With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz (big ebook reader .txt) 📕

down with sabres through the foreheads and faces, beaten, cut up, trampled under foot, in the madness of fear they stretched out their hands, and seizing the merciless steel, perished. The still forest was filled with the ominous uproar of the fight. Some tried to escape over the steep wall of the ravine, and wounding their hands with climbing, fell back on the sabre’s edge. Some died calmly, others cried for mercy; some covered their faces with their hands, not wishing to see the moment of death; others threw themselves on the ground, face downward; but above the whistling of sabres, the groans of the dying, rose the shout of the assailants, “Yeremi! Yeremi!”⁠—a shout which made the hair stand erect on the heads of the peasants, and death seem more terrible.

The minstrel gave a blow on the forehead to one of the Cossacks, and knocked him down; seized another by the hand, to stop the blow of the sabre, and bellowed from fear like a buffalo. Others, seeing him, ran up to cut him to pieces; but Skshetuski interfered.

“Take him alive!” shouted he.

“Stop!” roared the minstrel. “I am a noble. Loquor latine! I am no minstrel. Stop, I tell you! Robbers, bullock-drivers, sons of⁠—”

But the minstrel had not yet finished his litany when Pan Yan looked into his face, and cried, till the walls of the ravine gave back the echo, “Zagloba!” And suddenly rushing upon him like a wild beast, he drove his fingers into the shoulders and thrust his face up to the face of the man, and shaking him as he would a pear-tree, roared: “Where is the princess? where is the princess?”

“Alive, well, safe!” roared back the minstrel; “unhand me! The devil take you, you are shaking the soul out of me!”

Then that knight, whom neither captivity nor wounds nor grief nor the terrible Burdabut could bring down, was brought down by happiness. His hands dropped at his side, great drops of sweat came out on his forehead; he fell on his knees, covered his face with his hands, and leaning his head against the wall of the ravine, remained in silence, evidently thanking God.

Meanwhile the unfortunate peasants had been slaughtered, and were lying dead on the ground, except a few who were bound for the executioner in the camp so as to torture a confession from them. The struggle was over, the uproar at an end. The Cossacks gathered around their leader, and seeing him kneeling under the rock, looked at him with concern, not knowing but he was wounded. He rose, however, with a face as bright as though the light of morning were shining in his soul.

“Where is she?” asked he of Zagloba.

“In Bar.”

“Safe?”

“The castle is a strong one; no attack is feared. She is under the care of Pani Slavoshevska and with the nuns.”

“Praise be to God in the highest!” said the knight; and in his voice there trembled deep emotion. “Give me your hand; I thank you from my very soul.”

Suddenly he turned to the Cossacks. “Are there many prisoners?”

“Seventeen.”

“A great joy has met me, and mercy is in me,” said Pan Yan. “Let them be free!”

The Cossacks could not believe their ears. There was no such custom as that in the armies of Vishnyevetski.

The lieutenant frowned slightly. “Let them go free!” he repeated.

The Cossacks went away; but after a while the first essaul returned and said: “They do not believe as; they do not dare to go.”

“Are their bonds loose?”

“Yes.”

“Then leave them here, and to horse yourselves!”

Half an hour later the party was moving on again along the quiet, narrow road. The moon had risen, and sent long white streaks to the centre of the forest and lighted its dark depths. Zagloba and Skshetuski, riding ahead, conversed together.

“But tell me everything about her that you know,” said the knight. “Then you rescued her from the hands of Bogun?”

“Of course; and besides, when going away, I bound up his face so that he could not scream.”

“Well, you acted splendidly, as God is dear to me! But how did you get to Bar?”

“That is a long story, better at another time; for I am terribly tired, and my throat is dried up from singing to those rapscallions. Haven’t you anything to drink?”

“I have a little flask of gorailka; here it is.”

Zagloba seized the flask and raised it to his mouth. A protracted gurgling was heard; and Pan Yan, impatient, without waiting the end, inquired further: “Did you say well?”

“What a question!” answered Zagloba; “everything is well in a dry throat.”

“But I was inquiring about the princess.”

“Oh, the princess! She is as well as a deer.”

“Praise be to God on high! And she is comfortable in Bar?”

“As comfortable as in heaven⁠—couldn’t be more so. Everyone cleaves to her for her beauty. Pani Slavoshevska loves her as her own daughter. And how many men are in love with her! You couldn’t count them on a rosary. But she, in constant love for you, thinks as much of them as I do now of this empty flask of yours.”

“May God give health to her, the dearest!” said Skshetuski, joyfully. “Then she remembers me with pleasure?”

“Remembers you? I tell you that I myself couldn’t understand where she got breath for so many sighs; these sighs made everyone pity her, and most of all the little nuns, for she brought them to her side through her sweetness. Then she sent me too into these dangers, in which I have almost lost my life, to find you without fail and see if you were alive and well. She tried several times to send messengers, but no one would go. At last I took pity on her, and set out for your camp. If it hadn’t been for the disguise, I should have laid down my head surely. But the peasants took me for a minstrel everywhere, as I sing very beautifully.”

Skshetuski became silent from joy. A thousand thoughts and reminiscences thronged