King Stakh's Wild Hunt (14 page)

Some time had passed before I entered the room in which the quarrel had taken place. There I found the company sitting at a table again.

Varona had been put to bed in one of the distant rooms under the care of Dubatowk’s relatives. I wanted to go home immediately, but they would not let me. Dubatowk seated me at his side and said: “It’s alright, young man. It’s only nerves that are to blame. He’s alive. He’ll get well. What else do you need? And now he’ll know how to behave when he meets real people. Here – drink this... One thing I must say to you, you are a man worthy of the gentry. To be so devilishly cunning, and to wait so courageously for all the three shots – not everyone is able to do that. And it is well that you are so noble – you could have killed him with the two remaining bullets, but you didn’t do that. Now my house to its very last cross is grateful to you.”

“But nevertheless it’s bad,” said one of the gentlemen. “Such self control is simply not human.”

Dubatowk shook his head.

“Varona’s to blame, the pig. He picked the quarrel himself, the drunken fool. Who else, besides him, would have thought of screaming about money? You must have heard that he proposed to Nadzeya, and got a refusal for an answer. I’m sure that Mr. Andrey is better provided for than the Yanovskys are. He has a head on his shoulders, has work and hands, while the last of their family, a woman, has an entailed estate where one can sit like a dog in the manger and die of hunger sitting on a trunk full of money.”

And he turned to everybody:

“Gentlemen, I depend upon your honour. It seems to me that we should keep silent about what’s happened. It does no credit to Varona – to the devil with him, he deserves penal servitude, but neither does it do any credit to you or the girl whose name this fool allowed himself to utter in drunken prattle... Well, and the more so to me. The only one who behaved like a man is Mr. Belaretsky, and he, as a true gentleman, will not talk indiscreetly.”

Everybody agreed. The guests, apparently, could hold their tongues, for nobody in the district uttered a word about this incident ever since.

When I was leaving, Dubatowk detained me on the porch:

“Shall I give you a horse, Andrey?”

I was a good horseman, but now I wanted to take a walk and come to myself somewhat after all the events that had taken place. Therefore I refused.

“Well, as you like...”

I took my way home through the heather waste land. It was already the dead of night, the moon was hidden behind the clouds and a kind of sickly grey light flooded the waste land. Gusts of wind sometimes rustled the dry heather and then fell complete silence. Enormous stones stood here and there along the road. A gloomy road it was. The shadows cast by the stones covered the ground. Everything all around was dark and depressing. Sleep was stealing on me and the thought of going round the park on a long road past the Giant’s Gap frightened me. Perhaps better to take the short cut again across the waste land and look for the secret hole in the fence?

I turned off the road and almost immediately fell into deep mud; I was covered with dirt, got out onto a dry place, and then again got into dirt and finally came up against a long and narrow bog. Cursing myself for having taken this roundabout way, I turned to the left to the undergrowth on the river bank knowing that dry land had to be there, because a river usually dries the soil along its banks. I soon came out again onto the same path along which I had walked on my way to Dubatowk’s place, and finding myself half a mile away from his house, walked off along the undergrowth in the direction of Marsh Firs. Ahead, about a mile and a half away, the park was already visible, when some incomprehensible presentiment forced me to stop. Maybe it was my nerves strung to such a high pitch this evening by all the drinking and the danger, or perhaps it was some sixth sense that prompted me that I was not alone in the plain.

I didn’t know what it was, but I was certain that it was yet far away. I hastened my steps and soon rounded the tongue of the bog into which I had just a while ago crept and which blocked the way. It turned out that directly in front of me, less than a mile away, was the Marsh Firs Park. The marsh hollow, about ten metres wide, separated me from the place where I had been about forty minutes ago and where I had fallen into the mud. Behind the hollow lay the waste land, equally lit by the same flickering light, and behind that – the road. Turning around, I saw far to the right a twinkling light in Dubatowk’s house, peaceful and rosy; and to the left, also far away, behind the waste land the wall of the Yanovsky Forest Reserve was visible. It was at a great distance, bordering the waste land and the swamp.

