Song of the Legions (31 page)

We forded the river easily, further upstream in the proper spot, where a sandbar ran barely a yard under the water. One could cross there hardly wetting the tops of one’s boots. I slipped my musket back into its saddle holster, and drew my pistols. My comrades drew pistols or raised their lances.

There were about fifty of us, and we wound across the river like a snake. Szymon’s men stood dumbfounded, having lost half of their comrades at a stroke. Across the river, Sierawski calmly reloaded his gun before trotting his horse along the bank, and carefully crossing at the proper place, behind us.

“There’s many that go out for wool and find themselves shorn, Szymon!” Tanski shouted.

“We have a rope here for you, Szymon!” I called, “for he that swings cannot drown!”

Tanski led the line, and we formed up in three ranks, the first armed with lances. They couched their spears like winged knights, the pennants hissing and fluttering in the breeze. Along this narrow bank there was no room to manouevre, and it would be a brutal and bloody charge. Cuirassiers they may have been, heavier and stronger than us. But we had them three to one, and we had our lances. So they turned and ran, back to their Russian masters, with their tails between their legs.

We rode on, south and then east. As we rode we clapped Sierawski on the back, and pressed gifts of tobacco and vodka on him. This drowning of the cuirassiers was a great moment of ingenuity and courage. Had he been a princeling, or the son of a karmazym, with a father who wore scarlet boots, they’d have written songs about him. Why, he would have had a score of medals for it. As it was, the affair made him our hero. His fame quickly went to his head – of course.

About fifty of us made it across the ford. We followed the Dniester east for a week, doubled back, recrossed it, and headed south, across immense steppes and almost inaccessible citadels of stone. There we sought sanctuary in the great sweep of wasteland that curves like a dagger down into the Ottoman realms. It was as desolate as the surface of the moon. Below our horses’ hooves grew not grass but stones. Innumerable stones! The debris from gigantic cities not yet made – or perhaps long since destroyed.

There was no shelter. A wild jackal wind that could pare flesh from bone drove great columns of biting grey dust into the sky. Dust as black as the Devil’s cape. We and our beasts did great penance under these accursed storms, which chafed the skin like a hairshirt.

This void of rocks was naked of trees and of all vegetation save bristly tamarisk and great crowns of razor-sharp thorns. A huge outcrop of rocks thrust out of the dusty grey earth. Steep, sheer sided rocks. We marvelled at them, and ran our hands over their smooth faces. Some were as shiny as glass, and the mass of them was quite impassable. I expected to see the Devil on that outcrop, offering us our souls in exchange for turning the flat stones that lay at our feet into bread. We were sorely hungry.

We took a long detour around the outcrop, down into the belly of a great crater. It ran for many leagues across the plain. Our horses slid sideways, like crabs, down the edge of this pit. There, my last packhorse, a pretty white mare, took a tumble. She dragged old Muszka, my stallion, down with her. We three rolled down the slope in a chaos of crashing rocks, stones cracking against my head like musket balls. I felt as Twardowski must have done, falling from the Devil’s claws through empty space onto the moon.

“Are you alright, Blumer?” someone shouted. The little column halted. We were still about fifty men strong. The men sat heavily in their stirrups and waited.

“I’m alive,” I called back, “but what of my poor horses!” I shouted, in despair. Amid a crop of thorns I found old Muszka, sitting on his backside like a dog by a fireside, and blinking. Ignoring the pain in my jolted bones I dragged him, growling, to his feet, whereupon he bit my arm. He stood easy and unlamed on all four hooves. I braced myself, sickened, for the shock to come.

In a fever of fumbling, I ran my fingers over every leg, from fetlock to shoulder, over every bone, muscle and sinew. Nothing. No injury. Next I counted every rib of the great barrel of his fat belly. At each I gave a tearful prayer of thanks, still awaiting the inevitable mortal wound. I ran my hands over his backbone, his flanks, and neck, his ears and eyes, and into his mouth. He had a thorn stuck in his foot, which I plucked out, and deep cuts in his shaggy hair, from which blood flowed freely, but these were mere flesh wounds, and soon staunched.

“Thank God!” I shouted at the top of my voice, and danced a mad mazurka around my bemused horse, with the void echoing to my words. By some glorious miracle he was unharmed, and whole. My stallion stood staring at me patiently as if I were an idiot, as he always did. Then he turned his huge head. I followed his gaze, and saw Tanski standing by my poor white mare. She lay stricken, soaked in sweat, her flanks heaving, and panting as heavily as if she were in foal. Her leg was completely shattered.

“I’ll do it, if you like,” Tanski said kindly, clapping hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you brother, but no. It’s my horse,” I replied.

The pistol shot illuminated a tiny corner of that desolate place, and put an end to the poor creature’s suffering. Her burden of baggage we divided up between us. Then we swiftly butchered the dead beast into steaks with our knives and bayonets, and collected the warm blood in our canteens.

A halt was called, and we struck camp for the night. In truth, one could not tell if it was night or day, so dark and desolate was what passed for the day in that endless void. Down there, in the crater, the contours of the land were like beggar’s cupped hands. It gave us shelter from the gnawing gale, and we were thankful. Yet still we froze in the eternal black of the miserable gloomy place. Desperate for warmth, we found a thicket of thorn scrub and painstakingly cut it up, with frozen fingers. Our hands were lacerated and the flesh hung in shreds. We suffered such torments in those thorns as would have tested the patience of a saint.

