Empire of the Skull

by Philip Caveney

  'My guess is he's hiding out somewhere. And if I know him, he's waiting his chance. That's the kind of kid he is.'

  'I hope you're right,' said Coates. 'If those savages have hurt him, I'll—' He broke off, realizing that there was absolutely nothing he could do about the situation. His hands were tied securely behind his back and no amount of struggling would ever undo them.

  'He's a tough kid,' Ethan assured him. 'He'll be all right.'

  He turned to look at the man who seemed to be the leader. He waited until the man glanced at him and then offered a friendly grin. 'Ethan,' he said. 'My name is Ethan.'

  The warrior regarded him impassively. He either didn't understand or didn't care what Ethan's name was.

  Ethan repeated his name a few times. He would have liked to be able to pat his chest or the top of his head as he did so, but he couldn't. 'Me . . . Ethan,' he said once more. 'Ethan.'

  'E-tan,' said the Indian, and Ethan grinned.

  'Yeah, that's right, you got it. E-tan!' Then he nodded his head at the man. 'Your name?' he asked. No reaction. 'Your . . . name?'

  The man shrugged. 'Tlaloc,' he said.

  'Tlaloc,' echoed Ethan. 'Tlaloc, good!'

  'That's an Aztec name,' announced Luis's voice from back up the line. 'It means . . . of the earth.'

  Ethan nodded. 'You . . . leader?' he asked. 'Tlaloc leader?'

  Tlaloc, if that was his name, seemed to be tired of all the questions. He lifted a finger to his lips again.

  But Ethan pressed on stubbornly. 'How do you speak my language?' he asked. 'How . . . you speak . . . English?'

  'Mr Wade, I don't think you should keep pestering the man,' said Coates. 'He's looking decidedly tetchy.'

  Ethan ignored the advice. 'Where you take us?' he asked. 'We go to city?'

  Tlaloc suddenly seemed to lose patience. He swiped Ethan across the side of the head, nearly knocking him off his feet. 'Shut up!' he said again, and Ethan wondered if these were the only two words of English that he actually knew.

  'Hey, cut that out!' he snapped. 'I was only trying to talk to you!'

  Tlaloc ignored the remark.

  'Better quieten down,' Coates advised him. 'That fellow doesn't beat about the bush.'

  'You can say that again,' said Ethan ruefully. 'Though he seems perfectly happy to beat me about the head.' He wished he could lift a hand to rub his stinging right ear, but it was impossible. He concentrated on walking and didn't try speaking to Tlaloc again. He tried to look back down the line, but the trail was narrow and he couldn't see past the heads of the others.

  He was hoping against hope that Alec was out there somewhere; and that he knew what he was doing.

  Alec kept following the line of Indians and their captives, being careful to stay just the right distance behind them, ready to dive for cover if one of them should look back down the trail.

  As he walked, he tried to think what he might do to secure his friends' release. It had occurred to him that if darkness fell and they settled down to sleep, he might be able to creep up and cut their bonds, but he doubted whether he could do it quietly enough to avoid waking up the Indians – and anyway, wouldn't they post guards to keep watch?

  Then he realized that if the Indians were heading for the city he had seen from the plane, they might well be there before nightfall – and how could he ever hope to move through a place like that without being seen?

  Alec hesitated as he noticed something beside the trail up ahead of him – a grey stone statue some four feet tall rearing up out of the vegetation. As he approached it, he realized that it was Aztec in origin. It was what was called a chacmool, and depicted the kneeling figure of a warrior holding a round stone dish. Alec knew from his studies that this was something the Aztecs would have used to make offerings to their gods; he told himself that it must have been hundreds of years old, though the stone looked like it had been carved only recently. He would have hurried straight on by had he not noticed a great swarm of flies buzzing around the stone dish. He approached it slowly and saw to his horror that it was half filled with a thick pool of coagulating blood.

  Then he looked down at the feet of the statue and saw a pile of bones, some old and weathered, some relatively new. It was evident that somebody had been making sacrifices here in the last day or so.

