The wounded crept together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing screams and groans, sometimes feigned--or so it seemed to Rostov.

He put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and he felt afraid--afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.

The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several shots.

The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of terror and pity for himself.

He remembered his mother's last letter.