They listened, tricked for an instant by her words, but only the croak of frogs and the hum of insects sounded on the breeze; then the cowards' muttering swelled into a roar of rage. A volley of stones was flung against the house, one missile striking her upon the temple, causing her to totter on the roof's edge dizzily, while a trickle of blood ran down her cheek. Huzim had marked the man who hurled this stone, and, cursing, he set an arrow on his bow; but the mistress stayed his hand.
"Down, Huzim! I yet may deal with them. Be not a fool!"
Once more she turned to the scowling men who had stopped their rush when they saw the wound to one on whom their vengeance lay not so heavily; yet they hung in the balance now, and the weight of a hair might tip the beam.
"Perchance," she called aloud, "ye have a grievance, just, and one which I might quickly mend. What, then, would ye have of me?—I who have ever kept my promises, even though it brought me wounds, as I now am wounded at your hands. Speak! If it lieth within my power to grant—"
She was checked by a babel of discordant cries from the tongue of each who sought above the rest to air a separate woe; and Semiramis smiled within herself, though she frowned upon them with the dark displeasure of a queen.
"Be silent, dogs!" she commanded, fiercely. "What! Would ye burst my ears with the yelpings of your pack? Have done!"
They stared. She had them marveling now, and would keep them marveling, lest idle thought breed mischief ere she clipped its wings.
"Let one step forth!" she called. "Your leader. What! Is there not one man in all this valiant throng?" She paused to raise her eyes and hands. "Dear Ishtar, pity them!"
A mighty murmuring arose, when each man nudged his fellow, urging him to speak for all, till at last a hairy-chested, black-browed villain pushed toward the front—the same who had flung the stone, and Huzim's fingers curled about his bow, and he whimpered in restraint.
The leader spoke. He made his charge against the Governor who pressed, he said, upon the people till their children cried aloud for food. He lied; yet he lied with a certain air of honesty; and as he marked each point, the rabble applauded him, while their fury was like to bubble up afresh. He told of his nation staggering beneath the load of an unjust tax, when Ninus built him palaces wherein to squander wealth in wild debauchery. His people, he declared, were overjoyed to obey the King and pay him tribute according to the law; but when he sought to starve them by the right of might, then Syria bared her teeth. Justice they asked—no more—and received the lash.