The Keepers of the People

1328Meanwhile the Russians had been pouring through the pass since the dawn. Two thousand cavalry had come first; then a battery; then infantry; then more cavalry. Prince Melinsky and his officers had been busy examining the country from a height beside the road; but they could only see the first position of the Varandals; the second position, and the cavalry and infantry away on their right, were hidden from them by woods. A few bodies of Cossacks were sent forward to reconnoitre the Varandals’ position, and were fired upon by the outposts. By four o’clock in the afternoon some three thousand men had come through the pass; and then, while they were pitching and entrenching their camp, a body of five hundred Cossacks moved forward to the right, towards the middle of the country, with orders to reconnoitre, and burn the villages by way of striking terror into its inhabitants. Prince Melinsky and his officers watched their course. They made their uninterrupted way through the zone which Prince Ralph had had cleared of its inhabitants, the flat pasture and cornland unbroken by woods, round the foot of the pass. They plundered and burnt the villages as they went; the land was deserted, and they were unmolested. But when they drew near the belt of woods, a body of three hundred Varandal horse charged from a break in it, and were upon them as quickly as their own advance guards. The two bodies met with a violent shock; but the Varandals had the advantage of the greater impetus, and heavier horses; and drove the Cossacks back in a disorderly mob, pursuing them to within range of the Russian guns. It became plain to the staff that they must crush the Varandal force in front of them before they attempted to penetrate the middle country. They had only seen the three hundred horsemen on their right flank; but the woods might hide three thousand; and it was little use wasting men on dangerous reconnaissances when the main body of the enemy lay plainly before them. Then there came a refusal from the majority of their native auxiliaries to march through the pass. They shrank from it in a vague, boundless fear of the Varandals, inspired into them by the recruits from the country about the mouth of the pass. It was nightfall before they were persuaded to begin their march. The small body of them which had come through the pass earlier was sent out, singly, or by twos and threes, to steal into the middle of the country, and learn the strength of the Varandal force. Many of them did not come back; and those who did, reported that there was no passing the woods, which were filled full of watchers. For the leaders of the cavalry had filled them with hundreds of striplings and old men, armed for the most part with spears, to prevent the passage of any scouts. But though they found themselves shut in in this corner of the land, the Russians were full of confidence, and by daybreak all their force was through the pass.