Fire in the Steppe (40 page)

"Did he approve it?"

"He seized himself by the head, and almost beat with the forehead; next day he galloped off to the hetman with the happy news."

"Effendi," said Halim, timidly, "but if the Great Lion should not approve it?"

"Sobieski?"

"Yes."

A ruddy light began to gleam again in Azya's eyes; but it remained only during one twinkle. His face grew calm immediately; then he sat on a bench, and resting his head on his hands, fell into deep thought.

"I have weighed in my mind," said he, at last, "what the grand hetman may answer when Bogush gives him the happy news. The hetman is wise, and will consent. The hetman knows that in spring there will be war with the Sultan, for which there are neither men nor money in the Commonwealth; and when Doroshenko and the Cossacks are on the side of the Sultan, final destruction may come on Lehistan,—and all the more that neither the king nor the estates believe that there will be war, and are not hurrying to prepare for it. I have an attentive ear here on everything; I know all, and Bogush makes no secret before me of what they say at the hetman's headquarters. Pan Sobieski is a great man; he will consent, for he knows that if the Tartars come here for freedom and land, a civil war may spring up in the Crimea and the steppes of the Dobrudja, that the strength of the horde will decrease, and that the Sultan himself must see to quieting those outbreaks. Meanwhile, the hetman will have time to prepare himself better; the Cossacks and Doroshenko will waver in loyalty to the Sultan. This is the only salvation for the Commonwealth, which is so weak that even the return of a few thousand Lithuanian Tartars means much for it. The hetman knows this; he is wise, he will consent."

"I bow before your reason," answered Halim; "but what will happen if Allah takes from the Great Lion his light, or if Satan so blinds him with pride that he will reject your plans?"

Azya pushed his wild face up to Halim's ear, and whispered, "You remain here now until the answer comes from the hetman; and till then I will not go to Rashkoff. If they reject my plans, I will send you to Krychinski and the others. You will give them the order to advance to this side of the river almost up to Hreptyoff, and to be in readiness; and I with my men here will fall on the command the first night I choose, and do this for them—" Here Azya drew his finger across his neck, and after a while added, "Fate, fate, fate!"

Halim thrust his head down between his shoulders, and on his beast-like face an ominous smile appeared. "Allah! And that to the Little Falcon?"

"That to him first."

"And then to the Sultan's dominions?"

"To the Sultan's dominions,—with her."

A fierce winter covered the forests with heavy snow-clusters and icicles, and filled ravines to their edges with drifts, so that the whole land seemed a single white plain. Great, sudden storms came, in which men and herds were lost under the pall of snow; roads grew misleading and perilous: still, Pan Bogush hastened with all his power to Yavorov to communicate Azya's great plans to the hetman as quickly as possible. A noble of the border, reared in continual danger of Cossacks and Tartars, penetrated with the thought of perils which threatened the country from insurrections, from raids, from the whole power of the Turks, he saw in those plans almost the salvation of the country; he believed sacredly that the hetman, held in homage by him, and by all men of the frontier, would not hesitate a moment when it was a question of the power of the Commonwealth: hence he rode forward with joy in his heart, in spite of snow-drifts, wrong roads, and tempests.

He dropped in at last on a Sunday, together with snow, at Yavorov, and having the good fortune to find Pan Sobieski at home, announced himself straightway, though attendants informed him that the hetman, busied night and day with expeditions and the writing of despatches, had barely time to take food. But beyond expectation, the hetman gave command to call him at once. Therefore, after he had waited only a short time, the old soldier bowed to the knees of his leader.