“Well, we have made it out of hell, at least,” I said grimly, for the fire was made, and we ate strips of meat from the mare, and drank the last of the blood, mixed with wine. “Now we are merely in purgatory!”

Tanski said nothing, but glowered. We thought that this was because he was jealous of Sierawski’s fame. How mistaken we were! Our comrade was gravely ill, but he said nothing. He merely shouldered his share of our burdens without complaint.

“Let’s hear the Proclamation!” Sierawski said, and we all listened, for his fame glowed stronger still than the miserable fire, all smoke but no flame, and precious little heat. All of the company hung on his word, including the lads who had never clapped eyes on him before the affair at the ford. Whatever he said, we did, for he had earned it back there. So I dug the Proclamation from my saddlebag. We were sorely in need of its consolation now, it was our prayer. My comrades urged me to my feet, and obligingly I stood up. I declaimed it in near total darkness, for by now I knew it by heart.

“Proclamation to Poles!

I, Dabrowski, the Polish Lieutenant General, faithful to our Motherland, am forming a Polish Legion in Italy! We struggled for freedom, led by the immortal Kosciuszko. We saw our flag victorious at Dubienka, Raclawice, Warsaw and Vilnius. But our nation fell through violence, and the blood of innocents flowed in the soil that belonged to our forefathers.

Poles, fresh hope has come from France! Victorious France has come to our aid, so that we may fight our common enemies! France will give us shelter, to await better fortunes for our own country. We shall fight under her Tricolour flag, for these are signs of honour and victory. The Polish Legion, formed in Italy, the Holy Temple of Freedom!

There are many brave soldiers and officers, your comrades in hardship, here with me. Battalions are forming. Those of you who are conscripts – desert from the enemy armies! Join us! All nations who love liberty are fighting together as allies, under the brave Bonaparte, Victor of Italy. Our only hope to save our nation is the French Republic.

The Legion’s Headquarters in Milan, the First Day of the Month of Pluvoise, Year Five of the French Republic.”

Dabrowski’s Proclamation had been made in February of that year, 1797. The strange dates were from the French Revolutionary calendar. It seemed that not even time itself was safe from the Revolution!

At the end, the men fell to discussing Italy, which was to be reached by ship from Constantinople, and how we would get there.

“Do you know, Blumer – I think that we have taken a most terrible detour under your inept guidance! We are lost!” Sierawski said, chewing a hunk of horsemeat, savouring it, and savouring the way the men now hung on his every word. The engineer’s head was getting too big for his czapka, I feared.

“I think,” the engineer continued, “that this is not Turkey at all. We must have journeyed to the moon! You and your damned Podolian maps!” he laughed, clapping his thigh with glee. They all laughed at this, and I frowned. It is not good to hear fifty men laughing at you like damned hyenas. Had my hands not been wrapped in rags, hurting like the very devil, and dripping blood like tears, I should have knocked out every last one of Sierawski’s teeth for him, and seen how well he chewed my horsemeat then. So instead I laughed, too, and Sierawski handed me his flask, and I drank, and calmed myself. For I was a real
pistolet
in those days, a hothead. It landed me in no end of trouble, I can tell you. My temper had brought me naught but an empty purse and the tarnished badge of a warrant officer, after six long years of toil.

“Blumer is a good lad – for a Podolian,” Sierawski expounded. “He has the maps and the compass, and he even has Dabrowski’s Proclamation in there. We’d be lost without him. Why, he carries the entire Warsaw library in his saddlebag. Blumer is as organised as our general staff!”

“I hope not,” I retorted, “or we really are fucked!”

The others all laughed at this, and they passed me another drink. It occurred to me at last that one catches more flies with honey than with vinegar.

“Well, anyway,” Sierawski said, generously – as only a man who is cock of the walk can be generous – “we all agree that we’d be lost without you, comrade.”

“So tell us then,” Birnbaum put in sadly, “where in the world are we now, Blumer? Are we in hell, or on the moon?” Birnbaum was desolately sad. For he was the last of the Beardlings. His fellow Jewish cavalryman had been cut down by the Austrians, or taken, we knew not. At any rate the poor fellow was lost. We were all Birnbaum had now, and even pig-headed Tanski was kind to him in consequence.

“We are halfway to Galatz, Comrade Birnbaum,” I replied, “for I have reckoned it by the stars, and by my compass and maps.”

“Galatz!” Tanski spat, “What negligence is this? We are supposed to be going to Constantinople, Blumer, damn your eyes! Why the hell are we going to Galatz?” they all demanded, angry with me again.

How fickle is the mob! I explained it to them all, yet again, very wearily. My comrades knew little and cared less for geography. I had told them a dozen times already.

“We still have many miles to Constantinople. It is three months’ journey over land from here, hard riding across the mountain passes of Bulgaria and Greece, which are infested with bandits. But from Galatz it is a mere three weeks plain sailing by sea,” I told them.

“Galatz is the biggest port in a hundred miles. Finding a ship there will be easier than finding a priest in a whorehouse!”