Fire in the Steppe

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

  "We'll play an evening kindya for you, dog brothers," cried many voices.

  Suddenly something wonderful took place. All the Turkish guns ceased at once, as if some one had cut them off with a knife. At the same time, the musketry fire of the janissaries ceased in the new castle. The old castle thundered for a time yet; but at last the officers began to look at one another, and inquire,—

  "What is this? What has happened?"

  Ketling, alarmed somewhat, ceased firing also.

  "Maybe there is a mine under us which will be exploded right away," said one of the officers.

  Volodyovski pierced the man with a threatening glance, and said, "The mine is not ready; and even if it were, only the left side of the castle could be blown up by it, and we will defend ourselves in the ruins while there is breath in our nostrils. Do you understand?"

  Silence followed, unbroken by a shot from the trenches or the town. After thunders from which the walls and the earth had been quivering, there was something solemn in that silence, but something ominous also. The eyes of each were intent on the trenches; but through the clouds of smoke nothing was visible. Suddenly the measured blows of hammers were heard on the left side.

  "I told you that they are only making the mine," said Pan Michael. "Sergeant, take twenty men and examine for me the new castle," commanded he, turning to Lusnia.

  Lusnia obeyed quickly, took twenty men, and vanished in a moment beyond the breach. Silence followed again, broken only by groans here and there, or the gasp of the dying, and the pounding of hammers. They waited rather long. At last the sergeant returned.

  "Pan Commandant," said he, "there is not a living soul in the new castle."

  Volodyovski looked with astonishment at Ketling. "Have they raised the siege already, or what? Nothing can be seen through the smoke."

  But the smoke, blown by the wind, became thin, and at last its veil was broken above the town. At the same moment a voice, shrill and terrible, began to shout from the bastion,—

  "Over the gates are white flags! We are surrendering!"

  Hearing this, the soldiers and officers turned toward the town. Terrible amazement was reflected on their faces; the words died on the lips of all; and through the strips of smoke they were gazing toward the town. But in the town, on the Russian and Polish gates, white flags were really waving. Farther on, they saw one on the bastion of Batory.

  The face of the little knight became as white as those flags waving in the wind.

  "Ketling, do you see?" whispered he, turning to his friend.

  Ketling's face was pale also. "I see," replied he.

  And they looked into each other's eyes for some time, uttering with them everything which two soldiers like them, without fear or reproach, had to say,—soldiers who never in life had broken their word, and who had sworn before the altar to die rather than surrender the castle. And now, after such a defence, after a struggle which recalled the days of Zbaraj, after a storm which had been repulsed, and after a victory, they were commanded to break their oath, to surrender the castle, and live.

  As, not long before, hostile balls were flying over the castle, so now hostile thoughts were flying in a throng through their heads. And sorrow simply measureless pressed their hearts,—sorrow for two loved ones, sorrow for life and happiness; hence they looked at each other as if demented, as if dead, and at times they turned glances full of despair toward the town, as if wishing to be sure that their eyes were not deceiving them,—to be sure that the last hour had struck.

  At that time horses' hoofs sounded from the direction of the town; and after a while Horaim, the attendant of the starosta, rushed up to them.

  "An order to the commandant!" cried he, reining in his horse.

  Volodyovski took the order, read it in silence, and after a time, amid silence as of the grave, said to the officers,—

  "Gracious gentlemen, commissioners have crossed the river in a boat, and have gone to Dlujek to sign conditions. After a time they will come here. Before evening we must withdraw the troops from the castle, and raise a white flag without delay."

  No one answered a word. Nothing was heard but quick breathing.

  At last Kvasibrotski said, "We must raise the white flag. I will muster the men."

  Here and there the words of command were heard. The soldiers began to take their places in ranks, and shoulder arms. The clatter of muskets and the measured tread roused echoes in the silent castle.

  Ketling pushed up to Pan Michael. "Is it time?" inquired he.

  "Wait for the commissioners; let us hear the conditions! Besides, I will go down myself."

  "No, I will go! I know the places better; I know the position of everything."

  "The commissioners are returning! The commissioners are returning!"

