"What aileth thee, my mistress?" asked the Indian, and she laughed again in answer to his questioning:
"In truth, good Huzim, once more am I the mother of a thought—a sturdy brat—and thou shalt help me nurture him, for, lo! these laboring swine have made to me the gift of Zariaspa's outer walls."
Menon, Huzim and Semiramis sat far into the night, pondering over plans and stratagems, and when morning came the Indian and his mistress sought out a hidden valley among the hills. With them went seven score of workmen, a full-armed guard, and slaves who bore the beams and bodies of abandoned catapults; and straightway the voice of labor rose on the mountain side, while along the valley's lip was set the guard, who with slings and shafts made answer to wandering curiosity.
In Menon's camp a labor was likewise set afoot, and engines of siege were put to rights again, while the army, wondering at things they could not understand, were set to making sacks. These sacks they contrived of fibre, of discarded clothes, of the cloth of canopies, or of any fabric gleaned from far or near sobeit they held two hundred-weight of sand; and when a warrior made questionings as to the strangeness of this toil, his chief would bid him hold his tongue, for the reason thereof was known to Menon and Semiramis alone.
When tidings of these happenings were brought unto the King, he drove away the messenger with oaths, for his heart was sick of fruitless stratagems. Where Ninus failed, there also must Menon fail; so the King went hunting through the uplands, finding little game, but much to vex the soul of him because of unhappy ponderings. Glory he desired, and the mastery of all the world, yet greater than these was his haunting thirst for the mastery of one woman's love and the glory of her passion lit for him alone.
In such a mood King Ninus one day came upon Semiramis returning from the valley in the hills, and marveled at the score of engines which she dragged across the sands. So frail they were, so slender as to build and the fashioning of hurling-beams, that the King desired to know if these toys were designed to fling the stones of cherries at their enemies.
"Aye," said Semiramis, gravely and without a smile, "for the Bactrians like not cherries, nor the stones thereof. Come, good my lord, tomorrow, for tomorrow a red juice trickleth from their battlements."
This answer puzzled Ninus, puzzled him throughout the night and filled his very dreams with a deep unrest; so on the morrow he drove into Menon's eastern camp to mark what craft might lie beneath the Syrian's words. Yet, if craft it was, its meaning was hidden from the monarch's mind, for Menon was now employed in throwing sacks of sand against the city wall. No aim had they to harm the besieged upon the battlements, but smote the masonry with a harmless thud and piled upon the earth. Full two score engines, set in line and served by eager, sweating men, were thus engaged in a foolish sport; and as Ninus laughed in scorn, so laughed the Bactrians, gibing Menon and urging him to a greater diligence.
Now, strangely, Menon's warriors made no answer to the enemy's abuse, but wrought in silence, bearing endless bags of sand upon their backs, while beyond sat the engines of Semiramis, idle, aiding naught in this mockery of siege; yet beneath the walls a mound of sand-sacks grew apace; then, of a sudden, the jeering Bactrians understood. Their laughter was changed to curses, their merriment to shouts of rage, for they saw that Menon built a sloping road-way to their battlements and soon would launch a horde of warriors upon the walls.
And now a tumult rose—the cries of captains raging at their men, the shriek of battle-horns and the answering din of Bactrian soldiery rushing to defense. On the walls were set their heaviest catapults with the aim of wrecking Menon's lighter engines of assault; but now the "thought-child" of Semiramis took a part, and even Ninus watched in awe.