  But how could such a thing be possible? The worship of Aztec gods was something that belonged in a history book; yet here was evidence that, in this dense rainforest at least, time had stood still. Despite the awful heat, Alec could feel a chill running down his spine.

  He glanced up again and realized that he could no longer see the column of people he had been following. They had vanished into the jungle as if by magic – there was no sign of them ever having passed that way. He broke into a run, peering ahead, ready to stop if he came upon them again. After a few minutes he reached a place where several trails led off in different directions. He looked this way and that, hoping to spot some movement, but he saw nothing more than some brightly coloured butterflies, flapping silently in a shaft of sunlight . . . He'd lost them.

  Panic took him for a moment: he was lost in a vast, featureless jungle and had no idea which direction to take. Then he remembered his compass and pulled it out, trying to recall which direction the plane had been flying in. He thought Klaus had said something about heading south-east . . . So, he told himself, if he walked north-west, he should be heading towards the city, shouldn't he?

  He flipped the compass around until he found a north-west heading and selected the trail that was closest to that. He started walking again, telling himself not to panic, but after what felt like hours of trudging along the narrow path, there was still no sight or sound of the others. He came to a small clearing with a tall tree and looked thoughtfully up into its branches. There were plenty of limbs within easy reach – way up in the tree, he thought, he should to be able to see for miles in all directions.

  He slipped the compass into his pocket, and then, reaching up for the first handholds, started to climb . . .

  They had been walking for hours. To Ethan it seemed as if they were just wandering aimlessly, but the Indians kept up a steady pace and seemed to know exactly where they were going. Around midday, when the sun was at its hottest, Tlaloc called a halt and they were allowed to sit down in a circle for a while. They were all sweating profusely and were grateful when a couple of the Indians went round with a water skin, allowing each of them a mouthful of its tepid contents.

  'Quite delicious, thank you,' said Coates as the water was taken away. 'And may I congratulate you on your wonderful presentation?'

  'I wouldn't be so sarcastic if I were you,' Nelson warned him. 'For all we know, they understand every word we say.'

  'I wouldn't bet on it,' said Coates. 'I think they have a few simple phrases, no more.'

  'Yes, but where could they have learned them?' Ethan asked him.

  'I really couldn't say, Mr Wade. Perhaps they pop into the nightclubs in Veracruz every weekend for a Charleston session.'

  Ethan laughed. 'You kill me, Coates,' he said. 'Even in a tight spot like this, you just don't stop, do you?'

  'I try to lift the spirits,' said Coates flatly. The Indian wearing Ethan's Stetson went over to Conchita and signalled that she should open her mouth and tilt back her head. She did as she was told and received her meagre ration, but wasn't content to leave it at that. 'I need more,' she told him. 'More, comprende? Frank, tell him it is not enough!'

  Frank looked up at Stetson. 'She needs more water,' he said. 'Savvy? Give the lady more water!' He nodded his head frantically at Conchita. 'Encore! ' he shouted. 'Encore de l'eau! '

  The Indian nodded as though he understood and Conchita tilted back her head in readiness; whereupon the Indian splashed water all over her face, making her gasp for breath. Stetson walked away, laughing delightedly at his childish joke while Conchita stared after him, outraged.

  'How dare you!' she shrieked. 'That is no way to treat a lady, yo
u pig! Frank, are you gonna let him get away with that?'

  'Frank's in no position to do much about it,' Ethan pointed out. 'Just calm down and figure you got the best of the deal. I wouldn't have minded a little water in the kisser myself.'

  Conchita glared at him. 'I don' believe this!' she complained. 'I should be in Tonala now. I should be sipping a Margarita outside my hotel; instead I am here with a bunch of losers, kidnapped by savages.'

  Coates favoured her with a tight-lipped smile. 'Much as I agree with the main thrust of your argument,' he said, 'I can't help feeling that referring to us as "losers" is a tad unkind.'

  'If you people had not come, this would never have happened,' insisted Conchita.

  'How do you arrive at that conclusion?' Ethan asked her. 'Luis would still have been on the plane, he'd still have pulled a gun on Nelson, and chances are you'd still have crashed, only you wouldn't have us around to take care of you.'

