King Stakh's Wild Hunt (29 page)

The muzhyks caught up with me half way to the Hollow. They raced on the
drygants
with pitchforks in their hands.

“Mount, Chief,” Michal said warmly, pointing to a horse. “With these everything is over. And the Gap won’t tell anybody.”

I answered as calmly as I could:

“Let bygones be bygones. But now as quickly as possible to Ryhor. Then together with him we’ll go to Dubatowk’s house.”

We hastened to the Hollow, reaching it in the twinkling of an eye, and there we found the very end of the same tragedy. Ryhor kept his word, though they didn’t deal with the participants of the Wild Hunt as they did with horse thieves. Horse thieves they simply killed outright. The last of the living hunters here lay on his back in front of Ryhor. He was quite a young fellow. And he, guessing from my clothes that I was not a peasant, suddenly began to scream:

“Mother mine! Mother mine! They’re killing me.”

“Ryhor,” I begged. “You don’t need to kill him, he’s so young yet.”

And I seized him by the shoulder, but my hands were caught from behind.

“Away with you!” Ryhor shouted. “Take him away, this blockhead. Did they have any pity for our children in Jarki? They died of hunger – of hunger! A person, in your opinion, has no right to eat? This one has a mother dear! And haven’t we mothers? Or didn’t Michal have a mother? Haven’t you got one, that you are so kind? You sniveller! And don’t you know that this very ‘young fellow’ shot Symon, Zoska’s brother, and killed him? Never mind, we’ll commit such outrages as in the song “The Vampires’ Night”.

Ryhor was referring to the Murashka Rebellion and the slaughter of aristocrats at the hands of the peasants. I didn’t need to think twice. And Ryhor, turning around, struck his pitchfork into the man lying prostrate on the ground.

I went aside and sat down.

I was sick and didn’t immediately hear Ryhor coming up to me and taking me by the shoulder when the dead were already being thrown into the quagmire.

“You’re a fool, you are! You think I’m not sorry? My heart is bleeding. It seems to me I’ll never again in my life be able to sleep calmly, but suffering must be endured, and once we’ve begun, then on to the end. Not a single one to be left, only we alone by mutual guarantee should know... ‘A young one!’ You think this young one wouldn’t have grown into an old skunk? He would, certainly! Especially when recalling this night. His ‘pity’ for our people, bondsmen, will be something only to marvel at. Let him go – and we’ll have the law here. For me and you – the noose, for Michal and the rest – penal servitude. The region will overflow with blood, they’ll beat so hard that the flesh from our backsides will come off in rags.”

“I understand,” I said. “Not a single one of these must remain alive, but I’ve just recalled Svetsilovich and his dream... We must go to Dubatowk – to the last one left alive.”

“Well,” Ryhor grumbled, though tenderly. “Lead the way.”

With our detachment behind us, we moved on towards Dubatowsk’s house. We flew at a gallop, our horses raced as if wolves were after them. The moon dimly shone on our cavalcade, on the muzhyks’ leather coats, the pitchforks, the dark faces, the scarecrows on some of the horses. We had to skirt the marsh round the Yanovsky Reserve. The road seemed a rather long one till we came to where we saw the linden tree crowns near Dubatowk’s house. The moon flooded them with a deathly pale light; although it was very late, a light was burning in three windows.

I ordered the people to dismount about fifty metres away from the house and surround it in a close circle. The torches to be held in readiness and to light them when the signal was given. The command was fulfilled in silence. I crept over a low fence and walked through rows of almost bare apple trees lit by a flickering uncertain moonlight.

“Who’s with the horses?” I asked Ryhor who was walking behind me.

“One of our boys. In case anything should happen, he will signal us. He whistles very well.”

We stole on farther, and our boots stepped softly on the wet surface. I came up to a window. Dubatowk was nervously walking from one corner of the room to another, glancing often at the clock on the wall.

He was unrecognizable. This was an altogether different Dubatowk, and alone by himself, the real one, of course. What had become of his kindness, cordiality and tenderness? Where had that rosy face disappeared to, a face as healthy and merry as the face of Santa Claus? The face of this Dubatowk was yellow, the corners of his mouth were abruptly lowered and sharp wrinkles outlined his nostrils. His sunken eyes looked dead and dark. I was horrified at seeing him like that, as a person becomes horrified when on awakening in the morning after a night’s sleep he finds a snake in his bed having crept into it to warm itself, and then spent the night with him there.

