Doctor Who_ Left-Handed Hummingbird - Kate Orman [72]
Laughing, he devoured her, the air trembling with the power of his hunger.
He screamed at his men, ‘I’m not going to fight with witchcraft. I’m going to fight with weapons. My orders will be obeyed in every land from the east coast to the west. I’ll protect every border of our land. I’ll make sure we live in luxury. I’ll make our nation glorious, I’ll lift us up to the sky!’
They watched him from the bushes, from behind rocks, shuddering. ‘Our conquests will get us gems and gold and feathers and emeralds and coral and amethysts and animal skins and cotton,’ he said giddily. ‘I’ll have it all.’
He’d never have to use the weapon again. When they saw what he had done, the Toltecs weren’t going to put up much resistance. And from now on, every warrior would be called hummingbird.
* * *
‘Sir,’ someone said to Macbeth. The paranormalist sauntered over, surveying the basement door.
‘It’s locked,’ said the soldier.
‘Well, kick it in, then,’ said MacB.
‘Yes, sir.’
He kicked the door once, lightly, and it tore loose from its lower hinge, hanging like a stiff red flag over the stairs. The soldier carefully pushed it to one side. MacB went first, Benny hovering at his shoulder.
* * *
They said that the Tezcatlipocas spoke to the emperor in a tongue no one else could understand, a language with the sound of flutes. Tlacaelel heard it, and he understood it better than anyone. Including the emperor.
Advice for the king’s adviser, laughed the voice, waking young Tlacaelel out of his sleep. He rolled over on the mat, smiling in the darkness of his house. ‘What is it?’
Tlacaelel, said the voice, you’re the emperor’s nephew and his trusted general. I’ve given you more secrets than anyone before.
‘And I’m grateful. And we have an empire now, to protect and to drain. And to enlarge.’
It’s a very simple pattern, Tlacaelel. The more wars, the more cities we rule. The more cities we rule the more tribute we receive. We can build the empire on food, and jaguar skins, and precious stones.
‘What if we stop fighting?’
The reputation of power is power. You can never stop fighting. Should any town rebel, slaughter every man, woman and child, and no one will dare rebel. But grow peaceful and fat and the empire will slip through your fingers like sand.
‘And if the Aztecs won’t fight?’ asked Tlacaelel.
The sun needs sacrifice to stay alive. As he sacrificed himself in the fire when the world began. You know the tale: the gods bled for humanity. Now humanity must bleed for the gods.
Tlacaelel nodded in the darkness. ‘The warriors who are killed in battle die happy, feeding the sun.’
The warriors who aren’t killed in battle die happy, feeding the sun.
‘And when our enemies see a thousand men die on the altars they’ll think twice before rebelling, withholding tribute.’
Precisely.
‘As the empire expands,’ said Tlacaelel, ‘we will need more wars.’
Yes.
‘And more sacrifices.’
Yes.
‘Death will spread out from us in ripples, growing ever wider. The empire will grow unstable as it grows outwards.’
Glory is as brief as the flash of sunlight on water, said the whisper. And I need more deaths.
‘Yes.’
Tell the king. And I’ll make you my general, Tlacaelel, and you’ll rule this empire from behind the emperor for the rest of your life.
‘Yes.’
* * *
There was one person in the basement.
The bed was overturned, the metal of the legs and springs twisted and scored subtly in patterns that disturbed the mind The huge Aztec calendar behind it, with the hideous face of the sun pouting out from the centre, had great lines burned into it in meaningless patterns, as though someone had run a searing finger over its surface.
Bernice hesitated at the top of the stairs, feeling a familiar awfulness creeping into her stomach, a bitter tang that reminded her, reminded her… screaming in a Mexican hospital. Of Macbeth, an older Macbeth with grey in his red hair and a broken nose,