In the hierarchy of Baal, as in other religious orders, false and true, it was deemed but right that the priests should want for nothing, while the altar was well supplied with offerings. To one who had dismounted from a two nights' ride, such luxuries as were scattered profusely about the temple of the great Assyrian god formed a pleasing contrast to camp lodging and camp fare.
If Sarchedon, weary and travel-stained, was yet of so comely and fair a countenance as to extort approval from the queen herself, Sarchedon, bathed, refreshed, unarmed, clad in silken garments, and with a cup of gold in his hand, was simply beautiful. Assarac the priest, sitting over against him, could not but triumph in the sparkle of that bauble by which he hoped to divert and dull the only intellect in the Eastern world that he believed could rival his own.
The servant of Ninus and the servant of Baal sat together on the roof of a lower story of the temple; below them the pillars and porticoes of the outer court, behind them vast piles of building, vague, gloomy, and imposing in the shades of coming night. High over their heads rose the tower of Belus, pointing to the sky, and many a fathom down beneath their feet the stir and turmoil of the great city came up, terrace by terrace, till it died to a faint drowsy murmur like the hum of bees in a bed of flowers. The sun was sinking in uninterrupted splendour behind the level sky-line of the desert, and already a cool breeze stole over the plains from the hills beyond the marshes, to stir the priest's white garments and lift the locks on Sarchedon's glossy head, while for each it enhanced the flavour and fragrance of their rich Damascus wine, bubbling and blushing in its vase of gold. Between them stood a table, also of gold, studded with amethysts, while the liquor in their golden cups was yet more precious than the metal and brighter than the gem.
Something to this effect said Sarchedon, after a draught almost as welcome and invigorating as that which he had drained in the morning at the Well of Palms; while, with a sigh of extreme repose and content, he turned his handsome face to the breeze.
"It is so," answered Assarac; "and who more worthy to drink it than the warrior whose bow and spear keep for us sheep-fold and vineyard—who watches under arms by night, and bears his life in his hand by day, that our oxen may tread the threshing-floor, and our peasants press out their grapes in peace? I empty this cup to Ninus, the Great King, yonder in the camp, in love, fear, and reverence, as I would pour out a drink-offering from the summit of that tower to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven."
"And the Great King would dip his royal beard in it willingly enough, were it set before him," answered the light-hearted warrior. "I saw him myself come down from his chariot when we crossed the Nile, and drink from the hollow of his buckler mouthful after mouthful of the sweet vapid water; but he swore by the Seven Stars he would have given his best horse had it been the roughest of country wine; and he bade us ever spare the vineyards, though we were ordered to lay waste cornland and millet-ground, to level fruit-trees, break down water-sluices, burn, spoil, ravage, and destroy. Who is like the Great King—so fierce, so terrible? Most terrible, I think, when he smiles and pulls his long white beard; for then our captains know that his wrath is kindled, and can only be appeased with blood. I had rather turn my naked breast to all Pharaoh's bowmen than face the Great King's smile."
Assarac was deep in thought, though his countenance wore but the expression of a courteous host.
"He is the king of warriors," said the priest carelessly—"drink, I pray you, yet once more to his captains—and beloved, no doubt, as he is feared among the host."
"Nay, nay," answered the other laughing, for the good wine had somewhat loosened his tongue, while it removed the traces of fatigue from his frame. "Feared, if you will. Is he not descended from Nimrod and the Thirteen Gods? Brave, indeed, as his mighty ancestors, but pitiless and unsparing as Ashur himself."
"Hush!" exclaimed the priest, looking round. "What mean you?"
"I have not counted twenty sunsets," answered the other, "since I saw the Great King's arrow fly through buckler and breastplate, aye, and a brave Assyrian heart too, ere it stuck in the ground a spear's length farther on. He has a strong arm, I can bear witness, and the man fell dead under his very chariot; but it should not have been one of his own royal guard that he thus slew in the mere wantonness of wrath. Sataspes, the son of Sargon, had better have died in Egypt, where he fought so bravely, than here, under an Assyrian sky, within a few days' march of home."
"Sataspes!" repeated the other; "and what said his father? It is not Sargon's nature to be patient under injury or insult."
"His dark face grew black as night," answered Sarchedon, "and the javelin he held splintered in his grasp; but he bowed himself to the ground, and said only, 'My lord draws a stiff bow, and the king's arrow never yet missed its mark.'"
"It was a heavy punishment," observed Assarac thoughtfully.
"And for a light offence," answered the other. "Sataspes did but lift her veil to look on the face of a virgin in a drove of captives who had not yet defiled by the Great King's chariot. She cried out, half in wrath, half in fear; and ere the veil fell back on her bosom, the offender was a dead man."
"Did the Great King look favourably on the virgin?" asked Assarac. "A woman must needs be fair to warrant the taking of a brave man's life."
"I scarce heeded her," answered Sarchedon. "She came of a captive race, whom the Egyptians hold in bondage down yonder, imposing on them servile offices and many hard tasks—a race that seem to mix neither with their conquerors nor with strangers. They have peculiar laws and customs in their houses and families, giving their daughters in marriage only to their kindred, and arraying their whole people like an army, in hosts and companies. I used to see them at work for their task-masters, moving with as much order and precision as the archers and spearmen of the Great King."
"I have heard of them," said Assarac; "I have heard too that their increasing numbers gave no small disquiet to the last Pharaoh, who was wiser than his successor. Will they not rise at some future time, and cast off the Egyptian yoke?"
"Never!" answered the warrior scornfully. "It presses hard and heavy, but this people will never strike a blow in self-defence: they are a nation of slaves, of shepherds and herdsmen. Not a man have I seen amongst them who could draw a bow, nor so much as sling a stone. Where are they to find a leader? If such a one rose up, how are they to follow him? They are utterly unwarlike and weak of heart; they have no arms, no horses, and scarcely any gods."
Assarac smiled with the good-humoured superiority of an adept condescending to the crude intelligence of a neophyte. Did he not believe that through the very exercise of his profession he had sounded the depths of all faith, here and hereafter—in the earth, in the skies, in the infinite—above all, in himself and his own destiny?
"Their worship is not so unlike our own as you, who are outside the temple, might believe," said he, pointing upwards to the glowing spark on the summit of the tower of Belus, which was never extinguished night or day. "I have learned in our traditions, handed down, word for word, from priest to priest, since the first family of man peopled the earth after the subsiding of the waters, that they too worship the sacred element which constitutes the essence and spirit of the universe. If they have no images, nor outward symbols of their faith, it is because their deity is impalpable, invisible, as the principle of heat which generates flame. If they turn from the Seven Stars with scorn, if they pour out no drink-offering, make no obeisance to the Queen of Heaven, it is because they look yet higher, to that mystic property from which Baalim and Ashtaroth draw light and life and dominion over us poor children of darkness down here below. Their great patriarch and leader came out of this very land; and there is Assyrian blood, though I think shame to confess it, in the veins of that captive people subject now to our hereditary enemies in the South."
