Chapter 44: Ibrahim

Miria stared out towards the craggy mountain range as smoke began to rise into the distance. She found the most recent reconnaissance report rather intriguing. Liu Bei had led a large army north to support Zhuge Liang's forces, this time personally riding towards Hanzhong with the intention of wrenching it from Cao Cao's hands. "The Shu King himself has moved against Hanzhong?" she murmured to herself. "That city's the one that we failed to seize… after having been defeated by Galatea and Cao Cao."

Jean moved beside her. "We've now opened two fronts of war. I think I can understand Liu Bei's intentions. Jieting is at the chokepoint between western China and the Wei mainland. If we can seize both locations, we will put significant pressure on Wu Zhang, and we'll be able to offset our military disadvantage against Wei by fighting one decisive battle on the Central Plains."

Miria nodded. "It's about time we did. We should be focusing our fight against the Awakened Beings; even Galatea acknowledges that. We must locate Isley's lair before he unleashes something even more terrifying into this land." She clenched her teeth. "What on earth is the Wei Kingdom doing? What on earth is Cao Cao doing? Exactly when will they enact this grand 'plan' of theirs? Well… it doesn't really matter," she muttered. "As long as Isley isn't found, not much can be done except to curtail the carnage. Let's go."

She pointed at the Wei encampment at the base of Ma Su's mountain. The small number of meandering guards stationed outside was evidence that they were not expecting an attack from the bottom of the mountain. "No tricks. We'll engage in a frontal charge, straight into their underbelly. We'll send them reeling, and while they're in the lurch, Flora's reinforcements will mop them up."

"Yes, commander," said Jean. "Hyah!"

They spurred on their steeds, and the troops behind them followed, breaking into a gallop as they raced towards the mountain within the ravine. The military camp was within their sights after only several minutes. One of the men glimpsed the charging Shu cavalry, and screamed for the alarm to be raised. "Attack! We're under attack down here – "

The silver-eyed warriors somersaulted off their steeds and silenced him with two cuts across the torso. Miria glanced up at the looming wooden ramparts. Her infantry battalion charged behind the horsemen and rapidly deployed behind her. It was time.

"Fan out, and attack at will!"

"What's that noise? It couldn't be – an ambush?!" One after another, sleepy and confused enemy units poured out of the camp gates, only to be slain by the primed Shu ambush party. The unsettled and disoriented Wei soldiers outnumbered them vastly, but many inside the camp had only just realized the gravity of their situation. "What – " Miria catapulted herself into the throng of charging corporals, her abrupt and sharp warcry stunning them into helplessness. She stabbed her sword into the first and pivoted, twisting and slashing apart another. The nearby archers turned around in shock, and the last thing they glimpsed were the triumphant, wild grins of the Shu phalanxes as they charged and closed that crucial gap, impaling them against the timber walls of their own camp.

The second division had reached the pass, but the Men-At-Arms were also approaching, marching out of their disordered base. "Your senseless aggression ends here, marauders of Wei!" Jean thrust her sword into the throat of a nearby swordsman, and he crumpled, hissing in pain as blood spurted from his neck. From a distance, Miria whirled, crushing the throat of an enforcer with her pommel. His comrade also collapsed as a Shu halberd struck him from behind. "Form a line!" roared Jean. "Don't let them get past us! Push them back!" Several Wei swordsmen hurled themselves at Miria. She simply turned her greatsword at them, cleaving them into two pieces from their shoulders. She yanked her double-edged blade out from the last corpse and decapitated the remaining archer who attempted to flee for help. Leading the attack, her battalion slowly but surely drove the adversary in two directions away from the mountain bottom. Screams erupted from the flanks as the rear of the contingent reached the outcrop. It was precipitous, impossible to climb. Jean smiled, almost incredulously, as several terrified Wei soldiers tried to scale the steep stone, only to slip and fall back down.

The first stage of the counterattack had succeeded. The Wei forces were trapped. All that remained was to deal with the enemy's reinforcements. "Push on until Flora's men arrive!" roared Miria, hacking and slashing wildly at the screaming mob of Men-At-Arms, "push on and cut Ma Su a retreat route!!"

*

From Constantinople to Damascus. From Babylon to Parthia. From Ghandara to Mt. Imeon.

From Mt. Tian Shan to Chang'an.

