The Advancing Black Wolf

On the evening of December 23, Black Wolf led three thousand Guachichil dog-kin nearly three hundred li at a run and took in one stroke the ancestral land of the southwestern Tecos tribes—the empty Hand-Snake City.

The three thousand elite dog-kin plundered the city for a night, then plundered outside the city for another day. Under the Black Wolf legion commander's orders, the Guachichil warriors doing the looting did not chase down the tribespeople who had fled into the mountains and forests; they only set fires everywhere across the basin. More than ten nearby Tecos villages were completely put to the torch.

Billowing smoke rose from the horizon. Granaries caught fire, stored grain was burned away, thatched huts were reduced to ash, and the villages of the Tecos were turned to cinders, given wholly to the flames. By the night of the 24th, the entire fertile Hand-Snake Basin was filled everywhere with undying firelight!

The legion rested properly for a night inside Hand-Snake City. On the morning of the 25th, Black Wolf personally set fire to Hand-Snake City's chieftain hall, while red monkey set fire to the well-stocked granaries. Soon, great swaths of flame rose throughout the city. Seven thousand women and children were released by the legion and fled northward. Most of the fleeing women and children were deathly pale and terrified, carrying three days' grain with them as they were ordered to flee north and surrender to the kingdom beyond the valley. Of course, no one watched over them. When they passed north of the city, they would only see a capital-view mound built of severed heads, striking fear into every Tecos heart.

As the morning sun first rose, more than two thousand dog-kin warriors gathered south of the Hand-Snake Basin. Dailu had already gone ahead south with