War God (31 page)

Nicely done, cousin
, Shikotenka thought. To win a compliment from Etzli was no easy task and brought Tochtli one step closer to the recognition and acceptance he craved.

Chipahua and Ilhuicamina were checking the bodies of the foe. They found three who were injured but not dead and swiftly slit their throats.

The rain still poured down, a torrential, rumbling flood beating on the sagging awning overhead and on the glowing lantern-lit walls of the great pavilion, alive with silhouettes. From within came the sounds of wild music and laughter, and quite clearly and unmistakably Shikotenka heard the high-pitched groans and gasps of a woman approaching orgasm.

‘Bet she’s faking it,’ commented Chipahua sourly.

‘You’re just jealous,’ growled Ilhuicamina.

Amazingly no one inside the pavilion seemed to have heard the sounds of struggle at the entrance. No alarm had yet been raised. What sounded like a party in full swing, even an orgy, simply continued unchecked.

Shikotenka signalled his platoon commanders to gather round. ‘Tree, Acolmiztli, you and your men are with me. We go straight in through the front entrance and remember – we’re here only for Coaxoch and his sons and we can’t risk more than a two-hundred count to get the job done. Kill everyone who gets in our way but
don’t waste time on anyone else
. Same goes for you, Chipahua – take your ten round the west side of this monstrous tent and cut your way in. Ilhuicamina – you get the east side. Etzli – you get the north. We meet in the middle – that’s where Coaxoch will be.’

‘What if he isn’t?’ said Etzli.

‘He’ll be there – surrounded by sycophants and arse-lickers. He’s too fat to miss.’

Shikotenka was less sure of this than he pretended to be. The pavilion was massive – there could be dozens of inner rooms and it wasn’t inevitable that Coaxoch would be holding court. He might be sleeping. He might be fornicating. He might be taking a bath.

But it was too late now – much too late! – for any such concerns.

With slow, deliberate movements Shikotenka removed his helmet, shrugged loose his long Tlascalan locks and stripped off his jaguar knight uniform until he wore only a loincloth, weapons, waterskin and sandals. He signalled everyone else to do the same. ‘No more disguises,’ he said. ‘They have to know who we are.’

Tozi understood the new power she had found. It was the power to magnify others’ fears.

She had directed it at Moctezuma and magnified his fear that his bowels would betray him.

She had directed it at Ahuizotl, who feared his deceit would be exposed, and driven him into a frenzy of terror.

But she was under no illusions about Moctezuma’s decision to free Malinal from the killing stone. It had not happened because of anything she had done.

In the highly charged moments that had passed since she’d attained the summit of the pyramid, Tozi had experienced a revelation. It was often said by the Mexica that their Great Speakers were in direct communication with Hummingbird and served as his agents and instruments on earth, but she’d always suspected such statements of being little more than boastful propaganda. Now she knew she had been wrong, for her witch gift had allowed her to see something dreadful lurking there amongst the priests and lords clustered round the killing stone, something that no one except Moctezuma was meant to see – the true spiritual source of all the horror and wickedness the Mexica inflicted upon the world.

The war god himself.

And to see him was to witness the apparition of ultimate evil incarnate in a phantasm of immense beauty – not a body of flesh and blood, Tozi had understood at once, but a vision-body, tall and powerful with luminous skin and a nimbus of golden hair and black, black eyes, and a sly, cruel smile delighting in fear and misery and pain.

Delighting even in the fear and misery of the Great Speaker, whom he toyed with and taunted and confused by coming and going, slipping away through rifts in the fabric of the night into some invisible realm that lay beyond, only to return to pull the strings of his human puppet again and enforce his will upon him.

It was this demonic entity, this god of the dark places of the human soul, who had ordered Malinal freed, who had held back the obsidian knife, who had clamped his phantom hand over Moctezuma’s nose and mouth and stifled his breathing and forced him to release her from the stone and then vanished again as though his work was done.

Tozi would not have believed it if she had not seen it with her own eyes. But having seen it she was still left with the fundamental question.

Why?

