Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/405

Rh straightway that Hlava had on his side a tremendous advantage. Van Krist's axe moved slowly in his hand, and the motions of his shield were more labored. The legs seen beneath his shield were longer, but slender and less springy than the powerful limbs covered by the close-fitting dress of Hlava, who pressed on so passionately that Van Krist had to retreat almost from the first moment. People understood this immediately: one of those opponents rushes on the other like a storm, he pushes, presses, strikes like a thunderbolt, while the other, in the feeling that death is above him, defends himself only to defer the dread moment to the utmost. Such was the case in reality. That boaster, who in general went to combat only when he could not do otherwise, saw that insolence and thoughtless words had brought him to that struggle with a man of great strength, whom he should have avoided as he would destruction; hence, when he felt that each of those blows might have brought down a bullock, the heart fell in him utterly. He forgot almost that it was not enough to catch blows on a shield, but that he must return them. He saw above him gleams of an axe, and thought that each gleam was the last one. When holding his shield up he shut his eyes in terror, doubting whether he would open them another time. He gave a blow rarely, and hopeless of reaching his opponent, he merely raised his shield higher and higher above his head to protect it.

At last he was tortured, but Hlava struck on with increasing vigor. As from a great pine-tree immense chips fly under the axe of a peasant, so under the blows of the Cheh plates began to break and fall from the mail of the German attendant. The upper edge of his shield bent and broke, the shoulder-piece fell from his right shoulder, and with it the bloody, severed armor strap. The hair stood on Van Krist's head and mortal terror seized him. He struck still once and a second time with all the vigor of his arm against Hlava's buckler. Seeing at last that, in view of the terrible strength of his opponent, there was no rescue, and that nothing could save him except some uncommon exertion, he hurled himself suddenly at Hlava's legs with all the weight of his body and his armor.

Both fell to the earth and wrestled, turning in the snow and rolling. But the Cheh was soon the superior. He restrained for a time the desperate struggles of his opponent, till at last he pressed with his knee the iron network covering Van Krist's stomach, and drew from his own sword-belt a short, triple-edged misericordia.