War and Peace by graf Leo Tolstoy (latest ebook reader .TXT) 📕

“Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak, Antónov.”

The cadet was Rostóv. With one hand he supported the other; he was pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on “Matvévna,” the gun from which they had removed the dead officer. The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his breeches and arm.

“What, are you wounded, my lad?” said Túshin, approaching the gun on which Rostóv sat.

“No, it’s a sprain.”

“Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?” inquired Túshin.

“It was the officer, your honor, stained it,” answered the artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if apologizing for the state of his gun.

It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly, near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They all rushed out of the village again, but Túshin’s guns could not move, and the artillerymen, Túshin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking eagerly, streamed out of a side street.

“Not hurt, Petróv?” asked one.

“We’ve given it ‘em hot, mate! They won’t make another push now,” said another.

“You couldn’t see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows! Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn’t there something to drink?”

The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and again in the complete darkness Túshin’s guns moved forward, surrounded by the humming infantry as by a frame.

In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite, and said something in passing: “What did he say? Where to, now? Halt, is it? Did he thank us?” came eager questions from all sides. The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.

Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Túshin, having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostóv, too, dragged himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but he kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red, and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Túshin who was sitting cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Túshin’s large, kind, intelligent eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostóv, who saw that Túshin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.

From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry, who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses’ hoofs moving in mud, the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous rumble.

It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a storm. Rostóv looked at and listened listlessly to what passed before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.

“You don’t mind your honor?” he asked Túshin. “I’ve lost my company, your honor. I don’t know where... such bad luck!”

With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came up to the bonfire, and addressing Túshin asked him to have the guns moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately, each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding on to.

“You picked it up?... I dare say! You’re very smart!” one of them shouted hoarsely.

Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.

“Must one die like a dog?” said he.

Túshin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.

“A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you, fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire—we’ll return it with interest,” said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.

Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.

“Who the devil has put the logs on the road?” snarled he.

“He’s dead—why carry him?” said another.

“Shut up!”

And they disappeared into the darkness with their load.

“Still aching?” Túshin asked Rostóv in a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Your honor, you’re wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,” said a gunner, coming up to Túshin.

“Coming, friend.”

Túshin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight, walked away from the fire.

Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared for him, Prince Bagratión sat at dinner, talking with some commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years, flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with the signet ring, and Zherkóv, uneasily glancing at them all, and Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering eyes.

In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French, and the accountant with the naïve face was feeling its texture, shaking his head in perplexity—perhaps because the banner really interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was, to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next hut there was a French colonel who