The summer heat blazed, and the autumn wind rose. This was the hinge between death and harvest, like the yellowing dry grass in the mountains. Squad after squad of Dog-kin warriors escorted hundreds and thousands of young Mixtec men and women, carrying plundered goods, onto the road back north.
The same scene also unfolded to the north of the Tehuacan Valley, on land conquered by the Mexica People. All tribal resistance had turned to death and ash.
And in the valleys farther south, great bands of Dog-kin warriors wore leather armor, carried copper weapons, and adorned themselves with bone ornaments as they ran and roved without rest. Wolf-like howls echoed between mountain and valley, accompanied by bursts of slaughter from time to time; after a brief flare of fierce shouting came a silent stillness of death.
Whenever this happened, the Mixtec captives busily digging pits would always pause slightly, fear impossible to restrain showing on their faces. Then the whips of the God Stone City surrendered soldiers would come down without mercy, driving the captives to continue. Wherever a valley tribe had been destroyed, there was a blood-soaked pit. In those pits, revered Cloud Priests, noble Divine City warriors, and lowly village militia were all piled body upon body, gradually buried beneath the earth. And after the corpses and bones were covered, the young male and female captives would be picked out, burdened with the tribe's plundered grain and goods, and set upon the long road north.
As for the old, the weak, and the children left behind, the Mexica Warriors did not care, nor did they commit any unnecessary slaughter. A jungle jaguar never wasted needless strength hunting food it could not carry away. Moreover, the merciful His Highness had never liked massacre, so the warriors under his command