Zbyszko began questioning him hurriedly—how were they coming, how many horsemen, how many foot soldiers, and above all, how far away they still were. From the Samogitians’ answers he learned that the detachment numbered no more than a hundred and fifty warriors, fifty of them mounted, led not by a Krzyżak but by some secular knight; that they marched in formation, driving empty wagons laden with spare wheels; that ahead of the detachment, at a distance of two bowshots, went a vanguard of eight men who often left the road to search the forest and thickets; and finally, that they were about a quarter mile away.
Zbyszko was not pleased they were marching in formation. He knew from experience how hard it was to break up disciplined Krzyżacy in such a case, and how such a compact body could defend itself while retreating, striking like a wild boar beset by dogs. But the news that they were no more than a quarter mile off cheered him, for he reckoned that the troop he had sent ahead had already taken the Krzyżacy from behind and would let no living soul escape if they were defeated. As for the vanguard marching in front of the detachment, he cared little about it, since he had expected as much and had previously ordered his Samogitians to either let that guard pass in peace or, if the men tried to search the forest interior, to quietly pick them off one by one.
But that last order proved unnecessary. The vanguard soon arrived. The Samogitians, hidden near overturned trees close to the road, watched the foot soldiers clearly as they halted at a bend and began talking among themselves. Their leader, a stout, red-bearded Krzyżak, signaled them to be silent, then listened. For a moment he seemed to hesitate whether to ride into the forest, but hearing only the tapping of woodpeckers, he evidently thought the birds would not work so freely if anyone were hidden in the woods, so he waved his hand and led the detachment on.
Zbyszko waited until they disappeared around the next bend, then quietly moved to the very edge of the road at the head of the heavier-armed men. Among them were Macko of Bogdaniec, Czech Hlawa, two yeomen from Lekawica, three young knights from Ciechanow, and about a dozen of the more prominent, better-armed Samogitian boyars. Further concealment was no longer necessary, so Zbyszko intended, as soon as the Krzyżacy appeared, to move to the middle of the track, charge, strike them, and break their formation. If that succeeded and the general battle turned into a series of single combats, he could be sure the Samogitians would handle the Krzyżacy.
And again came a moment of silence, broken only by the usual forest noise. But soon the warriors’ ears caught human voices from the eastern side of the road. At first confused and fairly distant, they gradually grew closer and clearer.
At that same moment Zbyszko led his detachment to the middle of the road and formed it into a wedge. He stood at the front, with Macko of Bogdaniec and Czech Hlawa directly behind him. In the next rank stood three men, in the following one four.
All were well armed; they lacked the mighty lances, or knightly spears, which were a great hindrance in forest marches, but they carried short, lighter Samogitian javelins for the first onslaught, and swords and axes at their saddles for close combat.
Hlawa pricked up his ears, listened, then whispered to Macko:
“They’re singing, the devil take them!”
“But I’m surprised the forest closes in before us and we still can’t see them,” replied Macko.
At that Zbyszko, who considered further concealment and even quiet speech unnecessary, turned and said:
“Because the road follows a stream and often twists. We’ll see them unexpectedly, but that’s better.”
“And how cheerfully they sing!” repeated Czech Hlawa.
Indeed, the Krzyżacy were singing a song that was far from pious, easy to tell from the tune alone. Listening closely, one could also discern that no more than a dozen men were singing, with only one word repeated by all, which echoed like thunder through the forest.
And so they marched toward death, merry and full of spirit.
“We’ll see them soon,” said Macko.
His face suddenly darkened and took on a wolfish expression, for his soul was unyielding and vengeful, and besides, he had not yet repaid that crossbow shot he had received when, to rescue Zbyszko, he had set out with the letter from Witold’s sister to the Grand Master.
Now his heart began to seethe, and the thirst for vengeance washed over him like scalding water.
“Woe to the one who grapples with him first,” thought Hlawa, glancing at the old knight.
Just then a gust of wind brought the cry clearly, repeated by all in chorus: “Tandaradei, tandaradei!”—and at once Czech Hlawa recognized the words of a familiar song:
“Bi den rosen er wol mac, Tandaradei! Merken wa mir’z houbet lac...”
Suddenly the song broke off, for on both sides of the track a cawing arose, so noisy and resounding as if a parliament of ravens were meeting in that corner of the forest. Yet the Krzyżacy were puzzled where so many could have come from and why all the voices came from the ground, not from the treetops. The first rank of foot soldiers had just appeared at the bend and stood rooted to the spot at the sight of unknown riders facing them.
At that same moment Zbyszko leaned forward in the saddle, drove in his spurs, and charged:
“At them!”
