Part 1 (1/2)
Sarchedon.
by G. J. (George John) Whyte-Melville.
CHAPTER I
THE KING OF BEASTS
Dying in the desert--stretched, limp and helpless, in the darkening waste--poured out like water on the tawny sand--two specks poised high above him in the deeper orange of the upper sky--a wide-winged vulture hovering and wheeling between the stricken lion and the setting sun.
Dying in the desert--grim, dignified, unyielding, like a monarch slain in battle. So formidable in the morning--the herdsman's terror, the archer's dread, the savage wrestler in whose grasp horse and rider went down crushed, mangled, over-matched, like sucking fawn and unweaned child--fierce, tameless, unconquered--a n.o.ble adversary for the n.o.blest champions of the plain--but ere the last red streak of evening faded on the dusky level of their wilderness, a thing for the foul night-bird to tear and buffet--for the wild a.s.s, wincing and snorting, half in terror, half in scorn, to spurn and trample with her hoof.
Pitiful in its hopelessness, the wistful pleading of eyes gradually waning to the apathy of death; pitiful the long flickering tongue, licking with something of a dog's homely patience that fatal gash of which the pain grew every moment more endurable, only because it was a death-wound; and pitiful too the utter prostration of those ma.s.sive limbs, with knotted muscles and corded sinews--of that long, lean, tapering body--the very emblem of agile strength--which, striving in agony to rear but half its height, sank down again in dust, writhing, powerless, like an earthworm beneath the spade.
No yell, no moan--only a short quick breathing, a convulsive s.h.i.+ver, and the occasional effort to rise, that time by time soaked and stained his lair with darker jets of blood.
So those specks on the upper sky widened into two huge soaring vultures, while the wing of a third brushed lightly against the fallen lion's mane, as the foul bird ventured nearer its coming banquet, croaking hideous invitations to others and yet others, that emerged, as if by magic, from the solemn cloudless heaven.
Far back into the desert, varied here and there by clammy clotted spots, lay a single track of footprints, closer together, less sharp, round, and clearly-defined, as they dragged towards the end. Many a weary furlong had he travelled, the king of beasts, on his journey here to die; and yet he never was to reach the patch of arid reeds that instinct bade him seek for a last shelter--the scanty covert where-with nature prompted him to s.h.i.+eld his death agony from the remorseless bird of prey.
It is a royal sport to-day. It was a royal sport, no doubt, thousands of years ago, to rouse the kingly lion from his haunt of reeds, or rock, or cool dank quivering mora.s.s, in those wide plains that stretch between the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Mesopotamia of the ancients, the Naharaina of its present migratory tribes. A royal sport, when followed by a queen and all her glittering train, defiling from the lofty porches of Babylon the Great, the tramp of horse and ring of bridle, with steady footfall of a.s.syrian warriors--curled, bearded, erect, and formidable--with ponderous tread of stately elephants, gorgeous in trappings of scarlet, pearls, and gold, with stealthy gait of meek-eyed camels, plodding patient under their burdens in the rear. Scouring into the waste before that jewelled troop, herds of wild a.s.ses bruised and broke the shoots of wormwood beneath their flying hoofs, till the hot air was laden with an aromatic smell; the ostrich spread her scant and tufted wings to scud before the wind, tall, swift, ungainly, in a cloud of yellow dust; the fleet gazelle, with beating heart, and head tucked back, sprang forward like an arrow from the bow, never to pause nor stint in her terror-stricken flight, till man and horse, game and hunter, pursuer and pursued, were left hopelessly behind, far down beyond the unbroken level of the horizon. Was not her speed of foot the strength and safety and glory of her being? Nor could the desert falcon strike her save unawares, nor the cruel Eastern greyhound overtake her save when she had lately drunk her fill from the spring.
But the monarch of the desert, the grim and lordly lion, sought no refuge in flight, accepted no compromise of retreat. Driven from his covert, he might move slowly and sullenly away; but it was to turn in savage wrath on the eager horseman who approached too near, on the daring archer who ventured to bend his bow within point-blank distance of so formidable an enemy. Nevertheless, even the fiercest of their kind must yield before man, the conqueror of beasts; before woman, the conqueror of man: and on the shaft which drank his life-blood, and transfixed the lion from side to side, was graven the royal tiara of a monarch's mate, were cut those wedge-shaped letters that indicated the name of Semiramis the Great Queen.
Fainter and fainter drooped the mighty frame of the dying beast; one by one large red drops plashed heavily on the sand beneath him, as the first bright stars of a Chaldean sky blazed from the clear depths of heaven. The perishable was fast fading below. Was that indeed eternal which shone so pure and pitiless above?
Great Babylon lay spread out, ma.s.sive, mysterious, and indistinct, in the shades of coming night. Here and there, huge piles of building loomed vast and shadowy against the sky, far below these, amidst the tents, houses, palaces, and gardens within the town, glittered and flashed a world of lamps and torches, scattered bright and countless as the stars in that other world above; while rearing its head, like some ghostly giant, high over shaft and column, fortress, palace, and obelisk, rose a lofty tower that seemed to demand of heaven its secrets, and bade defiance to the sky.
