“Horses cannot swim against the current.”
“It goes slowly. They will swim! The water is almost standing.”
“The horses will be chilled, and the men cannot endure it. It is cold yet.”
“Oh, the men will swim holding to the horses’ tails! That is your Tartar way.”
“The men will grow stiff.”
“They will get warm under fire.”
“Kismet (fate)!”
Before it had grown dark in the world, Kmita had ordered them to cut bunches of willows, dry reeds, and rushes, and tie them to the sides of the horses. When the first star appeared, he sent about eight hundred horses into the water, and they began to swim. He swam himself at the head of them; but soon he saw that they were advancing so slowly that in two days they would not swim past the trenches. Then he ordered them to swim to the other bank.
That was a dangerous undertaking. The other bank was steep and swampy. The horses, though light, sank in it to their bellies. But Kmita’s men pushed forward, though slowly and saving one another, while advancing a couple of furlongs.
The stars indicated midnight. Then from the south came to them echoes of distant fighting.