Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/541

Rh without order, for in that pine wood and among bushes it would have been difficult to preserve order. Besides, men on foot were mingled with men on horseback, and to keep up with the horses they held to the manes, tails, and saddles of the animals. The shoulders of the warriors were covered with skins of wolves, bears, and panthers, and from their heads were thrust out wild-boar tusks, stag horns, and shaggy wild-beast ears; so that had it not been for their weapons standing upward, and the bows which they carried, and the quivers behind their shoulders, any onlooker might have thought, especially in the morning mist, all that to be the host of forest wild beasts issuing from their native lairs, driven on by desire of blood and by hunger. There was in it something terrible, and also as unexampled as that wonder called the "gomon," during which, as simple people think, wild beasts rush forward in a throng, and with them stones and trees, even.

At this sight one of those nobles of Lenkavitsa who had come with Hlava approached him, made the sign of the cross, and said,—

"In the name of the Father and the Son! We are going with a legion of wolves, and not people."

Hlava, though he beheld such a host for the first time, said, like a man of experience, who knows everything, and is astonished at no sight,—

"Wolves run in packs during winter, but the beast blood of the Order tastes well even in springtime."

And in truth it was springtime—it was May. Leshchyna, which was encircled with pine trees, was covered with tender green. From the velvety, soft mosses, over which the steps of the warriors passed without noise, appeared the white and tender blue of the sasanka, the young berry, and the fern leaf with its tooth-edged border. The trees, moistened with abundant rain, had the odor of damp bark, and from the earth surface of the forest came a strong odor of fallen pine leaves and decaying timber. The sun played with rainbow light on the water-drops hanging from the forest leaves, and the bird world announced itself joyously.

They advanced with increasing swiftness, for Zbyshko urged them forward. After a while he turned again to the rear of the division, where Matsko and Hlava were with the volunteers from Mazovia. The hope of a good battle had roused him greatly, as could be seen, for on his face