War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [343]
Nikolai set out after the first troika; behind him the rest came rattling and screeching. At first they went at a slow trot along the narrow road. As they drove past the garden, shadows from the bare trees often lay across the road and obscured the bright light of the moon, but as soon as they drove beyond the fence, a plain of snow, sparkling like diamonds, with a dove-blue sheen, bathed in moonlight and motionless, opened out on all sides. Once, twice the front sleigh jolted over a bump; the next sleigh jolted in the same way, then the next, and, boldly breaking the frost-bound stillness, the sleighs strung out one after the other.
“Hare’s tracks, lots of them!” Natasha’s voice rang out in the frost-bound air.
“How clear it is, Nicolas!” Sonya’s voice said. Nikolai turned to look at Sonya and bent down to see her face more closely. A totally new, dear face with black eyebrows and mustache, both near and distant in the moonlight, peeked from the sable fur.
“That used to be Sonya,” thought Nikolai. He looked at her more closely and smiled.
“What is it, Nicolas?”
“Nothing,” he said and turned to the horses again.
Having driven out to the smooth high road, slicked down by runners and all cut up by the tracks of calked horseshoes, visible in the moonlight, the horses began to pull at the reins and speed up by themselves. The left outrunner, thrusting its head back, leaped and tugged at its traces. The shaft horse swayed, twitching its ears, as if asking: “Shall we start? Or is it still too early?” Ahead, already far away and clanging its deep-toned bell, Zakhar’s black troika was clearly visible against the white snow. From his sleigh came shouts and laughter and the voices of the mummers.
“Well, now, my gentles!” cried Nikolai, tugging the reins to one side and raising the whip in his hand. And only by the keener wind that seemed to rush at them, and by the straining tug and ever-increasing gallop of the outrunners, could they tell how quickly the troika was flying. Nikolai turned and looked back. The other troikas hastened after them, with shouting and shrieking, the waving of whips and urging on of the shaft horses. His shaft horse rolled steadily under the bow, not even thinking of slowing down, but promising to push on more and more when necessary.
Nikolai caught up with the first troika. They drove down some sort of hill and came out on a wide trampled road across a meadow by the river.
“Where are we going?” thought Nikolai. “Across Sloping Meadow, it must be. But no, this is something new, I’ve never seen it before. This isn’t Sloping Meadow, or Diomkin Hill, it’s God knows what! It’s something new and magical. Well, whatever!” And, urging his horses on, he began to pass the first troika.
Zakhar reined in his horses and turned his face, already covered with hoarfrost up to the eyebrows.
Nikolai gave his horses free rein; Zakhar, stretching his arms forward, clucked his tongue and let his own go.
“Hold on now, master,” he said. The troikas flew on still faster side by side, and faster moved the legs of the galloping horses. Nikolai began to pull ahead. Zakhar, without changing the position of his outstretched arms, raised the hand that held the reins.
“No you don’t, master,” he cried to Nikolai. Nikolai sent his horses into a gallop and outstripped Zakhar. The horses sent a spray of fine, dry snow into the faces of the passengers; beside them was a rapid tinkling of bells and the tangle of quickly moving legs and shadows of the troika they were outstripping. From all sides came women’s shrieks and the whistle of runners over snow.
Stopping his horses again, Nikolai looked around. Around him was the same magical plain drenched in moonlight, with stars strewn over it.
“Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the left?” Nikolai wondered. “Are we driving to the Melyukovs’? Can this be Melyukovka? We’re driving God knows where, and God knows what’s going on with us—and it’s very strange and