Then Oxyartes embraced the Assyrian king, begging him to tarry for a day as an honored guest, to feast and receive the richest gifts his kingdom might afford; but Ninus smiled and shook his head.
"Nay, suffer me to treasure up the thought," he answered with a laugh, "yet keep thy gifts till I come to take them for myself."
"So be it," smiled the Bactrian in return. "Three years of peace thou givest me, and in them will I dig the grave of Assyria's lord in the shadow of frowning Kush! Farewell!"
He stooped and gave the sword of Ninus into the monarch's hand, stroked the charger's neck till its master mounted, then watched the King and Menon ride away across the sunlit plains.
Not once did Ninus give a backward glance, yet Menon wheeled his steed and kissed his hand to a gathering of maidens watching from the battlements.
CHAPTER II
THE BUILDING OF A CITY
The Assyrian host dragged westward till it wormed its way through notches in the mountain range, descended the further slopes, then fared upon its way. It split at last into lesser armies, each beneath the leadership of a trusted chief, each charged with a separate mission of its own. One force swung north, to harry the shores of the Black and Caspian seas and to levy tribute for the building of the city. Another force went south through the plains and valleys of Armenia, while still another fared afar to the Sea of the Setting Sun. Here fleets of Phoenician merchantmen were seized and pressed into the service of the King, for in the eyes of Ninus a nation's traffic was but a paltry thing till Nineveh should be. These ships sailed out toward the delta of the Nile, presently to return with swarms of Egyptian workers, together with their cutting-tools of bronze, their winches and their levers used in the wielding of mighty weights. Ten score thousand riders spread forth through every land and every tribe, summoning workers by pay or promises; and where a tribe rebelled, Assyria's warriors herded them like sheep toward one central hub of toil.
King Ninus himself sat down upon the river bank where the waters of the Tigris and the Khusur join, and here he wrought his plans. A band of men went northward to the forest lands, felled trees, and split them into boards with which they fashioned a fleet of wide flat boats. These boats, propelled by sweeps and pushing-poles, were manned by Phoenicia's sons, for Assyria knew no more of ship-craft than hillsmen know the camel's back; yet Ninus employed the skill of others in his self appointed task. While the boats were being builded, he marked the line of his city wall in the form of a mighty egg, full twenty leagues around; then the King began to dig.
He caused two trenches to be sunk, the one within the other; the outer trench being twenty cubits wide and ten in depth, while the inner trench was shallower, but of greater width. These he flooded by means of the river Khusur, forming two vast canals, with a ring of earth between whereon should rest the walls of Nineveh. Then the whole wide world, it seemed, was set a-making bricks.