The tired and indifferent faces of the soldiers at the roadblock were of a piece with the smoky landscape. The man who boarded the bus gloomily cast his eye over the arrivals.

“Ukrops?”

“Separatists!” the driver answered cheerfully.

“Good for you,” said the soldier wearily, descending and slapping the bus on its side. The doors closed and the bus crossed the bridge, circumvented the concrete slabs, and rattled onward. They were inside the city.

“When the war is over, we’ll have ourselves a swim here,” said Kostya smiling. “We’ll sit and grill ourselves some kebabs in Slavkurort.”

K. was too absorbed by the sight of the city to answer. There were very few people, cars or cyclists on the rubbish-strewn streets. Soon the first traces of shelling became evident: a two-storey house with a caved-in wall and roof, a felled lamppost, severed cables. Then the holes in blocks of flats—holes the size of a window, bricks and glass on the tarmac. At a wide deserted intersection by an imposing, colonnaded grey building there were advertising hoardings pasted with charred scraps of paper. Earlier layers peeped through the gaps—numbers, Leonardo di Caprio’s face, a watch on a wrist, a camera lens, loans, a huge slab of pink chicken, “Chesterf- / Find your way to pleas- / Smoking ki-,” a child, a slender leg. Time slowly rolled back in these scraps of words and images. Of the dozens of billboards along the road, one new one stood out: “300 Militiamen,” in imitation of that Spartans blockbuster. A thinly moustachioed man in fatigues stood in the foreground, several fighters in casually heroic poses behind him.

The bus drove through the centre, passed another concrete block checkpoint, overtook an ageing armoured vehicle belching out black smoke, and came to a stop in front of a fat, crooked branch set between two heaps of sandbags.

It was the entrance to the HQ. Dirty sheets were stretched out above the sandbags, blocking the view from the neighbouring buildings.

K. gripped the handrail. A new test.

A glum building with tall arched windows stood within the perimeter. An old UAZ van was parked at the entrance and a group of thin, short-haired types milled around.

The rumbles resumed as soon as they got off the bus. They wafted over the city, through the streets and bounced off the buildings.

A broad, black-bearded man in a black military jacket with a pistol and a crooked knife hanging from his belt came out.

“Line up!”

They complied. He lit a cigarette and inspected them sourly. He pointed to the entrance.

“Go in, sign up, collect a weapon, wait for orders. Clear?”

“Yes!”

“Not yes! Yes, sir, yes!” he thundered. “March.”

The men walked in an uneven formation to the doorway, climbed the stairs and entered a wide hallway. There were tables all around and a man in uniform sitting at each one. Guns were stacked in boxes in the corner. At the first table, the men dictated their names, surnames, addresses, and mothers’ phone numbers.