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

ataman!” muttered Anton to himself. Then he turned to the Cossacks: “To horse!”

They shot on like a flock of frightened bustards, though the road was difficult, for the country was broken into gorges. But they entered a broad ravine at the bottom of which was a kind of natural path formed by the flowing of a spring. The ravine extended to Kavraiets. They rushed on some miles without halting; Anton, on the best horse, ahead. The broad mouth of the ravine was already visible when Anton suddenly pulled in his horse till his hind shoes crushed the stones.

“What is this?”

The entrance was suddenly darkened with men and horses. A troop entered in pairs, and formed six abreast. There were about three hundred horsemen. Anton looked; and although he was an old soldier hardened to every danger, his heart thumped within his breast and on his face came a deathly pallor. He recognized the dragoons of Prince Yeremi.

It was too late to flee. Anton’s party was separated from the dragoons by scarcely two hundred yards, and the tired horses of the Cossacks could not go far in escape. The dragoons, seeing them, rode up on a trot. In a moment the Cossacks were surrounded on every side.

“Who are you?” asked the commander, sternly.

“Bogun’s men!” answered Anton, seeing that it was necessary to tell the truth. But recognizing the lieutenant whom he had seen in Pereyasláv, he cried out at once with pretended joy: “Oh, Pan Kushel! Thank God!”

“Ah! is that you, Anton?” asked the lieutenant, looking at the essaul. “What are you doing here? Where is your ataman?”

“The Grand Hetman has sent our ataman to the prince to ask for assistance; so he has gone to Lubni, and he has commanded us to go along through the villages to catch deserters.”

Anton lied as if for hire; but he trusted in this⁠—since the dragoons were going away from the Dnieper, they could not know yet of the attack on Rozlogi, nor of the battle at Vassílyevka, nor of any of Bogun’s undertakings.

Still the lieutenant added: “One might say you wanted to steal over to the rebellion.”

“Oh, Lieutenant, if we wanted to go to Hmelnitski, we should not be on this side of the Dnieper.”

“That,” said Kushel⁠—“is an evident truth which I am not able to deny. But the ataman will not find the prince in Lubni.”

“Where is he?”

“He was in Priluka; but it is possible that he started yesterday for Lubni.”

“Too bad! The ataman has a letter from the hetman to the prince. And may I make bold to ask if you are coming from Zólotonosha?”

“No; we were stationed at Kalenki, and now we have received orders to go to Lubni, like the rest of the army. From there the prince will move, with all his forces. But where are you going?”

“To Próhorovka, for the peasants are crossing there.”

“Have many of them fled?”

“Oh, many, many!”

“Well, then, go! God be with you!”

“Thank you kindly, Lieutenant. God conduct you!”

The dragoons opened their ranks, and Anton’s escort rode out from among them to the mouth of the ravine.

After he had issued from the ravine, Anton stopped and listened carefully; and when the dragoons had vanished from sight, and the last echo had ceased, he turned to his Cossacks, and said⁠—

“Do you know, you simpletons, that were it not for me, you would soon be gasping, impaled on stakes, in Lubni? And now, forward, even if we drive the last breath out of our horses!”

They rushed on with all speed.

“We are lucky, and doubly so,” thought Anton⁠—“first, in escaping with sound skins, and then because those dragoons were not marching from Zólotonosha, and Zagloba missed them; for if he had met them, he would have been safe from every pursuit.”

In truth, fortune was very unfavorable to Zagloba in not letting him come upon Kushel and his company; for then he would have been rescued at once, and freed from every fear.

Meanwhile the news of the catastrophe at Korsún came upon Zagloba at Próhorovka like a thunderbolt. Reports had already been passing through the villages and farmhouses on the road to Zólotonosha of a great battle, even of the victory of Hmelnitski; but Zagloba did not lend them belief, for he knew from experience that every report grows and grows among the common people to unheard of dimensions, and that specially of the preponderance of the Cossacks the people willingly told wonders. But in Próhorovka it was difficult to doubt any longer. The terrible and ominous truth struck like a club on the head. Hmelnitski had triumphed, the army of the king was swept away, the hetmans were in captivity, and the whole Ukraine was on fire.

Zagloba lost his head at first, for he was in a terrible position. Fortune had not favored him on the road, for at Zólotonosha he did not find the garrison, and the old fortress was deserted. He doubted not for a moment that Bogun was pursuing him, and that sooner or later he would come upon his trail. He had doubled back, it is true, like a hunted hare; but he knew, through and through, the hound that was hunting him, and he knew that that hound would not allow himself to be turned from the trail. Zagloba had Bogun behind, and before him a sea of peasant rebellion, slaughter, conflagration, Tartar raids, and raging mobs. To flee in such a position was a task difficult of accomplishment, especially with a young woman who, though disguised as a minstrel boy, attracted attention everywhere by her extraordinary beauty. In truth, it was enough to make a man lose his head.

But Zagloba never lost it long. Amid the greatest chaos in his brain he saw perfectly one thing, or rather felt it most clearly⁠—that he feared Bogun a hundred times more than fire, water, rebellion, slaughter, or Hmelnitski himself. At the very thought that he might fall into the hands of the terrible leader, the skin crept on his body. “He