Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [38]
Without further ado, the emperor smashed the knife into the Huaxtec’s chest. There wasn’t even time to cry out before the blade plunged through skin and fat and muscle, shattered his ribs.
The emperor pushed a muscular hand into the Huaxtec’s chest, past the jagged ends of bone, and ripped his heart out with a single violent tug.
Someone pushed their hand in through the Doctor’s face. He convulsed, mouth open. He squeezed his eyes shut, but patterns of blue and red and yellow screamed across his field of vision.
This was much too much. This was out of control. It was time to metabolize the psilocin, turn the poison into something harmless, time to come back from the trip.
He tried.
Nothing happened.
The fingers touched the whorls of his brain, intolerably.
He ran to the temple and shouted for them to stop.
* * *
The humming of the temple had become a strident buzzing, and the Blue had leaked between the flagstones, colouring everything.
Ahuitzotl wrenched another fluttering heart free from its sinews. Huitzilin felt it as though it were his own heart, his back arching as he clutched the edge of the altar with intangible fingers. His teeth were bared in a rictus of glory as death drenched him.
‘Again,’ he said.
Another victim topped the steps, was pushed onto the altar. Perhaps this one saw Huitzilin’s face before he died, his mouth gaping with surprise as the blade shattered his body, his heart shuddering in horror as it met the daylight. Huitzilin grinned invisibly at the dead face, meeting those glazing eyes in the seconds before they lost the world.
‘Again,’ he said.
Another victim, his body criss‐crossed with battle scars, let himself be dragged onto the stone. He stared stoically at the sky as the emperor sliced him open. Death exploded out of him, showering Huitzilin like blood. He opened his mouth, tasting it, spiced with despair and with pain.
‘Again,’ he said.
* * *
The children and the chickens squawked and fled as the warriors ran through the streets. The fighters screamed and yelled, their blades whirling like great wings.
Ace had lost track of the battle, lost track of her surroundings, everything but the moment. She cried out in awful pleasure as she slammed her weapon into the leg of one of the warriors, saw him fall. She grabbed his hair and dragged him shrieking out of the battle, tumbling through the dirt. He slid down the muddy side of a canal, landed in the water with the filth and the fishes.
Something hit her, feeling like a bomb exploding in her side, but it didn’t matter. She yelled, gloriously, stepping aside and swinging the sword sideways to connect with the warrior’s head. He fell without a word, and the fighters stepped over his stunned form.
Oh, the details of the battle were unimportant. At these moments, she was a hand inside a glove, and for once the glove wasn’t too loose, wasn’t too tight, but fitted perfectly. A human hand inside the glove of battle, reacting with perfect speed, pure grace. There was no memory, no worries about the future, there was no self‐doubt or anger or pain.
Taking care of business.
* * *
The street rippled under the Doctor’s feet, washing up and down like waves. Sometimes the ground seemed close, sometimes far away. Time was slowing down to the consistency of treacle.
He stumbled and he swayed, but somehow he kept moving, drawn towards the temple like a marionette dragged through the dirt by its strings. From time to time he cried out in alien words, and any Aztec who saw him thought he was mad or a sorcerer or a god and left him alone.
He could almost see it – almost see it –
At the four temples the kings were smashing through chest after chest with their heavy stone knives. The hearts they tore loose they held up to the burning sky, blood seething down their arms, and then they hurled the quivering organs into the hollow back of the eagle statue, its body sizzling and smoking as the hearts burned.
The priests lifted the shattered bodies and hurled them down the steps, bouncing and tumbling, their arms