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Then a tug on the bridle sent the Nisæan on his haunches. “Lycon, as Mazda made me!” The Spartan was beside them soon, he had run so swiftly. He was so dazed he barely heeded Mardonius’s call to halt and tell his tale. He was almost naked. His face was black with fear, never more brutish or loathsome. “All is betrayed. Democrates is seized. Pausanias and Aristeides are warned.
Mardonius’s shout had no answer. Here, there, he saw horsemen and footmen, now singly, now in small companies, drifting backward across the plain to the last refuge of the defeated, the stockaded camp by the Asopus. The Prince called on his cavalry, so few about him now. “Shall we die as scared dogs? Remember the Aryan glory. Another charge!” His bravest seemed never to hear him.
Mardonius’s tents were pitched in the eastern city by the fountain of Callirhoë,—a spot of fond memories for the Alcmæonid. Here first he had met Hermione, come with her maids to draw water, and had gone away dreaming of Aphrodite arising from the sea. Often here he had sat with Democrates by the little pool, whilst the cypresses above talked their sweet, monotonous music.
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.
The moon failed, even the stars were clouded. A kind of brute instinct guided him. At last—he guessed it was nearly midnight—he caught once more the flashings of a shallow river and the dim outlines of shrubbery beside the bank—again the Asopus. He must take care or he would wander straight into Mardonius’s camp.
Only a few ventured to mutter under breath: “The Hellene will have a subsatrapy in the East before the season is over and a treasure of five thousand talents! Mithra wither the upstart!” The summer was waning when the host moved southward from Larissa, for mere numbers had made progress slow, and despite Mardonius’s providence the question of commissariat sometimes became difficult.
Yet for long it seemed as if the host would march even to Athens without battle, without invoking Mardonius’s skill. The king crossed Thrace and Macedonia, meeting only trembling hospitality from the cities along his route.
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.
“I did not invite you, dear fellow,” rejoined the Athenian, “to remind me of the fact.” “Yet you should have gratitude, and you have lacked that virtue of late. It was a sorry plight Mardonius’s money saved you from two years since, and nobly have you remembered his good service.”
Glaucon learned how futile was Themistocles’s hope of succour to Athens from the Sicilian Greeks, for,—thanks to Mardonius’s indefatigable diplomacy,—it was arranged that the Phœnicians of Carthage should launch a powerful armament against the Sicilians, the same moment Xerxes descended on Sparta and Athens. With calm satisfaction Mardonius watched the completion of his efforts.
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