A Victor of Salamis Part 32

"Your tidings?" demanded Xerxes, sharply.

"Be gracious, Fountain of Mercy,"-the captain evidently disliked his mission,-"I am sent from the van. We came to a place where the mountains thrust down upon the sea and leave but a narrow road by the ocean. Your slaves found certain h.e.l.lenes, rebels against your benignant government, holding a wall and barring all pa.s.sage to your army."

"And did you not forthwith seize these impudent wretches and drag them hither to be judged by me?"

"Compa.s.sion, Omnipotence,"-the messenger trembled,-"they seemed st.u.r.dy, well-armed rogues, and the way was narrow and steep where a score can face a thousand. Therefore, your slave came straight with his tidings to the ever gracious king."

"Dog! Coward!" Xerxes plucked the whip from the charioteer's hand and lashed it over the wretch's shoulders. "By the _fravas.h.i.+_, the soul of Darius my father, no man shall bring so foul a word to me and live!"

"Compa.s.sion, Omnipotence, compa.s.sion!" groaned the man, writhing like a worm. Already the master-of-punishments was approaching to cover his face with a towel, preparatory to the bow-string, but the royal anger spent itself just enough to avert a tragedy.

"Your life is forfeit, but I am all too merciful! Take then three hundred stripes on the soles of your feet and live to be braver in the future."

"A thousand blessings on your benignity," cried the captain, as they led him away, "I congratulate myself that insignificant as I am the king yet deigns to notice my existence even to recompense my shortcomings."

"Off," ordered the bristling monarch, "or you die the death yet. And do you, Mardonius, take Prexaspes, who somewhat knows this country, spur forward, and discover who are the madmen thus earning their destruction."

The command was obeyed. Glaucon galloped beside the Prince, overtaking the marching army, until as they cantered into the little mud-walled city of Heraclea a second messenger from the van met them with further details.

"The pa.s.s is held by seven thousand Grecian men-at-arms. There are no Athenians. There are three hundred come from Sparta."

"And their chief?" asked Glaucon, leaning eagerly.

"Is Leonidas of Lacedaemon."

"Then, O Mardonius," spoke the Athenian, with a throb in his voice not there an hour ago. "There will be battle."

So, whether wise men or mad, the h.e.l.lenes were not to lay down their arms without one struggle, and Glaucon knew not whether to be sorry or to be proud.

CHAPTER XX

THERMOPYLae

A rugged mountain, an inaccessible mora.s.s, and beyond that mora.s.s the sea: the mountain thrusting so close upon the mora.s.s as barely to leave s.p.a.ce for a narrow wagon road. This was the western gate of Thermopylae. Behind the narrow defile the mountain and swamp-land drew asunder; in the still scanty opening hot springs gushed forth, sacred to Heracles, then again on the eastern side Mt. ta and the impenetrable swamp drew together, forming the second of the "Hot Gates,"-the gates which Xerxes must unlock if he would continue his march to Athens.

The Great King's couriers reported that the stubborn h.e.l.lenes had cast a wall across the entrance, and that so far from showing terror at the advent of majesty, were carelessly diverting themselves by athletic games, and by combing and adorning their hair, a fact which the "Lord Prexaspes"

at least comprehended to mean that Leonidas and his Spartans were preparing for desperate battle. Nevertheless, it was hard to persuade the king that at last he confronted men who would resist him to his face.

Glaucon said it. Demaratus, the outlawed Spartan, said it. Xerxes, however, remained angry and incredulous. Four long days he and his army sat before the pa.s.s, "because," announced his couriers, "he wishes in his benignity to give these madmen a chance to flee away and shun destruction;" "because," spoke those nearest to Mardonius, the brain of the army, "there is hot fighting ahead, and the general is resolved to bring up the picked troops in the rear before risking a battle."

Then on the fifth day either Xerxes's patience was exhausted or Mardonius felt ready. Strong regiments of Median infantry were ordered to charge Leonidas's position, Xerxes not failing to command that they slay as few of the wretches as possible, but drag them prisoners before his outraged presence.

