Chapter 10
"Get off the road, you stupid peasants!" screeched the leader of the boyars. He had gleaming silver-coloured scale armour, and an ankle-length coat to denote his status. Some of those with him had helmets, shining against the dark forest, in outlandish shapes, more akin to the onion domes of Orthodox churches than a sensible sort of helmet, thought Jurko.
"Why don't you goat fuckers honour the border, which is here, and sod off back to Moskwa?" said Jurko. "You will not step onto the sacred soil of our Commonwealth; you shall not pass. Russki idi na choj!"1
Taking an army round them, through the dense woods was too risky; there were unexpected marshes, and changes of elevation, the road, such as it was, following a pass through uneven terrain.
"Clear those peasants off the road!" screeched the one in charge, spittle flying into his heavy beard.
The shovel-masters waited.
Helena began to sing 'Bogurodzica' and the others joined in. It was the battle hymn of the Commonwealth. One hundred voices raised in fervour; and against that simple, touching affirmation of faith, the sound of galloping hoofs as the Moskale charged.
And broke.
Wild eyed, the horses veered away from the sharp spades, turning to the side to avoid the square of men, too tightly packed to jump into the middle, too large a group to jump right over. The square was seven men wide, occupying the whole width of the road, and four men deep, on each side. Some horsemen tried rushing the side, over the land opened by tree-felling, but with felled trees the footing was precarious, and the side of the hedgehog held as well as the front. And the riflemen of the square were firing, coolly firing and passing a musket to be reloaded, all the muskets of the front ranks at their disposal. Helena was one of the sharp-shooters, firing at the faces of the attackers, passing back the discharged weapon and taking another in its stead. She was next to the former hussar who had made the quip about wings, and he was loading for her.
"You're a good shot, lady," he said.
"That's why I'm using a musket not a shovel here," said Helena. "Also, my strength is not as great as that of a man."
"This is incredible," he said. "It must surely turn any cavalry if held with such discipline."
One of the Moskale had managed to shoot a man on the front rank, and he was swiftly pulled back and one from the second rank took his place, on one knee, spade pointing forward. One of the nusketeers moved into the second rank, thrusting his gun at Helena.
She sighted, and fired, catching the hand of the leader as he drew a pistol. He dropped it, and it fired, making his own horse whinny in pain as the ball stung it somewhere. Jurko thrust at the horse, making it rear, and the leader, who was preoccupied with the pain in his hand, slid unceremoniously over the horse's rump. Jurko thrust his spade into the hands of the man next to him, and rolled right under the length of his horse to grab the man and bodily lift him right over the square into the centre, before resuming his place.
"Now that's a court martial offence if you're out of place and the reason why fails!" he said, gaily.
Willing hands bound the stunned Boyar.
The rest of the cavalry faltered.
"Hold the hedgehog," ordered Jurko, as one of the officers came to the decision to try to rescue his leader.
Grimly they held.
oOoOo
Jan, Michał, and Andrej listened to Miszko's shrill report.
"But we must support Prince Jurij!" cried Andrzej Kmicic.
"No, lad, we must do what we are ordered," said Jan, even as a tear trickled out of one eye. "After dark we can send a scouting party if there is no report sent. Get that fort garrisoned. Miszko, how sore is your rear?"
"You want me out of here so Papa does not lose two sons, don't you?" said Miszko.
"It crossed my mind," said Jan.
"I can ride back to Smolensk and thence to Warszawa," said Miszko, proudly. "Please, my lord-brother, take care of yourself."
"I will," said Jan. "Both you boys go, and take some servants, I want you treated with the tender care of princelings wherever you go, and to have guards against the odd brigand."
"We'll manage it," said Miszko. "Papa will be here before rasputitsa."
Miszko and Juryk rode out with a guard of half a dozen poczowy.
"We'll make Smolensk tonight with this excellent road," said Miszko. "But we will need a lantern on a pole to finish the ride."
"It's fine, Prince Michał, I have it ready," said one of the servants.
"Thank you, Paweł," said Michał, hoping he had remembered the man's name correctly. Judging by the pleased look, he had.
Jurij always told him to memorise names, it meant a lot to underlings to be recognised. Thinking of Jurij gave him an unpleasant feeling inside, and he fought waves of nausea at the idea that his brother might already be dead.
