Читать книгу Guerrilla - Edward 18th Baron of Dunsany Plunkett - Страница 9

Table of Contents

For a while Srebnitz stood listening, but all was quiet down the lane by which Sophia went. Then he moved without a sound along the little street, and soon came to the edge of the wider street, from which the lights had flashed. He was still in his bare feet. The lights were flashing in the street, both to left and to right of him, and it seemed full of Germans. So he walked across it; and the street to which he came seemed empty, and it slanted steeply, as though its pavement were the hem of a cloak that covered the feet of the Mountain.

There were no sounds ahead of him, yet he walked warily, for the Germans in the town were uneasy, as the sounds behind him showed, and he expected them to have sentries at all the exits, especially towards the Mountain. He crossed another street safely, but now he heard sounds of marching behind him, as a patrol turned from the wider street and up the street he was in. Srebnitz quickened his pace then to a very slow run, but went no faster than that, in case he should run into a sentry ahead of him. A sentry was less likely to be out in the road than on the pavement, but Srebnitz ran on the pavement for the sake of the ease with which his bare feet could move on its smooth surface, and the mastery that he felt that his speed could give him there against any opponent he might meet in the night; and he felt almost as safe from the marching feet behind him as a hawk might feel from the feet of a gamekeeper on a night as dark as this. He crossed another street, the last of them, and still he had met no opposition. Then he dropped to a walk again; the German patrol was still behind him, but his only fear now was of a barricade, or a group of sentries, at the end of the street.

He went very cautiously past the last houses, and then the pavement ended and there was no sentry there. More than likely the men marching behind him were the very men who were to close the end of the street, and he was a few yards ahead of the news of what he had done. Certainly the patrol came no further than the end of the street.

Very soon the road by which he was travelling was no more than an ordinary country road. He stopped then and listened attentively for as long as he thought it would take Sophia to return to her home, and, hearing no shots, was sure she had got home in safety. Then he looked carefully at both sides of the road to see what sort of obstacles bounded it, and found a hedge on both sides, not too thick for him to get through if he had to.

Then he walked on slowly down the road, and presently the hedges ceased altogether. Then he came to the wood of which Sophia had told him, a pine-wood dark and mysterious in the night, but he felt that with his bare feet and his rifle he was as dangerous as any mystery in the wood. Tall asphodels shone faintly in the light from the stars: nothing else in all the wood gathered any radiance. Srebnitz felt more confidence now than he had felt before in that night, for he felt that if he met anyone now he could use his rifle and still get to the Mountain before he was overtaken; and if the worst should come to the worst, he meant to use it, which would have been impossible in the town, if he was to escape afterwards; and he meant to escape, for he had much to do for The Land. The road ran through the wood and brought him to heathy country without fields. The Mountain rose before him, but the road ran rather to the right than straight upwards. Yet he kept to the road, which seemed to know its business, rather than go straight up, which seemed so easy; for he had heard of men who had been lost on the Mountain.

When he was far from the town he sat down and put on his boots, tying them with many knots, for he had cut the laces earlier in the night. He put them on, not so much for protection for his feet on the road, but in case he should have to take to the rough country. The road had no boundaries any longer, and he felt almost perfectly safe now, for any patrol he might meet on the road would never overtake him in the rough country by night. He had only to run a few yards to his left, and the night and the Mountain would take care of him.

So he went on slowly through the night, thinking of Hlaka, and of the victory of The Land, which many doubted and which the Germans had not even considered as a possibility, or as an eventuality worthy of the trouble of any of their speakers to deny, but Srebnitz saw it vividly, and Hlaka up in the Mountain never saw anything else; for Srebnitz victory for The Land was a faith, but Hlaka up in the Mountain with his band of free men saw it all round him as the saints see Paradise. The eastern stars paled and a light came low in the sky and the night seemed to grow colder.

Srebnitz was glad of the second blanket that Sophia had given him, and that he wore like a cloak. He was too young to know that sleeplessness and hunger are two other causes of cold, besides the obvious one of the wind before dawn on a mountain; but a very elementary instinct prompted him to eat food, and he sat down by the road and cut a slice from the ham that Sophia had given him and a slice of bread from a loaf, both with the knife that had killed the sentry. The knife reminded him of his fulfilled dream, the rifle now in his hands, and he raised the rifle to his lips and kissed it.

Dawn as he ate came up coldly and slowly, first in a dead hush, then with the familiar sounds that accompany dawn in Europe, rising up from the far town, the dull and occasional rap of volleys of musketry. Reprisals already, thought Srebnitz. A feeling of horror went through him for a moment. And then he remembered Gregor's words, that all these people were lost already. Today, tomorrow or next day they would die: only The Land would be saved. At a certain altitude above the town Liberty seemed to dwell. Down below in the streets he was a fugitive, a man without a permit, and in his father's house he was one of a conquered race; but just about where he was now something in the feel of the air seemed to tell him there ran the frontier of Liberty. Near here, or further up where Hlaka served her, Liberty was enthroned. Her banners were beginning to show over the Mountain now, as the sun, although not yet risen, caught floating clouds; and larks rose up to sing to her. Her palace roof was over his head, the open sky; its great bastion rose beside him, the wild Mountain. He was going to join her guards. Then the boy's mind, playing with fancies, tried to picture what uniform the guards of Liberty should wear, and fancied them for a moment gorgeous in gold lace, marching into the capital when victory came. And suddenly a glance, straying from dreams, fell on his own clothes, and he realised that the Guards of Liberty were cloaked with a brown blanket, and wore plain clothes, much like his own, with a red sleeve.