War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [677]
“Well, raybeard,” he turned to the muzhik guide, “lead us to Shamshevo.”
Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by several Cossacks and the hussar who was carrying the prisoner, rode left across a ravine to the edge of the forest.
V
The light rain stopped; only mist fell and drops of water from the branches of the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya silently rode after the muzhik in the cap, who, stepping lightly and noiselessly over the roots and wet leaves with his splayed feet in bast shoes, led them to the edge of the forest.
Going up a slope, the muzhik paused, looked around, and made for the thinning wall of trees. By a big oak still covered with leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously with his hand.
Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the place where the muzhik had stopped, the French could be seen. Just beyond the forest, a field of spring wheat descended over a low knoll. To the right, across a steep ravine, a small village and a manor house with broken-down roofs could be seen. In this village, and in the manor house, and all over the knoll, in the garden, by the wells and the pond, and along the road uphill from the bridge to the village, no more than four hundred yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the undulating mist. One could clearly hear their non-Russian shouts at the horses pulling wagons up the hill and their calls to one another.
“Bring the prisoner here,” Denisov said in a low voice, without taking his eyes off the French.
The Cossack got off his horse, took the boy down, and went up to Denisov with him. Denisov, pointing to the French, asked what kind of troops these and those were. The boy, putting his chilled hands in his pockets and raising his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in fear and, despite his obvious wish to tell all he knew, became confused in his answers and only confirmed whatever Denisov asked. Denisov frowned, turned away from him, and addressed the esaul, telling him his considerations.
Petya, quickly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now at Denisov, now at the esaul, now at the French in the village and on the road, trying not to miss anything important.
“Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we’ve got to take them!…Right?” said Denisov, with a merry sparkle in his eyes.
“It’s a convenient place,” said the esaul.
“We’ll send the infantry from below, through the marshes,” Denisov went on. “They’ll sneak up on the garden. You and the Cossacks will ride around from there,” Denisov pointed to the forest behind the village, “and I’ll come from here with my hussars. And at the signal shot…”
“We can’t go through the hollow—it’s swampy,” said the esaul. “The horses will get bogged down; we’ll have to go around more to the left.”
As they were talking like that in half whispers, a shot cracked below, in the hollow by the pond, they saw a puff of white smoke, then another, and heard the concerted, merry-sounding shout of hundreds of voices of the French who were on the hillside. At the first moment, Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so close that they thought they were the cause of the shots and shouts. But the shots and shouts had nothing to do with them. Below, across the marsh, ran a man in something red. Obviously, the French were shooting and shouting at him.
“Why, that’s our Tikhon,” said the esaul.
“Him! It’s him!”
“What a rascal!” said Denisov.
“He’ll get away!” the esaul said, narrowing his eyes.
The man they called Tikhon ran to the river, plopped into it with a splash, disappeared for a moment, and clambered out on all fours, black from the water,