As travellers along the Silk Road, they had observed the decrees of those who sought their power for thousands of years. Their origins were lost to the chronicles of long-dead elders. While they had ascertained that a man called Ibrahim was their patriarchal ancestor, they did not truly know their history, for it was so blood-soaked that they could no longer see it with clarity. Neither were they taught to look to the future. All they possessed was now, this momentary second of eternity. It stretched out before them. It beckoned.

Only in the present could they observe the will to fight.

"Go forth, and make war. You are the most fearsome warriors that the Middle Kingdom has ever enlisted. Macerate the Shu forces! Crush them like insects, and reduce them to dust!" In the main camp, the leader of the Central Plains Guardians kneeled and nodded as Sima Yi uttered his final command. In one smooth movement, five hundred turbaned men slipped on their amulets of blessing and adjusted their weapons. Eyes that were once those of young boys… that looked upon mothers, sisters, wives and daughters… were now shrouded in an ineffable darkness. Their sheathed scimitars hung behind their backs, silently thirsting for Shu blood.

Their calling was to protect the heartland of China from southern incursions and marauding monsters. They were the mightiest sentinels to walk the earth. They had yet to lose a battle, and had built their victories on a mountain of Chinese corpses.

They were the Central Plains Guardians. They had already proved themselves against the Yoma at Chang'an. Against their Shu foes, they would now put their fearsome reputation to the test once again.

*

The desert nomads' march was simple and sparse. It consisted of a two-beat, half-step stride, a disciplined thunder of war boots that shook the earth to its foundations. By the flank, two of the masked soldiers lightly rapped wooden clubs against a thin-skinned drum, giving the soldiers a primitive rhythm to rally to. They thundered along the ridged cliff, tracing the trail of blood to the location of the mountain on which Shu general Ma Su was trapped.

The sky was gray. Light was sparsely spread across the heavens, and the twisted landscape reeked of Chinese dead.

As they marched towards the mountain base where their comrades had fallen, the leading Guardian raised a gauntleted hand, pausing for a moment. The enemy Claymores had clearly penetrated deep into their vanguard, and it seemed as if Ma Su was no longer in immediate danger. The Guardian commander stared at the wall of corpses for a moment longer, and then closed his hand in a tight fist. The thin-skinned drums stopped immediately. Their march stopped, and they stood in perfect formation, awaiting the next gesture silently.

Miria licked her lips as she crouched behind the craggy rocks. Those bastards have advanced several li, only to pay for it in cities of blood.

The leading Guardian stared at the bodies of the Wei soldiers beside the sundered encampment. He growled, and that growl turned into a roar, and his hands wandered to the sheathed scimitars on his back. He drew them in one smooth motion, and before Miria blinked, he was holding them, casually twirling them in his hands as if they were tools to help him focus, to help him think. He paced left and right around the camp, eyeing the hill suspiciously. The camp was utterly silent. Could it be – ?

Miria smiled grimly. "Han forces! Surge!" she roared.

The Guardians' responding bellow matched that of their enemy. "Swords!"

The first line of Han warriors lunged over the cliff and slid down, thrusting aggressively with their weapons. But they had exposed their position far too early. The turbaned nomads drew their scimitars, spaced evenly alongside each other. Spears fell to the ground as several infantrymen were quartered into four pieces of meat, blood spurting from their sundered limbs and splashing along the pebbled ground. A nomad hurled himself at a shocked Shu soldier, smashing his shoulder into his chest. The infantryman fell, winded. The turbaned warrior rolled up and thrust his swords into the fallen man, and the other gurgled, his eyes glazing. Yet another hurled himself into the throng, parrying the spears that were held before him and slashing off the heads of three pikemen before kicking at another, hurling him back against his friends. The frontline of Guardians advanced, cutting down any who dared to advance beyond the wall of corpses.

From her vantage point on the mound of Wei dead, Miria stared at a shocked Jean. Were they expecting us all along? After several moments, she shrugged that inkling away and roared, "Push!" The second front of Shu warriors heaved, and a wall of rocks and corpses toppled towards the Arabs. Boulder upon body heaped upon each other as the avalanched in a wave towards the disciplined formation. They would let them taste the blood of their own comrades –

"Evasion formation!" The line of the Guardians suddenly split down the middle and formed a funnel, the corpses tumbling down uselessly in the middle. The limp body of a Shu horseman rolled at the feet of the Guardian regiment commander. He looked upwards; eyes shrouded in blackness, and roared his violent hatred. "God is great! Forward!"

