Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/547

Rh time for admiration, and had not their horses swept them with the highest speed against the levelled, gleaming lances.

Through a chance, which for Zbyshko was fortunate, the German cavalry found itself in the rear of the detachment, near the wagons. They moved, it is true, at once toward the infantry, but could neither pass through nor ride around it, and consequently could not defend it from the first onset. Meanwhile crowds of Jmud warriors attacked the mounted Germans, rushing out of the thicket like a swarm of stinging wasps whose nest has been hit by the foot of a heedless traveller. Zbyshko struck with his men on the infantry. But his blow had no effect. The Germans put the ends of their heavy lances and halberds on the ground and held them with such firmness and so evenly that the lighthorse of the Jmud men had not force to break that wall. Matsko's horse, struck by a halberd in the shank, reared on its hind-legs and then dug the earth with its nostrils. For a moment death was hanging over the old knight, but, experienced in all struggles and every adventure, he drew his foot out of the stirrups and grasped with his strong hand the sharp German spear, which, instead of entering his bosom, was used to support him; next he sprang out among the horses, and drawing his sword, struck right and left at spears and halberds, just as a keen falcon dashes savagely at a flock of long-billed storks. Zbyshko's horse was stopped in its speed and almost stood on its hind-legs. Zbyshko leaned on his spear for support and broke it, so he too took his sword. Hlava, who believed in the axe above all weapons, hurled his at the Germans, and was for a moment defenceless. One of the nobles from Lenkavitsa perished; at sight of this, rage so seized the other that he howled like a wolf, and, reining back his bloody horse till it reared, drove the beast toward the midst of the enemy at random. The boyars of Jmud hewed with their blades against the large and small spears, from behind which gazed the faces of soldiers, transfixed as it were with amazement, and also contracted by stubbornness and resolution. But the line did not break. The Jmud men, who struck at the flanks, sprang back at once from the Germans as from porcupines. They returned, it is true, but could effect nothing.

Some climbed in a twinkle into the trees at the roadside and began to shoot from bows into the midst of the soldiers.