Song of the Legions (23 page)

“One of us could fight a duel with him,” Sierawski ventured, for he had not given up, like a dog that will not give up a bone.

“What cause have you to fight a duel, Sir?” Szymon said smugly. “Have I not been courteous in the face of your insults?”

“We cannot kill him,” I said firmly, before my comrades could reply, “because if we do, the Targowicans will hang many of these good people hereabouts in reprisal.” I pointed at the curious villagers, who had cautiously gathered, and watched us from a distance. There was a silence, as Tanski and Sierawski considered this bitter news, and Szymon exulted in his lucky escape.

“Then he gets away with nothing,” Tanski seethed.

“Not quite,” I replied. Drawing Szymon’s sabre, I broke it over my knee, and flung it on the ground. Then I struck him a heavy blow with the back of my hand and he fell at my feet, quite crushed, for I am a big man, strong as an ox, and the stronger man by far. His proud face blushed crimson red at this disgrace, for to have his sword broken thus is the worst dishonour that can befall a gentleman.

“You have cause for a duel now, you treacherous coward, when we meet again. You and I have fought twice, and I have vanquished you twice,” I said, “the third time, I will kill you, for you couldn’t hit my arse with a handful of buckwheat, let alone a sword.”

Szymon Korczak lay whining on the floor.

“Now, Tanski, Sierawski, tie his hands, blindfold him, and set him backwards on his horse, and let him ride where he will, the Devil take him!” I said.

When this was done, to the great merriment of the watching peasants, I said to Tanski –

“You are in charge now, comrade, for I am sick of it. You wanted command – now you have it.”

As we rode on, we shared a full pipe every day. We had guns and supplies to spare now, that we had appropriated from the Targowicans. A week ago they had been hunting us, today we smoked their tobacco, drank their wine, and rode their horses. There are many that go out for wool and find themselves shorn.

We rode for a week into the Eagles’ Nest Trail and did not seen another living human soul. We struck camp at the foot of a great rocky crag, where there was the ancient ruin of a small castle. Now there were only broken stones, lying like bleached bones on the green sward. We slept with our guns beside us under our blankets, like wives. There we lay up, like wolves with their bellies full of mutton, and their eyes full of fear of the hunters. It was a good stronghold, affording a tremendous vantage point. We could see the countryside for miles around. We sat around a blazing fire, one ear to the ground and two eyes to the horizon, waiting for hoof beats and horsemen.

After a further week had passed, there was still no pursuit. My leg began to heal and we breathed a little easier. Tanski took his new responsibility very seriously. One might have thought he commanded a whole regiment, not two forlorn fugitives. He spent his days hunting on horseback – spearing wild sheep, rabbits and pigs with his lance, or blasting game birds from the sky with Sierawski’s ancient fowling gun. This gun had proved far more of a boon than we ever imagined, and we thanked Magda for it every night, as we tucked into the spitted flesh, roasted on the hillside amongst the ancient, fire-blackened stones of the dead fortress.

Of nights the fire threw our crazy shadows onto the jagged and tumbled walls. Out here only the wind whistled and whined and moaned. It seemed that even our enemies had forsaken us, disdaining to chase us into this badland, despising our blood feud as a mere nothing. Were we naught but outlaws? We talked of our many failures, the chances our generals had spurned, the comrades we had lost. We talked of our successes, which boiled down to only this – that we were still alive, and free. Sierawski and I have always been thoughtful sorts. We set ourselves to thinking about how we had recently beaten the Targowicans, though outnumbered by two to one. We talked this over for some time, pondering the reasons for this. For we should really have been head down over a saddle by now on our way back to Tulczyn.

“A disciplined body of men will always beat a rabble,” I said, thinking of the histories of war I had read, for I had read everyone from Caesar to Czarniecki. “We are veteran soldiers, and they were jockeys, thugs for hire, good only for murdering peasants and Jews.”

