“And you have a daughter,” answered Azya, “for whose sake you gave command to flog me to death; and this daughter I will give now to the last of the horde, so that he may have service and pleasure from her.”
“Leader, give her to me!” cried Adurovich, on a sudden.
“Azya! Azya!” cried Eva, throwing herself at his feet, “I have always—”
But he kicked her away with one foot, and Adurovich seized her by the arms and began to drag her along the floor. Pan Novoveski from purple became blue; the ropes squeaked on his arms, as he twisted them, and from his mouth came unintelligible words. Azya rose from the skins and went toward him, at first slowly, then more quickly, like a wild beast preparing to bound on its prey. At last he came near, seized with the contorted fingers of one hand the mustaches of old Novoveski, and with the other fell to beating him without mercy on face and head.
A hoarse bellow was rent from his throat when the noble fell to the floor; Azya knelt on Novoveski’s breast, and suddenly the bright gleam of a knife shone in the room.
“Mercy! rescue!” screamed Eva. But Adurovich struck her on the head, and then put his broad hand on her mouth; meanwhile Azya was cutting the throat of Pan Novoveski.
The spectacle was so ghastly that it chilled even the breasts of the Tartars; for Azya, with calculated cruelty, drew his knife slowly across the neck of the ill-fated noble, who gasped and choked awfully. From his open veins the blood spurted more and more violently on the hands of the murderer and flowed in a stream along the floor. Then the rattling and gurgling ceased by degrees; finally air was wheezing in the severed throat, and the feet of the dying man dug the floor in convulsive quivers.
Azya rose; his eyes fell now on the pale and sweet face of Zosia Boski, who seemed dead, for she was hanging senseless on the arm of a Tartar who was holding her, and he said,—
“I will keep this girl for myself, till I give her away or sell her.”
Then he turned to the Tartars: “Now only let the pursuit return, and we will go to the lands of the Sultan.”