Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/174

 don’t wish that upon you, I wish only to point out that it wouldn’t be very nice if it happened. It is for this special reason, to protect you from just such a fate, that I’d like to negotiate for peace with your elders. I feel sorry for you, hot-blooded, inexperienced youngsters! You are ready to go to your death blindly without stopping to think whether it will benefit anyone or not. But your elders ought to be able to give the matter a less emotional and more objective consideration.”

As he talked the boyar drew closer to the campfire by which some carpenters were planing the freshly cut pieces of timber, while others were making grooves in the planed logs and still others drilling holes and sharpening wooden pegs to fit into them.

“What is this you’re making?” the boyar questioned the workmen.

“Guess if you’re smart!” they gibed, fitting together frameworks of wood resembling gates, joining a pair of them together horizontally at the top and bottom with split halves of timbers.

The boyar watched these operations a moment and then slapped his thighs in astonishment. “Trebuchets!” he exclaimed. “Men, who taught you how to make such machines?”

“Oh, there was someone who showed us how,” replied the carpenters, noncommittally. And taking hold of a strong beech stump, they chipped out a hollow to form a huge ladle to the handle of which heavily woven ropes were to be fastened and wound tightly on two windlasses attached to the front posts of the framework. An immense wooden basket filled with stones was to be attached to the other end. The force of its prodigious weight, released by the wound-up ropes, was to hurl stones from the ladle far out upon the Mongols in their encampment.

Tuhar Wolf glanced around him. Beside each campfire