LOST AND WON
Sarchedon, galloping furiously on his mission, yet cast more than one
glance over his shoulder at the battle raging behind him. He too marked
the overwhelming charge of the Anakim, and its effect on that solid mass
against which its might was hurled. Trained in the subtlest school of
war, by the great captain of the age, he perceived at once that if ever
they were to be routed, now was the critical moment at which the
discomfiture of his countrymen must be achieved. The bay horse reeked
with foam and reeled from want of breath when it reached Thorgon's side;
and Sarchedon, deeming not an instant should be lost, ventured so far to
extend the command he had received as to urge on that old warrior the
necessity of putting his men in motion at a gallop. Thorgon frowned and
bit his lip. "Go to!" said he. "I am not to be taught by an Assyrian
youth how to set the battle in array. Nevertheless, if thou wilt share
in a death-ride to-day with the children of the north, pull that knife
of thine out of thy girdle and come with me."
Thus speaking, he drew his own long heavy sword, and waving it round his
head, placed himself in front of his horsemen, and led them against the
enemy at a rapid pace, which, when within a bowshot distance, he
increased to their utmost speed.
The Anakim had now penetrated so far into the ranks of the Armenians as
to be nearly surrounded, while victorious, by the very foe they were
engaged in defeating. It needed but this charge of Thorgon and his grim
long swords in their rear to complete the circle that hemmed them in.
Semiramis, from her chariot, marked the crisis and the manner in which
it must be met. "Assarac," said she, in her calm modulated voice, "I
cannot trust the children of the desert. They would not retire if I bade
them, and so weaken the wedge by drawing it after them in pursuit. We
must check these wild cattle of the mountain, nevertheless. Bring up my
spears in solid column of a thousand men in front, masking the chariots.
When I raise my bow, let them open out and every driver urge his horses
to a gallop. I will not give the signal till I see my opportunity, so
watch me like a falcon over a fawn. Send for my horsemen clothed in
blue. Ten squadrons may serve to bring the Anakim out of peril, and with
the rest I will myself make a dash for the person of this Beautiful
King."
Her commands were implicitly obeyed. With a shout that denoted their
courage and unshaken confidence, the chief strength of the Assyrian army
advanced steadily to the attack.
Meantime the Anakim were fighting at considerable disadvantage. Hemmed
in by falling foes, encumbered by dead of their own slaying, they had no
space to turn their horses, scarce elbow-room to swing their swords.
Twice had Ishtar's rein been seized by a dismounted enemy, and her horse
dragged down to its knees; twice had his veiled queen been rescued by
some tall champion, who pierced her assailant to the heart, or clove him
to the chin. But, nevertheless, the farther these desperate giants
fought their way towards the centre of the Armenians, the more difficult
became the task of extrication, the more hopeless their chances of
retreat. It seemed that all was indeed lost when Thorgon and his long
swords came pouring down upon their rear.
To Ishtar the events passing before her eyes were but as the horrors of
some ghastly dream. Faint, gasping, terrified, stunned with the din,
choked in the dust, blinded by the flash of weapons, sickening at the
smell of blood, she was only sensible she had seen Sarchedon, as in a
vision, and had cried to him for assistance in vain.
Helpless and bewildered, she must have been slain a score of times but
for the chief of the Anakim, whose weapon kept her assailants at bay,
while his hand guided her horse through the press of battle; but even
this protection failed her when that formidable champion found himself
engaged with Thorgon hand to hand.
Wary and experienced, hardened and toughened by continual toil in
warfare and the chase, the old Armenian knew every wile of the
swordsman, every turn of the horseman, familiarly as he knew the spring
of a panther or the rush of a mountain bull. But he was no match for the
larger frame and lengthier limbs of an opponent who was a younger,
stronger, and quicker man, riding a better horse. While he waved his
long sword round his head to cleave his adversary to the girdle, the
other smote him sharp and true below the fifth rib, and, with a loud
curse on the only god he acknowledged--the weapon that had failed
him--Thorgon fell headlong from his saddle, dead before he reached the
ground.
