The virgin of the sun

by George Chetwynd Griffith

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I.
A PAGE OF HISTORY

Many months had passed, and many grievous misfortunes had fallen upon the Children of the Sun since Atahuallpa had been done to death in the square of Cajamarca. De Soto and his companions had returned after performing their mission only too well, since they had by fair words and splendid promises convinced the youth and inexperience of Manco that the sole object of the Spaniards and the only wish of their lord and master in Spain was the conquest and punishment of the Usurper and an honourable alliance with the true descendant and lawful heir of the ancient line of Huayna-Capac.

No sooner had this end been attained by the wily conquerors than it produced just that result which they expected. The nobles of Quito, enraged at the death of their prince and the collapse of their dream of universal empire, at once asserted their independence of Cuzco, and even persuaded the old chieftain Quiz-Quiz to forget his promises to Manco and undertake single-handed the tremendous task of driving the victorious invaders back over the mountains and into the sea whence they came.

Such falsehood and treachery on the part of a warrior so well proved is but one of many incomprehensible incidents in this most wonderful of all conquests. At every step the student of this last dark period of the history of the Incas is confronted and bewildered by events which, according to European ideas, ought never to have happened. At one time he sees the Inca princes and nobles acting like warriors and statesmen, at others like children and cowards. No doubt it would be possible to find many plausible reasons for their extraordinary conduct, but to seek and find such is the business of the philosophical historian. The romancer has nothing to do with them.

The first result of the secession of the army of Quito was the arrest of Challcuchima by the Spaniards after they had invited him as a guest to Cajamarca to be present at the obsequies of his murdered master. They then compelled him to accompany them on their triumphal march to Cuzco, whither they set out some five hundred strong, inflamed to intoxication by the splendid accounts of the incredible wealth of the city which had been brought back by de Soto and his companions.

On the road Quiz-Quiz with his own forces and those that had been Challcuchima’s beset the advancing conquerors at all the most difficult points on the way, and more than once came near to overwhelming them, but again and again the courage and discipline of the Spaniards, aided by their irresistible weapons, triumphed over all difficulties and dangers, though not without considerable cost both in men and horses, till at last in a great battle on the plain of Jauja the army of Quito was cut to pieces and scattered in fragments over the mountains. These fragments gradually came together again, and Quiz-Quiz led them back to Quito, and there at length his treachery was rewarded by a miserable death under the knives and spears of his own mutinous soldiers.

The Spaniards lost no time in turning this victory to the best advantage, and to the speedy clearing of their own road to universal dominion. Immediately after the battle Pizarro sent an embassy to Cuzco informing Manco of the defeat and dispersal of the rebels, and greeting him as Inca and lord of the whole land. At the same time he accused Challcuchima of treasonable correspondence with Quiz-Quiz during the march, and of attempting to lead the Spanish forces into an ambush. Like his master, he was convicted before he was judged, and the Captain-General, to the anger of de Soto and all the better minded of the cavaliers, condemned him to die by fire at the stake. The old warrior met his fate as became a prince and a soldier. Up to the last moment before the torch was applied to the fagots which his own countrymen piled round him, Valverde sought to do with him as he had done with Atahuallpa; but the brother of Huayna-Capac was made of sterner stuff than his son. His last words were—

“I do not understand the religion of the white men. They come with words of peace and kindness on their lips, and with their hands they do deeds of violence and cruelty and treachery. My place is waiting for me in the Mansions of the Sun. Let me go quickly back into the presence of my Father.”

And so he died, unmoved by the torment of the flames, and with the name of his ancient deity upon his lips. Only one of the great chieftains of the nation was now left, old Ruminavi, or Stony-face, of whom more hereafter.

The embassy to Manco bore speedy fruit, for while the Spanish army was resting in the verdant plain of Jauja the young Inca returned with it in brilliant state to thank Pizarro for his destruction of the Usurper and his rebel force, and to enter into a formal alliance with him. The wily Spaniard received him with open arms and all honour. The troops who were really his conquerors were drawn up to receive him as though he had really been a sovereign and independent prince, and the guns which had wrought such havoc in the ranks of his countrymen woke the echoes of the guardian hills of Jauja with salutes in his honour.

The united forces then returned to Cuzco, and here Manco-Capac, in the capital of his ancestors, was proclaimed and crowned Inca with all the stately ceremonial that had been practised of yore. The Spaniards formed his guard of honour, and did homage with his own nobles, but there was one difference. Instead of taking the imperial borla from the hands of Anda-Huillac, the Villac-Umu, High Priest of the Sun, he received it from the hands of him who was in fact Viceroy of the Spanish Emperor and now doubly his own conqueror.

After this had been done, and the sovereignty of Charles V. had been proclaimed at sound of trumpet in the Metropolis of the Inca’s, Pizarro’s brother Hernando returned from his mission to Spain, bringing with him the King’s patent appointing the Conqueror Governor of the country covered by his conquests, and raising him to the rank of Marquis, thus making the base-born adventurer a grandee of Spain.

But Hernando also brought less welcome tidings of other armies of adventurers steering for the golden shores of El-Dorado. Alvarado, one of the bravest of the captains of Cortez, had already landed, others were coming, and it behoved him to see to his position. Worse than all, when Hernando arrived in Peru from Panama, it was found that the Emperor had given Almagro permission to conquer the country to the south of Pizarro’s territory for a distance of two hundred leagues, and rule over it independently. The fatal upshot of this was that Almagro and his men at once took their revenge for what they had considered the unfair distribution of the spoils at Cajamarca by taking advantage of the imperfect measurements of the country and claiming that Cuzco fell outside the jurisdiction of Pizarro, and therefore within that of Almagro.

Thus, by the strange decrees of Fate, it came about that the City of the Sun, the chief and richest prize of their incredible labours and astonishing triumphs, first became the object of the bitter dispute between the two factions of the Conquerors, which speedily grew from personal quarrel into civil war, during which the former friends and allies turned their weapons upon each other, and in the end overwhelmed in mutual disaster for themselves the great enterprise which they had begun so brilliantly.

For the time being, however, the dispute was healed, and the two ancient comrades, who so many years before in far-away Panama had dreamed the golden dream of El-Dorado, took a solemn oath on the Sacrament in the very capital of El-Dorado itself that all quarrels should be forgotten, and that both should work henceforth loyally together for the glory of the crown of Spain and the spread of the true Faith. This being done, Pizarro set out for the coast to found that City of Kings, which is now called Lima, and which was for more than two centuries the most splendid city on the southern continent of America, while Almagro made ready to start southward to the conquest of his new dominions: and it is at this juncture in the fortunes of the conquerors and the conquered that the curtain rises upon the last act of the tragedy which began in the City of the Great Ravine.

CHAPTER II.
NAHUA’S OATH

It was after sunset one day early in the year 1535, and the young Inca Manco, the titular ruler of the Land of the Four Regions, was sitting moody and disconsolate in a chair, whose framework was carved out of massive silver, in a small apartment of the palace of the Inca-Rocca, which stood on an ample terrace about half-way up the slope leading to the great fortress of the Sacsahuaman, and which had been assigned to him as a residence by those whom he had now learnt to recognise were not his allies but his masters. A thousand trifles, and one fact that was anything but a trifle, had at last brought the bitter truth home to him. All the fair promises of the Spaniards had been lies. If they had overthrown the Usurper it had been only to help themselves, not him. He was no more sovereign here in the city of his fathers than Atahuallpa had been in captivity at Cajamarca.

After the fair seeming ceremony of his establishment there had been feasting and dancing and revelry, for the lighthearted, childlike people had believed as honestly as he had done in the sincerity and friendliness of the Strangers. But then had come the rude awakening. The Spaniards had appointed their own officers over the city; their priests had carried a new worship into the temples sacred to the Sun; the soldiers, in spite of their General’s own strict command, had plundered both palaces and temples of their treasures, and, worse than all, they had broken open the great House of the Virgins and the other convents about the city and had inflicted the foulest indignities upon their innocent dwellers. He had himself once sought to escape from the hideous thraldom of this royal mockery with Nahua, his one beloved, and of so little account did the Spaniards hold him that he was allowed to go unnoticed, and they would have escaped to the friendly shelter of the mountains had it not been that Talambo, the chieftain of the Cañaris, a northern tribe which had revolted from the rule of Atahuallpa and joined the invaders, went to Almagro and persuaded him that he had gone to join Ruminavi and bring all the remaining hosts of Peru in an irresistible swarm down upon the devoted city, and this had led to his being pursued and brought back to be thrown into prison like a common malefactor.

The coming of Hernando Pizarro to take command of the city in place of Almagro had led to his release and his restoration to the pretence of royalty. But now the iron had entered into his soul and he knew himself for what he was, a captive and a slave, a puppet dressed in the robes of sovereignty whose business it was to dance at his master’s orders for the delusion of his own people.

Nearly half an hour had passed in his sombre reverie when suddenly the vision of Atahuallpa, bound to the stake and surrounded by these pitiless Strangers, seemed to rise before his view as it had been told to him by many of those who had stood round the square of Cajamarca on that fatal night. Then he saw the morning light breaking over the circle of devoted women lying dead, slain by their own hands, round the stake, and among them the Princess Pillcu-Cica, his own half-sister. He remembered her in the old days at Quito as the friend and playmate of Nahua, and then suddenly again the picture before his half-dreaming eyes changed and he saw himself bound to such a stake with Nahua lying lifeless at his feet.

It needed no more to stir the latent heroism in his soul to revolt. He sprang from his seat, nerved by a sudden impulse of almost despairing anger, and snatching the fringed diadem from his brow he dashed it to the ground, and at the very moment that he did so the heavy curtains that covered the doorway were drawn apart and his uncle Anda-Huillac entered with bowed head and slow steps, followed by Mama-Oello, his mother, the sister-wife and Coya of Huayna-Capac, and Nahua.

When the high priest had given him the customary greetings, his eyes fell upon the borla lying on the floor, then he raised them and looked at the young Inca, and said—

“It is the first time, Lord, that the crown of the Four Regions has lain where it might be trampled underfoot, yet I call our Father the Sun to witness that I would rather see it there—ay, I would rather see it spurned by the foot of the merest slave in Cuzco—than on thy brow.”

“Because that brow is not worthy to wear it? Is that so, brother of my father?” exclaimed Manco, turning half angrily and half reproachfully upon him.

“Not so, Lord,” replied the old priest, “since I for one believe that if the true spirit of the great Huayna yet burns in the breast of any of the Children of the Sun it burns in thine. It is the crown that is not worthy of the brow since it was placed on it by the hand of the Stranger and the Unbeliever.”

“And the conqueror. Forget not that Anda-Huillac,” the young Inca added, clasping his hands behind his back and looking down upon the discarded crown.

“Conqueror until now only, my son and my Lord,” said Mama-Oello, coming forward and laying her hand lightly upon his arm, “and conquerors only because the Usurper had split the power of the land in twain and set one half of it against the other. Had there been but one Lord over the Four Regions, and had all our armies been united under such a rule as his whose love was my joy and my honour, then these few Strangers, despite their strange weapons and terrible war-beasts, would have been but as feeble reeds in a rushing torrent, to have stood perchance for a while and then fall overwhelmed. My son, is there no hand in all the Four Regions that can draw together what the hands of Atahuallpa parted? Is there no heart whose valour can fire the thousands who yet remain faithful to us with the high resolve to win back what is lost, and to overwhelm these cruel Strangers in the midst of the ruin that they have brought upon us? If there is such a hand and such a heart left in all the Four Regions, surely they shall be thine, my son.”

“Why have you come to tell me this now?” said Manco, turning almost roughly upon her. “Have you waited till I am something worse than a slave, powerless and a captive, degraded before the eyes of my people and accursed in my own? See, there lies the borla which I may never wear again. I am sick of pretence. Henceforth I will be and seem what I am. Oh, Nahua, Nahua, wisest and dearest of my counsellors, what evil spirit stopped my ears to the wisdom of your counsels and opened them to the smooth-spoken lies of these accursed strangers? But why do you three come to me now, now when it is too late?”

“Because it is not yet too late, Lord,” replied Anda-Huillac, motioning to Nahua to be silent till he had spoken, “and because while thou hast been brooding here in thy captivity, since it is nothing else, over the misfortunes of thy people two of the vilest outrages that could have befallen them and thee have this day come to pass.”

“What are they?” said Manco, looking gloomily at him. “What worse can befall the Children of the Sun or him who should be their lawful Lord?”

“My Lord knows,” replied Anda-Huillac solemnly, “that these impious Strangers have already despoiled the House of the Sun of its most sacred treasures. At noon to-day they robbed it even of its holiness, and dedicated it to the worship of their own gods. To-day, too, the common soldiers of the Strangers forced their way for the third time into the House of the Virgins, penetrating this time into its most secret and holiest place, and by order of the same four who came to thee many moons ago as friendly envoys, rifled it of its last priceless treasure, and at this moment the Princess Lalla-Cica and her sisters, fairest save one of the Virgins of the Sun, are the slaves and playthings of these false-tongued and black-hearted Strangers whom we have welcomed as friends only to know them as enemies and oppressors.”

No other tidings could have carried such shame and horror to the heart of a true Son of the Sun as these, and as he heard them Manco staggered back, and the red blood faded out of his cheeks leaving them a dull greyish brown. The Temple of the Sun was the last spot left undefiled in all the land, and the maidens who had been torn from the most sacred recesses of the House of the Virgins were, saving only Nahua herself, the pick and flower of the royal race that had been destined, according to the custom of the land, for the Inca’s own harem. How black was the insult and how deep was the injury may be guessed from the fact that the Temple of the Sun was looked upon as the actual first dwelling-place of the Divine founders of the Inca race, and that not even the vestal virgins of Rome were held in higher honour or guarded more jealously than were the Virgins of the Sun.

There was a little silence in the room before Manco spoke again. Nothing, not even his own captivity, could have shown him how far he and his race had fallen from almost unearthly splendour, or how utterly the imperial fabric which his ancestors had reared, had crumbled into fragments at the touch of these strange and terrible invaders. Then his eyes fell on the fair face and graceful form of Nahua and a new ray of hope seemed to shine through the gathering gloom of his despair. Brushing past his mother and Anda-Huillac he took two quick strides towards her holding out both his hands, and said in a voice that shook with the strength of his mingled sorrow and passion—

“All is lost, and yet not all whilst thou art left to me, my Nahua. If the Children of the Sun are false to their gods and themselves, if they give the land into the hands of the Strangers by fighting for it among themselves, is there not many a remote and unknown valley hidden away among our eternal mountains to which thou mayst fly with me and with a remnant of our people who may remain faithful? The land from the sea stretches away for ever so they tell me. Can we not escape out of this prison-house and in some far distant land, where these accursed Strangers can never follow us, found another empire and a new line of royal Incas?”

To his amazement Nahua drew herself up and shrank back for the first time from his proffered embrace, and as he stopped short and stared wide-eyed at her she said with distant and yet gentle dignity—

“My Lord has offered me the greatest honour that can befall a Daughter of the Sun. He has asked me to be not only his wife but his Coya and queen. He has the power to make me his slave, even as these brutal Strangers have made Lalla-Cica and her sisters their slaves. But by the Ancient Law he cannot make me his queen without my full and free consent, and his queen I will never be until he has taken that which is his own again. Not from the hands of the Strangers as he took this dishonoured diadem, but that which he shall have won in battle by the strength of his own right hand, and by the right hands of those who shall still bow faithful to him and the memory of his fathers. It is not that I love you less, my Lord,” she went on in a gentler tone, “for that would be impossible. It is that I love your honour and that of our ancient race more than life itself. Your slave I may be at your will, but—by the glory of our Father the Sun, by the unspeakable might and majesty of the Unnameable, I swear it—your wife and queen I will never be till I can take my lawful place beside you to rule over a people that is free!”

“And free it shall be!” cried Manco, roused by her words to all his old enthusiasm. “That holy oath which thou hast taken I take too. As thou hast sworn, so will I swear never to claim thee for my queen till I can set a worthy diadem upon thy brow. I will find a means of escape and this time I will not be caught. Ruminavi is still free and I will find him, and with him I will either win back what is lost, or thou shalt find me waiting for thee in the Mansions of the Sun. Surely there must be some way of escape even now.”

“There is, Lord, for we have found one for thee,” she said, her eyes suddenly filling with tears, and her voice broken by a sob which she tried in vain to repress. “But of that Anda-Huillac can tell thee better than I. Farewell, my Lord and my love—farewell!”

So saying she clasped her hands to her eyes, and before the Inca could make a motion to stop her or even say a word to call her back, she had fled swiftly and silently from the room.

CHAPTER III.
THE HOUR OF TRIAL

“Why has she gone? Why has she spoken to me in such a manner? It is the first time that her lips have ever spoken any but loving words to me. What is this new trouble that is about to fall upon me? Tell me quickly,” said Manco, turning almost angrily to the high priest.

“Lord,” replied the old man, bending his head humbly before him and yet speaking in strong and steady tone, “the meaning of it is this. The Princess Nahua, frail and tender though she may be in body, has a soul as strong and steadfast as any of the heroines of our ancient race. Nay, I will say that if the men of her race, the princes and warriors of the Sacred Blood, had had such wisdom and such steadfastness as hers the armed foot of the Stranger would not now be on our necks, nor would our most sacred things be the sport of his greed and his lust.”

While he was speaking Manco had looked at him first in angry surprise and then with something very like shame. The blood began to glow red in his bronzed cheeks, and he even hung his head somewhat as he said—

“It is an evil time for reproaches, Anda-Huillac. I have erred in judgment and I have been deceived, but neither the Usurper nor the Stranger has yet seen my back in battle, and the dearest wish of my soul is to be once more with Ruminavi at the head of our warriors, so that, if I could not win back what is lost, I might at least die as becomes my Blood in the strife for it. I have no care for this thing, dishonoured as it is by the touch of the Stranger!” he went on, kicking the borla into a corner of the room. “My only longing is now to fight and die as a simple Inca warrior. I long for battle with an even greater passion than I long for Nahua herself. Her words were bitter but true. What right has a king to claim his queen when he is crownless and throneless?”

“It is of that that she spoke, Lord——”

“Call me not Lord again,” the young Inca interrupted passionately. “It is not I who am Lord here. It is the Stranger. Call me Manco-Capac, since my name and its holy memories are all that our conquerors and plunderers have left me. Now say on.”

