Age of Aztec Read online

  Praise for the Pantheon series:

  “Mr. Lovegrove is one of the best writers out there... Highly, highly recommended.”

  – The Fantasy Book Critic on The Age of Ra

  “Lovegrove’s bluntness about the gods’ Jerry Springer-like repugnance refreshingly reflects the myths as they must appear to modern eyes.”

  – Strange Horizons Magazine on The Age of Ra

  “One of the UK SF scene’s most interesting, challenging and adventurous authors.”

  – Saxon Bullock, SFX on The Age of Ra

  “A compulsive, breakneck read by a master of the craft, with stunning action sequences and acute character observations. This is the kind of complex, action-oriented SF Dan Brown would write if Dan Brown could write.”

  – Eric Brown, The Guardian on The Age of Zeus

  “The action is just unbelievably good.”

  – The Fantasy Book Critic on The Age of Zeus

  “The reader feels as if they are right there accomplishing something along with our heroes... You definitely feel like you got your money’s worth.”

  – Sci-Fi & Fantasy Review on The Age of Zeus

  “I can totally see why The Age of Odin made it onto the New York Times Bestseller’s List; in terms of entertainment value alone it certainly deserves to be up there and I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw it on the big screen in a few years from now.”

  – Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review on The Age of Odin

  “The action, along with some finely observed satire, keeps the pages turning until the end.”

  – Total Sci-Fi Online on The Age of Odin

  “If you like your urban fantasy fast-paced, funny and full of action then you simply must read The Age of Odin.”

  – Geek Chocolate on The Age of Odin

  “Lovegrove is vigorously carving out a godpunk subgenre – rebellious underdog humans battling an outmoded belief system. Guns help a bit, but the real weapon is free will.”

  – Pornokitsch on The Age of Odin

  “The Age of Odin tells a great story with energy, excitement and a wonderful strand of humour. I loved both the previous books but even so, I would say that this is the best of the lot. Highly recommended.”

  – SF Crow’s Nest on The Age of Odin

  “All in, a seriously great bit of fun... a book that really has set the standards for 2011.”

  – Falcata Times on The Age of Odin

  ALSO BY JAMES LOVEGROVE:

  Novels

  The Hope

  Escardy Gap (with Peter Crowther)

  Days

  The Foreigners

  Untied Kingdom

  Worldstorm

  Provender Gleed

  Redlaw

  The Pantheon Series

  The Age Of Ra • The Age of Zeus

  The Age of Odin

  Novellas

  How The Other Half Lives

  Gig

  Dead Brigade

  Collections of Short Fiction

  Imagined Slights

  Diversifications

  For Younger Readers

  The Web: Computopia

  Wings

  The House of Lazarus

  Ant God

  Cold Keep

  Kill Swap

  Free Runner

  The 5 Lords Of Pain series

  WRITING AS JAY AMORY:

  The Clouded World series

  The Fledging Of Az Gabrielson

  Pirates Of The Relentless Desert

  Darkening For A Fall

  Empire Of Chaos

  AGE OF AZTEC

  JAMES LOVEGROVE

  First published 2012 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: (epub) 978-1-84997-345-8

  ISBN: (mobi) 978-1-84997-346-5

  Copyright © James Lovegrove 2012

  Cover Art by Marek Okon

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of he copyright owners.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  A Note on Pronunciation

  Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, was transliterated into our alphabet by Spanish missionaries. Hence many of the letter sounds are pronounced as in Spanish. For example, “x” is sounded as “sh,” “qu” as “k,” “z” as “s,” and “hu” as “w.” The diphthong “tl,” when it appears at the end of a word, should be treated as a single short phoneme rather than a syllable. Quetzalcoatl, therefore, is “kayt-sahl-ko-tluh.” The same rules apply to Mayan names.

  PART ONE

  LONDON

  ONE

  4 Jaguar 1 Monkey 1 House

  (Sunday 25th November 2012)

  IT WAS ANOTHER sultry, sweltering winter’s day, and the plaza around the City of London ziggurat was packed. Thousands clustered in the palm-fringed square itself, many of them having camped out overnight to be assured of a good view. Thousands more thronged the adjacent streets – Cheapside, Ludgate Hill, Paternoster Row – to watch the action on giant screens, close enough that they would just be able to hear the screams of the dying.

  The atmosphere was, as ever, festive. Vendors did a roaring trade in heart-shaped hamburgers, gooey crimson-coloured iced drinks, and skull candy. Soon, when the sun reached its zenith, blood would flow.

  The onlookers in the plaza were held back from its central avenue by a cordon of Jaguar Warrior constables. Resplendent in their golden armour and cat-head helmets, the constables stood with their arms folded, vigilant. Other Jaguar Warriors prowled in pairs, cradling their lightning guns. There were more of them present than was usual for such an occasion.

