War And Peace

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.