At the sound of the horn a troop of guards had hurried up. They bent their bows. Cethegus silently turned his back on them and returned to his tent by the way that he had come.
Perhaps it was only his suddenly-aroused mistrust which made him imagine that all the Byzantines and Longobardians whom he passed regarded him with half-jeering, half-compassionate looks. When he reached his tent he asked the Isaurian sentry:
"Is Syphax back?"
"Yes, sir, long since. He is impatiently waiting for you in the tent. He is wounded."
Cethegus quickly pushed aside the curtains and entered. Syphax, deadly pale beneath his bronzed skin, rushed to meet him, embraced his knees, and whispered in passionate and desperate excitement:
"O my master! my lion! You are ensnared--lost--nothing can save you!"
"Compose yourself, slave!" said Cethegus. "You bleed?" "It is nothing! They would not permit me to return to your camp--they began to struggle with me as if in joke, but their dagger-stabs were bitter earnest."
"Who? Whose dagger-stabs?"
"The Longobardians, master, who have placed double guards at all the entrances of your camp."
"Narses shall give me a reason for this," said Cethegus angrily.