“Have you found the body also of this crazed Spartan?” he inquired of the cavalry officer who had brought the trophies.
“As you say, Omnipotence,” rejoined the captain, bowing in the saddle.
“Good, then. Let the head be struck off and the trunk fastened on a cross that all may see it. And you, Mardonius,” addressing the bow-bearer, “ride back to the hillock where these madmen made their last stand. If you discover among the corpses any who yet breathe, bring them hither [pg 245]to me, that they may learn the futility of resisting my might.”
The bow-bearer shrugged his shoulders. He loved a fair battle and fair treatment of valiant foes. The dishonouring of the corpse of Leonidas was displeasing to more than one high-minded Aryan nobleman. But the king had spoken, and was to be obeyed. Mardonius rode back to the hillock at the mouth of the pass, where the Hellenes had retired—after their spears were broken and they could resist only with swords, stones, or naked hands—for the final death grip.
The slain Barbarians lay in heaps. The Greeks had been crushed at the end, not in close strife, but by showers of arrows. Mardonius dismounted and went with a few followers among the dead. Plunderers were already at their harpy work of stripping the slain. The bow-bearer chased them angrily away. He oversaw the task which his attendants performed as quickly as possible. Their toil was not quite fruitless. Three or four Thespians were still breathing, a few more of the helots who had attended Leonidas’s Spartans, but not one of the three hundred but seemed dead, and that too with many wounds.
Snofru, Mardonius’s Egyptian body-servant, rose from the ghastly work and grinned with his ivories at his master.
“All the rest are slain, Excellency.”
“You have not searched that pile yonder.”
Snofru and his helpers resumed their toil. Presently the Egyptian dragged from a bloody heap a body, and raised a yell. “Another one—he breathes!”
“There’s life in him. He shall not be left to the crows. Take him forth and lay him with the others that are living.”