The gloomy walls of the violated convent were growing gray in the dawn as the cavalcade roared past down the narrow, echoing streets and through the suburbs.
It was late afternoon when the troop reëntered Cuzco. It moved at a walk, and hanging on the pommel of the commander's saddle was the llautu of the Inca Manco. In the foremost rank of the column was a trooper without his helmet, with a bloody bandage across his face below the eyes. A weapon had passed the bars of his visor. Farther back was another, shorn of a pauldron and his right arm useless. In the rear, two Cañares carried a third on an improvised litter, dead. But in the middle of the column, between double files of troopers, marched the Inca and the Lord Mayta, blood-stained, bandaged, their arms bound behind their backs. Horses, riders, and the two prisoners, were splashed with mud.
Manco walked with head erect, without a glance at the Cañares who hurried into the street as the cavalcade traversed the suburb Munaycenca. Nor did he more than glance at his grief-stricken subjects who cast themselves moaning upon the pavement. Not a line of his stern young face betrayed his emotion at entering the capital a prisoner, nor his torture of mind at the disaster thus befallen his people on the very eve of the stroke for their deliverance.
From Munaycenca the news flew ahead. Cañares gathered, too stolid for manifestation, and knots of Spaniards, whom a sign from Juan Pizarro warned into silence. But throughout the remainder of the march every door was closed, and no native of Cuzco looked out upon the fallen majesty of their Inca.
Crossing the bridge toward the Coricancha the column turned northward through the city, passing the palaces of the Yupanquis, of the Inca Rocca, the schools where Manco had won his youthful honors, and entered the road which mounted to the Sachsahuaman. The single company of pikemen constituting its garrison stood in front of the citadel, and to its commander Pizarro surrendered the prisoners. An hour later they were heavily ironed within the keep, and the troop was on its way back to Cuzco.
In the Amarucancha the hours had dragged in a long nightmare. After Manco's departure his lords remained, racked by the shocking sounds to which they listened in helplessness. The war-hardened old Quehuar paced the court. Yumaquilque stood motionless against the wall, his mantle over his face. The others hearkened in silence broken only by an occasional fierce, whispered sentence from Mocho. But from those dreadful hours they imbibed a relentless ferocity of hate for the invaders which no amount of Spanish blood could ever mitigate, and which in the days to follow would send many a conquistador unshriven to his Maker.
Upon the Auqui Paullo, young and uninured, the night's tragedy fell most cruelly; but the anguish of his sisters gathered in Rava's chamber, crouched in speechless horror, and surrounded by wailing maids, nerved him by its reminder of their dependence now upon him. By the time he had restored them to partial calmness the tumult beyond the walls had subsided.
As he stepped into the court again, he heard the call to horse; and a few minutes later, the uproar of the passing troop. The circumstance was alarming. It stirred a sudden fear that Manco's flight had been detected. Paullo sent a page to learn its significance. The youth did not return. He despatched a second, and sought Quehuar. He found the old general with the others in the council room, and had hardly entered before the second messenger returned to announce that a guard of pikemen was at the outer door, and he had not been permitted to pass. The palace was surrounded by guards, and all within were prisoners.
That night the humble native knelt at his evening prayer, shuddering at the infinite indifference of his god to the sorrows of Tavantinsuyu. As twilight came, a few muffled figures stole to the edge of the square, gazed in silence at the guarded doors and sombre walls of the Amarucancha, and slunk away. The capture of the Inca was told in whispers, stirring no cry for vengeance, no move to rescue. The calamity was as irremediable and appalling as if heaven itself had fallen. It was the wrath of Inti, not to be opposed.
A few days later, the nobles were permitted to depart: were, in the case of Quehuar and Yumaquilque, even compelled to go; for these two would have shared the captivity of Paullo and the household, whom the Pizarros retained as hostages for the quiet of the empire, whose patience under this latest blow they doubted.