"And because of this city," King Ninus cried aloud, "the peoples of every land shall hold my memory till the passing ages rot, for I swear to mount it on a deathless throne and crown it with the splendour of my name! Up, Menon, and journey with thy King to NINEVEH!"
And thus was born that Nineveh which rode astride the world, to fall at last, as falls the pride of power, and find its grave in the dust from whence it sprung--to lie forgotten in a mouldy crypt of dreams, till the peoples who slipped from the womb of another age swarmed forth to dig again--to spell out a kingdom's vanished glories from the symbols of a vanished tongue.
Menon and the King rode down into the valley and across the plain to where the great war-serpent of Assyria began to uncoil itself and crawl toward the west. For the space of a moon the joyless work went on. The camps of horse and foot were struck, the rude utensils and heavier arms being strapped to the backs of beasts of burden, while an hundred thousand chariots were hitched and deployed across the plains. Cumberous engines for the hurling of heavy stones were dragged from beneath the city walls, to be burned and destroyed, or hauled through gaps in the distant mountain range by lowing oxen and toiling, sweating slaves. The warriors set torches to the huts and houses behind their trenches, and a roar of flames was added to the bustling din of moving men-at-arms. Great columns of spark-shot smoke arose, to roll above the city in a suffocating cloud--to choke the defenders who coughed and crowded along the battlements. As each dense mass of besiegers passed, the Bactrianas set up shouts and songs of victory, while they hurled their taunts, together with flights of shafts and stones, at the growling, cursing enemy below.
From day to day the scene was one of turbulence and haste, a jumble of groaning carts and provision trains, of swiftly formed battalions passing westward on the run, to join the vanguard and be lost in a cloud of thick, low-hanging dust. And thus an hundred nations trickled into order through the teeming ruck, each yelling in its native tongue as it flung defiance back at Zariaspa; while above the rumbling tramp of myriads of feet rose the blare of countless signal horns.