And over there—a road."
"I see it."
"At four o'clock some men on horseback galloped up, and people began stirring.
In the evening two carriages arrived.
That's where the devil sits, and nowhere else."
"Now go down!" said the stocky man, imperiously, and called the commander of the battery to him.
A bearded man in a sheepskin coat clambered up to the top of the mound.
The stocky man handed his field glasses to him, and he looked long through them.
"The Slusarev homestead—the farm," he said in rheumy accents. "Four and a half miles away.
We could direct fire on Slusarev."
He returned the glasses, clambered clumsily back down the slope, and, drawing a deep breath, shouted:
"Battery make ready!
Range.... First salvo.... Fire!..."
The brazen throats of the guns moaned, the tubes jerked, releasing a flame of fire, and the heavy shells went their way, muttering a death refrain, towards the high bank of the Kuban, to the two bare poplars, where Kornilov sat gloomily before a map in the little white hut.
General Markov and his officers' regiment were summoned from the baggage train on the second day of the assault.
Roshchin was a rank-and-file soldier in this column.
The six miles or so to Ekaterinodar, which was still more thickly enveloped in the dust and smoke of the cannonade than it had been the day before, were covered in an hour's time.
Markov strode in front, his wadded jacket unbuttoned, his tall fur hat pushed far back on his head.
Addressing the staff colonel, who could hardly keep up with him, he swore and cursed at the High Command:
"They broke up the brigade, left me to hang about with the transport...." (Here he emitted a stream of obscenities.)
"If they'd let me go with the brigade, I'd have been long ago in Ekaterinodar." (More obscenities.) Leaping across a ditch, he raised his whip and, turning to the column which stretched far over the green field, uttered a command, the veins on his neck swelling as he shouted.
Panting officers, with grave, sweating faces, set off at a run, and the column turned as if on an axis, stretching across the field in four quivering ribbons, in full view of the city.
Roshchin found himself quite close to Markov.
They stood for a few minutes.
Locks were tested on rifles.
Cartridge pouches were inspected.
Markov uttered another command, dragging out the vowels. An advance guard was formed, and started at a run far ahead.
The lines moved in their wake.
Wretched carts met them from the left, jogging wounded men over the slippery road.
Some of the wounded were walking, their heads (bent.
Many were seated on the sides of ditches, or on overturned carts.
There seemed to be no end to carts and wounded, as if the whole army was made up of them.
A tall obese man on a black horse, with a moustache, a red band round his cap, and the shoulder straps of the military stables on his smartly cut tunic, overtook the regiment.
He shouted something gaily to General Markov, who turned his head aside without replying.
It was Rodzyanko, who had got permission to leave the transport, to have a look at the storming of Ekaterinodar.
The regiment again halted.
The command came from afar—many lit up and began smoking.
All looked in silence towards the place where, amidst ditches and mounds, the advance guard was hidden.
General Markov, brandishing his whip, set off in the direction of the tall poplars.
There, from the depths of the almost imperceptible green haze of the trees, shaggy columns of smoke rose at short intervals, and branches and clods of earth flew high into the air.
They had a long wait.
It was past four now.
A horseman emerged from the grove at a gallop, bending low over his horse's neck.
Roshchin saw the foaming horse waltz about at the edge of a ditch, as if afraid to cross it, and then, with a wave of the tail, jump it, the rider losing his cap.
Galloping up to the regiment, he cried:
"Attack... the artillery barracks... the General is in front, over there...."
He flung his hand in the direction of a mound where a few figures came and went, one of them wearing a high fur cap.
The command rang out:
"Lines... forward!"
Roshchin's throat contracted, and his eyes burned; he knew a second of fear and ecstasy, in which his flesh seemed to melt, and he felt a desire to run, to shout, to shoot, to pierce, a desire for his heart to fill with blood, to sacrifice his heart....