“The name of the Divine One is a better and prouder one now than any name of rank,” replied Anda-Huillac, bowing his head at the mention of it, “and therefore I will call thee Manco-Capac and tell thee that thy worthy wish may yet be gratified though the sacrifice may be great. Briefly, then, the matter stands thus: When our Father first looked upon his sorrowing children this morning the Princess Nahua came to me with the queen, thy mother. They had been taking counsel together, and the Princess Nahua, well knowing that the last hopes of the Children of the Sun rest now upon thee, swore upon the sacred emblems of the Sun an oath that may not be recalled, that since the land demands a sacrifice, that sacrifice shall be herself if needs be.”

“What? Nahua?” cried the young Inca, springing from the chair into which he had thrown himself after he had bidden the priest call him Lord no longer. “What? The purest and the holiest thing that is left in the land. It is impossible! The gods could not accept it, and, as for me, I would die first—ay, even as Atahuallpa did.”

“There is but that choice and another before thee, O my son and Son of him who was my Lord,” said the queen, suddenly drawing herself up to her full height and stretching her arms out towards him. “For thee it is escape and then either victory or a death worthy of thy father’s son. That is one choice. The other is captivity, dishonour to thee and all thy House, and such a death of shame as would make thy name unworthy to be spoken hereafter even by the lips of slaves. We know thy love and Nahua’s. She has chosen the chance of death for herself rather than the certainty of shame for thee, and she has consecrated her choice by an oath that may not be broken. Wilt thou do less, bearer of the Divine name and last hope of the Children of the Sun?”

“No, I will not. The choice is bitter, yet I thank thee, mother and queen, that thou hast shown me the only path that my feet can tread with honour. Now, Anda-Huillac, say on and tell me the plan. I will listen patiently and will say no more till I tell thee that, however desperate it may be and however bitter the cost, I will dare the venture. By the glory of our Father the Sun and the holiness of that which may not be named, I, Manco-Capac, swear it.”

As he ceased speaking he made with his lips the silent sign indicating the name of the Unnameable. Then, taking his mother by the hand, he led her to the seat he had just risen from, and, turning to Anda-Huillac, waited in silence for him to begin.

“My son,” he began, speaking now with an air of authority befitting not the subject of a fallen prince but as the chief priest of a pure and ancient faith and the lawful pontiff of the land, “that oath of thine has already been heard in the Mansions of the Sun and carried joy to the hearts of all the kings and heroes who have gone before thee. Now what is to be done is this.

“Thou knowest that these Spaniards have but two passions in life—greed and lust, and that their greed is greater than their lust. So great is it, indeed, that not all the treasures they have torn from our temples and our homes have satisfied it. Nay, they have rather increased it. Thou knowest also that for many days past thou hast been seeking with us and the remnant of the House of Nobles to persuade this Hernando Pizarro, who is now our master and thy gaoler, to let thee go to Yucay and there ransom thyself with great treasures whose hiding-place is now known only to thee, the last of the royal line. This he has so far refused, but now his soldiers have been clamouring for more treasures, and more especially those who have lost all they had by gaming to their companions. We have taken care that stories of this great treasure at Yucay should be well spread among them, and they have demanded that it shall be found and shared as the other was, and to this Hernando Pizarro, driven by his own greed and the fear of a revolt among the soldiers of the chief they call Almagro, has at last consented, but he has made hard terms, and these must of necessity be agreed to.”

The Inca raised his eyes quickly and made as though he would speak, but he remembered his promise and closed his lips again.

“The terms are these,” the high priest continued in a low, sad tone that told Manco only too clearly what was coming. “In the first place a guard of his own men mounted on their war-beasts are to go with thee, and if the treasure is not found they are to slay thee. But so great are their fears of being surrounded in the city and cut off by our armies, and so much greater are their fears and jealousies of each other, that only a very few will be spared, and these Ruminavi will be ready to deal with at the proper time and place. But the second condition is harder than this. It is that thy mother the queen and the Princess Nahua shall give themselves up into his hands to be dealt with as he may see fit shouldst thou not return. Thou wilt not return, son of Huayna-Capac, for thou hast already sworn the oath that may not be broken. They too have sworn it, and so, whatever may befall, thy feet have but one path to tread, and that path lies hence to Yucay. Now, Manco-Capac, I have spoken, and it is for thee to remember thy name and blood and rank.”

While Anda-Huillac had been saying these last words the blood had left Manco’s cheeks and the pale bronze of his skin had turned to a sickly yellow grey. His eyes, opened to their widest extent, showed the white all round the black, gleaming eyeballs. His white, strong teeth were clenched, and his lips, drawn back from them, gave them almost the appearance of a wild animal’s fangs. The countenance which was wont to look so kingly and noble now looked horrible. It was like the face of a corpse with living eyes glaring out of it.

Mama-Oello uttered a cry of terror and, rising from her seat, flung herself weeping on his breast and moaning that he was already dying. The touch of her hand and the sound of her voice recalled its wonted strength to the manhood which had staggered under the stroke of these terrible tidings. The life came back to his features and motion to his limbs as he returned her embrace. For a few brief moments of weakness he mingled his tears with hers, and then, drawing himself up, he put her gently but firmly away from him. As he did so he saw her reel. In an instant he had her in his arms and had laid her on a couch which stood against one of the walls. Then, drawing himself up again, he faced Anda-Huillac and said in a hard, dry, unnatural voice which the high priest hardly recognised as his—

“If the frail daughters of our Father can dare so greatly, is there anything that his sons should not dare? Come, Anda-Huillac, I have looked my last on those I love. To look upon them again might make a craven of me even now. Henceforth I am no longer a man. I will tear out of my heart every human passion save hate and revenge, and the oath that I have sworn I repeat once more, that it may bind me never, so long as my arm can strike a blow, to spare a Spanish man, woman, or child whose life it is given me to take, and as He who sees all things knows the righteousness of my vengeance, so may He help me to take it! Now let us go to this Spanish butcher and tell him lies like his own, and then may the gods grant that I may never look upon his face again until the hour in which I shall ask his innocent victims’ blood at his hands! Come, let us go, for the sooner this thing is done the better.”

And so saying, and without even one backward look at the prostrate form on the couch, he gripped the high priest by the arm and almost dragged him out of the chamber.

CHAPTER IV.
A GENTLEMAN OF SPAIN

That night, soon after sunset, a body of five cavaliers, preceded and followed by a score of native auxiliaries of the Cañaris tribe, left the city by the causeway leading to the north-west across the Sierras in the direction of the lovely valley of Yucay—once the scene of the gorgeous revels of a long line of absolute monarchs, and now the mustering-ground of the last of their armies.

Four of the cavaliers were old acquaintances, Hernando de Soto, Pedro de Candia, Sebastian ben-Alcazar, and Alonso de Molina. The moment that they had heard of the terms that Hernando Pizarro had made with the Inca they had gone to him and not only volunteered themselves for the service, but had practically demanded that it should be entrusted to them and to no others. They had asserted that, after the Pizarros themselves, they stood highest in rank and honour in the old army of the Conquerors, that Almagro’s men were not to be trusted since they had shown themselves traitors already to the Governor by supporting their leader in his claim to a part of his territory, and that if they once set eyes on the treasure they would be quite capable of murdering the Inca and claiming that they had themselves discovered the gold, in which case their comrades in Cuzco would be certain to insist on the lion’s share of it, if not indeed the whole, saving only the royal fifth.

Hernando Pizarro, who, according to the chroniclers of the Conquest, always seemed to have been more kindly disposed towards the conquered people than any other of the Spanish leaders—which, after all, is not saying very much—had seen the force of this logic and consented, and he had also consented, after some further persuasion, to permit Alonso de Molina to lend the Inca one of his chargers, so that he might be spared the indignity of going on foot among the native guards.

Thus it had come about that the fifth cavalier was Manco himself, and he sat his horse as firmly and easily as any of the Spaniards; for, like the rest of the royal youth of Peru, he had been trained to hardy exercises almost from the time that he could walk, and ever since he had made what he had believed to be his alliance with Pizarro on the plain of Jauja, the four envoys who had come first into the City of the Sun had taken a delight in teaching him horsemanship and the better use of the Spanish arms in return for the kindness that he had shown to their lost and destitute countrymen, José Valdez and his comrade Alonzo de Avila.

When they were well out of the City and beyond the farthest outposts which had been placed on the slopes of the hills to guard against surprise, Manco, who was riding in the midst of the four cavaliers, saw a movement among them which at first sight seemed to betoken treachery. They pulled aside a little, allowing him to ride on alone between them and the advance guard of Indians, and then he heard them whispering in the still night together.

Perhaps to disarm his suspicions, but more probably on the representations of his guards, he had been allowed to wear his own arms and armour. José Valdez’ sword hung at his side, a good steel battle-axe was hooked on to his saddle-bow, and a long, keen dagger rested in its sheath at his right hand. His armour, too, was as perfect as that of any of the Spanish cavaliers, and so he was well prepared, if not to guard his life from attack, at least to sell it dearly. Presently he heard de Soto say aloud—

“Go to, Molina. Thou art the man to say and do it. Who better? Who else in the army hath a smoother tongue and a readier wit than thine? Thou art the lover too and the hero of thine own plot. Go on, man, and have no fear for us. We will keep well out of earshot. All the blame and all the glory shall be thine, though if there be danger afterwards thou shalt not find us lacking.”

Then the Inca heard the canter of hoofs behind him. His right hand instantly closed on the haft of his battle-axe; as he turned half round in the saddle he saw Alonso de Molina coming up on his left-hand side.

Instead of the sword-thrust or axe-stroke that he half expected there came a light, good-humoured laugh, and as the young cavalier reined his horse up alongside his he threw up his unarmed right hand and said—

“Nay, nay, your Majesty, it is well for a good soldier to be ever on his guard, more especially against those who come from behind, but thou art not now with Almagro’s men, but with true knights of Spain, who do not tempt a friend out into the open that they may fall on him four to one, so hook on thine axe again and listen to me, for I have something of moment to tell thee for myself and my comrades yonder.”

Manco, whose heart was too sore and whose soul was too utterly steeped in gloom and filled with hatred of all things Spanish to recognise the ring of truth and honesty that there was in Molina’s voice, laughed bitterly as he put his battle-axe back and said—

“Majesty and friend! Those words have a strange sound in my ears from one of those who are my conquerors and enemies. As I am now I would rather have a straight thrust than a crooked word. So far I have had nothing but fair promises and foul lies from your people, even as the Usurper himself had. What better am I to expect from you, Don Molina?”

“All that one brave man may expect from another, Señor Manco,” replied de Molina a little more gravely; “and more than some in thy position might have reason to hope for, even from honest enemies.”

“How can one such as I believe that those who came to me as friends can now be honest or honourable enemies? I and my people are not accustomed to believe those whose lips say one thing and whose hands do another. That is an art which the Children of the Sun have not yet learnt.”

“The rebuke is a just one!” replied de Molina, slightly bowing his head, and as the Inca turned sharply round he fancied he saw, even by the starlight, a deeper flush on the young cavalier’s sunburnt cheeks. “Yes,” he went on, “it is true that there is much to be laid to our charge in that respect, but your Highness must remember that guile was ever the weapon of the weak. What else were we when we first came here, a few score among multitudes?”

“Can a full-armed man be weak among a multitude of children who have no arms to hurt him? Would a god armed with the Llapa and guarded by impenetrable armour be weak among a host of men? If that is so, then you were weak among the hosts of the Children of the Sun.”

“That is true again in a measure, Inca,” replied de Molina, “and, more than that, I grant that we have not used the strength that our better knowledge has given us fairly or honourably against you, but that is a matter for our leaders, not for us. And yet,” he went on, lowering his voice and bringing his horse a little nearer to Manco’s, “not all the guile has been or is on our part. What of this treasure at Yucay? What of the thousands of men who are swarming in the passes and above the mountain roads we shall have to traverse? What of the rocks that are even now being poised ready to hurl down without warning upon us? What of the captured Spanish arms and armour already in Ruminavi’s possession——”

“You have said enough, Don Molina,” interrupted Manco in cold, steady tones. “I see that I have been betrayed, and the great price that has been paid for this, my last hope of freedom, has, like Atahuallpa’s ransom, been paid in vain. Well, you yourselves are four to one, and these barbarians are your slaves, but I at least can die as the last of my race should do.”

He never raised his voice, nor was there a trace of passion in his tone, but as he said these last words he drove the spurs into his horse’s flanks and swung him sharply round to the left, striking de Molina’s heavily on the forequarter and throwing it back on to its haunches, then he leapt him forward and wheeled again, and confronted the troop with battle-axe swung aloft. He knew that escape was hopeless for the hillside along the road sloped sharply upwards, and the Cañaris were already spreading before and behind to cut off his retreat. He believed that the plot had been discovered and that all was lost, and his only hope was to die fighting, and not as a captive. He had gained a little ’vantage ground up the hillside, and in another moment he would have charged the four Spanish cavaliers, and then to his utter amazement they all burst into a hearty laugh, and de Molina, who had been almost unseated by the violence of the shock, rode towards him with his right hand outstretched, and saying between his laughs—

“Santiago, Señor Inca! it seems that thou art made of different stuff to him whom we strangled down in Cajamarca yonder. A gallant foe may make a good friend. You and I may be foes hereafter, but for the present we will be friends. Come, come, I meant no harm by my words, however evil they may have sounded. If I had done it would have fared ill with thee by now, in spite of all thy valour. Come, let us ride on as friends, at least to our journey’s end. We love thee none the less for choosing as thou hast done the death of a brave man, and it has made us the more determined to serve thee as we set out to do. Come back, ere these heathen dogs do thee some damage.”

Manco was himself too honest and brave a man not to feel instinctively that de Molina’s words were sincere, and he was too good a warrior not to know that if the four Spaniards had been so minded they could by this time have flung him from the saddle and trampled the life out of him under their silver-shod horses’ hoofs. Yet their laugh and Alonso de Molina’s words not a little bewildered him, and as he put back his battle-axe he answered in some confusion—

“What does this mean, Señores? Is it possible that you are friends and not enemies? Are you not Spaniards?”

It was a bitter rebuke though spoken almost by chance, and it went home. Already the name of Spaniard had come to have the same meaning as a curse in that new world in which their memory is to-day one of ruthless greed and pitiless cruelty. The generous soul of de Molina felt it even more keenly than his companions did, and as he grasped the Inca’s hand half against his will he said half in sorrow and half in shame—

“Yes, Inca, that is true, we are Spaniards, but all Spaniards are not brute beasts such as thou, to our shame, hast seen amongst us. Even in this army of ours, adventurers and plunderers though in truth we may be, there are yet as thou shalt find some who know how an honest enemy should be treated by gentlemen of Spain. Come back, then, and let us ride along, for I have something to say to thee of those thou hast left behind.”

The last words instantly disarmed the Inca’s suspicion. He bowed his head in consent and returned de Molina’s hand-clasp, and when the cavalcade had been re-formed and the march resumed, he said gravely and yet with a thrill of expectation in his voice—

“Señor, I ask your pardon and that of your comrades for my suspicions. Now what of the lost ones I have left behind me?”

“They are not lost while they and thou have friends in Cuzco, even though those friends be Spaniards,” replied de Molina gravely.

Manco’s heart leaped with newborn hope at his words, though another moment’s thought seemed to show him that they were too fair-spoken to be truthful, and so he simply looked up and said again, somewhat coldly—

“Friends—Spanish friends to them in Cuzco? How can that be, de Molina? You know all, therefore you know that Mama-Oello the queen and the Princess Nahua, who one day I had hoped to make my queen, have delivered themselves up knowingly to a fate of shame and torment to buy one more chance of freedom for me. Who is there among you who could wish or could dare to save them?”

“From what we have done so far, Inca,” replied de Molina in a somewhat altered voice, “thou mayest have seen that there is little that gentlemen of Spain cannot dare. As to the wish, that is another matter, and springing from that there is a tale which concerns myself not a little, and for that reason my comrades yonder have chosen me to tell it. It hath also some interest for thee, if thou art willing to hear it; it may at least beguile a portion of our march.”

“I hear a friend speaking through your lips, my Lord,” replied the Inca quietly, although it took all his native stoicism to keep the eagerness of his expectations from showing itself in his voice. “Say on; I am listening not with patience but with the deepest interest.”

Then there was a little silence as though de Molina hardly knew how to begin his tale, and when he did begin his words were at first slow and halting.

“Inca,” he said, “I have told thee, and I trust I and my comrades have already given thee reason to believe, that we Spaniards, whatever else we may be, are not all thieves and ravishers like that one-eyed scoundrel Almagro and his fellow-villains. Nevertheless thou hast heard much against us of which I will now speak first of one charge. The high priest of thy faith told thee this morning that we who are here with certain of our men-at-arms broke into the most sacred recesses of the retreat that you call the House of the Virgins and took thence by force four of the noblest-born maidens, of whom the Princess Lalla-Cica, destined as they say to adorn thine own court, was one. That is true, but that is not all the truth. We took them with mock violence to save them from the real violence of Almagro’s men, who have to-night leagued themselves to commit just such a crime as ours would have been. The maidens are now safe under the charge of the holy father Valverde, who has received them into the sacred asylum of the Church, which no man among us may violate save at the peril of his own soul.”

“May the blessing of the Unnameable, even though He be not the same god as yours, rest upon you for that good deed for ever!” exclaimed Manco, holding out his right hand.

“It may be that after all He is the same,” replied de Molina, grasping it, “and therefore I take the blessing and thank thee for it. Now for the rest of my story.

“Years ago in old Castile, before these dreams of El-Dorado had fired my soul with visions of adventure and sudden riches, I loved a maiden of my own blood and country, as fair and sweet a maid as the sun of Heaven ever shone on, the fairest of all I thought till I came hither to El-Dorado itself. Thou wilt remember, Inca, how on that first day that we came to thee as an embassy from his Highness the Governor we were led into the great square to the foot of thy throne, and how ere thou didst take thine own place thou didst lead to the seat beside thee her who hath now given herself as hostage for thee. In that moment I saw that earth held a maiden fairer far than her who till then had been my soul’s mistress, and that moment I became a traitor to my own love and a slave of thine. Since then, sleeping or waking, the vision of her beauty has never left mine eyes. Again and again without thy knowledge I have sought by every art I knew to gain her favour, and once, but a few days since, to my eternal shame I say it, I hired force to do what my arts of love had failed to do. She was taken and brought to my house. I could not speak to her as I would in her own language, although, as thou knowest, I know some little of it, and so for want of a better way I sought to bring her to my mind through the lips of the interpreter Filipillo. If I had trusted to what he said I should have taken her as willing to betray thine honour and her own, but happily, when, misled by his lies, I sought to do so, she pleaded so sweetly for herself and thee, and I, more happily still, understood so much of her pleading, that the falsehood was made plain to me. Within the hour she was back unharmed in her home, and it may do thy heart good to know that within the same hour the vile slave who had deceived me, and would have betrayed her, shrieked out his last breath under the lash.”

