Arrows crossed through the air, and unarmored corpses tumbled from the city walls. Bright red streaks smeared the plastered ramparts. From afar, the various shades of crimson seemed to blend perfectly into the volcanic-stone palaces within the city.
And one Wooden Ladder after another hooked onto the four- or five-meter-high battlements. Armored Mexica Warriors roared wildly as they swung Bronze great axes atop the walls.
"The Main God protects us! Die! Die!..."
After ten days of unbroken harassment and shooting, the morale of the Zapotec Militia on the walls had long since sunk to rock bottom. And the mere two or three hundred Ant Hill City warriors had long since been singled out by the archers and shot dead with Bronze arrows. When a group of howling Shorn Guard climbed up onto a corner of North City like berserk Jaguars, that overwhelming slaughter by hacking finally became "the last Corn leaf that snapped the carrying basket."
"Ah! The city's fallen... The savage Aztecs have broken in!"
"It's over! All over! Resting ancestors! We couldn't hold your tomb..."
The evening sunlight pierced the plateau clouds and spilled across the red-earth palace walls. The slanting light was like the gods' final whisper, falling into the heart of the Zapotec Alliance. Then a dark-green flood surged in, chopping every obstacle along the way into flesh and blood, all the way to the palace of Ant Hill City.
The palace of Ant Hill City was fused together with a low pyramid. And beneath that not very tall pyramid lay the tomb of the ancient Zapotec God-descendant, carved all over with owls, the oldest relic of Ant Hill City. In Zapotec culture, this precisely symbolized the union of the divine natures of life and death. The dead God-descendant, the living royal clan, and the God-descendant