He divided his regiment up into little companies of a hundred each, with a centurion and a sergeant in command. Each company of a hundred must learn to act in perfect unison, freely and flexibly. “Perfect your hundred,” Cipriano insisted, “and I will perfect your thousands and your tens of thousands.”
“Listen!” he said. “For us, no trench and cannon warfare. My men are no cannon-fodder, nor trench-dung. Where cannon are, we move away. Our hundreds break up, and we attack where the cannon are not. That we are swift, that we are silent, that we have no burdens, and that the second strength is in us: that is all. We intend to put up no battle-front, but to attack at our own moment, and at a thousand points.”
And always he reiterated:
“If you can get the power from the heart of the earth, and the power from behind the sun; if you can summon the power of the red Huitzilopochtli into you, nobody can conquer you. Get the second strength.”
Ramón was pressing Cipriano now openly to assume the living Huitzilopochtli.
“Come!” he said. “It is time you let General Viedma be swallowed up in the red Huitzilopochtli. Don’t you think?”
“If I know what it means,” said Cipriano.
They were sitting on the mats in Ramón’s room, in the heat before the rain came, towards the end of the rainy season.
“Stand up!” said Ramón.
Cipriano stood up at once, with that soft, startling alertness in his movement.