Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/569

 Rh Night had fallen,—a pleasant night, indeed, but without moonlight. They had to halt to rest the horses and strengthen the men with food and sleep. Before resting, however, Zbyshko told Sanderus that he was to go ahead, and alone, on the morrow. To this he agreed willingly, stipulating only, that in case of peril from wild beasts, or people of the country, he should have the right to return to them. He begged also that he might stop, not three, but four times in the day, for some alarm always seized him in a lonely country, even where there were provisions; but what must it be in a forest as wild and ugly as that in which they found themselves!

The night camp was pitched, and having strengthened their bodies, they lay down on skins before a small fire made at a bend and distant from the road about half a furlong. The attendants took turns in watching the horses, which, when unsaddled, dozed after they had eaten oats, one putting its head on the neck of another. But barely had dawn silvered the treetops when Zbyshko sprang up, roused the others, and they moved on their further journey at daylight. The tracks left by the immense hoofs of Arnold's stallion were found again without difficulty, for stamped in the low, muddy earth, common there, they remained without drying. Sanderus went ahead and vanished from sight, but half-way between sunrise and mid-day they found him at the resting-place, and he told them that he had not seen a living thing except a bison, before which he had not fled, however, for the beast stepped out of the road first. At mid-day, at the first meal, he declared that he had seen a bee-keeper with a ladder; that he did not stop him, simply out of fear that in the forest depth there might be others like him. He asked the man about this and that, but they could not understand each other.

During the next march Zbyshko began to be alarmed. What would happen should they come to more elevated and drier places, where on a hard road tracks would fail? Also if pursuit should continue too long and bring them to a more inhabited country, where, among people accustomed from of old to obey the Order, an attack and the rescue of Danusia would be almost impossible; where Siegfried and Arnold, though unprotected by the walls of any castle, would be safe, for the local people would take their part surely.

But luckily those fears proved vain, for at the next halt