CHAPTER XI

The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness, tightened
their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denísov stood by the watchman’s
hut giving final orders. The infantry of the detachment passed along the
road and quickly disappeared amid the trees in the mist of early dawn,
hundreds of feet splashing through the mud. The esaul gave some orders to
his men. Pétya held his horse by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the
order to mount. His face, having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow,
and his eyes were particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine
and his whole body pulsed rhythmically.

“Well, is ev’wything weady?” asked Denísov. “Bwing the horses.”

The horses were brought. Denísov was angry with the Cossack because the
saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted. Pétya put his
foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to nip his leg, but
Pétya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of his own weight and,
turning to look at the hussars starting in the darkness behind him, rode
up to Denísov.

“Vasíli Dmítrich, entrust me with some commission! Please… for God’s
sake…!” said he.

Denísov seemed to have forgotten Pétya’s very existence. He turned to
glance at him.

“I ask one thing of you,” he said sternly, “to obey me and not shove
yourself forward anywhere.”

He did not say another word to Pétya but rode in silence all the way. When
they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably growing light
over the field. Denísov talked in whispers with the esaul and the Cossacks
rode past Pétya and Denísov. When they had all ridden by, Denísov touched
his horse and rode down the hill. Slipping onto their haunches and
sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the ravine. Pétya
rode beside Denísov, the pulsation of his body constantly increasing. It
was getting lighter and lighter, but the mist still hid distant objects.
Having reached the valley, Denísov looked back and nodded to a Cossack
beside him.

“The signal!” said he.

The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the tramp of
horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from various sides, and
then more shots.

At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Pétya lashed his horse
and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denísov who shouted
at him. It seemed to Pétya that at the moment the shot was fired it
suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge. Cossacks
were galloping along the road in front of him. On the bridge he collided
with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he galloped on. In front of him
soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were running from right to left across the
road. One of them fell in the mud under his horse’s feet.

Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the midst of
that crowd terrible screams arose. Pétya galloped up, and the first thing
he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman, clutching the
handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.

“Hurrah!… Lads!… ours!” shouted Pétya, and giving rein to his excited
horse he galloped forward along the village street.

He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged Russian
prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road, were shouting
something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking Frenchman, in a blue
overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red face, had been defending
himself against the hussars. When Pétya galloped up the Frenchman had
already fallen. “Too late again!” flashed through Pétya’s mind and he
galloped on to the place from which the rapid firing could be heard. The
shots came from the yard of the landowner’s house he had visited the night
before with Dólokhov. The French were making a stand there behind a wattle
fence in a garden thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the
Cossacks who crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached
the gate, Pétya saw Dólokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,
shouting to his men. “Go round! Wait for the infantry!” he exclaimed as
Pétya rode up to him.

“Wait?… Hurrah-ah-ah!” shouted Pétya, and without pausing a moment
galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the smoke
was thickest.

A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others plashed
against something. The Cossacks and Dólokhov galloped after Pétya into the
gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke some of the French
threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes to meet the Cossacks,
while others ran down the hill toward the pond. Pétya was galloping along
the courtyard, but instead of holding the reins he waved both his arms
about rapidly and strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in
his saddle. His horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was
smoldering in the morning light, stopped suddenly, and Pétya fell heavily
on to the wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked
rapidly though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his
skull.

After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the house
with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that they
surrendered, Dólokhov dismounted and went up to Pétya, who lay motionless
with outstretched arms.

“Done for!” he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet Denísov who
was riding toward him.

“Killed?” cried Denísov, recognizing from a distance the unmistakably
lifeless attitude—very familiar to him—in which Pétya’s body
was lying.

“Done for!” repeated Dólokhov as if the utterance of these words afforded
him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who were surrounded
by Cossacks who had hurried up. “We won’t take them!” he called out to
Denísov.

Denísov did not reply; he rode up to Pétya, dismounted, and with trembling
hands turned toward himself the bloodstained, mud-bespattered face which
had already gone white.

“I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones… take them all!” he
recalled Pétya’s words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise at the
sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denísov turned away, walked to
the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.

Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denísov and Dólokhov was Pierre
Bezúkhov.