A Victor of Salamis Part 64

"What place is the camp for the daughter of Darius, when her husband rides to war? We triumph together; we perish together. It shall be as Mazda decrees."

Mardonius answered nothing. Long since he had learned the folly of setting his will against that of the masterful princess at his side. And was not victory certain? Was not Artazostra doing even as Semiramis of Nineveh had done of old?

"The army is ready, Excellency," declared an adjutant, bowing in his saddle.

"Forward, then, but slowly, to await the reconnoitring parties sent toward the Greeks."

In the gray morning the host wound out of the stockaded camp. The women and grooms called fair wishes after them. The far slopes of Cithaeron were reddening. A breeze whistled down the hills. It would disperse the mist.

Soon the leader of the scouts came galloping, leaped down and salaamed to the general. "Let my Lord's liver find peace. All is even as our friends declared. The enemy have in part fled far away. The Athenians halt on a foot-hill of the mountain. The Laconians sit in companies on the ground, waiting their division that will not retreat. Let my Lord charge, and glory waits for Eran!"

Mardonius's cimeter swung high.

"Forward, all! Mazda fights for us. Bid our allies the Thebans(16) attack the Athenians. Ours is the n.o.bler prey-even the men of Sparta."

"Victory to the king!" thundered the thousands. Confident of triumph, Mardonius suffered the ranks to be broken, as his myriads rushed onward.

Over the Asopus and its shallow fords they swept, and raced across the plain-land. Horse mingled with foot; Persians with Tartars. The howlings in a score of tongues, the bray of cymbals and kettledrums, the clamour of spear-b.u.t.ts beaten on armour-who may tell it? Having unleashed his wild beasts, Mardonius dashed before to guide their ragings as he might. The white Nisaean and its companion led the way across the hard plain. Behind, as when in the springtime flood the watery wall goes cras.h.i.+ng down the valley, so spread the thousands. A G.o.d looking from heaven would not have forgotten that sight of whirling plumes, plunging steeds, flying steel, in all the aeons.

Five stadia, six, seven, eight,-so Mardonius led. Already before him he could see the glistering crests and long files of the Spartans-the prey he would crush with one stroke as a vulture swoops over the sparrow. Then nigh involuntarily his hand drew rein. What came to greet him? A man on foot-no horseman even. A man of huge stature running at headlong speed.

The risen sun was now dazzling. The general clapped his hand above his eyes. Then a tug on the bridle sent the Nisaean 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. They will give you fair battle. I barely escaped."

"Who betrayed you?" cried the Prince.

"Glaucon the Alcmaeonid, he is risen from the dead. _Ai!_ woe! no fault of mine."

Never before had the son of Gobryas smiled so fiercely as when the giant cowered beneath his darting eyes. The general's sword whistled down on the skull of the traitor. The Laconian sprawled in the dust without a groan.

Mardonius laughed horribly.

"A fair price then for unlucky villany. Blessed be Mithra, who suffers me to give recompense. Wish me joy,"-as his captains came galloping around him,-"our duty to the king is finished. We shall win h.e.l.las in fair battle."

"Then it were well, Excellency," thrust in Artabazus, "since the plot is foiled, to retire to the camp."

Mardonius's eyes flashed lightnings.

"Woman's counsel that! Are we not here to conquer h.e.l.las? Yes, by Mithra the Glorious, we will fight, though every _daeva_ in h.e.l.l joins against us.

Re-form the ranks. Halt the charge. Let the bowmen crush the Spartans with their arrows. Then we will see if these Greeks are stouter than Babylonian, Lydian, and Egyptian who played their game with Persia to sore cost. And you, Artabazus, to your rear-guard, and do your duty well."

The general bowed stiffly. He knew the son of Gobryas, and that disobedience would have brought Mardonius's cimeter upon his own helmet.

By a great effort the charge was stayed,-barely in time,-for to have flung that disorganized horde on the waiting Spartan spears would have been worse than madness. A single stadium sundered the two hosts when Mardonius brought his men to a stand, set his strong divisions of bowmen in array behind their wall of s.h.i.+elds, and drew up his cavalry on the flanks of the bowmen. Battle he would give, but it must be cautious battle now, and he did not love the silence which reigned among the motionless lines of the Spartans.

It was bright day at last. The two armies-the whole strength of the Barbarian, the Spartans with only their Tegean allies-stood facing, as athletes measuring strength before the grapple. The Spartan line was thinner than Mardonius's: no cavalry, few bowmen, but s.h.i.+eld was set beside s.h.i.+eld, and everywhere tossed the black and scarlet plumes of the helmets. Men who remembered Thermopylae gripped their spear-stocks tighter.

No long postponing now. On this narrow field, this bit of pebble and greensward, the G.o.ds would cast the last dice for the destiny of h.e.l.las.

All knew that.

