Fire in the Steppe (61 page)

"Well, comrades, you must sing now; if not, you will go to the other world on roasted soles. For old acquaintance' sake I will not spare fire on you."

When he had said this he threw dry limbs on the fire, which burst out at once in a tall blaze.

Pan Adam came now, and began the examination. From confessions of the prisoners it appeared that what the young lieutenant had divined earlier was true. The Lithuanian Tartars and Cheremis were marching in the vanguard before the horde, and before all the troops of the Sultan. They were led by Azya, son of Tugai Bey, to whom was given command over all the parties. They, as well as the whole army, marched at night because of the heat; in the day they sent their herds out to pasture. They threw out no pickets, for no one supposed that troops could attack them even near the Dniester, much less at the Pruth, right at the dwellings of the horde; they marched comfortably, therefore, with their herds and with camels, which carried the tents of the officers. The tent of Murza Azya was easily known, for it had a bunchuk fixed on its summit, and the banners of the companies were fastened near it in time of halt. The camp was four or five miles distant; there were about two thousand men in it, but some of them had remained with the Belgrod horde, which was marching about five miles behind.

Pan Adam inquired further touching the road which would lead to the camp best, then how the tents were arranged, and last, of that which concerned him most deeply.

"Are there women in the tent?"

The Tartars trembled for their lives. Those of them who had served in Hreptyoff knew perfectly that Pan Adam was the brother of one of those women, and was betrothed to the other; they understood, therefore, what rage would seize him when he knew the whole truth.

That rage might fall first on them; they hesitated, therefore, but Lusnia said at once,—

"Pan Commandant, we'll warm their soles for the dog brothers; then they will speak."

"Thrust their feet in the fire!" said Pan Adam.

"Have mercy!" cried Eliashevich, an old Tartar from Hreptyoff. "I will tell all that my eyes have seen."

Lusnia looked at the commandant to learn if he was to carry out the threat notwithstanding this answer; but Pan Adam shook his head, and said to Eliashevich,—

"Tell what thou hast seen."

"We are innocent, lord," answered Eliashevich; "we went at command. The murza gave your gracious sister to Pan Adurovich, who had her in his tent. I saw her in Kuchunkaury when she was going for water with pails; and I helped her to carry them, for she was heavy—"

"Woe!" muttered Pan Adam.

"But the other lady our murza himself had in his tent. We did not see her so often; but we heard more than once how she screamed, for the murza, though he kept her for his pleasure, beat her with rods, and kicked her."

Pan Adam's lips began to quiver.

Eliashevich barely heard the question.

"Where are they now?"

"Sold in Stambul."

"To whom?"

"The murza himself does not know certainly. A command came from the Padishah to keep no women in camp. All sold their women in the bazaar; the murza sold his."

The explanation was finished, and at the fire silence set in; but for some time a sultry afternoon wind shook the limbs of the trees, which sounded more and more deeply. The air became stifling; on the edge of the horizon, black clouds appeared, dark in the centre, and shining with a copper-color on the edges.

Pan Adam walked away from the fire, and moved like one demented, without giving an account to himself of where he was going. At last he dropped with his face to the ground, and began to tear the earth with his nails, then to gnaw his own hands, and then to gasp as if dying. A convulsion twisted his gigantic body, and he lay thus for hours. The dragoons looked at him from a distance; but even Lusnia dared not approach him.

Concluding that the commandant would not be angry at him for not sparing the Tartars, the terrible sergeant, impelled by pure inborn cruelty, stuffed their mouths with grass, so as to avoid noise, and slaughtered them like bullocks. He spared Eliashevich alone, supposing that he would be needed to guide them. When he had finished this work, he dragged away from the fire the bodies, still quivering, and put them in a row; he went then to look at the commandant.

"Even if he has gone mad," muttered Lusnia, "we must get that one."