The others charged after him. From both sides of the forest rose a terrible cry from the Samogitian warriors. About two hundred paces separated Zbyszko’s men from the Krzyżacy, who in the blink of an eye lowered a forest of spears toward the riders, while the rear ranks turned with equal speed to face both sides of the forest to defend against flank attacks. The Polish knights would have admired that skill had they had time for admiration, and had their horses not been carrying them at full speed toward the gleaming, leveled points.
Fortunately for Zbyszko, the Krzyżacy cavalry was at the rear of the detachment near the wagons. They hurried toward their infantry but could neither ride through nor bypass them, and thus could not shield them from the first blow. Moreover, a swarm of Samogitians began to pour out of the thickets around them, like a venomous wasp nest kicked by a careless traveler. Meanwhile Zbyszko and his men crashed into the infantry.
And they struck to no effect. The Krzyżacy had driven the rear ends of their heavy lances and halberds into the ground and held them so evenly and firmly that the light Samogitian ponies could not break that wall. Macko’s horse, slashed on the shin by a halberd, reared up and then buried its nose in the ground.
For a moment death hung over the old knight, but he, knowing all battle and experienced in adventures, pulled his feet from the stirrups, seized the blade of a Krzyżak spear with his mighty hand—which, instead of plunging into his chest, served him as support—then leaped up, dodged between the horses, drew his sword, and began to strike at spears and halberds like a rapacious falcon savagely attacking a flock of long-beaked cranes.
Zbyszko, when his horse, checked in its rush, sat almost entirely on its haunches, propped himself with his javelin and broke it, so he too took to his sword. Czech Hlawa, who trusted above all in his axe, hurled it into the mass of Krzyżacy and was momentarily weaponless. One of the yeomen from Lekawica fell; the other, seized by a frenzy of rage at the sight, began to howl like a wolf and, spurring his bleeding horse, blindly pressed into the thick of the host. The Samogitian boyars hacked with their blades at the points and shafts, behind which peered the faces of the foot soldiers, seemingly struck with surprise and yet twisted with stubbornness and fury. But it happened that the formation was not broken. The Samogitians, who had struck from the flanks, initially recoiled from the Krzyżacy as from a hedgehog. They soon returned with even greater ferocity, but could not prevail.
Some clambered instantly onto roadside pines and began shooting arrows into the midst of the foot soldiers, whose commander, seeing this, ordered a retreat toward their cavalry. The Krzyżak crossbowmen started returning fire, so now and then a Samogitian hidden among the pine branches fell to the ground like a ripe cone and, dying, tore at the forest moss with his hands or writhed like a fish pulled from water. Surrounded on all sides, the Krzyżacy could not hope for victory, but seeing the effectiveness of their defense, they thought that perhaps at least a handful of them could withdraw from the slaughter and get back to the river.
None of them thought of surrendering, for they themselves showed no mercy to prisoners and knew they could not count on pity from a desperate, rebellious people. So they retreated in silence, man by man, shoulder to shoulder, raising and lowering their lances and halberds, slashing, thrusting, shooting crossbows as the turmoil of battle allowed, and constantly drawing closer to their cavalry, which was fighting for life and death against other enemy forces.
Then something unexpected happened that decided the fate of the stubborn battle. The yeoman from Lekawica, who had been seized by madness after his brother’s death, leaned down without dismounting and lifted a body from the ground, apparently wanting to save it from being trampled and to lay it somewhere safe for the time being, so it could be found more easily after the battle. But at that same moment a new wave of fury flooded his head and robbed him of all sense, for instead of riding aside, he charged at the foot soldiers and threw the corpse onto the spear points, which, sticking into its chest, belly, and hips, bent under the weight; and before the foot soldiers could pull them out, the madman burst through the gap into the ranks, overturning men like a storm.
In the blink of an eye, dozens of hands reached for him, dozens of spears pierced the horse’s sides, but in the meantime the ranks were thrown into disorder, and before they could recover, first one of the Samogitian boyars who was closest, then Zbyszko, then Czech Hlawa crashed in, and the terrible confusion grew with each moment. Other boyars also grabbed the bodies of the fallen and began throwing them onto the spear points; the Samogitians attacked again from the flanks. The whole hitherto orderly unit swayed, shook like a house whose walls are cracking, split like a tree under a wedge, and finally shattered.
The battle turned in an instant into a slaughter. The long Krzyżak spears and halberds became useless in the crush. Instead, the riders’ blades grated against skulls and necks. Horses pushed into the human mass, knocking over and trampling the hapless foot soldiers. The riders could easily strike from above, so they struck without pause for breath. From the sides of the road, ever new bands of wild warriors in wolf skins with a wolfish lust for blood poured out. Their howling drowned out the begging voices for mercy and the groans of the dying.