The stolidity of the Spartans was maddening. They stood like bronze statues. In clear view at the front was a tall man in scarlet chlamys, and two more in white,-Pausanias and his seers examining the entrails of doves, seeking a fair omen for the battle. Mardonius drew the turban lower over his eyes.

"An end to this truce. Begin your arrows."

A cloud of bolts answered him. The Persian archers emptied their quivers.

They could see men falling among the foe, but still Pausanias stood beside the seers, still he gave no signal to advance. The omens doubtless were unfavourable. His men never s.h.i.+fted a foot as the storm of death flew over them. Their rigidity was more terrifying than any battle-shout. What were these men whose iron discipline bound so fast that they could be pelted to death, and no eyelash seem to quiver? The archers renewed their volley.

They shot against a rock. The Barbarians joined in one rending yell,-their answer was silence.

Deliberately, arrows dropping around him as tree-blossoms in the gale, Pausanias raised his hand. The omens were good. The G.o.ds permitted battle.

Deliberately, while men fell dying, he walked to his post on the right wing. Deliberately, while heaven seemed shaking with the Barbarians'

clamour, his hand went up again. Through a lull in the tumult pealed a trumpet. _Then the Spartans marched._

Slowly their lines of bristling spear-points and nodding crests moved on like the sea-waves. Shrill above the booming Tartar drums, the blaring Persian war-horns pierced the screams of their pipers. And the Barbarians heard that which had never met their ears before,-the chanting of their foes as the long line crept nearer.

"Ah!-la-la-la-la! Ah!-la-la-la-la!" deep, prolonged, bellowed in chorus from every bronze visor which peered above the serried s.h.i.+elds.

"Faster," stormed the Persian captains to their slingers and bowmen, "beat these madmen down." The rain of arrows and sling-stones was like hail, like hail it rattled from the s.h.i.+elds and helms. Here, there, a form sank, the inexorable phalanx closed and swept onward.

"Ah!-la-la-la! Ah!-la-la-la!"

The chant never ceased. The pipers screamed more shrilly. Eight deep, unhasting, unresting, Pausanias was bringing his heavy infantry across the two hundred paces betwixt himself and Mardonius. His Spartan spearmen might be unlearned, doltish, but they knew how to do one deed and that surpa.s.singly well,-to march in line though lightnings dashed from heaven, and to thrust home with their lances. And not a pitiful three hundred, but ten thousand bold and strong stood against the Barbarian that morning.

Mardonius was facing the finest infantry in the world, and the avenging of Leonidas was nigh.

"Ah!-la-la-la! Ah!-la-la-la!"

Flesh and blood in the Persian host could not wait the death grip longer.

"Let us charge, or let us flee," many a stout officer cried to his chief, and he sitting stern-eyed on the white horse gave to a Tartar troop its word, "Go!"

Then like a mountain stream the wild Tartars charged. The clods flew high under the hoofs. The yell of the riders, the shock of spears on s.h.i.+elds, the cry of dying men and dying beasts, the stamping, the dust-cloud, took but a moment. The chant of the Spartans ceased-an instant. An instant the long phalanx halted, from end to end bent and swayed. Then the dust-cloud pa.s.sed, the chanting renewed. Half of the Tartars were spurring back, with s.h.i.+vered lances, bleeding steeds. The rest,-but the phalanx shook now here, now there, as the impenetrable infantry strode over red forms that had been men and horses. And still the Spartans marched, still the pipes and the war-chant.

Then for the first time fear entered the heart of Mardonius, son of Gobryas, and he called to the thousand picked hors.e.m.e.n, who rode beside him,-not Tartars these, but Persians and Medes of lordly stock, men who had gone forth conquering and to conquer.

"Now as your fathers followed Cyrus the Invincible and Darius the Dauntless, follow you me. Since for the honour of Eran and the king I ride this day."

"We ride. For Eran and the king!" shouted the thousand. All the host joined. Mardonius led straight against the Spartan right wing where Pausanias's life-guard marched.

Old soldiers of Lacedaemon fighting their battles in the after days, when a warrior of Plataea was as a G.o.d to each youth in h.e.l.las, would tell how the Persian cavalrymen rode their phalanx down.

"And say never," they always added, "the Barbarians know not how to fight and how to die. Fools say it, not we of Plataea. For our first line seemed broken in a twinkling. The Pitanate _mora_ was cut to pieces; Athena Promachus and Ares the City-Waster alone turned back that charge when Mardonius led the way."

But turned it was. And the thousand horse, no thousand now, drifted to the cover of their s.h.i.+eld wall, raging, undaunted, yet beaten back.

Then at last the phalanx locked with the Persian footmen and their rampart of wicker s.h.i.+elds. At short spear length men grinned in each other's faces, while their veins were turned to fire. Many a soldier-Spartan, Aryan-had seen his twenty fights, but never a fight like this. And the Persians-those that knew Greek-heard words flung through their foemen's helmets that made each h.e.l.lene fight as ten.

"Remember Leonidas! Remember Thermopylae!"