Around him pine trees shivered in the wind. He pushed forward, clawed at by the low branches. Now he was certain he hadn’t been this way before. He entered another clearing. But this was different from the first.
He stopped. He was lost. His watch read midnight. He wished now that on their walks, he had paid closer attention to the land around them and not depended so much on her. But he had enough of a sense of the geography of the mountains to know that all the valleys ran down to the Galician plain. Better to be safe, to head downhill to the flatlands. There it would be easy to walk or get a ride back to the main road that led up to Lemnowice.
So he set out again, this time following the valley down to where a shallow river rushed, a murmuring that seemed to echo against the belly of the mist. Fording it, he found himself on a long, slow descent. This relieved him—soon he would reach flatter country. After some time, the sky began to lighten. The summer night had passed. Despite his worry, the world around him seemed almost out of a fairy tale; the air, heavy with water, glowed like amber.
He crossed a meadow, through neck-high grass. From time to time, he heard something moving, but it went silent when he stopped. A second trail joined his, and the path widened as he left the meadow and entered a new forest. And then: an open road—at last!—beneath a high outcrop of rock.
He took a deep breath of relief, and, exhausted, stopped and drank some water from his rucksack. The road flanked a curving hillside, above a dense swath of trees. By the orientation of the sun, the trail ran north, sloping gently down. Tracks rutted the mud. A convoy must have passed recently; perhaps he wouldn’t have to wait until he reached the flats to hitch a ride.
He had scarcely gone ten paces when he heard crashing in the undergrowth behind him. He turned. It was still early and the light was dim and so he didn’t understand at first what he was seeing, some kind of tank, festooned with camouflage, crackling, snorting through the brush…
A bear.
But the creature didn’t stop. It barely seemed to register Lucius as it surged forward, its brown fur heaving, casting off a spray of droplets as it cleared a small ledge and disappeared into the bushes. No sooner had it passed than there came more rustling. Two deer burst from the undergrowth behind the bear, tattered foliage flapping on their antlers. Then ahead on the road, more deer, coats red, breath steaming. A slow humming grew louder. A dark grey rabbit shot onto the trail. A flittering of little birds.
He stood there, puzzled, uncertain of what was happening, when a memory came to him, an old memory, of a childhood story, likely told to him by his father, though he couldn’t remember when.
An old knight and a young knight were traveling through a dark wood when a wolf broke across their path, followed swiftly by a hare. The young knight laughed. Ha! What is the world coming to? he asked. Are the hunters now pursued by prey?
The old knight just quietly drew his sword.
But how! said the young knight. Don’t you also think it’s odd? A wolf like that, running from a little hare! What will come next? A mouse! A toad!
The old knight dropped his visor. It isn’t running from the hare, he said.
From the far distance came a rumbling.
The knights turned.
Lucius turned.
Before him, the outcrop disintegrated. The trees lurched toward him and stones sprang into the air. A bright light made itself known.
12.
He awoke to the sounds of hoofbeats and shouting.
He was lying in the underbrush below the road where he’d been walking. The smell of earth and gunpowder filled his nostrils. Above him loomed the outcrop, the sky, a great hole ripped in the canopy. He blinked at the light, wiggled his fingers, hands, then slowly lifted his head. Then, with a jolting realization that whatever had just struck the mountain might strike again, he scrambled to his feet.
He looked back up the road. A column of horses had appeared, the riders with plumed helmets, sabers rattling at their waists. Hussars, he thought, Hungarian. For a moment he felt relief: My own. They were perhaps a hundred feet away, close enough for him to register the golden braids on their jackets, when a second shell whistled through the treetops and struck the road.
He ducked. A rain of mud came down upon him. He heard whinnying, more crashes. When he rose, he found a great crater had replaced the road where moments before he’d seen the first horses. Behind, the column had piled up as the riders tried to lead their bucking mounts down and out of the crater to the other side. He ran toward them, hoping to wave one down. Then, deep within the woods, from down the slope, he heard the rumbling again, now louder. Someone else was coming. He stopped and looked back down into the trees, and then he saw.
Flashes of sabers, high fur caps, and dark grey tunics. Shouts now. He knew instantly who they were, the monsters of every Polish child’s nightmares, of the stories he had heard since he was very young…
Near him, a horse was struggling up the shell crater, its lifeless rider dragging behind, foot still in its stirrup. Rushing forward, Lucius seized its reins and hurried upward to the road, clambering on just as they reached the crest. Around him, the fleeing hussars had begun to fire their pistols into the trees. He thought to grab the dead man’s weapon, but it was too late, his horse lunged forward, stumbling as the dead rider got caught between its legs. Lucius grabbed its mane to keep from falling. Then the rider’s foot broke free from the stirrup and his horse joined with the others just as the wave of Cossacks coalesced out of the darkness of the forest and, in one great roaring instant, struck.
The hussars plunged forward. Lucius clung tighter to his horse. He had no idea where he was going. On their flank, the Cossacks were gaining, the two armies merging now in roiling rivers of blue and grey. The air was filled with the sound of clashing swords and gunfire. Faster now, another Russian artillery charge striking high upon the hillside, showering them with gravel. Then another pulse, another shell, this from the opposite direction, straight into the Cossack charge. Another rain of rock. They swung right, then left again, sweeping around a boulder. Behind him he heard a shout, and turned to see two Cossacks gaining. They were close enough for him to see a pair of dark, determined eyes, when machine gun fire burst from the road ahead and the lead rider whipped sideways, his horse crashing into the other as they spun off, tumbling into the brush.
A crossroad. Austrian artillery. A glimpse of howitzers, a machine gun lighting up the forest. The retreat broke left, zigzagging through trench works and into a clearing. For a moment, he felt a sense of relief, of safety. But the hussars had begun to mass, their horses neighing and fighting their reins. More shouts, and they were off again, to meet the Cossack charge.
His horse followed on instinct. He grabbed at the reins, tried to pull her up, but she pounded headlong after the others. Around him he could hear the scrape of sabers emerging from scabbards, stirrups clanking, the snapping of whips. The horses wild-eyed, their mouths foaming at their bits. Like something from his father’s war.
My God, he thought, how the major would be proud: My son killed in battle with the hussars, fighting the horde.
He leapt and hit the ground, tucking his head inside his hands. Horses thundered past him, kicking up clods of dirt. He stumbled up, still trying to ward off the flying hooves. Gunfire churned up the ground around him. He ran, swerving through the horses, as behind him the armies struck each other with a sound like nothing he had ever heard before. But he didn’t turn, he could only think of fleeing. He crossed the clearing and ran up a slope to where an officer was shouting field commands, reaching him just as a bullet struck the officer’s neck and knocked him to the earth. “Down!” someone, somewhere, shouted. Stunned, staring, Lucius hit the ground. A few paces away, the officer clawed at his throat, gasping as blood spurted between his fingers. Out of instinct, Lucius crawled to him and pressed down on his carotid. Blood welled up and over his hands. Around him: bursts of pine needles. Something hot on his shoulder, like a bee sting. He tried to bury himself into the ground, hands stretched above him, still on the man’s neck, when the man twitched, a strip of his scalp lifted like a banner, and his eyes sprang open in surprise. Another pulse shook the earth. Dirt rose into Lucius’s mouth and he rolled away, coughing, as he scrambled to his feet. He began to run again. Away, faster, head down, until he reached a grove and threw himself behind a tree.