Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/134

. “We are not foxes whom a hunter has to smoke out of their burrow.”

“Very well! If that is what you want,” replied Maxim, form yourselves into three rows; cast your bows and arrows aside and take up your pole-axes, battle-axes and hunting knives and follow me! Remember, look not back in this battle. Fight to the death. Hit hard. Forward like men!”

Like a huge stone boulder released from a giant engine, against the walls of a fortress, the youths hurled themselves upon the Mongolian columns. Before they reached the Mongols, they were met by a shower of arrows. However, these arrows took no toll of them for their front line carried before it as a shield, the top of a table stuck on two spears, which stopped the arrow shots. When they neared the Mongols, the first row dropped its shield and the whole troop fought desperately with the enemy. At first the Mongols were disconcerted, confused and started to draw back but Tuhar Wolf was there leading them and encircled the youths with the whole company of Mongols like hunters surrounding their quarry with dogs.

In a short time the scene became one of unpitying slaughter. The valiant youths swung their axes cutting down the Mongols by tens, but Tuhar Wolf continued to send in reserves against them. Blood spurted from the dead and wounded; the wails and screams of the dying, the ferocious howls and yells of the killers, all these terrible sounds rose and fell from edge to edge of the cliffs like deep bursts of thunder, combining into a discord which rent the heart and pierced the ears, detonating into the welkin beneath the smiling, golden sun, within the dense, murky forests of spruce trees and in the gorges on whose bottoms hurtled the foaming icy mountain torrents.

“To the right, comrades! All together, forward!” shouted Maxim, fending off with his broad-axe three Mongols at once who were doing their best to knock the weapons from his