A Victor of Salamis
you shall have your hands knotted together and a soldier walking behind to
cut your throat at the first sign of treachery.”
Glaucon interpreted the threat. The man did not wince.
“There is no trap. I will guide you.”
That was all they could get him to say.
“And do not the Hellenes know of this mountain path and guard it?”
persisted the bow-bearer.
Ephialtes thought not; at least if they had, they had not told off any
efficient detachment to guard it. Hydarnes cut the matter short by rising
from his stool and casting himself before the king.
“A boon, your Eternity, a boon!”
“What is it?” asked the monarch.
“The Immortals have been disgraced. Twice they have been repulsed with
ignominy. The shame burns hot in their breasts. Suffer them to redeem
their honour. Suffer me to take this man and all the infantry of the Life
Guard, and at dawn the Lord of the World shall see his desire over his
miserable enemies.”
“The words of Hydarnes are good,” added Mardonius, incisively, and Xerxes
beamed and nodded assent.
“Go, scale the mountain with the Immortals and tell this Ephialtes there
await him ten talents and a girdle of honour if the thing goes well; if
ill, let him be flayed alive and his skin be made the head of a
kettledrum.”
The stolid peasant did not blench even at this. Glaucon remained in the
tent, translating and hearing all the details: how Hydarnes was to press
the attack from the rear at early dawn, how Mardonius was to conduct
another onset from the front. At last the general of the guard knelt
before the king for the last time.
“Thus I go forth, Omnipotence, and to-morrow, behold your will upon your
enemies, or behold me never more.”
“I have faithful slaves,” said Xerxes, rising and smiling benignantly upon
the general and the bow-bearer. “Let us disperse, but first let command be
given the Magians to cry all night to Mithra and Tishtrya, and to
sacrifice to them a white horse.”
“Your Majesty always enlists the blessings of heaven for your servants,”
bowed Mardonius, as the company broke up and the king went away to his
inner tent and his concubines. Glaucon lingered until most of the grandees
had gone forth, then the bow-bearer went to him.
“Go back to my tents,” ordered Mardonius; “tell Artazostra and Roxana that
all is well, that Ahura has delivered me from a great strait and restored
me to the king’s favour, and that to-morrow the gate of Hellas will be
opened.”
“You are still bloody and dusty. You have watched all last night and been
in the thick all day,” expostulated the Athenian; “come to the tents with
me and rest.”
The bow-bearer shook his head.
“No rest until to-morrow, and then the rest of victory or a longer one.
Now go; the women are consuming with their care.”
Glaucon wandered back through the long avenues of pavilions. The lights of
innumerable camp-fires, the hum of thousands of voices, the snorting of
horses, the grumbling of camels, the groans of men wounded—all these and
all other sights and sounds from the countless host were lost to him. He
walked on by a kind of animal instinct that took him to Mardonius’s
encampment through the mazes of the canvas city. It was dawning on him
with a terrible clearness that he was become a traitor to Hellas in very
deed. It was one thing to be a passive onlooker of a battle, another to be
a participant in a plot for the ruin of Leonidas. Unless warned betimes
the Spartan king and all who followed him infallibly would be captured or
slaughtered to a man. And he had heard all—the traitor, the discussion,
the design—had even, if without his choice, been partner and helper in the
same. The blood of Leonidas and his men would be on his head. Every curse
the Athenians had heaped on him once unjustly, he would deserve. Now truly
he would be, even in his own mind’s eyes, “Glaucon the Traitor, partner to
the betrayal of Thermopylæ.” The doltish peasant, lured by the great
reward, he might forgive,—himself, the high-born Alcmæonid, never.
From this revery he was shaken by finding himself at the entrance to the
tents of Mardonius. Artazostra and Roxana came to meet him. When he told
of the deliverance of the bow-bearer, he had joy by the light in their
eyes. Roxana had never shone in greater beauty. He spoke of the heat of
the sun, of his throbbing head. The women bathed his forehead with
lavender-water, touching him with their own soft hands. Roxana sang again
to him, a low, crooning song of the fragrant Nile, the lotus bells, the
nodding palms, the perfumed breeze from the desert. Whilst he watched her
through half-closed eyes, the visions of that day of battles left him. He
sat wrapped in a dream world, far from stern realities of men and arms. So
for a while, as he lounged on the divans, following the play of the
torch-light on the face of Roxana as her long fingers plied the strings.
What was it to him if Leonidas fought a losing battle? Was not his
happiness secure—be it in Hellas, or Egypt, or Bactria? He tried to
persuade himself thus. At the end, when he and Roxana stood face to face
for the parting, he violated all Oriental custom, yet he knew her brother
would not be angry. He took her in his arms and gave her kiss for kiss.
