Lives of Alcyone

This misfortune seemed for the time quite to change her character,
and the gentle and loving wife became a determined and relentless
avenger, filled entirely with one idea. She dressed herself in her
husband’ s armour, put herself at the head of what remained of her
people and fled to the recesses of the mountains, since the Toltec
armies had overrun the whole country. Her husband’ s steward,
Cygnus, who had always greatly admired her, became one of the
foremost of her band of warriors, and distinguished himself greatly.
She directed a guerrilla warfare for some years, enduring the
greatest hardships, but never for a moment swerving from her
purpose. She was unable, with her handful of mountaineers, to meet
the Toltecs in open fight, but she constantly harassed them and,
owing to the intimate knowledge which she gained of the
fastnessees of the mountain-chain, she was always able to elude all
attempts to capture her. Meanwhile, she never wavered in her
hatred of the Emperor, whose ambition had caused the death of her
beloved husband.
She caused her sons to take an oath never to rest until that
Emperor and his power should be destroyed, and she sent one of
them (Aurora) in disguise to the City of the Golden Gate to
endeavour to compass this destruction. After many adventures the
young man reached that city, and soon contrived to attach himself to
some of the many disaffected parties, and when the opportunity
offered he was one of the party who fell upon the Emperor and slew
him. He hurried to his mother with the news of the downfall of the
tyrant, proudly exhibiting to her the dagger with which the deed had
been done. She welcomed him with praise as the avenger of his
father, yet even in the very act a doubt for the first time came across
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