The Sun Virgin
Their principal drink was a beer made from corn and a more highly
developed whisky which was called _sora_. They had early learned
the magic qualities of the coca shrub and chewed its leaves as a sort
of tobacco. Its effects were stimulating to a high degree. By chewing
these leaves, from which the modern drug of cocaine is distilled, a
workman could labor a day without food, unconscious of fatigue. Tobacco
was used only in the form of snuff.
The travelers reached a large village at a most exciting moment. The
entire population had gathered on the green.
“What is it?” Molina asked of his fair guide.
The girl laughed gayly.
“Come. It’s the marriage festival day. Every boy and girl in Peru must
be married, the boy before the age of twenty-four, the girl before the
age of twenty.”
“And if they do not?”
“The controller makes them marry.”
“I see!” the cavalier exclaimed.
“On this day in every village of the kingdom the boys and girls gather
on the greens and claim their mates. They must choose their mates from
their own community. Both the parents and the bride and groom must
consent....”
“But unless they find a mate, the controller will arrange it for them?”
“By all means, Señor. They must marry.”
She looked meaningly at Molina, and he, unable to meet her gaze--half
yearning, half amused--turned away.
They went to an excited group of people. The controller was in action.
A stubborn youth had refused to marry, though twenty-four years of age.
Again Molina avoided her look.
The unmarried girls of the village were set before the recalcitrant.
They laughed and shouted at his stubborn folly. The official commanded
that he take one, love her and rear a family.
He angrily refused.
“Damn all women!” he exploded.
A chorus of shrill laughter greeted the explosion.
The controller walked sedately before the row of smiling girls,
selected one, seized the youth’s hand, placed the girl’s in his and
proclaimed them man and wife. He announced their honeymoon of a year’s
leisure and sent them to the community house to begin it. Each newly
wedded couple were allowed a year’s exemption from any toil.
“So that’s the way it’s done in Peru?” Molina laughed; but his laughter
was nervous.
“Yes, Señor,” Yma demurely answered. “If a man will not do his duty, he
must be made to do it.”
Her dark eyes held him for the instant, and he felt hot blood suffuse
his face.
He turned away and watched moodily, while the crowds gathered
everywhere at the doors of the newlyweds. Song and dance and feasting
would last for days. The last census had put the population at more
than twelve million.
Molina sought the controller and asked at length of their marriage
customs. He was curious about the penalty of death fixed for the crime
of incest.
“Is it not strange,” he asked the official, “that you enforce such a
law in an empire whose ruler is commanded to marry his sister?”
“Not at all, Señor,” he gravely explained. “We know the dangers of
incestuous marriages. The Inca of the South is required to marry his
sister that the heir to the throne may ever be the purest strain of
royal blood. After the birth of the prince, he no longer lives as the
husband of the queen. He has many wives. Neither the common people nor
the nobles are permitted this violation of natural laws commanded of
the royal family. Huyna Capac, the monarch who divided the kingdom,
began a new line of Incas by marrying the Queen of Quito. Atahualpa
is his son by the new royal line born of a union without incest. We
know that Atahualpa is the better man and Huascar will yet yield the
southern kingdom to his brother.”
He had scarcely finished his speech when a royal runner bounded to his
side and delivered a _quipa_ message bearing the imperial seal of
Atahualpa.
The official read with frowning brow.
“You have bad news?” Yma asked.
“The worst,” he answered addressing Molina. “Civil war!--the first
our empire has ever known. But it had to come. Atahualpa is marching
on Cuzco and bids you join his camp at once. He asks your aid against
Huascar.”
To the courier who bore the message of war, Molina said:
“Tell your monarch that I obey his summons and will join his standard
without delay.”
Yma’s face was radiant. She came impulsively to Molina and kissed
him on the mouth. In the excitement of the moment he returned it
with passionate eagerness, and trembled as the wave of swift warmth
overspread him. Yma smiled.
“My glorious god-man will lead his army to victory....”
Rushing his litters with fresh carriers Molina hurried to the camp of
the Inca. He tried, feebly, to leave Yma behind, but she refused to
seek safety in Quito. In answer to Molina’s protest her voice quivered.
“I am your slave. My place is by your side.”
He did not object. He found the Inca at Ambato, sixty miles from his
capital, confronted by an army from the South.
Atahualpa was the idol of his men. He had served in more than one
campaign with his illustrious father. The democratic manner of the
young ruler had endeared him to his soldiers. In the crisis he found
himself surrounded by the ablest officers of the old régime, who had
lived at Quito since the death of Huyna Capac.
The Inca called Molina to a council of war with his two generals,
Quizquiz and Challcuchima. The strength and position of the enemy were
duly reported and Molina advised that they join battle at sunrise.
The scene was set at the foot of the towering peak of Chimborazo. The
Spaniard’s blood leaped at the sight of Atahualpa’s host drawn up in
line of battle. The strength of their equipment amazed him. Without
cavalry, swords or muskets, they still carried weapons, that, used
_en masse_, made sure impressive results.
