Nabonidus drew a quick breath. Then, with an effort, he said: "Sippar--is fallen--to you?"

Gobryas bowed, with regret in his att.i.tude.

"And my servants--Nana-Babilu, and Sharrukin, the former governor of the city, where are they?"

"O king, they have suffered the fate of the conquered. They alone, out of all Sippar, were killed in defending their palaces."

"They alone," whispered the king to himself, wearily. "They alone? Nay, there was one other--one other faithful servant had I in my kingdom. I pray that Bel--re--ceive--" The old man reeled where he stood. Gobryas sprang quickly forward, catching him before he fell. And as he gazed upon the helpless, innocent face of the fallen king, Gobryas was constrained to wonder a little whether the part he had played in this game of unwarlike war were quite worth the suffering it inflicted upon others.

XVI

BELTI-SHAR-UZZUR

Eight days after the fall of Sippar, the army of the Elamite king lay encamped before Babylon. Not so vast an army, after all, this that had come out of lower Chaldea, after a series of astounding victories, to take the Great City from her king. Less than half a mile from where the gigantic height of Nimitti-Bel shut off the northeast horizon, the tents of Cyrus' army lay scattered over the parched plain. The largest of these, over which hung the royal standard, stood in the centre of the first line of the encampment, where it was most prominent to the eye from the city walls, and in the place of greatest danger in case of a sortie from the city.

Inside of Cyrus' tent, on this third day of the inactive siege, sat the royal commander himself, hard at work. The weather, even to a Babylonian born and bred, was nearly unendurable. To one who had been reared in the hills and had ruled over mountain-built Susa, with her fresh northerly winds and cold torrent streams, the temperature of a Chaldean summer was something to be marvelled at. To-day the conqueror half sat, half lay upon the couch in his tent, dictating letters to three scribes, who bent over their bricks in a steaming row in the door of the tent. Both the manner and the voice of the Achaemenian betrayed his intense fatigue.

Nevertheless he kept steadily on, formulating various curious plans for the prosecution of his siege.

A short, rather stocky man, this Cyrus, with thick, curling hair, a beard more golden-brown than black, and eyes so piercingly brilliant that it was difficult to determine their shade. His face had been tanned to a leathery brown by years of exposure in various climes; but his hands were smooth, shapely, and well-kept. In dress, there was no hint of either soldier or ruler. His head was bound round with a red fillet embroidered in black and gold. His body was clothed in the lightest and simplest of yellowish cotton tunics, narrowly bordered with red. On his feet he wore sandals, and his ankles and calves were bare. Only by his eyes and by the quick decisiveness of his manner could one have guessed that his station was high. And yet, with these two things to go by, few would have failed to select this man out of a hundred others as being indeed Kurush, the king.

Besides the king and his three scribes, there was one other person in the royal tent on this blazing afternoon of the twenty-second of the month Duzu. This was a young man, tall and meagre in body, with a peculiarly long head, a face not wholly devoid of beauty, but with an expression lurking about the lips and eyes that one who loved him would not have cared to a.n.a.lyze. Richly dressed was this youth, much belted, chained, and braceleted with silver and gold, his tunic elaborately embroidered, the very thongs of his sandals wrought with lapis-lazuli and crystals. It was Cambyses, eldest son and heir of the great Cyrus, who thus lay in the presence of his father, sighing out his weariness with the heat, with the campaign, with the lack of fighting, with the length of days--with anything and everything that it came into his head to say, and with that everything twisted into a complaint.

Cyrus, long accustomed to this monotone as an accompaniment to his afternoons of labor, listened to it abstractedly as he continued his letters. The train of thought that could not be disturbed by words, however, was presently broken by a shadow pa.s.sing the door-way of the tent; and he suddenly looked up, staring at the second scribe, trying to return to his sentence, but able to think of nothing but the last imprecation uttered by his son.

"In the name of Ahura the blessed, Cambyses, get you from my presence till these labors are at an end! Follow Bardiya into the camp, go where you will, but leave me to the letters that must be despatched to-night if there be no word from Gobryas this afternoon."

