Part 44 (1/2)
Aryas smiled, and his eyes glittered like a hawk's.
”Bring in the messenger,” said he in calm sonorous accents; adding in a lower tone to his bowbearer, ”When, in return for fair words, costly gifts, and a dishonourable demand, I sent two arrows to the land of s.h.i.+nar, the one a headless shaft, the other barbed and pointed, it was a token that Armenia, though desirous of peace, would never shrink from war. Had a dog sought my protection, he should have been safe behind a nation of hors.e.m.e.n. Shall I deliver up my _friend_ at the whim of a proud lascivious woman, though she be twenty times a queen?”
”Alas,” replied the other, ”my lord knows not the might of Semiramis.
She is immovable by pity, she is insensible to fear. All the hosts of heaven could not turn her purpose, nor thwart her desire. I will be the bearer of an emba.s.sy speaking words of peace from my lord the king. I will go back to put my neck under her foot, and abide my doom.”
”Let her come and take you!” was the gallant answer. ”By the sword we wors.h.i.+p, she shall find the task a hard one!--ay, if for every bodkin she looses from her head-gear she can set in array a hundred thousand men!”
The messenger, a rude and hardy horseman of the north, had now arrived in the king's presence. Prostrating himself but once, and with scanty ceremony, he stood erect to deliver his tidings in frank bluff tones.
”I have ridden night and day from the southern frontier,” said he.
”Thiras the governor sends greeting to the king. He bids me tell him the south wind has brought up a flight of locusts, that darken heaven and cover earth with their swarms. Shall I speak yet farther in the ears of the people who throng the gate?”
Aryas shot one glance of intelligence at Sarchedon.
”Say on,” he exclaimed; ”I have no secrets from those who sit at meat with me in the city, and stand beside me in the field.”
Thus adjured, the messenger proceeded:
”The sons of Ashur have come up in their might from the land between the rivers. Their war-chariots shake the mountain as they pa.s.s, their horses drink the streams dry where they ride through. Thiras cannot count their numbers, and what could he do but offer earth and water for tribute, seeing that they muster under the banner of the Great Queen?”
Aryas started as if he were stung. The comely face flushed dark red, and rarely as he lost his self-command, some outburst of anger would surely have followed, but that another messenger arrived on the heels of his predecessor, if possible more hurried, more jaded, more travel-worn than the first.
He, too, scarcely prostrated himself in the royal presence, and through the s.h.a.ggy locks which fell across his brow his eyes shone with the terror of some wild forest creature hunted by the wolves.
”From Sambates, governor of Beznun,” he stammered, ”to the king greeting. They have cast a bank against Betlis, they have surrounded the great lake, and called it by the name of their queen. They have overrun the province, taking fenced cities, burning villages, laying waste cornland and vineyard, slaying men, and carrying into captivity women and children. They are swifter than the south wind that brings them, fiercer than leopards, more terrible than the lightning, and numberless as the stars of heaven. What could Sambates do but offer earth and water for tribute, seeing that they muster under the banner of the Great Queen?”
Once again Aryas winced and coloured, but controlled himself the more effectually for the emergency of the situation. In the same instant he realised his peril, resolved to meet it, and calculated his powers of resistance. His first aim was to inspire his followers with confidence.
Filling his scarcely-tasted goblet to the brim, he advanced to the outer court, and standing in their midst, bade them follow his example, while he drank the national pledge--”To the Men of the Mountain and the Sons of the Naked Sword!” Then, taking his bow from Sarchedon, he broke it across, and cast the fragments at his feet in token that war was declared, while he thus addressed them:
”The wolves of the wood came up against the mountain-bull, and thought to slay him, saying, We are fierce and daring, my brothers, because we live on blood; and this creature cannot resist us, for his food cometh up under the dews of heaven, and he slakes his thirst in the murmuring stream of the hills. Also, we outnumber him a hundred to one. Therefore will we encircle him, and leap on him, and pull him down; so shall we fatten on his carca.s.s, and drain the warm life-blood from his throat.
Let us go up against him without fear, in an open s.p.a.ce, rejoicing that he has been delivered unto us for a prey.
”But a herd of wild deer were feeding in the plain, and when the wolves approached they took to flight; so the mountain-bull, grazing far above them, raised his head, and was aware of his enemy crowding and circling towards him, like the waves of the Northern Sea. Then he withdrew into a thicket, where he set his back against the solid rock; and when the wolves made at him, fiercely, but one by one, they dashed themselves to pieces in vain against his s.h.a.ggy front, writhing under his feet, falling pierced and mangled by his mighty horns.
”Men of the Mountain and Sons of the Naked Sword, is not Armenia strong and tameless as the wild bull of her hills? Are not the sons of Ashur innumerable and pitiless as the wolves that scour the forest, leaving only bones white and bare where they have pa.s.sed? Ye have learned by these messengers that our country has been entered and our honour a.s.sailed. The banner of a.s.syria is flaunting in Armenian breezes, the sons of the Mighty Hunter are trooping in by thousands from the south, to slay and ravage and destroy. Therefore I call on you at my need, therefore I bid you to council; not to deliberate on a question of peace or war, for the bow is already broken and the sword unsheathed, but to advise with your king and leader how best we shall rid us of our enemy, and drive the wolf back, cowed, mangled, halting, and howling, to his den!”
Wilder, fiercer, louder with every peal, rose the shouts that greeted the Comely King's harangue, while he paused and looked about him, stately and graceful, like a master-stag at bay. Brawny arms were tossed, and naked swords brandished aloft in very ecstasy of warlike defiance, nor, of all those manly russet-bearded faces, was there one that failed to express intense hatred of the stranger, implicit trust and confidence in the might of Armenia, with a fixed resolve to die, if need be, at worst, fighting hard to the very end.
When the council which Aryas had summoned took their places for deliberation, there seemed but one opinion--that, gathering all their forces without delay, they should pour down into the plain, like their own rivers in flood, and, overwhelming the foe in their onslaught, sweep him back to the place from whence he came. Who could stand before the hosts of the North? Were they not Men of the Mountain and Sons of the Naked Sword?
It was the king's bowbearer whose skill and experience tempered this bold resolve with a degree of caution, resulting from his own knowledge of the a.s.syrians' warlike resources. When it came to his turn to speak, though somewhat mistrusting his advice as an alien, none could gainsay the soundness of his argument, agreeing as it did with the half-expressed opinion of the Comely King.
Insisting strenuously on the countless numbers of the enemy, and their over-powering strength in chariots and hors.e.m.e.n, he urged that it would be the height of imprudence to meet them in the open plain, where they would too surely be encircled and crushed by their enemy in a resistless girdle of steel.