"Shit," gritted Miria. Their cover was blown. There was no choice but to settle this the conventional way. She and Jean led the charge, followed by the remaining phalanx. The Guardians stood their ground, their scimitars raised. Miria swung her sword, and it smashed into three Guardians, clotheslining them and sending them sprawling to the ground. Jean's Claymore impaled another Arab warrior as she thrust it into his eye. The Drill Sword expert roared and pivoted, smashing open a Guardian's mask with the flat of her blade. His attacker roared in surprise and pain, and she quickly silenced him with a spear in his chest. But only now did Miria truly understand the numerical advantage Wei enjoyed. She glanced around as another ten of her comrades collapsed, slashed in half by the mesmeric swords of the foreign warriors. They were not the fare of the average Wei soldier. They were unbelievably strong, relentless, and vicious.

A chill ran through her body as she realized two simple facts. Their enemies outnumbered them, and Flora's reinforcements had not arrived yet. For now, that was all that mattered. Should this drag on… "These men," she growled to herself, as she avoided a calculated slash from the Guardian regiment commander, "must be the Wei warrior elite. Not half bad, these bastards."

"Not half bad? They're doing pretty well, if you ask me," came a graceful, intelligent voice.

The voice of Galatea.

Miria gasped and looked into the immediate distance. "It can't be. Not now."

The Arab warriors roared in triumph. Several yards behind the regiment of Guardians was Wei's Tigress Guard, flanked by commanders Guo Huai and Wang Shuang. She was mounted on a splendid warhorse, her Yoki-powered aura sweeping throughout the hilly region in a full circumference. "I knew you would have tried something as daring as this, Phantom. Well, now I'm assured that I won't be bored. As much as I hate playing with human lives… I suppose your stubbornness leaves me no choice except to make the most of our circumstances."

Miria stared at her figure, at her shadow. This is bad, she thought wildly to herself. Are Flora's men still not here? We can't hold for long against these Guardians alone, let alone Galatea… and her… her…

Galatea raised her hand. The sun flared and was suddenly speared with the contours of hundreds of lances. Behind the tall beauty emerged one long procession of dark horsemen, their thick, powerful weapons jutting upwards into the air. Their helms shone hotly underneath the sun.

"Imperial Lancers."

She pursed her lips.

"Attack."

"Long live the King!!" The Imperial Lancers answered the directive of their leader and charged, preparing to impale Miria's entire division against the rocky cliff. Eyes alight in bloodlust, they roared the dictum, the credo of the Wei Empire: "For His Highness!!" The well-built Wang Shuang wielded a giant halberd and led the initial assault, followed closely by the nobleman Guo Huai, who drew his general's sword, pointing it at Jean. They were two of Wei's most excellent, having earned the favour of nobility like Cao Zhen and Cao Hong. Surely they were the generals who had devised this twofold assault of Central Plains Guardians and Imperial Lancers.

To defeat them would be a significant blow to enemy morale…

Miria gritted her teeth. "Stand firm!" she cried. "Sever the head, and the snake shall die! Attack the enemy leaders!" She leaped up to strike at Wang Shuang, but was beaten back by a Guardian, who smashed his blade against hers frontally, indifferent to the vast disparity in power behind the two blades. She grunted. "Tch… they are truly fearless." She and Jean felt themselves forced on the defensive as the Shu raiding party began to crumble under the combined force of the Imperial Lancers and Central Plains Guardians. As the Arab warriors hemmed them into the wrecked Wei camp, the Imperial Lancers continued their unstoppable charge, sweeping across the entire local landscape with one mighty attack. Their momentum was ferocious, terrifying. The entire Shu raiding force folded before them, metal crumpling before metal. Their defences were useless. They simply died in the hundreds, trampled under-hoof by the Wei elite cavalry.

Galatea leaped away from her horse and slashed at Miria, who parried with difficulty. The latter moved to surround her with the Phantom Mirage, but she felt her body move against her will, smashing against the hard rocks below. Galatea's… Yoki control… She quickly recovered and leaped up, avoiding the thundering hooves of the Imperial Lancers' horses that threatened to trample her. Jean attempted a drilling thrust at Galatea's leg, but the senior warrior calmly adjusted her Yoki to send Jean's body smashing into the ground. The latter gritted her teeth and attempted to rise, but Galatea merely thrust her sword into her wrist, pinning her against the rocks.

Jean swore quietly. "I… we… still cannot match you?"

