'Well, it's a weal pleasure to see you,' said Denisov, cutting across him, his face once more a picture of anxiety.
'Mikhail,' he said to the hetman, 'it's another note from the German. Wostov here is on his staff.' And Denisov told the hetman that the latest letter renewed the German general's request for them to join him in attacking the convoy. 'If we don't get them by tomowwow they'll gwab the lot fwom under our noses,' he concluded.
While Denisov was talking to the hetman Petya felt embarrassed by Denisov's sudden coldness, and since the only explanation seemed to be the state of his trousers, he started working them down furtively underneath his greatcoat, trying to manage it without being seen and look as warlike as he could.
'Will your Honour have any instructions for me?' he asked Denisov, raising one hand to the peak of his cap, and reverting to the game of adjutants and generals that he had worked up in advance, 'or shall I stay here with your Honour?'
'Instwuctions?' said Denisov distractedly. 'No. Can you stay till tomowwow?'
'Oh, yes . . . Please let me stay!' cried Petya.
'Well, what instwuctions did you get from your general - go stwaight back?' asked Denisov. Petya blushed.
'No, he didn't say. I think it would be all right for me to stay,' he said, though it sounded like a question.
'All wight, then,' said Denisov. And turning to his followers he directed a party of them to proceed to the hut in the wood where they had agreed to rest up and sent the officer on the Kirghiz pony (who was acting as his adjutant) to go and look for Dolokhov, find out where he was and whether he was coming that evening.
Denisov himself intended to take the hetman and Petya out to the edge of the wood near Shamshevo to assess the position of the French and work out where to attack in the morning.
'Wight, you old gweybeard,' he said to their peasant guide, 'take us to Shamshevo.' Denisov, Petya and the hetman, accompanied by one or two Cossacks and the hussar with the prisoner, turned to the left, crossed a ravine and rode out towards the edge of the wood.
CHAPTER 5
It had stopped raining, but there was still a rolling mist and drops of water dripped from the branches of the trees. Denisov, the hetman and Petya made no noise as they followed the peasant in the woollen cap, who nipped along lightly and silently in his bark-fibre shoes, with his toes turned out, stepping over roots and wet leaves as he led them to the edge of the wood.
Coming out at the top of a slope, the peasant paused, took stock and turned towards a thining screen of trees. He stopped by a big oak-tree that had not yet shed its leaves, and beckoned mysteriously.
Denisov and Petya rode over to him. From the place where the peasant was standing the French were visible. Just outside the wood a field of spring corn ran sharply downhill. To the right, on the other side of a steep ravine, they could see the shattered roofs of a little village and a manor house. In the village itself, in the house and across the top end of the garden, by the wells and the pond, and all the way up the road from the bridge to the village, not more than five hundred yards away, masses of men could be seen through the rolling mist. Foreign voices could be heard shouting at the horses as they struggled uphill with the baggage and calling across to each other.
'Get me the pwisoner,' said Denisov in a low voice, his eyes fixed on the French.
A Cossack got off his horse, lifted the boy down, and brought him over to Denisov. Denisov pointed to the French, and asked the boy who the various troops were. The boy stood there with his red-raw hands in his pockets, and raised his eyebrows in dismay as he looked at Denisov. Despite his obvious desire to tell them everything he knew he got his answers mixed up, and all he did was agree with everything Denisov asked him. Denisov scowled, turned away and spoke to the hetman, outlining his own views on the situation.
Petya's head whipped round in all directions as he looked from the drummer-boy to Denisov, then from the hetman to the French over in the village and spread out along the road, trying not to miss anything of any significance.
'With or without Dolokhov we've got to have a go at them, haven't we?' said Denisov with a merry glint in his eyes.
'It's a good spot,' said the hetman.
'We'll send the infantwy down there fwough the swampy gwound,' Denisov went on. 'Let them cweep up to the garden. You come in with your Cossacks from over there . . .' - Denisov pointed to the woods on the other side of the village - 'and I'll take my hussars in from here. Wait for a shot . . .'
'No, not through the gully. It's too soft,' said the hetman. 'The horses will get bogged down. You'll have to send them around, a bit further left . . .'