He found Pan Sobieski changed greatly, and with a face full of care; for those were well-nigh the most grievous years of his life. His name had not thundered yet through every corner of Christendom; but the fame of a great leader and a terrible crusher of the Mussulman encircled him already in the Commonwealth. Owing to that fame, the grand baton was confided to him in time, and the defence of the eastern boundary; but with the dignity of hetman they had given him neither money nor men. Still, victory had followed his steps hitherto as faithfully as his shadow follows a man. With a handful of troops he had won victory at Podhaytse; with a handful of troops he had passed like a flame through the length and the breadth of the Ukraine, rubbing into dust chambuls of many thousands, capturing insurgent cities, spreading dread and terror of the Polish name. But now there hung over the Commonwealth a war with the most terrible of the powers of that period, for it was a war with the whole Mussulman world. It was no longer a secret for Sobieski that since Doroshenko had given up the Ukraine and the Cossacks to the Sultan, the latter had promised to move Turkey, Asia Minor, Arabia, and Egypt as far as the interior of Africa, to proclaim a sacred war, and go in his own person to demand the new "pashalik"
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from the Commonwealth. Destruction, like a bird of prey, was floating over all Southern Russia, and meanwhile there was disorder in the Commonwealth; the nobles were uproarious in defence of their incompetent king, and, assembled in armed camps, were ready for civil war, if for any. The country, exhausted by recent conflicts and military confederations, had become impoverished; envy was storming in it; mutual distrust was rankling in men's hearts.

No one wished to believe that war with the Mussulman power was imminent; and they condemned the great leader for spreading news about it purposely to turn men's minds from home questions. He was condemned greatly for this also,—that he was ready himself to call in the Turks, if only to secure victory to his adherents. They made him simply a traitor; and had it not been for the army, they would not have hesitated to impeach him.

In view of the approaching war, to which thousands of legions of wild people would march from the East, he was without an army,—he had merely a handful, so small that the Sultan's court counted more servants; he was without money, without means of repairing the ruined fortresses, without hope of victory, without possibility of defence, without the conviction that his death, as formerly the death of Jolkyevski, would rouse the torpid country and give birth to an avenger. That was the reason that care had settled on his forehead; and the lordly countenance, like that of a Roman conqueror with a forehead in laurels, bore traces of hidden pain and sleepless nights. But at sight of Bogush a kindly smile brightened the face of the hetman; he placed his hands on the shoulders of the man inclining before him, and said,—

"I greet you, soldier, I greet you! I had not hoped to see you so soon; but you are the dearer to me in Yavorov. Whence do you come,—from Kamenyets?"

"No, serene, great, mighty lord hetman, I have not even been at Kamenyets. I come straightway from Hreptyoff."

"What is my little soldier doing there? Is he well, and has he cleared the wilds of Ushytsa even somewhat?"

"The wilds are so peaceful that a child might pass through them in safety. The robbers are hanged, and in these last days Azba Bey with his whole party was cut to pieces, so that even a witness of the slaughter was not left. I arrived there on the very day of their destruction."

"I recognize Volodyovski: Rushchyts in Rashkoff is the only man who may compare with him. But what do they say in the steppes? Are there fresh tidings from the Danube?"

"There are, but of evil. There is to be a great muster of troops at Adrianople in the last days of winter."

"I know that already. There are no tidings now save of evil,—evil from the Commonwealth, evil from the Crimea and from Stambul."

"But not altogether, for I myself bring such good tidings that if I were a Turk or a Tartar I should surely mention a present."

"Well, then, you have fallen from heaven to me. Come, speak quickly, dispel my anxiety!"

"But if I am so frozen, your great mightiness, that the wit has stiffened in my head?"

The hetman clapped his hands, and commanded an attendant to bring mead. After a while they brought in a mouldy decanter, and candlesticks with burning tapers, for though the hour was still early, snowy clouds had made the air so gloomy that outside, as well as in the house, it was like nightfall.

The hetman poured out and drank to his guest; the latter, bowing low, emptied his glass, and said: "The first news is this, that Azya, who was to bring back to our service the captains of the Lithuanian Tartars and the Cheremis, is not called Mellehovich, he is a son of Tugai Bey."

"Of Tugai Bey?" asked Pan Sobieski, with amazement.

"Thus it is, your great mightiness. It has come out that Pan Nyenashinyets carried him away from the Crimea while a child, but lost him on the road home; and Azya, falling into possession of the Novoveskis, was reared at their house without knowing that he was descended from such a father."

"It was a wonder to me that he, though so young, was held in such esteem among the Tartars. But now I understand; and the Cossacks too, even those who have remained faithful to the mother,
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consider Hmelnitski as a kind of saint, and are proud of him."

"That is just it, just it; I told Azya the same thing," said Pan Bogush.