  The three unhappy envoys appeared in the castle after a certain time. They were Grushetski, judge of Podolia, the chamberlain Revuski, and Pan Myslishevski, banneret of Chernigoff. They came gloomily, with drooping heads; on their shoulders were gleaming kaftans of gold brocade, which they had received as gifts from the vizir.

  Volodyovski was waiting for them, resting against a gun turned toward Dlujek. The gun was hot yet, and steaming. All three greeted him in silence.

  "What are the conditions?" asked he.

  "The town will not be plundered; life and property are assured to the inhabitants. Whoever does not choose to remain has the right to withdraw and betake himself to whatever place may please him."

  "And Kamenyets?"

  The commissioners dropped their heads: "Goes to the Sultan forever."

  The commissioners took their way, not toward the bridge, for throngs of people had blocked the road, but toward the southern gate at the side. When they had descended, they sat in the boat which was to go to the Polish gate. In the low place lying along the river between the cliffs, the janissaries began to appear. Greater and greater streams of people flowed from the town, and occupied the place opposite the old bridge. Many wished to run to the castle; but the outgoing regiments restrained them, at command of the little knight.

  When Volodyovski had mustered the troops, he called Pan Mushalski and said to him,—

  "Old friend, do me one more service. Go this moment to my wife, and tell her from me—" Here the voice stuck in the throat of the little knight for a while. "And say to her from me—" He halted again, and then added quickly, "This life is nothing!"

  The bowman departed. After him the troops went out gradually. Pan Michael mounted his horse and watched over the march. The castle was evacuated slowly, because of the rubbish and fragments which blocked the way.

  Ketling approached the little knight. "I will go down," said he, fixing his teeth.

  "Go! but delay till the troops have marched out. Go!"

  Here they seized each other in an embrace which lasted some time. The eyes of both were gleaming with an uncommon radiance. Ketling rushed away at last toward the vaults.

  Pan Michael took the helmet from his head. He looked awhile yet on the ruin, on that field of his glory, on the rubbish, the corpses, the fragments of walls, on the breastwork, on the guns; then raising his eyes, he began to pray. His last words were, "Grant her, O Lord, to endure this patiently; give her peace!"

  Ah! Ketling hastened, not waiting even till the troops had marched out; for at that moment the bastions quivered, an awful roar rent the air; bastions, towers, walls, horses, guns, living men, corpses, masses of earth, all torn upward with a flame, and mixed, pounded together, as it were, into one dreadful cartridge, flew toward the sky.

  Thus died Volodyovski, the Hector of Kamenyets, the first soldier of the Commonwealth.

  In the monastery of St. Stanislav stood a lofty catafalque in the centre of the church; it was surrounded with gleaming tapers, and on it lay Pan Volodyovski in two coffins, one of lead and one of wood. The lids had been fastened, and the funeral service was just ending.

  It was the heartfelt wish of the widow that the body should rest in Hrepty
off; but since all Podolia was in the hands of the enemy, it was decided to bury it temporarily in Stanislav, for to that place the "exiles" of Kamenyets had been sent under a Turkish convoy, and there delivered to the troops of the hetman.

  All the bells in the monastery were ringing. The church was filled with a throng of nobles and soldiers, who wished to look for the last time at the coffin of the Hector of Kamenyets, and the first cavalier of the Commonwealth. It was whispered that the hetman himself was to come to the funeral; but as he had not appeared so far, and as at any moment the Tartars might come in a chambul, it was determined not to defer the ceremony.

  Old soldiers, friends or subordinates of the deceased, stood in a circle around the catafalque. Among others were present Pan Mushalski, the bowman. Pan Motovidlo, Pan Snitko, Pan Hromyka, Pan Nyenashinyets, Pan Novoveski, and many others, former officers of the stanitsa. By a marvellous fortune, no man was lacking of those who had sat on the evening benches around the hearth at Hreptyoff; all had brought their heads safely out of that war, except the man who was their leader and model. That good and just knight, terrible to the enemy, loving to his own; that swordsman above swordsmen, with the heart of a dove,—lay there high among the tapers, in glory immeasurable, but in the silence of death. Hearts hardened through war were crushed with sorrow at that sight; yellow gleams from the tapers shone on the stern, suffering faces of warriors, and were reflected in glittering points in the tears dropping down from their eyelids.

