The Keepers of the People

1396The light of the rising sun fell upon some four thousand Russian corpses strewn about the plain, and on hundreds of riderless horses feeding about it in droves. There was no assault on the Russians in the gorge till the sun was up; then under the cover of the guns a crowd of sharpshooters moved forward; and Colonel Sayers lined the edges of the cliffs which walled it, with more. The Russians were well sheltered among the loose rocks at its end from an attack by infantry along it, but the shells fell among them, and the fire from above was deadly. At the end of half an hour they raised the white flag; and since Colonel Sayers would hear of no terms, they surrendered unconditionally. The noise of the firing, rolling in thunders among the mountains, did not awaken Prince Ralph; and when at length he awoke, Althea gave him the news of the surrender.

1397“It would have saved trouble,” he said, “if Colonel Sayers had slaughtered them all where they lay; but as it is, he has saved ammunition.”

1398He did not wish to leave the palace; he had been much among the Varandals of late; and it was not good that their Prince should become a more familiar sight to them than was needful. By noon thousands had flocked from all the country to the plain and the battle-fields to learn how their friends had fared, to rejoice with those who had conquered and lived, to bear their wounded home, to bewail and carry away their dead. A courier came from the pass with the news that the handful of Cossacks who had been left to hold it, had been surprised in it, and fled; that the camp beyond the pass, of the motley host who had followed the Russians, had been broken up; and that the Varandal horse were in hot pursuit of any flying Russians who had not been cut off by two hundred men whom Prince Ralph had left behind him. The Russian prisoners were busy burying the Russian dead. For two hours before sunset all the highways were thronged with the returning villagers and soldiers: the Varandal army, save a guard for the prisoners, was disbanded in the afternoon: and, in spite of their terrible losses, the people spent the night in a great rejoicing.