Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/762

 324 The knights took deep breaths into their breasts and fixed themselves firmly in their saddles.

The battle was to begin right there.

The Grand Master was looking meanwhile at the king's army which had come out of the forest.

He looked long at the immensity of it, at the wings spread out like those of an enormous bird, at the banners moved by the wind, and suddenly the heart was pressed in him by some terrible, unknown feeling. It may be that he saw with the eyes of his soul piles of corpses and rivers of blood. He had no fear of man, but perhaps he feared God, who up there in the heights of heaven was holding the scales of victory. For the first time it came to his mind what a ghastly day that would be, and for the first time he felt the responsibility which he had taken on his shoulders.

His face grew pale, his lips quivered, and from his eyes came abundant tears. The comturs glanced at their leader with amazement.

"What is troubling thee, lord?" inquired Count Wende.

"Indeed this is a fitting time for tears!" said the fierce Heinrich, comtur of Chluhov.

The grand comtur, Kuno Lichtenstein, pouted, and said,—

"I censure this openly, Master, for now it becomes thee to rouse the hearts of the knights, and not weaken them. In truth we have never seen thee thus up to this moment."

But in spite of all efforts tears flowed to the Grand Master's black beard, as if some other person were weeping within him.

At last, however, he controlled himself somewhat, and turning stern eyes on the comturs he commanded,—

"To the regiments!"

They sprang each man to his own regiment, for the Master had uttered his words with great power; and stretching his hand to the armor-bearer, he said,—

"Give me the helmet!"

Men's hearts in both armies were beating like hammers, but the trumpets had not given the call yet for battle. A moment of expectation had come, which was more grievous perhaps than battle itself. On the field, between the Germans and the army of the king, there towered up, on the side toward Tannenberg, a group of oaks, centuries old, on to which peasants of the neighborhood had climbed, so