"May he soon come!" muttered the first scribe; and the second and third, hearing, sighed in unison and wiped the sweat from their dripping brows.

Cambyses had risen and was doubtfully contemplating the prospect of the camp. Cyrus had come back to the subject of his epistle, and the scribe sat with his cuneiform iron poised in the air, when the scene was broken up. A horse, carrying a rider who clung to its bare back like a monkey, one hand twisted in the mane for guidance, came dashing up over the plain from the northwest and stopped at the tent door. The rider leaped to the ground, bending his head slightly before the king, and shouting, in a clear, fresh voice:

"News, my father! News at last! Gobryas with his army is three miles away. He will reach us by nightfall!"

Cyrus sprang to his feet. "How know you this, Bardiya?"

"I have seen them all, spoken with the general, and return to thee as his messenger."

Cyrus quickly waved his hand to the scribes. "Get you to your tents. Do not return to me till I shall command."

He waited while the three men picked up their stools in sober joy, and, saluting the royal master with a single accord, departed in an orderly file. When they were out of hearing, and Cyrus and his two sons were quite alone, the king let fall the crimson flap over the tent door, and then turned to Bardiya with his face very eager. "The king, Bar--"

"Gobryas brings with him Nabu-Nahid, the king of Babylon, a prisoner, to deliver him up to you."

Cyrus nodded, with less satisfaction than the boy had expected, and then thoughtfully bent his head. There was a short silence, which neither of the sons dared break. They saw an expression of trouble creep into their father's face. They saw him frown, and they heard him sigh. Then suddenly he crossed to a small coffer in the lent, and drew from it a long, white streamer.

"Bardiya, fasten this to the head of the spear on top of the tent. Put it there thyself, and at once."

The boy, in extreme surprise, received the pennant from his father's hand and went outside with it. Fifteen minutes later it was floating in the hot afternoon wind from the top of the royal tent; and ten minutes after that a white-robed acolyte had left the summit of Nimitti-Bel and was speeding through the fields on his way to a certain house in the centre of the city.

The afternoon pa.s.sed. It came to be the hour of day's death, and in that hour the final junction of the two invading armies was to be effected.

Seven months before, in the hills of Elam, they had separated, Gobryas marching to the north, Cyrus to the south. And now, each of them having fulfilled to the letter his plan of campaign, there remained only one thing more to do, the taking of that city which, six years ago, Cyrus had found impregnable to arms, and which he was now to a.s.sault in a less honorable and surer way.

The lamps in the royal tent were already swinging from their chains in a glow of fire, and the full moon was rising from the east over the city, though the sky was still too white for stars, when Cyrus, with Cambyses on his right hand and Bardiya on his left, stood in the door-way of his tent, waiting. Over the plain, at no great distance, could be seen a slow-moving line of horses and men. In front of this line, advancing at full gallop, came a single chariot, drawn by three white horses harnessed abreast, and carrying three men--the driver and two others.

This vehicle hurried along straight in the direction of the royal tent, until presently Cyrus stepped eagerly forward, while his sons cried in one voice, "Gobryas!"

The chariot came to a halt, and from it leaped a tall, bearded fellow, whom Cyrus seized in his arms and clasped delightedly. "Welcome, lord of Sippar. Welcome, O conqueror!" he cried, in the Aramaic language, generally used in his camp, and understood by Babylonian, Jew, and Elamite alike.

Having been embraced, Gobryas saw fit to bend the knee before his master, saying: "I bring the king my lord his royal prisoner. He is full of years and weary with the length of day. Let him, I pray, be removed to some tent that befits his rank, where refreshment may be given him."

Three pairs of eyes looked quickly up to the chariot, but Nabonidus'

back was turned to them. He stood there alone, his chained arms at his sides, looking off upon the walls of Babylon. His face was invisible; but Cyrus, seeing it, would not have known the expression. As it was, when the conqueror stepped up to the chariot and spoke a word of courteous greeting, the old man turned to him a dull and gentle countenance.

