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!”