  Within the circle of soldiers lay Basia, in the form of a cross, on the floor, and near her Zagloba, old, broken, decrepit, and trembling. She had followed on foot from Kamenyets the hearse bearing that most precious coffin, and now the moment had come when it was necessary to, give that coffin to the earth. Walking the whole way, insensible, as if not belonging to this world, and now at the catafalque, she repeated with unconscious lips, "This life is nothing!" She repeated it because that beloved one had commanded her, for that was the last message which he had sent her; but in that repetition and in those expressions were mere sounds, without substance, without truth, without meaning and solace. No; "This life is nothing" meant merely regret, darkness, despair, torpor, merely misfortune incurable, life beaten and broken,—an erroneous announcement that there was nothing above her, neither mercy nor hope; that there was merely a desert, and it will be a desert which God alone can fill when He sends death.

  They rang the bells; at the great altar Mass was at its end. At last thundered the deep voice of the priest, as if calling from the abyss: "Requiescat in pace!" A feverish quiver shook Basia, and in her unconscious head rose one thought alone, "Now, now, they will take him from me!" But that was not yet the end of the ceremony. The knights had prepared many speeches to be spoken at the lowering of the coffin; meanwhile Father Kaminski ascended the pulpit,—the same who had been in Hreptyoff frequently, and who in time of Basia's illness had prepared her for death.

  People in the church began to spit and cough, as is usual before preaching; then they were quiet, and all eyes were turned to the pulpit. The rattling of a drum was heard on the pulpit.

  The hearers were astonished. Father Kaminski beat the drum as if for alarm; he stopped suddenly, and a deathlike silence followed. Then the drum was heard a second and a third time; suddenly the priest threw the drumsticks to the floor of the church, and called,—

  "Pan Colonel Volodyovski!"

  A spasmodic scream from Basia answered him. It became simply terrible in the church. Pan Zagloba rose, and aided by Mushalski bore out the fainting woman.

  Meanwhile the priest continued: "In God's name, Pan Volodyovski, they are beating the alarm! there is war, the enemy is in the land!—and do you not spring up, seize your sabre, mount your horse? Have you forgotten your former virtue? Do you leave us alone with sorrow, with alarm?"

  The breasts of the knights rose; and a universal weeping broke out in the church, and broke out several times again, when the priest lauded the virtue, the love of country, and the bravery of the dead man. His own words carried the preacher away. His face became pale; his forehead was covered with sweat; his voice trembled. Sorrow for the little knight carried him away, sorrow for Kamenyets, sorrow for the Commonwealth, ruined by the hands of the followers of the Crescent; and finally he finished his eulogy with this prayer:—

  "O Lord, they will turn churches into mosques, and chant the Koran in places where till this time the Gospel has been chanted. Thou hast cast us down, O Lord; Thou hast turned Thy face from us, and given us into the power of the foul Turk. Inscrutable are Thy decrees; but who, O Lord, will resist the Turk now? What armies will war with him on the boundaries? Thou, from whom nothing in the world is concealed,—Thou knowest best that there is nothing superior to our cavalry! What cavalry can move for Thee, O Lord, as ours can? Wilt Thou set aside defenders behind whose shoulders all Christendom might glorify Thy name? O kind Father, do not desert us! show us Thy mercy! Send us a defender! Send a crusher of the foul Mohammedan! Let him come hither; let him stand among us; let him raise our fallen hearts! Send him, O Lord!"

  At that moment the people gave way at the door; and into the church walked the hetman, Pan Sobieski. The eyes of all were turned to him; a quiver shook the people; and he went with clatter of spurs to the catafalque, lordly, mighty, with the face of a Caesar. An escort of iron cavalry followed him.

  "Salvator!" cried the priest, in prophetic ecstasy.

  Sobieski knelt at the catafalque, and prayed for the soul of Volodyovski.

  EPILOGUE.