"Ease up," admonished God-Eye, as she pulled her sword out of Jean and met Miria's angry overhead strike with an even stronger underhand counter. "The two of you can't beat me, no matter how hard you've trained." Her lip curled. "And your men cannot defeat both the Guardians and Lancers."

The remaining and cornered Shu soldiers screamed and turned to flee. Their cries were infuriating anathema to Miria's ears. The cacophony was craven, cowardly, maddening. "The… the reinforcements aren't coming!"

"We can't fight them like this!"

"We… we've been abandoned by Lady Flora!"

"Stand your ground! That's an order!" roared Miria, her eyes flashing. She gripped her sword tightly. "She will come! Believe in her! She – "

"This is too much," gurgled a corporal, as he collapsed under a lance along with three of his men. "We… we're not… we're not superhuman like you," he murmured, as the light in his eyes dimmed forever.

Another sergeant fell, his body crushed and ground to near nothingness by the hooves of the Wei warhorses. His snapped bones were visible through his armour. "Forgive us… commander…"

Miria's eyes widened. "No…" she whispered, as the remaining desperate, wailing soldiers were silenced by the cold steel of Arab scimitars.

Have I really made a terrible mistake?

General Wang Shuang suddenly screamed in distress and agony, his deep voice almost comically shrill. "What's wrong?" snapped Galatea, looking at him – except his head was no longer there. It had rolled off his shoulders, and in its place was a giant sword – another Claymore. His horse whinnied in terror and fled, galloping away as Wang Shuang's limp body toppled off and was pulverized by his own advancing Imperial Lancers. "What the hell – "

"Commander!" screamed the Wei soldiers of the Jieting camp. "What – how could this be?!" They began to back away. "Who – who could have – "

"Stay calm!" cried Guo Huai, looking up and holding his sword cautiously. "This new enemy is fast, but not invincible. Remain focused and – "

Those were the final words he would ever utter. He silently slumped as the Claymore returned without warning and pierced into his eye, emerging from the back of his skull. Optical fluid and gore poured from his punctured head onto the thick blade. Gradually, his skull swelled, and eventually exploded from the pressure of the massive piece of metal lodged inside. "General Guo!!" cried the soldiers, their faces filled with horror. "No!"

Galatea growled as the Imperial Lancers faltered. Two generals dead in less than a minute! It was a formidable warrior she was dealing with here. Could it be?

A new grey cape that fluttered delicately in the afternoon sun answered her silent question. "About time you came," panted Miria, lowering her sword in visible exhaustion. The Guardians glared up at the small hillock, their eyes betraying their ire at the interruption of their task. "Now, Yue Ying's counterattack can finally bear fruit."

"It won't be long now before Clare and the others arrive, too," smiled a bleeding Jean. "You're in trouble now, Number Three."

"My apologies for making you wait," came the gentle, high-pitched reply. "Miss Cynthia is on her way. In the meantime, I will provide the assistance you require."

The Central Plains Guardians looked up, raising their scimitars for a renewed struggle. The Imperial Lancers had completed their charge and were now reining in their horses, preparing for a fresh gallop. They would triumph, that was a certainty. But still, who could have defeated their leaders so quickly?

Galatea's eyes met those of the wavy-haired newcomer.

"…Flora."

"Lady Galatea," acknowledged Flora quietly, nudging away a limp Lancer corpse. Her cape billowed in the dusk breeze.

Galatea gave a rare, genuine smile as Flora leaped away from an angry scimitar and landed a yard away, blocking the Wei forces from moving beyond the camp and up the mountain. "After everything I said to you last night… Not even the words of Cao Cao can seduce your allegiance away? You really have found someone to fight for, haven't you?"

"Most correct." Amongst hundreds of corpses that continued to pile up in the backdrop of slaughter, Flora raised her greatsword in the hawk guard. "Their names are Huang Yue Ying and Zhao Yun, the champions of the dying Han Dynasty." Her eyes flashed. "They are the heroes of the Shu Kingdom."

"Understandable and admirable." Galatea positioned her Claymore in a low guard, preparing to intercept Flora's overhead attack. She smirked. "Yet, I wonder how long you can continue to defy the man I love."

Flora's eyes narrowed.

"Well, that's enough girl talk," shrugged the higher-ranking warrior. "Duty before leisure, as they say.

"Come."

Flora nodded, and without another word, the two women charged, consummating an unspoken rivalry that echoed the titanic enmity between Shu and Wei.