The Rakshas entered the palace district's main avenue at the sixth hour.
The avenue was the broadest street in the capital's grid: sixty feet wide, lined with the administrative buildings and the noble residences whose architecture reflected the wealth that proximity to the palace represented. The avenue ran from the market district's northern edge to the palace compound's southern gate, the straight line of stone-paved road that the city's original planners had designed as the ceremonial approach that processions and parades and royal movements used.
The avenue was now the killing ground that two thousand Rakshas warriors and four thousand barbarian warriors contested.
