Knight Without Armour

He did not answer, except to urge her to dress quickly. Her own clothes, as she discarded them, he rolled into a bundle—it would not be safe to leave them behind. She was very calm; that was a good thing, yet he wondered if she realised that difficulties were beginning rather than ending, and that in a short while hundreds of blood-drunken searchers would be scouring the district for the escaped White countess. One thing he was sure of—the peasant disguise would never work a second time near Saratursk. Everyone knew that she had escaped as a peasant before; everyone would be prepared for the same disguise again. There was only the slender chance that as two soldiers they might escape through the cordon into safer country.

“Please hurry,” he said again. “And we had better not talk much.”

“I’m ready now, except for the boots.”

“Let me do them.”

He knelt on one knee and laced them quickly.

She whispered, looking down at him in the darkness: “You are very, very kind.”

“It will be safer not to talk just yet—your voice, you know. And when you do talk, you must call me ’Tovarish’—it’s the word the soldiers use. We must be very careful, even in details.”

“Yes, of course. I understand. Now I’m ready.”

“Good. We must try to get a long way into the forests by daylight.”

“Still en route for Moscow, I suppose?”

He answered, shouldering his bundle and helping her quickly over the uneven ground: “No. I have decided to accept your suggestion and will try to get you to the coast, where you can take ship for abroad. Now don’t answer me—don’t talk at all just save all your strength for the long journey.”

PART IV

He stood on the summit of the first low ridge that lifted out of the long level of the plains. Dawn was creeping over the horizon; distant and below lay the clustered roofs of the town. He and his companion had stopped for but a moment, to share bread and water together; she was so tired that she was already half asleep on the springy turf.

He stared strangely upon that refreshing August dawn, yet in his own mind, for some reason, he saw another picture—a frozen Arctic river under sunshine, all still and stiff, and then suddenly the splitting shiver of the ice-crust and the surge of water over the quickening land. He felt as if something like that were happening within himself. “Come now,” he said, picking up the bundles. She was asleep and he had to waken her. She smiled without a word and stumbled forward.

He dared not have allowed more than that moment’s halt, for though they had had good fortune so far, there was still danger, and perhaps the greatest of all now that daylight had come. They plunged on and on as the glow in the eastern sky deepened and became glorified by sunrise; over pine-covered ridges and down into little lonely valleys, through swishing gullies of dead leaves and round curving slopes whence Saratursk, glimpsed between tree-trunks, seemed ever further away yet ever dangerously near. By ten o’clock they had covered seven or eight miles, and were already deep in the foothill forests; but she was so tired that she could not take another step. There was nothing for it but to rest for at least a few moments. They sat on a fallen tree-trunk and she was asleep again instantly, with her head leaning forward into her hands.

He was tired himself and after a short time, being afraid of falling asleep also, he got up and moved about. Ten minutes—a quarter of an hour—might be enough to give her just the needful strength to scramble a few miles further. Even during those few minutes, he guessed, pursuers would be gaining on them. He had no illusions or false optimism; he knew that the escape must have been discovered within a few hours, at most, of its taking place, and that immense efforts would certainly be made to recapture such a fugitive. He had seen the whole routine carried through so often before—a price upon some prisoner, dead or alive—a whole army setting out on perhaps the cruellest and therefore the most intoxicatingly thrilling game in the world—a man-hunt. And a woman-hunt would be even a degree better than that. Then suddenly, even while he was pondering over it, he heard, very faintly in the distance, a shrill whistle, and, a few seconds later, a still fainter whistle answering it. The hunt had begun already.

He touched the woman on the shoulder, but it was no use—he had to shake her thoroughly to get her awake. He said quietly: “We must hide for a time—I think searchers are somewhere in the woods.” She answered in a dazed way: “All right. I’m ready.” He helped her to her feet and they moved away, he with eyes alert for a good hiding- place.