“How could I have been so clueless?” I thought.

Yes, the sooner we put an end to him, the better. We just had to do it. He, alone, is more dangerous than ten Wild Hunts. It’s well that during our fight I deprived him for a while of the possibility of riding his horse, for otherwise it would have been tough for us. He would not have placed himself right in front of a bullet, he would not have split up his detachment – he would have run us down like kittens with his horse’s hoofs, and we’d have been lying now at the bottom of the Gap with our eyes put out.

“Ryhor, send seven men here. Have them break down the door of the entrance, while I’ll try to tear off a board from the shed and make an unexpected attack on him from there. But see to it, everybody together...”

“Perhaps we could pretend we are the Hunt and knock at the window, and when he opens it, we’ll grab him. He’s sent his relatives somewhere, he’s at home alone,” Ryhor suggested.

“Nothing will come of that. He’s a sly fox.”

“Nevertheless, let’s have a try. You understand, a pity to lose so much blood...”

“See that it doesn’t turn out to be for the worse,” I said, shaking my head.

The horses were led up to the house. I was happy to see Dubatowk’s face in the window brightening up. He went up to the door with a candlelight, but suddenly stopped, stood stock still, on his face a puzzled expression. In a twinkling he blew out the candle and the room was drowned in darkness. The plan had fallen through.

“Come on, fellows,” I shouted. “Break down the door!” Hasty footfalls and cries were heard. They began beating on the door with something heavy. A shot rang out from the attic. Following the shot, a voice full of fury echoed from the top tower:

“Surrounded! Just wait, you dogs! The gentry does not give in so easily!”

And from another window in the attic a cone of bullets came flying. Dubatowk was running, evidently, from one window to another, shooting at the advancing attackers from all sides.

“Oho! He must have a whole arsenal there,” Ryhor said quietly.

His words were interrupted by yet another shot. A young fellow, standing beside me, fell on the ground with a hole in his head. Dubatowk shot better than the best hunter in Palessie. And yet another shot.

“Flatten yourselves against the walls!” I shouted. “The bullets won’t reach there.”

The bullets of our men, standing behind the trees, broke off the boards from the attic and the plastering. It was impossible to guess at which window Dubatowk would appear. Our victory promised to be a Pyrrhic one.

“Andrey!” Dubatowk’s voice thundered. “You, too, will get what’s coming to you. You devils have come after my soul, but you’ll be giving up yours.”

“Light the torches,” I commanded. “Throw them onto the roof.”

In the twinkling of an eye, scores of fires burst out surrounding the house. Some of them describing an arc in the air fell on the roof and sprayed tar, and tongues of flames were gradually reaching the windows of the attic. In answer to this, a howl was heard:

“Forty against one! And using fire! What nobility!”

“Be quiet!” I shouted. “Sending twenty bandits against one girl – that’s nobility? There they are, your Hunters, lying in the quagmire and you will be there, too.”

In answer a bullet clicked at my head, striking against the plaster.

Dubatowk’s house was ablaze. Moving farther away from the walls of the house, I made for the trees and almost perished – a bullet from King Stakh sang at my ear. My hair even stirred.

Flames penetrated into the attic, and there, in the fire, guns loaded in good time, began to shoot by themselves. Our minds set at ease we had left the house behind, now that it had become a candle, when suddenly the fellow near the horses began to shout. We looked in his direction and saw Dubatowk creeping out from his dungeon, over a hundred metres away from the house.

“Ah!” Ryhor gritted his teeth. “We forgot that a fox always has an extra passage in his burrow.”

And Dubatowk ran in loops in the direction of the Giant’s Gap. His right hand was hanging. We had, obviously, given the skunk a good treat.

He raced at a surprising rate for a man as stout as he. I shot from my revolver – far off. A whole volley from my people was like water off a duck’s back. Dubatowk crossed a small meadow, leaped rashly into a bog and began to jump from hummock to hummock like a grasshopper. Finding himself at a safe distance, he threatened us with his fist.

