After having suffered various inconveniences, and having passed the
cities of Bilcas and of Andabailla,[42] and before arriving at
Airamba,[43] they have letters from the Spaniards in which they ask
for the aid of thirty cavaliers.
Having received this letter, the Governor and all the Spaniards who were
with him were filled with infinite content over the victory which the
captain had obtained, and at once he sent it, together with another, to
the city of Xauxa, to the treasurer and to the Spaniards who had
remained there in order that they might share in the gladness over the
victory of the captain. And likewise he sent despatches to the captain
and the Spaniards who were with him congratulating them much on the
victory they had won, and begging them and counseling them to be
governed in these matters more by prudence than by confidence in their
own strength, and commanding, at all events, that, having passed the
last bridge, they should await him [the Governor] there so that they
might then enter the city of Cuzco all together. This done, the Governor
set out the following day and went by a rough and tiring road through
rocky mountains and over ascents and descents of stone steps from which
all believed they could only bring their horses with difficulty,
considering the road already traversed and that still to be traversed.
They slept that night in a village on the other side of the river, which
here, as elsewhere, had a bridge of net-work. The horses crossed through
the water and the footsoldiers and the servants of the Spaniards by the
bridge. On the next day they had a good road beside the river where they
encountered many wild animals, deer and antelope; and that day they
arrived at nightfall at some rooms in the vicinity of Bilcas where the
captain who was going ahead had made halt in order to travel by night
and so enter Bilcas without being found out, as he did enter it, and
here was received another letter from him in which he said that he had
left Bilcas two days before, and had come to a river four leagues ahead
which he had forded because the bridge had been burned, and here he had
understood that the captain Narabaliba was fleeing with some twenty
Indians and that he had met two thousand Indians whom the captain of
Cuzco had sent to him as aid who, as soon as they knew of the rout at
Bilcas, turned around and fled with him, endeavouring to join with the
scattered remnants of those who were fleeing, in order to await them
[the Spaniards] in a village called Andabailla,[44] and [the Spanish
captain said] that he was resolved not to stay his course until he
should encounter them. These announcements being understood by the
Governor, he first thought of sending aid to the captain, but later he
did not do so because he considered that if there were to be a battle at
all it would have occurred already and the aid would not arrive in
time, and he determined furthermore not to linger a single day until he
should catch up with him, and in this way he set out for Bilcas which he
entered very early the following day, and on that day he did not wish to
go further. This city of Bilcas[45] is placed on a high mountain and is
a large town and the head of a province. It has a beautiful and fine
fortress; there are many well built houses of stone, and it is half-way
by road from Xauxa to Cuzco. And on the next day the Governor encamped
on the other side of the river, four leagues from Bilcas, and although
the day's march was short, it was nevertheless toilsome because it was
entirely a descent almost all composed of stone steps, and the troops
waded the river with much fatigue because it was very full, and he set
up his camp on the other bank among some groves. Scarcely had the
Governor arrived here, when he received a letter from the captain who
was reconnoitring in which the latter informed him that the enemy had
gone on five leagues and were in waiting on the slope of a mountain in
a land called Curamba,[46] and that there were many warriors there, and
that they had made many preparations and had arranged great quantities
of stones so that the Spaniards would not be able to go up. The
Governor, when he understood this, although the captain did not ask him
for aid, believed that it was necessary now, and he at once ordered the
Marshal D. Diego de Almagro to get ready with thirty light horsemen,
well equipped as to arms and horses, and he did not wish him to take a
single peon with him, because he ordered him [Almagro] not to delay for
anything until he should come up with the captain who was ahead with the
others. And when he [Almagro] had set out, the Governor likewise
started, on the following day, with ten horsemen and the twenty peons
who were guarding Chilichuchima, and he quickened his pace so much that
day that of two days' marches he made one. And just as he was about to
arrive at the village called Andabailla, where he was to sleep, an
Indian came to him on the run to say that on a certain slope of the
mountain, which he pointed out with his finger, there had been
discovered hostile troops of war, on which account, the Governor, armed
as he was and on horseback, went with the Spaniards he had with him to
take the summit of that slope, and he examined the whole of it without
finding the warriors of whom the Indian had spoken, because they were
troops native to the land who were fleeing from the Indians of Quito
because the latter did them very great harm. The Governor and company
having arrived at that village of Andabailla, they supped and spent the
night there. On the next day, they arrived at the village of Airamba
from where the captain had written that he was with the armed troops
waiting for them upon the road.[47]