Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/366

342 wood and straw toward the town. Herdsmen were driving cattle. Men were drawing on sleighs frozen fish from the lakes. In one place four bowmen were leading a chained peasant to judgment, evidently for an offence, since his hands were bound behind his back and on his feet were fetters, which, dragging on the snow, hardly let him move forward. From his distended nostrils and open month the breath came forth as rolls of steam, but the bowmen sang as they urged him. When they saw Yurand they looked at him curiously, evidently amazed at the size of the knight and his horse, but at sight of his golden spurs and girdle they lowered their crossbows in sign of salutation and honor. In the town there were more people still, and it was noisier; they gave way to an armed man, however, hurriedly. He passed the main street and turned toward the castle, which, sheltered in the fog, seemed to be sleeping.

But not all were asleep round about; at least crows and rooks were not sleeping; whole flocks of them were whirling above the elevation which formed the approach to the castle, flapping their wings and cawing. When Yurand had ridden up nearer, he understood why those birds were circling there. At the side of the road leading to the castle gate stood a large gibbet; on it were hanging four bodies of Mazovian peasants, subjects of the Knights of the Cross. There was not the least breeze, so that the bodies, the faces of which seemed to be looking at the feet, did not swing, except when the dark birds perched on their shoulders and on their heads, quarrelling with each other, pulling at the ropes, and pecking the drooping heads. Some of the four must have hung for a long time, for their skulls were entirely bare, and their legs had stretched out beyond proportion. At the approach of Yurand the flock flew away with great noise, but soon made a turn in the air and alighted again on the crossbeam of the gibbet. Yurand passing by made the sign of the cross, approached the moat, and stopping in the place where the drawbridge was raised near the gate, blew the horn.

Then he sounded a second, a third, and a fourth time. There was not a living soul on the walls, and from inside the gate came no voice. But after a while a heavy slide, inside the grating evidently, was raised with a gritting sound in a loophole near the gate.

"Wer da (who is there)?" inquired a harsh voice.

"Yurand of Spyhov!" answered the knight.