"The men are well enough to look on," answered Sarchedon, "but, to my thinking, their women are not so fair as the women of the plain between the rivers; not to be spoken of with the Great Queen's retinue here, nor the mountain maids who come down from the north to gladden old Nineveh like sweet herbs and wild flowers growing in the crevices of a ruined wall. If this people are of our lineage, they have fallen away sadly from the parent stock."
"What I tell you is truth," replied Assarac; "and I, sitting by you here to-night, have spoken with men whose fathers remembered those that in their boyhood had seen the great founder of our nation—old, wrinkled, with a white beard descending to his feet, but lofty still, and mighty as the tower of defiance he reared to heaven, though suffering daily from torment unendurable; and why? Because of the patriarch and chief of the nation you despise."
Through all the Assyrian people, but especially amongst the hosts of the Great King, to believe in Nimrod was to believe in Baal, in Ashur, in their religion, their national existence, their very identity.
The colour rose to Sarchedon's brow as he passed his hand over his lips, scarcely yet darkened with a beard, while he answered haughtily,
"Nimrod was lord of earth by right of bow and spear. No man living, backed by all the gods of all the stars in heaven, would have dared to dispute his word, nor so much as look him in his lion-like face!"
"And yet did this old man, lord only in his own family—chief of a tribe scarce numbering a thousand bowmen—beard the lion-king in the city he had founded, in the palace where he reigned, in the very temple of his worship. The patriarch reasoned with him on the multitude of his gods; and Nimrod answered proudly, he could make as many as he would, but that while they emanated from himself they had supreme dominion on earth and over all in heaven, save only the Seven Stars and the Twenty-four Judges of the World. Then the patriarch took the king's molten images out of the temple, kindled a great furnace in the centre of the city, and in the presence of all Nineveh, cast them into the midst."
Sarchedon started to his feet.
"And the king did not hew him in pieces with his own hand where he stood!" exclaimed he. "It is impossible! It is contrary to all reason and experience!"
"The king could scarce believe his eyes," continued Assarac, smothering a smile, "when he saw his sacred images crumbling down and stealing away in streams of molten gold. It is even said that he uttered a great cry of lamentation and sat on the ground a whole night, with his garments rent, fasting, and in sore distress. This I scarcely think was the fashion of the mighty hunter: what Idobelieve is, that he sent a company of bowmen after the offender with orders to bring him back into his presence, alive or dead. They pursued the patriarch through the Valley of Siddim, till they came to the bitter waters; and here"—Assarac put his goblet with something of embarrassment to his lips—"here the stars in their courses must have fought against Assyria; for our warriors turned and fled in some confusion, so that the daring son of Terah escaped. Then it is said that he prayed to his God for vengeance against our lion-king, entreating that he who had been conqueror of the mightiest men and slayer of the fiercest beasts on earth, should be punished by the smallest and humblest of that animal creation it had been his chief pleasure to persecute and destroy. His God answered his prayer, though he raised no temples, made no golden images of man, beast, bird, nor monster, and sacrificed but a lamb or a kid in burnt-offering on the altar of unhewn stones in the plain.
"A tiny gnat was sent to plague great Nimrod, as the sand-fly of the wilderness maddens the lion in his lair. Under helm or diadem—in purple robe or steel harness—at board and bed—in saddle, bath, or war chariot, the lord of all the earth was goaded into a ceaseless encounter where there was no adversary, and exhausted by perpetual flight where none pursued.
"Then he sent for cunning artificers, who made for him a chamber of glass, impervious even to the air of heaven, so that the king entered it well pleased; for he said, 'Now shall I have ease from my tormentor, to eat bread and drink wine, and be refreshed with sleep.'
"But while he spoke the gnat was in his ear, and soon it ascended, and began to feed on his brain. Then the king's agony was greater than he could bear, and he cried aloud to his servants, bidding them beat on his head with a hammer, to ease the pain. So he endured for four hundred years; and then he—then he went home to his father Ashur; and when the Seven Stars shine out in the Northern sky, he looks down, well pleased, from his throne of light, on the city that his children have built, and the statue of gold they have raised to his name."
"And this is true?" exclaimed Sarchedon, whose love of the marvellous could not but be gratified by the priest's narrative.
"True as our traditions," answered Assarac, with something like a sneer; "true as our worship, true as our reason and intellect, true as the lessons we have learned to read in the stars themselves. What can be truer? except labour, sorrow, pain, and the insufficiency of man!"
"Every one to his own duty," replied the young warrior. "Slingers and bowmen in advance, spears and chariots in the centre, horsemen on the wings. It is your business to guess where the shaft falls; mine is but to fit the arrow and draw the bow. I am glad of it. I never could see much in the stars but a scatter of lamps to help a night march, when no brighter light was to be had. The moon has been a better friend to me ere now than all the host of heaven. Tell me, Assarac, can you not read on her fair open face when I shall be made captain of the guard to the Great King?"
"What you ask in jest," said the other, smiling, "I will hereafter answer in sober earnest. I go hence to the summit of that high tower, and all night long must I read on those scrolls of fire above us a future which they alone can tell—the destiny of nations, the fate of a line of kings, nay, the fortunes of a young warrior whom the queen delighteth to honour, and who may well deserve to sleep to-night while others take their turn to watch."
Thus speaking, he spread his mantle over a heap of silken cushions, disposed at the foot of the stairs leading to the tower of Belus so as to form a tempting couch, in the cool night air, for one who had ridden so far through the heat of an Assyrian day.
He had not ascended three steps towards the tower, ere Sarchedon, overcome with fatigue, excitement, and Damascus wine, laid his head amongst the cushions and fell into a deep sound sleep.
Casting his eye on the fire of fragrant wood that burned in its brazen tripod at the summit of the tower, passing his fingers, as it seemed, mechanically through its flame, and with the same unconscious gesture touching his right eyebrow, Assarac leaned his massive figure against the parapet, plunged in a train of deep engrossing thought.
The tapering structure he had ascended was built, as his traditions taught him to believe, for purposes of astral worship and observation. It afforded, therefore, a standing-point from which, on all sides, an uninterrupted view of the heavens could be obtained down to the horizon; yet the eyes of Assarac were fixed steadfastly on the great city sleeping at his feet, and it was of earthly interests, earthly destinies, that he pondered, rather than those spheres of light, hanging unmarked above him in the golden-studded sky.
A soft but measured step, the rustle of a woman's garment, caused him to turn with a start. He prostrated himself till his brow touched the brickwork at her feet, and then, resuming an erect position, looked his visitor proudly in the face, like a teacher with his pupil, rather than a subject before his queen.