Then he went to his own tent to seek rest. But Hypnos did not come for a
long time with his poppies. Once out of the Egyptian’s presence the
haunting terror had returned, “Glaucon the Traitor!” Those three words
were always uppermost. At last, indeed, sleep came and as he slept he
dreamed.
CHAPTER XXI
THE THREE HUNDRED—AND ONE
As Glaucon slept he found himself again in Athens. He was on the familiar
way from the cool wrestling ground of the Academy and walking toward the
city through the suburb of Ceramicus. Just as he came to the three tall
pine trees before the gate, after he had passed the tomb of Solon, behold!
a fair woman stood in the path and looked on him. She was beyond mortal
height and of divine beauty, yet a beauty grave and stern. Her gray eyes
cut to his heart like swords. On her right hand hovered a winged Victory,
on her shoulder rested an owl, at her feet twined a wise serpent, in her
left hand she bore the ægis, the shaggy goat-skin engirt with
snakes—emblem of Zeus’s lightnings. Glaucon knew that she was Athena
Polias, the Warder of Athens, and lifted his hands to adore her. But she
only looked on him in silent anger. Fire seemed leaping from her eyes. The
more Glaucon besought, the more she turned away. Fear possessed him. “Woe
is me,” he trembled, “I have enraged a terrible immortal.” Then suddenly
the woman’s countenance was changed. The ægis, the serpent, the Victory,
all vanished; he saw Hermione before him, beautiful as on the day she ran
to greet him at Eleusis, yet sad as was his last sight of her the moment
he fled from Colonus. Seized with infinite longing, he sprang to her. But
lo! she drifted back as into the air. It was even as when Odysseus
followed the shade of his mother in the shadowy Land of the Dead.
“Yearned he sorely then to clasp her,
Thrice his arms were opened wide:
From his hands so strong, so loving,
Like a dream she seemed to glide,
And away, away she flitted,
Whilst he grasped the empty space,
And a pain shot through him, maddening,
As he strove for her embrace.”
He pursued, she drifted farther, farther. Her face was inexpressibly
sorrowful. And Glaucon knew that she spoke to him.
“I have believed you innocent, though all Athens calls you ‘traitor.’ I
have been true to you, though all men rise up against me. In what manner
have you kept your innocence? Have you had love for another, caresses for
another, kisses for another? How will you prove your loyalty to Athens and
return?”
“Hermione!” Glaucon cried, not in his dream, but quite aloud. He awoke
with a start. Outside the tent sentry was calling to sentry, changing the
watch just before the dawning. It was perfectly plain to him what he must
do. His dream had only given shape to the ferment in his brain, a ferment
never ceasing while his body slept. He must go instantly to the Greek camp
and warn Leonidas. If the Spartan did not trust him, no matter, he had
done his duty. If Leonidas slew him on the spot, again no matter, life
with an eternally gnawing conscience could be bought on too hard terms. He
knew, as though Zeus’s messenger Iris had spoken it, that Hermione had
never believed him guilty, that she had been in all things true to him. He
could never betray her trust.
His head now was clear and calm. He arose, threw on his cloak, and buckled
about his waist a short sword. The Nubian boy that Mardonius had given him
for a body-servant awoke on his mat, and asked wonderingly “whither his
Lordship was going?” Glaucon informed him he must be at the front before
daybreak, and bade him remain behind and disturb no one. But the Athenian
was not to execute his design unhindered. As he passed out of the tent and
into the night, where the morning stars were burning, and where the first
red was creeping upward from the sea, two figures glided forth from the
next pavilion. He knew them and shrank from them. They were Artazostra and
Roxana.
“You go forth early, dearest Prexaspes,” spoke the Egyptian, throwing back
her veil, and even in the starlight he saw the anxious flash of her eyes,
“does the battle join so soon that you take so little sleep?”
“It joins early, lady,” spoke Glaucon, his wits wandering. In the
intensity of his purpose he had not thought of the partings with the
people he must henceforth reckon foes. He was sorely beset, when Roxana
drew near and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Your Greeks will resist terribly,” she spoke. “We women dread the battle
more than you. Yours is the fierce gladness of the combat, ours only the
waiting, the heavy tidings, the sorrow. Therefore Artazostra and I could
not sleep, but have been watching together. You will of course be near
Mardonius my brother. You will guard him from all danger. Leonidas will
resist fearfully when at bay. Ah! what is this?”
In pressing closer she had discovered the Athenian wore no cuirass.
“You will not risk the battle without armour?” was her cry.
“I shall not need it, lady,” answered he, and only half conscious what he
did, stretched forth as if to put her away. Roxana shrank back, grieved
and wondering, but Artazostra seized his arm quickly.
“What is this, Prexaspes? All is not well. Your manner is strange!”
He shook her off, almost savagely.
“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