Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/763

 Rh as to gaze at the struggle of those armies more gigantic than the world had seen within time to be remembered. But apart from this one group of trees the whole field was vacant, gray, ghastly, resembling a lifeless steppe. Nothing moved on it but the wind, while above it death was hovering in silence. The eyes of the knights turned in spite of them to that ominous and silent plain. Clouds which rushed over the sky hid the sun at intervals, and the gloom of death settled down in those moments.

A whirlwind rose up now. It roared through the forest tearing thousands of leaves away; it rushed into the field, seized dry grass-blades, whirled clouds of dust upward, and bore them into the eyes of the Knights of the Order.

At that very moment the air quivered from the shrill sound of horns, crooked trumpets, whistles; and the entire Lithuanian wing rose like a countless flock of birds when ready to fly.

They started, as was their custom, at a gallop. The horses, stretching their necks and dropping their ears, tore forward with all the strength that was in them; the riders flew on with a terrible shout, raising their swords and lances, against the left wing of the Knights of the Order.

The Grand Master was there just at that moment. His emotion had passed, and from his eyes sparks issued now instead of tears. Seeing the hurrying legions of Lithuania, he turned to Friedrich Wallenrod, who led the left wing of the Order, and said,—

"Vitold has attacked first. Begin you—in the name of God!"

And with a movement of his right hand he sent forward fourteen regiments of the Knights encased from head to foot in iron.

"Gott mit uns (God with us)!" cried Wallenrod.

The regiments, lowering their lances, began to advance at a walk. Then, precisely like a rock pushed from a mountain side which falls and gains ever increasing impetus, they from a walk passed to a trot, and then to a gallop, and rushed forward irresistible, like an avalanche which must rub out and crush everything in front of it.

The earth groaned and bent under them.

The battle might extend any moment and flame up along the whole line, hence the Polish regiments began to sing the ancient war hymn of. A hundred thousand heads covered with iron, and a hundred thousand pairs of