"Assarac," said Semiramis, "I have trusted you with a royal and unreserved confidence to-night. I do not say, deserve it, because your life is in my hand, but because our wishes, our interests, and the very object we aim at, are the same. Many have served me in slavish subjection through fear. Do you serve me with loyal regard as a friend?"
She laid her white hand frankly on his arm, and he, priest, man of science, as he was, ambitious, isolated, above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, felt the blood mount to his brain, the colour to his cheek, at that thrilling touch.
"Your servant's life," he answered, "and the lives of a thousand priests of Baal, are in the queen's hand to-night; for doth she not hold the signet of my lord the king, sent with Sarchedon from the camp in token of victory? And more than my life,—my art, my skill, the lore by which I have learned to compel those gods above us, are but precious in my sight so far as they can advantage the Great Queen."
"You will unfold the mysteries of the sky," she replied eagerly. "You will bid Baalim, Ashtaroth, and all the host of heaven speak with me face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. If you will answer for the gods up yonder," she added with a touch of sarcasm on her sweet proud lip, "I will take upon myself to order the actions of men below."
"Something of this Icando," said he gravely, "or I have watched here night by night, and fasted, and prayed, and cut myself with knives before the altar of Baal, in vain. But, first, I must ask of the queen, doth she believe in the power of the gods? Doth she trust her servant to interpret truly the characters of fire engraved by them on the dark tablets of night?"
She scanned him with a searching look. "I believe," she said, "thus far—that man makes for himself the destiny to which hereafter he must submit. I believe the gods can foretell that destiny, and I would fain believe, if I had proof, that you, Assarac, their faithful servant, possess power to read up yonder the counsels of the Thirteen, and all their satellites."
"What proof does my queen desire?" asked the priest. "Shall I read off to her from those shining tables the plastic mouldings of the future, or the deep indelible engravings of the past?"
The queen pondered. "Of the future," she replied, "I cannot judge whether they speak true or false. Were they to tell me of a past known only to myself and one long since gone from earth"—she sighed while she spoke—"I might give credit to their intelligence, and shape my course by those silent witnesses, as men do in the desert or at sea."
"Look upward, my queen," answered Assarac, "and mark where the belt of the Great Hunter points to that distant cluster of stars, like the diamonds on your own royal tiara. Faintest and farthest shines one that records her past history, as yonder golden planet, glowing low down by the horizon, foretells her future destiny."
He stopped, and from a vase of wine that stood near the sacred fire, sprinkled a few drops to the four quarters of the sky. "I pour this drink-offering," he said, "to Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven! Shall I tell the Queen of Earth a tale I read in those stars forming the symbol which, rightly interpreted, contains the name of Semiramis?"
The queen nodded assent, turning her beautiful face upward to the sky.
"Could it all be true?" was the wild thought that fleeted for an instant through his brain, "and had not Ashtaroth herself come down from heaven to look on her adoring votary?"
With a glance almost of awe into the queen's upturned countenance, Assarac proceeded: "I read there of a city in the South, a city beyond the desert, pleasant and beautiful in the waving of palms, the music of rushing waters, built on the margin of a lake, where leaping fish at sundown dot the glistening surface, countless as rain-drops in a shower. On its bank stands a temple to that goddess who, like Dagon, bears half a human form, terminating in the scales and body of a fish. Very fair is Derceta to the girdle, and, womanlike, fanciful as she is fair. Near her temple dwelt a young fisherman, comely, ruddy, of exceeding beauty and manhood, so that the goddess did not scorn to love him with all the ardour of her double nature, only too well.
"Yet it shamed her of her human attributes when she gave birth to a child, though the stars tell me, O queen, that never was seen so beautiful a babe, even amongst those borne by the daughters of men to the host of heaven.
"Nevertheless, a foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sackcloth; so that the goddess, in wrath and shame, carried her infant into the wilderness, and left it there to die.
"Behold how Ashtaroth glows and brightens in the darkening night. Surely it was the Queen of Heaven who sent fair doves to pity, succour, and preserve that child of light, tender as a flower, and beautiful as a star. Day by day the fond birds brought her fruits and sustenance, till certain peasants, observing their continual flight in the same direction, followed their guidance, and found by a rill of water the laughing infant, bearing even then a promise of beauty to be unequalled hereafter in the whole world."
There was pride and sorrow in the queen's deep eyes as she fixed them on the seer, and whispered,
"Ask, then, if it had not been better to have left the child there to die."
"The stars acknowledge no pity," was his answer. "It is the first of human weaknesses cast off by those who rule in earth or heaven. Had they not written the destiny of that babe by the desert spring in the same characters I read up there to-night? They tell me how, in her earliest womanhood, she was seen by Menon, governor of ten provinces under my lord the king. They tell me how Menon made her his wife. They tell me, too, of an amulet graven with a dove on the wing, which that maiden wore hidden in her bosom when she came veiled into the presence of her lord."
The queen started.
"How know you this?" she exclaimed almost angrily. "I have never yet shown it even to my lord the king."
"I do but read that which is written," he answered. "They tell me also how, when she shall part with that amulet, it will purchase for her the dearest wish of her heart at the sacrifice of all its powers hereafter. Its charm will then be broken, its virtue departed. She never showed it man save Menon; for the governor of those wide provinces stretching to the Southern sea would have gone ragged and barefoot, would have given rank, riches, honours, life itself, for but one smile from the loveliest face that ever laughed behind a veil."
"They speak truth," murmured the queen; "he loved me only too well."
"It was written in heaven," continued Assarac, "that the servant must yield to his master, and that a jewel too precious for Menon was to blaze in the diadem of the Great King. I read now of a fenced city, frowning and threatening, far off in an Eastern land; of a bank cast against its ramparts, and mighty engines smiting hard at its gates; of archers, spears, slingers, and horsemen; of the king of nations seated on his chariot in the midst, pulling his grey beard in anger because of the tower of strength he could in no wise lay waste and level with the ground. But for Menon and his skill in warfare, the besiegers must have fled from before it in disorder and dismay. One morning at sunrise there were heard strange tidings in the camp. Men asked each other who was the youth who had ridden to Menon's tent in shining apparel, devoid of helm and buckler, but armed with bow and spear—beautiful as Shamash the God of Light, so that human eyes were dazzled, looking steadfastly on his face.
"Ere set of sun the Great King had himself taken counsel with this blooming warrior; ere it had risen twice, Menon was made captain of the host, and the work of slaughter commenced; for the proud city had fallen, and the gods of Assyria were set up in its holy places, to be appeased with blood and suffering and spoil.
"When the host returned in triumph, they left a mighty warrior dead in his tent over against the ruins of the smoking town. No meaner hand could have sufficed to lay him low, and none but Menon took Menon's life, because—Shall I read on?"
