King Stakh's Wild Hunt (27 page)

“Aam–aam!”

“Who are you?” I was shaking him.

And the Little Man, the former ghost, answered – his answer well rehearsed:

“I’m Bazyl. I’m Bazyl.”

A slyness which exists even in idiots suddenly lit up his eyes:

“I saw you. Ha-ha! I was sitting under the table – under the table, my brother was feeding me. And you suddenly showed up...”

And again he champed with that large mouth of his that was reaching to his ears.

I began to understand everything. Two villains, the ringleader of the Wild Hunt and Bierman, both pursuing one and the same aim – to get rid of Yanovsky – hit upon, as a matter of fact, one and the same idea. Bierman, knowing that he is a relative of Yanovsky, arrived at Marsh Firs and found the listening channels and passages in the walls. After that he secretly went to town, abandoned his mother to her fate, took back with him his brother who avoided people not because he preferred being alone – he was simply a hopeless idiot. Not for nothing had his bad behaviour surprised the people in the club – Bierman had, of course, brought not his actual brother to the club but a random person. Bierman roomed together with his brother at Marsh Firs, taking advantage of the fact that nobody ever came to see him. And he ordered his brother to sit quietly. Once when I happened to come in on them during the Little Man’s feeding hour, the invalid, as it turns out, was under the table, and if only had I reached out my hand, I could have grabbed him.

During the night Bierman would lead him out into the secret passages where he walked about. As a result of this activity sounds were created in the listening channels that were heard by all the inhabitants of the house.

From time to time Bierman let the Little Man out into the hall. In that case he’d put on him an old fashioned costume, made specifically for such occasions. While his little brother took his walk, Bierman waited for him at the open door of the passage, for the Little Man couldn’t open it himself. Sometimes he allowed him to take a walk in the open air. With the ease of a monkey, or rather with that of a spider, he ran along the ledges of the building, glancing into the windows, and in case of an alarm, disappeared like lightning behind the numerous corners of the castle.

It was very easy for the Little Man to do all this. In fact, nothing could be easier – his caveman mind completely lacked the instinct of self-preservation. He walked along a ledge as calmly as we do when we walk along a railway track for fun.

It was during one such promenade of his that his meeting with me took place. What then happened afterwards? Likol had sent me a letter in which, in order to call me out of the house, he mentioned that he had information about the Little Man. Bierman, who had been watching me closely of late, read the letter and hastened to the meeting spot, hoping to come to an agreement with the author of the letter. There he was mistaken for me and the tragedy occurred, a tragedy to which I had become a belated witness.

The dwarf remained all these days inside the passages, lacking the strength to get out, and had become entirely weakened by hunger.

If I hadn’t opened the door, he would probably have died of hunger without having guessed why his brother had left him, his brother who always fed and caressed him.

What was I to do with him? The unfortunate fellow was not guilty of being born such a creature into this world. Here he disappears from our story. I fed him, informed Yanovsky of the death of one of the ghosts inhabiting the castle, and on the following day sent him off to the district hospital for the weak minded.

And for the first time I saw a ray of hope beginning to shine in the eyes of the mistress of Marsh Firs, and although the light in them was tender, it was as yet but weak.

“Is that you, Ryhor?”

“Me, Andrey. More exactly, us.”

I held out my hand to Ryhor. This night was the first cloudless and moonlit night that we’d had in a long time. The full moon cast a bluish silver light over the peat bogs, the waste land, the Marsh Firs Park and far, far away it shone in a little window of some lonely hut. The nights turned considerably colder, and now the swamps were “sweating”, giving birth to a mobile white fog in the hollows.

Ryhor stepped out from among the bushes that grew along the broken down fence, and people appeared behind him in the darkness, about twelve in all.

They were muzhyks. All of them in leather coats turned inside out, in identical white felt hats.

And they all looked alike in the moonlight, as if the Earth itself had simultaneously given birth to them. I saw that two of them had long guns the same as Ryhor’s. A third held a pistol in his hand, the rest were armed with boar spears and pitchforks, and one had an ordinary club.