“It was a fate justly decreed, my friend, for now I may well call you that,” said Manco in a voice that was broken by a faint sob. “Henceforth, whether I live or die, thy name shall be one of honour among our people. What more?”

“The rest may be told in a few words. When we heard this morning of the noble sacrifice that the Princess Nahua had vowed herself to make for the sake of thee and her people, I called my comrades here together and told them all the story, and when they had heard it we plighted our honour as good Christian knights and gentlemen of Spain that in so far as in us lay, even to the shedding of our own blood, we would prevent so foul a shame from falling upon our faith and nation.

“Hernando Pizarro is our leader and captain, but only under our sovereign lord the king, than whom there is no more knightly soul in Christendom, and it would go hard with the greatest among us did he know he had consented to do so vile a thing. Moreover, we know well that it is only these ruffians of Almagro’s who have driven him to it in the hope of getting more treasure, so, though it be called treachery or what it may, we have sworn to save thee this night and thy mother and thy princess so soon as God shall put it in our way to do it. That horse which thou bestridest so well is thine. Take it as a free gift from one who is to-night thy friend and whose duty may to-morrow make him thine enemy. I speak for every Christian and good knight here. Now see, here we have come at last to a fair level plain. None know the way to Yucay better than thou dost. Those slaves ahead are but the knaves who serve him who betrayed thee the other day—nay, waste no time in words or thanks, for time is priceless. Charge through their midst and begone. We shall pursue thee for show’s sake, but thou needst not fear we shall overtake thee. Farewell, friend Manco, and begone with all speed and take thy freedom for thy sweet princess’s sake.”

As the last words left his lips de Molina whipped out his long sword and gave Manco’s charger a slash across the haunches with the flat of it. The animal bounded forward and the next moment Manco found himself in the midst of the front guard of Cañaris. His battle-axe was already unhooked and swung high in air. It came down straight and true on the skull of a warrior who was making a stab at his horse with his spear and clove him to the shoulders. The next moment he had burst through the scattering troop and the next he was free. His battle-cry rose by instinct to his lips and rang out loud and clear as he swung his bloody axe above his head in the fierce exultation of freedom. Behind him he heard the hoarse shouts of the Spaniards mingled, as he thought, with laughter as well as with the stamping of their horses’ hoofs. He looked back and saw them cantering heavily after him with the Indians labouring behind them. He put his own horse to a harder gallop. The Indians vanished in the darkness, then the shouts of the Spaniards and the echo of hoofs grew fainter and fainter and at last they too faded into the star-lit dusk, and Manco sped on alone, exulting in his new-found freedom and with the new-born hope which had driven despair out of his soul.

CHAPTER V.
AT THE FORTRESS GATE OF YUCAY

Although the four cavaliers found no difficulty in reconciling their complicity in the Inca’s escape to their consciences, their generosity did not therefore extend to the rest of his people. They knew from what had already happened that the little force in Cuzco would soon be called upon to fight desperately for its very existence. They knew too from their Indian spies that all the approaches to the beautiful valley were fast filling with detachments of Peruvian warriors, and finally there had come rumours that Ruminavi, the last of Atahuallpa’s great chieftains, had returned from Quito and had rallied all that remained of the four great armies of the empire and had united all the factions, Quitans and Cuscans, tribes of the Sierras and tribes of the plains, under the banner of the Last of the Incas, and devoted them to one supreme effort to crush the conquerors in the midst of their conquests.

As they were now well on the road to Yucay they held a brief council of war when they halted, and determined to spend the rest of the night and the following day in reconnoitring the approaches to the valley and discovering, as far as they could, the positions held by the Peruvian army.

The first thing they did was to collect the Cañaris and rate them soundly for permitting the Inca to escape, emphasising their reproaches, lest they should be not fully understood, with their rein-straps and the flats of their swords, promising them further that if they went back to Cuzco without the information that was needed they should every one be put to death as traitors. They then took up the march again and rode on slowly and cautiously for the best part of the night, but without discovering a sign of the enemy.

A couple of hours before dawn they halted for food and rest and then with the earliest light rode on again. The bleak uplands over which they had passed now began to slope downwards and become more fertile, and as the light increased they saw that they were approaching the entrance to a great valley walled in on all sides by huge and precipitous mountains, and by the time the sun rose they had reached a rocky ledge from which they beheld a scene whose strange and wonderful loveliness told them at a glance that this could be nothing else than the far-famed valley of Yucay.

The lower slopes of the seemingly impassable mountains were terraced into gardens which glowed with a hundred shades of green and gold, azure and scarlet. The broad plain which lay along the centre was sprinkled with villas and temples and palaces bright with colours and glittering with gold and silver, and through the midst of them rolled a broad, winding river, glittering like a wide band of molten silver in the rays of the sun, now streaming into the valley from the eastward. All along the two sides rose ridge after ridge of bare, brown mountains, apparently without a break for miles and miles, and high above these towered into the sky, one to right and one to left, two mighty snow-crowned peaks like twin Titans guarding this enchanted realm.

But the keen eyes of the Spaniards soon discovered that the valley had other guardians than these. At every bend of the river a dark fortress rose tier above tier jutting out from the hillside and completely commanding it. All along the heights there were watch-towers on which, as the light grew stronger, they could see the sun glinting on polished arms and waving plumes, and soon shrill, wailing cries rose to right and left of them and ran along the ridges until they died away in the distance, telling that the sun shining on their own armour had already betrayed their presence and that the whole valley was alert.

“A glorious spot, by the Saints!” said de Soto, as his eye ranged delighted over the lovely prospect. “A very Garden of Eden, if such might be in a heathen land, but well guarded. Methinks it would fare badly with us even if we attacked it with all our forces. Still it is our present business to find a way into it, if such there be, and that can only be where the river flows out of it. Come, let us try the sloping ground down here to the right.”

“Ay,” replied de Candia, “it were well to keep moving lest we find ourselves surrounded, but for all that I doubt not that the Inca will find a way of showing his gratitude for what we did for him last night. He must have reached the army by this time.”

“That is certain,” said de Molina, “and I for one would so far trust him that I would ride unarmed through his whole host. Ah, look yonder,” he went on, pointing ahead past a spur of rock which they had just cleared. “Yonder is the gate of Eden.”

“And the mouth of the River of Paradise!” said ben-Alcazar. “But methinks for all that the mouth of Hell for the enemy that should seek to get into it. Were those forts guarded by well-served artillery not all the Spaniards in Peru could force the entrance.”

“I, for one,” added de Candia grimly, “would pledge my life on holding it with a dozen culverins against a thousand men.”

They had now come within full view of the entrance to the valley. It was some five or six hundred yards wide. On either side rose a steeply-sloping hill and on each of these a huge fortress of black stone built in angles like the Sacsahuaman and crowned with lofty towers dominated the little level, sandy plain through which the river flowed. The stream itself was some thirty yards wide and apparently deep and swift flowing. The moment that they came in sight the loud, shrill blast of a horn rang out, and instantly thousands of warriors, armed and plumed, sprang into view. They lined the tiers of the fortresses in perfect order, and far up the terraces of the hills were swarming in a moment with their glittering ranks. The notes of the horn had hardly died away before they were taken up and echoed far along the valley, and as they went fort after fort in endless succession was manned in full view by the glittering ranks of its garrisons.

Instinctively the whole troop pulled up, horse and foot. It was the first time that the Spaniards had ever seen a Peruvian army so splendid in appearance and so impregnable in position, and it was a sight that might have inspired the boldest heart with both admiration and awe. While they were standing thus gazing at the splendid spectacle, half inclined to wheel about and make the best of their way back to Cuzco, if indeed the way were still open, de Molina threw up his right hand and cried—

“Ah, did I not tell you, Caballeros? There is the Inca himself if I mistake not. By the Saints, does he not look as goodly a figure as any Christian knight amongst us, and how well he sits that good steed of mine! See, he is waving a white scarf and beckoning to us. Come, let us forward, comrades. That means a truce at least.”

The apparition that had called forth this exclamation was that of the Inca himself. He was clad from head to foot in shining steel. Round his helmet was bound the scarlet llautu but without the imperial borla, and from it rose two lofty nodding feathers of the Coraquenque, which only the chief of the royal House might wear. In his right hand he carried a broad white scarf or kerchief, and with his left he guided his charger with perfect ease down the narrow, winding causeway which led from the rear of the fortress on to the plain. As he crossed this towards the brink of the river the Spaniards rode up to the other bank, each of them waving his scarf in reply to his signal. Then across the river there came, in the clear, high-pitched tone in which the Peruvians send their signal-cries from mountain to mountain, the words—

“Why have you followed me so far, my friends? Every moment your lives have been in danger. Do you not know that the City of the Sun is already beleaguered, and that you stand between two of my armies?”

“Cuerpo de Cristo! That is bad news!” growled de Candia. “It will be no light matter getting back to our quarters if that is so.”

“And if it be so it were well to learn the worst at once,” said de Molina. “I will go and speak with his Majesty.”

And before any of them could stay him the gallant young cavalier had leapt his horse into the stream and was swimming across. A half-suppressed cry of wonder broke from the Peruvian soldiers, and two or three companies of them, armed with bows and slings and spears, marched swiftly down out of the fortress which guarded the bank on which the Spaniards were, as though to cut off their retreat, while others marched out from the other fortress as though to close round the sacred person of the Inca. But he instantly waved them back and rode alone to a point on the bank which de Molina was rapidly nearing. As he reached it the dripping horse scrambled out of the water, and de Molina, holding out his hand, said with a laugh—

“A good morrow to your Majesty! This is a strong place and a gallant array that you have here.”

Manco took his hand and replied gravely—

“You and your comrades have done unwisely, my friend. If you had not forced me to leave you so suddenly last night I would have warned you that by sunrise this morning every pathway to it would have been filled by our warriors. Moreover, if I had not been in this part of the valley Ruminavi would certainly have taken you for spies, and my people are now so incensed against yours that you would have been slain if it had cost a thousand lives, and then,” he went on more gently, “how would you have kept your promise, and who would have saved Nahua from her doom? But now you have not a moment to lose. The higher the sun rises the greater will be the peril of your return. There is indeed only one means by which you can reach the city alive. Take this feather,” he said, pulling one of the sacred plumes from his turban. “There is not one of the Children of the Sun who would dare to touch the wearer of that. Put it in your helmet and go. With it I give you and your comrades your lives in payment for mine. Should we come to battle, still wear it and you will be harmless, however thick the fight. Tell your leader what you have seen here, and save Nahua and the queen as quickly as maybe, for soon there will be bitter and relent less war between us to the end. Now farewell. Go quickly if you would go safely.”

“Fear not for the queen and princess, friend Manco!” replied de Molina as he gripped his hand again. “If we could not bring them out of Cuzco in safety we should not ourselves return, since we four have pledged ourselves each to the other by our Christian faith and knightly honour to be hostages for them. If they are not here on this river bank before another sun has set then thou wilt see us here or know that thou hast four Spanish knights the less to fight against. And now farewell, and till we meet again in battle God speed thee!”

Then with a last clasp of the hand he pulled his horse round and plunged into the river again. As he regained the opposite bank all four turned and saluted the Inca, still resting motionless on his horse. He returned the salute, and as he did so ten thousand warriors rent the still morning air with a great cry, and thousands of burnished weapons flashed in the now ardent sunbeams.

“Was that a farewell?” said de Soto, as they turned their horses and rode away up the hill. “To my ears it sounded more like a bidding to battle, and such battle as we have not had yet. Methinks that, despite all our easy-won triumph, the real work of conquest is only just beginning.”

“For one thing,” said de Candia, “this friend Manco of ours would seem to be the only man they have so far had to lead them. He will give us trouble. Old Carvahal said to me not long since that the Governor, if he had been wise, would have treated him as he did Atahuallpa when he had the chance.”

“Carvahal is a Christian savage,” laughed ben-Alcazar. “I have ever had a presentiment that that man will die neither on a field of battle nor in his bed, good soldier and huge drinker as he is.”

The lightly-spoken words were prophetic, although their fulfilment does not come within the limits of this narrative, for there came a day seven years afterwards when the fierce old swashbuckler was dragged in a basket to the scaffold in company with the last of the Pizarros without a fear in his heart and with a homely jest on his lips.

So, talking of the chances of the war which, with de Soto, they all believed to be only now about to commence in earnest, they made their way back with all possible speed to Cuzco. The sacred feather in de Molina’s helmet was saluted again and again on the road by armed detachments of Peruvian warriors, hundreds of whom they saw, not a little to their disquiet, posted with perfect skill and knowledge of the country, so as to command all the most difficult parts of the road. They rightly guessed that where they saw hundreds there were really thousands, but although, as they well knew, part of the great debt of vengeance that they had piled up might well have been paid off on them, not a hand was raised or a spear lowered to bar their path. The instant that the sacred plume was seen the leaders of the detachments bowed their heads and ordered their men back, leaving the road clear, and so with hard riding they came shortly after sundown within sight of Cuzco. When they had nearly reached the bottom of the steep causeway that winds round the western shoulder of the great fortress, de Molina turned in his saddle and said—

“And now, Caballeros, as the Inca has kept faith with us, so, I take it, must we now keep faith with him. There is little time to be lost if all these hosts are closing about us. Are you agreed, then, that we shall go at once and perform what remains of our oath to be fulfilled?”

“Yes,” the other three replied almost in a breath.

And then de Soto dismissed the Indian escort, and the four cavaliers, entering the city, turned their horses’ heads in the direction of the palace which Hernando Pizarro had taken for his headquarters.

CHAPTER VI.
“WE HAVE SWORN!”

The news that they had returned without the Inca had apparently preceded them by some means, for they met Carvahal at the door of the palace, and in answer to their greeting he looked up and said with one of his deep, growling laughs—

“So you have seen his Majesty safely home, Señores! By my faith, a right worthy Christian escort for a heathen king who was yesterday a captive! Did I not say that it would have been better to try the tight collar on him as we did on Atahuallpa? If I mistake not the lad is worth a score of Atahuallpas. I fear me it will go hard now with the lad’s mother and sweetheart. Don Hernando is in a towering rage, and I believe the punishment is to be a flogging first, and then shooting to death with arrows. It would have been greater mercy to have strangled the lad himself.”

While the old ruffian was running on in this way de Soto and his companions had flung themselves from their horses and mounted the steps.

“Is Don Hernando within?” said de Soto roughly, and seeming to take no heed of what he had said.

“He is, Señores,” replied Carvahal, bowing with a clumsy attempt at mock politeness, “and he is awaiting you in a humour that seems to have more of brimstone in it than of the milk of human kindness. You will find him in the banqueting-hall—and methinks you will find the feast already spread for you.”

Without noticing the sally the four cavaliers strode past him hands on sword-hilts, and looking more like men going to battle than soldiers about to account for a grave failure to their commander. De Soto went first, and as he entered the room Hernando Pizarro, who was sitting at a table with three or four of his officers, looked round and then started to his feet. He was a big, heavily-built man with a low, narrow brow, large and fleshy nose and mouth, and a pallid skin which the most ardent sun had been unable to tinge with bronze. His black eyes were small but very bright, and as he looked at de Soto they flashed with unmistakable anger. His voice, always unpleasing, seemed to grate roughly over his yellow uneven teeth as he said with the air of a judge addressing culprits brought up for judgment—

“How now, Señores? Where is he who was entrusted to your keeping? A tale brought by an Indian reached me to-day telling me that you had permitted his escape. I trust you come to tell me that that is false. If not, it will be my duty to show you how we deal with traitors.”

“Don Hernando,” said de Soto very quietly, as he always spoke when he had weighty words to say, “good soldiers do not draw their swords upon each other in the face of the enemy, and we have come to tell you that every moment brings the enemy closer, else there are four swords here ready for thine and those of any three friends at your choice. At proper time and place mine will be at your service. Meanwhile let me remind you with all respect that you are speaking to your peers and not to your men-at-arms. If you think otherwise we can find another use for our swords and the right arms of our friends and followers. You forget that we already have the Governor’s permission to join ourselves to his forces at Los Reyes.”

Angry as he was, Don Hernando was too shrewd not to see that this was really a serious threat. De Soto and his companions were not only very popular among the men, but they were, with the exception of the Pizarros themselves, the principal leaders of what were already called the Old Conquerers. As it was the balance of power between what were afterwards known as the Pizarro and Almagro factions was held too evenly in Cuzco just then for his liking. He knew that such a defection as this would place his party in a hopeless minority, and he knew too that the Almagrists, if they could do it with safety, would think no more of flinging him into prison, as indeed they afterwards did, and proclaiming their leader Governor of the city, than they would think of sending an arrow through a flying Indian’s body, for it must be remembered that the conquerors were not a regular army under the rigid discipline of a European camp. They were simply a body of adventurers held together by nothing but common interests and common perils, isolated in a hostile land and far removed from any centre of real authority. Their leaders were chosen by themselves, and, as the civil wars in which the two factions afterwards rent each other to pieces clearly proved, their tenure of office was by no means a secure one. No one knew this better than the titular Governor of Cuzco, and he knew, too, that if these four men chose to raise the standard of revolt and throw in their lot with the Almagrists his dead body might within an hour be lying in the streets pierced with a dozen sword-thrusts.

Such considerations as these, flashing as they did through his active mind during the pause which followed de Soto’s bold words, instantly brought back his habitual self-command and that tactful control of his feelings and manner which made him the best diplomatist and perhaps the only statesman among the Conquerors. He smiled as pleasantly as such lips as his could smile, and said with a not ungraceful wave of his hand—

“Señores, I spoke hastily and I ask your pardon. The loss of the Inca’s person is a very serious one to us. From the reports that have reached us it might even mean our ruin. It was natural, then, that the tidings should affect me deeply, but no doubt you have a report to make. If so, we are all attention. Will you be seated?”

“Señor,” replied de Soto, still in the same cold, quiet voice, “I have a somewhat strange tale to tell you for myself and these caballeros here, and after the greeting you have been pleased to give us, we would prefer not to sit in your presence lest perchance we might be taken for your guests.”

Don Hernando frowned at the coolly-spoken insult, but he was too politic not to see the danger of exasperating de Soto and his companions any further, so he simply nodded his head and waved his hand again and said—

“Very well, Señores. As you will. And now for the report.”