A faint moan caused him to stop and scan the queen's face. It was fixed and rigid as marble, pale too with an unearthly whiteness beneath that starlit sky; but there was neither pity for herself nor others in the calm, distinct articulation with which she syllabled her answer in his own words—"Read on!"
"They teach me," he continued, "that Menon could not bear his loss, after she had left his tent whose place was on the loftiest throne the earth has ever seen. When the triumph returned to Nineveh, there sat by the Great King's side, in male attire, the fairest woman under heaven. She guided his wisest counsels; she won for him his greatest victories; she raised his noblest city; she became the light of his eyes, the glory of his manhood, the treasure of his heart, mother of kings and mistress of the world; but she had never yet parted with her amulet to living man. All this is surely true; for it is written in those symbols of fire that cannot lie, and that trace the history of the Great Queen."
Semiramis turned her eyes on him with a look that seemed to read his very heart. The priest bore that searching glance in austere composure, creditable to his nerve and coolness; though these were enhanced by a vague conviction of his own prophetic powers, the result, no doubt, of a certain exaltation of mind, consequent on his previous fasts, his studies, and his long hours of brooding over deep ambitious schemes. After a protracted silence, she sighed like one who shakes off a heavy burden of memories; and, giving her companion the benefit of her brightest smile, asked him the pertinent question: "Is it the amulet that controls the destiny, or the destiny that gives a value to the amulet? Do the stars shed lustre on the woman, or is it the woman's fame that adds a glory to her star?"
For answer he pointed to a ruby in her bracelet, sparkling and glowing in the light of the mystic flame.
"That gem," said he, "was beyond price in the rayless cavern of its birth. Nevertheless, behold how its brilliancy is enhanced by the gleams it catches from the sacred fire. The stars shine down on a beautiful woman, and they make of her an all-powerful queen."
"All-powerful!" repeated Semiramis. "None is all-powerful but my lord the king. To be second in place is to be little less a slave than the meanest subject in his dominions."
He took no heed of her words. He seemed not to hear, so engrossed was he with his studies of the heavens, so awe-struck and preoccupied was the voice in which he declaimed his testimony, like a man reading from a sacred book.
"She whose counsels have won battles shall lead armies in person; she who has reached her hand to touch a sceptre shall lift her arm to take a diadem; she who has built a city shall found an empire. Walls and ramparts must hem in the one; but of the other brave men's weapons alone constitute the frontier: as much as they win with sword and spear so much do they possess. The dove is the bird of peace; and for her whom doves nourished at her birth there shall be peace in her womanhood, because none will be left to contend with the conqueror and mistress of the world."
He fell back against the parapet of the tower, pale, gasping, as if faint and exhausted from the effects of the inspiration that had passed away; but beneath those half-closed lids not a shade on the queen's brow, not a movement of her frame, escaped his penetrating eyes. He could read that fair proud face with far more certainty than the lustrous pages of heaven. Perhaps he experienced a vague consciousness that here on these delicate features were written the characters of fate, rather than yonder above him in the fathomless inscrutable sky. She seemed to have forgotten his presence. She was looking far out into the night, towards that quarter of the desert over which Sarchedon had ridden from the camp, where an arrow from her own quiver lay under the bleaching bones of the dead lion. Her eyes were fierce, and her countenance bore a rigid expression, bright, cold, unearthly, yet not devoid of triumph, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.
Such a glare had he seen in the eyes of the Great King when he awarded death to some shaking culprit—such a look on the victim's fixed face, ere it was covered, while they dragged him away.
It was well, thought Assarac, for men who dealt with kings and queens to have no sympathies, no affections, none of the softer emotions and weaknesses of our nature. The tools of ambition are sharp and double-edged; the staff on which it leans too often breaks beneath it, and pierces to the bone. Moreover, it would have been wiser and safer to commit himself to the mercy of winds and waves than to depend on the wilfulness of a woman, even though she wore a crown. Already the queen's mood had changed: her face had resumed its habitual expression of calm, indolent, and somewhat voluptuous repose.
"No more to-night," she said, with a gracious gesture, as of thanks and dismissal. "There is much to be done before the return in triumph of my lord the king. To-morrow you will carry my commands to the captains within the city, bidding them have all their preparations made for the reception of the conquerors. Let them assemble their companies under shield; let the chariots and horsemen be drawn up in the great square over against the palace; and let the archers look that their bows have new strings. You can answer for your own people here?"
"For every hand that bears a lotus in temple, palace, or streets—two thousand in all, without counting the prophets of the grove, and the priests of Baal, outside the walls."
"Enough," said the queen; "you have done well. I, too, can read in the future more and mightier things than you have imparted to me to-night."
She wrapped her mantle round her to depart, not suffering Assarac to attend her one step on her way. Kalmim, she said, was waiting in the garden, and would accompany her to the palace. So she walked slowly down the winding staircase, grave, abstracted, as though revolving some weighty purpose in her mind. At its foot she started to see the recumbent figure of Sarchedon buried in profound sleep.
Was it a fatality of the stars? Was it an impulse of womanhood? She bent over that beautiful unconscious face till her breath stirred the curls on its comely brow, then, with a gesture almost fierce in its passionate energy, snatched the famous amulet from her neck, and laid it on his breast.
"It is a rash purchase," she muttered; "but I am willing to pay the price."
He was sleeping, yet not so sound but that his rest was visited by a strange and terrifying dream.
He thought he was in the desert, galloping his good horse in pursuit of an ostrich, winged with plumes worthy to tuft the spears that guarded the Great King's tent. But for all his efforts of voice, hand, and frame, Merodach laboured strangely in the deep sand, of which the long-legged bird threw back such volumes as to choke his lips and nostrils, wrapping him in a dim revolving cloud, that whirled and towered to the sky. Like a stab came the conviction that he was in the midst of the pitiless simoon, and he must die. Once more he strove to rouse Merodach with heel and bridle; but the horse seemed turned to stone, till, plunging wildly, he struggled forward, only to sink under his rider and disappear beneath the sand. Then the cloud burst asunder to reveal the glories of a dying sunset, fading into the purple sea.
He was on foot in the desert, fainting, weary, and sore athirst; but he heard the night-breeze sighing through palms and whispering in lofty poplars; he heard the cool ripple of water against the shore, and the pleasant welcome of a stream, singing in starts of broken melody as it danced down to meet the waves; then he saw a yoke of oxen, a camel at rest, a few huts, and a boat drawn up high and dry on the beach.
He was no longer a warrior in the armies of the Great King, but a rude fisherman amongst fishermen. He ate of their bread, he drank from their pitcher; yet was he still hungry and athirst, still wore a sword at his girdle and carried a bow in his hand.
