CHAPTER XX
GONE TO THE STARS
Bowed in the dust, his heart torn with anguish, as his mantle was rent from hem to hem, Arbaces grovelled on his chamber floor, blind to the shades of coming night, deaf to the sounds of sacred riot and religious festivity that rang through all the city round. He was like a man in a trance; and yet, though such noises were powerless to rouse his faculties, they woke at once to a distant echo, that his practised ear knew for the tramp of an armed party, to a faint familiar music his fighting instincts warned him was the clink of steel.
With one spring he leaped to his feet, snatched spear and shield from the wall, drew his sword-belt tighter round his loins; and so, with prospect of danger and necessity for action, felt he was a man again.
Brave and wary, he ran on to a terrace of his palace which overlooked the court. His heart sank to perceive that it was already filled with spearmen, amongst whom two or three white-robed priests of Baal were conspicuous. Something told him then that his enemies were upon him. Remembering his fidelity to his old warrior lord, and the hostility he had never shrunk from provoking in that monarch's service, he knew, even while he recognised the spearmen as belonging to the queen's army, that some powerful conspiracy was in the ascendant, and he must die. At the same instant came across him the warning that Ishtar had read in his divining cup, under the semblance of blood.
They were in the court; they were crowding to the staircase. The only chance of saving his daughter was to make such a desperate stand before the women's apartments as should give her time to escape by the terrace on the roof to an adjoining dwelling, and thence fly to take refuge. Where? Not in the temple of Baal; not in the palace of Semiramis. No, the last hope of safety must lie under the roof of the Great King.
Most of the retainers were absent, partaking in the festivities of the night. Half a score or so gathered round him on the stairs, and of these he must dispatch one to warn Ishtar that they were assailed.
Even in that anxious moment he remembered how, long ago, he had held a pass in Bactria, though sore out-numbered, and the Great King said it was well and bravely done.
They called on him to surrender. They must search his palace, said their leader—one who had formerly been under his own command, whom he recognised as a bold, remorseless, and desperate man.
"You have no authority," replied Arbaces, eager but to gain time, minute by minute. "I am chief captain of all his hosts, under my lord the king."