United States or Saint Barthélemy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then before the eyes of Xerxes’s host, which kept silence, marvelling, the handful broke forth with their pæan. They threw their well-loved charging song of Tyrtæus in the very face of the king. “Press the charge, O sons of Sparta! Ye are sons of men born free: Press the charge; ’tis where the shields lock, That your sires would have you be!
All could read the order of battle at last as squadron lay against squadron. On the west, under Xerxes’s own eye, the Athenians must charge the serried Phœnicians, at the centre the Æginetans must face the Cilicians, on the east Adeimantus and his fellows from Peloponnese must make good against the vassal Ionians. But would the signal to row and strike never come?
But Mardonius could divine what had happened. The swallow must fly south in the autumn. The Athenian had returned to his own. The bow-bearer’s wrath at his protégé’s desertion was overmastered by the consuming fear that tidings of Prexaspes’s disloyalty would get to the king. Xerxes’s wrath would be boundless. Had he not proffered his new subject all the good things of his empire?
“Do you know this ship?” asked Themistocles, at Glaucon’s side on the poop. “A Tyrian, the newest in their fleet, but her captain is the admiral Ariamenes, Xerxes’s brother.” “She is attacking us, Excellency,” called Ameinias, in his chief’s ear. The din which covered the sea was beyond telling. Themistocles measured the water with his eye.
Xerxes’s act was a plain proof that he was adopting the beautiful Hellene as one of his personal favourites,—a post of influence and honour not to be despised by a vizier. What “Prexaspes” said when he thanked the king was drowned in the tumult of laughing and cheering.
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.
Officers who had exchanged the wine-cup with Glaucon in the days when he stood at Xerxes’s side passed through the glare of the battle lanterns swaying above the rail. The Athenian had gripped at the dagger in his belt as he watched them. Better in the instant of discovery to slay one’s self than die a few hours afterward by slow tortures! But discovery had not come.
“Fly, your Excellency! I’m from Xerxes’s camp. I was at the Persian council. The mountain path is betrayed. Hydarnes and the guard are almost over it. They will fall upon your rear. Fly, or you and all your men are trapped!” “Well,” observed the Spartan, slowly, motioning for the deserter to cease, but Glaucon’s fears made that impossible. “I say I was in Xerxes’s own tent.
Why had he not foreseen that Agis would fall into Lycon’s hands? Why had he trusted that lying tale from Artemisium? And worst of all, worse than the howls of the people who would tear his body asunder like dogs, not waiting the work of the hemlock, was the thought of Hermione. She hated him now. How she would love him, though he sat on Xerxes’s throne, if once her suspicion rose to certainty!
“Noble tidings,” whispered the giant, as the two stood an instant, before each went to his own men. “Behold how Hermes helps us—a great deity.” “Sometimes I think Nemesis is greater,” said Democrates, once again refusing Lycon’s proffered hand. “By noon you’ll laugh at Nemesis, philotate, when we both drink Helbon wine in Xerxes’s tent!” and away went Lycon into the dark.
Word Of The Day