Part 50 (1/2)
With fixed and rigid face, with hands clasped tight, with steps that seemed borne up and guided by some extraneous power, independent of and even dominating his own will, the eunuch followed through the darkness, as a sleep-walker follows the immaterial object of his dreams, never decreasing the s.p.a.ce that intervened, never turning aside from the footprints of those who led, pa.s.sing without heed over mailed corpse and broken chariot, through sand and s.h.i.+ngle and shallow pools of blood.
So the procession laboured gravely on, away from the battlefield, across the vineyards, up the rocky path that led to those mountain forests in which the dead king of Armenia might have found safety from his foes.
The bearers neither increased their speed nor halted, nor stinted for lack of breath, but moved calmly forward with even measured pace, symbol of a haughty reverence and respect, rather than of pity or distress; for he whom they bore feet foremost had been a warrior like themselves, and lay warlike in his riven harness, with a broken bow in his hand. He had fallen, as was meet for a stout champion, in the fore-front of battle, and though the hors.e.m.e.n of a.s.syria slashed it cruelly with their swords, his comely face had never turned one hair's-breadth from the foe.
Therefore the sons of Ashur thought no shame to carry him sternly and proudly to his rest, at the command of their mistress; therefore in their hearts they told themselves, how at Nisroch's appointed time, it would be well for them too that they should die in their armour, and that their last end should be like his.
The frogs clamoured in the marsh, the night wind moaned in the pines, filmy clouds swept over the crescent moon, and the corpse went ever upward into the mountain, while the queen followed after it, weeping, mute, unconscious, and a.s.sarac, giddy and bewildered, followed blindly after the queen.
CHAPTER LIV
COUNTING THE COST
Ever as their path grew steeper, and they penetrated farther into its recesses, the forest became more gloomy, while its trees a.s.sumed more hideous and fantastic shapes. The sky was dark and wild, the air loaded with those murmurs of the night that are to sounds of waking life as pa.s.sing shadows to real objects of flesh and blood; gigantic faces, grim, gray, and indistinct, blinked and peered from naked crag or gnarled and wrinkled trunk; while here, there, everywhere around, brooded a presence, no less awful because so vague and impalpable, that would have curdled and chilled the boldest human heart. It seemed to a.s.sarac, he was treading the border-land between here and hereafter; that at every step he might come face to face with some departed spirit, for which the universal experience was no longer a problem to be solved, which could tell him the secret all his life had been but an effort to inquire.
A white owl flitted noiselessly through the darkness, and the eunuch's heart stood still with something less debasing, yet far more horrible than fear. Nevertheless, as the shadowy train moved before him, mechanically he followed on.
In a gorge of the mountain, where night was blackest, a red light glowed suddenly across the sky. Wheeling round the stem of a rugged oak, the bearers halted with their burden, in an open s.p.a.ce where four glades met, converging on an indistinct ma.s.s, that seemed, in the fitful glare, some rough rude altar reared of unhewn stones.
Reverently they laid the dead hero down. Rising erect, when he touched the earth, a.s.sarac recognised in their lofty frames and costly armour four spearmen from the body-guard of the Great Queen.
Semiramis stood apart, peering eagerly into the gloom, only the outline of a white face visible in the deep folds of a mantle, that shrouded her head and figure.
Wild yells and piercing shrieks rose from the forest, while the flash of many torches danced fitfully among the trees. A score of hideous figures now came leaping into the open s.p.a.ce, and formed themselves in a circle round the queen, the spearmen and the dead warrior laid upon his s.h.i.+eld.
Interest and curiosity had somewhat mastered the eunuch's over-powering sense of horror, so that, waking, as it were, from the oppression of a trance, he seemed to resume his faculties of body and mind.
He knew the shapes at last, recognising them for those frantic votaries who, electing to wors.h.i.+p Abitur of the Mountains, disowned all human ties and interests, abjured all other creeds and professions, that they might serve the great principle of evil in the wilderness.
These men were naked to the waist, their hair and beards were matted and tangled in foul disorder, they tossed their lean arms aloft with frantic vehemence, and their eyes glared in the torchlight with the fierce cunning of insanity.
They might have been themselves the demons they adored, so strange and unearthly was their appearance, while dancing, gibbering, howling, they came and went, now opening out, now closing in, their circle, now retiring among the trees, now advancing towards the altar, but still, like vultures about a carrion, converging gradually round the corpse.
The queen held up her hand; immediately the torches gave a steadier light, the wavering shapes were still, and prostrated themselves before her with mute signs of submission, reverence, even abject fear.
She had protected the sect, respected their tenets, even joined in their wors.h.i.+p, from motives of policy long ago.
Now, in her great need, she clung to this desperate resource, and had come to wring from Abitur of the Mountains that which the host of heaven seemed unable to bestow.
With the increased light afforded by a score of torches, no longer whirled and brandished in the air, a.s.sarac observed that, in the rock over against him, was hewn an entrance to some vast cavernous temple, ornamented with rough symbols and grotesque representations of the demon wors.h.i.+pped within. This cavity seemed partly natural, partly hollowed out from the bowels of the earth, by the same rude labour that had erected the altar in its front.
Four of the wild men raised the burden recently laid down by the a.s.syrian warriors, and, preceded by two of their companions with torches, disappeared in the entrance of the temple or mouth of the cavern. While they lifted the corpse, Semiramis pa.s.sed her hand, with a gesture of exceeding tenderness, over the dead face, and followed close behind, succeeded by the rest of the torch-bearing troop, leaving the spearmen without, as if to guard the threshold.
An irresistible impulse drove the eunuch onward in his strange adventure, yet it seemed that he could not have uttered a word to save his life. With every faculty strained, every sense painfully sharpened, speech was alone denied him.
The sons of Ashur crossed their spears to bar his entrance; but throwing the cloak back from his face, though still without a word, he caused them to recognise him that stood at the right hand of the Great Queen, and thus pa.s.sed unimpeded into the temple of the fiend.
In a vaulted cavern, so lofty that the glare of twenty torches scarce illumined the shadowy ma.s.ses of its roof, stood four unhewn blocks of granite, supporting, at the height of a man's knee a rough slab of the same, on a flooring of rock, over which nature had spread a deep covering of sand. There was here no appearance of shrine or altar, none of those attempts at ornament, by which even the rudest of wors.h.i.+ppers do honour to their deity with hand and brain. The walls of this natural temple were of bare bulging stone, its roof was reared far into the bowels of the mountain; it had but one aperture, through which a dim thread of light might be seen at noon-day, and where, if he ever did visit them, the wors.h.i.+ppers of Abitur were taught to expect the appearance of their master.
Buried in the depths of the forest, beneath those wild s.h.a.ggy hills, this dwelling of the evil principle was as dark and shadowy compared with the temple of Baal, as that shrine of the a.s.syrian G.o.d, glowing in vermilion and gold, seemed poor and paltry to the starry dome above, of which it professed to be the type.