precise moment a powerful arm with steel-like grip grasped him by the neck from behind and flung him heavily to the ground. Over Maxim, reddened with arrogant anger and the strain, bent the face of Tuhar Wolf. “Now lout!” cried the boyar, smirking, “you see, I know how to keep my word? Come followers, fasten the iron chains upon him!”
“Though in chains, I shall still remain a free man. These chains bind but my hands and ankles, yours bind your soul!” remarked Maxim.
The boyar laughed uproariously at this and left to set about reorganizing the Mongolians whose numbers had become greatly depleted in the bloody battle. Tuhar Wolf planned to march back to his house and return to the Mongolian encampment with the greater number of the remaining Mongols and the chained Maxim. The rest he ordered to encircle and guard the entrance to the pass strewn with corpses.
“Those cursed peasants!” complained the boyar, counting his losses. “What a lot of men they’ve incapacitated! Well, the devil take the Mongols, I’m not sorry for them. If over their dead bodies lies the path to the power I seek, I would turn against them also. But this barbarian, this Maxim, he’s some warrior! Who knows perhaps he too could serve my purpose? I must get all I can out of him while I still have him in my hands. He must be my guide through the mountains, for the devil only knows what their trail is really like and whether there are any misleading cross-trails upon it! Now while he’s still in my hands, I must try to win him over, use a little persuasion! who knows to what he may yet be prevailed upon to agree?”
In the meantime the Mongols were saddling their horses preparatory to leaving. Maxim, chained at the wrists and ankles, covered with blood, hatless, his clothing torn, sat numbly on a stone beside a stream, his teeth clenched, his heart full of torment. Before him on the field and in the pass, lay piles of
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