Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/549

Rh, shook like a house in which the walls are bursting, opened like a log when a wedge is driven into it, and finally dropped apart.

The battle was changed in one moment into slaughter. The long German lances and halberds were useless in the onrush. On the other hand, the swords of the horsemen bit the skulls and the necks of the German footmen. The horses reared in the crowds of people, overturning and trampling the unfortunate soldiers. For horsemen it was easy to strike from above, so they cut without halting or resting. From the sides of the road rushed forth crowd after crowd of wild warriors in wolfskins, and with a wolf's thirst for blood in their bosoms. Their howls drowned voices imploring for pity, and drowned also the groans of the dying. The conquered threw away their weapons; some tried to escape to the forest; some, feigning death, fell on the earth there; some stood erect, with faces as pale as snow and with blinking eyes; others prayed; one, whose mind seemed lost from terror, began to play on a whistle, then raising his eyes up, he laughed till Jmud swords laid his skull open. The pine woods ceased to sound, as if terrified at the slaughter.

At last the handful of men of the Order melted. But for a time was heard in the brushwood the sound of brief fights, or the sharp cry of terror. Zbyshko and Matsko, and behind them all the light-horse, rushed now at the German cavalry, which, defending itself yet, had formed in a circle, for in that way the Germans always defended themselves when the enemy succeeded in meeting them with greater forces. The cavalry, sitting on good horses and in better armor than the footmen, fought bravely and with persistence which deserved admiration. There was no white mantle among them; they were mainly of the middle and smaller nobles of Prussia, whose duty it was to stand in line at command of the Order. Their horses were for the greater part armored, some with breast armor, and all in iron frontlets with a steel horn from the middle of the forehead. Leadership over them was held by a tall, slender man, in dark-blue armor and a helmet of the same shade with closed visor.

From the forest depth a shower of arrows was falling on them, but these shafts dropped harmless from their visors, hard shoulder-pieces, and breastplates. A wave of Jmud men on foot and on horseback had surrounded them closely,