  More than a year after the fall of Kamenyets, when the dissensions of parties had ceased in some fashion, the Commonwealth came forth at last in defence of its eastern boundaries; and it came forth offensively. The grand hetman, Sobieski, marched with thirty-one thousand cavalry and infantry to Hotin, in the Sultan's territory, to strike on the incomparably more powerful legions of Hussein Pasha, stationed at that fortress.

  The name of Sobieski had become terrible to the enemy. During the year succeeding the capture of Kamenyets the hetman accomplished so much, injured, the countless army of the Padishah to such a degree, crushed out so many chambuls, rescued such throngs of captives, that old Hussein, though stronger in the number of his men, though standing at the head, of chosen cavalry, though aided by Kaplan Pasha, did not dare to meet the hetman in the open field, and decided to defend himself in a fortified camp.

  The hetman surrounded that camp with his army; and it was known universally that he intended to take it in an offensive battle. Some thought surely that it was an undertaking unheard of in the history of war to attack a superior with an inferior army when the enemy was protected by walls and trenches. Hussein had a hundred and twenty guns, while in the whole Polish camp there were only fifty. The Turkish infantry was threefold greater in number than the power of the hetman; of janissaries alone, so terrible in hand-to-hand conflict, there were eighty thousand. But the hetman believed in his star, in the magic of his name,—and finally in the men whom he led. Under him marched regiments trained and tempered in fire,—men who had grown up from years of childhood in the bustle of war, who had passed through an uncounted number of expeditions, campaigns, sieges, battles. Many of them remembered the terrible days of Hmelnitski, of Zbaraj and Berestechko; many had gone through all the wars, Swedish, Prussian, Moscovite, civil, Danish, and Hungarian. With him were the escorts of magnates, formed of veterans only; there were soldiers from the stanitsas, for whom war had become what peace is for other men,—the ordinary condition and course of life. Under the voevoda of Rus were fifteen squadrons of hussars,—cavalry considered, even by foreigners, as invincible; there were light squadrons, the very same at the head of which the hetman had inflicted such disasters on detached Tartar chambuls after the fall of Kamenyets; there were finally the land infantry, who rushed on janissaries with the butts of their muskets, without firing a shot.

  War had reared those veterans, for it had reared whole generations in the Commonwealth; but hitherto they had b
een scattered, or in the service of opposing parties. Now, when internal agreement had summoned them to one camp and one command, the hetman hoped to crush with such soldiers the stronger Hussein and the equally strong Kaplan. These old soldiers were led by trained men whose names were written more than once in the history of recent wars, in the changing wheel of defeats and victories.

  The hetman himself stood at the head of them all like a sun, and directed thousands with his will; but who were the other leaders who at this camp in Hotin were to cover themselves with immortal glory? There were the two Lithuanian hetmans,—the grand hetman, Pats, and the field hetman, Michael Kazimir Radzivill. These two joined the armies of the kingdom a few days before the battle, and now, at command of Sobieski, they took position on the heights which connected Hotin with Jvanyets. Twelve thousand warriors obeyed their commands; among these were two thousand chosen infantry. From the Dniester toward the south stood the allied regiments of Wallachia, who left the Turkish camp on the eve of the battle to join their strength with Christians. At the flank of the Wallachians stood with his artillery Pan Kantski, incomparable in the capture of fortified places, in the making of intrenchments, and the handling of cannon. He had trained himself in foreign countries, but soon excelled even foreigners. Behind Kantski stood Korytski's Russian and Mazovian infantry; farther on, the field hetman of the kingdom, Dmitri Vishnyevetski, cousin of the sickly king. He had under him the light cavalry. Next to him, with his own squadron of infantry and cavalry, stood Pan Yendrei Pototski, once an opponent of the hetman, now an admirer of his greatness. Behind him and behind Korytski stood, under Pan Yablonovski, voevoda of Rus, fifteen squadrons of hussars in glittering armor, with helmets casting a threatening shade on their faces, and with wings at their shoulders. A forest of lances reared their points above these squadrons; but the men were calm. They were confident in their invincible force, and sure that it would come to them to decide the victory.