“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—