Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/107

 harshly shouted conversation between the guards stationed there and those who led the boyar and his daughter, after which they assumed charge of the unfamiliar guests and conducted them to the tents of their chieftains. Though Peace-Renown was quite crushed by the weight of her new knowledge and shame which burned in two bright spots on her girlish cheeks, she had not lost her usual alert audacity nor forgotten her princely training in endurance to the extent that she would neglect to interest herself in the lay-out of the encampment and in all the other new arrangements heretofore unseen by her. She keenly observed the guards who led them. They were short, thick-set and dressed in sheep-skin coats, over which they slung their bows and pouches of arrows on their shoulders, resembling bears or other wild beasts. Beardless, displaying their heavy jowls with the high cheekbones; bright, beady eyes barely visible from between the short-lashed, narrowed eye-lids and small flattened noses made them singularly unattractive. The reflection of the fireglow cast a ghastly greenish tint upon their yellow skin making them appear even more execrable. Speaking in their throaty, sing-song language, their heads drooping dejectedly, they resembled a pack of wolves out for a kill. Their tents, as Peace-Renown now noticed, were made of waterproof canvas pitched on four poles tied together at the top and covered by big caps of horse-hide to protect them against any leakage during the rain. In front of the tents, set on stakes, were bloody human heads with expressions of pain and horror frozen upon their pale bluish faces lit by the fire-glow into terrifying omnipresent simulacra.

Beads of cold perspiration stood out on Peace-Renown’s forehead at this sight. The thought that her head might also soon be sticking up there before the tent of some Mongol warlord did not trouble this courageous girl. On the contrary, she would rather have right then smouldered in one of those huge bonfires and had her head set up as a trophy in front of