ve ours. Pray to your Mazda and
Mithra, but we will still trust Zeus of the Thunders and Athena of the
Gray Eyes, the bulwarks of our fathers. And Fate must answer which can
help the best."

The Persians shook their heads. It was time to return to the palace. All
that Glaucon had seen of the Barbarian's might, since awakening in Sardis,
told him Xerxes was indeed destined to go forth conquering and to conquer.
Then the vision of the Acropolis, the temples, the Guardian Goddess,
returned. He banished all disloyal thoughts for the instant. The Prince
walked with his wife, Glaucon with Roxana. He had always thought her
beautiful; she had never seemed so beautiful as now. Did he imagine
whither Mardonius perhaps was leading him?

CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF XERXES THE GOD-KING

At last the lotus-eating ended. Repeated messengers told how Xerxes was
quitting Babylon, was holding a muster in Cappadocia, and now was crossing
Asia Minor toward Sardis. Mardonius and his companions had returned to
that capital. Daily the soldiery poured into Sardis by tens of thousands.
Glaucon knew now it was not a vain boast that for ten years the East had
been arming against Hellas, that the whole power of the twenty satrapies
would be flung as one thunderbolt upon devoted Greece.

In the plain about Sardis a second city was rising, of wicker booths and
gay pavilions. The host grew hourly. Now a band of ebony archers in
leopard skins entered from far Ethiopia, now Bactrian battle-axemen, now
yellow-faced Tartars from the northeast, now bright-turbaned Arabs upon
their swaying camels,--Syrians, Cilicians, black-bearded Assyrians and
Babylonians, thick-lipped Egyptians, came, and many a strange race more.

But the core of the army were the serried files of Aryan horse and
foot,--blond-headed, blue-eyed men, Persians and Medes, veterans of twenty
victories. Their muscles were tempered steel. Their unwearying feet had
tramped many a long parasang. Some were light infantry with wicker shields
and powerful bows, but as many more horsemen in gold-scaled armour and
with desert steeds that flew like Pegasus.

"The finest cavalry in the world!" Mardonius vaunted, and his guest durst
not answer nay.

Satrap after satrap came. When at last a foaming Arab galloping to the
castle proclaimed, "Next morn the Lord of the World will enter Sardis,"
Glaucon could scarce have looked for a greater,