They had just saluted the rising sun, standing hand in hand in the central square of the garden, and as they turned to resume their walk Nahua, chancing to look up towards the north-eastern hills, suddenly uttered a soft little cry, half of wonder and half of alarm, and shrank closer to Manco’s side.
“What is it, my Princess?” he asked tenderly, putting his arm round her shoulders. “Surely there can be nothing here to raise thy fears?”
“Look yonder, my Lord,” she answered, raising her hand and pointing towards the ridge. “Look, there come the Strangers! Canst thou not see the glances of our Father sparkling on that strange white clothing of theirs such as was worn by the two who fought for our Lord?”
Manco looked up and saw dotted along the ridge bright gleams of white light which his instinct, no less true than Nahua’s, told him could only be the sunlight reflected from the polished helmets and cuirasses of the mysterious strangers.
He was not as unfamiliar with these as the rest of his countrymen were, for he alone among the warriors of the Sun possessed a cuirass and morion and sword of good Milan plate and Toledo steel, which had been bequeathed to him by José Valdez, the Spanish knight who had fallen fighting by his side in the great fight at Jauja. He and some of his followers had borne him tenderly out of the battle, and Valdez, who had many a time before buckled the armour on to him and taught him how to use the sword and shield, had besought him almost with his dying breath never to go into battle without them, and to his obedience to this behest the young Inca had owed his liberty or life in many a hotly-contested battle and skirmish since then.
“Ay, thou art right, dearest. They can be no other,” he said, half eagerly, half solemnly. “Truly thine eyes are as keen as they are soft and bright. I wonder what the vision of those little points of light augurs for us and the Children of the Sun?”
“It augurs evil, my Lord!” she replied, turning and facing him, and laying her two hands on his shoulders. “Sore and deadly evil, if there be any truth in the voices of the spirits who come to us in our dreams; for last night, Lord, I dreamt that the fearful things which we have been told of these cruel strangers’ doings in Cajamarca were being done by them again here in our dear and sacred City of the Sun. I saw roofs blazing red over palaces and temples, and the war-fires alight on all the hills and on the Sacsahuaman itself, and I heard a great wailing cry of misery and despair going up from thousands of our people, for these strangers, mounted on their fierce and wonderful war-beasts, which I have never yet seen, save in my dream, but which looked very terrible, were flying hither and thither among them, hewing them down by thousands and trampling them under foot. And I saw too, those strange things which the messengers from Cajamarca told us of—the pipes from which they pour out the llapa and smite men dead long before they can reach them—and then, my Lord, I saw one of them point his llapa-pipe at thee, who wert ever foremost in the battle—and then—my Lord—I screamed aloud and woke. An evil omen, was it not?”
The young prince looked down tenderly on to the sweet face and into the loving eyes that were turned up, and after a short space of silence said—
“The Wise Men have often told me, dearest, that there are omens which should be read backwards to reach the truth of them, and others that have no truth at all in them, but are only the idle freaks that the spirits of the night love to play with us. Of a truth I think more of thy loving care for me in thy vision than of the vision itself.
“Knowing that these strangers were coming it was but reasonable that thou shouldst go to sleep thinking of the tales that have come to us from Cajamarca, and I have often heard that the last thoughts of our waking time remain with us through sleep and come to life again in strangely altered shapes. For me, I see nothing fearful in it. We have not yet heard the full truth of what the Strangers did at Cajamarca. It may be that the Usurper invited them peacefully into the city so as to take them in an ambush, and they did but lawfully punish him for his treachery. Thou knowest how cruel and unsparing he is, and how he trapped our Lord Huascar with his smooth words and false promises, only to take him prisoner and to murder him—if what we hear be true.