A Victor of Salamis 23Book II · Mardonius Gives a Promise
18
Literature · Adventure
A Victor of Salamis 23
Book II · Mardonius Gives a Promise
DavisEnglish
“Ugh—the dogs died hard, but they are dead,” grunted Xerxes, still shivering on the ivory throne. The battle had raged disagreeably close to him.
“They are dead; even so perish all of your Eternity’s enemies,” rejoined Mardonius, close by. The bow-bearer himself was covered with blood and dust. A Spartan sword had grazed his forehead. He had exposed himself recklessly, as well he might, for it had taken all the efforts of the Persian captains, as well as the ruthless laying of whips over the backs of their men, to make the king’s battalions face the frenzied Hellenes, until the closing in of Hydarnes from the rear gave the battle its inevitable ending.
Xerxes was victorious. The gate of Hellas was unlocked. The mountain wall of Œta would hinder him no more. But the triumph had been bought with a price which made Mardonius and every other general in the king’s host shake his head.
“Lord,” reported Hystaspes, commander of the Scythians, “one man in every seven of my band is slain, and those the bravest.”
“Lord,” spoke Artabazus, who led the Parthians, “my men swear the Hellenes were possessed by dævas. They dare not approach even their dead bodies.”
“Lord,” asked Hydarnes, “will it please your Eternity to appoint five other officers in the Life Guard, for of my ten lieutenants over the Immortals five are slain?”
But the heaviest news no man save Mardonius dared to bring to the king.
“May it please your Omnipotence,” spoke the bow-bearer, “to order the funeral pyres of cedar and precious oils to be prepared for your brothers Abrocomes and Hyperanthes, and command the Magians to offer prayers for the repose of their fravashis in Garonmana the Blessed, for it pleased Mazda the Great they should fall before the Hellenes.”
Xerxes waved his hand in assent. It was hard to be the “Lord of the World,” and be troubled by such little things as the deaths of a few thousand servants, or even of two of his numerous half-brethren, hard at least on a day like this when he had seen his desire over his enemies.
“They shall be well avenged,” he announced with kingly dignity, then smiled with satisfaction when they brought him the shield and helmet of Leonidas, the madman, who had dared to contemn his power. But all the generals who stood by were grim and sad. One more such victory would bring the army close to destruction.
Xerxes’s happiness, however, was not to be clouded. From childish fears he had passed to childish exultation.
“Have you found the body also of this crazed Spartan?” he inquired of the cavalry officer who had brought the trophies.
“As you say, Omnipotence,” rejoined the captain, bowing in the saddle.
“Good, then. Let the head be struck off and the trunk fastened on a cross that all may see it. And you, Mardonius,” addressing the bow-bearer, “ride back to the hillock where these madmen made their last stand. If you discover among the corpses any who yet breathe, bring them hither to me, that they may learn the futility of resisting my might.”
The bow-bearer shrugged his shoulders. He loved a fair battle and fair treatment of valiant foes. The dishonouring of the corpse of Leonidas was displeasing to more than one high-minded Aryan nobleman. But the king had spoken, and was to be obeyed. Mardonius rode back to the hillock at the mouth of the pass, where the Hellenes had retired—after their spears were broken and they could resist only with swords, stones, or naked hands—for the final death grip.
The slain Barbarians lay in heaps. The Greeks had been crushed at the end, not in close strife, but by showers of arrows. Mardonius dismounted and went with a few followers among the dead. Plunderers were already at their harpy work of stripping the slain. The bow-bearer chased them angrily away. He oversaw the task which his attendants performed as quickly as possible. Their toil was not quite fruitless. Three or four Thespians were still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas’s Spartans, but not one of the three hundred but seemed dead, and that too with many wounds.
Snofru, Mardonius’s Egyptian body-servant, rose from the ghastly work and grinned with his ivories at his master.
“All the rest are slain, Excellency.”
“You have not searched that pile yonder.”
Snofru and his helpers resumed their toil. Presently the Egyptian dragged from a bloody heap a body, and raised a yell. “Another one—he breathes!”
“There’s life in him. He shall not be left to the crows. Take him forth and lay him with the others that are living.”
It was not easy to roll the three corpses from their feebly stirring comrade. When this was done, the stricken man was still encased in his cuirass and helmet. They saw only that his hands were slim and white.
“With care,” ordered the humane bow-bearer, “he is a young man. I heard Leonidas took only older men on his desperate venture. Here, rascals, do you not see he is smothered in that helmet? Lift him up, unbuckle the cuirass. By Mithra, he has a strong and noble form! Now the helmet—uncover the face.”
