Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/746

 308 "But these whom we are passing now, who are they?" inquired Pan de Lorche.

"Those are Tartars; Vitold's feudatory, Saladin, brought them."

"Are they good in battle?"

"Lithuania understands how to war with those Tartars, and has conquered a considerable part of them, for this reason they were forced to come to this war. It is difficult for knights of western Europe to meet them, for they are more terrible in retreat than attack."

"Let us look at them more nearly," said De Lorche. And they rode toward the fires, which were surrounded by men whose arms were entirely naked. They were dressed, notwithstanding the summer season, in sheep-skin coats, the wool outside. They were sleeping for the greater part directly on the ground, or on straw which was steaming from heat, but many were sitting on their heels near the blazing fires; some were shortening the night hours by singing wild songs in nasal tones and striking in accompaniment one shin bone of a horse against another, which produced a strange and disagreeable clatter; some had small drums or were thrumming on stiffly drawn bow-strings; others were eating pieces of meat freshly snatched from the fire, still steaming and bloody, on which they blew through pouting, bluish lips. In general these people looked so wild and ill-omened that it was easier to take them for some terrible creatures of the forest than human beings.

The smoke of the fires gave out a sharp odor of the horseflesh and mutton which were roasting in them, and round about from burnt hair and heated sheep-skin coats the smell was unendurable, while from fresh hides and blood it was nauseating.

From beyond the street, where there were horses, came the smell of dung and sweat; those beasts, a number of hundreds of which were kept for scouting in the neighborhood, had gnawed the grass from beneath their own feet and were biting one another, squealing shrilly, and snorting. Horseboys quieted them with their voices and with rawhide whips.

It was unsafe to go alone among the Tartars, for those wild people were greedy to a degree unheard of. Directly behind them were a few companies of Bessarabians, a little less wild, with horns on their heads; and long-haired Wallachians, who instead of steel armor had wooden, painted