War And Peace

Ahead of Shamshevo Dolokhov had the same task of watching the road to find out how far away any other French troops might be. At a rough estimate the convoy had fifteen hundred men in it. Denisov had two hundred men, and Dolokhov perhaps the same. But Denisov was not interested in numerical superiority. The only thing he still needed to know was who these troops were, and in order to find out Denisov needed an informer, someone from the enemy column. The attack on the wagons in the morning had been carried out with such speed they had killed all the French soldiers in charge of the wagons, and the only person captured alive had been a little drummer-boy who had lost touch with his own regiment, and couldn’t tell them anything definite about the troops that made up the column.

It was Denisov’s view that another attack would be too risky – it might stir up the whole column – so he sent a peasant by the name of Tikhon Shcherbaty on to Shamshevo to see if he could manage to capture at least one French quartermaster who had been sent on ahead.

CHAPTER 4

It was a warm, rainy, autumn day. The sky and horizon were the colour of muddy water. The weather alternated between a kind of rolling mist and torrents of driving rain.

Dressed in a felt cloak and fur cap, both streaming with rain, Denisov was riding a thin thoroughbred with sunken sides. Like his horse, which had its head turned to one side and its ears laid back, he shrank away from the driving rain and peered anxiously ahead. There was a look of annoyance on his face, which was rather thinner than before and covered with a thick black stubble.

Alongside Denisov, also wearing a felt cloak and fur cap, and mounted on a strong, sleek Don horse, rode a Cossack hetman who was working with him.

Hetman Lovaysky the Third was a gangly creature, as straight as a plank, with a pale face, fair hair, light-coloured, close-set eyes and an expression of calm self-confidence in his face and his bearing. It would have been difficult to detect anything special between horse and rider, but you could tell at a glance that Denisov, looking wet through and uncomfortable, was a man sitting mounted on a horse, whereas the hetman, calm and comfortable as always, was not just a man sitting mounted on a horse, but a man who formed a unified whole with his horse and thus possessed a twofold strength.

Shortly ahead of them walked a peasant guide, also wet through, in his grey kaftan and white woollen cap.

Shortly behind, on a skinny, scraggy Kirghiz pony, with a huge tail and mane and a mouth flecked with blood, rode a young officer in a blue French greatcoat. Beside him rode a hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform and blue cap perched behind on the crupper of his horse. The boy’s hands were red with cold as he hung on to the hussar, waggling his bare feet to try and warm them up, and his eyebrows stood up high as he gazed round in bewilderment. This was the French drummer-boy who had been taken prisoner that morning.

Further back there were some hussars riding along the narrow, muddy, churned-up forest path in threes and fours, and some Cossacks wearing an assortment of cloaks, French greatcoats and horse-cloths pulled up over their heads. All the horses, chestnut and bay, looked black with the rain streaming down them. Their necks looked curiously thin because of their soaking manes, and steam rose from them in clouds. Clothes, saddles, bridles, everything was as wet, slippery and dank as the earth and fallen leaves strewn across their path. They sat hunched up in the saddle, trying not to move, so as to keep some warmth in the water that had got through to their skin, and stop any more cold rain trickling in anywhere under their seats, behind their knees or down their necks. In the middle of a long line of Cossacks two wagons drawn by French horses and Cossack saddle-horses rumbled over tree-stumps and branches, and splashed through ruts and puddles.

Denisov’s horse tried to avoid a puddle in the track, and in doing so banged his rider’s knee against a tree.

‘Ow, blast you!’ cried Denisov angrily. Baring his teeth, he lashed his horse three times with his whip, spattering himself and his comrades with mud. Denisov was feeling low, partly from the rain and hunger (no one had eaten since first thing that morning), but mostly because there had been no word from Dolokhov, and the man sent to catch an informer hadn’t come back.

‘There’ll never be a chance like this to attack that wagon-twain. It’s too wisky to attack on our own, but if we put it off some of the big boys will gwab the spoils wight under our noses,’ said Denisov to himself, constantly peering ahead in the hope of seeing the messenger he was expecting from Dolokhov.

Emerging into a clearing with a good long open view to the right, Denisov came to a halt.

‘Someone coming,’ he said.

The hetman looked in the direction where Denisov was pointing.