“What happened first,” said de Soto without any further preamble, “was this. In the darkness of the night and just as we had reached the edge of a level plain beyond the mountains, the Inca, who sits a horse as well as any Christian cavalier, suddenly spurred forward into the midst of the fore-guard of Indians. He clove the skull of one with his battle-axe, rode half-a-dozen others down, and went for his life across the plain with us hard after him. The horse he rode belonged, as you know, to the Señor de Molina here, and as you know also, five thousand pesos would not buy such a horse south of Panama. He had the better animal, and he knew the country to a yard. To be brief, he outrode us and escaped. We rode on, hoping to gain some knowledge of the position of the Indian army, which by all accounts is about to attack us. Soon after sunrise we found ourselves in the entrance to that valley of Yucay on which we had doubtless stumbled by accident in the chase, and there we found the Inca.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Hernando with just the suspicion of a sneer. “You found him and you did not bring him back—you, four Spanish cavaliers, to one puny Peruvian!”

“Señor,” replied de Soto as calmly as ever, “he who hears a tale but half told knows little of the truth of it. We were not four to one. We were more like four to forty thousand, for no sooner did the Inca show himself than the whole valley was alive with armed men. Moreover, there was a fortress on each side of us, a river in front of us, and behind us leagues of country swarming with the enemy. We had already given ourselves up for lost when the Inca waved a white scarf and made a sign that he wished to speak with us. Señor de Molina leapt his horse into the stream and swam to him. What happened, let him tell himself.”

He stepped aside, and the young cavalier strode forward, pale, angry, and defiant. But before he could speak Don Hernando waved his hand again and said—

“A moment, Señor. Your friend the Inca would seem to have forgotten that he left certain hostages with me in pledge for his return. I did not tell him what would befall them if he broke faith with me, but I will send one or two meaner prisoners that I have in my hands to him at once, to tell him that unless he is back here, alone and unarmed, by sunset to-morrow they shall be taken out at sunrise into the great square, and there, in the presence of the army, they shall be stripped and flogged and then shot to death with arrows. That is their doom, and I will abate no jot of it.”

“Then, Señor,” said de Molina, his ruddy face white to the lips, and his whole frame trembling with passion at the atrocious words, “if that is your irrevocable decision you have no need to release any of your prisoners to take the tidings of it to the Inca, for we ourselves will take it, as we have already pledged our Christian faith and knightly honour to do.”

“How? What mean you? You will take it?” exclaimed Don Hernando, staring at him in blank astonishment. “Surely, Señores, this is neither time nor place for jesting.”

“It is a jest that we are ready to put a point to with our swords, Señor,” replied de Molina, clapping his hand on his sword-hilt. “If it will please you to hear my story I will make few words of it, and my meaning shall be plain enough.

“When I met the Inca on the other side of the river he pointed out what was plain enough to see, that our lives were at his mercy. Then he told me of the pledge that he had left behind him in your hands, and he offered us our lives and liberties in exchange for those of his mother and his betrothed, and we, seeing no better way out of the business, accepted the offer.”

“How now, Señor?” cried Don Hernando angrily. “Whose authority had you to make such terms?”

“The authority of necessity, Señor,” replied de Molina, bowing slightly, “and if you know of a better you may tell us.”

“Whether I know of a better or not, I tell you that I will not recognise it!” cried Don Hernando, bringing his fist down on the table. “The lives of the women are forfeit, and they shall die unless Manco returns. I have sworn it.”

“And we have sworn, Señor,” exclaimed de Soto, stepping forward again, “that these ladies shall be sent scathless to Yucay, or that we will ourselves return according to our oath. Is that not so, Caballeros?”

The others bowed, and de Candia, placing himself between de Soto and de Molina, said in his deep, powerful voice—

“It seems to me, Don Hernando, that unless you think we are standing here lying to you, you are setting the gratification of a needless and cruel revenge against the honour and safety of four Christian knights and gentlemen of Spain. It is yet to be seen whether the Council of the Army will endure that, and if they do, whether the soldiers will. It maybe that they will think there is shame enough on our army already.”

“Is this your earnest, Caballeros?” asked Don Hernando somewhat anxiously, for he saw that the matter was now getting serious. “Have you in sober truth sworn to do so mad a thing? Is it possible you would go back and give yourselves up to this heathen?”

“Ay, by God and Santiago we will!” replied de Candia solemnly. “Our honour is pledged and our oaths are passed, and though we had to cut our way through the whole army we would do it to redeem them. Now what say you, Don Hernando? Which think you will have the more worth in the eyes of our sovereign lord when the news gets home to Spain—the honour and the lives of four cavaliers who have fought and bled for him, or the torment and death of two helpless and innocent women?”

It was an awkward situation plainly and skilfully described, and Don Hernando looked up with something very like admiration at the four cavaliers; for, making allowance for the age he lived in, and the profession he followed, he was a kindly-hearted man save when his passions were aroused, and, moreover, he was well enough skilled in the ways of the Spanish court to know how terribly black an accusation might be made against him out of such a circumstance. Still, having spoken so positively, he did not see his way to yield to such a peremptory summons, and he was looking round the table somewhat anxiously when his eye caught that of his half-brother Juan, the noblest youth and most gallant knight of all the Pizarro family. His ready wit grasped the situation instantly—the more quickly since he was entirely on the side of the four cavaliers. He rose to his feet and said, speaking to them all through de Candia—

“Caballeros, good as your motives are, and merciful as your errand is, it is yet a hard thing for one placed as my brother is in authority to turn aside from his path because he is threatened with certain pains and penalties. Nevertheless, speaking for myself, I will say as a private cavalier and not as Don Hernando’s brother, that he did not do this thing of his own will and judgment. He will not deny that the evil thought was put into his mind by that lying knave, Cepeda, who is himself a living proof of the wisdom of that decree of our august master which forbade lawyers to set foot in this land, and which has since, to my sorrow, been repealed. He, as you know, is heart and soul with the Almagrist faction, and he has no more a human heart in his breast than the mummies of the Incas which we found in the Temples of the Sun. The plan was his, and its object was not only the getting of more gold, but also the possession of the person of the Princess Nahua by himself——”

“Cuerpo de Cristo!” cried de Molina taking a couple of strides up the room and half drawing his sword from its scabbard. “What! Has that lean and scoundrelly anatomy of law and lying dared even to dream of that? Then, by the glory of God, am I the more fixed in my oath. Now, Don Hernando,” he went on, turning to the Governor, “we want you, not to yield, but to do justice. It cannot be that you knew of this thing. It cannot be that you, Governor of the city and brother of his Highness, could have entered into a league with this vile quill-driver to dishonour the promised bride of a prince who, be it remembered, received us as friends and honoured envoys.”

“It is true,” said Juan, “for I know it of my own knowledge, and so does Gonzalo here, and had you never returned we had determined that if Cepeda persisted in his intention he should not live to accomplish his infamy.”

“That is true,” added Gonzalo, with a nod; “for I was captain of the guard over the palace where the queen and princess are lodged, and the sentry told me how Cepeda went to them but to-day with an interpreter to tell them at what price he would save them from the punishment decreed against them did the Inca not return. When I heard of it I ordered him to be thrown out of the palace if he would not go for less persuasion, but he had already gone, looking as black as the gates of his future abode.”

“Then if that is so, Caballeros,” said Don Hernando, who meanwhile had been industriously reviewing all the aspects of the case, “since we do not make war on women or trade with their honour, I will willingly take back what I have said. The anger that I showed on your first entry you will doubtless take as natural in one who has lost an almost priceless prize. But now, in cooler blood, I am willing to confess that, situated as you were, you could have done only what you did, since the loss of four such gallant cavaliers to our little army would have been even graver than the loss of the Inca’s person. As you have sworn so shall you do, granted always that you will faithfully uphold me against these Almagrists.”

“Ay, that we will, Don Hernando!” exclaimed de Soto, well pleased that the seemingly difficult matter had been after all so easily settled; “and we shall do so with none the less heart and strength for that we were firmly resolved to keep our oath to Manco. That being kept we are more than ever devoted to your person and our holy cause.”

“Then, Señores,” replied Don Hernando, rising from his seat, and bowing gravely towards them, “you are at liberty, so far as your loyal duty to his Majesty permits, to provide for the present safety of the queen and the princess and their restoration to the Inca as may seem best in your eyes. But I pray you let there be no trouble with Cepeda if possible. I will answer to him for what is done, but we can afford no divisions in the camp now.”

“He is not worth an honest man’s steel,” replied de Soto as they all returned the bow, “so you may rest assured of that. In the name of my companions I thank you for permitting us to redeem our oath in peace and good fellowship. Señores, adios!”

“Adios, Señores!” replied Don Hernando and his brothers, and the four cavaliers swung round and marched with jaunty strides and cocked swords out of the palace, to the great astonishment of Carvahal, who had waited all this time for the joke of seeing them brought out under arrest.

CHAPTER VII.
FRIENDS THOUGH FOES

De Soto’s first care naturally was to seek out the Villac-Umu, and through him to convey to the queen-mother and the princess, who were already preparing themselves to meet with becoming dignity and fortitude the shameful fate from which they believed nothing could save them, the welcome news of their unexpected and indeed incomprehensible salvation. At the same time runners were dispatched to Yucay, or, to be more correct, to Chinchero, the great fortress at the entrance to the valley where the Inca had posted himself with the advance guard of his army. Their mission was to tell him that the four cavaliers had redeemed their promise, and that as soon as might be convenient for them the two royal ladies would set out from Cuzco under a suitable escort.

This they did betimes in two of the royal litters magnificently adorned with gold and jewels and feather work, and on either side of each rode one of those to whose chivalry and generosity they owed even more than life and liberty.

When the cavalcade had proceeded some two leagues or so beyond the city, and had reached the rugged plain on which Manco had made his mock escape, they saw several long, glittering files of men rapidly approaching them, and Gonzalo Pizarro, to whom the command of the escort had been given, looked round suspiciously at de Soto and said—

“Señor, your friend the Inca must have a good many men at his disposal to be able to send an army as an escort for his bride. To my eyes it has more the look of an ambush.”

“There is no need for fear, Señor,” replied de Soto, laughing, “for de Molina here carries in his morion a talisman that would take an unarmed foe scathless through all the Inca’s hosts. If it please you to bid him ride forward you shall soon see that this is so.”

“Very well,” said Gonzalo, “I shall be glad to know it. Let him go.”

So the young cavalier, who so far had been riding in moody silence on the right hand of Nahua’s litter, scarcely trusting his eyes to rest upon her, although she had drawn the curtains partly aside, touched his horse with the spurs and cantered off to meet the approaching host. As he rode on they saw file after file come into view from behind until the whole of that part of the plain seemed covered with the splendidly dressed soldiery. But the moment that the sacred feather in de Molina’s helmet became visible every file stopped motionless, then a rippling sea of fire seemed to run across the plain as the sunlight gleamed upon thousands of weapons of polished copper waved in greeting to him, and a mighty shout from thousands of throats came rolling over the plateau. Then, as though by magic, the shining files separated and swung back, and in a few moments the paved causeway was lined on either hand as far as the eye could reach with an endless array of warriors silent and rigid as bronze statues.

Between these the two litters with their escort passed at a rapid foot-pace for nearly four hours. As the cavalcade proceeded the two files behind fell into marching order on the roads, and so it went on, with an ever-increasing rearguard, until at length the huge black walls of the fortress loomed up in the distance.

“Yonder is our journey’s end, Señor!” said de Soto to Gonzalo Pizarro. “That is one of the fortresses guarding the river of which we told you. I doubt not that the Inca will meet us there and relieve us of our charge. There too you will see something of the strength of the position that we shall shortly have to force, unless indeed his Majesty takes the bolder step of besieging us in Cuzco.”

They were now on the sloping, zigzag pathway which led down towards the river, and Gonzalo’s soldierly eye had already noted that the lower they descended the worse the ground became for horses and the stronger the defences of the ravine appeared.

“I would rather his Majesty came to Cuzco, even though he came at the head of a hundred thousand men, than we should meet him here with only ten thousand at his back,” he replied. “I doubt if the world holds another so lovely a spot so ably defended.”

“So would I,” said de Soto. “It is well for us that these people have neither steel nor gunpowder. If they had they could hold this valley for years, in spite of all the soldiers Spain could send against them.”

“I believe you, Señor,” said Gonzalo, “but, mira! is not that a brave show. Look, the garrison are turning out to receive us, and yonder is our late guest, the Inca, armed cap-à-pie, and, Santiago! yonder is another clad in good steel and mounted on a piece of good Spanish horse-flesh. Por Dios, these people learn quickly! Methinks if we do not bring the war swiftly to a close we shall be conquered with our own weapons.”

“The other will no doubt be old Ruminavi—him they call Stony-Face,” replied de Soto. “Next to Huayna-Capac himself he is said to have been the greatest general in the land. The Inca warned me that we should find fighting him a graver matter than taking Atahuallpa prisoner.”

The cavalcade had now reached the last of the slopes in the roadway, and presently it turned from it on to the plain in front of the fortress. As it did so the shrill notes of trumpets and horns rang out along the mountain-sides, and instantly not only was every terrace and rampart lined with men but a vast array seemed to spring out from the ground behind the two mailed figures on the other side of the river. The stream was now bridged by a quadruple row of balsas or rafts of reeds lashed tightly together and covered with neatly-dressed planks of a size which showed that they must have come from the vast forests which clothe the eastern slopes of the Andes.

The Inca and his companion drew up at about forty paces from the river bank and remained motionless until the whole cavalcade had crossed it. The Peruvian escort, as before, separated and fell back into two files, between which the Spanish cavaliers rode, Gonzalo Pizarro at the head and the others on either side of the litters. When all had crossed Manco threw up his vizor and cantered forward alone. He pulled his horse up with admirable grace within a couple of paces of Gonzalo, and when he had saluted he held out his hand to him saying—

“Señor, you are welcome since you have come to bring me the greatest of all the treasures that our land contains. And welcome to you too, Señores,” he went on with a wave of his hand and a stately bow to either side of the litters, “since your coming proves that your tongues are as straight as your right arms are strong. For this day at least we are friends. I have been your guest,” he went on with a laugh, “now you must be mine if you will accept such hospitality as my poor palace can afford.”

“Since, as you say, there is truce between us, Señor Inca,” replied Gonzalo, “there is no reason against our accepting the honour with all due gratitude, and I trust we shall sup together none the less heartily that ere long we may be exchanging honest blows.”

The Inca bowed gravely, wheeling his charger without, as far as the Spaniards could see, so much as having glanced at the litters, the curtains of which were now closely drawn, and led the way towards the palace which formed the northern half of the fortress. The great array of warriors separated into two solid, shining masses as they approached, and old Ruminavi, sitting his horse like a statue of steel, threw up his vizor and saluted with his sword as they passed.

At the foot of a broad flight of steps leading up to a wide terrace running the whole length of the palace Manco dismounted and asked the Spanish cavaliers to do the same. Then he led the way on to the terrace. He now made a sign to the litter-bearers, who at once set their burdens down, and then for the first time he approached them. He went first to the one in which Mama-Oello was lying, and with gracious deference helped her to rise. Then he went to the other, and as Nahua rose and stood beside him a mighty shout burst from tens of thousands of throats and went echoing across the river and along the rock-walls of the valley, and at the same instant every warrior within sight of the terrace dropped on his knees and spread out his arms towards it, and Nahua’s name, uttered at the same instant by tens of thousands of lips, went up to heaven in one great cry of joy and thankfulness.

“You see, Señores,” said Manco, turning to the Spaniards, “that mine would not have been the only heart that you would have filled with darkness and sorrow had you not been as brothers rather than as enemies to one who hereafter, even if he should fall by your hands, will take none but loving memories of you with him to the Mansions of the Sun.”

Toil-worn and battle-hardened as they were the Spaniards were still men, and for the most part gentlemen, and more than one of them looked at this touching spectacle of thankful devotion through a mist which was certainly not in the clear sky or the translucent air of the Sierras, and this mist was not far from becoming veritable tears when Nahua, at a word in Quichua from Manco, left his side and went to them one after the other, beginning with de Soto, and took their rough right hands in hers and bowed her lovely head over them till her lips touched them.

It was her act of public thanks for the great service they had done her and her people, and although the army knew that ere many days were past they must meet these same men in bitter and unsparing battle every man of all the thousands within sight sprang to his feet again, waving his weapon and making the rocks and the fortress’ walls ring with his cheers. It was a moment in which a lasting peace might have been made and the greatest empire and the most perfect civilisation of the New World saved from utter and irretrievable ruin. If the majority of the Spaniards had been such men as those who were now standing with the Inca on the terrace of his palace they might have been to Peru what two centuries and a half later the English became to India. But this was not to be. They had brought with them into the land the twin curses of insatiable greed and invincible religious intolerance, and these were ere long to prove the utter undoing of both conquerors and conquered.

For the rest of that day and far into the night the Spaniards were treated with a royal and splendid hospitality worthy of the great race from which Manco sprang. They were feasted in gorgeous chambers, seated on chairs of silver, and eating and drinking from dishes and vessels of gold. They were carried in litters up to the rocky ledge beyond Chinchero, where the tableland ends and whence they could see all the glories of the lovely valley spread out laughing in the brilliant sunshine four thousand feet below them. Then, descending into the valley, they were taken without reserve from palace to palace and fortress to fortress, and at night they were amused with dances and martial displays. Then, after feasting splendidly again, they went to rest on couches of cedar and silver covered with the finest and softest furs and inclosed by bright-hued curtains of the silken vicuña wool.

The next morning they found their chargers ready groomed and caparisoned for them and their native escort drawn up to receive them in front of the terrace. As soon as the morning meal was over the trumpets and horns sounded and the garrison turned out in silent and perfect order to do honour to the departing guests, and the Inca, accompanied by Nahua and the queen, and attended by old Ruminavi, still clad in steel, and a brilliant array of his nobles, came out to bid them farewell in sight of the assembled host.

Behind the Inca came an attendant bearing a great plate of gold, on which was a heap of gems which flashed gloriously in the sunlight, and from this Manco took five long strings of emeralds and rubies, each of which in another land would have been of almost priceless value, and one of these he hung round each of the astonished Spaniards’ necks, and immediately afterwards Nahua left the side of the queen, with whom she had been standing, and went shyly up to de Molina and stood before him blushing rosy red through the pale olive of her skin.

On her upturned palms there lay a magnificent ruby cut in the shape of a heart and attached to a golden chain of exquisite workmanship. As soon as he saw it the young cavalier flushed red to the brows and, with the true instinct of a Spaniard and a cavalier, he instantly doffed his morion and dropped on one knee before her, and she took the two ends of the chain and with trembling fingers fastened them around his neck.

