In fact, that reckoning was good; and the dragoons of the convoy served as the first example, though Kovalski himself resisted-all his men went over without hesitation to Pan Michael. There might be found more such men in Radzivill's ranks. It might also be supposed that the first attack on the Swedes would call forth a general uprising in the country.
Pan Michael determined therefore to move that night toward Ponyevyej, assemble whom he could of the Lauda nobles in the vicinity of Upita, and thence plunge into the wilderness of Rogovsk, in which, as he expected, the remnants of the defeated resisting squadrons would be in hiding. Meanwhile he halted for rest at the river Lavecha, to refresh horses and men.
They halted there till night, looking from the density of the forest to the high-road, along which were passing continually new crowds of peasants, fleeing to the woods before the expected Swedish invasion.
The soldiers sent out on the road brought in from time to time single peasants as informants concerning the Swedes; but it was impossible to learn much from them. The peasants were frightened, and each repeated separately that the Swedes were here and there, but no one could give accurate information.
When it had become completely dark, Pan Volodyovski commanded the men to mount their horses; but before they started a rather distinct sound of bells came to their ears.
"What is that?" asked Zagloba, "it is too late for the Angelus."
Volodyovski listened carefully, for a while. "That is an alarm!" said he.
Then he went along the line. "And does any one here know what village or town there is in that direction?"
"Klavany, Colonel," answered one of the Gostsyeviches; "we go that way with potash."
"Do you hear bells?"
"We hear! That is something unusual."
Volodyovski nodded to the trumpeter, and in a low note the trumpet sounded in the dark forest. The squadron pushed forward.
The eyes of all were fixed in the direction from which the ringing came each moment more powerful; indeed they were not looking in vain, for soon a red light gleamed on the horizon and increased every moment.
"A fire!" muttered the men in the ranks.
Pan Michael bent toward Skshetuski. "The Swedes!" said he.
"We will try them!" answered Pan Yan.
"It is a wonder to me that they are setting fire."
"The nobles must have resisted, or the peasants risen if they attacked the church."
"Well, we shall see!" said Pan Michael. And he was panting with satisfaction.
Then Zagloba clattered up to him. "Pan Michael?"
"What?"
"I see that the odor of Swedish flesh has come to you. There will surely be a battle, will there not?"
"As God gives, as God gives!"
"But who will guard the prisoner?"
"What prisoner?"
"Of course, not me, but Kovalski. Pan Michael, it is a terribly important thing that he should not escape. Remember that the hetman knows nothing of what has happened, and will learn from no one, if Kovalski does not report to him. It is requisite to order some trusty men to guard him; for in time of battle he might escape easily, especially if he takes up some stratagem."
"He is as capable of stratagems as the wagon on which he is sitting. But you are right; it is necessary to station some one near. Will you have him under your eye during this time?"
"H'm! I am sorry to be away from the battle! It is true that in the night near fire I am as good as blind. If it were in the daytime you would never have persuaded me; but since the public good requires it, let this be so."
"Very well, I will leave you with five soldiers to assist; and if he tries to escape, fire at his head."
"I'll squeeze him like wax in my fingers, never fear! – But the fire is increasing every moment. Where shall I stay with Kovalski?"
"Wherever you like. I've no time now!" answered Pan Michael, and he rode on.
The flames were spreading rapidly. The wind was blowing from the fire and toward the squadron, and with the sound of bells brought the report of firearms.
"On a trot!" commanded Volodyovski.
CHAPTER XIX
When near the village, the Lauda men slackened their speed, and saw a broad street so lighted by flames that pins might be picked from the ground; for on both sides a number of cottages were burning, and others were catching fire from these gradually, for the wind was strong and carried sparks, nay, whole clusters of them, like fiery birds, to the adjoining roofs. On the street the flames illuminated greater and smaller crowds of people moving quickly in various directions. The cries of men were mingled with the sounds of the church-bells hidden among trees, with the bellowing of cattle, the barking of dogs, and with infrequent discharges of firearms.
