The silver light slashed down like lightning beneath a blazing sun, cleaving toward the flat ground between the two dunes ahead—ground the caravan would have to cross no matter which way it went. Rod-Dick's heart seemed to clench, and his pupils contracted with it. Seeing that silver light, he understood at once that Gabriel's combat arts were at least seventh rank: she was a high-rank grand warrior, ranked among the finest fighters on this continent.
From the lead carriage to the gap between those two dunes was sixty or seventy paces. At that distance Rod-Dick's swordsmanship could hardly inflict a lethal wound—and he still had not spotted any hidden danger there.
Gabriel had no time just then to care what Rod-Dick was thinking. She had in fact spotted signs of danger from much farther off, and only struck once the distance had closed to where her sword could kill effectively, catching the enemy completely off guard.
The sword light fell between the dunes, and the sand suddenly collapsed, exposing several iron chains set with barbed hooks and spikes. There was indeed a trap there. If the caravan had blundered into it, the lead carriage would have sunk in and blocked the whole column. A cloud of sand burst up to either side of the trap, and two men leapt out, each with a shield in one hand and a long-hafted battle-axe in the other, looking badly discomfited.
To carry a shield in battle and swing a long-hafted axe one-handed demanded exceptional strength and agility; no ordinary fighter could manage it. The two wore headcloths over their faces, and their clothes were the same pale yellow as the dunes—they had lain motionless under that scorching sand for a very long time. If Rod-Dick's carriage went down, those two axes, one to the left and one to the right, would have been death's summons.
Gabriel did not strike only once. Her wrist turned beautifully in the air, and she swept two more blades of sword light out to either side, hissing low along the sand like twin meteors. Two curtains of flying sand surged up, and dozens of yellow-clad figures leapt out of the dunes; iron chains came whipping up out of the sand as well. Blood sprayed from the few nearest men, and the closest chain, a dozen paces away, was already severed by the light of her blade.
Men were wounded, but no screams were heard. These were no ordinary bandits but well-trained elite soldiers. The trap ahead and the general shape of the ambush were now clear: the first trap lay on the only road between the two dunes, precisely where an uphill slope turned downhill.
On either side of the trap, a squad lay in wait facing the caravan, with chains under the sand that could snap taut at any moment—shaped like a sack closing around them. The ambushers on the flanks wore no armor and carried keen curved blades, a weapon common among the warriors of the Kingdom of Assyria. It was usually used in cavalry charges, but in foot combat it was no less deadly; a man simply needed absolute speed in the swing.
At the sight, Rod-Dick instead calmed from his shock and bellowed several orders in rapid succession. His personal guard numbered sixty men, divided into five squads of twelve, two of them cavalry.
His finest squad stood guard on both sides of Maria's carriage, unmoved by the fighting ahead, to keep anyone from seizing the chance to strike at their most important charge. The other two squads did not move forward but ran back to shield the column's flanks and rear, their squad leaders keeping the merchant train behind from falling into chaos. The two cavalry squads, led by their squad leaders, had already come up to the front of the column and formed for battle, the front rank with shields, the rear rank with javelins raised.
But the javelins could not be thrown, for Gabriel, seeing that Rod-Dick had his battle formation set, leapt down from the carriage canopy and charged forward wreathed in silver light—and the curved-blade warriors rushed at her as well. Now the screams came at last; severed limbs flew one after another, blood soaked the dunes red, and now and then came the clash of weapons.
At last the warriors' curved blades met Gabriel's sword head-on, and there was even the sound of a blade tip scraping across armor. But Gabriel did not stop; shield in hand and sword whirling, she charged straight on, and everyone who stood before her fell.
Rod-Dick felt his eyelid twitching. He too was a warrior who had mastered sixth-rank combat arts, standing at the very peak of the mid-rank warriors, but as city lord of Cape State his position was exalted and he had rarely experienced such a lone charge into the thick of slaughter. Gabriel's swordsmanship was so utterly unstoppable that watching it set even Rod-Dick's blood boiling.
Now he finally understood why the Isis Temple of Memphis had sent only this one warrior to protect Maria: against ordinary bandits and highway robbers, the entire column together would not have been a match for Gabriel alone. Rod-Dick thought to himself, If Gabriel had come not to protect Maria but to assassinate her, could my personal guard keep Maria safe? Even with a low-rank divine artist in support, it would be very doubtful.
