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,’ he added.
The little fort of Russka was closed tight. Inside, a garrison of twenty Polish soldiers, sent there from Pereiaslav in the general confusion, awaited further instructions.
The fortress also contained Yankel the liquor concessionaire, three Jewish craftsmen and two other Jewish merchants, all with their families. Since the Poles did not trust them, the local Cossacks and peasants had all been left outside, to defend themselves if the Tatars came as best they could.
When they left Pereiaslav, they had been told that the magnate Vyshnevetsky was raising a large force, but since then they had heard nothing of this force’s movements. They had been waiting for news for two days.
The sun was already getting low when, at the edge of the woods, on the Pereiaslav side, they saw the detachment approaching. Shielding their eyes against the sun, it was with huge relief that they saw, from the detachment’s shining uniforms and their splendid mounts, that they were Poles.
From his position behind some bushes, just a hundred yards below the fortress gate, Stepan also watched the Poles approach.
As they came close, the men on the walls called down: ‘Where are you from? What news?’
‘We’re Vyshnevetsky’s men,’ came the welcome Polish reply. ‘His main force is just behind us. Come down and open the gates.’
From behind his bush, the intrepid Stepan grunted: ‘Good. Very good. We’ll kill them all.’
The men from the walls came down and, as their brother Poles reached the gates, opened them.
Then something very strange occurred. Unseen by the defenders, as they opened the gates to the Poles, the huge figure of Stepan, together with about twenty villagers, rushed from their hiding places to swarm into the fort behind the horsemen. Only as they reached the gate itself did the garrison see them, but as they cried out in alarm, the Polish horsemen, instead of turning on the insurgents, jammed the gates open.
And then, too late, the Polish garrison realized they had been duped.
As he cut down an astonished Pole, Andrei laughed to himself. The splendid horses he and Stepan had been given, and the various Polish uniforms, swords and finery that his companions had looted in the big battles, had come in very useful in this little deception.
I’m even glad they made me learn Polish at the seminary, he thought.
Taken completely by surprise, the Polish garrison lost a quarter of their men before they even realized what was happening. But they rallied bravely and fought well. There was no quarter given; they did not suppose that there would be any captives taken. The fighting went from house to house.
It was in this way that Andrei almost lost his life.
Pressing a Pole slowly back past the stout wooden hut where Yankel the Jew sold his liquor, he failed to see another who had crept up on to the little balcony above. Only a shout from Stepan caused him to glance up and ward off a blow as the fellow leaped down on him. He fell to the ground and would have been done for if his friend’s huge figure had not burst upon the scene and despatched both Poles with a couple of mighty blows.
As he got up he saw that the battle was over. He could see the last two Poles surrounded by four of his men.
‘Don’t kill those two,’ he shouted cheerfully, ‘we’ll see if they have any information.’
Then he saw something else.
The rest of his men, and the villagers Stepan had collected, were killing the Jews.
Andrei grimaced. He didn’t like the Jews any better than the Poles, and if these fellows had been armed he wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But they were not armed. One man was trying to defend himself with a stick, but he soon went down. Then he saw them dragging out the women and children.
‘Stop that,’ he ordered.
The men took no notice. He saw a woman fall.
‘Leave them,’ he bellowed. ‘That is an order.’
The Cossacks hesitated this time. But he had not reckoned on the villagers.
‘Jewish children down the well,’ one of them shouted.
‘No, we use the well.’
‘To the river, then!’ another voice cried.
They were going to drown them, and he realized, with a sense of self-disgust, that there was nothing he could do to stop them.
He turned away.
‘Lord Andrei.’ The loud whisper came from the window of the house. ‘Lord Andrei.’
He looked in. It was Yankel. In all the excitement he had forgotten about the fellow.
‘Lord Andrei, I recognized you. Save us, noble sir. You see what is happening.’
Andrei looked at him dully.
‘I never did you any harm,’ Yankel went on eagerly. ‘You’re my only hope.’
Because he was not sure if he had the power, Andrei replied testily: ‘You took my father’s horse.’