“Who are they?” I asked in surprise.

“Muzhyks,” Ryhor said. “Our patience is exhausted. Two days ago the Wild Hunt trampled to death the brother of this muzhyk. His name’s Michal.”

Michal, the embodiment of a giant from an urban legend, had deep little eyes, high cheekbones, arms and legs meatier and more impressive than Dubatowk’s. His eyes were red and swollen, and his hands gripped his gun so hard that the knuckles of his fingers had even turned white. He looked gloomy and sullen, but clever.

“Enough’s enough!” Ryhor said. “The only thing left for us to do is to die. But we don’t want to die. And you, Belaretsky, if anything is not to your liking, keep quiet. This is our affair. And God allows the whole world to rise against the horse thief. Today we’ll teach them not only not to trample the people, but even not to eat bread. These people with Michal at their head will remain here under your command. Mine are waiting for me at the swamp that surrounds the Yanovsky Virgin Forest near the Witch’s mortar. There are twenty more of them there. If the Hunt comes there – we’ll meet them, if they take another road unknown to us – you’ll meet them. We’ll keep watch at the Virgin Forest, the Cold Hollow and the waste lands that are next to us. If you need help, send a man.”

And Ryhor disappeared into the darkness.

We arranged an ambush. I instructed six muzhyks to take their places along both sides of the road at the broken fence, and three somewhat farther on, thus forming a sack. In case anything should happen, the three would have to block the way to retreat for the Wild Hunt. I took my place behind the large tree by the very path.

I forgot to say that for each one of us there were three torches. Quite enough, should the need arise, to light up everything around us.

As my people in leather coats lay down, they merged well with the ground – they couldn’t be distinguished from the hummocks, their grey sheepskins became one with the beaten down autumn grass.

In this way we waited quite a long time. Above the marshland floated the moon, from time to time some blue sparks flashed there, the fog sometimes became a compact, low sheet up to one’s knees, sometimes it slowly moved away again.

They, as always, appeared unexpectedly. Twenty misty horsemen on twenty misty horses. Their approach was noiseless and terrifying. A silent mass moved on us. The bits did not ring, no human voices were heard. Capes were waving with the wind. The Hunt was dashing on, and at its head raced King Stakh, his hat, as previously, pulled down over his face. We had expected them to come flying with the wind, but at about a hundred steps away they dismounted, spent much time near the horses’ hoofs. When they moved on again, an altogether unexpected thunder of hoofs reached us, breaking into the silence.

Slowly they came nearer and nearer to us, they were already passing the quagmire and were riding up to the fence, but here they passed round it. Stakh came riding straight towards me, and I could see his face, a face white as chalk.

When he was almost at my tree, I stepped forward, took his horse by the bridle. Simultaneously – with my left hand in which I clutched the riding crop – I pushed his hat onto the back of his head.

I was looking at Varona’s face – a face pale as death, eyes without a living light in them, large dead eyes.

Being taken by surprise like that he certainly did not know what to do, but I, to make up for it, knew very well what I should do.

“So you are King Stakh?” I asked quietly, and hit him in the face with the riding crop.

Varona’s horse reared and dashed away from me into the group of horsemen.

At that very instant the guns thundered from the ambush, the torches blazed, and everything sank in a whirl into a mad sea of fire. The horses reared, the horsemen fell, someone yelled in a heart rending voice. I still remember only Michal’s face as he cold bloodedly took aim. A cone of bullets flashed out from a long gun. Then a young man’s face floated in front of me, the face of that man with high cheekbones; his long tresses of hair were falling down his forehead. The fellow was working with a pitchfork as on a threshing floor, then lifted it and with terrific strength thrust it into the belly of the rearing horse. The horseman, the horse, and the man fell down together. I remained standing, and in spite of the fact that shots were already coming also from the Hunt, and that bullets were whistling overhead, I deliberately chose whom to shoot at from among the horsemen energetically surrounding me. Shots came pouring on them also from behind.

“Brothers, treachery!”

“Our galloping is over!”

“Save us!”

“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!”

