Chapter 1 (Fragment)

It was the year 1241, when the Spirit of Spring had spread her magic mantle of fresh verdure over the hills and broad-backed, gently sloping mountain ranges of the Tukholian region in the Carpathian section of ancient Rus (Ukraine).¹

One glorious day of this spring the woodland slopes of Mt. Zelemenya echoed with shouts and bellowing blasts of the huntsmen’s horns.

Tuhar Wolf (Wowk), the new boyar of Tukhlia, had organized a big game hunt to celebrate the beginning of his rule in the region for just recently king Danilo of the principality of Halich had granted him full tenure over this section of luxuriantly grassy downs and mountain woodlands.

As soon as he had chosen a site and built himself a house, he arranged a hunting expedition as a way of self-introduction to the boyars² of surrounding communities.

In those days to undertake a hunt for big game was not just a means of pleasantly passing away the time but a grim and bloody risk, hazardous to life and limb. Bison, bears and wild boars are truculent, malignant brutes. Seldom did anyone ever succeed in killing one of them with a bow and arrow. Even deer were not bagged without a struggle. The actual kill most often had to be made by facing the animal and plunging a spear into its heart with all one’s might. If the spear missed its mark, the life of the hunter became greatly endangered, especially if he was unable at the crucial moment to find momentary refuge from which to launch a renewed attack with a hunting knife or a strong, long-handled battle-axe.

Therefore, it was not surprising to find that Tuhar and his company prepared for the hunt as if for a siege of war, with a supply of ammunition, bows and arrows, a coterie of servants, provisions of food and even a reputable sorcerer who knew how to heal wounds.

Nor was there anything unusual in that Tuhar and his guests were themselves as fully armed as warriors except for steel helmets and armor which would have been too burdensome to manage on their trek through the jungle growth and over fallen timber of the mountainside. The only remarkable aspect of this expedition was the presence of Tuhar’s daughter, Peace-Renown (Meroslava), who not forsaking her father even in this adventure, ventured to join his company of hunters.

The Tukholian citizens, seeing her riding boldly and proudly among her father’s guests, like a straight young willow tree among the oaks, followed her mounted form with approving eyes and spoke thus to one another: “What a girl! She’d make a fine young soldier, and probably a better man than her father!”

This was no mean compliment for Tuhar Wolf was a man as physically solid and strong as a giant oak, broad of shoulders, brawny, and with a thick growth of black beard and hair so that he might well himself have been mistaken for one of the hairy Tukholian bears which he was bound to hunt down. But such a daughter as his Peace-Renown was also hard to find. Aside from her high rank of birth, her beauty, her loveable, kindly disposition, which a number of her contemporaries could no doubt be found to possess in equal degree (though not many could surpass her at that) there was one respect in which none would ever rival her and that was in her free-spirited nature, her initiative, the high degree of muscular development and dauntless courage, manifest only in those young men brought up under the direst stress of circumstances requiring from them an unremitting struggle with relentless nature.