“Another enemy, as if there were few of them hitherto!” cried Kmita; and he folded his hands. “Great God! only let Pan Sapyeha send me for a week to Prussia, and God the Merciful grant that ten generations will remember me and my Tartars.”
“Perhaps you will go there,” said Pan Michael; “but first you must defeat Boguslav, for as a result of that treason of the elector is he furnished with men and permitted to go to Podlyasye.”
“Then we shall meet, as today is today; as God is in heaven, so shall we meet,” cried Kmita, with flashing eyes. “If you had brought me the appointment of voevoda of Vilna, it would not have given me more pleasure.”
“The king too cried at once: ‘There is an expedition ready for Yendrek, from which the soul will rejoice in him.’ He wanted to send his servant after you, but I said I will go myself, I will take farewell of him once more.”
Kmita bent on his horse, and seized the little knight in his embrace.
“A brother would not have done for me what you have done! God grant me to thank you in some way.”
“Tfu! Did not I want to shoot you?”
“I deserved nothing better. Never mind! May I be slain in the first battle if in all knighthood I love a man more than I love you.”
Then they began to embrace again at parting, and Volodyovski said—
“Be careful with Boguslav, be careful, for it is no easy matter with him.”
“For one of us death is written. Ei! if you who are a genius at the sabre could discover your secrets to me. But there is no time. As it is, may the angels help me; and I will see his blood, or my eyes will close forever on the light of day.”
“God aid you! A lucky journey, and give angelica to those traitors of Prussians!” said Volodyovski.
“Be sure on that point. The disgusting Lutherans!”
Here Volodyovski nodded to Jendzian, who during this time was talking to Akbah Ulan, explaining the former successes of Kmita over Hovanski. And both rode back to Lvoff.
Then Kmita turned his chambul on the spot, as a driver turns his wagon, and went straight toward the north.
LXI
Though the Tartars, and especially those of the Dobrudja, knew how to stand breast to breast against armed men in the field, their most cherished warfare was the slaughter of defenceless people, the seizing of women and peasants captive, and above all, plunder. The road was very bitter therefore to that chambul which Kmita led, for under his iron hand these wild warriors had to become lambs, keep their knives in the sheaths, and the quenched tinder and coiled ropes in their saddlebags. They murmured at first.
Near Tarnogrod a few remained behind of purpose to let free the “red birds” in Hmyelevsk and to frolic with the women. But Kmita, who had pushed on toward Tomashov, returned at sight of the first gleam of fire, and commanded the guilty to hang the guilty. And he had gained such control of Akbah Ulan, that the old Tartar not only did not resist, but he urged the condemned to hang quickly, or the “bogadyr” would be angry. Thenceforth “the lambs” marched quietly, crowding more closely together through the villages and towns, lest suspicion might fall on them. And the execution, though Kmita carried it out so severely, did not rouse even ill will or hatred against him; such fortune had that fighter that his subordinates felt just as much love for him as they did fear.
It is true that Pan Andrei permitted no one to wrong them. The country had been terribly ravaged by the recent attack of Hmelnitski and Sheremetyeff; therefore it was as difficult to find provisions and pasture as before harvest, and besides, everything had to be in time and in plenty; in Krinitsi, where the townspeople offered resistance and would not furnish supplies, Pan Andrei ordered that some of them be beaten with sticks, and the under-starosta he stretched out with the blow of a whirlbat.
This delighted the horde immensely, and hearing with pleasure the uproar of the beaten people, they said among themselves—
“Ei! our Babinich is a falcon; he lets no man offend his lambs.”
It is enough that not only did they not grow thin, but the men and horses improved in condition. Old Ulan, whose stomach had expanded, looked with growing wonder on the young hero and clicked with his tongue.
“If Allah were to give me a son, I should like such a one. I should not die of hunger in my old age in the Ulus,” repeated he.
But Kmita from time to time struck him on the stomach and said—
“Here listen, wild boar! If the Swedes do not open your paunch, you will hide the contents of all cupboards inside it.”
“Where are the Swedes? Our ropes will rot, our bows will be mildewed,” answered Ulan, who was homesick for war.
They were advancing indeed through a country to which a Swedish foot had not been able to come, but farther they would pass through one in which there had been garrisons afterward driven out by confederates. They met everywhere smaller and larger bands of armed nobles, marching in various directions, and not smaller bands of peasants, who more than once stopped the road to them threateningly, and to whom it was often difficult to explain that they had to do with friends and servants of the King of Poland.
They came at last to Zamost. The Tartars were amazed at sight of this mighty fortress; but what did they think when told that not
