No one thought of searching for Tugai Bey’s son; therefore he
lay on the ground until he recovered consciousness. When he had
come to his senses, he sat upright, and wishing to know what was
happening to him, began to look around. But he saw the place as if
in darkness; then he discovered that he was looking with only one
eye, and badly with that one. The other was either knocked out, or
filled with blood.
Azya raised his hands to his face. His fingers found icicles of
blood stiff on his mustaches; his mouth too was full of blood which
was suffocating him so that he had to cough and spit it out a
number of times; a terrible pain pierced his face at this spitting;
he put his fingers above his mustaches, but snatched them away with
a groan of suffering.
Basia’s blow had crushed the upper part of his nose, and injured
his cheek-bone. He sat for a time without motion; then he began to
look around with that eye in which some sight remained, and seeing
a streak of snow in a cleft he crept up to it, seized a handful and
applied it to his broken face.
This brought great relief straightway; and while the melting
snow flowed down in red streaks over his mustaches, he collected
another handful and applied it again. Besides, he began to eat snow
eagerly, and that also brought relief to him. After a time the
immense weight which he felt on his head became so much lighter
that he called to mind all that had happened. But at the first
moment he felt neither rage, anger, nor despair; bodily pain had
deadened all other feelings, and left but one wish,--the wish to
save himself quickly.
Azya, when he had eaten a number of handfuls more of snow, began
to look for his horse; the horse was not there; then he understood
that if he did not wish to wait till his men came to look for him,
he must go on foot. Supporting himself on the ground with his
hands, he tried to rise, but howled from pain and sat down again.
He sat perhaps an hour, and again began to make efforts. This time
he succeeded in so far that he rose, and, resting his shoulders
against the cliff, was able to remain on his feet; but when he
remembered that he must leave the support and make one step, then a
second and a third in the empty expanse, a feeling of weakness and
fear seized him so firmly that he almost sat down again.
Still he mastered himself, drew his sabre, leaned on it, and pushed
forward; he succeeded. After some steps he felt that his body and
feet were strong, that he had perfect command of them, only his
head was, as it were, not his own, and like an enormous weight was
swaying now to the right, now to the left, now to the front. He
had a feeling also as if he were carrying that head, shaky and too
heavy, with extraordinary care, and with extraordinary fear that he
would drop it on the stones and break it.
At times, too, the head turned him around, as if it wished him to
go in a circle. At times it became dark in his one eye; then he
supported himself with both hands on the sabre. The dizziness of
his head passed away gradually; but the pain increased always,
and bored, as it were, into his forehead, into his eyes, into his
whole head, till whining was forced from his breast. The echoes of
the rocks repeated his groans, and he went forward in that desert,
bloody, terrible, more like a vampire than a man.
It was growing dark when he heard the tramp of a horse in front.
It was the orderly coming for commands.
That evening Azya had strength to order pursuit; but immediately
after he lay down on skins, and for three days could see no one
except the Greek barber[25] who dressed his wounds, and Halim,
who assisted the barber. Only on the fourth day did he regain his
speech, and with it consciousness of what had happened.
Straightway his feverish thoughts followed Basia. He saw her
fleeing among rocks and in wild places; she seemed to him a bird
that was flying away forever; he saw her nearing Hreptyoff, saw
her in the arms of her husband, and at that sight a pain carried
him away which was more savage than his wound, and with the pain
sorrow, and with the sorrow shame for the defeat which he had
suffered.
“She has fled, she has fled!” repeated he, continually; and rage
stifled him so that at times presence of mind seemed to be leaving
him again.
“Woe!” answered he, when Halim tried to pacify him, and give
assurance that Basia could not escape pursuit; and he kicked the
skins with which the old Tartar had covered him, and with his
knife threatened him and the Greek. He howled like a wild beast,
and tried to spring up, wishing to fly himself to overtake her, to
seize her, and then from anger and wild love stifle her with his
own hands.
At times he was wandering in delirium, and summoned Halim to
bring the head of the little knight quickly, and to confine the
commandant’s wife, bound, there in that chamber. At times he talked
to her, begged, threatened; then he stretched out his hands to
draw her to him. At last he fell into a deep sleep, and slept for
twenty-four hours; when he woke the fever had left him entirely,
and he was able to see Krychinski and Adurovich.
They were anxious, for they knew not what to do. The troops which
had gone out under young Novoveski were not to return, it is true,
before two weeks; but some unexpected event might hasten their
coming, and then it was necessary to know what position to take.