While they were talking like this in low voices suddenly a shot rang out down below in the hollow near the pond, a puff of white smoke went up, then another, and hundreds of French voices half-way up the hill rang out in one great merry chorus. The instantaneous reaction of both Denisov and the hetman was to duck down. They were so close they could only imagine they were the cause of the shot and all the shouting. But no, the shots and the shouting had nothing to do with them. A man in red was dashing through the marshes down below. Clearly, the French were firing and shouting at him.
'Hey look, it's our Tikhon,' said the hetman.
'It is, you know!'
'Stupid idiot,' said Denisov.
'He'll be all right!' said the hetman, screwing up his eyes.
The man they called Tikhon ran up to the little river, plunged in with a great splash, disappeared for an instant, then scrambled out on all fours, all black from the water, and ran on. The pursuing French came to a halt.
'He's a good boy,' said the hetman.
'He's a stupid swine!' said Denisov, with the same look of annoyance. 'What's he think he's been doing all this time?'
'Who is he?' asked Petya.
'It's our scout. I sent him to catch an informer.'
'Oh yes,' said Petya, nodding at Denisov's first word, as if he knew the situation, though he didn't understand the first thing about it.
Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of Denisov's best men. He was a peasant from the village of Pokrovskoye, near the river Gzhat. Denisov had come to Pokrovskoye early in his career as a guerrilla leader, and as usual he had sent for the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French.
The village elder gave the same defensive answer all the others had given: see no evil, hear no evil. But once Denisov had explained that all he wanted to do was to kill the French and asked whether or not any Frenchmen had strayed their way, the village elder said yes, there had been one or two 'marorderers', but the man who dealt with things like that was Tikhon Shcherbaty. Denisov sent for Tikhon and praised him for all he had done, adding a few words, in the presence of the elder, about the kind of loyalty to Tsar and country, and hatred of the French, that all sons of the fatherland ought to cherish in their hearts.
'These Frenchies, we don't do 'em no 'arm,' said Tikhon, wary now because of what Denisov had been saying. 'It's only, like, just a bit o' fun for me and the lads. Them marorderers now - we can't 'ave killed more'n a couple o' dozen o' them, an' apart from that we 'aven't done no 'arm . . .'
Next day, when Denisov had left Pokrovskoye, having forgotten all about this peasant, he was told that Tikhon had joined the group and was asking to stay. Denisov agreed to let him stay.
Tikhon began by doing the rough work, making fires, fetching water, skinning dead horses and so on, but he soon showed great ability and enthusiasm as a guerrilla. He would go out at night to see what he could find, and he never came back without some French clothes or weapons, and when told to do so he would bring back prisoners too. Denisov relieved Tikhon of all menial work, took him out on expeditions and began to treat him like one of the Cossacks.
Tikhon, no horseman, went everywhere on foot, yet he was never far behind the cavalry. His weapons were a musketoon, which he carried rather as a joke, a pike and an axe, which he wielded as skilfully as a wolf uses its teeth to nip fleas in its coat and crunch big bones, a
ll with the same dexterity. Tikhon was equally adept at swinging his axe to split logs, and holding it by the head to chip off thin skewers or carve spoons. Tikhon occupied a very special position in Denisov's band. When anything really nasty or difficult had to be done, like putting a shoulder to a wagon stuck in the mud, hauling a horse out of a bog by its tail, skinning a horse, infiltrating the French or walking thirty miles in a day, everybody chuckled and looked straight at Tikhon.
'He's good for anything, that devil. Tough as old boots,' they used to say about him.
One day when he was trying to capture a Frenchman he was shot in the buttock. This wound, which Tikhon treated only by applications of vodka, internally and externally, was the subject of the funniest jokes in the whole unit, and Tikhon took them in good part.
'That's you finished, is it, old boy? Caught you bending!' laughed the Cossacks, and Tikhon would react by pulling a face, pretending to be furious, and cursing Frenchmen with swearwords that made them all laugh. The only noticeable effect this incident had on Tikhon was that afterwards he didn't bring in many prisoners.
