Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/597

 Rh which he was taking to Spyhov would be for his mistress a sentence of misery.

Anulka appeared before his eyes often as blushing as an apple. At those times he touched the sides of his horse with spurs, as much as the road permitted, such was his hurry to Spyhov.

They advanced by uncertain roads, or rather without roads, straight ahead as the cast of a sickle. Hlava knew only that going always a little to the west and always to the south they must reach Mazovia, and then all would be well. In the daytime he followed the sun, and when the journey stretched into the night he looked at the stars. The wilderness before him seemed to have neither bound nor limit. Days and nights flowed past in a night-like gloom. More than once Hlava thought that Zbyshko would not bring a woman alive through those terrible uninhabited regions, where there was no place to find provisions, where at night they had to guard their horses from bears and wolves, and leave the road in the daytime before bulls and bisons, where terrible wild boars sharpened their tusks against pine roots, and where frequently he who did not shoot from a crossbow, or pierce with a spear the spotted sides of a fawn or a young pig, had no food for days in succession.

"What will he do," thought Hlava, "travelling with a woman nearly tortured to death and almost breathing her last breath?"

Time after time he had to go around broad morasses or deep ravines at the bottom of which torrents, swollen by spring rains, were roaring. There was no lack, in this wilderness, of lakes in which he saw at sunset herds of elk or deer swimming in ruddy, smooth waters. Sometimes he noticed smoke, announcing the presence of people; a number of times he approached such forest places, but wild men ran out to meet him; these wore skins of wild beasts on their naked bodies, they were armed with clubs and bows, and stared ominously from beneath matted locks. The attendants mistook them for wolf-men. Hlava had to make quick use of the first astonishment caused by the spectacle of a knight, and ride away as swiftly as possible. Twice arrows whistled behind him, and the shout "Vokili!" (Germans!) followed. But he chose rather to fly than explain who he was. At last after many days he began to suppose that he might have passed the boundary. He learned first