After they had ridden nearer, Volodyovski's soldiers saw troopers wearing round hats, not many men. Some were skirmishing with groups of peasants, armed with scythes and forks; firing at them from pistols, and pushing them beyond the cottages, into the gardens; others were driving oxen, cows, and sheep to the road with rapiers; others, whom it was barely possible to distinguish among whole clouds of feathers, had covered themselves with poultry, with wings fluttering in the agonies of death; some were holding horses, each man having two or three belonging to officers who were occupied evidently in plundering the cottages.
The road to the village descended somewhat from a hill in the midst of a birch-grove; so that the Lauda men, without being seen themselves, saw, as it were, a picture representing the enemy's attack on the village, lighted up by flames, in the glare of which could be clearly distinguished foreign soldiers, villagers, women dragged by troopers, and men defending themselves in disordered groups. All were moving violently, like puppets on springs, shouting, cursing, lamenting.
The conflagration shook a full mane of flame over the village, and roared each moment more terribly.
Volodyovski led his men to the open gate, and ordered them to slacken their pace. He might strike, and with one blow wipe out the invaders, who were expecting nothing; but the little knight had determined "to taste the Swedes" in open battle, – he had so arranged that they might see him coming.
Some horsemen, standing near the gate, saw the approaching squadron first. One of them sprang to an officer, who stood with drawn rapier in the midst of a considerable group of horsemen, in the middle of the road, and began to speak to him, pointing to where Volodyovski was descending with his men. The officer shaded his eyes with his hand and gazed for a time; then he gave a sign, and at once the sharp sound of a trumpet was heard, mingled with various cries of men and beasts.
And here our knight could admire the regularity of the Swedish soldiers; for barely were the first tones of the trumpet heard, when some of the horsemen rushed out in hot haste from the cottages, others left the plundered articles, the oxen and sheep, and ran to their horses. In the twinkle of an eye they stood in regular line; at sight of which the little knight's heart rose with wonder, so select were the men. All were large, sturdy fellows, dressed in coats, with leather straps over the shoulders, and black hats with rim raised on the left side; all had matched bay horses, and stood in line with rapiers at their shoulders, looking sharply, but calmly, at the road.
An officer stepped forth from the line with a trumpeter, wishing apparently to inquire what sort of men were approaching so slowly. Evidently they were thought to be one of Radzivill's squadrons, from which no encounter was expected. The officer began to wave his rapier and his hat; the trumpeter sounded continually, as a sign that they wished to parley.
"Let some one fire at him," said the little knight, "so that he may know what to expect from us."
The report sounded; but the shot did not reach, for the distance was too great. Evidently the officer thought that there was some misunderstanding, for he began to shout and to wave his hat.
"Let him have it a second time!" cried Volodyovski.
After the second discharge the officer turned and moved, though not too hurriedly, toward his own, who also approached him on a trot.
The first rank of Lauda men were now entering the gate.
The Swedish officer, riding up, shouted to his men; the rapiers, hitherto standing upright by the shoulders of the horsemen, dropped and hung at their belts; but all at the same instant drew pistols from the holsters, and rested them on the pommels of their saddles, holding the muzzle upward.
"Finished soldiers!" muttered Volodyovski, seeing the rapidity of their movements, which were simultaneous and almost mechanical. Then he looked at his own men to see if the ranks were in order, straightened himself in the saddle, and cried, -
"Forward!"
The Lauda men bent down to the necks of their horses, and rushed on like a whirlwind.
The Swedes let them come near, and then gave a simultaneous discharge from their pistols; but this did little harm to the Lauda men hidden behind the heads of their horses; only a few dropped the reins and fell backward, the rest rushed on and struck the horsemen, breast to breast.
The Lithuanian light squadrons used lances yet, which in the army of the kingdom the hussars alone used; but Volodyovski expecting a battle at close quarters, had ordered his men to plant their lances at the roadside, therefore it came to sabres at once.
