“There will be rain tomorrow,” said Azya.
“If not today. How far is it to Rashkoff?”
Azya looked at the nearest place, barely visibly through the fog, and said—
“From that point it is nearer to Rashkoff than to Yampol.” And he breathed deeply, as if a great weight had fallen from his breast.
At that moment the tramp of a horse was heard from the direction of the cavalry, and some horseman was seen indistinctly in the fog.
“Halim! I know him,” cried Azya.
Indeed, it was Halim, who, when he had rushed up to Azya and Basia, sprang from his horse and began to beat with his forehead toward the stirrup of the young Tartar.
“From Rashkoff?” inquired Azya.
“From Rashkoff, my lord,” answered Halim.
“What is to be heard there?”
The old man raised toward Basia his ugly head, emaciated from unheard-of toils, as if wishing to inquire whether he might speak in her presence; but Tugai Bey’s son said at once—
“Speak boldly. Have the troops gone out?”
“They have. A handful remained.”
“Who led them?”
“Pan Novoveski.”
“Have the Pyotroviches gone to the Crimea?”
“Long ago. Only two women remained, and old Pan Novoveski with them.”
“Where is Krychinski?”
“On the other bank of the river; he is waiting.”
“Who is with him?”
“Adurovich with his company; both beat with the forehead to thy stirrup, O son of Tugai Bey, and give themselves under thy hand—they, and all those who have not come yet.”
“ ’Tis well!” said Azya, with fire in his eyes. “Fly to Krychinski at once, and give the command to occupy Rashkoff.”
“Thy will, lord.”
Halim sprang on his horse in a moment, and vanished like a phantom in the fog. A terrible, ominous gleam issued from the face of Azya. The decisive moment had come—the moment waited for, the moment of greatest happiness for him; but his heart was beating as if breath were failing him. He rode for a time in silence near Basia; and only when he felt that his voice would not deceive him did he turn toward her his eyes, inscrutable but bright, and say—
“Now I will speak to your grace with sincerity.”
“I listen,” said Basia, scanning him carefully, as if she wished to read his changed countenance.
XXXIX
Azya urged his horse up so closely to Basia’s pony that his stirrup almost touched hers. He rode forward a few steps in silence; during this time he strove to calm himself finally, and wondered why calmness came to him with such effort, since he had Basia in his hands, and there was no human power which could take her from him. But he did not know that in his soul, despite every probability, despite every evidence, there glimmered a certain spark of hope that the woman whom he desired would answer with a feeling like his own. If that hope was weak, the desire for its object was so strong that it shook him as a fever. The woman would not open her arms, would not cast herself into his embrace, would not say those words over which he had dreamed whole nights: “Azya, I am thine;” she would not hang with her lips on his lips—he knew this. But how would she receive his words? What would she say? Would she lose all feeling, like a dove in the claws of a bird of prey, and let him take her, just as the hapless dove yields itself to the hawk? Would she beg for mercy tearfully, or would she fill that wilderness with a cry of terror? Would there be something more, or something less, of all this? Such questions were storming in the head of the Tartar. But in every case the hour had come to cast aside feigning, pretences, and show her a truthful, a terrible face. Here was his fear, here his alarm. One moment more, and all would be accomplished.
Finally this mental alarm became in the Tartar that which alarm becomes most frequently in a wild beast—rage; and he began to rouse himself with that rage. “Whatever happens,” thought he, “she is mine, she is mine altogether; she will be mine tomorrow, and then will not return to her husband, but will follow me.”
At this thought wild delight seized him by the hair, and he said all at once in a voice which seemed strange to himself, “Your grace has not known me till now.”
“In this fog your voice has so changed,” answered Basia, somewhat alarmed, “that it seems to me really as if another were speaking.”
“In Mohiloff there are no troops, in Yampol none, in Rashkoff none. I alone am lord here—Krychinski, Adurovich, and those others are my slaves; for I am a prince, I am the son of a ruler. I am their vizir, I am their highest murza; I am their leader, as Tugai Bey was; I am their khan; I alone have authority; all here is in my power.”
“Why do you say this to me?”
“Your grace has not known me hitherto. Rashkoff is not far away. I wished to become hetman of the Tartars and serve the Commonwealth; but Sobieski would not permit it. I am not to be a Lithuanian Tartar any longer; I am not to serve under any man’s command, but to lead great chambuls myself, against Doroshenko, or the Commonwealth,
