Gobryas bowed, with regret in his attitude.
"And my servants—Nânâ-Babilû, and Sharrukin, the former governor of the city, where are they?"
"O king, they have suffered the fate of the conquered. They alone, out of all Sippar, were killed in defending their palaces."
"They alone," whispered the king to himself, wearily. "They alone? Nay, there was one other—one other faithful servant had I in my kingdom. I pray that Bel—re—ceive—" The old man reeled where he stood. Gobryas sprang quickly forward, catching him before he fell. And as he gazed upon the helpless, innocent face of the fallen king, Gobryas was constrained to wonder a little whether the part he had played in this game of unwarlike war were quite worth the suffering it inflicted upon others.
XVI
BELTI-SHAR-UZZUR
Eight days after the fall of Sippar, the army of the Elamite king lay encamped before Babylon. Not so vast an army, after all, this that had come out of lower Chaldea, after a series of astounding victories, to take the Great City from her king. Less than half a mile from where the gigantic height of Nimitti-Bel shut off the northeast horizon, the tents of Cyrus' army lay scattered over the parched plain. The largest of these, over which hung the royal standard, stood in the centre of the first line of the encampment, where it was most prominent to the eye from the city walls, and in the place of greatest danger in case of a sortie from the city.
Inside of Cyrus' tent, on this third day of the inactive siege, sat the royal commander himself, hard at work. The weather, even to a Babylonian born and bred, was nearly unendurable. To one who had been reared in the hills and had ruled over mountain-built Susa, with her fresh northerly winds and cold torrent streams, the temperature of a Chaldean summer was something to be marvelled at. To-day the conqueror half sat, half lay upon the couch in his tent, dictating letters to three scribes, who bent over their bricks in a steaming row in the door of the tent. Both the manner and the voice of the Achæmenian betrayed his intense fatigue. Nevertheless he kept steadily on, formulating various curious plans for the prosecution of his siege.