"Wonderful are the ways of God," said the hetman, after a while; "old Tugai shed rivers of blood in our country, and his son is serving it,—at least he serves it faithfully so far; but now I do not know whether he will not wish to taste Crimean greatness."

"Now? Now he is still more faithful; and here my second tidings begin, in which it may be that strength and resource and salvation for the suffering Commonwealth are contained. So help me God, I forgot fatigue and danger in view of these tidings, so as to let them out of my lips at the earliest moment, and console your troubled heart."

"I am listening eagerly," said Pan Sobieski.

Bogush began to explain Azya's plans, and presented them with such enthusiasm that he grew really eloquent. From time to time his hand, trembling from emotion, poured out a glass of mead, spilling the noble drink over the rim; and he spoke and spoke on. Before the astonished eyes of the grand hetman passed as it were clear pictures of the future; therefore thousands and tens of thousands of Tartars came for land and freedom, bringing their wives and children and their herds; therefore the astonished Cossacks, seeing the new power of the Commonwealth, bowed down to it obediently, bowed down to the king and the hetman; hence there was rebellion in the Ukraine no longer; hence raids, destructive as fire or flood, were advancing no longer on the old roads against Russia,—but at the side of the Polish and the Cossack armies moved over the measureless steppes, with the playing of trumpets and the rattle of drums, chambuls of Tartars, nobles of the Ukraine.

And for whole years carts after carts were advancing, and in them, in spite of the commands of Khan and Sultan, were multitudes who preferred the black land of the Ukraine and bread to their former hungry settlements. And the power, hostile aforetime, was moving to the service of the Commonwealth. The Crimea became depopulated; their former power slipped out of the hands of the Khan and the Sultan, and dread seized them; for from the steppes, from the Ukraine, the new hetman of a new Tartar nobility looked threateningly into their eyes,—a guardian and faithful defender of the Commonwealth, the renowned son of a terrible father, young Tugai Bey.

A flush came out on the countenance of Bogush; it seemed that his own words bore him away, for at the end he raised both hands and cried,—

"This is what I bring! This is what that dragon's whelp has brooded out in the wild woods of Hreptyoff! All that is needed now is to give him a letter and permission from your great mightiness to spread a report in the Crimea and on the Danube. Your great mightiness, if Tugai Bey's son were to do nothing except to make an uproar in the Crimea and on the Danube, to cause misunderstandings, to rouse the hydra of civil war among the Tartars, to embroil some camps against others, and that on the eve of conflict, I repeat, he would render a great and undying service to the Commonwealth."

But Pan Sobieski walked back and forth with long strides through the room, without speaking. His lordly face was gloomy, almost terrible; he strode, and it was to be seen that he was conversing in his soul,—unknown whether with himself or with God.

At last thou didst open some page in thy soul, grand hetman, for thou gavest answer in these words to the speaker:—

"Bogush, even if I had the right to give such a letter and such permission, while I live I should not give them."

These words fell as heavily as if they had been of molten lead or iron, and weighed so on Bogush that for a time he was dumb, hung his head, and only after a long interval did he groan out,—

"Why, your great mightiness, why?"

"First, I will tell you, as a statesman, that the name of Tugai Bey's son might attract, it is true, a certain number of Tartars, if land, liberty, and the rights of nobility were offered them; but not so many would come as he and you have imagined. And, besides, it would be an act of madness to call Tartars to the Ukraine, and settle new people there, when we cannot manage the Cossacks alone. You say that disputes and war will rise among them at once, that there will be a sword ready for the Cossack neck; but who will assure you that that sword would not be stained with Polish blood also? I have not known this Azya, hitherto; but now I perceive that the dragon of pride and ambition inhabits his breast, therefore I ask again, who will guarantee that there is not in him a second Hmelnitski? He will beat the Cossacks; but if the Commonwealth shall fail to satisfy him in something, and threaten him with justice and punishment for some act of violence, he will join the Cossacks, summon new hordes from the East, as Hmelnitski summoned Tugai Bey, give himself to the Sultan, as Doroshenko has done, and, instead of a new growth of power, new bloodshed and defeats will come on us."