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.