A brazen sun climbed upward on its arch, hung like a keystone over Nineveh, then dipped toward the west; and still Assyria's forces stretched in sight of the high brown walls, a tangle of an hundred nations pressing on at the will of a wounded King. A ball of dull red fire hung low behind the hills; a purple mist came creeping down on Nineveh, and the tail of an army disappeared beyond the river bend. Then Semiramis cast herself upon the palace roof and wept, for in the sob of a rising breeze she seemed to hear the sigh of Dagon and the rush of a carp that dragged her beetle down. It were better far that she should rot in Ascalon than dwell a prisoner at Nineveh, watching, listening, through the dull eternities of night for the footstep of a loved one who came not back to her.
The Assyrian host crawled eastward through the dust and heat, skirting the mountain spurs, and marching through the plains of Media, where an infant nation gave but weak resistance to the progress of the King. For four long moons they journeyed slowly, with many halts, for the ponderous machines of war retarded speed because of their weight and the breaking of axles and of wheels. Up mountain sides they were dragged by ropes attached to cattle and to slaves who held them back from running down the slopes beyond, though anon some heavier cart would sway, careen, and tumble with a rending crash among the stones.
In the van, and guarded by wings of flying horse, went an army of workmen who smoothed the way, hewing wide roads through forestlands, bridging the smaller streams, or constructing barges where rivers needs be crossed. Through desert wastes they laid a track of wood, whereon the wheels of catapults might roll and sink not deeply into the sands; and thus Assyria moved, by force of slow, brute strength, till the slopes of Hindu-Kush were reached and the toil of gods began.
King Ninus might have fretted at the slowness of his pace, yet his wound had healed and his strength came back again; so while his engines and his baggage carts crept slowly along their way, he foraged through the lands, subduing strangers, adding them to his mighty host, or collecting tribute and a store of food against the hungry days of siege. Where peoples were peaceful or stricken with fear before his might, then would he hunt from dawn till the shades of evening fell, though since the day of his going out from Nineveh, Menon joined not in his master's sports, nor dipped his hand in the fleshpots at the royal board; and in the eyes of men this thing was strange.