Men, horses, flashing weapons, reeling banners--all swam before Ishtar's
eyes; and, swaying blindly forward, she was scarcely conscious that a
protecting arm supported her, a careful hand guided her bridle, towards
the outskirts of the fight.
The fall of their leader seemed in no way to discourage the mountain
men; rather they fought with greater fierceness and obstinacy than
before. The children of Anak too, considerably out-numbered, and
disheartened by the helplessness of their Veiled Queen, began to give
way, striking furiously about them indeed, without a thought of flight,
yet obviously bent on effecting a retreat, if possible in good order,
but at any sacrifice a retreat.
In this imminent crisis of battle, the Comely King and the Great Queen
were moved simultaneously with a conviction that now was the moment at
which to throw all the weight attainable into the scale. If either side
could be driven back but a score of spear-lengths, it might be made to
give ground imperceptibly, till wavering grew to flight, and flight
culminated in defeat. For Armenia, it seemed the only hope to push
forward the wedge till it penetrated and divided the queen's solid
columns of spearmen; for the sons of Ashur the sure path to victory lay
in a breaking up of that dense obstinate mass, already weakened and
mutilated, while its nucleus should be annihilated by their chariots,
and its component parts cut to pieces by their horsemen hovering on its
flanks.
Therefore Aryas, standing erect in his chariot, encouraged his men of
war, with voice and gesture, in the very fore-front of battle. Therefore
Semiramis, scanning with undisguised approval the ranks of her
body-guard clothed in blue, placed herself joyfully at their head. The
Armenian monarch had resolved to save crown, kingdom, and friend, or
die, like a true mountain man, in his war-harness; while the Great
Queen, thirsting for victory as the drunkard thirsts for wine, was urged
by her longing after Sarchedon and the spur of a feminine desire to
behold Aryas the Beautiful face to face.
They were now scarce ten spear-lengths apart, on the dried-up river's
brink.
The ground was rough and broken, the wheels of her chariot drove
heavily, and Semiramis found herself more than once in danger of being
thrown from her elevated position between the horses that plunged and
laboured over slippery rock or yielding sand.
Against the carved and inlaid panel beside her hung a quiver with its
single arrow--one of those sent to Babylon in return for her embassy,
and which she had sworn by Nisroch to plant in the breast of Aryas the
Beautiful with her own hand. She snatched it from its case, made a sign
to the attendant who led him, leaped on Merodach, and, looking proudly
round, raised her bow aloft to brandish it over her head.
Then, while spears went down and bridles shook, a shout rose from the
warriors in blue raiment that was caught up by the whole Assyrian army,
and every man called lustily on Baal, swearing a mighty oath that he
would fight to the death for the Great Queen.
Aiming, as was her custom, at the heart of the enemy, Semiramis broke
furiously through the opposing long swords, now deprived of their
leader, with the view of first extricating the Anakim from their
perilous position, and afterwards directing all her force against the
Armenian king in person.
Assarac too had done his part like a practised warrior. The deep array
of spears, a solid column many furlongs in length, strong in its front
of a thousand marching men, was nearing the conflict every moment, with
that smooth and even step, that mechanical regularity of approach, which
seems the very impersonation of discipline and power. Concealed behind
its masses, betrayed only by an unceasing jar of iron and roll of
wheels, came on those formidable war-chariots, so irresistible by an
enemy who had sustained a check that caused the slightest confusion in
its ranks; and wielding the whole array, governing at once each element
of the storm, drove Assarac the eunuch--he of the cool brain, the
steadfast courage, the pitiless heart, who could be moved but by one
sentiment on earth--his mad infatuation for the queen.
Aryas marked it all, and knew that now the end was very near. Glancing
towards Sarchedon, he beheld his bowbearer, scarce ten spear-lengths
off, in the hottest of the struggle, defending, as it seemed, from
stroke and thrust some object at his side. The Anakim gathered about
him; while the long swords, shouting "Aryas! Aryas!" were making
desperate efforts to approach, believing, no doubt, they were rallying
round their king.