He took his share of their labour; he drew in their nets. It seemed to him he had seen their faces before, though they knew him not; but he marvelled why they moved so slowly, and neither spoke nor smiled. While he helped them, too, it was as if the whole weight of rope and meshes hung on his arm alone. So night fell; and they took him into a hut, pointing to a cruse of water and a mantle spread in the corner, but withdrawing in the same sad silence, calm and grave, like those who mourn for the dead.
He could not sleep. The moon rose and shone in on him where he lay. After long hours of tossing troubled waking, a figure blocked the window where her rays streamed in on his couch. Then a great horror came over him without cause or reason, and tugging hard to draw his sword, he found it fastened in the sheath. Solemnly, slowly the figure signed to follow. Leaving his couch, he felt his heart leap, for it resembled Ishtar! But in the porch of the hut he seemed to recognise the clear proud features of the queen. Nevertheless, when its face was turned to the moonlight, he knew it was Assarac under the garb of a fisherman, but bearing the lotus-flower always in his hand. Without exchanging word or look, with averted eyes and stealthy steps, these two set the little bark afloat and took the oars. Then at last was broken the long weary silence, by a voice that came up from the deep, saying, "Ferrymen, bring over your dead!"
Light, buoyant, and high in the water, the boat had danced like a sea-bird on the surface; but now, though never a form was seen nor sound heard, she began to sink—deeper, deeper, so that the waves seemed to peer over her sides, leaping and sporting about her in cruel mockery, as though eager to break in and send her down.
It was a hard task to row that heavy freight out to sea. Weary and horror-stricken he tugged at his oar till the sweat dropped from his brow.
The moon went down, and a great darkness settled on the waters—the thick clogging waters, through which their oars passed so heavily. Was it the sea of the plain whereon they were embarked? Yes, surely, it must be the sea of the plain, the Dead Sea.
Was he never to approach the term of this numbing oppressive labour? Must he row on for ever and ever, without pause or respite, having bid his last farewell to the shores of earth and the light of day? Thus thinking, he felt the boat's keel grate against the bottom, while the oar started from his hand.
He took courage to look about him; but mortal eye could not pierce that thick darkness; and though the toil awhile ago had been so severe, a chill air curdled his blood, and crept into his very heart.
Still and silent as the grave seemed that shadowy land, till the same voice he had heard on the other shore called out the name of one he knew well and loved with a brother's love. There was no answer; but the boat lightened perceptibly, and her keel no longer touched the shingle.
Another name was called, and yet another, always in the same calm passionless accents, always with the same strange solemn result.
At every summons the boat rose higher in the water. When Sataspes was called, she swung to the flow and wash of the sluggish wave against her sides; at the name of Ninus, the Great King, she floated free and unencumbered as before she put out on her mysterious voyage.
With a heart lightened as was the boat that bore him, he pushed her off to return; for something warned him that now his task was done. He would fain have spoken with Assarac; but the surrounding gloom seemed so to oppress his lungs and chest, that the words formed by his tongue could not find vent through his lips.
Once more he was bending to the oar, when, as it were out of his own heart, came a voice whispering his name, "Sarchedon! Sarchedon!" in low sweet tones, which yet he knew vibrated with the sentence of his doom.
An unseen power raised him to his feet, and would have lifted him to shore, but that the priest held him back by his coarse fisher's garment, which dragged on chest and throat till he was fairly choked. Then, in extremity of fear and agony, he found his voice to call on Assarac for help at the moment when his vesture, yielding to the strain laid on it, parted asunder to let the cold night air in on his naked breast.
So he awoke, scared, trembling, panting for breath, and even in his waking seemed still wrapped in the gloom of that Isle of Shadows—seemed still to catch the tread of muffled footsteps, the breath of airy whispers, faint echoes from another world.
In that age, and amongst a people ever striving after a mystic ideal, yearning for communion with a higher world, dreams, and the interpretations thereof, were held of no small account.
Sarchedon, warrior though he was, and, like his great chief, little imbued with the superstitions of his time and country, could not yet pass over such a scene as his imagination had even now pictured without much cogitation and concern. He sat up and considered it in no small perplexity, inclining to regard the vision now as an omen of fortune, anon as a warning of fate. In his suffocating struggles to wake, his hands had been pressed close against his breast; a few moments elapsed ere he became conscious that he held in them a jewel he had never seen before. Rising from his couch at the foot of the tower, he hastened to examine it by starlight under the open sky. It consisted of an emerald, on which was cut the figure of a dove with outspread wings, following, as it seemed, the course of an arrow flying upward through the air. That it had come to him by supernatural influences during his sleep, he never doubted, and interpreted it, as men always do interpret the inexplicable, in the manner most agreeable to his own wishes. This dove, he said to himself, must mean the girl he had so lately seen at the Well of Palms; for what could be more dove-like than the maiden sweetness and innocent bearing of Ishtar? The arrow doubtless signified, in its upward flight, his own future career. He would become illustrious as a warrior, and Ishtar would follow him in his brilliant course to fame. Was it an arrow, or the initial of a name? He was forced to confess, from its shape and direction, that it seemed intended to represent the weapon itself, and not the letter of which he would fain consider it a symbol. Nevertheless, it must be a sign that the gods intended him for great things, and it should be no fault of his if the only woman who had yet touched his heart did not share with him the good fortune thus promised by the stars.
Meantime it wanted many hours of dawn; so he returned to his cushions and mantle for the remainder of his night's rest, stopping by the table at which he had sat with Assarac in the evening for a pull at the golden flagon, not yet emptied of its good Damascus wine.
Nevertheless, long before sunrise, he awoke refreshed, invigorated, happy; feeling the amulet resting on his breast, he accepted its presence for a fortunate omen; and ere daylight paled the beacon-fire on the tower of Belus, was galloping Merodach through the desert on his way to the Well of Palms.
"Surely," thought this dreamer, "she will be watching there for the first glitter of spears that shall give token of her father's return? Then will I tell her when to expect the host, and how to distinguish between its vanguard and the spearmen of its strength, having Arbaces at their head, who march with the chariot of the Great King. She will give me to drink, and I will say unto her, Maiden, as this draught of water to one athirst and stifled with the desert sand, so is a whisper from the lips and a glance from the eyes of the fairest damsel in all the land of Shinar to him who has ridden from the great city only to look on her face ere he departs to see her no more. Then she cannot but lift her veil, and speak kindly to me, bidding me tarry but a few moments, while she draws water for my horse. So will I tell her the whole tale; and hereafter, when my lord the king has rewarded his warriors for service done with bow and spear, I will take to Arbaces a score of camels, a hundred sheep, and a talent of gold, together with the armour I won of that swarthy giant beyond the sweet river; and how shall he say me nay? So will I lead her home to my tent, and then shall I have attained full happiness, and need ask for nothing more on earth."
