The Deluge. Vol. 2

"We shall either lose this general battle, or we shall win it – "

"Every man knows that!" put in Volodyovski.

"You might be silent, Michael, and learn something. Supposing that we lose this battle, do you know what will happen? You see you do not know, for you are moving those little awls under your nose like a rabbit. Well, I will tell you that nothing will happen – "

Kmita, who was very quick, sprang up, struck his glass on the table, and said, —

"You are beating around the bush!"

"I say nothing will happen!" repeated Zagloba. "You are young, therefore you do not know. As affairs now stand, our king, our dear country, our armies may lose fifty battles one after another, and the war will go on in the old fashion, – the nobles will assemble, and with them the lower ranks. But if they do not succeed one time, they will another, until the enemy's force has melted away. But when the Swedes lose one great battle, the Devil will take them without salvation, and with them the elector to boot."

Here Zagloba grew animated, emptied his glass, struck it on the table, and continued, —

"Listen, – for you will not hear this from every mouth, for not every one knows how to take a general view of things. Many a man is thinking, 'What is waiting for us now? how many battles, how many defeats,' – which, in warring with Karl, are not unlikely, – 'how many tears, how much bloodshed, how many grievous paroxysms?' And many a one will doubt and blaspheme against the mercy of God and the Most Holy Mother. But I tell you this: do you know what is waiting for those vandal enemies? – destruction; do you know what is waiting for us? – victory! If they beat us one hundred times, very well; but we will beat them the hundred and first time, and that will be the end."

When he had said this, Zagloba closed his eyes for a moment, but soon opened them. He looked ahead with gleaming vision, and suddenly shouted with the whole force of his breast: "Victory! victory!"

Kmita was flushed from delight: "In God's name, he is right, he speaks justly. It cannot be otherwise! Such an end has to come!"

"It must be acknowledged that you are not lacking here," said Volodyovski, putting his finger on his forehead. "The Commonwealth may be occupied; but to stay in it is impossible, so at last the Swedes will have to go out."

"Well, is that it? I am not lacking!" said Zagloba, rejoiced at the praise. "If that is true, then I will prophesy further. God is with the just!" Here he turned to Kmita. "You will finish the traitor Radzivill; you will go to Taurogi, recover the maiden, marry her, rear posterity. May I have the pip on my tongue if this will not happen as I say! But for God's sake, don't smother me!"

Zagloba was rightfully cautious, for Kmita seized him in his arms, raised him, and began to hug him so that the old man's eyes were bursting out. He had barely come to his feet and recovered breath, when Pan Michael, greatly delighted, seized him by the hand, —

"It is my turn! Tell what awaits me."

"God bless you, Michael! your pretty tufted lark will hatch out a whole brood, – never fear. Uf!"

"Vivat!" cried Volodyovski.

"But first, we will make an end of the Swedes," added Zagloba.

"We will, we will!" cried the young colonels, shaking their sabres.

"Vivat! victory!"

CHAPTER L

A Week later Kmita crossed the boundaries of Electoral Prussia at Raygrod. It came to him easily enough; for before the departure of the full hetman he disappeared in the woods so secretly that Douglas felt sure that his party too had marched with the whole Tartar-Lithuanian division to Warsaw, and he left merely small garrisons in the castles for the defence of those parts.

Douglas, with Radzeyovski and Radzivill, followed Gosyevski.

Kmita heard of this before passing the boundary, and grieved greatly that he could not meet his mortal enemy eye to eye, and lest punishment might come to Boguslav from other hands, – namely, from Volodyovski, who also had made a vow against him.

Hence, not being able to wreak vengeance on the person of the traitor for the wrongs done the Commonwealth and himself, he wreaked it in terrible fashion on the lands of the elector.

That very night in which the Tartars had passed the boundary pillar, the heavens grew red from flames. An uproar was heard, with the weeping of people trampled by the foot of war. Whoso was able to beg for mercy in the Polish tongue was spared at command of the leader; but German settlements, colonies, villages, and hamlets were turned into a river of fire, and the terrified inhabitants went under the knife.

And not so swiftly does oil spread over the sea when the sailor pours it to pacify the waves, as that chambul of Tartars and volunteers spread over quiet and hitherto safe regions. It seemed that every Tartar was able to double and treble himself, to be at the same time in a number of places, to burn, to slay. They spared not even grain in the field, nor trees in the gardens.

Kmita had held his Tartars so long in the leash that at last, when he let them free like a flock of birds of prey, they grew almost wild in the midst of slaughter and destruction. One surpassed the other; and since they could not take captives, they swam from morning till evening in blood.

Kmita himself, having in his heart no little fierceness, gave it full freedom, and though he did not steep his own hands in the blood of defenceless people, he looked with pleasure on the flow of blood. In his soul he was at rest, and conscience reproached him with nothing; for this was not Polish blood, and besides it was the blood of heretics; therefore he judged that he was doing a work pleasing to God, and especially to the saints of the Lord.

The elector, a vassal, therefore a servant of the Commonwealth and living from its bounties, was the first to raise his sacrilegious hand against it; therefore punishment was his due, and Kmita was purely an instrument of God's vengeance.

For this reason, when in the evening he was repeating his Litany in peace by the blaze of burning German settlements, and when the screams of the murdered interrupted the tally of his prayers, he began again from the beginning, so as not to burden his soul with the sin of inattention to the service of God.

