“Call me not Prexaspes,” he cried, not in Persian, but in Greek. “I am Glaucon of Athens; as Glaucon I must live, as Glaucon die. No man—not though he desire it—can disown the land that bore him. And if I dreamed I was a Persian, I wake to find myself a Greek. Therefore forget me forever. I go to my own!”
“Prexaspes, my lover,”—Roxana, strong in fear and passion, clung about his girdle, while again Artazostra seized him,—“last night I was in your arms. Last night you kissed me. Are we not to be happy together? What is this you say?”
He stood one instant silent, then shook himself and put them both aside with a marvellous ease.
“Forget my name,” he commanded. “If I have given you sorrow, I repent it. I go to my own. Go you to yours. My place is with Leonidas—to save him, or more like to die with him! Farewell!”
He sprang away from them. He saw Roxana sink upon the ground. He heard Artazostra calling to the horse-boys and the eunuchs,—perhaps she bade them to pursue. Once he looked back, but never twice. He knew the watchwords, and all the sentries let him pass by freely. With a feverish stride he traced the avenues of sleeping tents. Soon he was at the outposts, where strong divisions of Cissian and Babylonian infantrymen were slumbering under arms, ready for the attack the instant the uproar from the rear of the pass told how Hydarnes had completed his circuit. Eos—“Rosy-Fingered Dawn”—was just shimmering above the mist-hung peak of Mt. Telethrius in Eubœa across the bay when Glaucon came to the last Persian outpost. The pickets [pg 234]saluted with their lances, as he went by them, taking him for a high officer on a reconnoissance before the onset. Next he was on the scene of the former battles. He stumbled over riven shields, shattered spear butts, and many times over ghastlier objects—objects yielding and still warm—dead men, awaiting the crows of the morrow. He walked straight on, while the dawn strengthened and the narrow pass sprang into view, betwixt mountain and morass. Then at last a challenge, not in Persian, but in round clear Doric.
“Halt! Who passes?”
Glaucon held up his right hand, and advanced cautiously. Two men in heavy armour approached, and threatened his breast with their lance points.
“Who are you?”
“A friend, a Hellene—my speech tells that. Take me to Leonidas. I’ve a story worth telling.”
“Euge! Master ‘Friend,’ our general can’t be waked for every deserter. We’ll call our decarch.”