That the Isis Temple could send such a warrior left everyone else with nothing to say. But privately Rod-Dick felt wronged on Gabriel's behalf: a high-rank grand warrior like her, with a divine artist and two attendants besides, would have been all the safer. So why send her alone? It's far beneath her dignity.
Gabriel had charged out just like that. If a skilled divine artist lay hidden at a distance, she could easily come off badly. Exalted divine artists would never stoop to robbing travelers on the road, true—but the enemy they had met today was plainly no simple matter.
Rod-Dick could sit still no longer. With a shout of command he charged out himself, flanked left and right by two squad leaders, following behind Gabriel—and yet even their speed could not keep up with Gabriel as she cut her way forward.
Leaving a trail of enemy dead behind her, Gabriel had already reached a point a dozen paces from the trap between the dunes, and no more curved-blade warriors stood in her path. The two axe-bearing warriors in armor who had appeared first had not charged like the others; they stood waiting on the higher ground, gathering themselves to strike. They looked like the strongest opponents of all.
At that very instant, when Gabriel's attention should have been wholly fixed on those two warriors, a beast-like roar burst out from left and right at once, and two figures came bursting up out of the dunes... no! Look closely and there were three. Behind the figure on the left stood one more man.
But the two on the left and right were so enormous that the last one was swallowed by the shadow of the figure in front of him; appearing without a sound, he was very hard to notice. His outline was faint and hazy—he must have used some divine art to hide his presence.
By the measures of the Celestial Pivot Continent, where a godstone's outer diameter is one inch and ten inches make one foot, those two stood a full ten-plus feet tall, planted there like two small hills, their arms thicker than an adult's thigh. Rod-Dick recognized them: these were the high-mountain giants who lived in lands even farther east than the Kingdom of Assyria.
The high-mountain giants lived in cold highland country, and were said to be descendants of the giants of legend. In truth they differed little from ordinary people beyond their enormous bulk. They too could learn combat arts; not especially nimble, they possessed overwhelming strength. The armies of the surrounding kingdoms recruited and trained such beings, and the outstanding ones served as heavily armed warriors with blunt weapons—on a frontal battlefield where there was no dodging, a great hammer or great axe in their hands was devastating.
Gabriel stood only as high as their chests. Swinging heavy hafted mauls whose round heads were studded with sharp, fang-like spikes, they smashed down at her from left and right, straight for her head and face. The attack came utterly without warning.
The enemy did have a divine artist after all—the third man standing in the shadow. It was he who had used divine art to conceal his own presence and that of the two giants, and only now sprang the killing blow.
Their position had been chosen with great cunning: had the caravan truly entered the trap, then at the moment the lead carriage went down they would have been right on either side of Maria's carriage. They must have been the core of the ambush, able to smash a whole carriage to pieces with a single blow.
Now they were being spent on one person: Gabriel.
Gabriel could not dodge; on every side she was wrapped in the wind of the falling mauls. Both squad leaders hurled their javelins, one flying at each of the two giants. Rod-Dick struck as well: his sword flew from his hand, its tip carrying a faint, unremarkable halo in the sunlight, faster even than the javelins—and it flew at the third man behind the giant on the right.
With an ear-splitting crash, Gabriel raised the shield in her left hand and caught the maul falling on her left head-on; both her feet sank into the sand up to the calves. Her right hand lifted her sword against the other maul—the silver heavy sword looked so slender now, as if a light knock would shatter it.
But the sword did not shatter. The maul struck the tip of the blade and made almost no sound; the long sword bent into an arc but did not break. Gabriel was murmuring something under her breath, and the two godstones on the sword's guard gave off a strange pulse.
Suddenly the blade sprang straight again, and a force that seemed able to twist space itself spread outward; the maul slid away to one side. The giant's huge body spun half a turn against his will—the blow had plainly struck the tip of the sword, yet it was as if he had hit nothing at all.
This was divine art—and mid-rank divine art at that! For a warrior, whose path of cultivation ran elsewhere, the systematic study of divine art was extremely difficult, and mastering divine art of a rank to match was impossible. Yet Gabriel could wield mid-rank divine art, even if only through a sword imbued with divine art. That alone was astonishing enough!
With a crack and a strangled roar, the giant's left shoulder was dislocated; his hand dropped, and the maul head slammed into the dune. The squad leaders' javelins arrived: the one aimed at the right-hand giant, as it came close, seemed to plunge into something thick and sticky, and was drawn by some force into the sand, missing by a few inches only—the divine artist had shielded the giant just in time.
