Michael sought him out, therefore, a place near the altar, and lay down beside the dead body of a warrior, it looked just as if the two of them were sleeping, or as if the two of them were dead. Simon, meanwhile, gathered together some fallen darts from the field of battle, found him a bow, and leaned against the lintel of the doorway. Whenever the hideous monsters approached, he shot an arrow among them, and every time he did so a fight arose between the wounded wolf and the others, which he thought had bitten him. This disgusting combat lasted amidst ugly snarling and snapping for about an hour, when an old wolf began to howl hideously, as if by way of signal to his fellows, who howled back again from every part of the town, and then suddenly the whole lot of them made off, scattering in every direction.
Simon speedily conjectured the cause of this sudden flight, hastened back to his brother and cried—
"Awake, little brother! I hear the hoot of the horns, the Tatars are coming back."
There was no other hope of escape than for the pair of them to lie down among the dead bodies with their faces turned earthwards, thus quietly to await the new-comers.
Presently they appeared amidst the ruins of the church.
Ofttimes it happened thus. The Tatars thought to themselves: The people who have taken refuge fancy we have nothing more to seek in the devastated towns, and will come out of their holes, let us go and hunt them down. And in this way very many perished.
It was a man of that very town who led them back. An inhabitant of a Christian town had become a Tatar, joined himself to the enemies of his faith and country, and went before to show them the best places to plunder.
And this wicked, accursed man was now wearing the Tatar dress, a high-peaked fur cap, white breeches, and murdered the Tatar tongue to give them pleasure—God grant the words may stick in his throat and choke him.
The two brethren could gather from their talk that the evil renegade had led the enemy hither in order that he might show them the entrance to the crypt in which the fugitive population had concealed their treasures, and then walled up the door behind them. They immediately broke it open, and with a great racket and uproar dispersed among the discovered treasures, breaking in pieces whatever was too large to be taken away whole. The renegade got for his share the cover of a pyx, which the vile wretch stuck in front of his cap by way of ornament.
"Let me once get a fair hold of you!" thought Simon the warrior to himself. He was looking on at all this with half an eye as he lay among the dead bodies.