Why would such a being, nourished by the hearts of the victims Moctezuma offered him, have wanted
anyone
released?

And why Malinal in particular?

And was Tozi’s own freedom, which her friend had so courageously and selflessly required, also part of some diabolical plan?

Malinal’s manner towards Moctezuma had been almost … intimate. But as Tozi ran to her side her voice snapped out like a whip. ‘Wait!’ she said, as though the Great Speaker were of no more consequence than a household slave. ‘There’s one more thing …’

Tozi was acutely conscious of how the nobles gathered on the summit platform, the killing crew and the priests were all standing round with their mouths gaping in disbelief watching this impossible exchange.

‘There’s a boy,’ Malinal continued. ‘A little boy. He was imprisoned amongst the women in error. Ahuizotl sent him to the western stairway for sacrifice. If he still lives I want to take him with us.’

All eyes turned towards the western altar. After the dramatic events of the past few moments the sacrifices there had ceased, as they had ceased also at the eastern altar – both these points being plainly visible in the bright light of torches and braziers, and less than a hundred feet distant from their present position.

‘A boy?’ said Moctezuma.

‘Yes,’ said Malinal. ‘A boy. I would take him with me. You must give the order.’

Tozi focussed her power and read the squirming mind of the Great Speaker. He was trying to guess if it was the god who wanted this, or only the impertinent woman whom the god had so inexplicably favoured? He also very much wished not to appear weak in the presence of the nobles. He played for time while he struggled to decide: ‘Why must I give such an order?’

‘
Because the god wills it
,’ hissed Tozi. Though unseen she felt the presence of Hummingbird again, horribly close, looming over her, and heard a voice, thick and triumphant, whisper in her ear the words, ‘
You’re mine now.
’
In that same fleeting instant, a great bolt of lightning cracked down out of the storm-tossed sky and struck the roof-comb of the temple, bathing the whole structure in a glory of flickering blue flame. Tozi watched, hypnotised, as a tongue of the witch fire licked out towards her, touched her, and was gone, leaving her astonished she was unhurt, her whole body reverberating as though she were a bell struck by some great hammer. A colossal roll of thunder shook the pyramid like an earthquake and Moctezuma groaned and stiffened. ‘Take the boy!’ he shrieked. ‘Cuitláhuac – see to it!’

As Cuitláhuac escorted them round the side of the temple towards the western altar, Tozi’s breath came in short, sharp gasps and she heard herself muttering –
Gods let us be on time. Gods let us be on time
. Reflected in the evil glow of the brazier, where a dozen hearts lay smoking, she saw the cruel hooked nose and sneering lips of Namacuix, Ahuizotl’s deputy. Clutching a long obsidian knife loosely in his right hand, he stood back from the killing stone where his assistants held a small struggling body stretched out ready for sacrifice.

‘
Coyotl
,’ Tozi bellowed rushing forward, only to discover as she drew closer that the victim was a young girl whose terrified face she half remembered from the fattening pen. Namacuix seemed to be in a trance, gazing up with rapt attention at the roof of the temple where the lightning bolt had struck, but Tozi’s frantic approach snapped him out of it. He turned on her with a roar of fury, knife raised.

‘Stay your blade, Namacuix,’ barked Cuitláhuac. ‘She’s not to be harmed.’ He indicated Malinal: ‘That one too. Moctezuma himself has ordered their release.’ As he spoke more lightning flickered amongst the clouds, thunder growling up there like some monstrous beast, and a few heavy drops of rain spattered down.

The anger drained from Namacuix’s face. Puzzlement replaced it. ‘What’s this all about?’ he asked Cuitláhuac. ‘The Great Speaker offering sacrifices from morning to night, a suicide on the northern stairway, the temple of Hummingbird struck by lightning, prisoners released. I’ve known nothing like it in twenty years as a priest.’

‘Neither have I, my friend,’ said Cuitláhuac. ‘Neither have any of us.’ He lowered his voice: ‘There’s sorcery at work.’ He looked at Malinal and Tozi again and made a gesture of disgust. ‘They say they have a friend who was brought to the western stair for sacrifice – a little boy. He’s to go free also. Have you seen him?’

