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“Sure we’re safe here?” asked
Andreotti nervously. The Italian
captain seemed to have lost his nerve.
Featherstone certainly did not blame
him. The assault on the lost
Egyptian city had been a disaster.
He had reckoned on the effect of modern weapons being devastating
enough that the sheer numbers of the enemy would make no difference, but
things had not worked out that way.
The well armed soldiers had killed hundreds
of Egyptians, but many of them had died as
well. He should have known better
than to trust the slippery Arab.
Mudada had fled at the first sign of resistance and his cowardly retreat
had panicked a number of the Italian soldiers who had fled with
him. That should not have mattered,
however. Attackers armed with
spears and bows should have still been no match for the men that remained,
but Mudada had led them into a death
trap. From the top of the narrow
canyon they had entered the Egyptians had rained boulders and projectiles
upon them. Even the furious fire
directed toward them had not been enough to turn the
tide. Eventually, Featherstone,
Andreotti, and Sturm had been forced to flee for their lives, leaving the
rocky floor of the canyon strewn with the fallen bodies of their
soldiers.
They were down to just a couple of dozen men
now. Fortunately, most of the
SS men Sturm had brought with him were
alive. Only two of them had been
killed, primarily due to their superior training and the fact that they had
not panicked. Still, it was obvious
that they could not enter the city the way they had
tried. However, there might be
another way. Featherstone’s
crude map showed another way in.
Andreotti repeated his
question. “You’re sure
we’re safe? They might follow
us.”
“Let them,” said
Sturm. “If they do we will
have the advantage.” He
gestured toward a machine gun his men had set up that covered the entrance
to the canyon. No one was going
to come that way and live.
“Alright,” Andreotti said, “then
what do we do?”
“We try the back way,” said Featherstone
pointing to his map.
“The Forbidden
Valley? It doesn’t sound
particularly inviting.”
“I’m not about to let a bunch of
primitives frighten me off,” Featherstone
said. “You can go home for
all I care. But I’m not
giving up.”
Sturm nodded his
agreement. “My superiors
would not be pleased if I gave up so close to our
goal. I will try Featherstone’s
plan.”
Andreotti nodded his reluctant
agreement. Signaling to what
remained of his men, he got ready to leave.
Mudada crept out from behind his place of
concealment. Featherstone and
his remaining companions had left behind most of their equipment; including
the chests of gold he had been shown.
He had no idea where they were going, but he did not intend to leave
such tempting loot behind.
Accompanied by his men he moved
forward.
The chests of gold
first. Greedily he threw back
the lid. There in its gleaming
splendor was a king’s ransom.
What he was looking at meant everything – respectability, women,
houses. He imagined himself living
in luxury. He pushed back his
men as they crowded about the horde.
He would give them a share, of course, but the majority of it he would
keep for himself.
“Allah be praised,” he cried, falling
to his knees and dipping his hands into the heaps of
coins. There were hundreds of
them – no thousands. He
was wealthy beyond his wildest
imaginings. He lifted his fingers
allowing the heavy metal to spill back into the
chest. Then he
frowned. Something was not
right. The coins did not seem
to have the right weight.
“No!” he screamed.
This could not be. The
filthy Englishman had tricked him.
Grabbing one of the coins between his grubby fingers he inserted it
between his crooked teeth.
Brass! The chests were
filled with brass knockouts from plumbing
fittings. Almost foaming at the
mouth he kicked the chest of brass scattering the pseudo-gold coins onto
the rocky ground.
He grabbed his
foot. Hopping about in pain and
cursing vilely. He had broken
his foot or so it felt. While
he cursed and screamed his men stood back grinning
broadly. Then they gave in to
their more natural instincts, and began to loot the bodies of the dead Italians
– those few that had made it out of the canyon, only to die of spear
and arrow wounds. Most of the
dead were still where they had fallen; back in the narrow confines of the
canyon.
Mudada finally settled
down. He limped over to the pile
of discarded equipment. All was
not lost. There was still plenty
of loot in the rifles, ammunition, tents and other assorted bits of equipment
the Europeans had left behind. It
was better than nothing.
He was sorting through a pile of clothing
when he heard a strange noise. He
craned his head listening intently.
He had never heard anything quite like
it. It was a low rumbling sound
and it was coming from the canyon.
He called to his men just as a huge cloud of dust burst from the canyon
entrance. And mingled in that
cloud he could see the vague forms of men and
horses. Too late he realized
that he was watching the business end of a chariot attack – a sight
no one had witnessed in the outside world for two thousand
years.
The historical significance of the spectacle,
however, was lost on him as he took to his heels and limped after his feeling
comrades. Not a one of them stayed
to fight. If they had done so
they might have had a chance. But
these were men used to preying on those who did not fight
back. They were ill-prepared
to stand up to any sort of opposition.
And the sight of the massed horses and chariots descending upon them
sent them into panicked flight. But
there was no escape. The chariots
of the Egyptians swept over and around them, leaving them nowhere to
run. Almost as a man Mudada and
his men went to their knees, tossing away their weapons and begging for
mercy.