But as the Egyptian did so, his master uttered a shout of mingled wonderment and terror.
“Glaucon—Prexaspes, and in Spartan armour!”
What had befallen Glaucon was in no wise miraculous. He had borne his part in the battle until the Hellenes fell back to the fatal hillock. Then in one of the fierce onsets which the Barbarians attempted before they had recourse to the simpler and less glorious method of crushing their foes by arrow fire, a Babylonian’s war club had dashed upon his helmet. The stout bronze had saved him from wound, but under the stroke strength and consciousness had left him in a flash. The moment after he fell, the soldier beside him had perished by a javelin, and falling above the Athenian made his body a ghastly shield against the surge and trampling of the battle. Glaucon lay scathless but senseless through the final catastrophe. Now consciousness was returning, but he would have died of suffocation save for Snofru’s timely aid.
It was well for the Athenian that Mardonius was a man of ready devices. He had not seen Glaucon at his familiar post beside the king, but had presumed the Hellene had remained at the tents with the women, unwilling to watch the destruction of his people. In the rush and roar of the battle the messenger Artazostra had sent her husband telling of “Prexaspes’s” flight had never reached him. 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? And to be rewarded thus! Glaucon’s recompense would be to be sawn asunder or flung into a serpent’s cage.
Fortunately Mardonius had only his own personal followers around him. He could count on their discreet loyalty. Vouchsafing no explanations, but bidding them say not a word of their discovery on their heads, he ordered Snofru and his companions to make a litter of cloaks and lances, to throw away Glaucon’s tell-tale Spartan armour, and bear him speedily to Artazostra’s tents. The stricken man was groaning feebly, moving his limbs, muttering incoherently. The sight of Xerxes driving in person to inspect the battle-field made Mardonius hasten the litter away, while he remained to parley with the king.
“So only a few are alive?” asked Xerxes, leaning over the silver rail of the chariot, and peering on the upturned faces of the dead which were nearly trampled by his horses. “Are any sound enough to set before me?”
“None, your Eternity; even the handful that live are desperately wounded. We have laid them yonder.”
“Let them wait, then; all around here seem dead. Ugly hounds!” muttered the monarch, still peering down; “even in death they seem to grit their teeth and defy me. Faugh! The stench is already terrible. It is just as well they are dead. Angra-Mainyu surely possessed them to fight so! It cannot be there are many more who can fight like this left in Hellas, though Demaratus, the Spartan outlaw, says there are. Drive away, Pitiramphes—and you, Mardonius, ride beside me. I cannot abide those corpses. Where is my handkerchief? The one with the Sabæan nard on it. I will hold it to my nose. Most refreshing! And I had a question to ask—I have forgotten what.”
“Whether news has come from the fleets before Artemisium?” spoke Mardonius, galloping close to the wheel.
“Not that. Ah! I remember. Where was Prexaspes? I did not see him near me. Did he stay in the tents while these mad men were destroyed? It was not loyal, yet I forgive him. After all, he was once a Hellene.”
“May it please your Eternity,”—Mardonius chose his words carefully,—a Persian always loved the truth, and lies to the king were doubly impious,—“Prexaspes was not in the tents but in the thick of the battle.”
“Ah!” Xerxes smiled pleasantly, “it was right loyal of him to show his devotion to me thus. And he acquitted himself valiantly?”
“Most valiantly, Omnipotence.”
“Doubly good. Yet he ought to have stayed near me. If he had been a true Persian, he would not have withdrawn from the person of the king, even to display his prowess in combat. Still he did well. Where is he?”
“I regret to tell your Eternity he was desperately wounded, though your servant hopes not unto death. He is even now being taken to my tents.”
“Where that pretty dancer, your sister, will play the surgeon—ha!” cried the king. “Well, tell him his Lord is grateful. He shall not be forgotten. If his wounds do not mend, call in my body-physicians. And I will send him something in gratitude—a golden cimeter, perhaps, or it may be another cream Nisæan charger.”
A general rode up to the chariot with his report, and Mardonius was suffered to gallop to his own tents, blessing Mazda; he had saved the Athenian, yet had not told a lie.
