urged his horse forward, ready to put an end to the stubborn man.

Lord have mercy! You are right! Besson exclaimed, despite the thin evidence. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but who is without sin? A man like this must go on... he must!

Besson gurgled.

Gurgled? What? He gurgled because someone plunged his head under the water.

Gurgled? What? He gurgled because his head plunged under the water.

Novgorod collapsed, the same way Reutovo had collapsed. Disoriented, I barely had time to jump into the new void before it closed behind Besson. I raced to the other end of the time tunnel, back in May 1591, my heart nearly exploding in my chest. Maybe I shouldn't have cut the Phys Ed so much...

Besson!

He gurgled again, as a huge hand dunked him into the Volga. He also coughed, flailed and splattered, fighting for dear life.