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 cried the youths, but just one glance in that direction convinced them that they might as well abandon all hope of being saved. The entrance to the pass was darkened by another contingent of Mongols advancing towards them to close off all possible chances of escape from the rocky cage.

“Our death is inevitable,” said Maxim, wiping his bloody battle-axe in the shaggy coat of a dead Mongol lying at his feet. “Comrades, let us put up a stiff fight, boldly, to the last of the battle.”

Though in number they were insufficient, they marched courageously forward to meet the invaders calling up their remaining strength for the encounter with the Mongols without regard for the vastly superior and growing force of the enemy. They rushed straight at the regiment of Mongols and once more confused them inflicting heavy losses upon them. But the whole force of the enemy moved against them directly, backing them down into the depths of the pass, breaking up their formation. With heroic resistance the youths fell one after the other, like grass when scythes are cutting, only Maxim, though he fought like a lion, did not sustain a single wound. The Mongols avoided him or if they crowded him it was only with the intention of knocking the weapons out of his grasp and taking him prisoner as Tuhar Wolf had ordered them to do.

Struck in the rear and the flank by fresh Mongol warriors, they were in a hopeless position, forced within that inescapable stone cage to the wall, with only as much free space before them as they could hold by their swords and pole-axes. Since they did not let their weapons out of their hands their arms began to weaken while the Mongolian reinforcements rolled in like a flood upon them.

In that serious and dreadful period when all feared destruction, some, losing all hope and seeing the futility of further defending themselves threw themselves blindly into the thick of the fight and in one moment perished under the broad-axes.