CHAPTER XLVII
THE FENCED CITY
"The storm has broke at last," said Aryas, stooping to lift a headless arrow that had fallen at his feet. "If it hail no deadlier missiles than this, there will be little glory in sheltering under buckler and headpiece, behind stone buttress and unbroken wall."
Sarchedon took the arrow from the king's hand.
"Behold," said he, "the feathers are dipped in blood. Such a token is the deadliest of all defiance from my countrymen. My lord the king hath ever measured glory by danger. Trust me, he will have enough of both who holds a fenced city against which the armies of Assyria come up to cast a bank."
"So be it," was the dauntless answer. "The god of our nation hath never failed us yet, and those can scarce refuse to accept the award of battle who worship no other power but that of the naked sword!"
They were standing on the wall of Ardesh, scanning anxiously the lines of the Assyrian camp, which now encircled them. The Comely King had here concentrated all his forces, and the hosts of Semiramis, disappointed, it may be, that they met so little resistance on their march, completely invested the capital of Armenia, where the men of the north had taken their stand, determined to put forth all their strength in a single blow, and finish the struggle once for all.
The Assyrians had surrounded the city by night. At dawn their trumpets sounded about it on all sides, and ere noon the siege had so far commenced, that the headless arrow, formerly dispatched to the Great Queen as a token from Aryas, was shot into his stronghold, to alight at his very feet, wet and stained with blood.
"She is here in person," observed Sarchedon in a low grave voice, while he turned the arrow round and round in his hand. "None of her servants would have dared to send such a messenger as this. It means war to the death, no ransom for the captive, no mercy for the wounded, no burial for the slain."
"Is she, then, so pitiless a conqueror?" asked the Comely King, repressing certain hideous misgivings, that he had undertaken a task beyond his strength, and that not only his own life, which he was always willing enough to wage freely, but the safety of his people and the very existence of his kingdom were in the utmost peril.