Midday had passed, the afternoon hours as well, and the day was inclining toward evening. But those clouds, small at first, occupied now almost the whole heavens, and were growing ever thicker and darker without losing that copper-colored gleam along the edges. Their gigantic rolls turned heavily, like millstones on their own axes; then they fell on one another, crowded one another, and pushing one another from the height, rolled in a dense mass lower and lower toward the earth. The wind struck at times, like a bird of prey with its wings, bent the cornel-trees and the dogwood to the earth, tore away a cloud of leaves, and bore it apart with rage; at times it stopped as if it had fallen into the ground. During such intervals of silence there was heard in the gathering clouds a certain ominous rattling, wheezing, rumbling; you would have said that legions of thunders were gathering within them and ranging for battle, grumbling in deep voices while rousing rage and fury in themselves, before they would burst out and strike madly on the terrified earth.

"A storm, a storm is coming!" whispered the dragoons to one another.

The storm was coming. The air grew darker each instant.

Then on the east, from the side of the Dniester, thunder rose and rolled with an awful outbreak along the heavens, till it went far away, beyond the Pruth; there it was silent for a moment, but springing up afresh, rushed toward the steppes of Budjyak, and rolled along the whole horizon.

First, great drops of rain fell on the parched grass. At that moment Pan Adam stood before the dragoons.

"To horse!" cried he, with a mighty voice.

And at the expiration of as much time as is needed to say a hurried "Our Father," he was moving at the head of a hundred and fifty horsemen. When he had ridden out of the woods, he joined, near the herd of horses, the other half of his men, who had been standing guard at the field-side, to prevent any herdsmen from escaping by stealth to the camp. The dragoons rushed around the herd in the twinkle of an eye, and giving out wild shouts, peculiar to Tartars, moved on, urging before them the panic-stricken horses.

The sergeant held Eliashevich on a lariat, and shouted in his ear, trying to outsound the roar of the thunder,—

"Lead us on dog blood, and straight, or a knife in thy throat!"

Now the clouds rolled so low that they almost touched the earth. On a sudden they burst, like an explosion in a furnace, and a raging hurricane was let loose; soon a blinding light rent the darkness, a thunder-clap came, and after it a second, a third; the smell of sulphur spread in the air, and again there was darkness. Terror seized the herd of horses. The beasts, driven from behind by the wild shouts of the dragoons, ran with distended nostrils and flowing mane, scarcely touching the earth in their onrush; the thunder did not cease for a moment; the wind roared, and the horses raced on madly in that wind, in that darkness, amid explosions in which the earth seemed to be breaking. Driven by the tempest and by vengeance, they were like a terrible company of vampires or evil spirits in that wild steppe.

Space fled before them. No guide was needed, for the herd ran straight to the camp of the Tartars, which was nearer and nearer. But before they had reached it, the storm was unchained, as if the sky and the earth had gone mad. The whole horizon blazed with living fire, by the gleam of which were seen the tents standing on the steppe; the world was quivering from the roar of thunders; it seemed that the clouds might burst any moment and tumble to the earth. In fact, their sluices were opened, and floods of rain began to deluge the steppe. The downfall was so dense that a few paces distant nothing could be seen, and from the earth, inflamed by the heat of the sun, a thick mist was soon rising.

Yet a little while, and herd and dragoons will be in the camp.

But right before the tents the herd split, and ran to both sides in wild panic; three hundred breasts gave out a fearful shriek; three hundred sabres glittered in the flame of the lightning, and the dragoons fell on the tents.

Before the outburst of the torrent, the Tartars saw in the lightning-flashes the on-coming herd; but none of them knew what terrible herdsmen were driving. Astonishment and alarm seized them; they wondered why the herd should rush straight at the tents; then they began to shout to frighten them away. Azya himself pushed aside the canvas door, and in spite of the rain, went out with anger on his threatening face. But that instant the herd split in two, and, amid torrents of rain and in the fog, certain fierce forms looked black and many times greater in number than the horse-herds; then the terrible cry, "Slay, kill!" was heard.

There was no time for anything, not even to guess what had happened, not even to be frightened. The hurricane of men, more dreadful and furious by far than the tempest, whirled on to the camp. Before Tugai Bey's son could retreat one step toward his tent, some power more than human, as you would have said, raised him from the earth.

Suddenly he felt that a dreadful embrace was squeezing him, that from its pressure his bones were bending and his ribs breaking; soon he saw, as if in mist, a face rather than which he would have seen Satan's, and fainted.