The defeated threw down their weapons; some tried to slip into the forest; some, pretending to be dead, fell to the ground; some stood upright, their faces white as snow and eyes half-closed; others prayed; one, whose mind had clearly been unhinged by terror, began to play on a pipe, smiling and raising his eyes upward, until a Samogitian club smashed his head. The forest stopped rustling, as if frightened by death.
Finally the Krzyżak band melted away. Only occasionally a sound of brief struggle or a piercing cry of despair rang out in the thickets. Zbyszko and Macko, and behind them all the horsemen, now charged toward the cavalry.
The cavalry was still defending itself, formed in a circle, for the Krzyżacy always defended themselves that way when the enemy managed to surround them with superior force. The riders, sitting on small horses and in better armor than the foot soldiers, fought bravely and with admirable stubbornness. There was not a single white cloak among them, but mostly middle and lesser nobility, who were obliged to come to war at the Order’s command. Their horses were for the most part also armored, some with mail coverings, and all with iron headpieces set with a steel horn in the center. Command over them was held by a tall, slender knight in a dark-blue breastplate and a like helmet with lowered visor.
From the depths of the forest a hail of arrows fell on them, but the points bounced harmlessly off the headpieces, breastplates, and hardened shoulder guards. A wall of Samogitian foot and horse surrounded them closely, but they defended themselves, slashing and thrusting with long swords so fiercely that a wreath of corpses lay before the horses’ hooves. The front ranks of the attackers wanted to retreat but, pressed from behind, could not. A crush and confusion arose all around. Eyes dazzled from the glint of spears and the flash of swords. Horses began to squeal, bite, and kick. Samogitian boyars rushed in, Zbyszko rushed in, Czech Hlawa rushed in, the Masurians rushed in. Under their mighty blows the compact mass began to waver and sway like a forest in a gale, while they, like woodsmen felling a dense thicket, slowly advanced forward with toil and effort.
But Macko ordered the collection of long Krzyżak halberds from the battlefield and, arming nearly thirty wild warriors with them, began to push through the throng toward the Krzyżacy. Having reached them, he shouted: “Cut the horses’ legs!” and at once a terrible effect appeared. The German knights could not reach his men with their swords, while the halberds began to cruelly shatter the horses’ shins. Then the blue knight realized that the end of the battle was near, and that only one option remained: either to break through the troop that blocked the way back, or to die.
He chose the former—and in an instant, at his command, the line of knights turned to face the direction from which they had come. The Samogitians were immediately on their backs, but the Krzyżacy, slinging shields onto their backs and cutting from the front and sides, tore the surrounding ring, let their horses loose, and began to race like a hurricane toward the east. The troop that had just been riding to the battle rushed to meet them, but crushed by the superiority of armor and horses, fell in an instant like a field of grain before a gale.
The road to the castle was open, but salvation was far and uncertain, for the Samogitian horses were swifter than the Krzyżak ones. The blue knight understood this perfectly.
“Woe!” he said to himself. “Not a one of them will be saved, unless I buy their rescue with my own blood.”
And having thought this, he began to shout at the nearest men to rein in their horses, while he himself wheeled around—and, heedless of whether anyone heeded his call, turned to face the enemy.
Zbyszko was running first, so the German struck him on the brim of his helmet covering his face, but did not shatter it nor damage his face. Then Zbyszko, instead of answering cut for cut, seized the knight around the waist, grappled with him, and, wanting desperately to take him alive, tried to pull him from the saddle. But the stirrup broke from the excessive pressure, and they both fell to the ground.
For a moment they rolled, fighting with hands and feet, but soon the unusually strong young man overcame his opponent and, pressing his knees against the other’s belly, held him beneath him like a wolf holding a dog that dared to face him in the thicket.
And he held him needlessly, for his opponent had fainted. Meanwhile Macko and Czech Hlawa ran up, and seeing them, Zbyszko began to shout:
“Come quick and tie him up! He’s some notable knight, and belted.”
Czech Hlawa dismounted, but seeing the knight’s limpness, did not tie him; instead he disarmed him, unbuckled the shoulder guards, removed the belt with the misericorde hanging from it, cut the straps holding the helmet, and finally set to work on the screws closing the visor.
But no sooner had he looked into the knight’s face than he jumped up and cried:
“My lord, my lord! Look here!”
“De Lorche!” shouted Zbyszko.
And de Lorche lay with a pale, sweaty face and closed eyes, motionless as a corpse.