By degrees, however, the Belgrod and Dobrudja chambuls convinced themselves that there were not only no large bodies of troops, but no troops at all in the neighborhood. They discovered the trail of a detachment numbering about three hundred horse, which moved hurriedly toward the Dniester. The Tartars, remembering the fate of Azya’s men, made no pursuit, out of fear of an ambush. The attack remained as something astonishing and unexplained; but quiet came back by degrees to the Ordu i Humayun, and the armies of the Padishah began again to advance like an inundation.
Meanwhile, Pan Adam was returning safely with his living booty to Rashkoff. He went hurriedly, but as experienced scouts learned on the second day that there was no pursuit, he advanced, notwithstanding his haste, at a gait not to weary the horses over-much. Azya, fastened with cords to the back of the horse, was always between Pan Adam and Lusnia. He had two ribs broken, and had become wonderfully weak, for even the wound given him by Basia in the face opened from his struggle with Pan Adam and from riding with head hanging down. The terrible sergeant was careful that he should not die before reaching Rashkoff, and thus baffle revenge. The young Tartar wanted to die. Knowing what awaited him, he determined first of all to kill himself with hunger, and would not take food; but Lusnia opened his set teeth with a knife, and forced into his mouth gorailka and Moldavian wine, in which biscuits, rubbed to dust, had been mixed. At the places of halting, they threw water on his face, lest the wounds of his eye and his nose, on which flies and gnats had settled thickly during the journey, should mortify, and bring premature death to the ill-fated man.
Pan Adam did not speak to him on the road. Once only, at the beginning of the journey, when Azya, at the price of his freedom and life, offered to return Zosia and Eva, did the lieutenant say to him,—
“Thou liest, dog! Both were sold by thee to a merchant of Stambul, who will sell them again in the bazaar.”
And straightway they brought Eliashevich, who said in presence of all,—
“It is so, Effendi. You sold her without knowing to whom; and Adurovich sold the bagadyr’s[30] sister, though she was with child by him.”
After these words, it seemed for a while to Azya that Novoveski would crush him at once in his terrible grasp. Afterwards, when he had lost all hope, he resolved to bring the young giant to kill him in a transport of rage, and in that way spare himself future torment; since Novoveski, unwilling to let his captive out of sight, rode always near him, Azya began to boast beyond measure and shamelessly of all that he had done. He told how he had killed old Novoveski, how he had kept Zosia Boski in the tent, how he gloated over her innocence, how he had torn her body with rods, and kicked her. The sweat rolled off the pale face of Pan Adam in thick drops. He listened; he had not the power, he had not the wish to go away. He listened eagerly, his hands quivered, his body shook convulsively; still he mastered himself, and did not kill.
But Azya, while tormenting his enemy, tormented himself, for his narratives brought to his mind his present misfortune. Not long before, he was commanding men, living in luxury, a murza, a favorite of the young kaimakan; now, lashed to the back of a horse, and eaten alive by flies, he was travelling on to a terrible death. Relief came to him when, from the pain of his wounds, and from suffering, he fainted. This happened with growing frequency, so that Lusnia began to fear that he might not bring him alive. But they travelled night and day, giving only as much rest to the horses as was absolutely needful, and Rashkoff was ever nearer and nearer. Still the horned soul of the Tartar would not leave the afflicted body. But during the last days he was in a continual fever, and at times he fell into an oppressive sleep. More than once in that fever or sleep he dreamed that he was still in Hreptyoff, that he had to go with Volodyovski to a great war; again that he was conducting Basia to Rashkoff; again that he had borne her away, and hidden her in his tent; at times in the fever he saw battles and slaughter, in which, as hetman of the Polish Tartars, he was giving orders from under his bunchuk. But awakening came, and with it consciousness. Opening his eyes, he saw the face of Novoveski, the face of Lusnia, the helmets of the dragoons, who had thrown aside the sheepskin caps of the horse herds; and all that reality was so dreadful that it seemed to him a genuine nightmare. Every movement of the horse tortured him; his wounds burned him increasingly; and again he fainted. Pierced with pain, he recovered consciousness, to fall into a fever, and with it into a dream, to wake up again.
There were moments in which it seemed to him impossible that he, such a wretched man, could be Azya, the son of Tugai Bey; that his life, which was full of uncommon events, and which seemed to promise a great destiny, was to end with such suddenness, and so terribly.
At times too it came to his head that after torments and death he would go straightway to paradise; but because once he had professed Christianity, and had lived long among Christians, fear seized him at the thought of Christ. Christ would have no pity on him; if the Prophet had been mightier than Christ, he would not have given him into the hands of Pan Adam. Perhaps, however, the Prophet would show pity yet, and take the soul out of him before Pan Adam would kill him with torture.