MERODACH
The boldest war-horse was never too courageous to wince and tremble at the smell of blood.
A solitary rider speeding across the surface of the desert, smooth, swift, and noiseless, like a bird on the wing, found himself nearly unseated by the violence with which the good horse under him plunged aside in terror, swerving from a low dark object lying in his path. While the startled horseman drew rein to examine it more closely, he scared two sated vultures from their work, the gorged birds hopping lazily and unconcernedly to a few paces' distance. Already the gray streaks of morning were tinged with crimson, as they flushed and widened on the long level of the horizon; and the lion, dead at nightfall, was picked nearly to the bone.
Ere dawn had fairly broke, and long before the gold on bit and bridle-piece caught the first flash of sunrise, the traveller had sped many a furlong on his way, and the vultures had laboured back to continue their loathsome meal. He had been riding the live-long night, yet his good horse seemed neither blown nor wearied; snorting, indeed, in the very wantonness of strength, as he settled down again to his long untiring gallop, and cleared his nostrils from the abomination that had so disturbed him in his career.
"Soh, Merodach!" said his master, "my gentle bold-hearted steed! I never knew you shrink from living foe, be it man or brute; but you would not trample on a dead enemy, would you, my king of horses? Steady then! At this rate we shall see the tower of Belus springing out of the plain, and the black tents by the Well of Palms, before the sun is another spear's length above the sky-line of this half-cooled sand. Steady, my gallant horse! Ah! you are indeed fit to carry him who takes the message of a king!"
Merodach, or Mars, no less sensible of his lord's caresses than he was worthy of the praises lavished on him, arched his crest, shook his head till his ornaments rang again, and increased his speed, for a reply.
He was in truth a rare and unequalled specimen of his kind, the true pure-bred horse of the Asiatic plains. Strong and bold as had been the very lion he was leaving rapidly behind him, beautiful in his rounded symmetry of shape, and so swift that Sarchedon, his rider, was wont to boast only one steed in all the armies of the King of Assyria was able, with a man's weight on his back, to outstrip the wild ass in her native plains, and that steed was Merodach. Horse and rider seemed a pair well matched, as they flung their dancing shadows behind them on the sand. The arms of one and accoutrements of the other shone ablaze with gold in the splendour of the morning sun. Both seemed full of pride, courage, mettle, and endurance, counterparts in strength and beauty, forming when combined the fairest and noblest ideal of the warlike element in creation. So they galloped on, choosing their course as if by instinct, through the trackless waste.
Long before noon a lofty tower seemed to grow, cubit by cubit, out of the horizon. Presently the walls and palaces of a city were seen stretching far on either side along the plain, like a line of white surf on a distant shore. Then strips of verdure, intersecting each other with more frequency, as a network of irrigation filtered the waters of the Euphrates through many a trickling stream, to fertilise the desert in the neighbourhood of Great Babylon. Yet a few more furlongs of those smooth untiring strides; a startled ostrich scudding away on long awkward legs before the wind; a troop of wild asses standing at gaze for a moment, to disappear with snort and whinny, and heels glancing upward through volumes of dust; a fleet gazelle scouring off in one direction, a desert-falcon darting through the sunlight in another; and Sarchedon could already descry that knot of feathery trees, that sprinkling of black tents, that low marble structure of dazzling white, which, under the name of the Well of Palms, afforded a landmark for every thirsty wayfarer journeying to the Great City.
But, except the sea, there is no such fallacious medium through which to estimate distance as the sun-dried atmosphere and unbroken expanse of the desert. Ere they reached those scattered tents and halted at the Well of Palms, neither man nor horse were unwilling to enjoy a moment's respite from their exertions; while the former, at least, was suffering from a protracted thirst, which under those scorching skies made a draught from the desert spring such a cordial, such an elixir, as could not be pressed from the choicest grapes that ever blushed and ripened under the Assyrian sun.
Springing off Merodach's back, his master drew the embossed bit carefully from his favourite's mouth, pressing his head down with a caress towards the water, while he administered, like a true horseman, to the needs of his servant before he slaked his own parched lips, or so much as dipped his hand in the cold, clear, tempting element. But Merodach, though he pointed his ears and neighed joyfully, scarcely wetted his muzzle in the marble basin; thereby affording a proof, had any been wanting, of his celebrated pedigree and stainless purity of breed. His young lord was not so abstemious. He looked about, indeed, for a drinking-vessel; but would have done very well without it, had not a shadow come between him and the sun as he was in the act of stooping to immerse face, lips, and nostrils in the sparkling water. With the ready instinct of one whose trade is war, he sprang erect, but bowed his head again in manly courtesy when he saw a girlish figure bending over him to dip her pitcher in the fountain.