“That is the gift of my betrothed wife and promised queen,” said Manco, who had come to her side, “and she asks your acceptance of it as a token of the great love that we both bear you, since without you we should not have been together to-day and both of our lives would have been darkened with a great darkness until we met hereafter in the Mansions of the Sun, and therefore we both pray that our Father may keep you to wear it in honour and happiness until we shall meet you as well, no longer enemies, in the land where men do not make war upon each other.”

While he was speaking de Molina had caught Nahua’s two little hands in his and pressed them in turn gently and respectfully to his lips, as he might have done had he been kissing the hands of his own sovereign’s consort. Then he rose to his feet with his morion under his left arm and said in a voice that he had hard work to keep steady—

“Señor, I would that I could thank her Highness in her own musical speech, but since I cannot you must do it for me, and doubtless her ears will receive the words more gladly from your lips than mine. Tell her that as long as Alonso de Molina lives her gift shall be the most priceless of his possessions, even as the memory of her beauty and graciousness shall be the sweetest, if also the saddest, that life holds for him. Whether I die in battle, as is my hope, or in bed, as may be my fate, those who find me dead shall find this next to my heart.”

As he said this he took the splendid gem and pressed it to his lips, and then throwing back his scarf, he dropped it out of sight under his breastplate.

“And now, Señor,” he went on, taking the sacred plume from his morion, “there remains, alas, but this to do. To-day we are your friends and guests. To-morrow we may meet as enemies, each bound by his duty to slay the other if he can. When you gave me this you bade me wear it, and you promised me that it should bear me scathless through every battle. That, Señor, is what no soldier of Spain could accept. I may rely on no protection save the mercy of God and my own right arm. Therefore I pray you take it back, not because I would part with it, but because I must.”

“That is spoken like a true warrior and an honest man,” said the Inca as he took the feather from him. “I take back my gift since you have shown me that you cannot wear it with honour, yet should it be our fate to join battle a hundred times for each time our hands have met in friendship, before each onset I will pray to our Father that he may keep your lance and mine far apart. And now farewell, Señor, y amigo mio. The way is long and the sun is getting high. When you come to the City of the Sun give my greeting to Anda-Huillac and the rest of my people that are there, and tell them, and your people too, that it will not be long ere I shall visit them.”

So the last farewells were said and the Spaniards and their auxiliaries, escorted by a splendid array of the Inca’s own body-guard, crossed the little plain and the bridge of boats and ascended the winding causeway, ever turning to look back with regretful eyes at the brilliant throng on the terrace which stood watching them and waving their farewells until the spur of the mountain had shut them from sight. After a hard ride over the bare, bleak puna they reached Cuzco shortly after sundown and at once made their report to Don Hernando.

They found him presiding over a Council of War, and when they had delivered their report, and de Soto and Gonzalo Pizarro were beginning to urge, in the interests of both humanity and policy, that an honourable peace, or at the least a lengthy truce, should be if possible concluded with the Inca until the whole situation of affairs could be laid before the King of Spain, with a view to preventing further bloodshed and destruction, Don Hernando cut them short by saying curtly, and with no great good-humour—

“Señores, though you doubtless come with the best of intentions you yet come too late, since it hath already been decided by a great majority in full council of war to attack this revolted prince forthwith in his stronghold, and before he hath time to further increase the hosts which he means to bring against us. I regret that you were not here to take part in the deliberation, though your voices would not have been numerous enough to have changed the decision. But since you have now been twice the guests of the Inca none can know the approaches to his fastnesses so well as you, and therefore none can be better fitted to direct the expedition. It leaves at sunrise to-morrow, and I do not doubt that in furthering the work in hand you will prove yourselves at least as good friends to Spain and our holy cause as your laudable chivalry has lately led you to show yourselves such good friends to her enemies.”

Later on that night Michael Asterre became the richer by two bars of gold of the value of 500 pesos each, and Alonso de Molina became the poorer by these and by the exchange of one of the best suits of armour in the city for the iron cuirass and greaves and battered plumeless morion which had so far been the property of the stalwart man-at-arms.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE OATH OF THE BLOOD

That same night, when the last of the escort had returned, the bridge was taken up out of the river and all the dispositions for the defence of the valley against an attacking force were made as complete as possible. The Inca and his General personally inspected the vast stores of arrows, javelins, and spears that were accumulated in the fortresses. Between twenty and thirty sets and half-sets of armour, with as many swords, pikes, and battle-axes which had been taken from the Spaniards in the skirmishes of the last six months, were distributed among the bravest and most stalwart of Manco’s body-guard, and great stones and fragments of rock were laboriously carried up from the river bed and collected from the mountains and plateaus surrounding the valley, to be piled up on all the points of vantage ready to be hurled down on the heads of the attacking force.

Then towards midnight, when all the preparations had at length been completed, Manco and Ruminavi assembled their princes and chieftains on a high plateau of bare rock overlooking the valley.

Three hundred torchbearers formed a wide circle round them, and in the midst were two huge golden vases full of chicha. About these the nobles and chief warriors were grouped, and between them stood Manco clad in his Spanish armour, saving only for the helmet, in place of which he wore the scarlet Llautu surmounted by a plume of coraquenque feathers.

He looked round the ring of torchbearers and then upon the two groups of princes and warriors which had silently ranged themselves round either of the vases. But for the space of several minutes not a word was spoken. At length the broad yellow disc of the full moon began to show itself above the eastern ridge of the mountains. Instantly all eyes were turned towards it; then every head was bowed as the brilliant orb rose into full view.

As soon as its lower edge was clear of the mountain-tops Manco drew his sword and held it aloft so that the moonlight fell upon the long, polished blade, making it look like a slim shaft of burnished silver, and then he began to speak in tones very different from those in which he had that morning bidden his Spanish guests farewell. Then they had been gentle and courteous; now they were deep and full, instinct with majesty, and thrilling with indignant emotion.

“Brothers of the Sacred Blood and warriors of the Four Regions,” he said, addressing each of the groups in turn, “the ancient glories of our race and nation lie behind us, and between us and them there is the shame of division and the sorrow of defeat. But if the division had not gone before the defeat would not have followed after. Had not the Usurper—whose name shall be for ever accursed in the ears of the Children of the Sun—divided the armies of my conquering father into hostile factions, these calamities could never have fallen upon us. Is it to be believed that if the great Huayna-Capac had still commanded the united armies of the Sun these strangers, falsely called the sons of Viracocha, would have crossed those mountains which our Father in his wisdom raised up as bulwarks to guard the homes of his children? Would not they have been overwhelmed in the narrow passes? Would not they and their war-beasts have been starved on the bare and wind-swept punas; and would not those who might have been left have perished amidst the ice and snows through which the servants of the Usurper guided them in safety?

“But all that is past now,” he went on, with an added note of passion in his voice. “The conquering Strangers are here in our midst. They have plundered our treasure-houses, they have defiled our temples, and dishonoured the holy vestals of the Sun. They have proved themselves, not the descendants of gods, but of demons, and yonder, in the heart of the empire of our fathers, in the sacred City of the Sun itself, they are even now perpetrating their vilest abominations and wreaking their cruel will and sating their foulest lusts like masters and conquerors in a land of slaves!”

The Inca paused for a moment, and as he looked about him he saw by the light of the torches frowning brows, dark, gleaming eyes, and white, clenched teeth shining through parted lips, and he heard a low, growling, hissing sound that would have boded but ill in the Spaniards’ ears. Then he went on again—

“But as the Ancient Wisdom says, out of evil there may often come good, and out of the grave evils that have befallen us and our people there has come this good—that, though defeated and broken, we have become united, and so are still unconquerable. Now, for the first time since the death of the great Huayna, the heart of every warrior within the Four Regions is beating high and true for his lawful Lord and his beloved country. It has fallen to me, the unworthy bearer of the Divine Name, to lead you, my brothers of the Blood, in the last struggle with the invader of our country and the dishonourer of our holy things. Before two more suns have risen and set that struggle will have begun, and we have come here unto this holy place, where the Divine Manco held his first war-council, to take the most solemn oath that the lips of the Children of the Sun can utter that, when that struggle has once begun, it shall not end while an invader is left alive in the land or one of us has power to do him harm.

“Henceforth there is war without rest or mercy between us. Where any of this accursed race are found within the confines of the Four Regions, be they man, woman, or child, death, swift and pitiless, must overtake them. As they have dealt with us, so shall we deal with them. We will give blow for blow, death for death, and dishonour for dishonour, until the last of us shall have fallen in the holy strife or the last of them shall have paid the last penalty of their countless crimes—and that I, Manco-Capac, Inca and lawful Lord of the Four Regions, swear by the glory of our Father the Sun and his sister-wife the Moon, who now beholds my oath, and by the might and Majesty of That which may not be named, and in token of my oath I give my blood that it may bear witness for me or against me as I keep my oath or break it in that hour, be it soon or late, when my foot crosses the threshold of the Mansions of the Sun!”

As he said this the Inca lowered his sword and sheathed it. Then he drew his dagger, and baring his left arm he made a slight cut in it and held it over one of the bowls of chicha until a few drops of his blood had fallen into it. Then he gave the dagger to Ruminavi, who did the same and passed it on to the prince next in rank to himself, and so the dagger went round until a few drops from the veins of each one of the Blood had fallen into the vase. Then the dagger was passed to the other group, for it was not lawful that the pure blood should be mingled with any other, however slightly tainted, and the same ceremony was performed over the second bowl.

Then Manco raised the great goblet to his lips and drank and gave it to Ruminavi, and so the two goblets were passed round the two groups till they were drained to the last drop. And so the taking of the Oath of the Blood was completed.

There was not much rest that night for prince or warrior in the valley of Yucay and its guardian fortresses, for every hour runners came in from all parts of the country, some bringing news of new regiments marching up to the scene of action, some telling of isolated settlements of the Strangers cut off and given over to fire and sword, of detachments of the enemy making their way to the mountains overwhelmed in narrow gorges and on the brink of precipices, or caught on bridges and flung headlong into the torrents, and others again of the safe removal of stores and flocks of animals into parts of the mountains inaccessible to the heavy-footed Strangers and their war-beasts.

The next day the defences of the valley were once more inspected, outposts were thrown out, and ambushes laid, and so another day and another night passed, and at length, in the twilight of the second morning, there came runners in from the way of Cuzco bringing the news that a body of nearly a hundred horse were within two leagues of the fortress of Chinchero.

There was no need to give any further orders, for every man already knew what was to be done. All the way from Cuzco the Spaniards had not seen a single living thing. The whole country was silent and seemingly deserted. The great guardian fortress was as still and lifeless as a house of the dead.

They halted before it, and Juan Pizarro, who was in command of the troop, ordered half a score of his men to dismount and summon it to surrender. There was no answer to the summons, and when at length they entered it they found the vast halls of the palace stripped bare and deserted. Then they cautiously entered the fortress, only to find it in the same state. They had no men to spare for a garrison, for they knew not what work lay before them, and so, not a little mystified and not without some misgivings, Juan Pizarro ordered his men to re-mount, and then the difficult descent of the zigzag road began.

“I would sooner have seen that fortress swarming with men and have fought our first battle under its walls,” said de Soto, who was riding beside Pizarro, “than leave it empty like that in our rear. Methinks we shall find it full enough when we come back.”

“Ay, that is like enough,” said Juan, “but we could spare no men to keep it. We should have had a half-score of archers and as many arquebusiers to hold it for us, but they could ill be spared from Cuzco now, so we must take our chances of the retreat, if retreat we must.”

They accomplished the descent amidst an unbroken and ominous silence, and even by the time they reached the river they had not seen a single warrior. Fortress, palace, and terrace seemed alike deserted, and as they halted about thirty yards from the river-bank, Juan Pizarro said to de Soto—

“I like this but little. Yonder valley looks to me more of a trap than a battlefield. What if the Inca has left us to entangle ourselves here among these unknown mountains while he has gone to Cuzco? He knows full well that the city can ill spare as many swords as we have here from its defence.”

“That may be so,” replied de Soto, “yet the daylight is precious to us, and it were not wise to lose too much of it making vain guesses here. Would it not be well to send a party across the river to reconnoitre?”

“The river looks deep and flows fast,” said Pizarro, shaking his head. “It would make a bad way of retreat were this bank well held by the enemy.”

“I have swum it twice, Señor, and will answer for taking a troop across and back safely.”

It was Alonso de Molina who spoke, though few would have recognised the gallant young cavalier who was wont to take such fastidious pride in his armour and accoutrements in the meanly-armed trooper who now reigned his horse up alongside Pizarro’s.

The reason for this strange freak may be told in a few words. After the council Hernando Pizarro had jested with him somewhat rudely on the promise that the Inca had made to spare him when he gave him the sacred plume, and de Molina, who had been strangely silent and cast down ever since he had left the palace of Chinchero, had there and then sworn that he would go into the first battle that should be fought so disguised that not even his own companions should know him. Among themselves his three companions had said more than this—that he had resolved to make this disguise of his a short way to death, for it was plain to all of them that he was sorely stricken with hopeless love for the Princess Nahua, who was now, through his own act, lost to him for ever.

Juan Pizarro gladly accepted his offer, and he called for twelve volunteers, on which a score immediately rode out of the ranks, and among them Michael Asterre, looking very gay and gallant in his captain’s armour. He chose his twelve men, Asterre among them, and at once rode to the brink of the river and plunged in at the same spot where he had entered it before.

They reached the other side without catching a sight of an enemy or hearing a hostile sound, and when they had got on to firm ground again de Molina said to Asterre—

“Now, Michael, thou art leader for the time being. Keep thine eyes and ears open, and do not believe that there are no enemies here because thou canst hear and see none.”

They rode past the guardian fortress, scanning it closely and listening intently without seeing the glint of a weapon or hearing anything but the wash of the river behind them. As they rounded the angle the ground became rougher, and presently they came to a very narrow place where there was nothing but a steep, rugged footway leading close under an ancient and seemingly tottering fortress wall, and fenced in on the other side by the fast-flowing river. Beyond this they came to another bend in the river, and here the valley widened out again, leaving a broad and fairly level plain of some considerable size on either side of the stream. This plain was completely walled in on all sides, save the one on which they had entered it, with tiered fortresses built into the rocky mountain-sides, and as they came in sight of it Asterre pointed ahead with his sword and said to de Molina—

“Ha! yonder they are at last, Señor! And this is the death-trap in which they would fain give us battle.”

De Molina looked ahead as he rounded the point and saw the whole of the upper end of the valley covered with glittering ranks of silent warriors, conspicuous in the midst of whom were the figures of Manco and Ruminavi mounted on their Spanish war-horses and clad in their shining Spanish mail.

“A goodly array and well posted, friend Manco!” he exclaimed, “yet if you do but bring it out to fight us on the plain the end will not be long in doubt.”

“It is not the fight, Señor,” said Asterre, “but rather the getting back after it that looks the worst to my eyes. If they give us battle here it will be but as a feint. They will entangle us here with their multitudes. Yonder fortresses are unscaleable for us who have no ladders. The horses cannot work among those rock-strewn slopes that line the hills, and some time, whether victors or vanquished, we must get back.”

“Then let us get back now, good Michael,” said de Molina abruptly. “Those are matters for the commander to decide, not for us.”

And with that he turned his horse’s head and led the way back through the narrow path under the fortress wall. Their retreat was watched without a sound or a sign from the hosts of the Inca, which remained under their entrenchments silent, terrible, and portentous.

When they reached the main body again de Molina told the commander exactly what they had seen without proffering any advice.

“Well, friend Alonso, that is not very good hearing,” said Juan Pizarro when he had finished his description of the valley and the preparations that the Inca had made for their reception in it. “It would seem to me that, unless some miracle like that of Cajamarca happens, we shall discover that our erstwhile guest in Cuzco has invited us to a feast where we shall find the viands somewhat hard of digestion. Hast thou any advice to offer—or let me say rather, what wouldst thou do wert thou in my place?”

“To put it quite plainly, Señor,” said de Molina bluntly, “and to speak as one who has already devoted himself to such death as may be honourably found in battle, were I myself commanding this troop I would send my men back to Cuzco under a trusty lieutenant, then I would swim the river and fight the champions of the Inca, beginning with himself, on the condition that if I overcome three of them in succession this whole land should henceforth be held as tributary to our Sovereign Lord. But if I were Juan Pizarro, and yet knew as much as I do of the Inca and the dispositions he has most evidently made to receive us, I should without further ado turn my horses’ heads back to Cuzco and fight my way thither with as little loss and delay as might be.”

The young captain looked at him long and seriously before he replied, then he said, almost solemnly for him—

“De Molina, that sounds but little like counsel of thine—thou whose blade was ever wont to show red earliest in the battle. Moreover, it is such counsel as I, entrusted now with my first command, could not accept without dishonour. I have been sent here to bring this proud young Inca back a captive, and I must do it. To return without striking a blow would be to make my name—and that is his Highness’s name, mind you—a by-word in the camp. No, whatever be the odds or the hazards, we must fight.”

“Very well, Señor,” replied de Molina, with a somewhat ceremonious bow, “you asked for my candid counsel and I have given it. The rest is nothing to me. Did you go back I would cross the river alone and fulfil my oath. If you fight, I may still hope to do so. But in this case, since you have more than half the day left, I would most earnestly counsel you to lose no time. Cross the river at once. It may be that the Inca’s troops, flushed with conquest, may give us battle in the plain. If so we may inflict so crushing a defeat on them that Yucay will be another Jauja, though you will never take the Inca alive. If we camp here till morning we shall find the fortresses behind us occupied, and, when we are in the thick of the battle, another host behind us waiting till we are wearied with fighting to cut us off from all retreat. Nevertheless,” he went on, speaking still more earnestly, “my best counsel to you is to go back to Cuzco, for by the time you reached it you would find it already beleaguered. That is my reading of the Inca’s last words to us.”

“Nay, friend Alonso,” replied Juan Pizarro, reaching out his hand and laying it on de Molina’s shoulder, “that cannot be. We were sent here to fight, and fight we must, whatever the odds and whatever the upshot.”

CHAPTER IX.
THE BATTLE OF THE VALLEY

Within ten minutes of this decisive pronouncement Alonso de Molina had once more led his little troop of scouts across the river, followed closely by the whole company. But scarcely had they made good their footing on the opposite bank and begun their cautious march towards the narrow path at the river bend than a file of spearmen came round the corner at a quick run and drew a treble line of spear-points across the entrance to the narrow passage. There were neither archers nor arquebusiers among the Spaniards, for none could be spared from the defence of the city, and so Juan Pizarro could do nothing more than dismount a portion of his troop and send them forward as pikemen to clear the way with pike and sword, since horses would have been worse than useless. The Peruvians disputed the passage obstinately and several severe wounds were given and taken and a few lives lost on either side before they at last broke and ran.

