CHAPTER XXXVII
THE PERSIAN COMES
The night was deepening. Eëtíon and Dryas, fully armed, stood guard together on the temple platform not far from the Pythia House. Nikander, at their insistence, had gone within the house. He was sleeping, worn out by his anxieties for children and state.
“Do you think,” spoke Dryas in a low voice, “that even now the host may go on toward Athens and leave us out of their march?”
“It is possible,” returned Eëtíon. “The Persians have no time to lose in the direction of Athens. Their marching to Abai is a good sign for Delphi.”
Meanwhile, Delphi was armed for the Medes’ immediate coming. Most of the Precinct guards were stationed at the great gate. The small gates facing the highway had a few men each, but the gates in the back wall were entirely without guard—a pitiful preparation truly for the coming of a hundred myriads of men.
It was a showing forth of the Delphians’ despair. The best they could do was so far short of adequate defence that this seemed nor less nor more.
Suddenly, as the two friends stood there in the night, they saw a glow break on the far heights east of Pleistos Valley, very red and brightening, brightening!
“Look,” said Dryas, between lips which hardly parted. “Eëtíon, that light up there!”
One of the old temple guardsmen approached.
“That will be up Daulis way,” he said. “They’ve set fire to Daulis.”
Neither Dryas nor Eëtíon made comment. They knew only too well what it meant.
The Persians were heading for Delphi! And were now not two hours away!
Dryas hurriedly sent a slave to fetch wine.
“Don’t do that,” advised Eëtíon. “The wine will help you now, but later it will weaken your arm.”
Dryas clapped his hands together in pitiful misery.
“Why don’t you hate me, kick me out for the dog I am? Why did you ever try to save me?”
“Hush, hush,” said Eëtíon. He laid his hand on Dryas’s arm. “Your father must not hear you.”
“Why, Eëtíon! Your hand is cold as ice.”
“Of course it is, foolish boy, do you suppose other men are made of wood and only you feel what must be hid?”
“Oh, Eëtíon, forgive—forgive me,” pleaded the emotional Dryas.
“This inaction now, this waiting,” said Eëtíon soberly, “is the hardest part of the battle. I have not been in battles myself, but old soldiers tell me so. Think, Dryas, you have father, mother, sister to protect. I have no one I can call my own—and no city.”
“Father would give you Theria,” whispered Dryas, “if he could get her free. And oh, Eëtíon, I know he feels that Delphi is your city. I feel that Delphi is your city.”
All night long Dryas had been assailed by a horrible picture of his own death. His highly developed imagination swept the thing through him like a reality. It was a spear-thrust in his side, keen and fatal, the grinning face of a Persian triumphing over him. Dryas tried to think other thoughts, but this thing returned again and again, sometimes with an actual pain where the weapon was thrust in. Dryas could have conquered it but for the fear-producing chant which old Akeretos kept up near the Great Altar.
All night long the old prophet moved to and fro—making sacrifices, trying omens of all sorts, seeing portents where none were, an eerie, aged figure in the starlight with his white beard wagging and his hands lifted on high.
Dawn began to break in the slow beautiful way as if the day were to be all gentleness instead of the most dreadful day these hills had ever known.
At full morning Nikander came out refreshed, to share with Dryas and Eëtíon the morning meal. He was in armour, for Nikander was yet in full fighting strength.
They were eating in silence when Dryas with a cry jumped to his feet.
“Look, look,” he said. “There on the uppermost road!”
The road from Daulis, winding down the distant mountains among the crags, was several times visible and lost again ere it reached Delphi. Now on its highest, farthest stretch the Delphians saw moving spots, like groups of ants, carrying ant burdens. Even as the Delphians were gazing, the spots became a solid mass, which filled the road from end to end of its visible stretch.
They could not tell now that the mass was moving. Simply the road at that point was curiously black.
Dryas’s cry brought Theria from the house. She noted the looks and gestures of the men, then stole over to Eëtíon’s side. The others were too intent to notice what she did.
“What is it?” she asked.
He pointed out the black stretch of distant road and she knew by the horror in his face what it meant.
Eëtíon was not a natural soldier. Only training and Hellas-love had made him such. But now with Theria beside him, the horror in his face changed to iron resolve. Theria hardly recognized him as he turned toward her.
“Theria, there is no chance for Delphi now,” he whispered. “Your father has told me of your hiding place. I shall keep as near to it as I may, but the gods only know whither the battle will thrust me. If I escape, I’ll come to you. I’ll speak outside a pass-word, ‘Hera basileia,’ because Hera is my goddess at home.”
“Yes,” she whispered, clinging to his hand, “but add ‘Paian will care for his own.’”
He could not but catch the hope which lived with her, the peace which her vision had left upon her.
He bent and kissed her, almost believing that they should both be saved.
