Now all these things were strange to Huzim and as marvels beyond his grasp, but Semiramis smiled and thus reproached herself:
"In truth have I been but a suckling babe concerning wit and the wiles of men; yet beyond the mountains lie twice a million other babes, with Ninus who croweth mightily and sitteth enthroned—the master-babe of all!" She turned to the Indian, thoughtfully: "Tell me, didst say that Menon dug his wells to the east of Zariaspa and found sweet water there?"
"Aye," said Huzim; "but what hath this to do with barges on a mountainside?"
"Much," the Syrian laughed, "for these boats go down through a cavernous passage-way, beneath the mountain, beneath the earth where Ninus is encamped, and beneath the city's walls. There the Bactrians receive their stores of food and burn these barges which may not travel back again. The water they gather up in cisterns for the city's needs, or loose it at will, whence it floweth away, to sink in the thirsty sands beyond. Thus Menon hath digged his wells, and marveleth at what is found."
The Indian listened with an open mouth, grunting his wonder, but offering no reply, and Semiramis spoke again:
"By Ishtar, 'tis a cunning wile, yet craft may match it unto Bactria's woe. Menon is mine at last!" she cried exultantly. "The King is mine! And Zariaspa lieth in the hollow of my hand! Up, Huzim, for we climb to the mountain top ere dawn hath come!"
Once more they journeyed, with care at first because of sentinels who watched the hillsides as a mother eagle guards her young; but at length the danger line was passed and they mounted with quickened pace. Up, up they climbed till the moon went down, and the chill of the lofty altitude came searching beneath their cloaks; then for an hour they rested, and the ascent was begun again. By the gleam of the stars alone they toiled, till a sickly glow came stealing from out the east; and then, as the sun came up, they stood at last on the mountain's spine, poor Habal dropping at their feet with heaving flanks and a lolling tongue.
Semiramis heaved a sigh. Beneath her lay the land of Bactria, yet hidden now by a ghostly sea of mist—a mist that writhed and heaved, revealing giant peaks that seemed to peep out timidly, to turn and flee as though pursued by spirits of the under-world; then the peaks, emboldened as the sunrays drank the vapors down, rushed back again, while scurrying clouds dissolved like rabble before a war-king's chariot.
Lower and lower sank the mist, till the battlements of Zariaspa pierced the veil, and on the walls long lines of white-robed priests came forth in worship of the sun, while warriors dipped their banners, knelt, and raised their gleaming arms aloft.
As Semiramis watched, the scene unrolled as to one who looks into a witch's caldron when the reek is blown away. She saw the valleyed foothills, and the tawny plain that stretched beyond till lost in an ochre haze. She saw the city, grim, defiant in its might, and the vast brown monster coiled around its outer shell, hungry, baffled, weary of its fruitless grip. From north to south long ridges seamed the earth where trenches had been dug to hold the slain and the offal of the camps, the whole heaped o'er with sand lest pestilence arise, while scattered far and wide lay blackened skeletons of scaling-towers, engines of assault, and abandoned catapults, which the enemy had wrecked or burned with fire.