At the outpost of the Tengin Regiment, fate brought together five young officers: Captain Raevsky, Cadet Nikolai Annensky, a duelist, card player, and skilled fencer Alexander Shulenin, young officer Fyodor Chistyakov, and lieutenant Vladimir Baumgarten, exiled to the Caucasus for killing Prince Golitsyn in a duel.
They are destined to enact a grand and intricate play in the search for the true culprit of Prince Golitsyn's murder. In one way or another, everyone found themselves entangled in this story — both the guilty and the executioners simultaneously. To unravel this "Gordian knot," the participants in the drama decide to stage a "carousel" — a kind of five-way duel where there will be no winner...