Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [207]
‘Yes, Hetman’
‘Good. I’ll be watching you next time we fight.’
Andrei knew what that meant. In a year, perhaps, he might even be made an esaul – a Cossack captain. If the rebellion succeeded, the path to fortune might be opening up before him.
The party rode off in high spirits.
How beautiful the country was, as they made their way eastwards over the plain under the warm June sun. Occasionally they encountered stretches of woods and little coppices; sometimes there were willows and pines growing along the banks of the streams. But for the most part they saw only the broad, open steppe, with its delicate, waving feather grass. There was plenty of game, and fish to catch, but they rode steadily, resting at noon, travelling swiftly in the morning and evening.
Although he possessed the fine Polish horses, Andrei preferred to ride his smaller, Cossack steed. Bred for strength and endurance, these sturdy unshod animals could carry a man as much as fifty miles a day across the steppe. By the end of the second day, the party had reached the mighty Dniepr and crossed it by raft. In another day, they would be at Russka.
They came upon the first sign of trouble at mid-morning. It was at one of the tiny wooden forts, smaller than Russka, which served as outposts for the Polish administration. As they approached, the Cossacks saw that the place was deserted, and they would have passed by without stopping if Andrei had not noticed something strange hanging from the open gateway.
It was a Polish official – one could see that at once from his fine clothes. He had been hanged. But the Ukrainian peasants had not been content until they had been cruel; and so they had first killed his wife and children in front of him and then hung their heads, on a rope, round his neck. It was a miserable ending that many Poles were to suffer that summer.
An hour later they came to a Cossack farmstead, not unlike his father’s. This had been burned to the ground and thoroughly looted. But when Andrei began to curse the Poles, Stepan stopped him.
‘Look.’ He picked up an arrow from the ground. ‘It wasn’t the Poles. It was the Tatars on their way back.’
Andrei looked and nodded.
‘We gave them all the Polish nobles,’ he remarked sadly. ‘Wasn’t that enough?’
‘Nothing’s ever enough for the Tatars,’ Stepan replied.
‘Let’s move on,’ Andrei said. He wondered what they would find at Russka.
They rode, for the most part, in silence. The others had sensed Andrei’s anxiety and the whole group pressed ahead as fast as it could.
Only one tiny incident provoked a conversation. This was when a wildcat darted across the path in front of them and disappeared into the long grasses. Andrei would not have thought about it at all, if he had not heard Stepan mutter a curse beside him.
‘What’s the matter, my Ox?’
‘Nothing,’ the huge fellow gruffly replied, but he didn’t sound very convincing.
‘Come on, what is it?’
‘That wildcat: did it look at us?’
Andrei considered.
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Nothing. Perhaps it didn’t.’
Anxious as he was, Andrei could not help smiling. In a superstitious age, in a superstitious land, he had never met anyone like Stepan. Time and again on the campaign, he had seen the big fellow gaze at trees, rocks, the flight of birds, any number of everyday things which had some special, magical significance for him.
‘So what does it mean, where you come from, if a wildcat looks at you?’ he asked with a laugh.
But Stepan would not tell him.
At last, late in the afternoon, they drew close to Russka. Anxiously Andrei looked from side to side, searching for signs of Tatars, but saw nothing.
And then, just before they reached the marshes below Russka, they met a peasant from the forest; and when he told them what he knew, Andrei saw what he must do.
‘Prepare yourselves for a battle,’ he told his men. ‘This will need careful timing,’