Then the Kurds arose in fierce revolt, and the Governor needs leave his wife for a longer space, though many a bitter tear she shed, in that he would not suffer her to go. She was mad for a taste of war, mad as when with kisses she had urged him on the temple steps at Ascalon; yet Menon closed his ears alike to prayer and subtle argument. And thus it came to pass that she dried her eyes and watched him depart alone.
Now the Kurds were a wild and valiant race of hillsmen dwelling among the rocks, bold men who ceased to long for battle only when vultures picked their carcasses; so Menon and his army journeyed forth and laboured unto that end. He tracked them through wastes of sand, through gorges where torrents rushed, and monster stones came thundering down the pass; yet after a space he lured them to the centre of a plain and sought to give them one more taste of Assyria's scourge. He screened a strong reserve behind a hill, and then, in seeming disarray, marched down upon the enemy, while the Kurds looked on and were overjoyed because of the greater number of their warriors.
The Kurds awaited not the enemy's attack, but, shrieking in their barbarous tongue, poured down the slope to catch him in a dip between the hills.
In sooth the case of Assyria seemed evil, yet at a low command the disorder vanished utterly. As if by magic warriors sprang into the close-ranked form of a crescent moon, its curving front a line of bristling spears, its long horns tipped by horse, while in the rear and on either flank a cloud of bowmen waited for their prey.
In the hush before the storm a rider came spurring down the hill, to fling himself from his winded steed and to fall at Menon's feet.
"Huzim!" breathed the Governor, in a nameless dread. "What now?"
"Forgive, my lord," the Indian begged upon his knees, "and slay me if thou wilt. The lady Shammuramat—hath gone!"
"Gone?" cried Menon, whitening to the lips. "In the name of Bêlit—where?"
"Nay, lord, I know not," Huzim, in his grief, protested wildly. "In the hours of night she slipped away unseen. At morning, Habal, Scimitar and she were gone. I tracked them hither, lord, and now—"
His speech was drowned in a rush of howling Kurds, their first line breaking as a wave is shattered on a rock, their second crumpled, bleeding, tossed back in heaps of slain, while the third for an instant glared across the spears, then died as their brothers died. Yet more came on, and more again, an endless stream of madmen, delirious in rage, each caring naught for life so be it that he dragged a foeman down. They hacked at lance heads with their clumsy swords and wormed their way through the legs of the heaving front, till the crescent swayed and was like to burst in rout. And still they came, like waves from out the sea, to strike and fall, roll backward, rise and strike again.