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

“Horpyna!” said he, after a while.

“What?”

“You are a witch; you must know whether or not it is true that there is an herb of some kind that whoever drinks of it must fall in love⁠—lubystka, is it?”

“Yes, lubystka. But unfortunately for you, lubystka will not help. If the princess hadn’t fallen in love with someone else, then you might give it to her; but if she is in love, do you know what will happen?”

“What?”

“She will love the other man still more.”

“Oh, perish with your lubystka! You know how to prophesy evil, but you don’t know how to help.”

“Listen to me! I know other herbs which grow from the earth; whoever drinks them will be like a stump two days and two nights, knowing nothing of the world. I will give her those herbs, and then⁠—”

The Cossack shuddered in his saddle, and fixed on the witch his eyes gleaming in the darkness. “What are you croaking about?” he asked.

“Then you can⁠—” said the witch, and burst into loud laughter like the neighing of a mare. This laughter resounded with ill-omened echo through the windings of the glen.

“Wretch!” said Bogun.

Then the light of his eyes went out gradually; he dropped again into meditation, and at length began to speak as if to himself⁠—

“No, no! When we captured Bar, I rushed first to the monastery, so as to defend her from the drunken crowd and smash the head of any man who should come near her; but she stabbed herself with a knife, and now has no consciousness of God’s world. If I lay a finger on her, she will stab herself again, or jump into the river if you are not careful⁠—ill-fated that I am!”

“You are at heart a Pole, not a Cossack, if you will not constrain the girl in Cossack fashion⁠—”

“That I were a Pole, that I were a Pole!” cried Bogun, grasping the cap on his head with both hands, for pain had seized him.

“The Polish woman must have bewitched you,” muttered Horpyna.

“Ai! if she has not,” answered he, sadly, “may the first bullet not pass me; may I finish my wretched life on the empaling stake! I love one in the world, and that one does not love me!”

“Fool!” cried Horpyna, with anger; “but you have got her!”

“Hold your tongue!” cried he, with rage. “If she lays hands on herself, then what? I’ll tear you apart and then myself. I’ll break my head against a rock, I’ll gnaw people like a dog. I would have given my soul for her, Cossack fame. I would have fled beyond the Yagorlik from the regiments to the end of the earth, to live with her, to die at her side. That’s what I would have done. But she stabbed herself with a knife, and through whom? Through me! She stabbed herself with a knife! Do you hear?”

“That’s nothing. She will not die.”

“If she dies, I will nail you to the door.”

“You have no power over her.”

“I have none, I have none. Would she had stabbed me⁠—it would have been better had she killed me!”

“Silly little Pole! She should have been kind to you. Where will she find your superior?”

“Arrange this, and I will give you a pot of ducats and another of pearls. In Bar we took booty not a little, and before that we took booty too.”

“You are as rich as Prince Yeremi, and full of fame. They say Krívonos himself is afraid of you.”

The Cossack waved his hand. “What is that to me if my heart is sore⁠—”

And silence came again. The bank of the river grew wider and more desolate. The pale light of the moon lent fantastic forms to the trees and the rocks. At last Horpyna said⁠—

“This is the Enemy’s Mound. We must ride together.”

“Why?”

“It is a bad place.”

They reined in their horses, and after a while the party coming on behind joined them. Bogun rose in the stirrups and looked into the cradle.

“Is she asleep?” he asked.

“She is sleeping as sweetly as an infant,” answered an old Cossack.

“I gave her a sleeping dose,” said the witch.

“Slowly, carefully!” said Bogun, fixing his eyes on the sleeper; “don’t wake her! The moon is looking straight into her face, my dear one!”

“It shines quietly, it will not wake her,” whispered one of the Cossacks.

The party moved on. Soon they arrived at the Enemy’s Mound. It was a low hill lying close to the river and sloping like a round shield on the earth. The moon covered the place entirely with its beams, lighting up the white stones scattered over the whole extent of it. In some spots they lay singly; in others they formed heaps, as it were fragments of buildings, ruined castles, and churches. Here and there stone slabs stuck up, planted endwise in the earth like gravestones in a cemetery. The whole mound was like a great ruin, and perhaps in other ages, long before the days of the Yagellons, human life flourished upon it; now not only the mound but the whole neighborhood as far as Rashkoff was an empty waste, in which wild beasts alone found refuge, and in the night evil spirits held their dances.

The party had scarcely reached half the height of the mound, when the light breeze which had been blowing hitherto changed into a regular whirlwind, which began to encircle the mound with a certain gloomy, ominous whistling; and then it appeared to the Cossacks that among those ruins were heard heavy sighs, issuing as it were from straitened breasts, sad groans, laughter, wailing, and puling of infants. The whole mound began to be alive, to call with various voices. From behind the stones lofty dark figures seemed to look, shadows of strange forms glided along quietly among the slabs. Far off in the darkness gleamed lights like the eyes of wolves. Finally, from the other end of the mound, from among the thickest