Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [32]
It had been a fight. In a fight, you use the best, the most effective weapons available. If the sword hadn’t been handy, she would have drawn the useless Magnum first. And if she had done that, she’d be dead now, her skull split open by an Aztec club. How’d you like that, Mr All‐Powerful Time Lord?
And the Doctor hadn’t tried to stop Achtli and Iccauhtli from dispatching their opponents. He hadn’t said a word to them about it, just left those corpses lying in the jungle, as if they’d be a useful marker for finding the boat again.
There was no way it was coincidental that those robbers had turned up, right here, right now. They’d been sent by the enemy, sent to kill them before they could muck up anything important. The Doctor hadn’t even let her question them, just sent the survivors slinking away with a glance. For all the Doctor knew, they might have gone for reinforcements, or be stalking them through the jungle at this very moment. At the very least they might have pinched the boat.
Achtli stopped, the red point of his torch hovering nervously. ‘It’s here,’ he said, very quietly.
The Doctor passed Ace without a glance, taking something out of his pocket, a snub‐nosed shape that might have been mistaken for a gun. It made a familiar crackling noise, like beetles underfoot.
‘The three of you will be staying here,’ said the Doctor. ‘I won’t be very long.’
Iccauhtli and Achtli instantly sat down, holding their clubs in their laps. They beat the torches against the ground until they went out. A moment later, for want of anything better to do, Ace joined them on the dewy grass.
* * *
The stones of the Great Temple hid things. Rubies and jade and every kind of gem had been thrown into the mortar. After all, since such treasure belonged to the gods, wasn’t it only right to use it in their service?
Huitzilin hid in the stones, embedded in the rough cement. He hid in the carved snakes that jutted from the base of the temple, in the tiny offerings under the floor of the pyramid, the delicate jade fish and the necklaces of carven shell. He was in the sculpted eagle that rested in front of his sanctuary at the top of the pyramid.
Huitzilin reached for himself, dragging the lost pieces back to the centre. He was leaking out between the stones, he was dripping in fat splashes from the beak of the eagle, he was running down the steps in a thin film of Blue. He snatched at himself, crying out, holding on, holding on.
He was coming unglued. He needed nourishment.
* * *
The Doctor moved through the blackness without a sound, listening with his ears and with his mind. There was a thunderstorm feeling here, the same sense of anticipation he had tasted in Tenochtitlan.
And there was a lot of radiation. The closer he came to Achtli’s cave, the stronger the reading from the radiation detector, clicking rhythmically in his hand. He stopped, fished in his pocket for anti‐radiation pills.
He came to a place where the trees had stopped growing, and the ground crunched underfoot, bare of grass. Unlucky Aztecs had visited and had left with their DNA smashed apart, dying quickly with their hair and teeth falling out, dying slowly as their bone marrow grew out of control. Even with the pills he couldn’t stay for long.
The cave was a simple breach in the hillside, just the sort of place a group of wanderers might rest on their way to a new home. The Doctor took out his pencil‐torch. A single beam of whiteness stabbed into the heart of the cavern.
The cave couldn’t be more than twenty feet deep; there were a few pools on the floor, the gentle tap‐tapping of water as it dripped from new‐born stalactites. No animals, of course.
He walked into the cave without hesitating. If this were a trap, it was long overdue to be sprung. And he wanted to be back in Tenochtitlan in time for the dedication. The bloodthirsty anticipation sizzling in