“Szymon is a soldier,” Sierawski reminded me, unconvinced. “Perhaps it was our despicable and underhanded tactics of ambush, hit and run!”

“Perhaps,” I laughed. “Cowards and backstabbers tend to win battles.
He who turns and runs away, lives to fight another day
– that was the Roman maxim, and they won a few wars, didn’t they?” I drained a cup of our captured vodka to ward off the cold. “We Poles are too stubborn and brave. We should learn from the Cossacks, who hit and run. That was what Czarniecki did in the Swedish Wars, a hundred years ago,” I concluded. Czarniecki had been the Polish general a hundred years ago, in wars we had fought concurrently with Swedes, Germans, Russians, Austrians, and Turks. Namely, unequal invasions by perfidious foreigners!

“Czarniecki fought the Swedes on this very ground,” Sierawski said, pointing around us at the towering crags and hills, “in barren, godforsaken places like this. Fought them and won.”

Why didn’t the Commander let us fight like Czarniecki, we argued – like partisans? But Ko[cuiszko had said it must be regular war, or nothing! So then we fell to bickering, as we always did, as to why we had lost the war.

“Not enough money,” Sierawski said. “Not enough guns, not enough cannon, not enough men.”

“Treachery and cowardice,” Tanski spat, “damned Felix, and the damned king,”

“All that is true,” I agreed, “but the real reason we lost, in my opinion, was General Suvarov. What we need, God help us,” I concluded, “is our own Suvarov.”

A chill wind fell across the hillside. We huddled in our cloaks and clutched our swords and guns, but these seemed naught but pitiful toys before the terrible name of Suvarov. We held up our crosses, and drank vodka, as if to ward off the curse.

“Blumer is right,” Sierawski admitted, “he is a poor shot, and a middling swordsman, and he rides like a woman going to church, and he is a great oaf with a thick head, but he is right. We need our own Suvarov.”

“In God’s name, where in the world would we find a man like Suvarov?” Tanski asked.

“God,” I laughed, “has no part in the begetting of men such as him. We will all have to pray to the Devil, boys! Amen!”

We stared into the flames as they danced. Up above, the moon glowed pale, fat, and unforgiving. When we stared up at the moon, we knew that the evil old devil up there had not forgotten us. We listened to the wolves howling in the wilderness, and the wood crackling and blazing in the fireplace, like laughter.

The very next day we rode on, and it was a good thing we did. We had seven horses now – three of our own, and four that we had taken from the Targowicans, and other spoils of war. We had their pistols, their powder, their victuals, their tobacco, their snuff, and sundry other trappings of good quality and quantity. The seizure of these articles was bittersweet. As ever, our enemies were better equipped than us in every particular. It would be preferable to receive supplies from a friendly quartermaster than to forever have to seize them, at great personal hazard, from hostile foes. Nevertheless Sierawski seemed delighted at something.

“Why, we have seven horses, and we are riding to war!” he exclaimed, for indeed we were, although how, and by whose command, was entirely uncertain. Still, we did not let that dampen our spirits.

Sierawski, as you know, was a Krakowian, and as we rode he bellowed out, very tunelessly and at great volume, a nonsense song that he knew, that did indeed fit the occasion perfectly. They have many such songs in Krakow, and they call them – with no great originality – ‘Krakowiaks’, which is also what the Krakowians call themselves. This was his favourite.

“One man from Krakow

Had seven horses.

But after he went to war

Only one was left!

In seven years of war

He didn’t draw his sword

So his sword went rusty

From no war!”

As we rode, the valley narrowed and the flat plain turned to scrub and then to wood and the woods thickened to forest. Sierawski stopped singing and we drew our muskets, for this was bandit country still, and we with our four remounts laden with booty were a fat target. We saw that the trail rounded into a hairpin bend and we halted.

Up ahead we could hear wild shouts, and the neighing of Cossack ponies. We heard a shot, and smelled the faint whiff of powder.