Tikhon was the bravest and handiest man in the unit. Nobody found more ways of attacking; nobody captured or killed as many Frenchmen as he did. This made him the camp joker, acknowledged as such by Cossacks and hussars alike, and it was a role he was only too willing to take on.
On this occasion Tikhon had been sent overnight by Denisov to Shamshevo to catch an informer. But, either because he was not satisfied with catching a single French prisoner or because he had overslept, he had waited until daylight to creep through the bushes in among the French, and, as Denisov had just seen from the hill-top, he had been discovered.
CHAPTER 6
Denisov stayed on for a few minutes chatting to the hetman about tomorrow's attack, which he now seemed to have settled on once and for all, seeing how near the French were, but then he turned his horse's head and rode back.
'Wight, my boy, let's go and get ourselves dwied out,' he said to Petya.
As he was getting close to the forester's hut Denisov stopped and peered into the wood. A man in a short jacket, bark-fibre shoes and a Kazan hat, with a gun slung across his shoulder and an axe in his belt, was striding easily through the forest on his long legs with his long arms swinging at his sides. The moment he caught sight of Denisov he made a quick movement and threw something into the bushes before taking off his sopping-wet hat with its droopy brim and walking across to his commanding officer.
It was Tikhon. His wrinkled, pock-marked face with its narrow eyes was a picture of beaming self-satisfaction and cheeriness. He held his head high and fixed Denisov with a close stare, looking as if he could hardly stop himself laughing.
'Well, where did you get to?' asked Denisov.
'Where did I get to? I been after the French.' The answer was quick and assertive, delivered in a rich and throaty bass.
'Why did you cweep up in bwoad daylight? You stupid ass! And why didn't you get me one of them?'
'Oh, I did,' said Tikhon.
'Well, where is he?'
'Got one at first light, I did,' Tikhon went on, spreading his flat feet and turned-out toes in their bark-fibre shoes. 'Yes, took him in the wood, I did. Could see 'e was no good, though. So I says to meself - better go back an' get another one, bit nearer the mark.'
'I knew it. Wotten devil,' said Denisov to the hetman. 'Why didn't you bwing him to me?'
'No point in bringing 'im in!' Tikhon was angry and he cut in quickly. 'Useless 'e was. I knows what you be after.'
'Stupid swine! . . . Well, what happened?'
'I went to get another one,' Tikhon went on. 'I creeps up through the wood like this, and I lays meself down.' Suddenly, in one smooth movement, Tikhon was down on his belly, showing them how he had done it. 'One shows up, so I grabs 'im,' he went on, 'like this . . .' Tikhon skipped lightly to his feet. ' "You an' me," says I, "we'm off to see the colonel." He starts yellin' 'is 'ead off, and suddenly there's four of 'em. All rushin' at me with their little swords out. Took me axe to 'em, I did, like this. "What's all this?" says I. "Jesus, I'm off," ' cried Tikhon, waving his arms in the air and squaring his chest with a fearsome scowl.
'Yes, we were up there on the hill. We saw you legging it through the puddles,' said the hetman, screwing up his glittering eyes.
Petya was finding it hard not to laugh, but he could see they were all holding it back. His eyes flew back and forth between the three faces. He couldn't make head or tail of what was going on.
'Don't you fool about with me,' said Denisov, coughing angrily. 'Why didn't you bwing me that first one?'
Tikhon started scratching his back with one hand and his head with the other, and all at once his face broadened out, beaming with an inane grin that showed why they had called him 'gap-tooth' (Shcherbaty). Denisov broke into a smile, Petya burst out laughing and Tikhon joined in.
'I tell you, 'e was no good,' said Tikhon. 'Lousy dresser too. Couldn't take 'im nowhere. Nasty piece o' work, your Honour. "Oh no," says he, "I be a gendral's son," says he, "an' I aint goin' nowhere." '
'Agh, you swine!' said Denisov. 'I needed him for questioning . . .'
