The Crimson Conquest 48

The Crimson Conquest 48

"My lords," said Manco, after the business of the council was finished,

"I perceive that the current of things is bearing us to early victory.

The _Cañares_ left in the city number less than a thousand. We scarcely

need count them. The Viracochas die hard, as we learned at Vilcaconga,"

he smiled grimly, "but they are not more than two hundred. Almagro is

marching rapidly to the south, and he is now where no cry for help from

Cuzco can reach. Should he seek to return he would find the passes

closed. Ullulama is within five days’ march, but we need not wait. The

Villac Vmu will be with us to-morrow, and by the day following the

household will be in safety at Ollantaytambo. Then, my lords, we

strike. To thee, my Lord Mocho, it will please me to give the honor of

taking the Sachsahuaman."

 

Mocho bowed. "I would better like an honor more dearly gained, Sapa

Inca. The place is but feebly garrisoned."

 

The Inca smiled. "Thou’lt have opportunity, presently, for others less

easily won, my lord; do not fear it. The fortress may not be so easily

held as taken, for if I mistake not the Viracochas will not be slow to

learn its importance. Thou wilt garrison it strongly, therefore, and

see it amply supplied." He turned to the senior general. "My Lord

Quehuar, thou wilt send a _chasqui_ to Xauxa to-night——"

 

He was interrupted by commotion and an excited voice in the antechamber.

A frown crossed his face, and he motioned to Paullo. The prince hurried

out, returned in a moment with precipitation, and as he threw open the

door the Inca started. Paullo’s face was drawn with horror. At his

elbow was a soldier in the uniform of the guard, who, as Paullo strove

to speak, sank upon his knees and bent to the floor.

 

"Manco! Manco!" cried the young prince, in agony. "In the name of

Inti!—The Virgins of the Sun!"

 

The Inca strode toward him, demanding sharply as he seized his arm,

"What meanest thou, boy? Speak!"

 

"The Acllahuasi! The Viracochas are battering its doors!"

 

Manco rushed across the anteroom to the court without a word. Paullo

jerked the soldier to his feet, and followed by the generals, hurried

after. As the Inca stepped into the open air a dull roar of voices in

the street outside, the sound of blows, and fierce shouts shocked his

hearing; then a rending crash of a falling door, and the clamor of a

rush. For an instant he was motionless, strained and listening. He

turned suddenly, and the light from the open door fell upon his face,

distorted by fury.

 

"Mayta!" he shouted. "Mayta!—where is he?—Mayta, thy battalions!

Fly!—Paullo, my arms!"

 

As Mayta started the soldier grasped his arm. "Hold, my lord!" he said;

then, rapidly to Manco: "Sapa Inca, the barracks are surrounded, and but

twenty are within the quarters—the rest have gone to Ollantaytambo. I

sought to enter, but was driven away."

 

Manco stamped with impatience and rage, "Follow me!" he cried to his

generals, seizing his arms from Paullo. "We will take the guard."

 

Quehuar blocked his way determinedly. "Rashness, my Lord Inca! We are

unarmed, and the guard may be needed at its post before the night is

gone."

 

Manco thrust him aside, maddened by women’s shrieks from the convent,

but the generals crowded about him. Quehuar laid a strong hand upon his

shoulder.

 

"Prudence, prudence, my lord!" he urged. "A moment’s folly now would

undo all that hath been done."

 

Manco shook off his grasp. "Prudence! Dost hear those cries, old man?

Release me!"

 

"God of heaven! do I not hear them? But—hold!—wouldst have vengeance in

full? Then abort it not by an act of madness! Dost forget thine army?"

Manco checked himself with an effort, and Quehuar went on energetically:

"The instrument for punishment is ready for thy hand. Beware thrusting

that hand without it into the teeth of wild beasts! What couldst

thou—what could our united strength do to-night? Thy death, or even a

wound, would seal the fate of Tavantinsuyu. Bethink thee, Inca!"

 

Manco drew his cloak over his face with a groan. He dropped it and

exclaimed hoarsely: "My lords, I go to the army to-night! The hour hath

come for action. Mayta, thou wilt go with me. Do you, my friends,

remain until the women are in safety. You will join me at

Ollantaytambo."

 

"Sapa Inca——" began Quehuar; but Manco raised his hand and continued

vehemently:—

 

"I go to-night! What wouldst have? That I sit clutching mine ears, or

shuffling my feet to drown the wails of these unfortunates? Hear them!

Hear them! Oh, by the gods, they drive away my reason! Come, Mayta: we

go!"

 

He grasped the officer’s arm, waved back the others, and hurried across

the court. At the entrance of the next stood a sentinel, and the Inca

halted, checking his salute. "Here, Mayta, thou ’rt unarmed. Take

this." With his own hand he drew the soldier’s sword and passed it to

his companion. They hastened across another court filled with

shuddering attendants, and through a third and smaller one to a narrow

corridor along which they groped until halted by a door at its end.

Manco hastily unbarred. It was a postern opening upon a terrace between

the wall of the palace and the rivulet Huatenay. Opposite was a flight

of steps leading to the bed of the stream, and they descended.

