“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—