“Aside!” cried he to the Butryms, “aside!”
The obedient soldiers sprang aside, the little knight rushed on and closed with the Swede, the horses of the two stood on their haunches.
The officer wished evidently to unhorse his opponent with a thrust; but Volodyovski, interposing the hilt of his sabre, described a half-circle like lightning, and the rapier flew away. The officer bent to his holsters, but, cut through the cheek at that moment, he dropped the reins from his left hand.
“Take him alive!” shouted Volodyovski to the Butryms.
The Lauda men seized the wounded officer and held him tottering in the saddle; the little knight pushed on and rode farther against the Swedes, quenching them before him like candles.
But the Swedes began to yield everywhere before the nobles, who were more adroit in fencing and single combat. Some of the Swedes, seizing their rapier blades, extended the hilts to their opponents; others threw their weapons at their feet; the word “Pardon!” was heard more and more frequently on the field. But no attention was paid to the word, for Pan Michael had commanded to spare but few. The Swedes, seeing this, rushed anew to the struggle, and died as became soldiers after a desperate defence, redeeming richly with blood their own death.
An hour later the last of them were cut down. The peasants ran in crowds from the village to the grass-plot to catch the horses, kill the wounded, and plunder the dead.
Such was the end of the first encounter of Lithuanians with Swedes.
Meanwhile Zagloba, stationed at a distance in the birch-grove with the wagon in which lay Pan Roh, was forced to hear the bitter reproach that, though a relative, he had treated that young man shamefully.
“Uncle, you have ruined me utterly, for not only is a bullet in the head waiting for me at Kyedani, but eternal infamy will fall on my name. Henceforth whoso wants to say, ‘Fool,’ may say, ‘Roh Kovalski!’”