The footmen pressed them back at a run and Juan Pizarro cried exultingly—

“Mira! Mira! So—they fly already! When could the infidel withstand good Christian steel! After them, gentlemen and soldiers of Spain! For God and Santiago—forward!”

“For God and Santiago, back, Señor!” shouted de Molina, who, still full of suspicion, had been watching, not the little skirmish, but the rocks and fortress walls about him, and had seen that these were now swarming with hidden men.

But the warning came too late to be heeded. The pikemen were already round the bend and chasing the Peruvian spearmen over the plain. Juan Pizarro had galloped round, waving his sword above his head, and the whole troop, some of them leading the horses of the dismounted men, were streaming along under the fortress wall. He himself held back till the last man had passed, and then he drove his spurs into his horse’s flanks and went after them at a gallop.

Just as he cleared the bend and swung out into the open plain he heard a dull rumbling crash behind him. He reined his horse up sharp and looked round. The whole of the front wall of the old fortress had fallen outward, completely blocking the path between the hillside and the river, and over the ruins hundreds of men were streaming down into the plain, swinging their weapons aloft and screaming out their shrill and savage war-cries.

“There closes the death-trap!” he laughed. “Well, now it is just a question of who lives longest. There is nothing much to be done with these fellows. There is better work than that to do in front. Adios, Señores!” and with that he put spurs to his horse again and, waving his sword as though in invitation to the shouting throng behind him, he galloped away over the plain and joined the troop.

Juan Pizarro had by this time got his men into battle array—that is to say, he had divided them into three divisions in the invariable Spanish style, a main body or “battle” in the centre and two wings a little in advance of it. But the gleaming wall of soldiery in front made no move as they rode up to it, and when they came within some thirty paces they found a rising ridge of ground running from the mountain-side to the river across the plain strewn and piled so thickly with stones that no cavalry could charge across it without being broken, and as they halted before this showers of arrows and stones from slings were rained upon them, and then bands of javelin-men ran out almost up the ridge of stones and hurled their heavy weapons pointed with tempered copper at the horses’ heads and flanks until the maddened animals, already galled by the arrows and bruised by the stones, began to rear and plunge and swerve aside in somewhat ominous fashion, and Juan Pizarro, seeing that not much good could come of this, drew his troop back and ordered a score of men to dismount and cross the barrier on foot.

Nearly twice the number obeyed, and then, sword and dagger in hand, the grim, iron-clad Spanish soldiery leapt through the stones and sprang at their assailants. It was steel against copper, iron cuirass against quilted cotton mail, European discipline and training against mere savage valour, and what followed was butchery until the Inca himself led a troop of his own body-guard down into the plain and drove the Spaniards back nearly to the barrier.

But meanwhile the right wing had scrambled through the stones, and, as they were forming to charge, old Ruminavi led a column of spearmen across their path while another moved out to cut them off by the rear. The spearmen took the charge kneeling with their spear-butts planted firmly in the ground. They were ridden over and slain almost to a man, but when the charge was past four of the dreaded war-beasts were writhing and kicking on the ground, screaming with pain and gashed with fearful wounds inflicted by the barbed copper lance-heads, and this was a greater loss to the Spaniards than a hundred men to the Peruvians.

Old Ruminavi himself rode at the first man who broke the line, caught his sword-thrust on his own Spanish buckler, and then dealt him so shrewd a blow with a huge, copper-headed mace that he hammered in the iron of his cap as though it had been parchment and broke his skull like an egg-shell beneath it. Almost at the same time the Inca, seeing three troopers playing sad havoc with their long swords among his own guards, put his Spanish lance down and charged one of them so strongly and so truly that he drove him from the saddle and flung him down among the struggling footmen, there to be speedily stabbed to death. And then, letting go his lance and unhooking his battle-axe, he clove another through helm and skull to the chin. Then he wrenched his axe out just in time to take a sword-cut from the other on his shield and drove the blade under his still up-lifted arm and hurled him too, crippled and bleeding, to the ground.

“Santiago! that was well hit, Señor Inca!” shouted Michael Asterre through the bars of his vizor.

He had just forced his way through the press towards the mounted and mailed figure, longing to find some worthy foe to prove his new armour and weapons, and when he saw the third man go down under the Inca’s fierce attack he made sure he had found one; but to his amazement and disgust the Inca only turned in his saddle towards him and then leapt his horse over the dead and dying and flung himself into another part of the battle.

All through the long burning afternoon the fight raged fast and furious, and until sundown Michael Asterre sought to close with the mailed figure that carried the sacred plumes in its helmet, but ever without success. Once only they came to blows, and then the Inca contented himself with taking the savage sword-cut on his buckler, and once more avoided the single combat without returning it.

There was another of the Spaniards, a man clad and armed like one of the meanest troopers, who also seemed to the Inca to meet him at every turn in the battle and three times he wounded him without taking a scratch back. Indeed so light and half-hearted were his blows that Manco took him at last for some soldier enfeebled by disease, and so avoided him too as not worthy of his own royal steel.

So the Battle of the Valley raged on until the sun drooped towards the western ridges and the long shadows of the mountains began to fall across the river and the now bloody plain. Yard by yard the Spaniards had driven the Peruvians back under their fortress walls. Superiority of discipline and weapons had now, as ever, proved better than superiority of numbers; and although neither the Inca nor Ruminavi had been captured or even wounded, so far as was known, yet when the Peruvians at length retreated into their impregnable fastnesses and Juan Pizarro took the remains of his troop back across the stony barrier to form his camp in the middle of the plain, where he would be secure from a night attack, he was fain to confess that, if all the battles to come were to be like this one, even victory would leave the Spanish forces so weak that it would be worthless to them.

Hundreds of the enemy had been slain, but more than half a score of his own men were dead, a score more were badly wounded, and no less than eleven horses would never carry a rider to battle again. Still, they had fought the enemy on his own ground and driven him back, as usual with heavy loss, and the young commander hoped all through the anxious, miserable night that followed that the lesson would prove stern enough, and that he would at least be able to go back to Cuzco with the news of a victory.

But when morning dawned grey and calm over the mighty hills that seemed to shut them in from all the rest of the world, he saw what had happened the day before was only the beginning of the tragedy. The whole of the valley as far as they could see was filled with innumerable hosts which surrounded them on every side, and one despairing look about him sufficed to show him that his expedition was now nothing more than a forlorn hope.

His battle-worn and wounded men had laid down in their armour beside their horses, and with the first glimmer of light all who could mount were in the saddle. There were only two ways out of the fatal valley. One was over the narrow pathway, blocked and cumbered by the stones of the fallen wall which had been pushed by the sheer weight of the men behind it out from its foundation. The other was across the river, and already the plain on the other side was filling up with regiment after regiment of the Inca’s soldiery.

“I would to God I had taken thy advice yesterday, Alonso!” said Juan Pizarro, as he swung himself up into his saddle. “Those of us who get alive out of here will have but a sad tale to tell in Cuzco.”

“There are no eggs in last year’s nests, Señor!” replied de Molina, as he too, stiff and sore with his wounds and weak with loss of blood and lack of food and sleep, dragged himself up to the saddle. “The only question for us now is how many of us may get back. If my advice is still worth having, you will take all the men and horses that are now fit for hard service and fight your way back with all haste that you may, for you will be sorely wanted ere long in Cuzco. As for us who are not of much further account, we will do what we can to keep the enemy at bay while you make good your retreat.”

“And what of you after that?” said Pizarro. “Do you think, friend Alonso, that we are going to desert wounded comrades in arms in that fashion?”

“Señor,” said de Molina, with a brave attempt at a laugh, “we are wounded, and our horses are well-nigh crippled, and without sound beasts escape is hopeless. When it is over what is left of us will not be worth the taking home. It is a hard thing to say and a harder thing to do, but it is the need of battle and our duty. There are fourteen or fifteen of us here who are still men enough to keep the enemy back while you lead your horses over the stones yonder. Ride over them you cannot. Once on the other side and remounted, your way is open to the river, though doubtless you will need your swords to keep it open.

“You cannot pass the river here. It is too deep and the banks are too steep. There is but one way and that is over the fallen wall. For God’s sake and Spain’s, Señor, take it quickly or it will be too late. Do you not see those clouds of men up yonder gathering on the mountain-side? If you are not past that corner before they come above us they will rain down such an avalanche of stones and rocks as will not leave a man or horse unmaimed among us. Go, Señor, go, for God’s sake, while you can!”

Juan Pizarro looked up at the towering slopes above him and saw that, bitter as de Molina’s counsel was, in it lay the only hope of saving the troop. The other bank of the deep, swift stream was swarming with men, and already arrows and darts and stones were flying across in ever thickening showers. Their hands met for a moment in a last clasp, and then the troop moved forward towards the pass. In front went the thirty-five men who were still unwounded or only slightly hurt, taking all the sound horses with them, and in the rear went Alonso de Molina with his forlorn hope of wounded men and horses.

While they were on the plain the Inca held his men back by the strictest orders, for he knew full what would happen if the retreating enemy turned and caught them on the open plain. He was well content with what had been done so far, and he knew what was still in store for the Spaniards before they got back to Cuzco. But the moment that the troop had reached the narrow pathway and the men began to dismount he gave the order to advance, and his regiments went forward at the run, not over the plain, but round along the mountain slopes, while he rode with Ruminavi along the open directing their movements with word and gesture.

But when he reached the pass he saw that all the Spaniards were not crossing it, for a line of them were drawn up across the approach, half on horseback and half on foot. He could see that they were wounded and weary, and that their beasts were gashed and spattered with dried blood. One of their mounted men a little in advance of the others was the sorry-looking trooper who had again and again the day before seemed to seek death at his own hands.

Before half Pizarro’s troop was over the stone-encumbered pathway the first of the Inca’s regiments had gained the high ground above it, and instantly the hillside was covered with leaping stones and masses of rock which crashed and thundered into their midst, sending horses and men down with maimed and broken limbs. Hoarse shouts of triumph thundered along the valley, showers of arrows and darts and sling-stones rained rattling upon the harness of the Spaniards, who could strike no blow in return till they had got the trembling, frightened animals, on whom they were depending for their escape, over the stones.

At the same time the Inca ordered another regiment to come down and charge the rear-guard, and on they went, rank after rank, yelling their war-cries and hurling themselves with spear and axe and mace on the thin, ragged line of wounded men.

But, few and wounded though they were, they were made of stern stuff. With the first onset wounds and weariness were forgotten, and the long, keen Spanish swords struck out hard and true, and the heavy Spanish axes swung fast and bit deep, and every warrior who came within their reach went down. But more and more came on, and then one by one the Spaniards, overwhelmed by weight of numbers, began to go down, till at last only the mounted men were left.

But now the last of the troop had passed the stones, and they could hear the shouts of their comrades telling them that all was well and bidding them come and join them. De Molina shouted to his remaining companions to give up the unequal fight and make the best of their way back, and this they did, nothing loth to end it, though only two of them reached the other side alive.

Then de Molina, facing the whole host alone, drove his spurs into the flanks of his jaded, wounded beast, and made for the river brink. But old Ruminavi was too quick for him, and charged him when he was within two yards of it. De Molina, better skilled in horsemanship, swerved aside, and Ruminavi very nearly charged into the river instead, but the next moment the Inca was on him, with axe uplifted.

“Yield, Señor!” he cried, in Spanish. “Whether you be gentle or simple, you are too gallant a man to throw your life away thus. We are two to one, and there are thousands behind us.”

“I have already got my death-blow, so your axe will but make the end a little quicker. Therefore strike, friend Manco, for I could wish to die by no nobler hand than thine.”

As de Molina said this he threw up his vizor, and the Inca saw his face already ghastly with the grey hue of death and his once bright blue eyes already dim and glazing.

“They are safe, are they not?” he said faintly, looking over the pass he had so gallantly held. “Then the work is done. Well, since you will not strike, friend Manco, I yield.”

But even as he said this he reeled in the saddle, and the Inca, calling to Ruminavi, sprang from his horse just in time to catch him in his arms as he fell. As he laid him down on the sand he saw that there was scarcely a part of his body in which he had not received a wound, and that blood was flowing from him in nearly a score of places. He at once took his morion off and bade one of his men go to the river for water. A draught of it revived him for the moment, and he put his hand to his neck and pulled out the gem that Nahua had given him.

“You can tell your princess, friend Manco, that I spoke truly when I said that this should only leave me with my life. I have not many more moments left. When they are over take it back to her and tell her that I died happier holding this dear token of her friendship than I could have lived without her love. As a loyal Spaniard I cannot wish you victory, but for her sake I can wish you safety and happiness when this evil war is over. Farewell, friend Manco! May your last fight be as hard a one as mine has been, and may you come better out of it. Mother of God, pray for one who is a sinner!—Dios y Santiago, they are coming!—Stand fast, gentlemen, for God and Spain! They are on us! Now strike! Ah, that was my death-wound, yet we must hold them a few minutes longer. It will not be long—not long——”

As the delirium of death had come on him he had struggled up into a sitting posture and waved his right hand above his head as though it still held a sword. Manco threw himself on his knees beside him, but just as he clasped him in his arms his head fell back heavily against his shoulder, and there, on the breast of his best-loved enemy, Alonso de Molina breathed out his gallant soul with a sigh so soft that even Manco’s strained ears could scarcely catch it.

He laid him down with gentle reverence on the sands, and when he had taken Nahua’s jewel from his neck he ordered one of the royal litters to be instantly brought that he might be taken back to the fortress, and while it was being brought he stood over him with bent head and wet eyes, mourning for him as man seldom mourns for his enemy, and, for the time, heedless in his sorrow of the battle which was still roaring away up the valley.

CHAPTER X.
BELEAGUERED

Nearly five months had passed since Juan Pizarro and Hernando de Soto had ridden at the head of twenty-eight wounded and wearied men, the sole survivors of the terrible Battle of the Valley, into the northern gates of Cuzco. Their homeward march had been one long fight of two nights and two days, during which not a man left his saddle save when he dropped from it overcome by wounds and weariness, and lay waiting for the axe or spear or mace which ended his fighting days for ever.

Those who reached the city had found it closely invested on all sides by seemingly innumerable hosts, which had come flocking from all quarters of the land in answer to the call of its last champion. The beleaguering hosts had opened to let them through, and the Peruvian warriors had laughed at them as their wounded and jaded steeds crawled feebly into what seemed the death-trap in which they were about to die, but those who had fallen behind had been butchered without pity.

The young Inca had fulfilled with terrible exactness the oath which he had sworn to Anda-Huillac on the fateful night when Nahua and Mama-Oello had devoted themselves to a death of shame and torment to buy him his last chance of liberty. The news of the Battle of the Valley had sped with the swiftness of lightning throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the Inca’s call to arms had been answered north and south and east and west by hosts of fierce and pitiless warriors, who had seemed to spring full-armed from the earth like the fabled fruit of the dragon’s teeth of old.

Wherever the Spaniards had settled in isolated families and small communities, they had been fallen upon and butchered, men, women, and children, without warning and without pity, for the day of reckoning had come, and the penalty of outrage and massacre, of plunder and treachery, had now to be paid.

Messenger after messenger had been dispatched from Cuzco to the coast, and when at length one of them had reached Pizarro in his newly-founded City of the Kings, he had sent an army of four hundred horse and foot to the relief of the sorely beleaguered city. Then the host which had been besieging Lima had drawn back into the mountains, hovering on the Spaniards’ flanks and rear until they had caught them entangled among the narrow, winding mountain-paths and the fearful gorges of the mountains. Then they had cut the bridges and broken down the roads before and behind them. Avalanches of rocks and stones had fallen upon them from inaccessible precipices, clouds of warriors had descended on their nightly camps, and though these had fallen by hundreds under the well-wielded Spanish weapons, in the end the inevitable happened, and of the army which was more than twice as strong as that which had conquered Atahuallpa in Cajamarca, only a few sorely-wounded stragglers had struggled back across the mountains to Lima to tell their tale of disaster and defeat.

In the City of the Sun the long weary months had been filled with days and nights of horror. The splendid capital of El-Dorado on which de Soto and his companions had gazed in awe-mingled wonder on that first memorable morning was now a wilderness of blackened and fire-wasted ruins. Day after day the legions of the Inca had flung themselves into its approaches, only to be beaten back with fearful slaughter by the little band of desperate heroes, now less than two hundred strong, who held their camp in the midst of the great square surrounded by the blackened ruins of the palaces and temples which they had first seen glowing with gay colours and shining with gold and silver.

Every night the countless watchfires had blazed up in undiminished numbers on the hills about the city and on the towers of the great fortress which loomed dark, threatening, and unscaleable above it. Every hour arrows and darts headed with blazing fire-balls had soared through the air and fallen on the thatched roofs of the buildings and into the fast-emptying magazines of grain, which, saving the horses killed in battle, were all that now stood between the besieged and starvation.

Scarcely a day had passed but one or more severed Spanish heads were flung from the battlements of the fortress into the city to tell Hernando Pizarro and his men in what terrible fashion the Inca was keeping his oath, and at last Don Hernando, forgetting all knightly honour and humanity in his desperation, sent out an envoy to say that if he received such another message he would slay every prisoner in his hands.

As it happened, the Inca was absent at the time on one of those raiding expeditions which afterwards made his name a terror to every Spaniard in the land, and Ruminavi sent back his messenger’s head as an answer. Within an hour the Princess Lalla-Cica and her companions, whom de Soto had so far, even in the midst of all these horrors, contrived to defend from injury, were brought out into the square, and there, in full sight of the garrison of the fortress, they died the death that had been decreed to Nahua and the Queen-mother.

Scarcely had their shame and torment ended than a general assault was made on all sides of the city, and the Peruvian warriors poured in, column after column, through the streets blocked with charred timbers and strewn with the rotting corpses which throughout the siege had been filling the air with poison and plague. Through these they fought their way with little check, for the narrow streets were too choked and cumbered for the horses to work with any good effect. But no sooner did they reach the entrances to the square than the cannon and musketry roared out, and the silver balls and bullets—for iron was now too precious to use for such purposes—tore their way through their crowded ranks, mowing them down by scores, and then came the thundering charges of the war-beasts, the onslaught of the swift-striking, deep-biting steel, and the end was the same as it had ever been—hundreds slain at the cost of a few wounded men and horses and one or two dead of the iron-clad soldiery of Spain.

