Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/318

294 travelled on, keeping closely together, but so slowly that Zbyshko began to think that they would not reach Tsehanov even on Christmas eve.

In some places it was necessary to clear the drifts, for horses could not wade through them. Fortunately, the forest road was definite. Still it was dusk in the world when they saw Tsehanov.

It may be even that they would have gone around the place in the snow-storm and the whistling of the wind without knowing that they were right there, had it not been for fires which were burning on the height where the new castle was standing. No one knew certainly whether those fires had been lighted on that eve of the Divine Birth to serve guests, or because of some ancient custom, but neither did any one of those accompanying Zbyshko care at that moment, for all wished to find a refuge at the earliest.

The tempest increased every instant. The cutting and freezing wind swept along immense clouds of snow. It broke trees, roared, went mad, tore away entire drifts, carried them into the air, twisted them, shot them apart, covered horses and wagons with them, cut the faces of travellers with them as if with sharpened sand, stopped with them the breath and speech of people. The sound of bells fastened to sleigh tongues was not heard in the least, but in the howling and the whistling of the whirlwind sounded complaining voices, as if voices of wolves, as if distant neighing of horses, and sometimes as if the cries of people filled with fear and calling for assistance. Exhausted horses, leaning each with its side against the other, advanced more and more slowly.

"Hei! this is a snow tempest, indeed it is!" said the Cheh, with a panting voice. "It is lucky enough that we are near the town, and that those fires are burning, otherwise it would go hard with us."

"It is death to be out now," said Zbyshko; "but I do not see even the blaze there."

"Because there is such a mist that the light of the fire cannot pass through it. Besides that, the fire and the wood may have been blown away."

On other sleighs merchants and knights were also saying that whoever was caught by the storm at a distance from human dwellings would hear no church bell on the morrow. But Zbyshko was disquieted all on a sudden, and said,—

"May God not grant that Yurand be out on the road somewhere!"