An hour or so later, when the little troop had succeeded in quieting the horses, and had advanced some way on its journey amid many perils and dangers, the cause of all this excitement among the wild animals was suddenly revealed. The forest was on fire! It was crackling in the flames, burning like a furnace beneath a canopy of black smoke.
The Mongols had fired it on this side, while in another direction they had opened a way forty fathoms wide, through woods over hill and dale, through walls of rock, and across streams and ditches. They were making ready their way before them, and were advancing along it upon the unready country.
Wherever they were reached by the fire, the trees crashed down one upon another; ravens, crows, jackdaws, and all the winged creatures of the woods, were flying to and fro above the trees, in dense, dark clouds, and with loud cries and cawing; bears came along muttering, flying before the fire and smoke, climbing trees from which they did not dare descend again, and with which they perished together.
As already mentioned, Batu Khan's army was preceded by pioneers with axes and hatchets, who drove their road straight forward, through or over obstacles of all kinds. Nothing stopped them, and often their own dead bodies helped to fill up the ditches and trenches; for what was the value of their lives to the Mongols? Absolutely nothing! since they were taken for the most part from the people whom they had conquered.
As soon as the awful news of their advance spread through the country, the people fled without another thought of defending their homes or resisting the enemy, or of anything else but saving their lives and what little property they could carry with them in their wild stampede.
In a few days Transylvania was ablaze from end to end. Towns, villages, farms, castles, country seats, strongholds, even the ancient walls of Alba Julia, all were surrounded by the flames, and were crashing and cracking into ruins.
The invaders, stupid in their destructiveness, spared nothing whatever; and their leaders and commanders, themselves as stupid as the brute-like herd over whom they were placed, occasioned loss to the Khan which was past all reckoning, for his object was plunder, and they in their rage for ruin, destroyed what the Khan might even have called treasure, as well as what might have provided food for hundreds of thousands of the army. What did the Khan Oktai, or Batu, or his thousands of leaders care! The latter were Little Tartars, Russian Tartars, German Tartars, and what not, to whom the conqueror had given the rank and title of Knéz, whom he favoured, promoted, and enriched, until his humour changed, or he had no further use for them, and then—why then he squeezed them, made them disgorge their wealth, and strung them up to the nearest tree. They were but miserable foreigners after all!
Transylvania was in the clutches of the enemy, who had entered her in two large divisions, north and south. But, thanks to the nature of the country, and the many hiding-places it afforded, she did not suffer quite so severely as her neighbour.
Orsolya Szirmay, of whom the travellers had heard at Frata, had married one Bankó, a man of large property and influence, who owned vast estates both in Hungary and Transylvania; but Orsolya did not see much of her own relatives after her marriage, for her husband was a man of awkward temper, and they rarely paid her a visit; so that when, four or five years before the Mongol invasion, Bankó died, she went to live on the Transylvanian property, which was in a most neglected condition, and required her presence. Bankó had lived to be ninety-three, and his widow was now an old lady with snow-white hair, but with all her faculties and energies about her, and eyes as bright, hair as lustrous, as those of a young girl.
She had made her home in a gloomy castle among the mountains, but at the first rumour of the coming invasion, she left it for Frata, where she had an old house, or rather barn, which had been divided up into rooms, and was neither better nor worse than many another dwelling-house in those days.