“Ho, there,” he cried aloud, “ye mighty heroes of Holy Russia, saddle your good steeds without delay and mount with speed. A message of distress has come from my brother-in-arms, and had it not been for the cross upon my breast it would have honoured me with a wound fit only for one of the Golden Horde.”
Roused at last the heroes took their chargers from the scattered wheat, saddled them and rode them towards Kiev town; and Ilya noting this from his point of vantage came down from the mountain to join his twelve brethren, and in a long line of strength and swiftness the thirteen heroes rode against the Golden Horde.
For the space of five hours they mowed down young and old, and they left at the end of that heroic period not so many as one single soul to continue the accursed race. Flushed with victory and self-confidence, they came together in one place, and all except Ilya began to boast and to say, “If there were steps raised up to Heaven we would climb them and wage war against the sacred hosts.”
As these impious words were spoken there happened a wonder of wonders. For the Tatars rose up from the field of the slain, and where there had been one man there were now three, and they all stood up strong and well upon their feet; and if Ilya had not accounted for Tsar Kalin their advance upon Kiev town would have been sudden and overwhelming; but they turned hither and thither like the sands of the desert, having no leader.
‘A mountain cave which no man has ever seen’
Now as the heroes saw them rise, man after man, three in place of one, they rubbed their eyes in wonder, and the impious words which they had spoken dazzled their sense and confused their wits, so that they turned their arms against each other and fought with the fury of sundered friends. But Ilya took no part in that unnatural fight. Sadly and dazedly he watched until the twelve lay dead upon the plain. Then he slowly turned his shaggy bay steed Cloudfall and rode towards a mountain cave which no man has ever seen or shall see till the end of Holy Russia; and sitting in that cavern with his sword across his knees he slowly turned to stone. Cloudfall also became a lifeless statue, and there the two heroic friends sit on, waiting, waiting, waiting for the touch of life which will come when Holy Russia is in direst need and calls aloud in distress for the courage and skill, the patience and the fiery valour of Ilya of Murom the Old Cossáck.
