But his tortures were not over, his punishment not yet complete. Sitting calmly on her horse, though day was breaking fast, and every instant brought nearer the certainty of a storm of arrows from the wall, Semiramis looked round with a careless smile, like some light-minded dame chattering with her tirewoman.
"What think you, Assarac?" she whispered. "Is he waking yet, this Comely King?—of whose beauty they make such a prate you would suppose he was Shamash, god of day. I would fain see him rise from his couch; for I like well to look on beauty, both of man and beast."
Then she patted Merodach on his swelling neck, sighing and smiling too while she caressed her favourite: the sigh was for memory, the smile for triumph and for hope.
"We shall rouse him to some purpose," answered the eunuch, mastering his emotion bravely. "And the Great Queen shall judge of his beauty for herself, naked and a prisoner, bound at her chariot-wheels."
He spoke firmly, even gaily, as behoved one who had made up his mind for the worst. That day, he resolved, should see the end of all this doubt, and longing, and misery. In the front of battle he would perform such deeds of valour as should force the queen's regard for him, the eunuch, who could thus put to shame her stoutest men of war, or in the ranks of the long swords he would find out the great secret, and start for yonder place, wherever it might be, that Ninus and Sargon, and so many others, had reached long ago.
Semiramis caught up her rein with an exclamation of delight.
"I was sure of it!" she said; "I knew it from the first! They will fight in the plain—they are moving the host down even now. Behold, I can see their archers on the wall! It is time for you and me, Assarac, to prove the mettle of our horses and the surety of their archers' aim."
As she spoke, she urged Merodach to a gallop, while an arrow whistling by her cheek quivered in the ground a spear's length farther on. The good horse only sped the faster, and ere morning had brightened the mountain's crest, Semiramis reached her pavilion, and her trumpets rang gaily out, to set the sons of Ashur in array.