"The fool!" muttered Aryas, sitting like a statue, though eagerly on the watch, "not to keep on their flanks. It was my fault," he added; "I should have warned him."
Then he shook his horse's bridle and charged down at speed amongst the herd.
In the meantime the entire mass, headed by the oldest and heaviest bulls, came thundering on against Sarchedon. Their leader he transfixed, indeed, with an arrow through its mighty neck; but the animal, with a roar of rage and pain, only lowered its head and made at him with the more fury. Had he been on Merodach, he might have escaped; for watching its attack with wary eye, he would have evaded the collision, and stabbed it as it passed by; but the horse beneath him had now become unmanageable from fright, would answer neither heel nor bridle, and turning its flank towards the enemy, was rolled up by the wild bull in a confused mass, with its prostrate helpless rider.
Looking wildly out from under his horse, Sarchedon saw the conqueror's eye glow like a living coal, felt its warm slaver streak his own defenceless face, and knew that ringed, curved, massive horn, brandished aloft with sidelong menace, would only descend to be buried in his entrails. Already the bitterness of death seemed past, when a horse's head showed over the wild bull's massive shoulder, an arm was raised to strike, and the ponderous brute went down almost across Sarchedon's feet, with spine and marrow deftly cloven by one lightning stroke from the sharp hunting blade of the Comely King.
Extricating himself from his fallen horse, the Assyrian bowed his forehead to the ground, and kissed his preserver's feet.
"My life is as a prey," said he, "delivered into the hand of my lord the king, who has saved it at the peril of his own. Therefore, in storm and sunshine, peace and war, good and evil, I am his slave for evermore."
Aryas was measuring the dead bull's horn with his bowstring.
"I can get slaves enough for gold," he answered carelessly. "When I venture life, it is to buy a friend."
Sarchedon's voice came very low and hoarse, and in his eyes shone the unaccustomed glitter of tears, while he replied,
"When I fail my lord, may my steed fall, may my bowstring rot, may my javelin splinter, and may the woman I love betray me to another for a measure of barley or a paltry handful of gold!"