They had developed nearly every weapon known of man before the
invention of gunpowder. Only their swords and lances lacked the hard
edge of steel. (In this, the sword of the cavalier, wrought by master
hands at Toledo, was easily the superior weapon.) Yet as both armies
were without steel, the advantage was with neither.
Bows, arrows, lances, darts, battle-axes and slings were ready.
The weapons of the commander were tipped with gold and silver and the
gorgeous costumes of the army gave to the scene a festive color. The
mass of the soldiers wore the dress of their provinces; and the gay
plumage of their local uniforms added to the gala character of the host.
Beneath his gay coloring each soldier wore a close tunic of heavily
quilted cotton, strong enough to withstand the thrust of an arrow,
dart, or lance, and tough enough to break the force of the hardest
stone hurled by the sling.
Each company carried its banner and above all floated the imperial
standard with the device of the rainbow, the ensign of the Incas,
proclaiming their kinship with sun and sky.
From sunrise to sunset the battle raged. As the sun sank, the army of
the South gave way, and their retreat became a rout. Atahualpa swept
over the bloody field strewn with the dead.
He pressed his advantage without pause until he reached the gates of
the capital town of the province of Canaris, which had sided with his
brother. The Inca drew up his army, entered the place in triumph, razed
every house to the ground and put the inhabitants to the sword. He sent
his army into every district of the offending province and laid the
country waste. At length bands of children led by old men and women met
him bearing green branches in their hands praying for mercy. But the
young conqueror, deaf to all appeals, spared no man capable of bearing
arms.
The terror spread by his stern revenge on the treacherous province
opened the gates of every city before him for miles. At the roadway
leading across the Andes to the hot springs at Caxamalca, the Inca
paused, detached a small division of the army, led it across the
mountains, and established the imperial headquarters at Caxamalca. The
women of his court accompanied the monarch and Molina sent Yma with
them. Atahualpa refused the cavalier’s plea to lead a division into
battle. But he attached the stranger to the staff of his two generals
and asked for his best advice in every council of war.
From Caxamalca, whose approaches were strongly fortified, Atahualpa
could advance on Cuzco if his army were victorious, or retreat to Quito
if it met defeat.
The main army moved rapidly along the great highway that leads from
Quito to Cuzco. They crossed the river Apurimac and were within
striking distance of Huascar’s capital before the ruler of the South
moved to check the advance. Atahualpa’s priests in the Temple of the
Sun consulted the oracles, made sacrifices, read the signs, and advised
him to wait.
Meanwhile, advised by his generals of the peril of his capital Huascar
raised a levy of recruits with all speed, reënforced his lines and met
the invaders on the plains of Quipaypan. The battle ground had been
carefully selected by Molina and approved by Quizquiz and Challcuchima.
Both armies fought with desperation. Not merely a battle was at
stake--an empire was the prize.
Atahualpa’s men were flushed with the victory of Ambato and Huascar’s
fought under the personal leadership of their Inca. An hour before
sunset the field was piled with heaps of the dead and dying. Huascar’s
lines again broke in wild disorder and his army fled. A thousand of his
faithful noblemen rallied about his person too late to save him from
capture. He was taken prisoner and the victorious generals of the North
marched into the capital and occupied it in the name of their emperor,
proclaiming him sole ruler of the Kingdom of the Four Corners of the
World.
Atahualpa immediately called a meeting of all the nobles in Cuzco to
advise with him on the future of the empire. At this conference the
wily young Inca, now supreme, arrested the ringleaders who had urged
his brother to war and executed them.
His triumph was now complete, and he had taken steps to insure a future
peace. Huascar, the weakling, he sent to the fortress at Xauxa to be
held pending his abdication of the throne.
While still celebrating his triumph in Cuzco and preparing the capital
for his formal entry with the Queen and Dowager Mother, a royal courier
dashed into the palace and proclaimed:
“The strange white men, carrying thunderbolts, and with queer animals,
which they ride, have again landed at Tumbez!”
The Inca left his ablest general, Challcuchima in command of Cuzco,
surrounded himself with a strong guard, and hurried to his headquarters
at Caxamalca. From Molina he carefully guarded this news, carrying him
in his train a virtual prisoner.
Riding in his litter, Atahualpa remembered the prophecy made to his
father and wondered. Evening came, and he looked at the battlements of
the Andes, towering in the quiet hush of day. Beyond them the sun was
setting. Its rays struck the eternal snows of the peaks, and the snows
became as blood.
CHAPTER X
The pilot Ruiz had held a steady course from Panama for the Bay of
Tumbez. But, swept out of it by head winds and adverse currents, he was
compelled to anchor in the Bay of St. Matthew, many miles north of his
destination.
Pizarro put his forces ashore and ordered his ships to keep in touch
with his signals. Marching southward he discovered a large village,
assaulted and captured it, and secured a rich spoil of gold and silver
vessels and many emeralds of great value.
The road became a waste of desert sands, drifting and yielding
underfoot and blinding his men as they breasted the wind. The glare of
the full equatorial sun was almost unbearable.
The bravest scout of his forces was a slender girl on a white horse
always leading the van. Others dreamed of gold, she of a gallant lover