Pan Michael by Henryk Sienkiewicz — Read

The fugitive Tartars carried news to the Belgrod horde of the disaster. Couriers from them took the news to the Ordu i Humayun -- that is, to the Sultan's camp -- where it made an uncommon impression.

Pan Adam had no need, it is true, to flee too hurriedly with his booty to the Commonwealth, for not only did no one pursue him at the first moment, but not even for the two succeeding days. The Sultan was so astonished that he knew not what to think. He sent Belgrod and Dobrudja chambuls at once to discover what troops were in the vicinity. They went unwillingly, for with them it was a question of their own skins. Meanwhile the tidings, given from mouth to mouth, grew to be the account of a considerable overthrow. Men inhabiting the depth of Asia or Africa, who had not gone hitherto with war to Lehistan, and who heard from narratives of the terrible cavalry of the unbelievers, were seized with fright at the thought that they were already in presence of that enemy who did not wait for them within his own boundaries, but sought them in the very dominions of the Padishah; the grand vizir himself, and the "future sun of war," the kaimakan, Kara Mustafa, did not know either what to think of the attack. How that Commonwealth, of whose weakness they had the minutest accounts, could assume all at once the offensive, no Turkish head could explain. It is enough that henceforth the march seemed less secure, and less like a triumph. At the council of war the Sultan received the vizir and the kaimakan with a terrible countenance.