I saw fear on the faces of these bandits, and the joy of revenge took possession of me. They should have thought beforehand that the day of reckoning would come. I saw a muzhyk with a club breaking into the thick of the fight, inflicting violent strokes on his victims. All the old fury, all the suffering now exploded in an attack of unheard of passion and fighting bravery. Somebody jerked off one of the hunters from his saddle and the horse dragged his head by the roots.

Within ten minutes all, in fact, was over. Abandoned horses neighed horribly, the killed and the wounded lay like sheaves on the ground, Varona alone like the devil, cornered by the muzhyks and beating them off with his sword with his revolver clutched between his teeth. He fought splendidly. Then he saw me, his face disfigured with such terrible hatred that even now I still remember it and sometimes see in my dreams.

Having trampled down one of the peasants with his horse, he grabbed his revolver.

“Beware, you villain! You’ve taken her away from me! But there’ll be no caresses for you!”

The peasant with the long whiskers pulled him by his leg and due only to that I didn’t crash on the ground with a hole in my skull. Varona understood he would be pulled off his horse now, and firing point blank, he killed the long-whiskered man on the spot.

Having succeeded in reloading my revolver, I sent all the six bullets into him without hesitation. Varona, grasping at the air with his hands, reeled in his saddle, but nevertheless turned his horse around, knocked a muzhyk, the one with high cheekbones and meaty legs, to the ground and dashed off in the direction of the swamp. He was all the time grasping at the air with his hands, but stayed in the saddle and together with it – the saddle girth must have broken – slid down one side until he was hanging over the ground. The horse turned aside. Varona’s head struck heavily against a stone post in the fence. His lifeless body flew out of the saddle, struck against the ground and remained lying motionless, dead.

Theirs was a crushing defeat. The terrible Wild Hunt was overcome by the hands of ordinary muzhyks on the very first day that they exerted themselves a little and began to believe that with pitchforks they could rise even against phantoms.

I examined the battlefield. The peasants were leading the horses off to the side. They were real
drygants
of
the
Palessie,
the presumably extinct breed. All striped and with spots, with white nostrils, with eyes ablaze in red flame deep in them. Not surprising then that their capering in the fog seemed so unnatural, for I knew that this breed was distinguished for its remarkably long strides.

And unexpectedly two more riddles were solved. Firstly, four sheepskin bags hung at the saddle of each of the hunters. Should the need arise, they could be put on the horses’ hoofs and tied at the pasterns. Their steps became entirely noiseless. Secondly, among the dead and the wounded I saw three scarecrows on the ground, all three dressed like hunters, but they were tied to their saddles with ropes. Evidently, Varona did not have enough people.

However, our losses were also heavy ones. We’d never have conquered this band of professional murderers if our attack had not been so unexpected. But even as it was, our score was bad; the muzhyks just could not fight. The fellow with the prominent cheekbones who was knocked down by Varona’s horse, lay with his head smashed. The long-legged muzhyk had a bullet hole darkening in the very middle of his forehead. The muzhyk with the club lay on the ground, his feet jerking – he was dying. Of the wounded there were twice as many. I also received a wound. A bullet at the rebound had flicked me in the back of my head.

We were swearing. Michal was bandaging my head and I was screaming that it was a trifle, rubbish. Soon one man was found alive among the Hunters, and he was led to a blazing campfire. In front of me stood Mark Stakhievich, his hand hanging down at his side like a whip. It was that very same young aristocrat whose conversation with Patsuk I had overheard sitting in the tree. He looked very eye catching in his cherry coloured
chuga
,
in a little hat, with an empty sabre scabbard at his side. “It seems you threatened the muzhyks, didn’t you, Stakhievich? You will die as these here,” I said calmly. “But we can let you go free, because, alone, you are not dangerous. You will depart from the Yanovsky region and will remain alive, if you tell us about all the foul deeds of your gang.”

He hesitated, looked at the severe faces of the muzhyks, the crimson light of the campfire lighting up their faces, their leather coats, their hands gripping their pitchforks, and he understood there was no mercy to be expected. Pitchforks from all sides were surrounding him, touching his body.