It was a victory for Don Hernando and his companions, as every fight had been when the Peruvians had once come within range of the artillery and musketry and made themselves a fair mark for the irresistible charges of the cavalry. But the same thing had happened day after day, week after week, and month after month, as the great tragedy of the Conquest drew to its climax, and every day fresh hosts had replaced the slain without, and every night death and wounds and sickness had made the muster-roll of the defenders shorter and shorter.

“We must make an end of this somehow, comrades,” said Don Hernando, when they were holding a council the night after the grand assault, “or by the Saints it will surely make an end of us! Here we are, cut off from all succour, with scarce a hundred and fifty fighting-men, and not fourscore horses that are fit for work. Every day we grow fewer and weaker, and every day these heathens seem to grow more and stronger. Those we slay lie in the streets and poison us with plague, so that we do but bring sickness on ourselves by slaying them, while at every onset there come back ten for every one we kill. The loss of one man and a horse is to us greater than a thousand men to them. They have the whole country to draw their supplies from; we have only what is here in the city, and that, as you know, cannot last many days longer. When that is gone we must fight our way out or starve. It is manifest that no help can come to us from outside. Almagro is far away in Chili, my brother, the Governor, is no doubt beleaguered in Los Reyes. If he could have sent us succour he would have done. If he has sent it the troops have doubtless been cut off and perished among the mountains. That is our condition, comrades. Now what is your counsel upon it?”

The assembled cavaliers, who were sitting and standing round a smoky fire in the middle of the wretched camp, looked at one another for a few moments in gloomy silence. They had eaten their last scanty meal from vessels of gold, and the whole camp was littered with gold and silver flagons and dishes, ornaments and chains and bars into which others had been melted down, and yet, battle-worn and sore stricken with plague and famine, they themselves looked scarcely less wretched than that other company which some seven years before had grubbed for worms and sea-snails on the desolate shores of Gallo. At length Pedro de Leon, one of the Almagrist faction, spoke, and said in a sullen, angry voice—

“So far as I can see, Señor, and as many others think with me, this much-boasted city of El-Dorado hath been little better than a gold-baited death-trap to us. True we eat and drink from vessels of gold, yet we are dying of famine by inches. Therefore my counsel is that, while we have yet a little life left in us, and before all our powder is burnt or our horses die of wounds and starvation, we should leave this accursed place and make shift to fight our way to the coast.”

“It would be as easy to fight thy way to Heaven, friend!” growled Carvahal, whose huge form seemed to thrive as well on famine as on plenty. “Depend upon it, if men well fed and well found have not been able to fight their way from Los Reyes here, we shall never fight ours to Los Reyes, and, since one place is as good as another to die in, why take the trouble to go elsewhere to do it?”

“I have not often heard thee speak wiser words than those, Carvahal,” said de Soto. “But still to my mind there is something more to be said. It seems to me, Señores,” he went on, addressing the council generally, “that we are here to hold this place for his Highness and our Sovereign Lord. We have won it with our arms, and with our arms we should keep it. Nevertheless, I am fain to confess that I see no way of holding it so long as the fortress is held by the enemy. It commands the whole country to the north, and blocks the only road by which succour can reach us. Moreover, if report speaks truly, there are great stores of meal and grain in it which would be very useful to us just now. If it were ours I should see no cause for despair.”

“Then let us take it!” said Juan Pizarro, sitting up on a rug of skins on which he had been lying.

He had been wounded in the jaw in that day’s fight by a shrewdly-slung stone, which had crushed the iron of his chin-piece in upon his flesh, and the wound was so painful that he could not now bear anything more than a felt cap upon his head.

“It was by my counsel that we did not occupy it at first. Therefore if it be the wish of the council, I will seek to make good my error by leading the attack upon it to-morrow. Let us make scaling-ladders and shields to guard us from the stones, and take it by escalade. Let us to-morrow divide our force into three companies of fifty each. I will lead one against the fortress, let Gonzalo take the other out by the northern road and take it in flank at the same time, and do you, Hernando, hold the camp with the other fifty. With the cannon and the musketry you will be well able to keep it against as many as will attack it. If God gives us the victory we can hold out for months to come; if not, we shall at least have fought a good fight and be none the worse than we are now. What say you to that, Señores?”

“It is good counsel, Juan,” said Hernando, after a little pause, during which they all looked at one another in anxious silence. “It is good counsel and we will do it. In such straits as ours what is boldest is best; so now, comrades, the council is ended. Get what rest and refreshment you can to-night, for to-morrow we shall have a hard day’s work. I will see to the making of the ladders and shields. The holy father Valverde will hold Mass at sunrise, and those who have sins to confess had better seek their confessors betimes, for this time to-morrow night may be too late. And now, comrades, again good-night, and God be with us, for in Him is now our only hope of help!”

CHAPTER XI.
ST. JAGO’S DAY

While the Spaniards were holding their council in the camp in the great square, Manco and Ruminavi were holding another no less momentous in one of the chambers of the central tower which crowned the fortress of the Sacsahuaman. Nor was their debate less anxious than that of Hernando Pizarro and his companions. The truth was that the feeding of the vast host which had now for months been encompassing Cuzco was fast becoming impossible. More than that, the time for sowing had come, and this among the Incas and their people had for ever been the season of universal religious observance. It was to them what Holy Week was to the Catholics, or the feast of Bairam to the Moslems.

Moreover, in such a country as the elevated regions of the Sierras, it was absolutely imperative that the grain should be sown simultaneously, and at this one season. If not, the next year the Children of the Sun would have to fight a foe even more pitiless than the Spaniards, for there would be famine throughout the length and breadth of the land. There were thus two reasons—one religious and one economical—which made it imperative to partially raise the siege of Cuzco, at least for a time.

Now that the great Temple of the Sun had been defiled and desecrated, the most holy place in the Land of the Four Regions was the temple on the sacred Island of Titicaca, some six days’ journey to the south, and thither it was necessary that the Inca, in his sacred character as Brother of the Sun, should go and open the first furrow with his golden hoe and plant the first seeds of the next year’s harvest. To have neglected this duty would have been an incredible impiety, and a breach of a custom hallowed by ages of solemn observance.

On the other hand, too, the multitudes which had been gathered about Cuzco, feeling the pinch of famine, and wearying of the length and rigours of the siege, were getting more and more difficult to keep together in any semblance of an army. Their thoughts were turning to their homes and families, and to the starvation and misery that would be their fate if the crops were not sown.

The last grand attack on the Spanish camp had failed, as all the others had done, and the disheartened hosts of the Inca were falling back to their old belief that, after all, these strange invaders must be something more than human, and therefore unconquerable, and Manco and his old General well knew that, while the people were in this temper, to neglect or even to postpone the Feast of Sowing would be to provoke almost universal mutiny and revolt, and utterly ruin all hope of future resistance.

So, after long and earnest debate between the young Inca and his General, the priests of the Sun and the chief nobles of the Blood, a compromise was decided upon. Manco was to start at dawn with his priestly retinue, and proceed with all possible dispatch to Titicaca. The bulk of the people were to be sent to their homes to prepare the fields for sowing, and Ruminavi was to remain with the picked regiments of the army to continue the blockade of the city.

It was thus that there came about the last of the long series of fatalities which had seemed to foredoom the empire of the Incas to destruction. If this decision had been made even a day later, or even if the Spaniards had carried out their original plan of attacking the fortress the next morning, Cuzco might have fallen, and the Spaniards might have been forced to begin the whole conquest over again in the face of a victorious and triumphant people.

But it so happened that the next day was St. James’, and when Hernando Pizarro told the Fray Valverde, who was now duly consecrated Bishop of Cuzco and the Southern Indies, of the projected attack, he protested with all the vigour of his eloquence against the desecration of the holy day by avoidable bloodshed, and ended by refusing point blank to celebrate Mass or to give absolution to any who took part in the impious enterprise.

“No, Señor,” he said sternly, in reply to Don Hernando’s military arguments as to the necessity of striking quickly. “No, the day on which the holy St. Jago died is no day for battle and slaughter if good Christians can avoid them. If you are attacked again, then strike back like true men, and prayers shall not be wanting for the souls of those who fall. But if the heathen leave you in peace, as after to-day’s defeat they may well do, then should the solemn hours of to-morrow be devoted to a better and more urgent service. They must be hours of fasting, humiliation, and prayer.

“Do you wonder, Señor, at the misfortunes that have overtaken you when you and your captains have permitted your men to imperil their own souls and pollute their holy cause by all manner of greed and lust and violence? Think you that God and the Holy Saints can look down with favour on work done by hands so foul and wicked as theirs are? It is not a battle with the heathen that they must fight to-morrow. It is a battle with their own evil lusts, which destroy the soul as well as the body. Do your will according to your own advice, Señor, but remember that to-morrow I proclaim a solemn fast and day of humiliation and intercession, and those who go out to battle between the rising and setting of the sun, save to repel an assault of the enemy, will go followed, not by the Church’s blessing, but by her solemn anathema!”

Don Hernando was too good a soldier as well as too good a Catholic not to see that in the face of such an interdict the order to march would be answered by the superstitious soldiery with nothing less than flat refusal and mutiny. So Bishop Valverde had his way, and, all unknowingly, did more than any other man at such a juncture could have done to ensure the triumph of the enterprise. All through the day a silence hung over the Spanish camp, broken only by the tolling of bells and the murmur of prayer and chanting and exhortation. The Peruvians, most mistakingly believing that they were preparing to leave the city and run the fatal hazard of the mountain passes, left them unmolested and went on with their own dispositions. The Inca departed southward at dawn, his heart full of heavy forebodings, and yet firmly persuaded that duty as well as necessity compelled the observance of the sacred duty he was going to perform; while Ruminavi and his captains busied themselves in organising the people according to their divisions, or nations, preparatory to dismissing them to their homes.

And so it came about that, when that ever memorable Saturday came, the amazed and delighted Spaniards looked out upon the surrounding hills and saw that the innumerable hosts which for months had blackened the hillsides and covered the plain had melted away and vanished like the creatures of an evil dream.

“Behold how quickly the Lord has answered the prayer of His servants!” cried Valverde, when the news was brought to him, and he came out on the terrace before the palace of Viracocha, which he had consecrated as the Cathedral of San Francisco. “Behold the Lord of Hosts hath spoken and His enemies are scattered, even as were the multitudes of Sennacherib before Salem! Now, soldiers of the Cross, go forth and conquer, for the voice of your contrition has risen up to Heaven and the hour of your deliverance is at hand. Go now and take the triumph that awaits you and the blessing of God and His holy Church go with you!”

The soldiers who had assembled before the terrace at the sound of his voice knelt by one impulse and received his benediction. Then they ate as good a meal as their scanty resources afforded them and set about their preparations.

Juan Pizarro’s first plan of attack had been greatly altered in after debate. In the first place the assault was to be made under cover of darkness, as the Peruvians, like all Indian nations, never fought at night unless forced to do so. Secondly, Don Hernando was to take command of the troop which was to carry out the flanking operations, while Gonzalo Pizarro, with Pedro de Candia as Captain of the Artillery, was to hold the square and what was left of the city.

The morning was busily employed in constructing scaling-ladders and mantlets, to protect the assailants from the stones that would be showered upon them, and shortly after the midday meal Juan Pizarro, at the head of forty horse, rode out of the city to the southward. This move was a feint to persuade the Peruvian leaders that he had gone on a foraging raid to replenish the exhausted store-houses of Cuzco.

But as soon as the sudden darkness had fallen over the valley he turned aside and threaded his way up through the side valleys on to the open plain which was commanded by the curved northern and eastern face of the great fortress. Meanwhile another party on foot had left the city carrying the ladders and mantlets, and made their way up under cover of the darkness to the gorge of the Rodadero past the south-eastern flank of the fortress and met him on the plain. By this time, too, Don Hernando had taken his troop round by the north up the steep, paved roads towards the head of the pass from which de Soto and his companions had first seen the City of the Sun.

The Sacsahuaman, the guardian fortress of the metropolis of the Land of the Four Regions, was at this time by far the most splendid and stately monument of architectural skill in the Western Hemisphere, and would have lost little by comparison with some of the strongest places of the Old World. It was, indeed, rather a fortified hill than a fortress—a Gibraltar of the land.

On the side facing the city it towered up an almost sheer ascent of more than seven hundred feet, faced with massive masonry, and approachable only by narrow zigzag paths and flights of steps hewn in the living rock, and absolutely unapproachable by a hostile force so long as the summit or fortress proper was held even by a scanty garrison. The approaches to the hill at either end were ravines dominated by high walls built of stones so huge and solidly set together that they stand to-day as firm as the primæval rock on which they are founded. To the northward the true fighting face, commanding the little, level plain of the Rodadero, consists of three angled walls of cyclopean stonework, extending in the shape of a bent bow and rising in terraces one above the other to a height of some seventy feet, and the lower of these walls forms a curve of some eighteen hundred feet in length.

At the time of the Conquest this colossal structure was crowned by three towers, the central and greatest of which was the true citadel, half palace, half fortress, built close to the perpendicular wall overlooking the city, and rising some sixty feet above its summit. These three towers have vanished, and much of the outworks are damaged now, torn down by the Conquerors to yield dressed stones for the building of the modern city, but, even after the ravages of three centuries, the Sacsahuaman remains to-day the greatest as well as the most marvellous structure of the New World.

Such, then, was the strong place which the remnant of the Spanish army in Cuzco, something less than a hundred men in all, set out to storm on that memorable night. If it had been held by disciplined troops, furnished with even the most primitive artillery of the times, it would have been impregnable, but its present defenders possessed only the arms of savage warfare—bows and arrows, darts and stones, and for closer quarters axes, maces and swords of copper, while its assailants, few as they were, were equipped with the most efficient arms that the art of war had so far produced.

Had it not been for the fatal decision of the night before the whole country would still have been occupied by the countless throngs, through which it would have been impossible for the attacking forces to have passed without discovery, as they now did, until they had reached the points at which the assault was to be delivered. Instead of this they must have been entangled and overwhelmed in the difficult defiles which, by an oversight of which no European commander could have been guilty, they now found unguarded.

The point which Juan Pizarro had selected for his attack was a great gateway opening on to the narrow valley through which the little stream now known as the Rodadero flows down to the ravine. This was called the Tiapunco, or Gate of Sand, possibly from the sandy nature of the little plain. It was an opening in the lower and outer wall of the fortifications, and led on to the first terrace of level ground between the outer and middle wall.

When they reached it they found it blocked by masses of stone which made almost as solid a barrier as the wall itself, and guarded by vigilant sentries, who instantly gave the alarm by kindling a huge pile of grass and brushwood saturated with oil and fat which had been built up in an angle beside the gate. The moment that the flames leapt up they were answered by others all along the triple walls and on the battlements of the central towers.

A score of archers and half as many arquebusiers had come up with the ladders and mantlets, and these Juan Pizarro posted on a little eminence on the other side of the stream about forty paces away, with orders to keep the terrace and wall clear while a company of sappers attacked the pile of stones in the gateway with their picks and crowbars.

The pain of his wounded jaw had been so great that he had been forced to discard his helmet and trust entirely to his buckler, yet, in spite of this, he led the first party up to the assault as coolly as though he had been encased from head to foot in mail of proof.

Before they had reached the gate the alarm had spread over the whole vast fortress, and the three terraces were already alive with armed men. A storm of missiles, arrows, javelins, and stones was rained down upon the sappers as they advanced to the attack, but the next moment the roar of the arquebuses rolled out, and the heavy balls, directed by the light of the fires, plunged into the crowded masses of men. Then came the hissing flight of the long, steel-headed arrows and the short, heavy, crossbow bolts, which did almost as much execution as the bullets. Under cover of this fire the mantlets were pushed forward, and under them pick and lever and crowbar went to work on the stones.

A little higher up one of the scaling-ladders had been planted against the outer wall, and up this began to crawl a dark stream of mail-clad men, headed by Sebastian ben-Alcazar with his buckler close down over his head, and a long, broad-bladed dagger between his teeth.

Four times was the ladder planted against the wall, and four times did the gallant Spanish Moor climb to the top of it through a storm of missiles, only to be flung down again when he had almost reached the top. The fifth time a well-directed volley from the archers swept the wall clear for a moment and in that moment he made good his footing. He struck down two warriors with his dagger, and then, drawing his heavy broadsword, he set his back against the inside of the wall and valiantly held the place he had won until a dozen more had scrambled up the ladder and planted themselves beside him.

Then, shoulder to shoulder and with bucklers interlaced, they went like a moving wall of iron along the terrace towards the gate, hewing down all who opposed them with the swift, swinging strokes of their good Toledo blades. Meanwhile the sappers had been doing their work well, and the Peruvian warriors, gallant as they were, were recoiling before the well-directed arrow-flights and the volleys of the ever-dreaded fire-arms. Presently a great stone was prised out from below and sent rolling down into the valley followed by an avalanche of others, and at last the gate was clear.

“Dios y Santiago! Make way there for God and Spain, ye heathens!” roared old Carvahal, flinging his huge bulk first into the breach. “To me, comrades, to me! Carrai! there goes another heathen soul to Hell!” he shouted again as he struck out with his heavy blade at the first of a stream of warriors that had poured down into the gateway, and the splendidly attired Peruvian rolled over with severed shield arm and head split to the jaws.

Close behind Carvahal came Hernando de Soto and Juan Pizarro followed by a score of men shouting the familiar war-cry. For some minutes they were checked by the solid mass of warriors which had poured down from the second terrace to oppose them, and so close was the press that they could scarcely find room to use their weapons. They were even driven back a few feet by the sheer weight of the crowd descending upon them; but meanwhile ben-Alcazar and his comrades had been hacking and hewing away at the Peruvian flank, more ladders had been planted against the outer wall; the archers and arquebusiers had left their position as soon as there was danger of their volleys injuring friends as well as foes, and they too had joined in the desperate escalade.

Again and again the ladders were hurled away from the wall by the ever-increasing throngs of warriors who came pouring down from the upper terraces, and again and again they were up-reared, until, one by one, the climbing columns of men gained the summit of the first rampart and made good their footing. Some drew their weapons and turned fiercely on the swarming defenders while others dragged the ladders up in readiness for the assault on the second line. Before long ben-Alcazar had nearly forty men behind him, and, forming these into a solid wedge of steel and iron, he drove them deep into the flank of the column that was still holding the assailants of the gate in check.

For a few moments it stuck fast as though locked in and overwhelmed by the swarm of men into which it had driven itself. Then the wedge began to move slowly forward again, and then the column burst asunder, half of it scattered flying up the slope and the other half fast shut in between the wedge and the gate.

