The Crimson Conquest 37

The Crimson Conquest 37

Again a moonlit evening. They had said good-night and parted. Hours

had passed; Cristoval was sitting beside his lamp, whose waning light

drew his thoughts back to earth; even while he contemplated its

struggles it sputtered and died, leaving the room in darkness. He

sighed, loath to lay aside his reverie, and stepped to the window. The

moon was nearly at the full, and he leaned against the casement, looking

across the placid lake to the silvered peaks beyond. He stood long,

enjoying the fresh beauty of the night, his eyes among the shadows of

the garden where he had crowned his life. While he mused a cloud

drifted across the moon, leaving the garden a moment in obscurity. When

it passed and the light returned, he was startled out of his dreaming.

The details of shade and illumination had come back, but now there was

something more. Near the edge of the shrubbery, half a hundred yards

below, was a formless shadow not there before. Cristoval leaned forward,

studying intently a curious blot on the sward, suggestive of some

lurking beast, yet different. It moved, ever so slightly, and the

confused outline became suddenly clear. There was the head of a

warrior, stretched alertly forward, and wearing the high, conical helm

of a Cañare. There was the line of his crouched back. One hand and a

knee were on the ground. Now there was a sparkle just above—a javelin

head!—and at the same instant an arm was raised in signal. At once

other shadows appeared here and there, and they slunk, half running,

toward the villa.

 

Cristoval watched no longer. In a second he was groping for his armor.

His hands were shaking, but soon corselet was on, and helmet: no time

for more. Now, sword and buckler. He threw the empty scabbard on the

couch as he rushed to the door. In the anteroom slept Markumi.

 

"Markumi! Markumi!" Cristoval whispered, shaking him.

 

"Yes, Viracocha," said the youth, sleepily.

 

"Up, Markumi! Make no sound. Quick—thy weapons, and follow!"

 

Markumi needed no second word. Electrified by the cavalier’s voice, he

was on his feet at a bound. Cristoval had not reached the door leading

into the court, which he must cross to gain Rava’s apartment, before the

boy was beside him, grunting as he slipped the loop of the bow-string

into its notch. Cristoval halted, listening. Without were movement and

suppressed voices. As he put hand to the bar to open, the fastenings

creaked with the weight of some one trying. Across the court came the

crash of blows upon another door.

 

Markumi gasped, "What is it, Viracocha?"

 

"Devilry!" answered Cristoval. "The house is surrounded. Cañares, I

think." The words were not uttered before the room reverberated with a

rain of strokes upon the panels before them.

 

"Set an arrow!" said Cristoval, in Markumi’s ear. "Stand clear of the

door when I throw it open. Do not follow. Keep in the darkness, and

shoot low."

 

Markumi hurriedly set his arrow, grateful that the darkness hid his

shaking legs. The cavalier released the bar and sprang back. The door

flew wide, letting in a sudden flare of torches, and two half-naked

forms plunged in headlong. The first ran full upon Cristoval’s point.

The second was shot through by Markumi. With a shout a throng filled

the doorway. A javelin whizzed past Cristoval’s ear; another, and

another. Markumi’s bow twanged, a _Cañare_ fell, and the cavalier

dashed forward, his buckler ringing with the quick thrusts of spears,

his sword playing swift and deadly. A gasp or moan followed every lunge

at the unarmored bodies. Shielding his head he pressed close upon the

group, cut through, and was in the open. A pause of half a second, and

he found himself the centre of a confused surging of warriors, their

limbs and dark, ferocious faces illumined by the dancing light of

torches. The court seemed full, resounding with the uproar from savage

throats. Now a fiercer yell, and they closed. So dense the mass none

dared hurl his javelin, but they pressed from all sides, and for an

instant Cristoval staggered under the impact of their weapons upon his

shield and mail. As they rushed, shriek upon shriek, half smothered by

the walls of the opposite wing of the villa, cut to his heart with a

sudden deadly chill—Rava!

 

The chill was followed by a flame more quick, and Cristoval became a

demon. He charged into the thickest, thrusting from beneath his

upraised buckler, the thin, glimmering steel finding flesh at every

stroke. It flashed low, reaching its mark under lifted arms: a dull ray

of light, with the velocity of light itself; a chameleon’s tongue, its

gleam barely seen for its fatal quickness. For a moment he seemed to

struggle hopelessly. Hedged about, he labored heavily, impeded by mere

weight of numbers, lacerated from elbow to shoulder by their spears, the

grip of his weapon slippery with his own blood. Hands clutched to

wrench his buckler from his grasp. Once it was swept aside, and he

looked into the eyes of a Cañare in the head-gear of a chieftain: saw

the glitter of a falling axe. It fell, glanced from his helmet, and

struck with stunning force upon his shoulder—by the grace of Heaven, not

upon his right! The chief went down, his naked body run through, and

the circle widened. A javelin glanced from the shield, and impaled a

Cañare beyond. Another, thrown with terrific force, shivered against

his breastplate.

 

But for his mail the cavalier would not have lived through a dozen

paces. He was breathing in gasps, his arm stiffening with its wounds.

Warriors whirled around him, yielding here before the lightning blade;

closing there and forcing him to fight to the rear. From the doorway

Markumi had sped his last arrow and fled. Every shaft had carried

death. Cristoval fought, not with hope, not in despair, but in madness

to reach and save his love; in a frenzy to kill, kill, kill, while a man

lived to interpose. All at once he became conscious of a growing light.