Surprisingly, they received
it. The Egyptians surrounded
them, but other than lancing one of Mudada’s men who made a break for
it, they made no attempt to kill them.
Instead several men jumped from the chariots, and forcing Mudada and
his fellow slavers to strip off their clothes, linked them together with
a length of rope, tying each man to the next in a long
chain. Then, prodded forward
at spearpoint the ex-slavers were marched up the canyon.
It was a situation Mudada found hauntingly
familiar. He had done the same
thing countless times to the helpless African villagers he had
ambushed. But now the situation
was reversed. Limping badly,
and cursing his bad luck, he struggled up the canyon, the hot sun beating
down on his naked body. What
was going to happen to him now?
The ordeal had
started. Larra had no idea how
long she would last; nor how long Melissa would
survive. The scorching heat hit
her like a wall of fire. In a
few seconds the water evaporated from her body, then the wheel rotated her
downward and she gulped a lungful of air as her head was
submerged.
She was strapped to a large
wheel. After being recaptured
by the guardians of Thoth, she and Melissa had been dragged to a barge anchored
in the amazing cavern of fire and water.
Centred in the barge was a large wheel, constructed so that it could
be rotated though the hull of the boat and into the
water. It looked like some sort
of strange paddle wheel, but it had no use in
propulsion. It was an instrument
of torture. She and Melissa had
been stretched out on its curved surface and their arms and legs tethered
to it. Then the barge had been
pushed closer to the incredible pillar of fire that roared out of the
lake. When it was situated to
the liking of the high priest, the wheel had been
released. The surge of water
from the base of the flame provided enough pressure to rotate the wheel
slowly. The two helpless women
slowly traveled upward, exposing their naked bodies to the suffocating heat
of the flame, And then they were rotated downward slowly submerging into
the lake.
It was almost a relief to enter the cooling
water. During her exposure to
the burning pillar, Larra had felt as if her flesh was being slowly grilled
and the water provided a pleasant
respite. However, she was also
forced to hold her breath as she was plunged head-first into the waters of
the lake. In her weakened condition
she did not know how long she would be able to do this even though the total
immersion was less than thirty seconds.
Emerging from the lake she was rotated up again, once more experiencing
the searing heat of the burning plume of
gas.
Gasping for air and barely able to breathe
in the torturous heat, Larra knew she could not last
long. Soon she would be too weak
to hold her breath and then she would
die. That is, if the roasting
heat did not kill her first.
“Oh God,” thought
Melissa. “I hope Larra can
endure this.” She was not
all that sure about herself, but her thoughts went to her
mentor. Now she was going down
again, the baking heat of the giant torch beating against her naked
skin. She was still in considerable
pain. The high priest had seen
no reason to release the bindings that squeezed her breasts and the painful
thorns still adorned her nipples.
In addition her injured thigh pounded with excruciating
pain. Being forced to walk to
on the throbbing leg had been one of the most painful experiences she had
ever had to endure. She took
a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain generated in her breasts as she
did so, and then her head plunged into the
water.
She and Larra had been arranged so that each
of them was on an opposite side of the
wheel. As she entered the lake,
Larra was being roasted. Melissa
reflected on their fate, wondering what would kill them
first. Would they drown in the
lake or would they stubbornly survive and be slowly roasted
alive? Either way it was a horrible
end to so great an adventure.
“No!” Amy screamed.
“Not
again!” She was
not as strong as Katie or Jia Li.
The thought of being gang raped once more had her nearly in
hysterics. But that was clearly
the intention of her captors. She
and her two companions were being held by several men, stretched out on large
cold slabs. Their simple robes
had been removed and their legs had been spread and clustered about them
were men who were in an aroused state of
readiness. Their fate was certain,
there could be no escape.
”Hold on, Amy” said
Katie. She too was
terrified. Rape always terrified
her. Why would it
not? But she had the strength
to resist – or at least she hoped she
had. Her mind fled back to her
terrible ordeal at the hands of the
slavers. She remembered how she
had screamed and begged for mercy when she had been raped repeatedly by the
gang of slavers. She would try
to be strong, but she was trembling in
fear.
The high priest slowly walked among the three
latest arrivals. It seemed to
be raining white-skinned women. Was
this some sort of joke of the gods or had they been sent to test or even
reward him? Perhaps it was a
bit of both. All of the women
had caused him aggravation and all were astoundingly
beautiful. It was going to be
most pleasurable watching them as his priests and soldiers raped
them. He had decided to stay
and watch. The two women on the
wheel were being watched by his
sub-priests. They would call
him if one of them decided to talk.
In the meantime he was looking forward to a few hours of
entertainment.
Three
women. And all incredibly beautiful
and dangerous. One golden-haired and magnificently
endowed. He had never seen breasts
that large so perfectly formed. She
was a marvel of human architecture.