“Damned Cossacks!” Tanski hissed, peering through a captured Targowican telescope, that had belonged to Szymon Korczak.

“This is as pisspoor as your ambush was, Blumer,” Sierawski complained, “they’ve given the game away!”

“You stupid sod!” I laughed, as I peered through my own telescope, “they’re not ambushing us! They’re ambushing someone else!” Or rather, they had ambushed someone else, for we had arrived towards the end of the affair. About a dozen Cossacks had set upon three of our soldiers – fugitives like ourselves. Having overpowered them, and robbed them, they were in the process of murdering them. Intent on their villainy, the Cossacks were entirely oblivious to our presence, and had posted no pickets or sentries.

“To sword!” we roared, incensed, “to sword!”

One of the Cossacks had thrown a rope over the limb of a tree. The first prisoner had a noose around his neck and the Cossacks were hauling him up in the air. He kicked his legs, gasped helplessly for air, and grasped at the rope with his hands, which his tormentors had left untied. Every few moments, as his face turned red and blue, the Cossacks would release their grip, cackling as if this was the height of wit. No sooner had the poor man recovered his breath, than they would haul him up again, and repeat this torture.

The Cossack Hetman, which is their chief or sergeant, watched approvingly as he raised a bottle of wine to his lips. A moment later, he was dead, run through with Tanski’s lance, and the bottle rolled away into the dirt.

As we charged, I thought of the two girls hanged by the Targowicans. I was determined to prevent another such foul murder, and thus I reached the hangman first. Quickly I dispatched the drunk and unarmed Cossack with point-blank pistol fire, and without any qualms whatsoever. The rope flew from his hands like a whip and the hanged man fell to the ground, gasping for air.

“Lachy! Lachy!” the Cossacks cried, in despair, running for their ponies. All around, Cossacks were running to and fro. The three of us cut them down mercilessly like rabbits, blazing away at their backs until we ran out of shot, then slashing at the top of their heads with our sabres. For if you give no quarter, you can expect none in return.

Three of them made it out of the clearing alive and we took a man each, chasing them down on our horses. I caught up with my man near a stream and leapt from my horse, wrestling him to the ground, dropping my sword in the undergrowth. We rolled through a thorn bush and the barbs cut through my uniform and shredded the skin of my face and hands.

The Cossack was a stout, thick, round fellow, with a great bristling beard, dressed in filthy furs. We traded a few good punches, blacking each other’s eyes and bloodying each other’s noses. Then he sprang back and pulled a wicked dagger from his belt. My pistols were gone, in the mêlée.

Grinning, he began to circle me, feinting and jabbing his knife at my ribs and face, and cackling and cursing. It was, as you may imagine, extremely unpleasant, and I had to be on my guard to avoid being skewered. I had my own knife in my boot, but no leisure to draw it, for I was sorely pressed.

Then, from out of the trees, came another figure, wielding a huge Cossack cutlass, his neck still red with the rope burns, showing livid above his white shirt collar. He was, I noticed, a tall, handsome fellow with a great shock of shiny jet-black hair, and a black beard. I fancied that he looked a bit like a Jew, which struck me as an odd thought, and also appropriate. For the Cossacks have a great hatred of Jews, and would very well have tormented one in the base fashion that they had done, by strangling him with a rope.

As I was speculating on this, the hanged man struck the Cossack’s head from his shoulders with a single vengeful blow of the sabre.

“
Dobry wieczor
, good day to you,” I said, whistling with awe at this prodigious feat. “Warrant Officer Ignatius Blumer at your service, comrade. I am indebted to you, for saving my life!”

“Good day to you too, Sir,” saluted the man, who was indeed a Jew, for he had the Star of David at his collar. He wore the same tattered uniform of the Republic as I did. The hanged man then rubbed vigorously at his throat, which was as raw as the meat on a butcher’s block.

“My name is Private Karol Birnbaum,” he said, still rubbing his throat, “and it is I who am indebted to you, Sir, for cutting me down from that accursed tree.”