By that time the battle had begun, or rather the ghastly slaughter. The storm, the darkness, the unknown number of the assailants, the suddenness of the attack, and the scattering of the horses were the cause that the Tartars scarcely defended themselves. The madness of terror simply took possession of them. No one knew whither to escape, where to hide himself. Many had no weapons at hand; the attack found many asleep. Therefore, stunned, bewildered, and terrified, they gathered into dense groups, crowding, overturning, and trampling one another. The breasts of horses pushed them down, threw them to the ground; sabres cut them, hoofs crushed them. A storm does not so break, destroy, and lay waste a young forest, wolves do not eat into a flock of bewildered sheep, as the dragoons trampled and cut down those Tartars. On the one hand, bewilderment, on the other, rage and vengeance, completed the measure of their misfortune. Torrents of blood were mingled with the rain. It seemed to the Tartars that the sky was falling on them, that the earth was opening under their feet. The flash of lightning, the roar of thunder, the noise of rain, the darkness, the terror of the storm, answered to the dreadful outcries of the slaughtered. The horses of the dragoons, seized also with fear, rushed, as if maddened, into the throng, breaking it and stretching the men on the ground. At length the smaller groups began to flee, but they had lost knowledge of the place to such a degree that they fled around on the scene of struggle, instead of fleeing straight forward; and frequently they knocked against one another, like two opposing waves, struck one another, overturned one another, and went under the sword. At last the dragoons scattered the remnant of them completely, and slew them in the flight, taking no prisoners, and pursuing without mercy till the trumpets called them back from pursuit.

Never had an attack been more unexpected, and never a defeat more terrible. Three hundred men had scattered to the four winds of the world nearly two thousand cavalry, surpassing incomparably in training the ordinary chambuls. The greater part of them were lying flat in red pools of blood and rain. The rest dispersed, hid their heads, thanks to the darkness, and escaped on foot, at random, not certain that they would not run under the knife a second time. The storm and the darkness assisted the victors, as if the anger of God were fighting on their side against traitors.

Night had fallen completely when Pan Adam moved out at the head of his dragoons, to return to the boundaries of the Commonwealth. Between the young lieutenant and Lusnia, the sergeant, went a horse from the herd. On the back of this horse lay, bound with cords, the leader of all the Lithuanian Tartars,—Azya, the son of Tugai Bey, with broken ribs. He was alive, but in a swoon. Both looked at him from time to time as carefully and anxiously as if they were carrying a treasure, and were fearful of losing it.

The storm began to pass. On the heavens, legions of clouds were still moving, but in intervals between them, stars were beginning to shine, and to be reflected in lakes of water, formed on the steppe by the dense rain. In the distance, in the direction of the Commonwealth, thunder was still roaring from time to time.

The fugitive Tartars carried news to the Belgrod horde of the disaster. Couriers from them took the news to the Ordu i Humayun,—that is, to the Sultan's camp,—where it made an uncommon impression.

Pan Adam had no need, it is true, to flee too hurriedly with his booty to the Commonwealth, for not only did no one pursue him at the first moment, but not even for the two succeeding days. The Sultan was so astonished that he knew not what to think. He sent Belgrod and Dobrudja chambuls at once to discover what troops were in the vicinity. They went unwillingly, for with them it was a question of their own skins. Meanwhile the tidings, given from mouth to mouth, grew to be the account of a considerable overthrow. Men inhabiting the depth of Asia or Africa, who had not gone hitherto with war to Lehistan, and who heard from narratives of the terrible cavalry of the unbelievers, were seized with fright at the thought that they were already in presence of that enemy who did not wait for them within his own boundaries, but sought them in the very dominions of the Padishah; the grand vizir himself, and the "future sun of war," the kaimakan, Kara Mustafa, did not know either what to think of the attack. How that Commonwealth, of whose weakness they had the minutest accounts, could assume all at once the offensive, no Turkish head could explain. It is enough that henceforth the march seemed less secure, and less like a triumph. At the council of war the Sultan received the vizir and the kaimakan with a terrible countenance.