side breeding ground with his company and to rid it once and for all of its savage inhabitants.
From earliest morn the encampment was alive with the excitement of preparation. The servants had been stirring about long before dawn getting ready the provisions of food and filling the guests’ wooden canteens with a thirst-quenching drink of fomented honey. The Tukholian youths also prepared themselves by sharpening their knives and wooden arrows, drawing on durable moccasins and filling the compartments of their lunch baskets with roast meat, dumplings, bread, cheese and other food enough to last them the entire day.
Not until this day did Maxim Berkut assume the full responsibility of the expedition. He neither hurried nor tarried, nor did he neglect to oversee every detail of the preparations. Everything had its time and place. Whether among his fellow mountaineers, the older and more experienced boyars, or the servants, Maxim moved about calmly, unobtrusively, giving orders confidently as if he considered them all his equals. His friends were just as free with him as he with them, laughing and joking with him at the same time carrying out his instructions promptly and happily as though they were doing everything on their own initiative without being told. The company of boyar warlords, accustomed to sly, derisive laughter on the one hand and to toadying servility on the other, were in their ways neither as free nor as readily given to jollity, nevertheless, they respected Maxim’s guidance and judgment and carried out his instructions without question.
Although the proud and arrogant boyars may have resented the presence of a common peasant “lout” who ordered them about as if they were his equals, it was demonstrated to them almost at every turn that his instructions were both sensible and necessary.
The sun had not yet risen when the huntsmen left their encampment. The mountains slept, wrapped in their blanket
5