The first impetus was not sufficient to break the Swedes, but it pushed them back, so that they began to retreat, cutting and thrusting with their rapiers; but the Lauda men pushed them furiously along the road. Bodies began to fall thickly. The throng grew denser each moment; the clatter of sabres frightened the peasants out of the broad road, in which the heat from the burning houses was unendurable, though the houses were separated from the road and the fences by gardens.
The Swedes, pressed with increasing vigor, retreated gradually, but still in good order. It was difficult moreover to scatter them, since strong fences closed the road on both sides. At times they tried to stop, but were unable to do so.
It was a wonderful battle, in which, by reason of the relatively narrow place of meeting, only the first ranks fought, those next in order could only push forward those standing in front of them; but just for this reason the struggle was turned into a furious encounter.
Volodyovski, having previously requested the old colonels and Pan Yan to look after the men during the attack, enjoyed himself to the full in the first rank. And every moment some Swedish hat fell before him in the throng, as if it had dived into the ground; sometimes a rapier, torn from the hand of a horseman, flew whistling above the rank, and at the same instant was heard the piercing cry of a man, and again a hat fell; a second took its place, then a third the place of the second; but Volodyovski pushed ever forward. His eyes glittered like two ill-omened sparks, but he was not carried away and did not forget himself; at moments, when he had no one at sword's length in front of him, he turned his face and blade somewhat to the right or left, and destroyed in the twinkle of an eye a horseman, with a movement apparently trifling; and he was terrible through these slight and lightning movements which were almost not human.
As a woman pulling hemp disappears in it and is hidden completely, but by the falling stalks her road is known easily, so he vanished from the eye for a time in the throng of large men; but where soldiers were falling like stalks under the sickle of the harvester who cuts near the ground, there was Pan Michael. Pan Stanislav and the gloomy Yuzva Butrym, called Footless, followed hard in his track.
At length the Swedish rear ranks began to push out from between the fences to the broad grass-plot before the church and the bell-tower, and after them came the front ranks. Now was heard the command of the officer, who wished evidently to bring all his men into action at once; and the oblong rectangular body of horsemen stretched out, deployed in the twinkle of an eye, into a long line to present its whole front.
But Pan Yan, who directed the battle and led the squadron, did not imitate the Swede; he rushed forward with a dense column which, striking the now weaker line, broke it, as if with a wedge, and turned swiftly to the right toward the church, taking with this movement the rear of one half of the Swedes, while on the other half Mirski and Stankyevich sprang with the reserve in which were a part of the Lauda men and all of Kovalski's dragoons.
Two battles now began; but they did not last long. The left wing, on which Pan Yan had struck, was unable to form, and scattered first; the right, in which was the commanding officer, resisted longer, but being too much extended, it began to break, to fall into disorder, and at last followed the example of the left wing.
The grass-plot was broad, but unfortunately was enclosed on all sides by a lofty fence; and the church-servants closed and propped the opposite gate when they saw what was taking place.
The scattered Swedes then ran around, but the Lauda men rushed after them. In some places larger groups fought, a number at a time, with sabres and rapiers; in other places the conflict was turned into a series of duels, and man met man, the rapier crossed the sabre, and at times the report of a pistol burst forth. Here and there a Swedish horseman, escaping from one sabre, ran, as if to a trap, under another. Here and there a Swede or a Lithuanian rose from under a fallen horse and fell that moment under the blow of a weapon awaiting him.
Through the grass-plot terrified horses rushed about riderless, with waving mane and nostrils distended from fear; some bit one another; others, blinded from fright, turned their tails to the groups of fighting men and kicked them.
Pan Volodyovski, hurling down Swedes as he went, searched the whole place with his eyes for the officer in command; at last he saw him defending himself against two Butryms, and he sprang toward him.
"Aside!" cried he to the Butryms, "aside!"
The obedient soldiers sprang aside, the little knight rushed on and closed with the Swede, the horses of the two stood on their haunches.