  'Oh yeah, you takin' real good care of me,' growled Conchita. 'Idiot.'

  'Ignore her,' said Nelson. 'Let's see what we can salvage out of this situation. Does anybody have any idea which direction we're heading?'

  'We are travelling north-west,' said Luis. 'I can tell that much from the position of the sun.'

  'Oh, of course, I was forgetting we have the great expert naturalist with us. Oh well, that's a weight off my mind.'

  'Can't you two give it a rest for a moment?' pleaded Ethan. 'I don't want the last thing I ever hear to be the sound of you two bickering.'

  'What you mean by that?' asked Conchita fearfully. 'Frank, what does he mean? Why would it be the last thing we ever hear?'

  Ethan sighed. 'Lady, I don't want to be Mr Wet Blanket here, but this isn't looking very promising. You must have seen that thing back up the trail. The blood and bones around that altar?'

  'Yes – so somebody killed a chicken there or something,' said Conchita. 'That don' mean nothing.'

  Ethan looked at her. 'Lady, they weren't chicken bones,' he said. 'We've been kidnapped by what seems to be a bunch of Aztecs and we all know what they're famous for. Believe me, it isn't their gracious hospitality.'

  There was a silence while this information sank in. Then Conchita started crying again.

  'Did you have to mention that?' complained Frank. 'Now you've gone and upset her all over again.'

  'We noticed,' said Ethan dismally.

  At that moment Tlaloc strode across and urged them to their feet. 'We go,' he said – so there were at least two other words of English that he knew.

  Ethan got to his feet and Stetson came over and grabbed the rope around his neck. He gave it a yank and whistled, as if to a dog, then laughed at the American's angry reaction. He said something in that strange sing-song language and set off, dragging Ethan behind him. The others had no option but to follow, trudging on through the rising heat of the day.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jungle Boy

  Alec moved higher and higher into the canopy of the tree, hugging the branches close to his chest and praying that he didn't lose his footing on the slippery bark. He was already some thirty feet up, but he realized he needed to be much higher to see over the tops of the other trees. He reached out a hand to pull himself up to the next branch, then froze as he heard a sound just ahead of him.

  He caught a glimpse of a pair of yellow eyes and a mouth fringed with sharp yellow teeth. Then a deep rumbling growl turned the blood in his veins to ice. The creature came into focus. Its spotted hide had merged so perfectly with the patterns of dappled light around it that Alec had been completely unaware of its presence until he was almost on top of it. A jaguar was stretched out on a branch and had just registered his approach. As Alec watched, transfixed, the big cat came up into a crouch, its claws tearing strips out of the stout limb it had been resting on.

  Alec swallowed hard. For a moment he didn't know what to do. He tried to remember whether anybody had ever given him any advice about what to do in such a situation, and decided that the best option would be to run in the opposite direction.

  Only he couldn't do that. He was thirty feet up; a fall from this height would almost certainly kill him. He began to lower his outstretched arm, gritting his teeth as he did so, but the jaguar immediately gave a roar that nearly knocked him backwards out of the tree.

  'Here, kitty, kitty!' Alec heard himself utter the words and thought he had never said anything so stupid in his entire life. The jaguar retreated a few steps, its tail coiling agitatedly behind it. It seemed to be deliberating whether or not to attack.

  Alec snatched a breath and began to lower his foot to the branch below. The movement seemed to infuriate the big cat. It roared again, the volume ear-shattering at such close range; panicked by the noise, Alec tried to move his other foot down but found himself stepping into empty air: he was falling! He threw out a hand and tried to grab at a branch, but it was rotten and collapsed beneath his fingers like powder.

  He fell backwards, staring up at the jaguar, which was climbing down after him. He winced at the thought of hitting the ground, but the impact came sooner than he'd expected: he crashed into a branch and let out a yell of surprise, and then into another, and another, and then another, his entire body jolted – though he was so full of adrenalin, he barely registered the pain. As he fell, Alec tried to grab handfuls of leaves – and suddenly, miraculously, his fingers found a grip, and his downward impetus was halted so suddenly that his arm was nearly pulled out of its socket. He hung there for a moment, stunned. Then, looking down, he saw that he was perhaps eight feet above the ground.