 

Meanwhile, within the walls of the Convent of the Virgins and in the

street without, a hell-carnival was in progress too hideous to dwell

upon. At the moment the Inca was passing through the outskirts of the

city Juan Pizarro, mounted bareback, unarmored, and bareheaded, was

charging into the tumult, followed by his brother Gonzalo and a few

other cavaliers, sword in hand. Bellowing oaths, laying about with the

flat of their blades, not infrequently with the edge, and leaping their

horses upon the obstinate, they cut their way to the convent and rode in

to rescue the unhappy inmates. Behind followed a dozen of the guard,

only to throw aside their pikes and join in the fiendish revel, leaving

their duty to the black-robed priests and friars who struggled through

in their wake. One bore a crucifix; but the stout Valverde did better

work with a bludgeon, breaking many a wicked face and ruffianly head in

his career through the desecrated halls and gardens.

 

The night was far spent before the place was cleared, and its doors

closed and guarded. Juan Pizarro was riding slowly back toward the

square when a Cañare, who had lurked about the Spaniard for an hour in a

vain effort to approach and be heard without a cleft skull for his

pains, touched his leg and sprang back with hands upraised. Juan halted.

 

"Well?" he demanded brusquely, scowling at the Indio. "Hast business

with me? If so, be brisk." The Cañare jabbered a stream of broken

words in Quichua, not intelligible, but something, it seemed to be,

about the Inca,—enough to arrest the attention of Juan Pizarro, and he

demanded impatiently of his brother:—

 

"What saith the dog, Gonzalo? Canst make it out? Here, thou, say it

over and slowly."

 

The Cañare repeated his words with better effect,—with immediate and

startling effect, for Juan turned with a shout to his companions: "Dost

hear, Gonzalo? Do ye hear, Caballeros? The Inca hath fled the city!"

He kicked the ribs of his horse and galloped madly to the palace of

Viracocha, across the great court and into the hall that served as a

guard-room, filling it with the clamor of hoofs, and throwing its

occupants into confusion. They seized their arms in a panic.

 

"Ho! The trumpeter!" he roared. "Out, and sound to horse! Out, and

sound to horse! _Presteza_! _Salta_! To horse! To horse!" He went

out like a whirlwind. Before he had reached his quarters the shrill,

quick notes were rising from the square. Again, and again, and again

the stirring measure, and the stable was alive with men, tossing

saddles, tugging at straps, swearing, and panting in a frenzy. One

after another, and by twos and threes, the mailed riders swung into

saddle, seized lances from the rack, and clattered out into the plaza.

The line formed rapidly, and the plunging, kicking, and head-tossing of

the excited steeds had hardly subsided before it was in column and, led

by Juan Pizarro, took up a trot behind the Cañare.

 

The gloomy walls of the violated convent were growing gray in the dawn

as the cavalcade roared past down the narrow, echoing streets and

through the suburbs.

 

It was late afternoon when the troop reëntered Cuzco. It moved at a

walk, and hanging on the pommel of the commander’s saddle was the

_llautu_ of the Inca Manco. In the foremost rank of the column was a

trooper without his helmet, with a bloody bandage across his face below

the eyes. A weapon had passed the bars of his visor. Farther back was

another, shorn of a pauldron and his right arm useless. In the rear,

two Cañares carried a third on an improvised litter, dead. But in the

middle of the column, between double files of troopers, marched the Inca

and the Lord Mayta, blood-stained, bandaged, their arms bound behind

their backs. Horses, riders, and the two prisoners, were splashed with

mud.

 

Manco walked with head erect, without a glance at the Cañares who

hurried into the street as the cavalcade traversed the suburb

Munaycenca. Nor did he more than glance at his grief-stricken subjects

who cast themselves moaning upon the pavement. Not a line of his stern

young face betrayed his emotion at entering the capital a prisoner, nor

his torture of mind at the disaster thus befallen his people on the very

eve of the stroke for their deliverance.

 

From Munaycenca the news flew ahead. Cañares gathered, too stolid for

manifestation, and knots of Spaniards, whom a sign from Juan Pizarro

warned into silence. But throughout the remainder of the march every

door was closed, and no native of Cuzco looked out upon the fallen

majesty of their Inca.

 

Crossing the bridge toward the Coricancha the column turned northward

through the city, passing the palaces of the Yupanquis, of the Inca

Rocca, the schools where Manco had won his youthful honors, and entered

the road which mounted to the Sachsahuaman. The single company of

pikemen constituting its garrison stood in front of the citadel, and to

its commander Pizarro surrendered the prisoners. An hour later they

were heavily ironed within the keep, and the troop was on its way back

to Cuzco.

 

In the Amarucancha the hours had dragged in a long nightmare. After

Manco’s departure his lords remained, racked by the shocking sounds to

which they listened in helplessness. The war-hardened old Quehuar paced

the court. Yumaquilque stood motionless against the wall, his mantle

over his face. The others hearkened in silence broken only by an

occasional fierce, whispered sentence from Mocho. But from those

dreadful hours they imbibed a relentless ferocity of hate for the

invaders which no amount of Spanish blood could ever mitigate, and which

in the days to follow would send many a conquistador unshriven to his

Maker.

 

Upon the Auqui Paullo, young and uninured, the night’s tragedy fell most

cruelly; but the anguish of his sisters gathered in Rava’s chamber,

crouched in speechless horror, and surrounded by wailing maids, nerved

him by its reminder of their dependence now upon him. By the time he

had restored them to partial calmness the tumult beyond the walls had subsided.