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

advanced parties reached that place, and the Tartars took captives everywhere, and God only knows how many they seized around Zamost and Grubeshovo. Skshetuski has already sent several thousand rescued prisoners to the fortress. He is working with all his might, regardless of health.”

Here Pan Longin sighed, bowed his head in thought, and after a while continued: “And I thought: ‘God in his supreme mercy will undoubtedly comfort Skshetuski, and give him that in which he sees his happiness; for great are that man’s services.’ In these times of corruption and covetousness, when everyone is thinking of self alone, he has forgotten himself. He might have obtained permission long ago from the prince, and gone to seek the princess; but instead of that, since this paroxysm has come on the country he has not left his duty for a moment, continuing his unceasing labor with torment in his heart.”

“He has a Roman soul; this cannot be denied,” said Zagloba.

“We should take example from him.”

“Especially you, Pan Longin, who have gone to the war, not to serve your country, but to find three heads.”

“God is looking into my soul,” said Podbipienta, raising his eyes to heaven.

“God has rewarded Skshetuski with the death of Bogun,” said Zagloba, “and with this, that he has given a moment of peace to the Commonwealth; for now the time has come for him to seek what he lost.”

“You will go with him?” asked the Lithuanian.

“And you?”

“I should be glad to go; but what will happen to the letters I am taking⁠—one from the starosta of Valets to the king, another to the prince, and a third from Skshetuski to the prince, with a request for leave?”

“We are taking leave to him.”

“Yes, but how can I avoid delivering the letters?”

“You must go to Krakow, it cannot be otherwise; however, I tell you sincerely I should be glad, in this quest after the princess, to have such fists as yours behind my shoulders; but for any other purpose you are useless. There dissimulation will be necessary, and complete disguise in Cossack dress, to appear as peasants; but you are so remarkable with your stature that everyone would ask, ‘Who is that tall booby? Where did such a Cossack as that come from?’ Besides, you don’t know their language well. No, no! you go to Krakow, and we will help ourselves somehow.”

“That is what I think too,” said Volodyovski.

“Surely it must be so,” answered Podbipienta. “May the merciful God bless and aid you! And do you know where she is hidden?”

“Bogun would not tell. We know only what I overheard when Bogun confined me in the stable, but that is enough.”

“But how will you find her?”

“My head, my head!” said Zagloba. “I was in more difficult places than this. Now the question is only to find Skshetuski as quickly as possible.”

“Inquire in Zamost. Pan Weyher must know, for he corresponds with him, and Skshetuski sends him captives. May God bless you!”

“And you too,” said Zagloba. “When you are in Krakow, at the prince’s, give our respects to Pan Kharlamp.”

“Who is he?”

“A Lithuanian of extraordinary beauty, for whom all the maidens and ladies-in-waiting of the princess have lost their heads.”

Pan Longin trembled. “My good friend, is this joking?”

“Farewell! Terribly bad beer in this Konskovoli!” concluded Zagloba, muttering at Volodyovski.

XLVIII

So Pan Longin went to Krakow, his heart pierced with an arrow, and the cruel Zagloba with Volodyovski to Zamost, where they remained only one day; for the commandant informed them that he had received no news for a long time from Skshetuski, and thought the regiments which had set out under Skshetuski would go to Zbaraj to protect those regions from disorderly bands. This was the more likely since Zbaraj, being the property of the Vishnyevetskis, was specially exposed to the attacks of the mortal enemies of the prince. There lay therefore before Volodyovski and Zagloba a road long and difficult enough; but since they were going after the princess, they were obliged to pass it; therefore it was all one to them whether they should enter on it earlier or later, and they moved without delay, halting only to rest, or disperse robber bands wandering here and there.

They went through a country so ruined that frequently for whole days they did not meet a living soul. Hamlets lay in ashes, villages were burned and empty, the people either killed or gathered into captivity. They saw only corpses along the road, the skeletons of houses, of Polish and Russian churches, the unburnt remnants of villages and cottages, dogs howling on burnt ruins. Whoever had survived the Tartar-Cossack passage hid in the depth of the forest, and was freezing from cold or dying of hunger, not daring yet to leave the forest, not believing that misfortune could have passed so soon. Volodyovski was obliged to feed the horses of his squadron with the bark of trees or with half-burnt grain taken from the ruins of former granaries. But they advanced quickly, supporting themselves mainly by supplies taken from bands of robbers. It was already the end of November; and inasmuch as the preceding winter had passed, to the greatest wonder of people, without snow, frost, and ice, so that the whole order of Nature seemed reversed by it, by so much did the present one promise to be of more than usual rigor. The ground had stiffened, snow was on the fields, riverbanks were bordered each morning with a transparent, glassy shell. The weather was dry; the pale sunbeams warmed the world but feebly in the midday hours. Red twilight of morning and evening flamed in the sky⁠—an infallible herald of an early and stern winter.

After war and hunger a third enemy of wretched humanity had to appear⁠—frost; and still people looked for it with desire because more surely than all negotiations was it a restrainer of war. Volodyovski, as a man of experience and knowing the Ukraine through and through, was full of hope