  The avenue, which led to the base of the ziggurat, was reserved for the queue of blood rite participants. Most of these hundred or so souls looked patient, eager, serene as they waited. A few wore the glassy, dreamy expressions of people who’d taken the precaution of anaesthetising themselves beforehand, perhaps by chewing a paste of morning glory seeds or downing a few stiff shots of pulque or tequila. Here and there a child shivered and wept and had to be comforted by his parents: It’s an honour to die at the priest’s hand. The gods love all sacrifices but they love the sacrifice of the young more than anything. A little pain, and then it will be bliss in Tamoanchan for ever after. Hush, dear, hush. Soon be over.

  Animal din competed with the human hubbub. Parrots chattered amid the palm fronds. Monkeys hooted as they swung among the vines and creepers that coated the surrounding buildings like verdant fur. A quetzal bird screeched as it shot overhead in a sudden, brilliant flash of rainbow plumage. Those who saw it gasped in delight. A good omen. Quetzalcoatl himself watched through the bird’s eyes. He was putting his personal stamp of approval on the proceedings.

  Once a Christian place of worship had stood on this spot, one of the largest of its kind, and one of the last. A century ago almost to the day, after Britain finally allowed itself to be subsumed into the Aztec Empire, St Paul’s Cathedral had been razed to the ground. The demolished stonemasonry, statuary and iconography had been dynamited and used to form the foundations and ballast of the ziggurat. The Empire was nothing if not thrifty. Nor was it averse to cannibalising.

  In the steely-hot blue sky, three short-range aerodiscs hovered. Tw
o bore the logo of Sun Broadcasting, the state TV network, and carried film crews, who were shooting live footage of the event. The third, a Jaguar Warrior patrol craft, was keeping a no-less beady eye on the public below.

  At noon precisely, the officiating priest emerged from the low temple building that capped the ziggurat. He was accompanied by a flock of acolytes and flanked, too, by a pair of Jaguar Warriors serving as bodyguards. The two men, both sergeants, had been selected for the sacred duty by virtue of their intimidating bulk, skill at arms, and unwavering willingness to die protecting their charge. With eyes like flint, they scanned in all directions as the priest raised his arms and spoke.

  “People of Britain,” he said, his voice relayed to the plaza’s PA system by a radio mike embedded in the ornate feathery folds of his headdress. “On this auspicious day we gather here to show obeisance to the gods, who have blessed us this solar year with fine weather, a bountiful harvest, and continued national wellbeing.”

  Cheers erupted from the plaza and beyond. What the priest said was true. It had, almost indisputably, been a good year. The chinampas fields had yielded plenty of maize. A territorial dispute with Iceland had been resolved in Britain’s favour. The summer had blazed long and blissfully hot, the run of sunny days broken by just enough downpours to keep the reservoirs topped up and the crops irrigated.

  “We have much to be grateful for,” the priest continued. “And as I see before me a long line of volunteers, civilians willing to shed their blood in the name of the gods, I know that the gratitude is felt universally. You, you brave ones, you blessed ones” – he addressed the blood rite participants – “wish to convey how glad we are for all we have been given, by giving your all. You perish today, not just for the gods’ benefit, but for the benefit of your fellow countrymen. Your blood will nourish the soil and ensure our future happiness and prosperity.”

  At these words the onlookers in the plaza started cheering like mad. They showered the blood rite participants with flower petals and praise. The participants lapped it up, beaming around them, some of them punching the air. Truly, there was no greater glory than this. Even the fretful children were placated. All these strangers insisting how fantastic they were – they must be indeed doing something worthwhile.

  One of the Sun Broadcasting aerodiscs descended a couple of hundred feet, presumably to get a better view, a tighter camera angle.

  “Come, then,” the priest said, beckoning. “Ascend the steps, as your souls will shortly be ascending to Tamoanchan.”

  The first of the sacrificial victims stepped forward. He was a tlachtli player, captain of one of the most successful London premier-league teams, a national hero. His celebrity put him at the head of the queue. He, with all his fame and money, not to mention being in the prime of youth and health and recently wedded to a glamour model, stood to lose more than most. It was only right and proper that the enormity of his unselfishness be recognised. Not all martyrs were equal.

  The tlachtli player sprinted up the 300 steps to the apex of the ziggurat, displaying the fitness and fearlessness that had made him such a star of the ball court. To tumultuous applause from the onlookers, he threw himself flat on his back on the altar, all smiles. Naked save for a loincloth, he had ceremonially anointed himself beforehand with sweet-smelling oils. He offered his bare, glistening chest to the priest, who muttered ritual phrases over him, then took an obsidian-bladed dagger and raised it aloft.

  With a practised, powerful stroke, the priest pierced the tlachtli player’s torso. Blood exploded from the wound, and the young man died with a scream and a shudder that were as much ecstasy as agony. The acolytes then hauled the body off the altar and set about hacking the ribcage open and sawing out the heart.