The other javelin struck the left giant's thigh. It was a third-rank warrior's blow at full strength—a javelin like that could run through several oxen—yet now it sank only a few inches deep; the giant's body was like forged iron. Even so, the wound was far from trivial. He had smashed his maul onto Gabriel's shield, denting and deforming its center until radial cracks appeared, and the shock had left his whole body aching and numb; with the javelin in his leg he gave a strange roar and dropped to one knee.
With a ringing clang, Gabriel pulled her legs out of the sand and sprang forward, shield grinding against maul in a spray of sparks. The cracks in the shield's center could be seen slowly fading, as if it could mend itself, but the repair stopped barely halfway. The shield Rod-Dick had given her was imbued with divine art, and even it could not withstand a single blow from a giant.
Gabriel stepped in and thrust with her left hand, and the shield's edge spun into the giant's chest. That was axe technique—she was using the shield as a battle-axe. The giant let out a shriek of shock, let go of his maul, and grabbed both sides of the shield, trying to tear it away. Gabriel did not wrestle with him: she drove it in with all her strength and let go, leaping off to the right front, and as she went she swept a dazzling burst of silver light out to her right.
In searing agony the giant's instinct was to grab for the shield; Gabriel simply abandoned it, adding one last push as she released it. Clutching the shield buried in his chest, the giant toppled over onto his back, a javelin still stuck in his leg.
The skirmish had lasted only a short while. The javelin aimed at the right-hand giant had missed, and the divine artist behind him was working a spell. Rod-Dick's sword flew at him and, close in, strangely slowed, giving out a string of sounds like something being shattered; it dropped toward the ground and happened to plunge through one of his feet, pinning that foot to the sand.
The divine artist gave a long scream of agony—and then he saw desert and sky spinning and flying before his eyes!
It was the light of Gabriel's sword, which sheared off his head and sent it tumbling away; at the same moment the silver light sliced across the waist of the right-hand giant, and the blood did not burst out until two breaths later.
He was a mid-rank divine artist whose divine art had reached the fifth level; his status was far from low. But his luck had run out today. To keep his presence hidden he had held back from attacking, letting a warrior like Gabriel close to such a distance—and once the giant in front of him could no longer shield him, he was little more than meat on a chopping block.
And do not forget that Gabriel, too, could use mid-rank divine art. Hers served only to assist her fighting skills and was nothing like the complete, systematic mastery of a professional divine artist—but in that situation it was more than enough to take his life.
Gabriel paid the giant behind her no further mind. She left the shield and ran on with her sword, for two axe-bearing enemies still stood ahead on the dune. The two warriors, so confident a moment before, could not keep a flicker of panic from their faces as they saw the ambush ahead shattered so quickly; they turned as if to run, yet felt they could not escape, and in that instant of cowardly hesitation Gabriel was upon them.
Between life and death, they had to fight whether they would or not. With a shout the two swung their long-hafted axes in crossing cuts from left and right, the axe edges too carrying a faint, hazy halo. Gabriel, closing in, suddenly quickened: back arched and legs bent, like a lion springing, she dropped low and slipped through the arc of the blades, then slammed with all her force into the warrior on the left.
Her shoulder guard struck his shield, and the shield's rim smashed into his breastplate, caving it in deeply, with the sound of ribs snapping between. Gabriel's body rebounded at once to the right, and she drove her sword straight at the other warrior.
The axe haft was long; the man on the right had only just raised it when Gabriel was suddenly upon him. Too late to bring the axe edge down, he frantically raised his shield to block the sword light. The light blazed blindingly, as if it could tear through anything: the shield split in two, the sword drove into his breastplate, the trembling of its tip shattered his organs, and then it was pulled free.
The silver blade was unmarked, without even a trace of blood. On one shoulder guard of Gabriel's armor were several cracks, slowly closing and healing over. She turned amid the dunes with her sword in hand; sunlight fell on her golden curls, her beautiful face was cold and severe, and behind her not one enemy remained alive.
Rod-Dick and the two squad leaders stood between the two fallen giants, gazing at Gabriel with faces full of admiration and awe.
On the distant hills, in the shadow of the strange boulders, a group of men lay quietly hidden, every face disbelieving. Three stood at the front: in the middle was none other than the local chief administrator, Faymiyang-Xiaomo, provincial lord of the city-state of Xuya; on his left stood his most trusted deputy, the city-state of Xuya's finance officer, Mister-Morton; and on his right, the high priest of the Xuya Temple and divine artist, Cosman.