"Where will you go? Don't you care for Bogdaniec? Will you plow with your nails without peasants?"
"Not true! You calculated cleverly about the Tartars! You have forgotten what the Rusini[21] told us, that it is difficult to catch any prisoners among the Tartars, because you cannot reach a Tartar on the steppes. On what will I chase them? On those heavy stallions that we captured from the Germans? Do you see? And what booty can I take? Scabby sheep-skin coats but nothing else! How rich then I shall return to Bogdaniec! Then they will call me _comes_!"
Macko was silent because there was a great deal of truth in Zbyszko's words; but after a while he said:
"Bah, you know; to one he gives too much, to another nothing."
Macko angrily twisted the belt of his leather jacket, and said:
"Listen," answered Zbyszko quietly. "I had a talk with Mikolaj of Dlugolas and he said that Jurand is seeking revenge on the Germans for the death of his wife. I will go and help him. In the first place, you said yourself that it was nothing strange for us to fight the Germans because we know them and their ways so well. _Secundo_, I will thus more easily capture those peacock's crests; and _tercio_, you know that peacock's crests are not worn by knaves; therefore if the Lord Jesus will help me to secure the crests, it will also bring booty. Finally: the slaves from those parts are not like the Tartars. If you settle such slaves in a forest, then you will accomplish something."
"Man, are you crazy? There is no war at present and God knows when there will be!"
"How clever you are! The bears make peace with the bee-keepers and they neither spoil the beehives, nor eat the honey! Ha! ha! ha! Then it is news to you, that although the great armies are not fighting and although the king and the grand master stamped the parchment with their seals, still there is always great disturbance on the frontiers? If some cattle are seized, they burn several villages for one cow's head and besiege the castles. How about capturing peasants and their girls? About merchants on the highways? Remember former times, about which you told me yourself. That Nalencz, who captured forty knights going to join the Knights of the Cross, and kept them in prison until the grand master sent him a cart full of _grzywien_;[22] did he not do a good business? Jurand of Spychow is doing the same and on the frontier the work is always ready."