King Stakh's Wild Hunt

“Andrej! I learned… are intere… Wild Hunt… Ki… Nadzieja Ram… in danger… my da… (a large piece burnt out)…Today I spo… He agrees… left for town. Drygants… chie… When you receive this letter, go immediately… to… ain, where only three pines stand. Biełarecki and I will wait… ly ma… is going on on this ea… Come without fail. Burn this letter, because it is very dang… for me. You… fir… They are also in mortal danger which only you can ward off… (again much burnt out)…me.

Your well-wisher Likol…”

All was obvious: somebody had sent the letter to lure Śvieciłovič out of the house. He believed every word. He evidently knew very well the person who had written it. Something subtle had been planned here. He shouldn't come to me, they wrote they had spoken with me, that I had left for town, I would be awaiting him somewhere at “ain” where three pines stand alone. What is this “…ain”? At the plain?

Not a minute to be lost!

“Kandrat, where are there nearby three big pines on the plain?”

“The devil knows,” he thought awhile. “Unless it's those near the Giant's Gap. Three enormous pines stand there. It's there that King Stach's horses — so people say — flew into the quagmire. But what's happened?”

“This is what's happened: Mr. Andrej is threatened by great danger… He left long ago?”

“No, an hour ago, perhaps.”

I dragged him out onto the porch, and he, almost in tears, pointed out to me the way to the three pines. I ordered him to remain in the house, and I myself ran away. This time I did not alternate running with walking. I flew, I tore on as fast as I only could, as if I wanted to fall down dead there at the three pines. I threw off my jacket as I ran, and my cap, threw out of my pockets my gold cigarette-case, the pocket edition of Dante which I always carried with me. Running became a little easier. I would have removed my boots, if I could have done that without stopping. It was mad racing. As I timed it I should turn up at the pines some twenty minutes after my friend. Terror, despair, hatred gave me strength. Suddenly a wind arose behind me, pushing me ahead. I hadn't noticed the sky become completely covered with clouds, that something heavy, depressing was hanging over the earth: I kept tearing on madly…

The three great pines were already visible in the distance, and above them such dark clouds, such a pitch darkness, such a dim sky… I rushed into the bushes, trampling them under my feet. And here… ahead, a shot sounded, a shot from an old pistol.

Wildly I yelled, and as if in answer to my yell, the silence was broken by a mad stamping of horses' hoofs.

I jumped out into a clearing and saw the shadows of ten retreating horsemen who turned about in the bushes at a gallop. And under the pines I saw a human figure slowly settling down on the earth.

By the time I had run up to him, the man had fallen down face upward, with hands widely outstretched, as if wishing to protect his land from bullets with his body. I had time yet to send a few shots in the direction of the murderers, it even seemed to me that one of them had reeled in his saddle, but this unexpected woe made me throw myself down at once on my knees at the side of the body lying there.

“Brother! Brother mine! My brother!”

As if alive he lay there, and only a tiny little wound from which almost no blood flowed, told me of the truth, a cruel and irremediable truth.

The bullet had pierced his temple and left through the back of the head. I looked at him, at the ruthlessly ruined young life, I grasped him in my arms, called to him, pulled at him and howled like a wolf, as if that might help.

Then I sat up, put his head in my lap and began to smooth his hair.

“Andrej! Andrej! Wake up! Wake up, my dear friend!”

In death he was beautiful, unusually beautiful. With his face tnrown back, his head hanging down, his slender neck as if carved from marble, he lay in my lap. The long, light-coloured hair had become entangled with the dry yellow grass which caressed it. His mouth was smiling as if death had solved one of life's riddles for him, his eyes were closed peacefully, and his long eyelashes overshadowed them. His hands so beautiful and strong, hands which women might have kissed in moments of happiness, lay alongside his body, as if in rest.

As a mother grieving over her son did I sit there, on my knees my son who had undergone torture on the cross. I howled over him and cursed God who was merciless towards people, towards the best of His sons.

“God! God! All-Knowing, Ail-Powerful One! May You perish! You Apostate, having sold Your people!”

Overhead something thundered, and in the following instant an ocean of water, a terrible shower, came pouring down on the swamp and the waste land, so lost and forgotten in the forests of this territory. The firs, bent down under it to the earth, moaned and groaned. It beat against my back, slashed at the earth.