Sarchedon

For the first time that night he smiled while he patted Merodach"s neck, and put the good horse into a gallop once more.

Stretching on with that long untiring stride, he was aware of a solitary horseman wandering aimlessly towards him, and riding at a foot"s pace.

For all ages it has been a true saying, that he whom one meets in the desert must be friend or foe. Sarchedon bore down on the other, and halting in front of him, discovered, to his great surprise, that it was Sethos.

The cup-bearer, who accompanied Ninyas on his fict.i.tious lion-hunt outside the walls, had taken the earliest opportunity of leaving his young prince, when the latter rode back at sundown to the city.

Impressed by the vague warning of Beladon, he had followed as far as he could the advice it accompanied, and turned his horse"s head towards the desert, as directed by his friend.

But it was not in the nature of Sethos to persevere for any length of time in a course requiring sustained energy or self-denial. The fatigue of the long ride before him soon suggested itself painfully to his mind.

Babylon with all her charms allured him irresistibly, now that he had really turned his back on her temptations; Kalmim"s dark eyes seemed to plead with his own inclinations against an abandonment of courtly life, an exchange of luxury and pleasure for hardship and privation.

It was not long before he guided his willing horse back towards the city, and so, pacing leisurely through the cool night air, came against his friend, galloping in fiery haste on his errand of life and death.

"Have you seen them?" exclaimed Sarchedon, pale, fierce, and breathless.

"Shall I catch them? How long have they gone past?"

"Seen what?" asked Sethos in turn, marvelling at the other"s disturbed looks and wild imploring eyes.

In a hoa.r.s.e whisper, in the low quick accents of a desperate man, Sarchedon briefly described the party of which he was in pursuit.

"If it was daylight, they would be in sight even, now," replied the other; and was entering into a long description of the dromedary"s extraordinary speed and powers, which he had not failed to observe, although the little band had pa.s.sed him at a pace which forbade his identifying those who composed it, when Sarchedon, giving his bridle-reins a shake, went away again in more furious haste than before, neither wishing him farewell, nor thanking him for tidings that seemed so welcome and yet so sad.

"A woman," thought Sethos, nodding sagely, and thinking he would be back with Kalmim by to-morrow"s dawn--"a woman must needs be the cause of all this turmoil. Surely there is wormwood with the honey, and a two-edged sword in the scabbard of velvet and gold."

But when did such pithy saws ever preserve a man from foolish deeds? Or where is the armour of proof to fence his heart from a pair of soft eyes, the mantle of wisdom that is not shrivelled to shreds in the breath of a burning sigh? Sethos rode steadily back to Babylon, and Sarchedon galloped on into the desert, like a falcon stooping for its prey.

Piercing as were his eager eyes, sharpened of love and hate and fear, he was aware, by the swelling of Merodach"s proud neck and the horse"s voluntary increase of speed, that they were nearing the object of pursuit long ere his sight could distinguish certain dusky shadows flying like vapours before him, but looming larger as his gallant war-horse gained on them with every stride.

"Merodach," he muttered, "king of horses, you are worthy of your name!"

Then, in husky frantic tones he shrieked out: "Stand, cowards, stand!"

They were within ear-shot, and the dromedary was forced to its utmost speed; but a horseman wheeled round, and halted not a bowshot from his approaching enemy, supported by a follower, who bore his shield.

"It is a spirit," said the latter; "it is Abitur of the Mountains!"

"Fool, keep your arm down and cover me," replied the other, while, bending his bow behind the buckler, he took a long steady aim.

Swift and straight as Sarchedon dashed in, the arrow flew swifter, straighter yet. It pierced through steel and silk and gold embroidered baldrick; the very feathers that winged it were draggled red in blood.

Faint, sick, and dizzy, the strickened man lowered himself on his horse"s neck, while stars and moon and desert sand spun round him like a wheel. Had not Merodach"s instincts taught him to obey its movements, balancing himself as it were under the swaying body, his rider must have fallen headlong to the earth.

So while the successful archer and his shield-bearer followed their party well pleased, Sarchedon, helpless, senseless, yet cleaving still to the saddle, was carried back at a gallop towards Babylon, over the same ground that he had traversed so gallantly when he bore the signet of Ninus to his queen.

Once more the good horse snorted at an object in his path--snorted and swerved aside, casting his rider heavily to the sand, where lay a framework of gaunt white ribs, with a strip or two of putrid flesh, black and festering on the bones.

