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Now, with unprecedented courage and a strength that amazed everyone, he slew and subdued an innumerable host of hillsmen; now he was himself a hillsman and with them was maintaining their independence against the Russians. As soon as he pictured anything definite, familiar Moscow figures always appeared on the scene. Sashka B -fights with the Russians or the hillsmen against him.
As he turned again to peer in the direction of the firing it went through his mind that she must love him very much indeed. He was assured of it. It must have been some small outpour between nervous pickets and eager hillsmen, for it ended in a moment. The party waited in abasement for what seemed to them a time, and the blue dawn began, to laggardly shift the night as they waited.
A hundred hillsmen rode before, and a hundred behind, and between were two thousand soldiers of Mandakan on foot and fifty of the late Dakoon's body-guard mounted and brilliant in scarlet and gold.
The best weapons are obtained from the hillsmen and the best horses are bought, or stolen, from them. A dashing young Cossack likes to show off his knowledge of Tartar, and when carousing talks Tartar even to his fellow Cossack.
There was a sudden swaying movement of the shrieking mass between Boonda Broke and Pango Dooni, and in the confusion and displacement Boonda Broke had disappeared. Panic and flight came after, and the hillsmen and the little garrison were masters of the field. "I have paid the debt of the mare," said Pango Dooni, laughing.
Now in the Palace yard his body lay under a canopy, the flags of Mandakan and England over his breast, twenty of his own naked body-guard stood round, and four of his high chiefs stood at his head and four at his feet, and little lads ran softly past, crying: "Corn and tears and wine for the dead!" And behind all these again were placed the dark battalions and the hillsmen.
So he turned aside and rode fast for Lough Conn, which he reached the next evening, and there came a storm of men on all that country. Twice through the days that followed Brian had to fight hard once against a muster of the O'Connors, and once against a large force of ravaging hillsmen under one Fitzgerald. Him Brian slew with a blow of his ax that went from shoulder to saddle.
It went abroad through the city that Pango Dooni and Cumner paid great homage to the dead Dakoon, and the dread of the hillsmen grew less.
The Hillsmen had paid greater honour to their heroic foes than to the bravest of their own brave dead. Another instance is the short poem, which, while being perfectly simple, is rich in suggestion of more than the young child will see for himself. The following example shows the working out of details in order to provide a satisfactorily rounded story.
Some were killed by the spears that were thrown from the cliffs, before they had gone half way; some were stabbed as they reached the crest, and hurled backward from the precipice; two or three got to the top, and fought hand to hand with the Hillsmen. They were outnumbered, seven to one; but when the last of the English soldiers lay dead, twice their number of Hillsmen lay dead around them!
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