Here, on the summit of this tower stood a human figure, gazing fixedly on the planets already visible, scanning the heavens with rapt attention; calm, serious, abstracted, wrestling, as it were, with all its mental forces, for the triumph of intellect, the mastery of thought.
It was a.s.sarac, priest of Baal, reading the stars, as a student reads a book writ in some symbolical language of which he holds the key.
a.s.sarac the priest, the man for whom in that voluptuous climate, amidst that gorgeous people, delighted in splendour, in pleasure, in luxury, in warfare, glory, arts, arms, and magnificence, the world could furnish but one attraction--the insatiable craving of ambition--to lull which he must rule supreme; therefore he trained himself, night and day, with the weapons of victory, seeking diligently that knowledge which const.i.tutes power.
The act of wors.h.i.+p is amongst all creation indigenous and peculiar to man. As he alone stands erect and raises his front without effort towards heaven, so he bends the knee in reasoning adoration, neither cowering down with his head in the dust, nor grovelling on his belly, like other creatures, in abject fear; but wanton, unstable, and extravagant even in his n.o.blest aspirations, this viceroy of earth has been ever p.r.o.ne to waver in his allegiance, eager to amplify his wors.h.i.+p of the one true G.o.d into a thousand false religions, more or less beautiful, poetical, and absurd. Amongst these, none could be less unworthy than that earliest form of superst.i.tion which attributed to the celestial bodies certain properties of power and knowledge, such as could affect the present no less than they predicted the future. Man's intellect felt elevated and purified by scientific communion with the book of Fate as written on the luminous pages of the sky, while his soul seemed scarce debased by an adoration that lifted it at least to the visible and material heaven. On the wide-stretching plains of Western Asia, in the warm cloudless a.s.syrian night, with the lamps of heaven flas.h.i.+ng out their radiance in uninterrupted splendour from the centre to the boundless horizon, it was no wonder that students and sages should have accepted for deities those distant worlds of fire on which eyes, brain, hopes, thoughts, and aspirations were nightly fixed--the guides of their science, the exponents of their history, the arbiters of their fate.
While the rude camel-driver, as he plodded by night through the trackless desert, relied, no less than the early mariner, for progress and safety on the stars, priests in their temples, kings in their palaces, consulted the same changeless, pa.s.sionless, inscrutable witnesses, for the web of policy, the conduct of warfare, the furtherance of love, desire, ambition, or revenge. Ere long, by an inevitable process in the human mind, the instructor of their course came to be looked on as the originator of events; and that which began only with an a.s.sumption that it could foretell, was soon credited with the power to bias, to prevent, or to destroy.
Then arose an idolatry which seemed irresistible to the n.o.blest and boldest nations of the ancient world, which, notwithstanding their own sublime creed, possessed a strong fascination for the Chosen People themselves. Yav, Nebo, Bel, and Ashtaroth[1] came to be wors.h.i.+pped as living deities, reigning and revealing themselves through the planets that bore these names. The Seven Stars[2] were believed to time the inevitable march of the universe to their seven tones of mysterious music, unheard by mortal ears only because it never ceased nor faltered in its eternal diapason. The twelve months of the year were sacred, each to its especial luminary. Thirty stars were wors.h.i.+pped as the Consulting G.o.ds. Twelve to the north, twelve to the south, were believed respectively to compel the destinies of living men and dead, the whole twenty-four bearing the t.i.tle of Judges of the World. And finally, lest superst.i.tion should overlook one single object of its adoration, or idolatry fail in the smallest detail to sin against its Creator, priests, temples, sacrifices, and votive offerings were a.s.signed to those countless worlds that gem a Southern night, under the collective t.i.tle of the Host of Heaven.
[Footnote 1: Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, and Venus.]
[Footnote 2: Rather the seven spheres, or the five planets with the sun and moon.]
a.s.sarac looked abroad, above, around, below--with the confident glance of a monarch who reviews his powers, with the critical attention of a calculator who sums up his total, with the visionary gaze of a prophet who forecasts his destiny, yet not entirely without something of that astute and wary expression which on the magician's face seems to scan and dominate, while it half mistrusts, the implements of his art.
He was yet a young man, to count by years, and his dark almond-shaped eyes had lost none of the fire and softness which are only combined before middle life; but above his black eyebrows there were lines traced deep in the tawny forehead, and at his temples a few white hairs already mingled with the black bushy ringlets that, confined by a fillet of gold, were drawn back in cl.u.s.tering profusion to his neck and shoulders.
His arms, but for the heavy gold bracelets that clasped their wrists, were bare, as were his strong muscular legs from knee to ankle; he wore sandals, fastened by straps; of embroidered leather crossing and recrossing so as to form no slight protection for foot and instep. His long gown of white linen, open to the breast and looped so as to give the legs freedom of action at the knee, was bordered with cunning needlework wrought in tissue of gold and scarlet silk, its arrow-headed characters displaying many a dark sentence and time-honoured record. A ta.s.selled cord fastened it at the waist, and a deep fringe also of scarlet tissue, hung below its edges, while an ample cloak, white and embroidered like the gown, fell from one shoulder and trailed behind the priest as he stood erect and motionless, looking out into the night.