The ever ready eunuchs of Artazostra ran to tell Mardonius of the Hellene’s strange desertion, even before their lord dismounted. Mardonius was not astonished now, however much the tidings pained him. The Greek had escaped more than trifling wounds; ten days would see him sound and hale, but the stunning blow had left his wits still wandering. He had believed himself dead at first, and demanded why Charon took so long with his ferry-boat. He had not recognized Roxana, but spoke one name many times—“Hermione!” And the Egyptian, understanding too well, went to her own tent weeping bitterly.
“He has forsaken us,” spoke Artazostra, harshly, to her husband. “He has paid kindness with disloyalty. He has chosen the lot of his desperate race rather than princely state amongst the Aryans. Your sister is in agony.”
“And I with her,” returned the bow-bearer, gravely, “but let us not forget one thing—this man has saved our lives. And all else weighs small in the balance.”
When Mardonius went to him, Glaucon was again himself. He lay on bright pillows, his forehead swathed in linen. His eyes were unnaturally bright.
“You know what has befallen?” asked Mardonius.
“They have told me. I almost alone of all the Hellenes have not been called to the heroes’ Elysium, to the glory of Theseus and Achilles, the glory that shall not die. Yet I am content. For plainly the Olympians have destined that I should see and do great things in Hellas, otherwise they would not have kept me back from Leonidas’s glory.”
The Athenian’s voice rang confidently. None of the halting weakness remained that had made it falter once when Mardonius asked him, “Will your Hellenes fight?” He spoke as might one returned crowned with the victor’s laurel.
“And wherefore are you grown so bold?” The bow-bearer was troubled as he looked on him. “Nobly you and your handful fought. We Persians honour the brave, and full honour we give to you. But was it not graven upon the stars what should befall? Were not Leonidas, his men, and you all mad—”
“Ah, yes! divinely mad.” Brighter still grew the Athenian’s eyes. “For that moment of exultation when we charged to meet the king I would again pay a lifetime.”
“Yet the gateway of Hellas is unlocked. Your bravest are fallen. Your land is defenceless. What else can be written hereafter save, ‘The Hellenes strove with fierce courage to fling back Xerxes. Their valour was foolishness. The god turned against them. The king prevailed.’ ”
But Glaucon met the Persian’s glance with one more bold.
“No, Mardonius, good friend, for do not think that we must be foes one to another because our people are at war,—I can answer you with ease. Leonidas you have slain, and his handful, and you have pierced the mountain wall of Œta, and no doubt your king’s host will march even to Athens. But do not dream Hellas is conquered by striding over her land. Before you shall possess the land you must first possess the men. And I say to you, Athens is still left, and Sparta left, free and strong, with men whose hearts and hands can never fail. I doubted once. But now I doubt no more. And our gods will fight for us. Your Ahura-Mazda has still to prevail over Zeus the Thunderer and Athena of the Pure Heart.”
“And you?” asked the Persian.
“And as for me, I know I have cast away by my own act all the good things you and your king would fain bestow upon me. Perhaps I deserve death at your hands. I will never plead for respite, but this I know, whether I live or die, it shall be as Glaucon of Athens who owns no king but Zeus, no loyalty save to the land that bore him.”
There was stillness in the tent. The wounded man sank back on the pillows, breathing deep, closing his eyes, expectant almost of a burst of wrath from the Persian. But Mardonius answered without trace of anger.
“Friend, your words cut keenly, and your boasts are high. Only the Most High knoweth whether you boast aright. Yet this I say, that much as I desire your friendship, would see you my brother, even,—you know that,—I dare not tell you you do wholly wrong. A man is given one country and one manner of faith in God. He does not choose them. I was born to serve the lord of the Aryans, and to spread the triumphs of Mithra the Glorious, and you were born in Athens. I would it were otherwise. Artazostra and I would fain have made you Persian like ourselves. My sister loves you. Yet we cannot strive against fate. Will you go back to your own people and share their lot, however direful?”
“Since life is given me, I will.”
Mardonius stepped to the bedside and gave the Athenian his right hand.
“At the island you saved my life and that of my best beloved. Let it never be said that Mardonius, son of Gobryas, is ungrateful. To-day, in some measure, I have repaid the debt I owe. If you will have it so, as speedily as your strength returns and opportunity offers I will return you to your people. And amongst them may your own gods show you favour, for you will have none from ours!”
Glaucon took the proffered hand in silent gratitude. He was still very weak and rested on the pillows, breathing hard. The bow-bearer went out to his wife and his sister and told his promise. There was little to be said. The Athenian must go his path, and they go theirs, unless he were to be handed over to Xerxes to die a death of torments. And not even Roxana, keenly as pierced her sorrow, would think of that.