"O king, Nabu-Nahid of the Great City, let thy body find rest and refreshment here in my frail dwelling-place! In the name of the blessed Ahura-Mazda, I, Kurush, bid thee welcome. Descend from the hot chariot and enter my tent."

Nabonidus acknowledged the courtesy with old-accustomed graciousness. In alighting from the vehicle he stumbled a little in his great exhaustion.

Instantly Bardiya and Gobryas started to his side, and, each taking an arm, a.s.sisted the fallen king gently inside the tent, prepared for him the couch on which Cambyses had spent the afternoon, and made him comfortable upon it while Cyrus called to a slave to bring food and wine to all.

The five of them partook together of the evening meal, while conversation ran upon general topics. Nabonidus did not speak; nor, though the others did not guess it, did he listen to what was said.

Cyrus and his general might have discussed their most secret plans without risk of being overheard or understood, for Nabonidus' heart was beyond them, in Babylon, and his thoughts were of his world, not of theirs.

After the meal was over, however, Gobryas leaned across to the king and whispered, just audibly: "I must go forth now, for a time, to oversee the encampment that you have commanded. While I am gone, were it not well that Nabonidus be put in a tent of his own, under guard, that when I return we may talk freely of many things?"

"Nabu-Nahid--" Cyrus hesitated a little in his reply. "Nabu-Nahid will, I think, not sleep in this camp to-night. He is to be delivered into other hands, to which, many weeks ago, I promised to intrust him."

"Whose are they?" demanded Gobryas, roughly, without any of the respect due to his lord.

Cyrus failed to resent the breach. His expression betokened regret as he opened his lips to reply. But before a word left his mouth two figures appeared suddenly in the door-way--two white-robed figures, only one of whom wore the goat-skin on his shoulder. Before Cyrus could turn to them, the prisoner on the couch sprang suddenly to his feet, and a cry rang out into the night:

"Amraphel--thou dog!"

Then silence ensued. Gobryas, whose back had turned to the door, moved slowly round. Catching sight of the new-comers, he suddenly realized what Cyrus had meant: suddenly knew why Nabonidus would not sleep that night safely guarded in the camp. The high-priest of Babylon, and the leader of the Jews, in response to a prearranged signal, had come to claim their own--part of their payment for the betrayal of the city.

As he looked and understood yet more, Gobryas' face darkened with disgust. He could imagine well enough what was to follow, and his spirit revolted against taking any part in it.

"Let my lord give me permission to retire!" he demanded gruffly of Cyrus.

The king nodded to him, and the general forthwith, with a curl of the lip and a flash of disdain at the Babylonians, brushed his way by them and hurriedly left the tent. His departure removed the single disinterested element in the scene--and those that remained to enact it drew mental breath. For a moment or two no one moved. Priest and Jew stood facing the conqueror, the three of them eying one another in full understanding of this consummation of their plot. The conqueror's sons, more than half cognizant of the whole significance of the affair, shifted their glances from one figure to another with a vague sense of foreboding. Lastly, Nabonidus, the central figure in the scene, stiff and faint in his unutterable desertion, hair and face far whiter than his stained garments, confronted, with an air of supreme accusation, the two betrayers of his people. The silence was long, and nearly unendurable. Amraphel would not speak; Cyrus could not; the young men did not dare. It remained for Belti-shar-uzzur, evading that burning glance of Nabu-Nahid's, to address himself to the conqueror:

"We have seen the signal, Kurush, and have answered it. We are come to receive our own."

For the shadow of an instant Cyrus dropped his eyes. He said, anxiously: "Leave the prisoner here. I swear to his safety. He shall come to no harm!"

Amraphel stepped forward with menace in his eyes. "The promise! Remember the promise! Remember, or we fail you. Babylon to thee--Nabu-Nahid to us!"

At these words two cries rang out through the tent. The one was from Nabu-Nahid, the other from Cyrus' youngest son. The boy stepped forward quickly, his feeling plainly written in his young face. "My father!" was all he said; but before the words, and the unutterable things they told, the head of the great warrior fell and his heart smote him.