'Oh, but I asked 'im some questions,' said Tikhon. 'Said 'e didn't know very much. "There's lots of us," says 'e, "but they'm a miserable bunch, an' they'm all the same. One good shout," says he, "and you'll get the lot," ' Tikhon concluded, looking Denisov straight in the eye cheerily enough but with determination.
'I've a good mind to give you a damn good thwashing. Teach you to fool about with me,' said Denisov sternly.
'No need to go on like that,' said Tikhon, 'just because I didn't see none of your Frenchies. When it gets a bit dark I'll go an' catch whatever you want. Get you three of 'em.'
'Come on, then, let's get going,' said Denisov. All the way to the forester's hut he refused to speak, and his face wore an angry scowl.
Tikhon dropped back, and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with him and at him about a pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.
Tikhon's words and his smiling manner had given him plenty to laugh at, but when this passed, Petya suddenly realized Tikhon had killed the man. He felt queasy. He stole a glance at the boy prisoner and felt a pang in his heart. But the queasiness was short-lived. He felt duty-bound to hold his head high, look brave and important and ask the hetman some questions about tomorrow's assignment. He just had to live up to the company he was now in.
The officer Denisov had sent to find Dolokhov came out to meet him with the news that Dolokhov would soon be with them and all was well with him.
Denisov's spirits rose, and he beckoned to Petya. 'Wight, then. Come and tell me what's been happening to you,' he said.
CHAPTER 7
When the Rostov family had still been in the process of moving out of Moscow Petya had left them to join his regiment, and was soon taken on as an orderly by a general in charge of a large guerrilla unit.
Ever since he had received his commission, and especially since joining a regiment on active service and taking part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state of elation at his grown-up status, and he was burning with all-consuming anxiety not to miss any opportunity for true heroism. He was delighted with everything he had seen and experienced in the army, but he couldn't escape the impression that the really heroic things were going on right now in places where he happened not to be. So he was in a constant hurry to get to places where he wasn't.
On the 21st of October, when his general had voiced a desire to send someone over to Denisov's company, Petya had begged so piteously to be sent that the general couldn't refuse. But even as he dispatched him the general remembered Petya's foolhardy behaviour at the battle of Vyazma, when, instead of riding straight down the road to deliver a message, Petya had got within firing range of the French and loosed off a couple of pistol-shots, so with this in mind he explicitly banned Petya from taking part in any action that Denisov might be contemplating. This was why Petya had blus
hed and looked embarrassed when Denisov asked if it was all right for him to stay. Until the moment he got to the edge of the wood Petya had fully intended to carry out his duty to the letter and go straight back. But once he had seen the French, and Tikhon, and learnt that tonight's attack was definitely on, he suddenly decided, with the swift change of mind that youngsters are so prone to, that the general he had greatly admired until then was a miserable specimen, and only a German, whereas Denisov was a hero, and the hetman was a hero, and Tikhon was a hero, and it would be disgraceful to leave them at such a difficult time.
It was getting dark when Denisov, Petya and the hetman rode up to the forester's hut. In the semi-darkness they could see saddled horses, Cossacks and hussars building little shelters in the clearing, and kindling a glowing fire in a gully so no smoke would be visible to the French. In the entrance of the little hut a Cossack with his sleeves rolled up was butchering a sheep. Inside, three officers of Denisov's unit were busy converting the door into a table. Petya took off his wet clothes, handed them over for drying and got straight down to helping the officers fix up a dining-table.
In ten minutes the table was ready, covered with a napkin and set out with vodka, a flask of rum, some white bread, roast mutton and salt.
Sitting at the table with the officers, with his fingers running with fat as he tore into the mutton that smelled so good, Petya was in a state of childish rapture and tender affection for the whole of mankind matched by the certainty that everybody else felt the same affection for him.
'So what do you think, Vasily Fyodorovich?' he said to Denisov. 'It will be all right for me to stay on just for a day or so, won't it?' And without waiting for an answer, he provided his own response: 'I mean, I was told to find out about things, and I am finding out about things . . . Only you must let me get right into . . . you know, the real . . . I'm not bothered about winning medals . . . But I would like to, er . . .' Petya clenched his teeth and looked round at them, raising his head even higher and waving his hands in the air.