But beside the Nisæan pranced another, lighter and with a lighter mount. The rider was cased in silvered scale-armour, and bore only a steel-tipped reed.
“The general’s page,” ran the whisper, and other whispers, far softer, followed. None heard the quick words passed back and forth betwixt the two riders.
“You may be riding to death, Artazostra. What place is a battle for women?”
“What place is the camp for the daughter of Darius, when her husband rides to war? We triumph together; we perish together. It shall be as Mazda decrees.”
Mardonius answered nothing. Long since he had learned the folly of setting his will against that of the masterful princess at his side. And was not victory certain? Was not Artazostra doing even as Semiramis of Nineveh had done of old?
“The army is ready, Excellency,” declared an adjutant, bowing in his saddle.
“Forward, then, but slowly, to await the reconnoitring parties sent toward the Greeks.”
In the gray morning the host wound out of the stockaded camp. The women and grooms called fair wishes after them. The far slopes of Cithæron were reddening. A breeze whistled down the hills. It would disperse the mist. Soon the leader of the scouts came galloping, leaped down and salaamed to the general. “Let my Lord’s liver find peace. All is even as our friends declared. The enemy have in part fled far away. The Athenians halt on a foot-hill of the mountain. The Laconians sit in companies on the ground, waiting their division that will not retreat. Let my Lord charge, and glory waits for Eran!”
Mardonius’s cimeter swung high.
“Forward, all! Mazda fights for us. Bid our allies the Thebans[16] attack the Athenians. Ours is the nobler prey—even the men of Sparta.”