"Knocking that empty head of thine against the wall!" returned the veteran. "I tell ye, my brothers, that of all the wars yet undertaken by the sons of Ashur, this is the most untoward and ill-advised. What said the Great King when he turned back from the Zagros range, taking earth and water of the Men of the Mountain, but refraining to occupy their country? 'I would be lord of all below,' said he, pointing to those snow-whitened hills that mingle with the clouds, 'while I leave to my fathers the dominion of the sky!' He has gone to join them at last; but could he come back to us this night, I tell ye by to-morrow's sunset we should be a day's march on our journey towards home!"
"Then why are we here now?" was asked by two or three voices at once.
The answer came in a grave important tone:
"Because of a treasure within those walls that Semiramis would wage life and empire, and you and me, and the whole might of Ashur to attain. What it is, I know not; if I knew, peradventure I dared not tell. But this I will uphold of the Great Queen, that her lightest wish is to the fixed resolve of another, as a man walking in armour to a maiden washing her feet in a stream."
His listeners nodded approval, and scanning the lofty towers above them, began hazarding many conjectures as to the nature of that possession so coveted by their queen. A strong opinion seemed to prevail that Ardesh contained some illimitable store of spoils hoarded by Armenian kings for ages; and this impression served partly to counteract their general feeling of despondency and disheartening belief in the impregnable strength of the place. The youngest of these men of war spoke the most hopefully.
"I will never admit," said he, "that the might of man can shut out the sons of Ashur under the banner of our Great Queen. A rock is steep. Go to! shall we not cast a bank against it? A wall is thick; shall we not undermine it from beneath? Give me a high curved shield to keep my head, a steel pick, and an iron crowbar; behold, I will sit like a partridge in the barley, and burrow like a coney amongst the rocks."
"So be it," answered the veteran moodily. "The sooner our trumpets sound to the assault the better. I tell thee, man, though the guards still show a goodly front, the hosts of Assyria are wasting and waning day by day, like that river in Egypt I passed over dry shod, like a flagon of Damascus wine, my brother, standing betwixt thee and me."
The archer turned thoughtfully away, walking through the lines with folded hands and head bent down in earnest consideration.
There was food for reflection, even for anxiety and alarm, in the light talk of these careless spearmen. When they touched on her personal weaknesses, her predilection for stalwart warriors, and especially her indomitable strength of will, the queen could not forbear a smile; but it faded into an expression of deeper gravity than was often worn by that bright face, while she pondered on the cost and peril of this adventurous expedition, so wild in its object, so disastrous in its results, confessing to her own heart that its impolicy was as obvious to her meanest followers as to their leader. Had not Assarac himself expressed the same opinion, almost in the same words?—Assarac, to whom she had never given a problem so hard but that he could solve it, a task so difficult, but that, for her sake, it was fulfilled.
Her armies melting away daily, her men of war dispirited and ill-supplied, a strongly-fortified city in front, a barren desert in rear! Not a captain of her host but would have quailed at the prospect, and had he been chief in command, would have commenced a fatal and disorderly retreat.