Thump, thump, thump!
Night had not yet fully faded. Only a thread of blue-gray showed at the edge of the sky, like the frayed hem of a torn cloth, stitched with distant mountains and cold mist. Frog Water City awoke amid thin fog and firelight, facing slaughter like death and sacrifice. Thousands of the Royal Legion spread across the narrow mountain pass and the slopes on both sides. And the two thousand Zapotec defenders atop Frog Water City were like reefs barely holding fast within the dark-green Mexica flood!
Boom!
Hundreds of able-bodied men pulled in unison. The giant arms made from more than twenty thick logs pressed down, and the prepared fire jars shot out, turning into more than twenty streaking fire meteors! These fire jars were filled with resin, pine pitch, charcoal powder, sulfur powder, and a little saltpeter. Once lit, they belched thick smoke; the moment they were launched, they dragged long fiery tails and smashed into the battlements, granaries, and wooden structures of the altar in Frog Water City! Then acrid poisonous smoke rose, flames soared, and fire swallowed everything in its roll. In places where the defenders had not had time to prepare, shrill wails rang out once again.
"Volcano Demons!"
"The evil Aztecs have summoned fire demons again!"
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
The Longbowmen followed close behind, arrayed on the four wings. Under the cover of the shield-bearers, they nocked arrows and shot toward the city walls. Their rain of arrows drove into the cracks of the walls and the arrow sheds, not to kill the enemy, but to suppress them, to keep the defenders from lifting their heads.
Thump, thump, thump!
Immediately after came twenty Scaling Ladders all at once! The royal Bronze-armored soldiers carried the Scaling Ladders and, amid the War Priests' chanted