Semiramis neared her object with every stride. Aryas had stooped to take
another arrow from his quiver, and, as he raised his head again to
confront his enemy, looking boldly over his shield, behold! for the
first time, he stood face to face with the Great Queen.
Deceived by the likeness, duped by her own wild heart and reckless
longing, she called on him she loved by the name she had learned to
whisper in her dreams; but the hoarse shriek that cried "Sarchedon,
Sarchedon!" was so different from the full soft tones in which she was
used to doom a culprit or direct a battle, that her guards pressed
fiercely in, thinking their leader must have been stricken with a
death-hurt.
Casting down horse and rider in the fury of her career, she urged
Merodach towards the chariot, every consideration of war and policy, all
care for herself, her army, her people, lost in a fierce thrill of
triumph that the desire of her eyes had not escaped her, and she had
found him even at the last.
Surrounded by the chosen horsemen of Assyria, over-matched,
out-numbered, and now at his sorest need, Aryas shouted to his bowbearer
for help; and Sarchedon, still struggling in the strife as a swimmer
fights and reels amongst the breakers, answered lustily to the call.
The Great Queen, making, as she believed, for another, was now within
ten paces of Aryas the Beautiful himself.
In that hideous din of battle she neither heard his cry nor the voice
that replied to it; but the white horse with the eyes of fire had a
truer memory and a sharper ear. Recognising his master's accents, he
swerved aside to reach him, but meeting the wrench of the queen's
practised hand on his bridle, reared high with tossing head, and plunged
blindly forward against the king's chariot, struck himself and his rider
heavily to the ground.
As the good horse rolled over a maimed Armenian, the dying mountain man
shortened the sword he grasped fiercely even then, and buried it in the
animal's bowels.
Agile as a panther, Semiramis extricated herself, and was up like
lightning; but when she saw the beast she prized so dearly dead at her
very feet, her heart burned, and her eyes blazed with a fury wilder,
fiercer, madder, than the rage of any beast of prey.
Baffled, stunned, bewildered, she only knew that Merodach lay slain
beneath her; that an armed enemy stood above with shielded face and
javelin raised to strike; that here across the body of her horse was the
turning-point of battle, and that she held a bow and arrow in her hand.
Unconsciously, she fitted the one to the string, and drew the other at a
venture, as it were, in self-defence.
It was the Armenian arrow, cut in Armenian forests, tipped with Armenian
steel. It had travelled to Babylon and back as a symbol of dignified
remonstrance and royal self-respect; now the white cruel arm impelled it
straight and true, to find its home in the heart of an Armenian king.
Stricken below the buckler, he felt his life-blood oozing down to wet
its feathers, drop by drop.
"Turn thy hand out of the battle," murmured Aryas to his charioteer,
"since I am hurt even unto death!"
But he never spoke again; for the Great Queen's men of war, making in to
aid their leader, hurled him from his chariot, gashing with pitiless
sword-strokes the comely face so fair even in death, crushing under
trampling hoofs the stately form that, maimed, bruised, and mangled, was
grand and kingly still.
So the horsemen of Assyria triumphed; her spears made victory secure,
her chariots rolled over the slain. The blue mantles smote and spared
not; the Anakim extricating themselves, not without considerable loss,
departed in good order; and the pursuit rolled on till the sons of Ashur
sacked the town of Ardesh--to burn, pillage, and destroy, even unto the
going down of the day.
But men looked in vain for her who had led the attack and achieved the
victory, asking each other with eager looks and anxious faces,
"What tidings of the Great Queen?"
[Illustration: "SHE KNELT BESIDE THE BODY OF A DEAD HORSE."]
Her armour lay, piece by piece, beside her; there was dust on her
lustrous hair, the pride of her royal garment was rent from hem to hem,
while bowed down in anguish, with fixed eyes, white face, and rigid
lips, she knelt beside a dead horse, over the body of a dead king.