War and Peace

he rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from
the trees. Denísov, the esaul, and Pétya rode silently, following the
peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned toes
and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet leaves,
silently led them to the edge of the forest.

He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to where
the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree that
had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously to
them with his hand.

Denísov and Pétya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant was
standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest, on a
downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a steep
ravine, was a small village and a landowner’s house with a broken roof.
In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well, by the pond,
over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill from the
bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred yards
away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist. Their
un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining uphill with the
carts, and their calls to one another, could be clearly heard.

“Bwing the prisoner here,” said Denísov in a low voice, not taking his
eyes off the French.

A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to Denísov.
Pointing to the French troops, Denísov asked him what these and those
of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his pockets and
lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denísov in affright, but in spite of
an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused answers, merely
assenting to everything Denísov asked him. Denísov turned away from him
frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his own conjectures to him.

Pétya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy, now
at Denísov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village and
along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.

“Whether Dólokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?” said Denísov with
a merry sparkle in his eyes.

“It is a very suitable spot,” said the esaul.

“We’ll send the infantwy down by the swamps,” Denísov continued.
“They’ll cweep up to the garden; you’ll wide up fwom there with the
Cossacks”—he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village—“and I
with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot...”

“The hollow is impassable—there’s a swamp there,” said the esaul. “The
horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left....”

While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded
from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared, then
another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French voices
shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment Denísov and the
esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought they were the cause
of the firing and shouting. But the firing and shouting did not relate
to them. Down below, a man wearing something red was running through the
marsh. The French were evidently firing and shouting at him.

“Why, that’s our Tíkhon,” said the esaul.

“So it is! It is!”

“The wascal!” said Denísov.

“He’ll get away!” said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.

The man whom they called Tíkhon, having run to the stream, plunged in
so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared for an
instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet, and ran on.
The French who had been pursuing him stopped.

“Smart, that!” said the esaul.

“What a beast!” said Denísov with his former look of vexation. “What has
he been doing all this time?”

“Who is he?” asked Pétya.

“He’s our plastún. I sent him to capture a ‘tongue.’”

“Oh, yes,” said Pétya, nodding at the first words Denísov uttered as if
he understood it all, though he really did not understand anything of
it.

Tíkhon Shcherbáty was one of the most indispensable men in their band.
He was a peasant from Pokróvsk, near the river Gzhat. When Denísov had
come to Pokróvsk at the beginning of his operations and had as usual
summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew about the French,
the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied, as all village
elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything of them. But
when Denísov explained that his purpose was to kill the French, and
asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied that some
“more-orderers” had really been at their village, but that Tíkhon
Shcherbáty was the only man who dealt with such matters. Denísov had
Tíkhon called and, having praised him for his activity, said a few words
in the elder’s presence about loyalty to the Tsar and the country and
the hatred of the French that all sons of the fatherland should cherish.

“We don’t do the French any harm,” said Tíkhon, evidently frightened by
Denísov’s words. “We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you know!
We killed a score or so of ‘more-orderers,’ but we did no harm else....”

Next day when Denísov had left Pokróvsk, having quite forgotten about
this peasant, it was reported to him that Tíkhon had attached himself
to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it. Denísov gave
orders to let him do so.

Tíkhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching water,
flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking and aptitude
for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for booty and always
brought back French clothing and weapons, and when told to would bring
in French captives also. Denísov then relieved him from drudgery and
began taking him with him when he went out on expeditions and had him
enrolled among the Cossacks.

Tíkhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging
behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried
rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf uses
its teeth, with equal ease picking fleas out of its fur or crunching
thick bones. Tíkhon with equal accuracy would split logs with blows at
arm’s length, or holding the head of the ax would cut thin little pegs
or carve spoons. In Denísov’s party he held a peculiar and exceptional
position. When anything particularly difficult or nasty had to be
done—to push a cart out of the mud with one’s shoulders, pull a horse
out of a swamp by its tail, skin it, slink in among the French, or walk
more than thirty miles in a day—everybody pointed laughingly at Tíkhon.

“It won’t hurt that devil—he’s as strong as a horse!” they said of him.

Once a Frenchman Tíkhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at him
and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which Tíkhon
treated only with internal and external applications of vodka) was the
subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment—jokes in which
Tíkhon readily joined.

“Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?” the Cossacks would banter
him. And Tíkhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended to be
angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only effect
of this incident on Tíkhon was that after being wounded he seldom
brought in prisoners.

He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found more
opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more Frenchmen,
and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the Cossacks and hussars
and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been sent by Denísov
overnight to Shámshevo to capture a “tongue.” But whether because he
had not been content to take only one Frenchman or because he had slept
through the night, he had crept by day into some bushes right among the
French and, as Denísov had witnessed from above, had been detected by
them.