“I have not often heard thee speak wiser words than those, Carvahal,” said de Soto. “But still to my mind there is something more to be said. It seems to me, Señores,” he went on, addressing the council generally, “that we are here to hold this place for his Highness and our Sovereign Lord. We have won it with our arms, and with our arms we should keep it. Nevertheless, I am fain to confess that I see no way of holding it so long as the fortress is held by the enemy. It commands the whole country to the north, and blocks the only road by which succour can reach us. Moreover, if report speaks truly, there are great stores of meal and grain in it which would be very useful to us just now. If it were ours I should see no cause for despair.”
“Then let us take it!” said Juan Pizarro, sitting up on a rug of skins on which he had been lying.
He had been wounded in the jaw in that day’s fight by a shrewdly-slung stone, which had crushed the iron of his chin-piece in upon his flesh, and the wound was so painful that he could not now bear anything more than a felt cap upon his head.
“It was by my counsel that we did not occupy it at first. Therefore if it be the wish of the council, I will seek to make good my error by leading the attack upon it to-morrow. Let us make scaling-ladders and shields to guard us from the stones, and take it by escalade. Let us to-morrow divide our force into three companies of fifty each. I will lead one against the fortress, let Gonzalo take the other out by the northern road and take it in flank at the same time, and do you, Hernando, hold the camp with the other fifty. With the cannon and the musketry you will be well able to keep it against as many as will attack it. If God gives us the victory we can hold out for months to come; if not, we shall at least have fought a good fight and be none the worse than we are now. What say you to that, Señores?”
“It is good counsel, Juan,” said Hernando, after a little pause, during which they all looked at one another in anxious silence. “It is good counsel and we will do it. In such straits as ours what is boldest is best; so now, comrades, the council is ended. Get what rest and refreshment you can to-night, for to-morrow we shall have a hard day’s work. I will see to the making of the ladders and shields. The holy father Valverde will hold Mass at sunrise, and those who have sins to confess had better seek their confessors betimes, for this time to-morrow night may be too late. And now, comrades, again good-night, and God be with us, for in Him is now our only hope of help!”
CHAPTER XI.
ST. JAGO’S DAY
While the Spaniards were holding their council in the camp in the great square, Manco and Ruminavi were holding another no less momentous in one of the chambers of the central tower which crowned the fortress of the Sacsahuaman. Nor was their debate less anxious than that of Hernando Pizarro and his companions. The truth was that the feeding of the vast host which had now for months been encompassing Cuzco was fast becoming impossible. More than that, the time for sowing had come, and this among the Incas and their people had for ever been the season of universal religious observance. It was to them what Holy Week was to the Catholics, or the feast of Bairam to the Moslems.
Moreover, in such a country as the elevated regions of the Sierras, it was absolutely imperative that the grain should be sown simultaneously, and at this one season. If not, the next year the Children of the Sun would have to fight a foe even more pitiless than the Spaniards, for there would be famine throughout the length and breadth of the land. There were thus two reasons—one religious and one economical—which made it imperative to partially raise the siege of Cuzco, at least for a time.
Now that the great Temple of the Sun had been defiled and desecrated, the most holy place in the Land of the Four Regions was the temple on the sacred Island of Titicaca, some six days’ journey to the south, and thither it was necessary that the Inca, in his sacred character as Brother of the Sun, should go and open the first furrow with his golden hoe and plant the first seeds of the next year’s harvest. To have neglected this duty would have been an incredible impiety, and a breach of a custom hallowed by ages of solemn observance.
On the other hand, too, the multitudes which had been gathered about Cuzco, feeling the pinch of famine, and wearying of the length and rigours of the siege, were getting more and more difficult to keep together in any semblance of an army. Their thoughts were turning to their homes and families, and to the starvation and misery that would be their fate if the crops were not sown.