I stood and listened, although an uneasy feeling prompted me that whatever that was, was now nearer. But I did not want to believe this presentiment. There had to be some real reason for such an emotional state. I saw nothing suspicious, heard nothing. What could this signal have been, where had it come from? I lay down, pressed my ear to the ground and felt an even vibration. I cannot say that I am a very bold person. It may as well be that my instinct of self-preservation is more advanced than in others, but I have always been very inquisitive. I decided to wait and was soon rewarded. From the side of the forest some dark mass came moving very swiftly through the waste land. At first I could not guess what it was. Then I heard a gentle and smooth clatter of horses’ hoofs. The heather rustled. Then everything disappeared, the mass had perhaps gone down into some hollow, and when it reappeared – the clattering was lost. The mass raced on noiselessly, as if floating in the air, coming nearer and nearer all the time. Yet another instant and my whole body moved ahead. Among the waves of the hardly transparent fog, horsemen’s silhouettes could be seen galloping at a mad pace, the horses’ manes whirling in the wind. I began to count them and counted up to twenty. At their head galloped the twenty-first. I still had my doubts, but here the wind brought somewhere from afar the sound of a hunting horn. A cold, dry frost ran down my spine giving me the shivers.

The horsemen’s faint shadows ran obliquely from the road to the swampy hollow. Their capes were swirling in the wind, the horsemen were sitting straight as dolls in their saddles, yet not a sound reached my ears. The silence was creating this horror that enveloped me. In the fog bright spots were dancing. And racing on ahead was sitting the twenty-first, motionless in his saddle. A hat with a feather in it was lowered to cover his eyes. His face was pale and gloomy, his lips were compressed.

The wild heather sang beneath the horses’ hoofs.

I looked attentively at the sharp noses that stuck out from under their hats, at the thin and shaggy legs of the horses that were of an unknown species.

Bending forward, grey, transparent horsemen raced on, silently they raced, no one other than King Stakh’s Wild Hunt.

I didn’t immediately grasp the fact that roaming in the marsh they had fallen on my track and were now following after me. They stopped, just as noiselessly, near the place where I had fallen into the swamp. They were no more than twenty metres away from me across the swamp, I could even see that their horses, misty horses, were of a black and varicoloured coat, but I did not hear a single sound, only at times somewhere near the dense forest the horn sang in a muffled tone. I saw that one of them had bent down in his saddle, looked at the tracks and straightened up again. The leader waved his hand in the direction I had gone, rounding the hollow, and the Hunt raced on. A cold anger boiled within my heart.
Well, no, be you apparitions or whatever else, but I shall meet you in a fitting manner!
A revolver and six bullets – and we shall see. I thrust my hand in my pocket, and a cold sweat covered my forehead – I could find no revolver. Only now did I recollect that I had left it at home in the table’s drawer.

“This is the end,” I thought.

But to await the end with folded arms was not among my rules. They will be here within fifteen minutes. The country here is rugged. Here and there are hillocks that I can run across, while horsemen are afraid to get stuck in the mud on their horses. In this way I can confuse the tracks. Although, if they are apparitions, they can fly across the dangerous places through the air.

I removed my boots so that the noise of my steps should not attract the attention of the Hunt. At first I went stealthily, and then, when the bushes concealed the hollow, I jumped about more quickly in loops, running across the heather, wetting my feet in the dew.

At first I went along the hollow, then made a sharp turn in the bushes towards Marsh Firs. I rushed through water and dirt – how could I now pay attention to such trifles? I was soon again on a path and on turning about I saw the Wild Hunt already on the other side of the swamp. It was moving in my tracks with a dull stubbornness. The Hunt raced on, the manes and capes swirling in the air.

Since the bushes hid me and the path was downhill, my running was of a class that I had never shown before and most likely never did afterward. I tore down at such a speed that the wind whistled in my ears, burnt my lungs, and perspiration ate my eyes. And the chase behind my back was slowly but surely coming closer. Soon it seemed to me I was about to fall and would be unable to get up - I had in fact stumbled twice - but I ran and ran, on and on. Slowly, very slowly, the dark park was coming nearer, but the clatter of the horses’ hoofs sounded ever closer.

