Semiramis: A Tale of Battle and of Love. Edward Peple

lifted not his eyes:

      "It is not meet that the lord of Assyria hold speech with fowls who roost in trees. Come down and parley, King to King."

      A bowman from above took umbrage at the haughty tone, and loosed a shaft which broke upon the monarch's metal helm, yet because of this deed King Oxyartes seized the miscreant and flung him from the wall. Then he called for a rope which, being brought, was looped beneath his arms, and his warriors lowered him to the earth, for the city gates were sealed. In his hand he held a naked sword, and Ninus noting this laughed scornfully, dismounted and cast his weapon on the ground, awaiting his enemy with folded arms. The Bactrian flushed in shame, flung his own blade aside, and advanced with outstretched hands.

      "Pardon, my lord," he begged. "With one so strange to fear, I might have brought my trust as I brought my sword."

      "Nay," smiled Ninus; "where the sword is wisdom, there caution is a shield."

      Oxyartes was of that mould of warrior which Ninus loved; the straight, lean form, the kingly head beneath whose brow the eyes looked out with a level gaze, while the hands he offered were firm in the strength of youth—a fitting shield for the heart of his sturdy land.

      "And why," he asked, "am I honoured by a parley with Assyria's lord, when his army marcheth westward in retreat?"

      King Ninus laid his hand upon the Bactrian's shoulder, looked into his eyes, and spoke:

      "I come to bid farewell to a worthy foe, ere I turn toward the Tigris where my city shall be builded on its shore. There will I rest and plan my coming wars. There will I raise another and a mightier force, to return when three short years have passed and blot thy city from the plains. Ah, smile if thou wilt, friend Oxyartes, but I come again, and at my coming, look well to Zariaspa's walls!"

      So Oxyartes ceased to smile, casting his gaze upon the earth, for he knew his foe spoke truth and would come again.

      "My lord," he asked at length, "wherefore should our races be at war? In the country round about I may not match thy multitude of men-at-arms; yet behind my battlements I defy thy proudest strength. Wisdom crieth out for truce, a compact wherein I weld my force with thine and share all conquests and a portion of the spoil thereof. Speak, Ninus, for the compact seemeth just."

      "True," the monarch nodded gravely, "true; and yet I may not do this thing. When Bactria is conquered and thy citadel laid low, then will I make a treaty with thy nation's chiefs. They shall join their strength to mine and share a goodly part of my captives and my spoils." He paused to smile, and once more laid his hand on the shoulder of Oxyartes. "Their warrior King will I set among my best beloved, for I hold him as a brother in the arts of war; yet heed me, friend, I have sworn by Bel and Ramân to rake the ashes of thy Zariaspa into sacks and with them feed the waters of the sea! And this will I do, or leave my bones to bleach beneath the brow of Hindu-Kush! Till I come again—farewell."

      Then Oxyartes embraced the Assyrian king, begging him to tarry for a day as an honored guest, to feast and receive the richest gifts his kingdom might afford; but Ninus smiled and shook his head.

      "Nay, suffer me to treasure up the thought," he answered with a laugh, "yet keep thy gifts till I come to take them for myself."

      "So be it," smiled the Bactrian in return. "Three years of peace thou givest me, and in them will I dig the grave of Assyria's lord in the shadow of frowning Kush! Farewell!"

      He stooped and gave the sword of Ninus into the monarch's hand, stroked the charger's neck till its master mounted, then watched the King and Menon ride away across the sunlit plains.

      Not once did Ninus give a backward glance, yet Menon wheeled his steed and kissed his hand to a gathering of maidens watching from the battlements.

      CHAPTER II

      THE BUILDING OF A CITY

      The Assyrian host dragged westward till it wormed its way through notches in the mountain range, descended the further slopes, then fared upon its way. It split at last into lesser armies, each beneath the leadership of a trusted chief, each charged with a separate mission of its own. One force swung north, to harry the shores of the Black and Caspian seas and to levy tribute for the building of the city. Another force went south through the plains and valleys of Armenia, while still another fared afar to the Sea of the Setting Sun. Here fleets of Phoenician merchantmen were seized and pressed into the service of the King, for in the eyes of Ninus a nation's traffic was but a paltry thing till Nineveh should be. These ships sailed out toward the delta of the Nile, presently to return with swarms of Egyptian workers, together with their cutting-tools of bronze, their winches and their levers used in the wielding of mighty weights. Ten score thousand riders spread forth through every land and every tribe, summoning workers by pay or promises; and where a tribe rebelled, Assyria's warriors herded them like sheep toward one central hub of toil.

      King Ninus himself sat down upon the river bank where the waters of the Tigris and the Khusur join, and here he wrought his plans. A band of men went northward to the forest lands, felled trees, and split them into boards with which they fashioned a fleet of wide flat boats. These boats, propelled by sweeps and pushing-poles, were manned by Phoenicia's sons, for Assyria knew no more of ship-craft than hillsmen know the camel's back; yet Ninus employed the skill of others in his self appointed task. While the boats were being builded, he marked the line of his city wall in the form of a mighty egg, full twenty leagues around; then the King began to dig.

      He caused two trenches to be sunk, the one within the other; the outer trench being twenty cubits wide and ten in depth, while the inner trench was shallower, but of greater width. These he flooded by means of the river Khusur, forming two vast canals, with a ring of earth between whereon should rest the walls of Nineveh. Then the whole wide world, it seemed, was set a-making bricks.

      On the Tigris river-flats, above and below the city site, a million workers toiled by night and day—warrior, captive, slave, King Ninus cared not, so he moulded bricks. These bricks were fashioned from river mud brought down by inundation, the mud commingled with straw and the fiberous parts of reeds to give it strength, and were set to bake in the heat of the summer sun.

      Later these river flats would be employed for the making of other bricks—the kiln-baked bricks which were glazed and tinted with every color known to men, designed for the facing of temples and of palaces; but now the work went on for the city wall alone. And yet not quite alone, for in the centre of the city's line, where the Khusur cut the site in twain, the King erected a monster mound whereon his royal palace would one day sit; then on the summit of the mound he builded a watch-tower, and abode therein. Here, beneath a shading canopy, the master-builder sat from dawn till dark, watching his work, for he had sworn a sacred oath to indulge in neither hunt nor war till Nineveh was Nineveh.

      And now he saw the budding of his dream. From the Tigris banks and up the Khusur came his flatboats, piled high with bricks; they floated on his two canals, supplying the workers who builded the wall between. In time this inner canal would disappear, being filled with earth, but the outer trench would ever remain, to serve as a moat which girt the city round about.

      Like unto ants the workers swarmed beneath the eye of Ninus on his tower, yet every little insect moved in lines marked out by patient thought. The well-nigh countless throng was divided into ordered gangs, each gang provided with an over-chief who urged his laborers by word of mouth or the lash of whips. Beneath the tower sat a ring of mounted men-at-arms who galloped forth with orders of the King, or brought report from points too distant for his eye to scan; for the builder willed his work to grow, not with gaps or breaks, but as one splendid whole, each section of the wall arising in conformity with its brother parts, until a straight, unvaried line should mount each day toward the sky.

      From dawn till dark the robe of Ninus fluttered on the tower's crest—a banner of warning to those who shirked their toil. Where diligence grew slack from weariness, or the work of a section fell behind, a man-at-arms spurred out toward the offending gang, to strike off the head of its over-chief and cast his body into an empty boat. Presently this boat, on its outward journey for a load of bricks, would drop the corpse into the Tigris, and another chief was set in the sleeper's place.

      Beyond