A new day is dawning for the Maya. New knowledge, even new ways of thinking have come from across the sea and promise to usher in a golden age. But the light of that new dawn is red, not with the threat of stormy weather, but with the threat of war. The Europeans, with ships and weapons the Maya and their neighbors cannot yet hope to match, will settle for nothing less than the conquest and subjugation, if not the extermination of all people in the New World. Those Maya who wish to harvest the fruits of the new day must accept the challenge that the barbarians from the east present. And the threat of defeat and oblivion is all too real. But the Maya have one enormous advantage; the enemy has no idea of who they're facing or what their mysterious foes are capable of. They think they face nothing more than primitive savages. And so, if those who see the new lands and all that they contain as theirs for the taking can be dealt a few demoralizing defeats before they can establish themselves out in those eastern islands, the Maya and their allies may be able to buy themselves the time they need to meet the foreigners on more even terms. But if they fail, their civilization will be erased, and those few who survive will live in perpetual servitude to the cruelest of masters.