Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/756

 318 only a company of courtiers, priests, and attendants. At that moment a bell sounded, in sign that the parish priest of Kaliska was beginning the second mass, so Yagello, stretching out his arms, placed his hands together piously, and raising them toward heaven, entered the tent with deliberate step.

When, after the second mass, the king went out again in front of the tent, he could convince himself with his own eyes that the scouts had spoken truly, for on the edges of the broad sloping plain something seemed black, as if a pine wood had grown up suddenly on the empty fields, while above that pine wood, colors played and changed in the sunlight, a rainbow of banners. Still more distant, far off beyond Grünwald and Tannenberg, a gigantic cloud of dust was rising toward the sky.

The king took in at a glance that whole tremendous horizon, then turning to the reverend vice-chancellor Mikolai, he inquired,—

"Who is the saint of to-day?"

"This is the day of the sending of the Apostles," answered the vice-chancellor.

The king sighed, and said in a sad, broken voice,—

"So the day of the apostles will be the last in life, for the many thousands of Christians who will fall on this field."

And he indicated with his hand the broad, empty plain in the middle of which, about half-way to Tannenberg, stood a group of oaks centuries old.

Meanwhile, his horse was led up, and in the distance appeared sixty lancers whom Zyndram had sent to be the king's body-guard.

This guard was led by Alexander, the youngest son of the Prince of Plotsk, a brother of that Ziemovit who, gifted with exceptional "wisdom in war," had sat in the military council. Next to Alexander in command was, a Lithuanian, and nephew of the monarch, a youth of great hopes and great destinies, but of restless spirit. Of the knights most famous were: Yasko Monjyk of Dombrova, a genuine giant, almost equal in bulk to Pashko, and in strength yielding but little to Zavisha Charny; Zolava, a Bohemian baron, small and slender, but of immense skill, famous at the courts of Bohemia and Hungary for duels, in which he had brought down between ten and twenty Austrian nobles; and Sokol, another Bohemian,