For a moment the shock brought him to life. While his horse scoured away riderless, Sarchedon was aware, as if in a trance, that he had fallen across a splintered arrow bearing the same mark as that which was drinking his own life-blood: a royal tiara, and the symbol of Semiramis the queen.

Ere he closed his eyes again, he saw a sheet of flame quiver in the sky.

It flared above the city where his G.o.ds had come down in chariots of fire to take back with them the person of the Great King.

Ashtaroth, Queen of Heaven

CHAPTER XXI

WHO IS MY BROTHER?

Sarchedon, stretched senseless in the desert, bled so freely, that he must have bled to death but for the sand on which he lay. Its fine particles served to stanch the wound ere life was quite extinct; and though very faint and feeble, the mysterious spark was not so wholly quenched but that a tender hand might nurse it into flame once more.

Sadoc and his little band of Israelites, journeying peaceably on, so long as their a.s.ses seemed to travel without fatigue, and finding their course through the wilderness by the stars, were about to halt for the night, when they came across the prostrate form of the a.s.syrian, very white and death-like in the moonlight, lying near the lion"s skeleton in their path. Those were patriarchal times, and it was not the nature of a son of Abraham, witnessing such a calamity, to "pa.s.s by on the other side." Sadoc was down by the helpless figure in an instant with his hand on its breast, rejoiced to trace the feeble flutterings of its heart.

What little skill of surgery he possessed came into practice forthwith.

He forced some drops of wine between the clenched teeth; he drew the arrow, and poured oil into the gaping wound; he tore his linen garment into strips for a bandage; and lifting the wounded man on his own beast, walked patiently by its side, until they reached a fitting spot of encampment for the night.

That Sadoc should have been thus journeying in freedom and honour, while his Egyptian fellow-captives were bewailing their bondage in the heart of Babylon, was due to one of those strokes of policy in which a.s.sarac the eunuch took especial pride.

Ever since her subjection under an Eastern people of wandering and warlike habits, counting their possessions by their flocks, but showing rather the rapacious instincts of the wolf than the meek and gentle nature of those creatures they loved to tend, Egypt had learned to hate, even more than she feared, all races of mankind that lay nearer the land of Morning than herself. She had not long shaken off the loathed supremacy of the Shepherd Kings ere she employed her new-found strength in making war on the nations of her eastern border--the formidable Philistines, the terrible sons of Anak, and the mighty empire of which Nimrod was the founder, ruled in succession by a line of heroic kings.

As her victories increased, so she enlarged her territories, until she became powerful enough to contest with her a.s.syrian rival the supremacy of the Eastern world.

Perhaps that protracted famine, which wasted other countries, and for which the wise and high-minded stranger whom Pharaoh had made his regent provided so skilfully, may have enhanced her relative resources as it weakened her neighbours; perhaps the balance in which nations are weighed was so adjusted by that Supreme Power, to whom worlds are but as grains of sand, through other means; but it came to pa.s.s that the more Southern and less warlike people contended with varying success against their ancient enemy; and to proud a.s.syria the very name of Egypt was as an offence that stunk in her nostrils, a wound that spread and festered in her flesh.

It was a day of triumph, therefore, in great Babylon when her fiery old monarch returned victorious from his Egyptian campaign, and the common mult.i.tude rejoiced to tell each other how their hereditary foes had been humbled, how Memphis and Thebes had seen the banners of Ashur flaunting defiance at their gates, his hors.e.m.e.n encompa.s.sing their walls; but wiser heads reflected on the small amount of real gain represented by all this glory, of real damage inflicted on the enemy by an invasion that had obtained no concession of dominion, no increase of national power. What were a few herds of cattle, a drove of captives, a heap or two of gold, garments, armour, and common spoil. Like the subsiding of their own river, this ebbing wave of war left, perhaps, increased fertility where it had pa.s.sed, in the stern lessons of experience learned by those who were honourably worsted in hard-won fight. Egypt was little weaker in numerical force than when the Great King entered her territories; in skill, confidence, and spirit, she was actually stronger than before.

These considerations were not overlooked by the wisdom of Semiramis; while to a.s.sarac"s far-seeing eye, the sapping of Egyptian strength, by every means at home and abroad, seemed the surest and safest policy for the attainment of his one paramount object--the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt of his country, and through her supremacy, his own.