Luckily, as people would say today, I got my second wind. I ran straight through holes and ravines, skirting hills on which I might be noticed. The horses’ hoofs sounded now nearer, now farther, now to the left, now to the right. No time to look round, but nevertheless I looked through the bushes. The riders of the Wild Hunt were flying after me in a milky, low fog.

Their horses stretched out in the air, the horsemen sat motionless, the heather rang beneath their hoofs. Above them, in a strip of clear sky, burnt a lonely sharp star.

I rolled down a hill, crossed a wide path, jumped into a ditch and ran along its bottom. The ditch was not far from the fence. I crept out from it and with one leap reached the fence. They were about forty metres away from me, but they lingered a little, having lost my scent and it enabled me to creep through a hardly noticeable hole and hide in the lilac. The park was in complete darkness and therefore when they raced past me along the path I couldn’t get a good look at them. But I distinctly heard the leader groan:

“To the Gap!”

On raced the Wild Hunt, and I sat down on the ground. My heart was beating like a lamb’s tail, but I jumped up quickly, knowing that I must not sit after this race. I understood very well that I had only a minute’s respite. They could reach the house in a roundabout way more quickly than I in a straight line. And again I ran on. My feet were bleeding. Several times I caught my feet on roots, and fell down, pine needles lashed against my face. The large castle grew up in front of me entirely unexpectedly, and simultaneously I heard the clattering of the horses’ hoofs somewhere ahead of me. They sounded again, they thundered so often that my skin sensed their incredibly fast gallop.

I decided to put everything at stake. I could hide in the park, but in the castle was a girl who was now most likely dying of fright. I had to be there. Besides, that was where I had left my weapon.

A few jumps and I landed on the porch. I began beating on the door.

“Nadzeya! Miss Nadzeya! Open the door!”

She might fall unconscious on hearing my screaming. But the hoofs were already beating near the castle. Again I began to thunder.

The doors opened unexpectedly. I jumped into the house, locked the doors and was about to rush off for my weapon, but through the eye in the door I saw the misty horses racing past and disappearing behind the turn in the lane.

I glanced at first at Yanovsky and then in the mirror. She was evidently shocked at my appearance, in rags, all in scratches, blood on my hands, my hair dishevelled. I looked at Yanovsky again. Her pale face had grown stiff with fright, she shut her eyes and asked:

“Now you believe in King Stakh’s Wild Hunt?”

“Now I believe,” I answered darkly. “And weren’t you afraid to open the door at such a moment?! Such a courageous little heart!”

In answer she burst into tears:

“Mr. Belaretsky... Mr. Andrey... Andrey. I was so afraid, I had such fear for you. My God... my God! Let only me be taken!”

I clenched my fists.

“Miss Nadzeya, I don’t know whether they are apparitions or not. Apparitions couldn’t be so real, and people couldn’t be so transparent or blaze with such malice and rage. But I swear to you: for this fright of yours, for your tears, they shall pay, shall pay a high price. This I swear to you.”

Somewhere in the distance the fast clattering of horses’ hoofs was fading away.

If my story has formerly been somewhat slow in its development, it will now, very likely be too swift. But that cannot be helped, the events which followed that dreadful night came so thick and fast that my head was in a whirl. The following morning Yanovsky went with me to the village where I wrote down some legends. All along the way I was trying to convince her that she needn’t be in such fear of the Wild Hunt, told her how I had outwitted the hunters the day before, but one thought wracked my brain: “But what was it? What was it?”

Though my hostess became somewhat merrier, she was, nevertheless, still depressed. I hadn’t seen her previously in such a mood. When I returned to the castle with Yanovsky remaining behind at one of the wings with the watchman, I noticed a dirty piece of paper stuck with a thorn onto the bark of a fir tree in a conspicuous place. I tore it off:

“What’s fated must die. You, a tramp, a newcomer, get out of the way. You are a stranger here, these cursed generations are no business of yours. King Stakh’s Hunt comes at midnight. Await it.”

I only shrugged my shoulders. After the apocalyptic fright I had experienced the night before, this threat seemed to me a bad melodrama, a thoughtless move, and it convinced me that the devilry was of Earthly origin.