It is true that Krychinski and Adurovich were simply feigning a
return to the service of the Commonwealth; but Azya was managing
the whole affair: he alone could give them directions what to
do in emergency; he alone could explain on which side was the
greatest profit, whether to return to the dominions of the Sultan
or to pretend, or how long to pretend, that they were serving the
Commonwealth. They both knew well that in the end of ends Azya
intended to betray the Commonwealth; but they supposed that he
might command them to wait for the war before disclosing their
treason, so as to betray most effectively. His indications were
to be a command for them; for he had put himself on them as a
leader, as the head of the whole affair, the most crafty, the most
influential, and, besides, renowned among all the hordes as the son
of Tugai Bey.
They came hurriedly, therefore, to his bed, and bowed before him.
With a bandaged face and only one eye, he was still weak, but his
health was restored.
“I am sick,” began he, at once. “The woman that I wished to take
with me tore herself out of my hands, after wounding me with the
butt of a pistol. She was the wife of Volodyovski, the commandant;
may pestilence fall on him and all his race!”
“May it be as thou hast said!” answered the two captains.
“May God grant you, faithful men, happiness and success!”
“And to thee also, oh, lord!” answered the captains. Then they
began to speak of what they ought to do.
“It is impossible to delay, or to defer the Sultan’s service
till war begins,” said Azya; “after what has happened with this
woman they will not trust us, and will attack us with sabres.
But before they attack, we will fall upon this place and burn
it, for the glory of God. The handful of soldiers we will seize;
the townspeople, who are subjects of the Commonwealth, we will
take captive, divide the goods of the Wallachians, Armenians, and
Greeks, and go beyond the Dniester to the land of the Sultan.”
Krychinski and Adurovich had lived as nomads among the wildest
hordes for a long time, had robbed with them, and grown wild
altogether; their eyes lighted up therefore.
“Thanks to you,” said Krychinski, “we were admitted to this place,
which God now gives to us.”
“Did Novoveski make no opposition?” asked Azya.
“Novoveski knew that we were passing over to the Commonwealth, and
knew that you were coming to meet us; he looks on us as his men,
because he looked on you as his man.”
“We remained on the Moldavian bank,” put in Adurovich; “but
Krychinski and I went as guests to him. He received us as nobles,
for he said: ‘By your present acts you extinguish former offence;
and since the hetman forgives you on Azya’s security, ’tis not
proper for me to look askance at you.’ He even wished us to enter
the town; but we said: ‘We will not till Azya, Tugai Bey’s son,
brings the hetman’s permission.’ But when he was going away he gave
us another feast, and begged us to watch over the town.”
“At that feast,” added Krychinski, “we saw his father, and the old
woman who is searching for her captive husband, and that young lady
whom Novoveski intends to marry.”
“Ah!” said Azya, “I did not think that they were all here, and I
brought Panna Novoveski.”
He clapped his hands; Halim appeared at once, and Azya said to him:
“When my men see the flames in the place, let them fall on those
soldiers in the fortalice, and cut their throats; let them bind the
women and the old noble, and guard them till I give the order.”
He turned to Krychinski and Adurovich,--
“I will not assist myself, for I am weak; still, I will mount my
horse and look on. But, dear comrades, begin, begin!”
Krychinski and Adurovich rushed through the doorway at once. Azya
went out after them, and gave command to lead a horse to him; then
he rode to the stockade to look from the gate of the high fortalice
on what would happen in the town.
Many of his men had begun to climb the wall to look through the
stockade and sate their eyes with the sight of the slaughter. Those
of Novoveski’s soldiers who had not gone to the steppe, seeing the
Lithuanian Tartars assembling, and thinking there was something to
look at in the town, mixed with them without a shadow of fear or
suspicion. Moreover, there were barely twenty of those soldiers;
the rest were dispersed in the dram-shops.
Meanwhile the bands of Krychinski and Adurovich scattered through
the place in the twinkle of an eye. The men in those bands were
almost exclusively Lithuanian Tartars and Cheremis, therefore
former inhabitants of the Commonwealth, for the greater part
nobles; but since they had left its borders long before, during
that time of wandering they had become much like wild Tartars.
Their former clothing had gone to pieces, and they were dressed in
sheepskin coats with the wool outside. These coats they wore next
to their bodies, which were embrowned from the winds of the steppe
and from the smoke of fires; but their weapons were better than
those of wild Tartars,--all had sabres, all had bows seasoned in
fire, and many had muskets. Their faces expressed the same cruelty
and thirst for blood as those of their Dobrudja, Belgrod, or
Crimean brethren.
