"But how come you here?" asked Ninyas, ignoring, from force of habit, the accustomed formalities of the other. "They tell me you rode in with half-a-score of bowmen, pursued by the hosts of Egypt—chariots and horsemen, banner, bow, and spear. I would have loosed a shaft or two amongst them nevertheless, had they been a hundred to one."
"My lord speaks well," answered Sethos proudly. "His servant slew their leader with his own hand ere he turned rein, and fled to seek shelter with my lord!"
"I would I had been at your back!" exclaimed the prince, kindling. "I grew weary unto death of their country, I own, when we rode there under the banner of Ashur, and I never wished to set eyes on one of their tawny faces or their supple backs again. But to have them brought here at bowshot distance, without any trouble, like a troop of wild asses or a herd of deer! Ah, Sethos, you were always a favourite of the gods—Baal, Nisroch, Merodach, and above all, Ashtaroth, Queen of Light!"
"My lord gives praise to his servant out of his own bounty," answered the other. "Hath Ninyas ever yet been known to come down from saddle or war-chariot without taking the first spoil? And as for Ashtaroth—surely, fairer game than feeds in field or forest falls to him, even before he lifts his bow."
The prince loved flattery dearly, though he had wit to despise the flatterer. He smiled well pleased.
"I cannot blame the gods," said he; "they have served me better than ever I served them. Do you remember the old lion we slew in the mountains ten days' march from Nineveh, when you drove my chariot up to the axles through the marsh? That was a prey worth the taking of a king. How he grinned and roared, and fought, with my javelin through his shoulder, and my arrow in his neck! Had he not torn at the chariot-wheel with claws and fangs, in blind senseless rage, we had hardly brought his dark skin home to make a foot-cloth for the Great Queen. Believe me, man, the beast I slew to-day might have been whelped in the same litter—as old, as savage, flecked in the jaws with grey, leaner perhaps, and a thought longer—say a span—from muzzle to tail. I am no boaster, Sethos; but surely old Nimrod himself can scarce have won nobler triumphs over the fiercest beasts of chase than mine!"
"My lord hath spoken," answered Sethos. "Is he not unrivalled in war, in the chase, in love?"
The last word seemed to touch some painful chord, rouse some bitter memory in his listener. The prince's handsome face reddened, and then turned pale. When he spoke again, it was the cup-bearer's turn to feel discomposed; for the voice of Ninyas sounded cold and hard, his manner had become stern and almost severe.
The lion's cub so far resembled his fierce old father, that his mood would change on occasion at a moment's notice from joyous good-humour and hilarity to a paroxysm of wrath, all the more dangerous that it was so sudden and unexpected.
With Ninus, however, such an access of passion betrayed itself in uncontrolled violence of language and gesture; while his son, on the contrary, concealed his feelings under a smooth brow and calm demeanour, far more implacable than the savage outbreak of his sire. The one would order an offender to be taken out and strangled on the spot, but forgive him perhaps before the fatal covering had been drawn round his head. The other spoke softly, nodded courteously, passed sentence of death in a whisper, and remitted it for no consideration of justice or mercy whatsoever.