CHAPTER X.

BELEAGUERED

Nearly five months had passed since Juan Pizarro and Hernando de Soto had ridden at the head of twenty-eight wounded and wearied men, the sole survivors of the terrible Battle of the Valley, into the northern gates of Cuzco. Their homeward march had been one long fight of two nights and two days, during which not a man left his saddle save when he dropped from it overcome by wounds and weariness, and lay waiting for the axe or spear or mace which ended his fighting days for ever.

Those who reached the city had found it closely invested on all sides by seemingly innumerable hosts, which had come flocking from all quarters of the land in answer to the call of its last champion. The beleaguering hosts had opened to let them through, and the Peruvian warriors had laughed at them as their wounded and jaded steeds crawled feebly into what seemed the death-trap in which they were about to die, but those who had fallen behind had been butchered without pity.

The young Inca had fulfilled with terrible exactness the oath which he had sworn to Anda-Huillac on the fateful night when Nahua and Mama-Oello had devoted themselves to a death of shame and torment to buy him his last chance of liberty. The news of the Battle of the Valley had sped with the swiftness of lightning throughout the length and breadth of the land, and the Inca’s call to arms had been answered north and south and east and west by hosts of fierce and pitiless warriors, who had seemed to spring full-armed from the earth like the fabled fruit of the dragon’s teeth of old.

Wherever the Spaniards had settled in isolated families and small communities, they had been fallen upon and butchered, men, women, and children, without warning and without pity, for the day of reckoning had come, and the penalty of outrage and massacre, of plunder and treachery, had now to be paid.

Messenger after messenger had been dispatched from Cuzco to the coast, and when at length one of them had reached Pizarro in his newly-founded City of the Kings, he had sent an army of four hundred horse and foot to the relief of the sorely beleaguered city. Then the host which had been besieging Lima had drawn back into the mountains, hovering on the Spaniards’ flanks and rear until they had caught them entangled among the narrow, winding mountain-paths and the fearful gorges of the mountains. Then they had cut the bridges and broken down the roads before and behind them. Avalanches of rocks and stones had fallen upon them from inaccessible precipices, clouds of warriors had descended on their nightly camps, and though these had fallen by hundreds under the well-wielded Spanish weapons, in the end the inevitable happened, and of the army which was more than twice as strong as that which had conquered Atahuallpa in Cajamarca, only a few sorely-wounded stragglers had struggled back across the mountains to Lima to tell their tale of disaster and defeat.

In the City of the Sun the long weary months had been filled with days and nights of horror. The splendid capital of El-Dorado on which de Soto and his companions had gazed in awe-mingled wonder on that first memorable morning was now a wilderness of blackened and fire-wasted ruins. Day after day the legions of the Inca had flung themselves into its approaches, only to be beaten back with fearful slaughter by the little band of desperate heroes, now less than two hundred strong, who held their camp in the midst of the great square surrounded by the blackened ruins of the palaces and temples which they had first seen glowing with gay colours and shining with gold and silver.

Every night the countless watchfires had blazed up in undiminished numbers on the hills about the city and on the towers of the great fortress which loomed dark, threatening, and unscaleable above it. Every hour arrows and darts headed with blazing fire-balls had soared through the air and fallen on the thatched roofs of the buildings and into the fast-emptying magazines of grain, which, saving the horses killed in battle, were all that now stood between the besieged and starvation.

Scarcely a day had passed but one or more severed Spanish heads were flung from the battlements of the fortress into the city to tell Hernando Pizarro and his men in what terrible fashion the Inca was keeping his oath, and at last Don Hernando, forgetting all knightly honour and humanity in his desperation, sent out an envoy to say that if he received such another message he would slay every prisoner in his hands.

As it happened, the Inca was absent at the time on one of those raiding expeditions which afterwards made his name a terror to every Spaniard in the land, and Ruminavi sent back his messenger’s head as an answer. Within an hour the Princess Lalla-Cica and her companions, whom de Soto had so far, even in the midst of all these horrors, contrived to defend from injury, were brought out into the square, and there, in full sight of the garrison of the fortress, they died the death that had been decreed to Nahua and the Queen-mother.

Scarcely had their shame and torment ended than a general assault was made on all sides of the city, and the Peruvian warriors poured in, column after column, through the streets blocked with charred timbers and strewn with the rotting corpses which throughout the siege had been filling the air with poison and plague. Through these they fought their way with little check, for the narrow streets were too choked and cumbered for the horses to work with any good effect. But no sooner did they reach the entrances to the square than the cannon and musketry roared out, and the silver balls and bullets--for iron was now too precious to use for such purposes--tore their way through their crowded ranks, mowing them down by scores, and then came the thundering charges of the war-beasts, the onslaught of the swift-striking, deep-biting steel, and the end was the same as it had ever been--hundreds slain at the cost of a few wounded men and horses and one or two dead of the iron-clad soldiery of Spain.

It was a victory for Don Hernando and his companions, as every fight had been when the Peruvians had once come within range of the artillery and musketry and made themselves a fair mark for the irresistible charges of the cavalry. But the same thing had happened day after day, week after week, and month after month, as the great tragedy of the Conquest drew to its climax, and every day fresh hosts had replaced the slain without, and every night death and wounds and sickness had made the muster-roll of the defenders shorter and shorter.

“We must make an end of this somehow, comrades,” said Don Hernando, when they were holding a council the night after the grand assault, “or by the Saints it will surely make an end of us! Here we are, cut off from all succour, with scarce a hundred and fifty fighting-men, and not fourscore horses that are fit for work. Every day we grow fewer and weaker, and every day these heathens seem to grow more and stronger. Those we slay lie in the streets and poison us with plague, so that we do but bring sickness on ourselves by slaying them, while at every onset there come back ten for every one we kill. The loss of one man and a horse is to us greater than a thousand men to them. They have the whole country to draw their supplies from; we have only what is here in the city, and that, as you know, cannot last many days longer. When that is gone we must fight our way out or starve. It is manifest that no help can come to us from outside. Almagro is far away in Chili, my brother, the Governor, is no doubt beleaguered in Los Reyes. If he could have sent us succour he would have done. If he has sent it the troops have doubtless been cut off and perished among the mountains. That is our condition, comrades. Now what is your counsel upon it?”

The assembled cavaliers, who were sitting and standing round a smoky fire in the middle of the wretched camp, looked at one another for a few moments in gloomy silence. They had eaten their last scanty meal from vessels of gold, and the whole camp was littered with gold and silver flagons and dishes, ornaments and chains and bars into which others had been melted down, and yet, battle-worn and sore stricken with plague and famine, they themselves looked scarcely less wretched than that other company which some seven years before had grubbed for worms and sea-snails on the desolate shores of Gallo. At length Pedro de Leon, one of the Almagrist faction, spoke, and said in a sullen, angry voice--

“So far as I can see, Señor, and as many others think with me, this much-boasted city of El-Dorado hath been little better than a gold-baited death-trap to us. True we eat and drink from vessels of gold, yet we are dying of famine by inches. Therefore my counsel is that, while we have yet a little life left in us, and before all our powder is burnt or our horses die of wounds and starvation, we should leave this accursed place and make shift to fight our way to the coast.”

“It would be as easy to fight thy way to Heaven, friend!” growled Carvahal, whose huge form seemed to thrive as well on famine as on plenty. “Depend upon it, if men well fed and well found have not been able to fight their way from Los Reyes here, we shall never fight ours to Los Reyes, and, since one place is as good as another to die in, why take the trouble to go elsewhere to do it?”

“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!”