Namacuix’s puzzlement deepened. ‘The Speaker ordered only females sacrificed. The fattening pen was emptied. No males have come under my knife.’

‘His
tepulli
and
ahuacatl
had been hacked off,’ Tozi snarled. ‘Many mistake him for a girl. Did you see such a one?’

‘Insolent cockroach!’ Namacuix was furious again. ‘How dare you address
me
?’

‘Answer her question,’ Malinal snapped, ‘unless you prefer to answer to the Great Speaker.’

‘It would be wise to answer,’ suggested Cuitláhuac. ‘Could one of your victims have been a mutilated boy?’

Namacuix nibbled his lower lip. ‘How can I know?’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘I’m here to kill them not examine them.’ He pointed his knife at a heap of butchered torsos stacked five deep and four wide, like logs at the edge of the summit platform ready to be thrown down. ‘The last ones I harvested are still there. See for yourselves.’

Tozi fell on her knees in the pool of gore before the grisly mound of human remains. Behind her, on the sacrificial stone, she heard a wail of renewed terror. Below, the captives waiting their turn for sacrifice occupied the bloody steps in a long line that stretched down through the deep shadows enveloping the lower reaches of the pyramid and emerged beyond into the lantern-lit plaza.

Tozi put her hands on the first of the slick, glistening bodies – a woman’s body, full breasts obscenely divided by a wide, dripping gash where the heart had been torn out. The others next to it were also those of mature women. She groaned with effort and horror as she shoved them aside to reach the layer below.

‘Don’t,’ Tozi heard Malinal say. ‘This is more than any human can bear.’

‘I have to know. I promised I’d protect him …’ Tozi bowed her head and one by one examined every blood-smeared cadaver, but Coyotl was not amongst them.

When she was done she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Come,’ Malinal said quietly. She was holding a flickering torch. ‘Perhaps he’s still somewhere in the line.’

As they moved to the steps, Cuitláhuac sighed with impatience and urged them to make haste, but Malinal held the torch up to the tired, terrified, sometimes defiant faces of every waiting victim. Each time a child of approximately Coyotl’s age and size was illuminated by the flames, Tozi peered closer, only to stand back again in disappointment and continue the slippery, precipitous journey.

About halfway down, the torch light reflected in the
Itzli
-dulled eyes of one of the Tlascalan girls from Xoco’s gang who’d persecuted Tozi since the morning. ‘Well if it isn’t the witch,’ she slurred. ‘Walking free again, are you?’

Tozi didn’t explain. ‘We’re looking for Coyotl,’ she said.

The girl gave a crafty, knowing grin: ‘You mean that little eunuch of yours?’

A surge of hope. ‘Yes. Have you seen him?’

‘Might have done. Then again I might not.’

Tozi moved closer. ‘If you’ve seen him, please tell me.’

The girl cast a sideways glance at Cuitláhuac. ‘Get this great lord to free me,’ she said, ‘then I’ll tell you.’ But Tozi was already inside her head and saw at once she knew nothing. Without a backward glance she resumed the descent.

‘I’ve seen him all right,’ the girl suddenly shouted, high-pitched, furious. ‘He was crying out for you! I dealt him a few slaps but he wouldn’t shut up, so I shoved him off the steps. He fell and died! That’s what happened to him.’

Tozi ignored her, continued to examine the faces in the line. ‘It’s not true,’ she said to Malinal.

‘How do you know?’

‘I just know. It’s not true. She hasn’t seen Coyotl.’

When they reached the foot of the stairway there were more hideous piles of torsos piled on both sides, the remains of victims already sacrificed and thrown down the pyramid. Tozi felt drawn strongly towards the huge mound of hundreds of bodies on their right but Malinal’s hand touched her shoulder again. ‘There isn’t time,’ the older woman said, her voice urgent. ‘You’ve done all you can but this is hopeless. We have to get out of here,
now
, before Moctezuma changes his mind.’