Now scattering through the town, they began to run about in various
directions, shouting shrilly, as if wishing by those shouts to
encourage one another, and excite one another to slaughter and
plunder. But though many of them had put knives in their mouths in
Tartar fashion, the people of the place, composed as in Yampol of
Wallachians, Armenians, Greeks, and partly of Tartar merchants,
looked on them without any distrust. The shops were open; the
merchants, sitting in front of their shops in Turkish fashion on
benches, slipped their beads through their fingers. The cries of
the Lithuanian Tartars merely caused men to look at them with
curiosity, thinking that they were playing some game.
But all at once smoke rose from the corners of the market square,
and from the mouth of all the Tartars came a howling so terrible
that pale fear seized the Wallachians, Armenians, and Greeks, and
all their wives and children.
Straightway a shower of arrows rained on the peaceful inhabitants.
Their cries, the noise of doors and windows closed in a hurry, were
mingled with the tramp of horses and the howling of the plunderers.
The market was covered with smoke. Cries of “Woe, woe!” were
raised. At the same time the Tartars fell to breaking open shops
and houses, dragging out terrified women by the hair; hurling
into the street furniture, morocco, merchandise, beds from which
feathers went up in a cloud; the groans of slaughtered men were
heard, lamentation, the howling of dogs, the bellowing of cattle
caught by fire in rear buildings; red tongues of flame, visible
even in the daytime on the black rolls of smoke, were shooting
higher and higher toward the sky.
In the fortalice Azya’s cavalry-men hurled themselves at the very
beginning on the infantry, who were defenceless for the greater
part.
There was no struggle whatever; a number of knives were buried
in each Polish breast without warning; then the heads of the
unfortunates were cut off and borne to the hoofs of Azya’s horse.
Tugai Bey’s son permitted most of his men to join their brethren in
the bloody work; but he himself stood and looked on.
Smoke hid the work of Krychinski and Adurovich; the odor of burnt
flesh rose to the fortalice. The town was burning like a great
pile, and smoke covered the view; only at times in the smoke was
heard the report of a musket, like thunder in a cloud, or a fleeing
man was seen, or a crowd of Tartars pursuing.
Azya stood still and looked on with delight in his heart; a stern
smile parted his lips, under which the white teeth were gleaming:
this smile was the more savage because it was mingled with pain
from the drying wounds. Besides delight, pride, too, rose in the
heart of Azya. He had cast from his breast that burden of feigning,
and for the first time he gave rein to his hatred, concealed for
long years; now he felt that he was himself, felt that he was the
real Azya, the son of Tugai Bey. But at the same time there rose
in him a savage regret that Basia was not looking at that fire, at
that slaughter; that she could not see him in his new occupation.
He loved her, but a wild desire for revenge on her was tearing him.
“She ought to be standing right here by my horse,” thought he, “and
I would hold her by the hair; she would grasp at my feet, and then
I would seize her and kiss her on the mouth, and she would be mine,
mine!--my slave!”
Only the hope that perhaps that detachment sent in pursuit, or
those which he left on the road, would bring her back, restrained
him from despair. He clung to that hope as a drowning man to a
plank, and that gave him strength; he could not think of losing
her, for he was thinking too much of the moment in which he would
find her and take her.
He remained at the gate till the slaughtered town had grown still.
Stillness came soon, for the bands of Krychinski and Adurovich
numbered almost as many heads as the town; therefore the burning
outlasted the groans of men and roared on till evening. Azya
dismounted and went with slow steps to a spacious room in the
middle of which sheepskins were spread; on these he sat and awaited
the coming of the two captains.
They came soon, and with them the sotniks. Delight was on the faces
of all, for the booty had surpassed expectation; the town had grown
much since the time of the peasant incursion, and was wealthy. They
had taken about a hundred young women, and a crowd of children of
ten years old and upward; these could be sold with profit in the
markets of the East. Old women, and children too small and unfit
for the road, were slaughtered. The hands of the Tartars were
streaming with human blood, and their sheepskin coats had the odor
of burning flesh. All took their seats around Azya.
“Only a pile of glowing embers behind us,” said Krychinski. “Before
the command returns we might go to Yampol; there is as much wealth
of every kind there as in Rashkoff,--perhaps more.”
“No,” answered Azya, “men of mine are in Yampol who will burn the
place; but it is time for us to go to the lands of the Khan and the
Sultan.”