"They'd hold him for ransom, you know," said Juryk.
"Only if they knew who he was," said Miszko, in a tight, hard voice. "And he won't tell them, so they have no hold on Papa."
Juryk sighed. He knew it was true.
"We can pray," he said.
Two little boys prayed as they rode.
oOoOo
The Moskale withdrew for a discussion.
"This is more than a party to occupy a small fort and scout," said Jurko, grimly. "I wager they started with around three hundred men. And their mounted servants, who appear to be armed with spears. If they send the peasants, we drive our spades into the ground in front of us as a rough pallisade, and draw sabres to cut short their spears. If we can hold until nightfall, we can disperse a few at a time, the musketeers first, ready to cover the retreat of those of us who hold to the last. And Helena! Can you organise a sortie to grab our cloaks? We'll freeze stripped down as we are, in exercise, then standing still with sweat on us."
Helena designated half a dozen of the most lithe of the rear ranks of the hedgehog, who slid out between their fellows. One of them had the happy idea of dragging back the groundsheet on which all the clothes were piled, and the rear ranks of the hedgehog rippled open and closed again before the attackers realised anyone had gone. Shirts distributed first, the men pulled them on, one at a time, guarding the man next to him as each dressed in turn. Jackets next, as the second in command approached with a peasant. The peasant spoke in passable Polish.
"My lord wants to know if you are such ignorant serfs that you do not know who you oppose, and what terrible punishment will be yours if you do not give up Prince Feodor Ivanovitch Kandinsky."
"I know who we oppose; we oppose a bunch of ignorant and filthy invaders, who are plainly too badly educated to speak Latin to address me directly, and I say to you, he does not know who he opposes."
This was plainly translated a little more diplomatically, since the leader did not appear to take offence.
"You say you speak Latin, fellow?" the boyar spoke slowly and carefully.
"Better than you, old boy," sneered Jurko. "As I said, you ignorant and filthy invaders are too badly educated to be much use with the language of diplomacy. I can manage French if you prefer it, though it lacks the delicacy or subtlety for me to taunt you another time. And you don't know against whom you stand. You offend me, your prince offends me, and your silly helmets also offend me."
The prince was making futile noises; Helena had not liked the sound of what he had been trying to say, and had gagged him.
"Give up our prince, and I will be lenient with you," said the boyar.
"Go back to Moskwa and I will be lenient with you, and treat your prince with due respect as a prisoner of war, though your violation of our borders is an act of aggression which places your leader in the situation of being a brigand. In Poland, we impale brigands; and I expect the prince's blood will flow out of his guts and down his legs and the pole just as red when the stake rips him apart as that of any other brigand," said Jurko, cheerfully.
"But... but you can't do that; he's a prince!" cried the boyar.
"So? So am I, so he can suck on lemons," said Jurko.
"You? You are a dirty Cossack, and I don't believe you."
"Your problem," said Jurko, resuming his fine kontusz. "If you were a gentleman, I'd call you out for calling the lie direct on me, but as you are a Moskal, this precludes you from being a gentleman. More to the point, we are Poles, Lithuanians and Ruthenians, and we have a proverb that you have to outnumber us forty to one to get any kind or hold on our lands."
"We do?" muttered Helena's loader.
"Hush, he made it up," said Helena. She raised her voice. "Tell the little shit-for-brains that we have the spirit of Sparta, Jurko."
"I think he heard," said Jurko, happily. "He's gone a funny colour. Now, cherub, are you going to be a good little Moskal goat-fucker, and go back to Daddy Aleksej and tell him those big bad Poles wouldn't let you play in their mud puddle like a good little boy, or are you going to do anything? I have a road to build and you're being a perishing nuisance."
"You peasants! Attack these damned Poles! Kill them all!" screeched the boyar.
The obedient dragoons moved forward on foot, armed with spears2. Jurko sneered to see the officers driving them forward with knouts.
"You peasants!" his Russian was rough, but the language was close enough to Ruthenian to be able to make himself understood. "If you disengage, drop your weapons, and go behind our lines and sit on a tree trunk with your hands on your heads, you will be found a place to go, or permitted to fight as you wish, our quarrel is not with the Moskale people but with your leaders."
