“By Santiago that must not be if we can prevent it!” cried Pizarro, bringing his hand down heavily on the table. “With the first light of dawn a force must be dispatched to his place of captivity to bring him hither in safety. Tell the Inca that we must know where Huascar is, and that we must have his orders for his instant surrender to us. We cannot have one who may be so precious to us murdered like a rat in a hole. Tell him that his own life shall answer for Huascar’s if need be.”
CHAPTER II.
THE INFAMY OF FILIPILLO
Very soon after the capture of Atahuallpa had been accomplished, and when Challcuchima had withdrawn his regiments into the mountains, whither the Spaniards, by reason of the smallness of the force with which they had to guard so great a treasure as they had gained, could not follow them, Pizarro proclaimed peace in the name of the Inca, and Atahuallpa, so soon as he found that his captors intended no violence or indignity towards him, had given this the sanction of his royal word, which, fallen and captive though he was, was yet the sole law of the Land of the Four Regions.
Now the proclamation of this peace had had two effects, both of which worked momentously on the future fortunes of captors and captive. Most sorely against his will, Challcuchima believed that his master—still stricken by the same stupor of madness that had caused him to reject the plans which might have placed the invaders at his mercy—had abandoned his people at the very moment when the tide of victory was rolling at full flood towards the South. Clearly divining the true character and purpose of the invaders, he had given him up for lost, and was already considering in the privacy of his own soul how the deeds of the Day of Massacre might be best undone and how, should Atahuallpa prove helpless or unworthy, the forces which he had so far led to victory might be best employed in upholding the throne of the Four Regions.
In the direct line of descent there were three princes of the Blood who possessed an almost equal right to wear the imperial borla. Of these the first was Huascar, whose title was better even than that of Atahuallpa himself, for Atahuallpa was the son of Huayna-Capac and Zaïma, Princess of Quito, and this marriage was by the Ancient Law inferior to the union between Huayna-Capac and Amara-Coyllur, his own sister and Coya, who was the mother of Huascar.
But Huascar himself was already conquered and a prisoner, and at any moment Atahuallpa might find means to send the order for his death to those who were guarding him. After him came his younger brother Manco, also of the pure blood-royal, and he, after the death of Huascar, would be the true heir to the throne. Lastly, there was the Prince Toparca, also a son of Huayna-Capac, but not born within the circle of the Sacred Blood, and he, following in the train of Atahuallpa, had shared his fate and was already a prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards.
Upon Huascar the old General, well versed as he was in the ways of his master, looked as already lost. To rescue him would be to raise the standard of open revolt and once more to open the wound of dissension between Quito and Cuzco, and, moreover, Huascar, as he knew well, was but a dreamer of dreams and a lover of women, who lived such a life as no man could live who had great things to do; and even if he could have released him by force of arms he was but too well assured that he would lend a ready ear to the vain legend which had already deceived Atahuallpa, and greet the Spaniards, not as invaders and hungry adventurers, but as the true sons of Viracocha who had come to raise the Empire of the Children of the Sun to a height of glory before undreamt of. Toparca was a mere lad, unformed alike in mind and body, already the Spaniards’ captive, and, it might be, ready to become their puppet and their slave.
But Manco, bearer of the Divine Name, still remained. He was free, his blood was pure, and as for his manhood—the old General’s thoughts went back to the Day of Terror in the City of the Great Ravine when he stood with his brother chieftains, Quiz-Quiz and Ruminavi, on the terrace of the palace and saw the gallant lad leap up over the fagots piled around the scaffold on which stood Nahua, his beloved, and all her kindred awaiting the fiery death. He saw the sun, so soon to be darkened, flashing upon the blade of polished copper in his hand, and he saw that blade raised high above Nahua’s breast ready, in defiance of the sentence of his Lord, to fall and rob her doom of its worst terror.
Manco had done this and lived. Out of the ruin and desolation that had overwhelmed the whole city he had brought Nahua, his beloved, fairest of the Virgins of the Sun, unharmed. Since then he had fought gallantly against himself in the armies of Cuzco, and even after the defeat and capture of Huascar had made Atahuallpa master of the land, he had withdrawn his own regiments into the fastnesses of Yucay and Ollantay-Tambo and there had defied all the efforts of himself and his brother generals to reduce him to subjection. Upon whom, then, if not upon him should the hopes of the Children of the Sun rest?
So reasoned Challcuchima, brother of Huayna-Capac and General-in-Chief of the armies which the great Inca had so often led to victory. Yet, as he pondered over all these things, sitting by his camp fire high up in the mountains overlooking the plain of Cajamarca, the love of the Warrior-Prince who by some strange fatality was now lying captive in the city below him came back strong upon him, and he resolved even at the risk of his own liberty, and it might be his life, to make one more effort to break the spell that bound his master and to nerve him to the supreme effort which even now might save his life and his throne.