“At thy command! We will return with glory and booty,” said the
captains and the sergeants.
“There are still women here in the fortalice, and that noble who
reared me,” said Azya. “A just reward belongs to them.”
He clapped his hands and gave command to bring the prisoners.
They were brought without delay,--Pani Boski in tears; Zosia, pale
as a kerchief; Eva and her father. Old Pan Novoveski’s hands and
feet were bound with ropes. All were terrified, but still more
astonished at what had taken place. Eva was lost in conjectures as
to what had become of Pani Volodyovski, and wondered why Azya had
not shown himself. She, not knowing why there was slaughter in the
town, nor why she and her friends were bound as captives, concluded
that it was a question of carrying her away; that Azya, not wishing
in his pride to beg her hand of her father, had fallen into a rage
simply out of love for her, and had determined to take her by
violence. This was all terrible in itself; but Eva, at least, was
not trembling for her own life.
The prisoners did not recognize Azya, for his face was nearly
concealed; but all the more did terror seize the knees of the women
at the first moment, for they judged that wild Tartars had in some
incomprehensible manner destroyed the Lithuanian Tartars and gained
possession of Rashkoff. But the sight of Krychinski and Adurovich
convinced them that they were still in the hands of Lithuanian
Tartars.
They looked at one another some time in silence; at last old Pan
Novoveski asked, with an uncertain but powerful voice,--
“In whose hands are we?”
Azya began to unwind the bandages from his head, and from beneath
them his face soon appeared, beautiful on a time, though wild,
deformed now forever, with a broken nose and a black-and-blue spot
instead of an eye,--a face dreadful, collected in cold vengeance
and with a smile like convulsive contortions. He was silent for a
moment, then fixed his burning eye on the old man and said,--
“In mine,--in the hands of Tugai Bey’s son.”
But old Novoveski knew him before he spoke; and Eva also knew him,
though the heart was straitened in her from terror and disgust at
sight of that ghastly visage. The maiden covered her eyes with her
unbound hands; and the noble, opening his mouth, began to blink
with astonishment and repeat,--
“Azya! Azya!”
“Whom your lordship reared, to whom you were a father, and whose
back streamed with blood under your parental hand.”
Blood rushed to the noble’s head.
“Traitor,” said he, “you shall answer for your deeds before a
judge. Serpent! I have a son yet.”
“And you have a daughter,” answered Azya, “for whose sake you gave
command to flog me to death; and this daughter I will give now to
the last of the horde, so that he may have service and pleasure
from her.”
“Leader, give her to me!” cried Adurovich, on a sudden.
“Azya! Azya!” cried Eva, throwing herself at his feet, “I have
always--”
But he kicked her away with one foot, and Adurovich seized her by
the arms and began to drag her along the floor. Pan Novoveski from
purple became blue; the ropes squeaked on his arms, as he twisted
them, and from his mouth came unintelligible words. Azya rose from
the skins and went toward him, at first slowly, then more quickly,
like a wild beast preparing to bound on its prey. At last he came
near, seized with the contorted fingers of one hand the mustaches
of old Novoveski, and with the other fell to beating him without
mercy on face and head.
A hoarse bellow was rent from his throat when the noble fell to the
floor; Azya knelt on Novoveski’s breast, and suddenly the bright
gleam of a knife shone in the room.
“Mercy! rescue!” screamed Eva. But Adurovich struck her on the
head, and then put his broad hand on her mouth; meanwhile Azya was
cutting the throat of Pan Novoveski.
The spectacle was so ghastly that it chilled even the breasts of
the Tartars; for Azya, with calculated cruelty, drew his knife
slowly across the neck of the ill-fated noble, who gasped and
choked awfully. From his open veins the blood spurted more and
more violently on the hands of the murderer and flowed in a stream
along the floor. Then the rattling and gurgling ceased by degrees;
finally air was wheezing in the severed throat, and the feet of the
dying man dug the floor in convulsive quivers.
Azya rose; his eyes fell now on the pale and sweet face of Zosia
Boski, who seemed dead, for she was hanging senseless on the arm of
a Tartar who was holding her, and he said,--
“I will keep this girl for myself, till I give her away or sell
her.”
Then he turned to the Tartars: “Now only let the pursuit return,
and we will go to the lands of the Sultan.”
The pursuit returned two days later, but with empty hands. Tugai
Bey’s son went, therefore, to the land of the Sultan with despair
and rage in his heart, leaving behind him a gray and bluish pile of
ruins.