A n.o.ble charge. A terrible repulse. For the first time those Asiatics who had forgotten Marathon discovered the overwhelming superiority that the sheathing of heavy armour gave the Greek hoplites over the lighter armed Median spearmen. The short lances and wooden targets of the attackers were pitifully futile against the long spears and brazen s.h.i.+elds of the h.e.l.lenes. In the narrow pa.s.s the vast numbers of Barbarians went for nothing. They could not use their archers, they could not charge with their magnificent cavalry. The dead lay in heaps. The Medes attacked again and again. At last an end came to their courage. The captains laid the lash over their mutinous troops. The men bore the whips in sullen silence.

They would not charge again upon those devouring spears.

White with anger, Xerxes turned to Hydarnes and his "Immortals," the infantry of the Life Guard. The general needed no second bidding. The charge was driven home with magnificent spirit. But what the va.s.sal Medes could not accomplish, neither could the lordly Persians. The repulse was b.l.o.o.d.y. If once Leonidas's line broke and the Persians rushed on with howls of triumph, it was only to see the h.e.l.lenes' files close in a twinkling and return to the onset with their foes in confusion. Hydarnes led back his men at last. The king sat on the ivory throne just out of arrow shot, watching the ebb and flow of the battle. Hydarnes approached and prostrated himself.

"Omnipotence, I the least of your slaves put my life at your bidding.

Command that I forfeit my head, but my men can do no more. I have lost hundreds. The pa.s.s is not to be stormed."

Only the murmur of a.s.sent from all the well-tried generals about the throne saved Hydarnes from paying the last penalty. The king's rage was fearful; men trembled to look on him. His words came so thick, the rest could never follow all his curses and commands. Only Mardonius was bold enough to stand up before his face.

"Your Eternity, this is an unlucky day. Is it not sacred to Angra-Mainyu the Evil? The arch-Magian says the holy fire gives forth sparks of ill-omen. Wait, then, till to-morrow. Verethraghna, the Angel of Victory, will then return to your servants."

The bow-bearer led his trembling master to the royal tent, and naught more of Xerxes was seen till the morning. All that night Mardonius never slept, but went unceasingly the round of the host preparing for battle. Glaucon saw little of him. The Athenian himself had been posted among the guard of n.o.bles directly about the person of the king, and he was glad he was set nowhere else, otherwise he might have been ordered to join in the attack.

Like every other in the host, he slept under arms, and never returned to Mardonius's pavilion. His heart had been in his eyes all that day. He had believed Leonidas would be swept from the pa.s.s at the first onset. Even he had underrated the Spartan prowess. The repulse of the Medes had astonished him. When Hydarnes reeled back, he could hardly conceal his joy. The h.e.l.lenes were fighting! The h.e.l.lenes were conquering! He forgot he stood almost at Xerxes's side when the last charge failed; and barely in time did he save himself from joining in the shout of triumph raised by the defenders when the decimated Immortals slunk away. He had grown intensely proud of his countrymen, and when he heard the startled Persian lords muttering dark forbodings of the morrow, he all but laughed his gladness in their faces.

So the night pa.s.sed for him: the hard earth for a bed, a water cruse wrapped in a cloak for a pillow. And just as the first red blush stole over the green Malian bay and the mist-hung hills of Euba beyond, he woke with all the army. Mardonius had used the night well. Chosen contingents from every corps were ready. Cavalrymen had been dismounted. Heavy ma.s.ses of a.s.syrian archers and Arabian slingers were advanced to prepare for the attack by overwhelming volleys. The Persian n.o.blemen, stung to madness by their king's reproaches and their own sense of shame, bound themselves by fearful oaths never to draw from the onset until victorious or dead. The attack itself was led by princes of the blood, royal half-brothers of the king. Xerxes sat again on the ivory throne, a.s.sured by every obsequious tongue that the sacred fire gave fair omens, that to-day was the day of victory.

The attack was magnificent. For an instant its fury seemed to carry the h.e.l.lenes back. Where a Persian fell two stepped over him. The defenders were swept against their wall. The Barbarians appeared to be storming it.

Then like the tide the battle turned. The hoplites, locking s.h.i.+elds, presented an impenetrable spear hedge. The charge spent itself in empty promise. Mardonius, who had been in the thickest, nevertheless drew off his men skilfully and prepared to renew the combat.

In the interval Glaucon, standing by the king, could see a short, firm figure in black armour going in and out among the h.e.l.lenes, ordering their array-Leonidas-he needed no bird to tell him. And as the Athenian stood and watched, saw the Persians ma.s.s their files for another battering charge, saw the Great King twist his beard whilst his gleaming eyes followed the fate of his army, an impulse nigh irresistible came over him to run one short bow-shot to that opposite array, and cry in his own Greek tongue:-

"I am a h.e.l.lene, too! Look on me come to join you, to live and die with you, with my face against the Barbarian!"

