War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [186]
The horse guards galloped, but still holding back their horses. Rostov could now see their faces and heard the command “Forward, forward!” uttered by an officer, letting his thoroughbred go at full speed. Rostov, afraid of being trampled or swept into the attack on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go, and still did not manage to avoid them.
The last horse guard, a pockmarked man of enormous height, frowned angrily, seeing Rostov in front of him, where he would inevitably run into him. This horse guard would certainly have knocked Rostov and his Bedouin down (Rostov felt himself so small and weak compared to these enormous men and horses), if it had not occurred to him to swing his whip at the eyes of the guardsman’s horse. The heavy, black, twenty-hand horse shied, laying back his ears; but the pockmarked horse guard spurred him as hard as he could with his huge spurs, and the horse, tossing his tail and stretching his neck, raced on still faster. The horse guards had barely gone past Rostov, when he heard their shout of “Hurrah!” and, turning, saw their front ranks mingling with other, probably French, horsemen with red epaulettes. Beyond that nothing could be seen, because just after that cannon began firing from somewhere and everything was covered in smoke.
At the moment when the horse guards, going past him, disappeared into the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after them or ride where he was supposed to. This was that brilliant attack of the horse guards which astonished the French themselves. Rostov was horrified to hear later that, of all that mass of enormous, handsome men, of all those brilliant, rich men, youths, officers, and junkers, who had ridden past him on thousand-rouble horses, only eighteen were left after the attack.
“Why should I envy them, mine won’t go away, and now maybe I’ll see the sovereign!” thought Rostov, and he rode on.
Having drawn even with the infantry guards, he noticed that cannonballs were flying over and around them, not so much because he heard the sound of the cannon, but because he saw uneasiness on the soldiers’ faces, and on the officers’ an unnatural military solemnity.
Riding behind one of the lines of the infantry guard regiments, he heard a voice call him by name.
“Rostov!”
“What?” he replied, not recognizing Boris.
“Imagine, we got into the front line! Our regiment went into an attack!” said Boris, smiling that happy smile which occurs in young men who have been under fire for the first time.
Rostov stopped.
“Really!” he said. “And what then?”
“We beat them back,” Boris said animatedly, becoming talkative. “Can you imagine?”
And Boris began telling how the guards, taking up their position and seeing troops in front of them, took them for Austrians, and suddenly, from the cannonballs fired from those troops, realized that they were in the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov, not hearing Boris out, touched up his horse.
“Where are you going?” asked Boris.
“To his majesty with a message.”
“There he is!” said Boris, who thought he heard Rostov say “his highness” instead of “his majesty.”
And he pointed him to the grand duke, who, a hundred paces from them, in a helmet and a horse guard’s tunic, with his raised shoulders and frowning brows, was shouting something to a white and pale-faced Austrian officer.
“But that’s the grand duke, and I need the commander in chief or the sovereign,” said Rostov, and he touched up his horse.
“Count, Count!” cried Berg, as animated as Boris, running up to him from the other side. “Count, I’m wounded in the right hand,” he said, showing his hand, bloody and bandaged with a handkerchief, “and