The officer wished evidently to unhorse his opponent with a thrust; but Volodyovski, interposing the hilt of his sabre, described a half-circle like lightning, and the rapier flew away. The officer bent to his holsters, but, cut through the cheek at that moment, he dropped the reins from his left hand.
"Take him alive!" shouted Volodyovski to the Butryms.
The Lauda men seized the wounded officer and held him tottering in the saddle; the little knight pushed on and rode farther against the Swedes, quenching them before him like candles.
But the Swedes began to yield everywhere before the nobles, who were more adroit in fencing and single combat. Some of the Swedes, seizing their rapier blades, extended the hilts to their opponents; others threw their weapons at their feet; the word "Pardon!" was heard more and more frequently on the field. But no attention was paid to the word, for Pan Michael had commanded to spare but few. The Swedes, seeing this, rushed anew to the struggle, and died as became soldiers after a desperate defence, redeeming richly with blood their own death.
An hour later the last of them were cut down. The peasants ran in crowds from the village to the grass-plot to catch the horses, kill the wounded, and plunder the dead.
Such was the end of the first encounter of Lithuanians with Swedes.
Meanwhile Zagloba, stationed at a distance in the birch-grove with the wagon in which lay Pan Roh, was forced to hear the bitter reproach that, though a relative, he had treated that young man shamefully.
"Uncle, you have ruined me utterly, for not only is a bullet in the head waiting for me at Kyedani, but eternal infamy will fall on my name. Henceforth whoso wants to say, 'Fool,' may say, 'Roh Kovalski!'"
"The truth is that not many will be found to contradict him," answered Zagloba; "and the best proof of your folly is that you wonder at being hung on a hook by me who moved the Khan of the Crimea as a puppet. Well, did you think to yourself, worthless fellow, that I would let you take me and other men of importance to Birji, and throw us, the ornaments of the Commonwealth, into the jaws of the Swedes?"
"I was not taking you of my own will."
"But you were the servant of an executioner, and that for a noble is infamy from which you must purify yourself, or I will renounce you and all the Kovalskis. To be a traitor is worse than to be a crabmonger, but to be the servant of some one worse than a crabmonger is the lowest thing."
"I was serving the hetman."
"And the hetman the devil. There you have it! You are a fool, Roh: get that into your head once and forever, dispute not, but hold to my skirts, and a man will come of you yet; for know this, that advancement has met more than one personage through me."
The rattle of shots interrupted further conversation, for the battle was just beginning in the village. Then the discharges stopped, but the noise continued, and shouts reached that retreat in the birch-grove.
"Ah, Pan Michael is working," said Zagloba. "He is not big, but he bites like a viper. They are shelling out those devils from over the sea like peas. I would rather be there than here, and through you I must listen here. Is this your gratitude? Is this the act of a respectable relative?"
"What have I to be grateful for?" asked Roh.
"For this, that a traitor is not ploughing with you, as with an ox, – though you are grandly fitted for ploughing, since you are stupid and strong. Understand me? Ai! it is getting hotter and hotter there. Do you hear? That must be the Swedes who are bawling like calves in a pasture."
Here Zagloba became serious, for he was a little disturbed; on a sudden he asked, looking quickly into Pan Roh's eyes, -
"To whom do you wish victory?"
"To ours, of course."
"See that! And why not to the Swedes?"
"I would rather pound them. Who are ours, are ours!"
"Conscience is waking up in you. But how could you take your own blood to the Swedes?"
"For I had an order."
"But now you have no order?"
"True."
"Your superior is now Pan Volodyovski, no one else."
"Well, that seems to be true."
"You must do what Pan Volodyovski commands."
"I must."
"He commands you now to renounce Radzivill future, and not to serve him, but the country."
"How is that?" asked Pan Roh, scratching his head.
"A command!" cried Zagloba.
"I obey!" said Kovalski.
"That is right! At the first chance you will thrash the Swedes."
"If it is the order, it is the order!" answered Kovalski, and breathed deeply, as if a great burden had fallen from his breast.
