The Deluge. Vol. 2

Shandarovski sprang to his aid, and commanded: "Let him alone! He took it before my eyes; let him give it to Charnyetski himself."

"Charnyetski is coming!" cried a number of voices.

In fact, from a distance trumpets were heard; and on the road from the side of the field appeared a whole squadron, galloping to the priest's house. It was the Lauda squadron; and at the head of it rode Charnyetski himself. When the men had ridden up, seeing that all was over, they halted; and Shandarovski's soldiers began to hurry toward them.

Shandarovski himself hastened with a report to the castellan; but he was so exhausted that at first he could not catch breath, for he trembled as in a fever, and the voice broke in his throat every moment.

"The king himself was here: I don't know – whether he has escaped!"

"He has, he has!" answered those who had seen the pursuit.

"The standard is taken! There are many killed!"

Charnyetski, without saying a word, hurried to the scene of the struggle, where a cruel and woful sight presented itself. More than two hundred bodies of Swedes and Poles were lying like a pavement, one at the side of the other, and often one above the other. Sometimes one held another by the hair; some had died biting or tearing one another with their nails; and some again were closed as in a brotherly embrace, or they lay one with his head on the breast of his enemy. Many faces were so trampled that there remained nothing human in them; those not crushed by hoofs had their eyes open full of terror, the fierceness of battle, and rage. Blood spattered on the softened earth under the feet of Charnyetski's horse, which were soon red above the fetlocks; the odor of blood and the sweat of horses irritated the nostrils and stopped breath in the breast.

The castellan looked on those corpses of men as the agriculturist looks on bound sheaves of wheat which are to fill out his stacks. Satisfaction was reflected on his face. He rode around the priest's house in silence, looked at the bodies lying on the other side, beyond the garden; then returned slowly to the chief scene.

"I see genuine work here, and I am satisfied with you, gentlemen."

They hurled up their caps with bloody hands.

"Vivat Charnyetski!"

"God grant another speedy meeting. Vivat! vivat!"

And the castellan said: "You will go to the rear for rest. But who took the standard?"

"Give the lad this way!" cried Shandarovski; "where is he?"

The soldiers sprang for him, and found him sitting at the wall of the stable near the colt, which had fallen from wounds and was just breathing out his last breath. At the first glance it did not seem that the lad would last long, but he held the standard with both hands to his breast.

They bore him away at once, and brought him before Charnyetski. The youth stood there barefoot, with disordered hair, with naked breast, his shirt and his jacket in shreds, smeared with Swedish blood and his own, tottering, bewildered, but with unquenched fire in his eyes.

Charnyetski was astounded at sight of him. "How is this?" asked he. "Did he take the royal standard?"

"With his own hand and his own blood," answered Shandarovski. "He was the first also to let us know of the Swedes; and afterward, in the thickest of the whirl, he did so much that he surpassed me and us all."

"It is truth, genuine truth, as if some one had written it!" cried others.

"What is thy name?" asked Charnyetski of the lad.

"Mihalko."

"Whose art thou?"

"The priest's."

"Thou hast been the priest's, but thou wilt be thy own!" said Charnyetski.

Mihalko heard not the last words, for from his wounds and the loss of blood he tottered and fell, striking the castellan's stirrup with his head.

"Take him and give him every care. I am the guaranty that at the first Diet he will be the equal of you all in rank, as to-day he is the equal in spirit."

"He deserves it! he deserves it!" cried the nobles.

Then they took Mihalko on a stretcher, and bore him to the priest's house.

Charnyetski listened to the further report, which not Shandarovski gave, but those who had seen the pursuit of the king by Roh Kovalski. He was wonderfully delighted with that narrative, so that he caught his head, and struck his thighs with his hands; for he understood that after such an adventure the spirit must fall considerably in Karl Gustav.

Zagloba was not less delighted, and putting his hands on his hips, said proudly to the knights, —

"Ha! he is a robber, isn't he? If he had reached Karl, the devil himself could not have saved the king! He is my blood, as God is dear to me, my blood!"

In course of time Zagloba believed that he was Roh Kovalski's uncle.

Charnyetski gave orders to find the young knight; but they could not find him, for Roh, from shame and mortification, had crept into a barn, and burying himself in the straw, had fallen asleep so soundly that he came up with the squadron only two days later. But he still suffered greatly, and dared not show himself before the eyes of his uncle. His uncle, however, sought him out, and began to comfort him, —

"Be not troubled, Roh!" said he. "As it is, you have covered yourself with great glory; I have myself heard the castellan praise you: 'To the eye a fool,' said he, 'so that he looks as though he could not count three, and I see that he is a fiery cavalier who has raised the reputation of the whole army.'"

"The Lord Jesus has not blessed me," said Roh; "for I got drunk the day before, and forgot my prayers."

"Don't try to penetrate the judgments of God, lest you add blasphemy to other deeds. Whatever you can take on your shoulders take, but take nothing on your mind; if you do, you will fail."

"Rut I was so near that the sweat from his horse was flying to me. I should have cut him to the saddle! Uncle thinks that I have no reason whatever!"

"Every creature," said Zagloba, "has its reason. You are a sprightly lad, Roh, and you will give me comfort yet more than once. God grant your sons to have the same reason in their fists that you have!"

"I do not want that! I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski."

CHAPTER XXXIII

After the affair at Rudnik the king advanced farther toward the point of the wedge between the San and the Vistula, and did not cease as before to march with the rearguard; for he was not only a famous leader, but a knight of unrivalled daring. Charnyetski, Vitovski, and Lyubomirski followed, and urged him on as a wild beast is urged to a trap. Detached parties made an uproar night and day around the Swedes. The retreating troops had less and less provisions; they were more and more wearied and drooping in courage, looking forward to certain destruction.

At last the Swedes enclosed themselves in the very corner where the two rivers meet, and rested. On one side the Vistula defended them, on the other the San, both overflowed, as usual in springtime; the third side of the triangle the king fortified with strong intrenchments, in which cannons were mounted.

That was a position not to be taken, but it was possible to die there from hunger. But even in that regard the Swedes gained better courage, for they hoped that the commandants would send them provisions by water from Cracow and other river fortresses. For instance, right there at hand was Sandomir, in which Colonel Schinkler had collected considerable supplies. He sent these in at once; therefore the Swedes ate, drank, slept; and when they woke they sang Lutheran psalms, praising God that he had saved them from such dire distress.

But Charnyetski was preparing new blows for them.

Sandomir in Swedish hands could always come to the aid of the main army. Charnyetski planned, therefore, to take the town with the castle at a blow, and cut off the Swedes.

"We will prepare a cruel spectacle for them," said he, at a council of war. "They will look on from the opposite bank when we strike the town, and they will not be able to give aid across the Vistula; and when we have Sandomir we will not let provisions come from Wirtz in Cracow."

Lyubomirski, Vitovski, and others tried to dissuade Charnyetski from that undertaking. "It would be well," said they, "to take such a considerable town, and we might injure the Swedes greatly; but how are we to take it? We have no infantry, siege guns we have not; it would be hard for cavalry to attack walls."

"But do our peasants," asked Charnyetski, "fight badly as infantry? If I had two thousand such as Mihalko, I would take not only Sandomir, but Warsaw."

And without listening to further counsel he crossed the Vistula. Barely had his summons gone through the neighborhood when a couple of thousand men hurried to him, one with a scythe, another with a musket, the third with carabine; and they marched against Sandomir.