Cruel the fate that set him here, impotent, when on that band of countrymen Queen Nike was shedding bright glory!

But he was "Glaucon the Traitor" still, to be awarded the traitor's doom by Leonidas. Therefore the "Lord Prexaspes" must stand at his post, guarding the king of the Aryans.

The second charge was as the first, the third was as the second. Mardonius was full of recourses. By repeated attacks he strove to wear the stubborn h.e.l.lenes down. The Persians proved their courage seven times. Ten of them died gladly, if their deaths bought that of a single foe. But few as were Leonidas's numbers, they were not so few as to fail to relieve one another at the front of the press,-which front was fearfully narrow. And three times, as his men drifted back in defeat, Xerxes the king "leaped from the throne whereon he sat, in anguish for his army."

At noon new contingents from the rear took the place of the exhausted attackers. The sun beat down with unpitying heat. The wounded lay sweltering in their agony whilst the battle roared over them. Mardonius never stopped to count his dead. Then at last came nightfall. Man could do no more. As the shadows from ta grew long over the close scene of combat, even the proudest Persians turned away. They had lost thousands. Their defeat was absolute. Before them and to westward and far away ranged the jagged mountains, report had it, unthreaded by a single pa.s.s. To the eastward was only the sea,-the sea closed to them by the Greek fleet at the unseen haven of Artemisium. Was the triumph march of the Lord of the World to end in this?

Xerxes spoke no word when they took him to his tent that night, a sign of indescribable anger. Fear, humiliation, rage-all these seemed driving him mad. His chamberlains and eunuchs feared to approach to take off his golden armour. Mardonius came to the royal tent; the king, with curses he had never hurled against the bow-bearer before, refused to see him. The battle was ended. No one was hardy enough to talk of a fresh attack on the morrow. Every captain had to report the loss of scores of his best. As Glaucon rode back to Mardonius's tents, he overheard two infantry officers:-

"A fearful day-the bow-bearer is likely to pay for it. I hope his Majesty confines his anger only to him."

"Yes-Mardonius will walk the Chinvat bridge to-morrow. The king is turning against him. Megabyzus is the bow-bearer's enemy, and already is gone to his Majesty to say that it is Mardonius's blunders that have brought the army to such a plight. The king will catch at that readily."

At the tents Glaucon found Artazostra and Roxana. They were both pale. The news of the great defeat had been brought by a dozen messengers. Mardonius had not arrived. He was not slain, that was certain, but Artazostra feared the worst. The proud daughter of Darius found it hard to bear up.

"My husband has many enemies. Hitherto the king's favour has allowed him to mock them. But if my brother deserts him, his ruin is speedy. Ah!

Ahura-Mazda, why hast Thou suffered us to see this day?"

Glaucon said what he could of comfort, which was little. Roxana wept piteously; he was fain to soothe her by his caress,-something he had never ventured before. Artazostra was on the point of calling her eunuchs and setting forth for Xerxes's tent to plead for the life of her husband, when suddenly Pharnuches, Mardonius's body-servant, came with news that dispelled at least the fears of the women.

"I am bidden to tell your Ladys.h.i.+ps that my master has silenced the tongues of his enemies and is restored to the king's good favor. And I am bidden also to command the Lord Prexaspes to come to the royal tent. His Majesty has need of him."

Glaucon went, questioning much as to the service to be required. He did not soon forget the scene that followed. The great pavilion was lit by a score of resinous flambeaux. The red light shook over the green and purple hangings, the silver plating of the tent-poles. At one end rose the golden throne of the king; before it in a semicircle the stools of a dozen or more princes and commanders. In the centre stood Mardonius questioning a coa.r.s.e-featured, ill-favoured fellow, who by his sheepskin dress and leggings Glaucon instantly recognized as a peasant of this Malian country.

The king beckoned the Athenian into the midst and was clearly too eager to stand on ceremony.

"Your Greek is better than Mardonius's, good Prexaspes. In a matter like this we dare not trust too many interpreters. This man speaks the rough dialect of his country, and few can understand him. Can you interpret?"

"I am pa.s.sing familiar with the Locrian and Malian dialect, your Majesty."