Zagloba was equally well satisfied, for he had his own views concerning Kovalski. They began then to listen in harmony to the sounds of the battle which came to them, and listened about an hour longer, until all was silent.
Zagloba was more and more alarmed. "If they have not succeeded?" asked he.
"Uncle, you an old warrior and can say such things! If they were beaten they would come back to us in small groups."
"True! I see thy wit will be of service."
"Do you hear the tramp, Uncle? They are riding slowly. They must have cut the Swedes to pieces."
"Oi, if they are only ours! Shall I go forward, or not?"
Saying this, Zagloba dropped his sabre at his side, took his pistol in his hand, and moved forward. Soon he saw before him a dark mass moving slowly along the road; at the same time noise of conversation reached him.
In front rode a number of men talking with one another loudly; soon the well-known voice of Pan Michael struck the ear of Zagloba. "They are good men! I don't know what kind of infantry they have, but the cavalry is perfect."
Zagloba touched his horse with the spurs. "Ah! how is it, how is it? Oh, impatience was tearing me, I wanted to fly into the fire! But is no one wounded?"
"All are sound, praise to God; but we have lost more than twenty good soldiers."
"And the Swedes?"
"We laid them down like a pavement."
"Pan Michael, you must have enjoyed yourself as a dog in a spring. But was it a decent thing to leave me, an old man, on guard? The soul came near going out of me, so much did I want Swedish meat. Oh, I should have gnawed them!"
"You may have a roast now if you like, for a number of them are in the fire."
"Let the dogs eat them. And were prisoners taken?"
"A captain, and seven soldiers."
"What do you think to do with them?"
"I would have them hanged, for like robbers they fell on an innocent village and were killing the people. Yan says, however, that that will not do."
"Listen to me, gentlemen, hear what has come to my head just now: there is no good in hanging them; on the contrary, let them go to Birji as soon as possible."
"What for?"
"You know me as a soldier, know me now as a statesman. We will let the Swedes go, but we will not tell them who we are. We will say that we are Radzivill's men, that we have cut off this detachment at command of the hetman, and in future will cut off whom we meet, for the hetman only pretended, through strategy, to join the Swedes. They will break their heads over this, and thus we will undermine the hetman's credit terribly. Just think, this hits the Swedes and hits Radzivill too. Kyedani is far from Birji, and Radzivill is still farther from Pontus de la Gardie. Before they explain to each other what has happened and how, they will be ready to fight. We will set the traitor against the invaders; and who will gain by this, if not the Commonwealth?"
"This is excellent counsel, and quite worth the victory. May the bullets strike him!" said Stankyevich.
"You have the mind of a chancellor," added Mirski, "for this will disturb their plans."
"Surely we should act thus," said Pan Michael. "I will set them free to-morrow; but to-day I do not wish to know of anything, for I am dreadfully wearied. It was as hot in the village as in an oven! Uf! my arms are paralyzed completely. The officer could not go to-day in any case, for his face is cut."
"But in what language shall we tell them all this? What is your counsel, father?" asked Pan Yan.
"I have been thinking of that too," answered Zagloba. "Kovalski told me that there are two Prussians among his dragoons who know how to jabber German, and are sharp fellows. Let them tell in German, – which the Swedes know of course, after fighting so many years in Germany. Kovalski is ours, soul and body. He is a man in a hundred, and we will have no small profit from him."
"Well done!" said Volodyovski. "Will some of you, gentlemen, be so kind as to see to this, for I have no voice in my throat from weariness? I have told the men that we shall stay in this grove till morning. The villagers will bring us food, and now to sleep! My lieutenant will see to the watch. 'Pon my word, I cannot see you, for my eyes are closing."
"Gentlemen," said Zagloba, "there is a stack of hay just outside the birches; let us go to the stack, we shall sleep like susliks, and to the road on the morrow. We shall not come back to this country, unless with Pan Sapyeha against Radzivill."