“Beware, you rats!” his frightful voice came flying to us. “Not one of you shall remain alive. I swear in the name of the gentry, I swear by my blood to slaughter you together with your children.”

We were stunned. But at this moment such a loud whistle was heard that it deafened my ears. And I saw a young fellow sticking a bunch of stinging dry thistle into one of the horses right under his tail. And again a piercing whistle...

The horses neighed. We understood this youth’s plan and rushed to the horses, and began to whip them. In a twinkling the herd dashed off, panic stricken, to the Giant’s Gap. The figures of the scarecrow hunters were still sitting on some of the horses.

The wild stamping of hoofs broke into the night. The horses raced like wind. Dubatowk, apparently, also understood what it meant, and after a wild scream, ran off; the horses rushed in pursuit, having been taught to do that by this very man who was now running away from them.

We watched the mad race of King Stakh’s Wild Hunt, now without horsemen on their backs. Their manes waved with the wind, mud flew from under their hoofs, and a lonely star burned in the sky above the horses’ hoofs.

Nearer and nearer they came! The distance between Dubatowk and the furious animals was growing less and less. In despair he turned away from the paths, but the horses, having gone mad, also turned away.

A scream full of deathly fright came flying towards us.

“To my rescue! Oh! King Stakh!” At that very moment his feet fell recklessly into the abyss, and the horses, having caught up with him, also began to fall into it. The first horse smashed Dubatowk with his hoofs, pushing him deeper and deeper into the stinking swamp, and began to neigh. The quagmire began to bubble.

“King Stakh!” reached our ears from there. Then an enormous thing turned over in the depths of the abyss, swallowing water. The horses and the man disappeared, and only the large bubbles whistled at the top as they burst. Like a candle burned the house of the last of the “knights”, knights who like wolves marauded in the night. The muzhyks in leather coats turned inside out, with pitchforks in their hands surrounded the house, a crimson and alarming light illuminating them.

I came home dirty and tired and, when the watchman opened the door for me, I immediately went to my room. At last, everything connected with these horrors was quite over and finished with; we had run down and crushed the cast iron Wild Force. I was so exhausted that after lighting the candle, I almost fell asleep in the armchair, with one boot pulled off half way. When I finally got into bed, everything was swimming before my eyes: the swamp, the flames over Dubatowk’s house, the measured stamping of the horses’ hoofs, the frightful screams, Ryhor’s face as he lowered a heavy fork on somebody’s head. I fell asleep only after some time had elapsed; a heavy sleep overcame me. I pushed my head into my pillow as the horse had pushed Dubatowk’s head. Even in my sleep, I was experiencing the events of the night all over again. I ran, shot, jumped, and felt my feet moving, in my sleep.

My awakening was a strange one, although the state I was in could hardly have been called an awakening. Still sleeping, a feeling of something heavy arose, as if the shadow of some great and last misfortune were threatening me. It seemed that someone was sitting on my feet, so heavy had they become. I opened my eyes and saw Death nearby with Dubatowk laughing boisterously. I understood that this was all a dream, but the misfortune was tangible and alive in the room, it was moving, it was coming nearer and nearer.

The canopy was threatening me, was floating down to me, choking me, its tassels were swinging right in front of my eyes. My heart was thumping madly. I felt something mysterious approaching me, its heavy steps sounding along the passages, but I was weak and helpless, nor was there any need for strength, the evil monster was about to catch me now, or rather, not me, but her; and her thin, weak little bones were about to crack. I hadn’t the strength to prevent what was coming; I shook my head and mumbled something, unable to shake off this horrible nightmare.

And suddenly the flame of a candle turned towards the ceiling, began to grow smaller and, weakened by its struggle with the darkness, finally died out altogether.

I looked at the door – it was ajar. The moon had cast a deathly light along the walls of the room and made window squares on the floor. In going out, the candlelight gave off a puff of smoke that rose upward as if in a blurred fog.

Suddenly I saw two very large eyes looking at me through the transparent curtain. It was awful! I shook my head. A woman was looking at me. But her eyes did not see me, they were staring somewhere behind me, as if they were looking through me, not noticing me at all.

Then she floated away. I looked at her, at the Lady-in-Blue of Marsh Firs, and my hair stood on end, though I knew not whether it was reality or a dream, a dream of my weakened mind.