This engine was not the like of other engines, for its hurling-beam bent backward in half a circle's space, and on the beam was set a chariot wheel. When loosed, the beam sprang forward with a sidelong sweep and the missile was launched as a boy might fling a shell. At the first discharge—aimed high because of a lurking vanity in the Syrian's soul—the wheel spun out, and, with a strange, melodious sound, went whining over Zariaspa. The eyes of Assyria's host looked on in wonder and in pride of her, and the joy of Semiramis was like unto the joy of a crowing babe.
Soon other engines were set in place and a score of chariot wheels were loosed, with a mournful, pleasing hum—pleasing to those who sent it forth, yet of different tune to the hapless warriors who were dashed from off their walls. These wheels, by reason of their roundness and their equal weight, could be flung with a wondrous accuracy, and woe unto those who sought to serve the Bactrian catapults; while Menon, in peace, went forward with his toil of piling sacks of sand.
If the Bactrians raged because of this new-born stratagem, so Ninus also raged, but in another vein of wrath. None had communed with him concerning it, and Menon, in secret, sought to snatch a glory from his King; so Ninus cast about him for a cause of just displeasure at the man. With the road against the wall he could find no fault, for the sands of the desert were free to all; yet the casting away of his chariot wheels was wicked extravagance, a crime, and in no wise to be borne.
"How now, Shammuramat!" he cried, striding to her side, and trembling in his wrath. "Wherefore shouldst thou do this evil thing? and how shall my hosts ride home to Nineveh when the wheels of my chariots are cast among our enemies?"
"Nay, lord," she answered, with her devil's laugh, "to-day, when Zariaspa shall be thine, then mays't thou gather up these cherry-stones and call them wheels again."
So Ninus, cursing, turned upon his heel, mounted his waiting chariot and drove furiously toward the western camp, in his ears a roar from Zariaspa's walls and an answering roar from those who toiled beneath; then Semiramis left her engines, and, with Huzim to drive her steeds, went clattering along the dust-trail of the King.
The camp once reached, the King deployed his armies in a swift attack upon the western wall, in the hope that Bactria's force was bent on the distant point where Menon struck his blow; so creaking towers and mighty structures of wood and brass were pushed toward the battlements, and men swarmed up, to grapple with defending foes, to fall and die.
Semiramis, following in the wake of Ninus, caused Huzim to draw his reins at the camp of Asharal, the Babylonian Prince whom the monarch had deprived of office, yet restored again at the pleadings of the Syrian. To him she whispered, and at the whisper Prince Asharal smiled happily and straightway sought the King. The King he found in a fretful mood because of the slowness of his armies and their failure to win the walls, and it troubled him the more when Asharal in meekness bent his knee and spoke:
"My lord, in what appointed place shall thy servant serve, trusting thereby to aid my King in this his sore discomfiture?"
Now this question, to Ninus, was like salt in an open wound, and he fain would have smitten Asharal upon his humble mouth; yet many watched, and so the King stretched forth one trembling arm and pointed to the citadel.