Some indeed dropped their weapons and fled to the side and rear.
"Many of us have family," said the peasant who had acted as spokesman. "If we surrender, they will suffer."
"My commiserations," said Jurko.
And the spades thunked hard into the earth as one, sabres hissed from sheaths, giving pause to both peasant infantry and the cavalry, who had assumed that shovels were all the weaponry that could be mustered, and a few firearms; and then the sabres were cutting off the heads of the menacing spears. The peasants tried to fall back, having now no weapons more menacing than sticks. Their officers drove them forward with the knout. Jurko sheathed his sabre, and grabbed up his spade, hitting about him with the flat of it . His fellows followed suit. The infantry were able to get round the sides and back of the hedgehog, and were swiftly taken out of combat with broken shins, bruised heads, and other relatively minor wounds.
The officers wavered.
"Their formation has been broken! Charge, and let us retrieve our prince! Do not dare run, for you will have to tell the tsar that his favourite is taken!" cried the boyar in charge.
"Oh, that's why the buggers are so tenacious, is it?" said Jurko. "Hold the hedgehog, lads."
The peasants still standing must get out of the way of their own cavalry's charge as best they might, and willing Cossack hands picked up a wounded youth and passed him back when he was about to get trampled by the horse of the leading boyar. Regretfully, to cover his men who had moved out of line, Jurko slammed his spade into the delicate leg of the horse, breaking it. The horse screamed and fell, its rider falling, but his leg trapped.
The thrashing, screaming horse was now an obstacle to the attackers. Helena leaned forward with a pistol to put the poor creature out of its misery.
"Thank you, my love," said Jurko. "Satan's bollocks, is that gold on the barding? Men, we need to defeat them all, they have brought us loot!"
A ragged cheer went up from his shovel-masters.
That put new heart into them.
The musketeers were cheerfully shooting any boyar who dismounted to attempt to give succour to their current leader, still trapped by the leg under the weight of his dead horse. With a convulsive writhe, somehow he managed to get clear, and scuttled away on all fours, hoping to avoid being shot.
"Stand back!" he screamed. "We have supplies behind us; this rabble have no food or water, and no shelter. Put up the tents! Watch them and fire on them if they try to escape! We shall starve and dehydrate them into submission! And then I want that foul mouthed bastard skinned!"
"Oh, cherub, I love you too!" called Jurko.
"What are your plans, ataman?" asked one of the men.
"Remember the six I sent into the woods?" said Jurko.
The shovel-masters sniggered.
Each of them carried two big canteens of water, which was one of Jurko's requirements.
"Now you know why I order you to carry an excess of water, and why I flog any man who sneaks wódka or any other liquor into one canteen," said Jurko. "And if any of you has put wódka in a canteen, if you confess it now, I will forgive it, and you can pass it back to the princess to use on wounds, but you'll catch it from those of your fellows who have to share with you."
Apparently none had committed that solecism.
"My lord!" called one of their peasant prisoners, "What should we do?"
"Walk back along that road – it's less than ten versts – until you reach the pickets of the fort. Tell them you are Prince Jurij's prisoners and ask to be taken in. If you give your word not to cause trouble, they will see you have relative comfort. Report our situation to Lord Jan, and tell him to send up a relief party quietly after dark."
"Yes, my lord, your highness, I mean," said the peasant, who marvelled at a prince wielding a shovel, and wondered if it could be true. And if so, and as the prince spoke civilly to him, in his own tongue, it must be a wonderful land to live in.
Jurko whistled a curious little tune, and settled down to wait.
And in the forest, Kuryło smiled grimly at his band.
"Time for us to get ready to be busy," he said.
1 It had to be added since it became a rallying cry when the 13 defenders of Snake Island said 'Russians fuck off!' to a warship, and died for their bravery. I'll be launching shortly a slim volume of poetry about the war in Ukraine, co-authored by my friend Giselle Marks. We are hoping to raise funds for refugees so please spread the word.
2 Dragoons are mounted infantry, and the peasant levee were conscripts who were trained to use spears as the easiest weapon in which to train them. The Russians didn't trust their peasantry with firearms.
Young Michal is known from now on as Michaś, a change suggested by my Polish Beta