But he did not cherish in his heart savage feelings alone; for, besides piety, various other feelings moved it, connected by memory with distant years. Therefore those times came frequently to his mind when he attacked Hovanski with such glory, and his former comrades stood as if alive before his eyes, – Kokosinski; the gigantic Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus; the spotted Ranitski, with senatorial blood in his veins; Uhlik, playing on the flageolet; Rekuts, on whom human blood was not weighing; and Zend, imitating birds and every kind of beast.

They all, save perhaps Rekuts alone, were burning in hell; and behold, if they were living now, they might wallow in blood without bringing sin on their souls, and with profit to the Commonwealth.

Here Pan Andrei sighed at the thought of how destructive a thing license is, since in the morning of youth it stops the road for the ages of ages to beautiful deeds.

But he sighed more than all for Olenka. The deeper he entered the Prussian country, the more fiercely did the wounds of his heart burn him, as if those fires which he kindled roused at the same time his old love. Almost every day then he said in his heart to the maiden, —

"Dearest dove, you may have forgotten me, or if you remember, disgust fills your heart; but I, at a distance or near, in the night or the day-time, in labor for the country and toils, am thinking ever of you, and my soul flies to you over pine-woods and waters, like a tired bird, to drop down at your feet. Only to the country and to you would I give all my blood; but woe is me, if in your heart you proclaim me an outlaw forever."

Thus meditating, he went ever farther to the north along the boundary belt. He burned and slew, sparing no one. Sadness throttled him terribly. He would like to be in Taurogi on the morrow; but the road was still long and difficult, for at last they began to ring all the bells in the province of Prussia.

Every one living seized arms to resist the dreadful destroyers; garrisons were brought in from towns the remotest, regiments were formed of even village youths, and soon they were able to place twenty men against every Tartar.

Kmita rushed at these commands like a thunderbolt, beat them, hanged men, escaped, hid, and again sailed out on a wave of fire; but still he could not advance so swiftly as at first. More than once it was necessary to attack in Tartar fashion, and hide for whole weeks in thickets or reeds at the banks of a lake. The inhabitants rushed forth more and more numerously, as if against a wolf; and he bit too like a wolf, – with one snap of his jaws he gave death, and not only defended himself, but did not desist from attack.

Loving genuine work, he did not leave a given district, in spite of pursuit, until he had annihilated it for miles around with fire and sword. His name reached, it is unknown by what means, the mouths of the people, and bearing terror and fright, thundered on to the shores of the Baltic.

Babinich might, it is true, return within the boundaries of the Commonwealth, and in spite of Swedish detachments, move quickly to Taurogi; but he did not wish to do so, for he desired to serve not only himself but the country.

Now came news which gave courage for defence and revenge to the people in Prussia, but pierced the heart of Babinich with savage sorrow. News came like a thunderclap of a great battle at Warsaw, which the King of Poland had lost. "Karl Gustav and the elector have beaten all the troops of Yan Kazimir," people repeated to one and another with delight throughout Prussia. "Warsaw is recaptured!" "This is the greatest victory of the war, and now comes the end of the Commonwealth!" All men whom the Tartars seized and put on the coals to obtain information, repeated the same; there was also exaggerated news, as is common in time of war and uncertainty. According to this news the Poles were cut to pieces, the hetmans had fallen, and Yan Kazimir was captured.

Was all at an end, then? Was that rising and triumphing Commonwealth naught but an empty illusion? So much power, so many troops, so many great men and famous warriors; the hetmans, the king, Charnyetski with his invincible division, the marshal of the kingdom, other lords with their attendants, – had all perished, had all rolled away like smoke? And are there no other defenders of this hapless country, save detached parties of insurgents who certainly at news of the disaster will pass away like a fog?

Kmita tore the hair from his head and wrung his hands; he seized the wet earth, pressed palms-full of it to his burning head.

"I shall fall too," said he; "but first this land will swim in blood."

And he began to fight like a man in despair. He did not hide longer, he did not attack in the forest and reeds, he sought death; he rushed like a madman on forces three times greater than his own, and cut them to pieces with sabres and hoofs. In his Tartars all traces of human feeling died out, and they were turned into a herd of wild beasts. A predatory people, but not over-much fitted for fighting in the open field, without losing their genius for surprises and ambush, they, by continual exercise, by continual conflict, had trained themselves so that breast to breast they could hold the field against the first cavalry, and scatter quadrangles even of the Swedish guard. In their struggles with the armed mob of Prussia, a hundred of those Tartars scattered with ease two and even three hundred sturdy men armed with spears and muskets.

Kmita weaned them from weighting themselves with plunder; they took only money and gold, which they sewed up in their saddles, so that when one of them fell the survivors fought with rage for his horse and his saddle. Growing rich in this manner, they lost none of their swiftness, well-nigh superhuman. Recognizing that under no leader on earth could they find such rich harvests, they grew attached to Babinich, as hounds to the hunter, and with real Mohammedan honesty placed after battle in the hands of Soroka and the Kyemliches the lion's share of the plunder which belonged to the "bagadyr."

"Allah!" said Akbah Ulan, "few of them will see Bagche-Serai, but all who go back will be murzas."

Babinich, who from of old knew how to live upon war, collected great riches; but death, which he sought more than gold, he found not.

A month passed again in battles and labors surpassing belief. The Tartar horses, though fed with barley and Prussian wheat, needed absolutely even a couple of days' rest; therefore the young colonel, wishing also to gain news and fill the gaps in his ranks with fresh volunteers, withdrew, near Dospada, to the Commonwealth.

News soon came, and so joyful that Kmita almost lost his wits. It turned out to be true that the equally valiant and unfortunate Yan Kazimir had lost a great three-days' battle at Warsaw, but for what reason?