Thus it fell out that Kalmim, arriving in the temple of Baal soon after daybreak, missed both the object of her real and her fictitious search. The queen after a heated restless night, bade her chief tiring-woman seek in that edifice for an amulet, which Semiramis affirmed she could only have dropped at the foot of the tower of Belus, where some one, she added, was sleeping, who must be brought to her and interrogated forthwith. Kalmim's experience, in her own person and that of her mistress, led her at once to guess the truth; therefore she hurried off to apprise Sarchedon he was wanted without delay in the royal palace. On her arrival, it might be said that she found the nest still warm, though the bird had flown; for a priest was carrying away the cloak and cushions that had formed the young man's couch, and his dark eyes glittered with a roguish smile while he peered into the flagon of Damascus, to find little left in it but dregs.
"These warriors seem to know the use of good wine when they can get it," said he, "and I doubt not it sings and mantles under helm of steel no less than linen tiara or fillet of gold; but they clasp bow and spear through many a long night for one that they spend with goblet of Ophir in hand. Men sleep little in the camp too, and feed sparingly, they tell me, nor day after day must they be cheered by the sight of a woman's veil or the sound of a woman's voice. To say nothing of a fierce enemy and a place in the fore-front of the battle between two hosts in array, where it is scarcely more dangerous to fight than to fly. Truly it is better to be a servant of Baal than of the Great King."
"It is better to be a boar in the marshes than a lion in the mountain!" retorted Kalmim with high disdain; "a vulture battening on a dead camel than an eagle striking the wild goat from its rock! Conquering or conquered, up or down, a warrior is at least aman, and a match for men!"
"While a priest is a match for women," answered the other, laughing. "Is that what you would say? Nevertheless, Kalmim, it must be a priest who will serve your turn this morning, for there are here a thousand in the temple, and never a hand among us to draw bowstring or close round the shaft of a spear."
"There was a warrior in the porch even now," replied Kalmim; "a goodly young warrior with dark flowing locks, and a chin nearly as smooth, Beladon, as your own. What have you done with him? He bore hither the Great King's signet, and if he has come by harm, not all the gods of all your temples will shield you from the fair face that never looked on man in anger but he was consumed."
Beladon, a handsome young priest, with bright roguish eyes and swarthy complexion, turned pale while she spoke—pale even through the rich crimson of his cheek and the blue tint of lips and chin, where his beard was close-shaven, and rubbed down with pumice-stone in imitation of Assarac's smooth unmanly face.
"The youth lay here scarce an hour ago," said he, trembling. "He mounted the noblest steed that ever wore a bridle—a white horse, with eyes of fire—and rode off through the Great Brazen Gate into the desert like an arrow from a bow. Surely he will return."
Kalmim burst out laughing at his discomposure.
"Surely he will return!" she repeated; "and when he does return, surely you will bring him to me by the path through the great paradise without delay. Semiramis hath been dealing justice amongst the people since sunrise, but she will pass the heat of the day as usual in the fishing temple, and you will find me in its porch. You do not fear to present yourself before Dagon? His worship requires no sacrifice of sheep nor oxen, no blood of priests to flow from the gashes they cut in their naked flesh, before his altar."
She spoke in a jesting tone ill befitting the solemnity of the subject, and he answered in the same vein.
"The sheep and oxen we offer are consumed without doubt by Baal himself, while his servants live miraculously on the light of his countenance and the fragments that he leaves! Touching our self-inflicted wounds, notwithstanding all the blood spilt before the people, we scarcely feel the pain; and this too cannot but be by a miracle of the god. I make no secret with you of our mysteries. Tell me, in return, what mean these warlike preparations that have set the whole city astir to-day?"
Her tone was still of banter and sarcasm.
"Would you wish the Great King to be received," said she, "with no more ceremony than a shepherd bringing a stray lamb in from the wilderness on his shoulders? When he returns a conqueror, shall not the triumph be worthy of the victory?"
"But if every man who can bear arms is to stand forth in array with bow and spear; if the women and children, on pain of death, are not to come down into the streets; if the priests of Baal and the prophets of the grove are to be marshalled like warriors, with knives unsheathed and sacrificing weapons in hand, our welcome will seem to Ninus more like the assault of a fenced city than the return of my lord the king to his home!"
"So be it," answered Kalmim. "It is not the flash of a blade or the gleam of a spear that will frighten the old king. By the serpent of Ashtaroth, he fears neither man nor demon; and when his queen raised a temple in Bactria to Abitur of the Mountains, he profaned his altar and defied the Chief of the Devils in sight of our whole army. It angered her, and she hath not forgotten it. Why, men say, he believes no more in Baal than—than you do yourselves!"
He looked about him in alarm.
"Hush!" said he. "It is not for me to judge between my gods and my lord the king. The divining cup of Assarac has not failed to tell him that Ninus shall one day take his place with the Thirteen Gods. It may be that he knows the golden throne is waiting for him even now."
He scrutinised her face narrowly, but saw on it only a light and careless smile.
"Were I the queen, I'd have a younger one next time," was her reply. "Ofyouryears, say you? No, thank you, Beladon—not for me. Well, you may come with me to the Jaspar Gate and as far as the outer court; I dare not pass alone through all those oxen, lowing, poor things, as if they knew not one of them would be left alive to-day at noon."
Leaning on his spear within a day's march of the Great City, the tall figure of a warrior loomed massive and indistinct in the early light of morning breaking on the Assyrian camp. Line by line, shade by shade, as dawn stole slowly upward, his form came out in bolder relief. Presently a dark blurred mass, some few paces off, took the shape of a sleeping camel; soon shadowy tents, dusky banners, spoil, arms, accoutrements, all the encumbrances of an army on the march, grew into their real outline, filled with their respective colours; and the man's features, under his steel headpiece, became plainly visible in the light of day.
He was arrayed in the utmost splendour of armour and apparel. The former, inlaid throughout with gold, shone bright and polished like a mirror, though the goodly silks and heavy embroidery that formed the latter were sadly rent and frayed by the press of many a hot encounter, the wear and tear of many a weary march. He wore in his girdle a short straight sword with jewelled hilt and ornamented scabbard, carried a bow and quiver of arrows at his back, and a shield studded with precious stones on his arm. From his shoulders hung an ample mantle of crimson silk, bordered with deep fringes of gold; while the head of the spear, or rather javelin, on which he rested, though broad, sharp, and heavy, was plated and ornamented with the same costly metal.
In such an arm it seemed no doubt a formidable weapon; for the man's square frame and weighty limbs denoted great personal strength; while his marked features wore an expression of habitual fierceness, in accordance with a swarthy complexion, thick black brows, and ample curling beard.