Now the wedge dissolved and spread out into a double line, and between this and the head of the Spanish column coming through the gate the Peruvian warriors were entrapped. They had no more chance against the steel-clad Spanish soldiery than a mob of children would have had against themselves, but they went down to the last man fighting and dying like heroes, and when the bloody, pitiless work was over the Gate of Sand was won, and the hitherto inviolate fortress was impregnable no longer.

CHAPTER XII.
THE FIGHT FOR THE FORTRESS

Juan Pizarro now divided his men into three companies commanded by himself, de Soto, and ben-Alcazar, and planted the archers and arquebusiers in positions from which they could rake the second terrace with their volleys, but the storming of this was harder work than the forcing of the gate had been, for the wall was high and smooth and the few and narrow openings in it had been built up almost as solidly as the wall itself. It presented an unbroken series of angles, and above these huge heaps of stones had been piled, and hence the moment a ladder was planted those who attempted to mount it were exposed to attack not only from the top but from both sides as well.

Time after time the ladders were planted, and time after time the heroic assailants were driven back bruised and maimed by the avalanches of stones that were rained upon them. Only their stout, well-tried mail and bucklers saved them from certain death, and only the knowledge that this was their last fight and that they must either conquer in it or lose all that they had fought so hard and suffered so bitterly for, sent them back and back again to the seemingly hopeless assault.

At last Juan Pizarro, seeing that isolated attacks could only end in failure, ordered all the ladders to be planted in a single angle where the ammunition of the defenders was becoming exhausted. At the same time he drew up his archers and arquebusiers on the opposite side of the lower terrace, and, while the assailants were swarming for the fiftieth time up the ladder, these sent volley after volley over their heads into the dense ranks of the defenders above.

Still, in spite of this, two of the ladders were pushed aside and sent crashing down with their load of men on to the terrace below. Carvahal had just reached the top of a fourth, panting and swearing and foaming with fury, when suddenly the ranks of the defenders divided and a tall figure clad in Spanish mail and helm, with a Spanish buckler on his left arm and a huge copper-headed mace in his right hand, strode forward and, swinging up the mace, brought it down with a frightful crash on Carvahal’s steel cap.

The grip that he had just taken of the top of the wall relaxed and, with a hoarse cry like the bellow of a wounded bull, he reeled backwards and rolled down the ladder, sweeping every man behind him off it. They tumbled in a heap to the ground with Carvahal on top of them. One was killed outright and two were maimed for life, but the old swashbuckler sat up the next minute in the midst of them, pulled off his cap to see if his head was broken, and then, finding it wasn’t, shouted—

“Cuerpo de Cristo! that was a shrewd knock for a heathen to give a good Christian. By the Saints, I thought all the fortress had fallen on me! Devil take him, I shall have a headache for a week! Come on, lads, up again! It shall never be said that Carvahal took a blow without giving it back! I’ll crack that son of Satan’s pate for him yet if God gives me strength and a fair chance at him.”

With that he scrambled to his feet again and, with the help of those who were not too badly hurt by the fall, reared up the ladder again and once more mounted first upon it. But while this was happening a footing had already been gained on top of the wall from three of the other ladders, and Juan Pizarro, de Soto, and ben-Alcazar, with stout Michael Asterre, were laying about them with their long swords and fast clearing a space on the second terrace. Foot by foot they drove the defenders back, and now the infuriated soldiery came pouring unresisted up the ladders.

“Where is he? Where is he?” howled Carvahal as he rolled over the parapet.

“Whom seekest thou, fire-eater?” laughed de Soto, leaning on his sword during a brief pause in the fight.

“That heathen knave in Christian clothing! That iron clad son of Belial who gave me that crack over the pate and made me see more stars than the good God ever created!” he growled, looking about him in the dim light for his foe. “If I mistake not he is none other than Ruminavi the General, old Stony-face as they rightly call him. Carrajo! I will see whether his head too be made of stone when I get near enough to whet my blade upon it.”

“It will not be stone but good Spanish steel that thou wilt whet thy blade on,” said Juan Pizarro, “for that, as thou hast said, was old Ruminavi, and thou mayest thank the Saints that it was not the Inca himself, for, judging what he did in the Battle of the Valley, thick and all as thy skull may be, he would have smashed it like an egg-shell. But come, Señores,” he went on, addressing the others, “minutes are worth much now, and we have yet another wall to scale and after that the citadel to storm, and, see, the heathens are gathering to the fight again! So far we have done well, yet I would give something to hear Hernando’s guns from the gap of the road yonder.”

“And I would give more to see your head covered by a good steel morion, Señor Juan,” said de Soto. “There are two or three down yonder who have done with theirs for ever. Why not take one of them? It might mean the difference between life and death for you to-night, and the worst part of the battle has to come yet, for these gallant heathens, if I mistake not, will fight while one of them can strike a blow.”

“I have a good buckler, de Soto, and that must suffice,” he replied, speaking with some little difficulty, “for with this wounded jaw of mine I could not bear the chin-piece, and if I have to die I may as well do it comfortably as any other way.”

“And yet this is not a matter in which one may take too many chances,” growled Carvahal, rubbing his head. “Carramba! if it had not been for this steel cap of mine methinks I should by this time have been looking for the coolest spot in Purgatory. Cuerpo de Cristo! where is the scoundrel who gave me this headache?”

“By Allah and all the Saints!” shouted ben-Alcazar, “thou wilt not have long to wait, Carvahal. See, here he comes and at the head of a goodly array too! On guard, Señores, on guard!”

He had scarcely spoken when they turned and saw coming along the terrace a solid phalanx of men with long spears levelled at the charge, swinging on at a steady, measured run, led by Ruminavi whirling his huge mace and shouting the old battle-cry of the Incas.

Carvahal, who was standing a little in advance of the others, put his buckler up and his head down, and with his sword shortened in his right hand ran like a charging bull at Ruminavi. But the old warrior had fought too many fights in that style to be taken unawares. As Carvahal rushed blindly on he stepped aside with the lightness of a youth, and as he passed brought his mace down between his shoulders, and with a cry that was half a gasp and half a groan Carvahal stumbled and fell, and the next moment the first rank of the spearmen had leapt over his body and flung themselves on the Spaniards.

Even now, if it had only been man to man and weapon to weapon, the assault would have been repelled, for, in spite of their tough armour and long swords, the rush of the well-drilled spearmen drove the Spaniards back and huddled them into a heap. But just at the critical moment, as they were being crushed up against a terrace wall by the sheer weight of the column that had hurled itself against them, there rang out far to the rear a hoarse roaring shout—

“Dios y Santiago! lay on for God and Spain—lay on!” and then came the ever-dreaded thunder of horses’ hoofs, mingled with yells of terror and screams of pain and the fierce clink—clink—clink of smiting steel.

The charging spearmen stopped in the very moment of victory, as though paralysed by the dreaded sound. In vain Ruminavi, who had already smitten ben-Alcazar lifeless to the ground and broke Michael Asterre’s sword-arm with a blow of his mace, alternately cursed and cheered them on. Three or four arquebusiers scaled the wall and levelled their pieces. The “thunder-pipes” belched out their flame and smoke, and the balls, fired at less than five paces, tore through rank after rank of the close-packed spearmen and completed the panic. They broke their formation and ran, some leaping over into the terrace below, others swarming like cats up the third wall, but most of them going down pierced and slashed by the Spanish steel.

Meanwhile a troop of Don Hernando’s horse had come tearing along the terrace, riding down and trampling over a crowd of fugitives before them, and in the fast-closing gap between the Spanish horse and foot stood Ruminavi, still unwounded yet seemingly devoted to certain death.

For one brief instant he stood and looked from one to the other, and then, just as de Soto ran forward, as he thought, to save his life by making him prisoner, the wary old warrior darted under the cover of the upper wall and then, as the first horse came up to him, he put his buckler over his helmet, took a well-meant sword-stroke harmlessly upon it, and at the same moment brought his mace round with such a savage swing on the horse’s forelegs that the bones snapped under it like twigs, and horse and man rolled over in a helpless heap with the next rider and horse on top of them. Two more swift strokes of the terrible mace drove the steel of their caps into the skulls of the two fallen riders, and then the gallant old warrior, grasping one of a dozen hands held out to him over the upper wall, swung himself up as lightly as a lad of sixteen and disappeared into the darkness.

“Santiago! that was well met, Señor,” said Juan Pizarro to Cieza de Leon, who was leading the troop of horse. “Another minute and we should have been over the wall. It is well for us that these heathens have only two good men to lead them, and that only one of them seems to be here. That old Stony-face as they call him fights as if all the devils of Gadara were in him.”

“Ay, and by the Saints he nearly sent me down a steeper place than I could ever climb up again. Carrajo! has no one killed the heathen yet? First he tries to hammer what brains I have down my throat, and then he knocks the breath out of me like the wind out of a burst bladder.”

“Why, Carvahal,” laughed de Soto, as the old swashbuckler hobbled out from the midst of the fallen horses and men with one hand behind his back and the other rubbing his huge paunch, “art thou not dead yet? I should be loth to believe that thou wert born to be hanged——”

“Go hang thyself, babbler!” said Carvahal between a snarl and a gasp. “Is this time to crack jokes on a comrade’s misfortunes? Carrajo, Caballeros, what are we standing here for? Is this a battle or a dancing party, and where has that infernal heathen vanished to again? Ah! that was poor ben-Alcazar, was it? Well, well, it is the fortune of war and the good God will be able to see now whether he was better Christian or Moslem. For myself as a good Christian I have always had my doubts of him.”

“Buenos noches, Señores! How goes the battle your way?” said the deep voice of Don Hernando, who now rode up at the head of a second troop of horse. “For our part we have cleared the two lower terraces and driven the heathen, or such as we have left alive, either on the plain, where I have posted a troop to look after them, or up yonder to their citadels—— How now, Juan? What art thou doing here without thy helmet? Art mad, lad, to come into a fight like this bareheaded?”

“I have but a scratch and a bruise or two so far, brother,” said Juan, with a good attempt at a laugh, “and this jaw of mine is so sore and stiff that I could not bear a chin-piece on it, and what is the use of a leader who cannot cheer his men on? But enough of me for the moment. What we have done is as thou seest. We have forced the gate and cleared the two terraces, though, it grieves me to say it, not without loss. Still, here we are and there is the citadel yet to be taken. What say you? Shall we attack forthwith ere the heathen have time to recover themselves?”

“Ay, that were best,” replied Don Hernando, “when you start a savage running keep him going, and we may as well scale the wall while it is yet unguarded.”

While this conversation had been going on between the two leaders the archers and crossbow-men of the two parties had been busy collecting the arrows and bolts which they had shot, pulling and cutting them out of the flesh of those they had slain with them, and so Don Hernando, now taking the chief command, ordered them to scale the third undefended wall and spread themselves out in skirmishing order on the little plain above it. After them went the musketeers, of whom there were now five-and-twenty, and then Don Hernando, leaving half a score of mounted men to watch the horses and keep the terrace clear, dismounted and led the rest of his men, to the number of over sixty, to the final assault on the citadel.

While they were clearing the wall and dragging the ladders after them the archers, crossbow-men, and musketeers had been advancing slowly across the little plain towards the citadel, driving the now disheartened Peruvians before them. For generations the great fortress had been rightly believed to be impregnable. Horde after horde of the savage tribes of the east had dashed themselves to fragments against its triple walls and until now no enemy had ever yet set foot even upon its first terrace, and yet here a mere handful of these unconquerable strangers stood triumphant on its topmost tier. To them it was the work of demons rather than of men, and, following as it did upon unnumbered defeats and only a single victory, it was little wonder that in such a moment the hearts of the bravest failed them.

The three Spanish ranks advanced almost without resistance to the walls of the central citadel. The other two towers had been deserted, but round the base of the central one the remnants of the garrison were drawn up ten or twelve deep in a solid human wall of desperate, though it might be despairing valour, and its three terraces and broad, flat roof were filled with men who had there taken their last stand ready to die to a man for the country and the homes which they could no longer save.

But however desperate their valour and resolution they were of little avail against the well-proved science of Don Hernando and his lieutenants. Though there were others amongst the Conquerors who could have led a charge more brilliantly or fought a pitched battle in the open against overwhelming odds with better chance of success than he, yet when it came to such an attack as this, where skill and caution were equally needed, he was without a rival.

The moon had risen now and in the clear air of that elevated region the light was quite bright enough for accurate aim either with bow or arquebus, so he planted his force in three lines arranged in a semicircle about the citadel, which, as has been said before, stood close to the perpendicular face of the fortress overlooking the city. In front were the musketeers lying down with their pieces levelled at the close ranks beneath the walls. Behind them was the line of cavaliers and troopers armed with their long swords, battle-axes, and pikes, and behind them again were the archers and crossbow-men; and the plan of the battle was this:—

First the musketeers sent a murderous volley into the ranks round the base. Then, while they reloaded, the second line charged past them to increase with axe and pike and sword the havoc which the musket-balls had wrought, and while they were doing this the third rank sent their volleys of arrows and bolts into the crowded masses on the terraces. Then when the musketeers had reloaded Don Hernando gave the signal for the second rank to disengage itself and retire behind them, and as the defenders rushed forward they were met by yet another volley of balls, and hard after these came the charging steel again.

Thus, volley after volley and charge after charge were made and ever the close and well-directed flights of bolts and arrows rained with deadly effect upon the impotent defenders of the citadel whose feeble weapons were useless at a range at which the Spanish long-bows and arbalests were almost as deadly as modern rifles.

To such a fight there could be but one end, and so the time came when the last volley of musketry and the last charge of the sword and pike rent asunder the ranks of the defenders at the base and scattered their remnants weaponless and terror-stricken over the plain. Then Don Hernando bade his musketeers stand up and use their resting-forks so that they could play on the terraces of the citadel and he kept them and the archers and crossbow-men at this work until every bullet and arrow and bolt had been shot away. Then he ordered up the ladders and the last assault began.

All this time Ruminavi had been striding up and down the roof of the citadel exhorting his warriors to stand fast and die as he had sworn to do, in battle rather than in that slavery to the Strangers which was now the only alternative. Though ever erect himself and passing by some miracle scathless through the storm of missiles, he had kept his men crouching behind the parapets so that as many of them as possible might remain for the last struggle, and this struggle when it came was a bitter one, for now the fight was hand to hand, weapon to weapon, and man to man.

Again and again the ladders were planted and again and again they were hurled back to fall with their human load on the thronging assailants beneath, and a good half-score of Spaniards had fought their last fight by the time the last rampart was gained, and more than twice as many more had been disabled by wounds or broken limbs. But still, rung by rung, they went up the ladders and terrace by terrace the last stronghold of the Incas was stormed until at length one of the ladders was firmly hooked on the parapet of the roof itself.

Juan Pizarro, pushing Cieza de Leon aside and swearing that a Pizarro should be first on the roof, sprang on to the ladder with his dagger between his teeth. As he did so Don Hernando fought his way, to the foot, shouting in a voice hoarse with anxiety and the passion of battle—

“Down, Juan, down! Come back! Come back! Come down, I pray thee—nay, I command thee, come down! Ah! Mother of God, there is that accursed heathen again!”

And so saying he sprang up the ladder after Juan, who, unheeding his brother’s prayers and command, was already more than half-way to the parapet. After him went de Soto and then Carvahal. Juan reached the top first and as he put his hand on the parapet to clamber over, the gigantic form of Ruminavi towered high above it and the great mace went up. Instantly Juan’s buckler covered his head, and, lying flat on the ladder, he crawled up another step. He let go the parapet, snatched the dagger from his mouth and made a swift thrust at Ruminavi’s side. But in the uncertain light he missed the joint and the Spanish blade shivered to splinters on the Spanish mail. The next instant the mace came down, and with a dull, rending crash Juan’s buckler burst asunder under the irresistible shock of the blow. The bones of the arm that held it were crushed to pulp and Juan’s body, doubled up like a half-empty sack, pitched on to his brother’s shoulders and fell with a dead, heavy thud on the terrace below.

“God curse thee, thou hast killed the gentlest knight in Christendom!” roared Don Hernando as he rushed up the ladder and sprang over the parapet at Ruminavi before he could bring his mace up again. “Take that to Hell with thee!” he shouted again as he swung his long blade round and dealt a sweeping sword-stroke at the old warrior.

But Ruminavi saw it coming and sprang back so that the point only grazed his armour. The next instant Don Hernando was striding across the roof with de Soto and Carvahal hard after him. Meanwhile, too, another ladder had been hooked on and another stream of eager assailants were pouring on to the roof. Don Hernando, de Soto and Carvahal rushed together at Ruminavi while the new-comers were striking down the few defenders left, but not one of them could pass the circle which the terrible sweeps of the great mace made about him. Don Hernando’s sword was knocked flying from his grasp, another stroke took de Soto on the right shoulder and sent him reeling back among his followers. Then Carvahal ran in and took the head of the mace full on his jaw.

“Carrajo!” he howled, reeling back and spitting out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. “The curse of God upon thee and thy stolen steel!” And then he ran in again with a savage, sweeping stroke of his broad blade at Ruminavi’s thigh.

But again the Spanish steel was met by the Spanish mail and the edge turned harmless off it and again Carvahal took a blow of the mace on his left shoulder which paralysed his buckler-arm and made even his mighty bulk tremble and reel backwards.

By this time every other defender of the roof had been cut down or pierced through and through with sword and pike-thrusts, and now old Ruminavi was the only defender left. Don Hernando had picked up an axe in place of his lost sword, de Soto had shifted his sword to his left hand, and de Leon and a dozen more Spaniards were making ready for a last rush at the gallant old warrior.

And now Ruminavi saw that the end had come. One swift glance over the corpse-strewn roof showed him that he alone was left, another at his closing enemies showed him that the trust he had so desperately defended was lost at last. He ran back to the parapet overlooking the city and leapt upon it and for the last time turned and looked round on his foes.

“Save him! Save him! He is too gallant a man to die!” shouted Don Hernando springing forward towards him.

The great mace swung round again and then like a stone from a catapult it whistled through the air, and taking Don Hernando full on the breast it sent him reeling backwards and hurled him prone on the roof. The next moment old Ruminavi drew himself up erect and, still without turning his back on his foes, sprang into the air. The next he was lying smashed out of all human shape on the stones five hundred feet below.

The Spaniards rushed forward and leant over the battlements peering down into the fearful abyss. Then de Soto stood up and made the sign of the Cross and said in a choked, husky voice—

“Heathen or not, comrades, a stark warrior and a good patriot! May God receive his gallant soul in peace. Amen!”