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It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were
both the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended,
and then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.
Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the
rain ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken
sides. Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears
back, he shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before
him. His thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.
Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov's fellow worker, also
in felt cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don
horse.
*A captain of Cossacks.
Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an
arrow, pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with
calm self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was
impossible to say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider
lay, yet at first glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that
the latter was wet and uncomfortable and was a man mounted on
a horse, while looking at the esaul one saw that he was as comfortable
and as much at ease as always and that he was not a man who had
mounted a horse, but a man who was one with his horse, a being
consequently possessed of twofold strength.
A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the
skin and wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.
A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with
an enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer
in a blue French overcoat.
Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French
uniform and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The
boy held on to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his
eyebrows gazed about him with surprise. This was the French drummer
boy captured that morning.
Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came
hussars in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks,
some in French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their
heads. The horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black
whether chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging
manes, looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,
reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and
the fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up
trying not to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled
to their bodies and not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking
in under their seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks.
In the midst of the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn
by French horses and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched
on in front, rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed
through the water that lay in the ruts.
Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track
and bumped his rider's knee against a tree.
"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and
showing his teeth he struck his horse three times with his whip,
splashing himself and his comrades with mud.
Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also
from hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and
yet more because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man
sent to capture a "tongue" had not returned.
"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a
transport as today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself,
and if we put it off till another day one of the big guerrilla
detachments will snatch the prey from under our noses," thought
Denisov, continually peering forward, hoping to see a messenger
from Dolokhov.
On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see
far to the right, Denisov stopped.
"There's someone coming," said he.
The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.
"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not
presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself,"
said the esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not
know.
The approaching riders having descended a decline were no
longer visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front,
at a weary gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer,
disheveled and drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above
his knees. Behind him, standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack.
The officer, a very young lad with a broad rosy face and keen
merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov and handed him a sodden envelope.
"From the general," said the officer. "Please
excuse its not being quite dry."
Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.
"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"
said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading
the dispatch. "But Komarov and I"- he pointed to the
Cossack- "were prepared. We have each of us two pistols....
But what's this?" he asked, noticing the French drummer boy.
"A prisoner? You've already been in action? May I speak to
him?"
"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through
the dispatch. "Why didn't you say who you were?" and
turning with a smile he held out his hand to the lad.
The officer was Petya Rostov.
All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with
Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer- without hinting
at their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled
at him Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the
official manner he had been rehearsing, and began telling him
how he had already been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain
hussar had distinguished himself there.
"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted
him, and his face again assumed its anxious expression.
"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this
is again fwom that German, you know. He"- he indicated Petya-
"is serving under him."
And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered
was a repetition of the German general's demand that he should
join forces with him for an attack on the transport.
"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under
our noses," he added.
While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya- abashed by
Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition
of his trousers- furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat
so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial
an air as possible.
"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked
Denisov, holding his hand at the salute and resuming the game
of adjutant and general for which he had prepared himself, "or
shall I remain with your honor?"
"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But
can you stay till tomowwow?"
"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.
"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at
once?" asked Denisov.
Petya blushed.
"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he
returned, inquiringly.
"Well, all wight," said Denisov.
And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the
halting place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest,
and told the officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties
of an adjutant) to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether
he would come that evening. Denisov himself intended going with
the esaul and Petya to the edge of the forest where it reached
out to Shamshevo, to have a look at the part of the French bivouac
they were to attack next day.
"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide,
"lead us to Shamshevo."
Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks
and the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a
ravine to the edge of the forest.
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