It did not escape his penetration, that a.s.syria"s great rival was vexed with a sore at her very heart, to prove a constant drain on her resources, an object of daily anxiety and alarm. By a flagrant breach of faith, an unscrupulous desecration of the rites of hospitality, she had converted a race of exiles into a nation of slaves. Those who came to her for bread had indeed received a stone, and the hand she once stretched to them in friendship was now clenched in menace, or fell heavily in blows of tyranny and oppression. As the Israelites increased in numbers, like certain herbs that spring into growth and vitality more profusely, the more they are trampled under foot, the wiser Pharaohs began to realise the danger they incurred. No state, however powerful, could be safe having a numerous race of aliens mixed, yet not mingling, with its native population, strangers in thought, feelings, usages, above all, in creed and worship. They might be tamed with hard work, disheartened by ill-usage, coerced and kept down in every mode that a remorseless policy could suggest, still nothing less than their absorption or extinction could give security to their conquerors; and Providence permitted neither the one nor the other.

They lived, a people apart, dogged, unresisting, suffering with but little complaint, yet preserving, apparently for consolation under the bitterest hardships, some strange confidence in their future, some mysterious trust in a Power before which Pharaoh and his bowmen should be swept away like locusts in an east wind. They worked in sad suggestive silence, they earned their morsel of bread with sweat and blood and tears; but they had no voluntary dealings with their task-masters--neither ate nor drank with them, married nor gave in marriage, bought nor sold.

Much of this a.s.sarac had already learned from intercourse with the many strangers who crowded to the great mart of Babylon out of the South; much from his conversation with Sadoc, whom he had liberated, not without a purpose. By the Israelite"s narrative, he verified his own information concerning the captive people, and won the other"s confidence in his sympathy with their sufferings, his desire to right them by the unanswerable arguments of sword and spear. His plan, he thought, was not unworthy of his own intellect and the glory of the Great Queen.

To send back this venerable Israelite, as an emissary to his countrymen, promising them the powerful aid of a.s.syria at the time when they should see fit to cast off the Egyptian yoke; exhorting them to rise unanimously from within, while all the force of Ashur pressed on the enemy from without; thus to obtain complete conquest, to extend unbounded dominion over the land of the South; and, finally, when the sway of the Great Queen should extend from the sands of the Libyan desert to the farthest mountains of Armenia, to place this strange people in some district suited to their habits, there to become hewers of wood and drawers of water for the a.s.syrian nation. What matter? They would have served his purpose, and might be cast aside like a frayed bowstring or the shaft of a broken spear.

But the wily eunuch was perplexed by the coldness with which the Israelite received, while he accepted, these warlike overtures. Sadoc seemed to have but little confidence even in the mighty resources of a.s.syria; little faith in chariots of iron, and hors.e.m.e.n countless as the sands by the Red Sea.

"Our fathers," said he, "came down into Egypt, directed by the finger of our G.o.d. When he thinks fit, he will lead us out of the house of our captivity into a land of corn and wine and oil, where we shall worship him in freedom, teaching our children, and our children"s children, that he only is mighty, and that the G.o.ds of the nations are in his sight but as chaff winnowed from the threshing-floor, as smoke from a burnt-offering, that melts into empty air."

Nevertheless, he was satisfied to take with him to his captive people the good tidings of promised a.s.sistance at their need, and journeyed back to Egypt, pondering deeply on the prospect of a path to freedom thus opened out by the a.s.surances of a priest of Baal.

It was characteristic of the man and of his national habits, that he refused all guard or escort for his long and toilsome journey. His own servants, taken captive at the same time with himself, and a few a.s.ses bearing a slender store of water and provisions, formed the whole troop.

Thus scarcely half a score of wayfarers gathered round Sarchedon, to preserve him from a lonely death on the desert sand.

Long days the little company plodded on, taking by choice the most frequented route, in order to avoid those wandering and predatory tribes of the Philistines, whose hand was already against every man, as "every man"s hand was against them." But the domestic policy of Semiramis had made her name a terror to these pitiless spoilers; and many a swarthy robber, who would have scorned to quail before the face of Ninus himself, trembled at the ghastly punishments inflicted on his kindred by order of the Great Queen. They believed her--and not entirely without reason--to be omnipotent, omnipresent, beautiful as morning, terrible as the lightning, pitiless as fate.