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;
