James Axler – Deathlands

Now he was being helped up the pyramid, a faltering step at a time. The watching natives had all stood, watching the progress of the ritual.

Time passed with a strange drugged slowness.

Ryan was becoming increasingly disoriented, his head weightless, feeling as though the solid turf were shimmering under his feet, like the scales of some gigantic reptile.

The smoke that swirled all around was tainted with the bitter scent of herbs, which he began to suspect might be seriously intoxicating. He tried to breathe in a more shallow manner, through his mouth, hoping that it might minimize the adverse effects of the native drugs.

Without realizing it, Ryan had closed his good eye, drifting away from the present, jerking back to life when Krysty nudged him in the ribs.

“Dropping asleep, lover,” she warned.

Now all three prisoners were together on the top of the pyramid. Most of the dancers had stepped away, returning carefully down the shadowed steps to level ground. The sun was nearly done, illuminating only the very topmost layer of stones. It was beginning to get cool.

“Soon,” Itzcoatl said softly.

Two warriors remained beside the white slaver, bracing him up as though he might have collapsed without their support.

Now the Jaguar men danced together, just the two of them alone, very slowly, hands on each other’s shoulders, faces almost touching, eyes closed, lips moving as if they were whispering their farewells. The dark clearing was so still that the watchers below could clearly hear the faint slap of their bare feet upon the hewn stones.

Three of the priests now joined the dance, their long matted hair gleaming with fresh-spilled blood, their gowns of human skin whirling about them, dancing closer to the three prisoners, almost caressingly.

One by one they each lifted a prisoner on their backs, carrying them as if they were frail elderly relatives. Neither the Jaguar natives nor the slaver seemed to be offering any resistance to this.

They seemed to find the men weightless, dancing with an infinite lightness. Slower and slower. Slower.

“This isn’t too” Jak began, the sentence choking in his throat.

At a hidden signal the drums and the pipes stopped, and there was a single piercing note on the trumpet.

The trio of priests turned and dumped the prisoners off their backs into the center of each of the three main fires that topped the huge pyramid.

“Oh, Jesus!” Mildred exclaimed, turning her back on the ghastly spectacle. But it wasn’t over. It had barely begun.

The screams of the three hapless men soared above the eagerly watching crowd as the flames frizzled and blackened their hair, blistering the skin from their bodies with fierce intensity. All of them tried to stand and move from the hearts of the fires, but more of the priests pushed them back into the blazes.

“Why do this?” Ryan asked Itzcoatl. “It’s fucking barbaric to chill someone like this. Even if they’re your enemies.”

But the chief merely held up his right hand. “Peace, friend. It is not yet done. The fire god has only received a part of his tribute. The right word? Tribute?”

But Ryan ignored him.

Even a hundred feet below the crest of the pyramid the air was filled with the stink of roasting flesh, rising above the scent of the smoky herbs.

“They’re rescuing the poor devils,” Doc said, standing on tiptoe to study the ritual.

“Don’t look,” Mildred called. “I know what’s happening next. I remember the black swords”

Doc also turned away, staring blankly into the dark wall of trees.

The burned men were still alive, wriggling and crying out as they were dragged from the fires and pinioned in a firm grip, legs spread, arms held wide.

Each of the main priests was holding a short sword of polished black obsidian, lifting it toward the heavens. They cried out in a loud chorus, to which Itzcoatl replied in a firm, ringing voice in their own tongue.

The three swords flashed as one.

“Fireblast!” Ryan said, feeling vomit rising in his throat at the sight.

For a moment he was reminded of a method of execution called the flying eagle, where a sharp knife was thrust into the solar plexus and drawn up on the right and back again, then up on the left, like the wings of a bird of prey. Finally the ritual killer would stretch his hands into the deep, steaming gash, and rip out the victim’s lungs.