  There was a crack, and the branch Alec was holding broke off. He dropped again, but was now falling feet first. He remembered how Mr Goodwin, the PT instructor at his last school, always used to tell him to bend his knees and roll forward, and he automatically did exactly that. His feet thudded into the soft ground and he went into a forward roll and came upright with a shout of triumph; but the growl behind him was a grim reminder that his ordeal was not yet over.

  Alec turned round and saw the lithe spotted shape of the jaguar coming down the tree in a series of agile bounds and reminded himself that this was the point where he was supposed to run. For a moment his legs seemed to have seized up and he almost collapsed.

  But terror lent him strength and he put down his head and started to sprint, not even sure where he was running. The shadowy opening of a narrow trail appeared ahead of him and he threw himself along it, knowing that he could not outrun the cat for long. He glanced back over his shoulder to see the jaguar coming after him, as silent as a ghost, narrowing the gap between them by the second. Alec was just telling himself that he'd have to stop and fight it off when, quite suddenly, the trail ended and he went flying, his arms and legs flailing wildly. He landed on his backside in the mud and began to slide downhill, twisting and turning as he went, completely out of control. The first drop ended in another, steeper drop and he hurtled through the air. He seemed to fall for a long time. Then, unexpectedly, he crashed headlong into a man, knocking him to the ground. Alec rolled over a couple more times and lay there, dizzy and disorientated. He shook his head, sat up and saw that a whole bunch of people were staring down at him in complete surprise. He recognized Ethan and Coates and the others. Then he saw that the man he had collided with was Stetson, the Indian who had stolen Ethan's hat. His companions were laughing delightedly at the bewildered expression on his face.

  Ethan, astounded by Alec's sudden appearance, tried to make a move, but half a dozen spear points were pressed to his chest before he could take so much as a step. He scowled and looked down at Alec.

  'Kid, that was about the bravest thing I ever saw!' he said; and Alec began to laugh – just a chuckle at first, but then hysterically as he realized the full significance of what had just happened. They thought he had just launched a rescue attempt. He glanced back and pointed up the incline, trying to find the words to explain.

  'I was . . . up a tree!' he jabbered. 'There was a .
. . a—'

  'Master Alec, whatever's come over you?' asked Coates, which only made Alec laugh all the harder. Then the Indians helped Stetson to his feet and approached Alec holding lengths of twine. He tried to struggle to his feet, but then Stetson slapped him hard across his face. Before he knew it, he was down on the ground and his wrists were being secured behind his back, just like the others.

  Some rescue attempt, he thought bitterly, and then he was yanked upright, tied in place in front of Ethan, and Stetson was yanking hard on the rope around his neck, a smile of grim pleasure on his face.

  'Nice try, kid,' said Ethan.

  Alec just shrugged his shoulders, too exhausted after his ordeal to explain exactly what had happened. Stetson pulled on the rope and he could do nothing but follow him.

  All through the afternoon they walked along narrow overgrown trails where ferns and vines hung in their faces. Alec's shirt was sodden with sweat and his wrists rubbed raw by the tight bonds. He was aching in a dozen places where he had hit branches in his fall and would have given anything to stop for a rest, but whenever he tried speaking to Tlaloc, the warning glare he received was enough to make him shut up again. He was just beginning to wonder if he could possibly walk another step when the Indians turned onto a wider, clearly defined trail that led straight ahead into the forest; the dense vegetation on either side had evidently been cut back.

  On either side of them the jungle gradually thinned out. Tlaloc spoke to one of his warriors and the man nodded and sprinted off, presumably to give notice of their arrival. Alec saw an ancient stone archway ahead of them, carved with depictions of Aztec gods. He recognized the maize goddess, Chicomecoatl, and Xipe Totec, the god of the spring; but at the very centre of the arch a hideous skull-like face grinned down at the approaching party. Alec felt a sense of dread, for he knew that this was the image of Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the dead; and that this position at the centre of the arch announced that the captives were now entering a place that was dedicated to him.