  They placed the still-twitching organ in a large iron basin which sat on a tripod over a bellows-stoked fire. The heart sizzled and sent a wisp of smoke up to heaven. Meanwhile, the acolytes pitched the eviscerated corpse off the rear of the ziggurat. It tumbled into a fenced-off enclosure below, for later disposal.

  The cooked heart was handed to the priest on a skewer. He took a bite, then tossed the remainder aside. He would do the same with every victim’s heart this afternoon, although the bites would become increasingly small until, by the end, they would be the tiniest nibbles. There was only so much meat one man’s stomach could handle in one go, and the human heart was a tough, tasteless morsel.

  The next victims climbed the stairs, somewhat more slowly and reluctantly than the tlachtli player had, in a group. They were a quartet of high-ranking Icelandic diplomats who had been chosen by their country’s High Priest as the official scapegoats in the matter of the recent dispute with Britain over fishing rights around the Faroe Islands. The Great Speaker had decreed that the Faroes should be considered a sovereign British dependency. Iceland had no claim over their territorial waters and the cod stocks therein. Both countries’ navies had been on the brink of hostilities at that point, but the Great Speaker’s verdict was final and Iceland had wisely conceded.

  The diplomats’ lives were by way of compensation for trouble caused. All four of them had drunk themselves into a stupor in order to appear calm in the face of death and not let the side down. Intoning slurred prayers to Tlazolteotl, goddess of purification, eater of sins, they presented themselves at the altar. There were moments of almost comic confusion as each, professionally tactful to the end, insisted that the others should go first. Finally they settled the matter by lining up in order of seniority. The priest despatched them with the rapidity and dispassionate efficiency that their status merited.

  After that came an aristocratic family, three generations all wishing to die together. The dynasty was not completely extinguishing itself, however. An adult male heir had been singled out to be exempt from martyrdom. He would inherit the family wealth – minus the odd death duty – and carry on the lineage.

  The Sun Broadcasting aerodisc dipped even lower until its bulbous underside was mere metres above the temple roof. The bassy throb of its negative-mass drive vibrated through the ziggurat’s stonework.

  One of the Jaguar Warrior sergeants waved the disc away, but the pilot either didn’t notice or chose to ignore the irritable gesture. The sergeant scowled. TV news people. They thought they were hot shit, especially when covering state occasions like this which garnered huge ratings and similarly huge advertising revenues. They thought themselves as important as, if not more important than, the law of the land.

  By now the topmost of the ziggurat’s steps were slick with spilled blood, making them treacherous for the participants who followed in the wake of the initial wave of the great and good. Several of these people, middle-class professionals mostly, slipped and lost their footing as they neared the summit. They were bloodstained even before they reached the wet red altar and prostrated themselves on it.

  The sergeant waved yet again at the TV news disc. The aircraft was literally casting a shadow over the blood rite, and its engine thrum was making the priest’s words hard to distinguish. The sergeant flipped down his helmet mike and instructed the patrol disc to intervene. There was an edge in his voice. The Sun Broadcasting disc’s antics were making him very nervous. Was this what Chief Superintendent Kellaway had warned them to be on the lookout for? The suspicious activity that might herald a terrorist attack?

  Wary, the sergeant unshipped and primed his lightning gun. Meanwhile, the Jaguar Warrior disc drew alongside the Sun Broadcasting aircraft and hailed it over the aviation frequency. “By order of the High Priest of Great Britain, and in the name of the law, please ascend to a safe distance. This is your only warning. Fail to comply and we will open fire.”

  At that moment, a shrill cry came from within the TV news disc. The sergeant spied movement in one of the hatches from which a camera protruded. He glimpsed a shape, a silvery silhouette, darting.

  Next instant, a cameraman came flying out, fell flailing, and hit the temple roof with a bone-crushing thud. He was followed by an arm
our-clad figure who leapt nimbly down from the disc, landing on the roof and dropping straight into a crouching, catlike stance.

  The sergeant swore softly.

  Him.

  Bold as brass. Clear as day.

  Top of the Jaguar Warriors’ Most Wanted list. Public enemy number one.

  The Conquistador.

  THE LIGHTNING GUN was warm and humming in the sergeant’s hands, plasma generator charged. He raised it to fire, but the Conquistador reacted quickly – too quickly. He snatched up the injured cameraman and threw him at the Jaguar Warrior, a kind of moving human shield. A bolt of blue-white brilliance leapt from the l-gun and struck the hapless cameraman full on. He howled and writhed and burned, laced with crackling light.

  The cameraman’s smouldering corpse tumbled towards the sergeant, who twisted aside to avoid being hit. When he regained his balance, he found himself directly face to face with the Conquistador. Implacable blue eyes stared out from slits in the terrorist’s face mask. A rapier flashed. The sergeant looked down to see snakes emerging from a gash in his abdomen. He tried to catch them but they slithered out of his hands, falling at his feet in coils. That was when he realised the snakes were his own intestines. He looked up again at the Conquistador, who opened his throat with a swift transverse stroke of his sword.