He was buried in thought of no pleasing nature, to judge by the working of his lips and the scowling glances he directed towards a tent standing apart, of which two upright spears tufted with ostrich-plumes marked, and seemed to guard, the entrance.
As morning brightened, the whole camp came into view from the mound where he kept guard, and whereon the Great King's tent was pitched—a camp of many sleeping thousands, ranged in warlike order under a hundred banners drooping heavily in the still clear air.
Suddenly the warrior started from his listless attitude into life and action; for a light step was approaching, and a figure advanced to the tufted spears that denoted the abode of royalty.
"Stand!" he exclaimed in threatening accents, advancing his shield and raising the javelin to strike. "Nay, pass, Sethos," he added with a scornful laugh. "I have no orders to stop the king's cup-bearer; but you are on foot betimes this morning, though you wot well the old lion stirs not before break of day."
Sethos patted the wine-skin under his arm—a homely vessel enough, though its contents were to be poured into a jewelled cup.
"The old lion laps ever at sunrise," said he; "and the hunter who brings him to drink need not fear to enter his lair."
"Fear!" repeated the other with an accent of contempt. "He who deals with lions must forget the meaning of the word. 'Tis thus, man, they are trapped and tamed."
"Of a truth," answered Sethos, "I once believed that in all the hosts of Assyria or of Egypt was to be found no frown so dark as gathers on the brows of the Great King when he is angered. By the beard of Ashur, Sargon, I have seen a fiercer look of late on the face of one who used to be ready with smile and wine-cup as with bow and spear; and it comes from under the helmet, my friend, that keepsyourhead."
"Have I not cause?" muttered the other, speaking below his breath in the quick concentrated accents of intense feeling. "When the host marches into Babylon, and the women come out with song and timbrel to welcome the conquerors; when each man makes his boast, showing his treasure, his spoil, and the captives of his bow and spear; when my lord the king rewards his servants, giving gifts—to this a dress of honour, to that a beautiful slave, to another a talent of gold and spoil of household stuff—what shall be done for Sargon, the king's shield-bearer, returning childless and bereaved by the king's own hand? Boy, it is well I hold not your place. I might be tempted to mix that in the cup which should cause Ninus to pour out his next drink-offering amongst a host of heaven in whom he professes to have no belief."
"Dangerous words," answered Sethos, "and empty as they are rash. Why, man, you yourself cover him in battle with his shield. It is but lowering your arm a cubit, and the king's life is in your hand."
"I could not do it," said Sargon, drawing himself proudly up. "It shall never be said that the great Assyrian fell to point of Egyptian arrow, or gash of Bactrian steel. Nay; though the fire on Sargon's hearth may be quenched, his name extinct, let Ninus fulfil his destiny, and sit amongst the gods like his forefathers. It may be they are waiting for him even now. Listen, Sethos; he calls from his tent. Hie thee into the lion's den, and pour him out such a morning's draught as shall keep him fasting from blood at least till noon."
Sethos—a handsome light-hearted youth, who as the king's cup-bearer enjoyed many privileges and immunities, of which he availed himself to the utmost—passed swiftly between the tufted spears, and with a low prostration raised its curtain, to enter the tent of the oldest and mightiest warrior in the world.
Ninus, half risen from his couch, ruder and simpler than that of any captain in his host, stretched his long gaunt arm with impatience for the wine he so craved, to replenish the exhausted energies and wasting powers of extreme old age. The Great King's face was pale and sunken; his eyes, deep in their sockets, were dull and dim; while his thin scattered locks, shaggy brows, and long flowing beard had turned white as snow. Nevertheless, the wreck of that mighty frame, like some hoary fortress crumbling and tottering into ruin, still showed the remnant of such grand proportions, such fabulous strength as was allotted to the men of olden time, when earth was new and nature inexhaustible. Yet was it whispered through the host, that as their fiercest champion would have seemed a mere child by the side of their king in his prime, so was Ninus but as a babe compared with great Nimrod, his ancestor, the god of their idolatry, and mighty founder of their race.
Sethos tendered the wine-cup as in duty bound, then stood with hands crossed before him, and looks bent lowly on the earth. The king drained his morning draught to the dregs; and for a moment there rose a faint flush on the ashen features, a lurid glow in the wan weary eyes—but only to fade as quickly; and it was a sadly tremulous hand, though so broad and sinewy, that grasped his wine-cup; while the deep voice came very hoarse and broken in which he asked Sethos,
"Who waits outside? Is it near sunrise?"
"Sargon, the royal shield-bearer," was the answer, "has been on guard since cock-crow; and Shamash, Prince of Light, will doubtless show himself above the horizon so soon as my lord the king appears at the door of his tent."
Ninus bent his shaggy brows in displeasure on the volubility of his servant.
"Halt!" said he. "Rein in thy tongue, lest the dogs have their share of it without the camp. Fill yet again; and let me hear no more of this endless jargon about the gods."
It was death to laugh in the king's presence; but Sethos, replenishing the goblet to its brim, did not repress a smile. The old warrior's second draught seemed somewhat to renew his strength.
"Reach me that gown," said he—"the heavy one; and the girdle yonder. Fool! that in which hangs the sword—my good old sword! Ha! if Baal and Ashtaroth had done for me but one half the service of horse and weapon, they might take their share of the spoil, and welcome. By the belt of Nimrod, they shall not have one shekel more than a tenth this time! Thirteen gods, by my beard, and every god a thousand priests! Why, it is enough to ruin the richest king that ever built treasure-house. I must reduce them. I will about it at once, when the people are busy with the triumph. I wonder whatshewill say—my beautiful! I angered her long ago, when I refused to worship Satan up yonder in the mountains. I would be loath to anger her again, though I will worship nothing but the eyes that are watching fondly for my return."
Old, exhausted, weary as he was, there came a gentle look over his grim war-worn face while he thought of the woman he loved so fondly, whom it had cost him so much of crime and cruelty to possess. But the passion of acquisition, almost inseparable from age, was strong in the king's heart; and it chafed him to think the votaries of Baal should so largely share in the fruits of this his last and most successful expedition beyond the Nile.
Sethos, standing before him in the prescribed attitude of respect, marked every shade of his lord's countenance, drawing his own conclusions, and preserving his usual air of imperturbable good humour and self-conceit.
The early flush of sunrise now stole under the hangings of the tent, crimsoning the cup-bearer's feet where he stood, so that his sandals looked as if they had been dipped in blood.
"Bid them sound trumpets," said the king. "Go tell Arbaces that the vanguard must set themselves in array at once. Where is Ninyas? He should have been waiting before his father's tent ere now. Wine, sloth, and pleasure—he loves them all too well. Yet the boy drew a good bow in his first battle, and rode through Pharaoh's horsemen, dealing about him like Nimrod himself. Go, bring him hither; and, Sethos, as you pass through the camp, order the captain of the night to call in the watches. So soon as the camels are loaded I shall march."