Only Dryas saw him do it, Dryas, whom Eëtíon had forgotten in this moment of snatched joy, Dryas, whose struggle had now grown so intense that it seemed every moment he must break away. The hills were still there to hide in, so near, so possible a refuge. Was it worth while standing there to be slaughtered? This was no battling for Delphi. It was foolishness. They were all of them fools—fools—fools!
Now Nikander came to him. “Son,” he said reassuringly, “I am thankful you are here.”
Dryas did not answer, for at this moment a low exclamation broke from all the little group at once.
The Persians had emerged on the lower road!
Now could be caught the moving colour of their garments, flashes of bronze, as shields glanced the light, and now a moving bulk of shivering glitter as a host of upright spears advanced.
Nearer, nearer! Well seen now at the foot of Delphi’s own cliffs, well seen at the foot of Phaidriades, well seen below in the Precinct of Athena Forethought in Delphi village!
Pointed caps, huge wicker shields, tall lances, these were the Medes themselves. Behind them, a curious barbarian folk in hooded mantles, and oh, dear Paian, what are these? Men black as ebony, clad in skins of leopard and lion, carrying bows twice as tall as themselves. Some have woolly heads, others have heads not human at all but horse heads, with upright ears and flowing manes. Behind these come tribes and tribes and tribes, greedy, pitiless, devouring.
Look far up the mountain road! Every visible loop is filled back to where it is lost in distance. Oh, Apollon, surely you have forgotten! Son of Leto, you are far off this day, joying among your Olympians. Our Delphi is naught to you!
What happened now can hardly be believed, but it is recorded by the father of history and later writers bear testimony to it.
This had happened time and time again in the past to the hurt of Delphi, why not happen this once to her help? Herodotus says it did happen.
Eëtíon, Dryas, Theria, Nikander heard groan as if the earth, old Gê herself, had spoken. A little bird singing in the laurel bush near by stopped its song and leaped aloft with frightened cries. Then like a wave on the sea-beach the temple platform beneath their feet pitched forward. They saw the wave motion run onward upon the earth, down the glen, and to the farther hillside where the forests received it shivering. The Delphian group on the platform stumbled wildly forward. Old Akeretos fell flat before his altar. The altar itself shook and the Great Temple rocked as if about to begin an elephantine dance.
The earth movement was distinct, outward from Parnassos toward the valley.
Theria, looking up at Phaidriades, saw the cliffs nodding solemnly to each other as if to say: “Ay—so be it.”
Then huge rocks flew hurtling from their summits high overhead and down upon the road, down crashing upon the moving Persian host!
There was a great and bitter cry, death, terror, confusion.
The Persian army fled this way and that. Forward toward the village—downward into the Forethought Precinct where the avenging rocks of Delphi followed them.
Everywhere the mountains sent up clouds and clouds of dust. In the distance upon the distant armies poured down avalanches of earth and rolling stones and dust—more dust!
Of the little group on the temple platform Dryas was the first to get upon his feet.
“Hail, Paian; Alala, Alala!”
He shouted the old Dorian war cry and, waiting not for Eëtíon nor his father, charged down the Sacred Way. His spear was forward-ready; his shield weightless upon his arm. His hair streamed from his helmet upon the wind. He was light-footed as a god. So might Achilles have swept into battle after his days of wrath.
Eëtíon and Nikander, with a score of temple guards, leaped after him. The great gates had already been flung open by the earth’s motion.
“Ai, Ai! look up! Look up. Behold our avenging god!”
It was old Akeretos shouting in a frenzy which Theria had to obey. Her upward glance caught the bronze votive chariot of Gelon just as it toppled from its lofty eyrie in the cliffside. Down it came! Chariot, horses, victor and charioteer, banging on jutting rock and crag with grand clangour, a divine and shattering noise.
“And there happened to the Persians yet greater portents,” says the historian. “Two men in full armour and of stature more than human followed them slaying and pursuing.”
Meanwhile Dryas in the midst of battle knew only that he was struggling amid a sea of men. Persian warriors, who in spite of their terror of the supernatural happenings, fought the pursuing Delphians desperately and tried thus to preserve their fleeing hordes.
Dryas dealt blow after blow, stroke after stroke. Better yet, he received wounds uncaring, and with every wound, every stroke, the gods gave him manhood and courage.
Surely after tasting so sweet a thing as courage he could not ever go back to cowardice. The Nikander in him grew to full stature in these moments.
Oh, heaven! Eëtíon had fallen. Dryas rushed to him, holding over him the shield while he fought. More wounds were here. Then, Paian be praised, Eëtíon struggled to his feet.
Where were they now? Out beyond Delphi, a mile out on the Daulis road and the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Ethiopians in full retreat.
Oh, what was Dryas doing now? Struggling, shouting, brandishing his arms in foolish wildness, while Eëtíon and Nikander adjured him to keep still, that all was past.