The villa was afire! A torch had been set to the roof of the main

building, and the thatch blazed high, a column of rosy smoke curling

toward the quiet stars. Half across the court his eye caught the gleam

of a morion. A Spaniard dashed from a door, followed by two others

bearing a senseless form. For the first time Cristoval gave voice, and

his roar overtopped the din. The first Spaniard stopped, glanced toward

the struggle, then rushed forward with a shout, followed by one of the

others, leaving their burden to the third. Straight to thy doom, Juan

Lopez!

 

He sprang through the mob, sweeping the Cañares from his path, and

whirling aloft his halberd. Cristoval rushed upon him. The axe fell,

was caught upon the buckler, and Cristoval drove his sword into the

Spaniard’s throat, jerked it out, and while the other tottered, drove it

home again with all the force lent his arm by hate.

 

It was the end. While he strove to disengage his blade the Cañares

swept upon him. He was down. On his knees he still fought, creeping a

few inches toward his beloved, then sank beneath a war club whose force

even his helmet could not ward. While his brain reeled he heard the

yell of triumph, growing distant to his ears, and the world ceased to

be. A score of hands clutched to tear him to pieces, struck back by the

second halberdier.

 

"Off, dogs! He is mine.—_Hola_, Duero! We have him!—A thousand

_castellanos_!"

 

He stopped. A Cañare reeled against him in a spasm of coughing, tugging

at the shaft of an arrow in his chest. In another moment the Spaniard

had been forced away from Cristoval by a rush of the tribesmen, and

arrows and javelins whistled about him from the darkness outside the

court. He heard Duero calling and swearing, a fierce yell from the

gloom surrounding the villa, and a storm of missiles swept the court,

whose tumult became a pandemonium.

 

Xilcala had been roused. One of the household had given alarm, and the

flames brought the villagers on wings. The conflagration wrought its own

punishment: every Cañare in the court revealed by the mounting flames,

the garden in blackness. A merciless hail assailed the ravagers from

the obscurity, and they were seized with panic—a mere tossing herd,

stampeded by a foe unseen, dropping by twos and threes beneath the

deadly rain. Yells, the crackling flames, and the shouts of the

invisible assailants made the garden a horror.

 

The halberdier fought his way to Duero’s side, and they stood in

consternation. The still unconscious Rava had been drawn into the

doorway. With a motion to his companion Duero picked her up, and they

groped through the smoke-filled building into the shrubbery in front,

and were away.

 

Clear of the garden, they made a detour to pass the village, halting

once to bind and gag the Ñusta as they hurried toward the gorge. A mile

beyond the town they joined a small party of Spaniards and Cañares in

concealment beside the road. Duero replied to their questions with a

comprehensive curse. "Move, blockheads!" he roared. "Fetch the litter.

Before ye finish gawping they will be upon us. Hell is uncovered, d’ ye

hear? Fetch the litter."

 

A _hamaca_ was brought, Rava thrust into it, and the curtains drawn.

Two Cañares took it up, and the party hurried away.

 

At the entrance of the gorge they crossed the stream by a bridge of

twisted osiers. On the farther side they hacked with their halberds

until the structure hung, a wreck, from its opposite anchorage. It

would cut off the retreat of their allies, but would delay pursuit, for

the torrent was unfordable. Their route was down the gorge. Toward

morning they crossed and destroyed another bridge, then proceeded in

security.

 

The conflict raged about the villa until the Cañares retreated to the

mountains, leaving their wounded and dead. The villagers turned to the

flames, tore away the thatch, and saved the wings of the house, but of

the main portion only blackened walls remained. Until Maytalca was

found, imprisoned with her maids in a room remote from the flames, the

capture of Rava was unknown, and Duero’s party had gained several miles

the start. Pursuit, delayed at the first bridge, was balked completely

at the second, and forced into a circuitous mountain path before it

could come again upon the raiders’ trail. The flight was toward Xauxa,

but by the third day the pursuers found themselves impeded by prowling

Cañares. Forced again to the mountain trails, the chase was hopeless.

 

Markumi found Cristoval, and with assistance bore him, almost lifeless,

to Huallampo’s villa. For the second time he was hovering upon the

brink, and for days the aged healer summoned by the _curaca_ answered

the villagers with a dubious shake of his head.

 

 

 

 

*CHAPTER XXI*

 

_*The Señora Descends upon Pedro*_

 

 

We go forward to find ourselves at Xauxa, a week subsequent to the

catastrophe at Xilcala, months after Pizarro’s march to Cuzco.

 

The town lies on the river Xauxa, a branch of the great Apurimac, in one

of the many fertile valleys, or _bolsons_, that break the arid

desolation of the Sierra. Pizarro had found it well defended by the

immense fortress on the steeps of an adjacent mountain. He left it with

a small garrison, as has appeared. With this remained the sick and

incapacitated, and most of the non-combatants. Among these were Pedro,

who, since the escape of Peralta, was no longer _persona grata_, and

felt more secure away from the commander; José remained invalided by an

attack of the fever; Father Tendilla, as missionary to the natives; and

Rogelio, the _veedor_, who tarried for reasons best known to himself.

Rogelio, however, pleaded an indisposition which, as a civil officer of

the Crown and a man with a family, he could not conscientiously neglect;

and from his couch in his quarters within the fortress, bade farewell in

a voice of feebleness and suffering. When assured that the last company

had marched he rolled out of bed and dressed in time to watch the

command from the rampart as it trailed down to the town below. He shook

a fist at the distant figure he knew to be Mendoza’s, rubbed his hands,

snuffled, and emitted a chuckle of mingled glee, triumph, and malice.

An hour afterward he was haggling with Duero and Mani-mani, a sub-chief of the Cañares.