A short, rather stocky man, this Cyrus, with thick, curling hair, a beard more golden-brown than black, and eyes so piercingly brilliant that it was difficult to determine their shade. His face had been tanned to a leathery brown by years of exposure in various climes; but his hands were smooth, shapely, and well-kept. In dress, there was no hint of either soldier or ruler. His head was bound round with a red fillet embroidered in black and gold. His body was clothed in the lightest and simplest of yellowish cotton tunics, narrowly bordered with red. On his feet he wore sandals, and his ankles and calves were bare. Only by his eyes and by the quick decisiveness of his manner could one have guessed that his station was high. And yet, with these two things to go by, few would have failed to select this man out of a hundred others as being indeed Kurush, the king.
Besides the king and his three scribes, there was one other person in the royal tent on this blazing afternoon of the twenty-second of the month Duzu. This was a young man, tall and meagre in body, with a peculiarly long head, a face not wholly devoid of beauty, but with an expression lurking about the lips and eyes that one who loved him would not have cared to analyze. Richly dressed was this youth, much belted, chained, and braceleted with silver and gold, his tunic elaborately embroidered, the very thongs of his sandals wrought with lapis-lazuli and crystals. It was Cambyses, eldest son and heir of the great Cyrus, who thus lay in the presence of his father, sighing out his weariness with the heat, with the campaign, with the lack of fighting, with the length of days—with anything and everything that it came into his head to say, and with that everything twisted into a complaint.
Cyrus, long accustomed to this monotone as an accompaniment to his afternoons of labor, listened to it abstractedly as he continued his letters. The train of thought that could not be disturbed by words, however, was presently broken by a shadow passing the door-way of the tent; and he suddenly looked up, staring at the second scribe, trying to return to his sentence, but able to think of nothing but the last imprecation uttered by his son.
"In the name of Ahura the blessed, Cambyses, get you from my presence till these labors are at an end! Follow Bardiya into the camp, go where you will, but leave me to the letters that must be despatched to-night if there be no word from Gobryas this afternoon."
"May he soon come!" muttered the first scribe; and the second and third, hearing, sighed in unison and wiped the sweat from their dripping brows.
Cambyses had risen and was doubtfully contemplating the prospect of the camp. Cyrus had come back to the subject of his epistle, and the scribe sat with his cuneiform iron poised in the air, when the scene was broken up. A horse, carrying a rider who clung to its bare back like a monkey, one hand twisted in the mane for guidance, came dashing up over the plain from the northwest and stopped at the tent door. The rider leaped to the ground, bending his head slightly before the king, and shouting, in a clear, fresh voice:
"News, my father! News at last! Gobryas with his army is three miles away. He will reach us by nightfall!"
Cyrus sprang to his feet. "How know you this, Bardiya?"
"I have seen them all, spoken with the general, and return to thee as his messenger."