A warrior to the very marrow, Ninus loved such minute details as the marshalling of a vanguard, or the ordering of an encampment, better than all the pomp of royalty; and felt more at ease in steel harness, on the back of a good steed, than seated in purple and gold, with the royal parasol over head, the royal sceptre in hand, an object of worship to adoring crowds in ancient Nineveh, or even great Babylon itself.
His son Ninyas, on the contrary, though scarcely yet verging on manhood, was already steeped in sensuality, and a slave to that reckless indulgence of the appetites which so soon degenerates from pleasure into vice. His grim father perhaps would have been less patient of excesses and outbreaks in camp and city but for the lad's exceeding beauty and likeness to his mother, Semiramis, whose race and womanly graces were reproduced with startling fidelity in those delicate boyish features, that lithe symmetry of form.
Sethos was a prime favourite with the prince, who approached his father's tent, leaning on the cup-bearer's shoulder, in respectful haste, denoted by his flushed face and disordered apparel. Though careless of the displeasure with which Ninus visited such unwarlike negligence, as he was of everything save the folly of the moment, he had put on neither harness nor headpiece, had neither taken a spear in his hand nor girt a sword upon his thigh.
The old king's shaggy brows lowered till they almost hid his dull stern eyes.
"What maiden is this," said he, "who comes thus unveiled into the camp of warriors? Go, take needle in hand, and busy them with cunning embroidery if those unmanly fingers be too dainty to bear the weight of heavier steel."
It was death to laugh in the king's presence, death to assume any other than the prescribed attitude with bowed head and crossed hands; nevertheless a merry peal rang through the tent, the boy tossed the king's goblet in the air, and caught it again, while his fresh young voice answered lightly,
"There is a season for all things, father, and I like fighting at the proper time as well as old Nimrod himself. But this is a day of victory and rejoicing. I begin it with a drink-offering to my lord the king."
He held the cup to Sethos while he spoke, laughing to see how little of the generous fluid was left in the wine-skin. His mirth was contagious, and the old lion smiled a grim smile while he laid his large wrinkled hand on the lad's shoulder, with a kindly gesture that was in itself a caress.
"Begone with you!" said he, "and if proven harness be too heavy for those young bones, at least take bow and spear in hand. It was thus your mother came riding into camp the first time I ever saw those arched brows of hers. You have her fair face, lad, and something of her proud spirit and wilful heart."
He looked after the boy sadly and with a wistful shake of his head; but just then a trumpet sounded, and the old warrior's eye gleamed, his features assumed their usual fierce and even savage expression, while he summoned his armour-bearer to rivet harness on his back, and the captains of his host to take their short, stern orders for the day.
And now the whole camp was astir. Tents were struck and camels loaded with a rapidity only acquired by the daily repetition of such duties under the eye of discipline and in presence of an enemy. Ere long, where horses and beasts of burden had been loosely picketed, or wandering half tethered amongst bundles of unbound forage, between the lines of dusky weather-stained tents—where spears had been piled in sheaves, amongst cooking utensils and drinking vessels—where bow and arrow, sword and shield, helm and habergeon, had been tossed indiscriminately on war-chariots, horse furniture, or scattered heaps of spoil—where the movable city had seemed but a confused and disorganised mass, was fairly marshalled the flower of an Assyrian army, perfect in formation, splendid in equipment, and no less formidable, thus disposed in its smooth motionless concentration, like a snake prepared to strike, than when drawn out in winding shining lines to encircle and annihilate its foe.
Even the captives had their allotted station, and with the spoil were disposed in mathematical regularity, to be guarded by a chosen band of spears. These prisoners were of two kinds, separate and distinct in every detail of feature, form, and bearing. The darker portion, some of whom were so swarthy that their colour looked like bronze, scowled with peculiar hatred on their conquerors, and, as it seemed, with the more reason that several bore such wounds and injuries as showed they had fought hard before they were taken alive, while a whiter-skinned and better-favoured race, with flowing beards, high features, and stately bearing, who kept entirely apart and to themselves, seemed to accept the proceedings of their captors in the forbearance of conscious superiority, not without a certain sympathy, as of those who have interests and traditions in common with their masters.
The admiration of all, however, was compelled by the imposing appearance of those war-chariots and horsemen that formed the strength and pride of an Assyrian army.
As the old king, tottering somewhat under the weight of his harness, appeared at the door of his tent, the entire host was set in motion—bowmen and slingers in front, followed by a body of horsemen glittering in scarlet and gold, raising clouds of dust, while their trumpets sounded above the neigh and trample of those horses of the desert that knew neither fatigue nor fear; then, with stately even tread, marched a dark serried column of spears, bearded, curled, and stalwart warriors, every man with shield on arm, sword on thigh, and lance in hand; next, the war-chariots, thousands in number, with a roll like distant thunder, as they came on in a solid mass of moving iron, tipped with steel. After these a few priests of Baal, weary and dejected, walking with but little assumption of sacred dignity, bore the image of a bull and a few other idols small and portable, but formed of molten gold. These hurried on, as if they feared to be ridden down by the king's body-guard who succeeded them, picked champions, every one of whom must have slain an enemy outright with his own hand, mounted on white steeds, and glistening with shields and helmets of gold. In their rear rode Arbaces, the captain of the host, and immediately behind him came the chariot and led horse of the monarch himself.
As these reached the mound on which the royal tent was pitched, the whole force halted, and a shiver of steel ran like the ripple of a wave along their ranks, while every man brandished his weapon over his head, and shouted the name of the Great King.
Ninus stood unmoved, though for an instant the wrinkles seemed less furrowed on his brow. They gathered, however, deeper than ever, when his quick eye caught sight of Ninyas reclining in his chariot, with his favourite Sethos beside him, and a cup of wine half-emptied in his hand.
The king's own chariot was in waiting; but he caused it to pass on, and bade them bring his war-horse, a fiery animal, that came up curvetting and champing at its bit. Sargon, with the same scowl that had never left his face, went down on hands and knees for his lord to mount with greater advantage from off his back, and Ninus, settling himself in the saddle, while the war-horse plunged with a force that would have unseated many a younger rider, looked his son fixedly in the face, observing in a tone of marked reproach,
"Couches for women! chariots for eunuchs! May you never learn to your cost, boy, that his good horse is the only secure throne for an Assyrian king!"
Then he signed with his hand, and while trumpets rang out, and warriors recovered their weapons, a globe of crystal, emblematic of the sun, and suspended above the royal tent, was illumined by a priest with sacred fire. As it flashed and kindled, the whole army set itself in motion, and the King of Nations was once more on the march towards his last triumph, after his last campaign.