It was not long before the cause for this feeling of foreboding manifested itself. Immediately after noon alarming and unexpected tidings were brought into Tukhlia. The shepherds from neighboring downs ran breathlessly into the village announcing that they had witnessed a battle in progress before the boyar’s house with a regiment of unfamiliar dark-skinned people and had heard strange blood-curdling yells.
Every Tukholian youth who could carry a weapon armed himself with whatever came to hand, rushed to the scene of the struggle and halted some distance away upon seeing the battlefield strewn with corpses and covered with blood and the boyar’s house surrounded by a swarm of Mongols. There was not the least doubt in their minds but that all the youths sent to demolish the boyar’s house had perished in defeat in the unequal conflict with the foreign assailants. Not knowing what to do, the Tukholian young men returned to the village spreading their shocking news on the way.
Listening to them old Zakhar shuddered and bitter tears rolled down his old face. “This must be the answer. The prophesy of my dream has been revealed!” he whispered. “My Maxim laid down his life in defence of his village. And that is how it should be! Everyone dies once, but the privilege of dying honorably, heroically, does not come to everyone. I should not grieve but rejoice in his fate!”
Thus old Zakhar tried to comfort himself but his heart ached intolerably. He loved his youngest son profoundly, with all the vast power of his great soul. But he bore it stoically. The community called to him, needed his counsel and wisdom.
A multitude of people, young and old, thronged to the narrows of the Tukholian Trail, a short distance beyond which their mortal enemy maintained its position.
For the first time in the history of the Tukholian settlement, the folk-mote gathered without the customary ritual, the summoning of the people by the town criers carrying the
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