The second, more slender with hair like
flame. She too was incredibly
beautiful, her smaller breasts quivering as she shook with
fear. It would be most interesting
to watch her as she was brutally
ravished. And then there was
the raven-haired goddess.
Exquisitely beautiful and more dangerous that any of his warriors
she stared at him in cool defiance.
She seemed unafraid, but he sensed she would scream as loudly as the
other two once his men had worked her over for a few
hours. He waved his hand signaling
the beginning of the orgy.
Jia Li clenched her jaws as the first man
entered her. She tried to hold
her body rigid, the better to deny the man raping her any pleasure, but she
gasped as one of the men holding her crushed her left
breast. It was a signal for the
men around her to lay their hands on her.
She was a special target, the intruder they most
feared. It was their mission
to punish her most severely. A
few feet away she heard a moan. One
of her companions mouthed her pain.
Amy’s terror got the better of
her. After Katie’s words
she had tried to be brave, but as the first of her ravishers took her she
lost her composure, letting out first a low moan and then a scream of
fear. Struggling in frantic
desperation she thrashed wildly as man after man took her, until eventually,
exhausted by her frenzied efforts she lay quietly as each man took his
turn. For the priests and guards
who raped her, this was not nearly as much fun, but they took her
anyway.
Katie
endured. It was hard with so
many men clutching at her body, but she managed to remain quiet, not uttering
a sound even when they bent her face down on the stone table and violated
her anally. She was not entirely
silent. She couldn’t be,
but she managed to confine herself to gasps and grunts as her ravishers worked
her over.
Larra was almost
finished. Each time she was plunged
into the lake she could barely hold her
breath. The time would come when
she wouldn’t make it. She
suspected it was the same for Melissa.
Such torment could not be endured
forever.
The guard watching the two women studied them
intently, and not just because he was interested in their
bodies. He had been entrusted
with making sure that they did not drown.
He had a certain amount of experience in this, having been posted
to this position the last time some poor unfortunate had been sentenced to
die by fire and water. His
observations told him that both women were close to the
end. Neither was likely to last
much longer. His hand hovered
near the lever that would stop the wheel.
Once he had stopped it the natural flow of the lake would push the
barge back to the bank.
Now was the
time! The older woman had gone
completely limp. If she entered
the water she would drown. The
wheel stopped and the barge began to slowly move toward the
shore. He was glad the woman
had finally given in. The heat
in the cavern was stifling and he could hardly
breathe. Turning he beckoned
toward two of the guards who were sheltering from the heat behind a block
of stone. He would need them
to help him carry the women into the secret rooms hidden in the
rock.
Quickly he unlashed the two women from the
wheel. The younger one still
seemed to have some spark of life in her, so he took no chances, lashing
her hands behind her back before allowing her to be carried away from the
barge. The other lay as still
as the grave. As far as she could
tell she wasn’t even breathing.
He ordered her dragged to the cooler passages and had her laid on
her back. There was no movement
of her chest. Kneeling beside
her he placed his ear to her breast.
Larra jabbed her thumb into the man’s
carotid artery. It was neatly
done, shutting off the flow of blood to the brain so quickly that the young
priest was unconscious before he even knew he had been
attacked. He slumped forward
and as he did Larra rolled from beneath
him. Struggling to her feet,
she turned to face the two startled
guards. She swayed on her
feet. There was very little strength
left in her. Had there been but
one guard she might have had a slight chance, but she doubted she could take
two. She could barely
stand. But she had no
choice. She suspected that she
would not get another chance.
The two guards moved toward
her. Larra readied herself, slowly
stepping back. And then one of
the guards gave a surprised cry and stumbled
forward. He bumped into the other
man, breaking his concentration. It
was the slight opening Larra needed.
Darting forward with what was left of her strength she jabbed her
stiffened fingers into the throat of the first guard and then without waiting
to see the effect of the blow, spun violently and smashed her heel into the
face of the second man. It was
all she had left, but it was enough.
As she collapsed in a semi-faint she noted the two guards stretched
out on the floor.
Melissa rolled onto her
knees. It had been her foot that
had distracted the second guard. No
doubt he had been most surprised when she had lifted her leg and flattened
his gonads against his crotch.
Larra seemed to be unconscious.
Melissa was not surprised; she was close to passing out
herself. She maneuvered her body
to a position where she could abrade the ropes tying her wrists against the
edge of one of the guard’s spears.
It took her a few minutes, but she managed to sever the
ropes. Then grabbing Larra’s
arms she dragged her like a log to a side room she had spotted a short distance
away. As she did so Larra opened
her eyes.
“Thank God,” thought
Melissa. Her friend was going
to be alright.
She sat Larra up against the wall and pushed
her hair out of her eyes.
“Just take it easy,” she
said. “You’ll soon
get your strength back.”
Larra struggled to get
up. “I think I know a faster
way,” she said. She crawled
over to a corner, placed her head between her knees and was violently
ill.
Melissa watched her
sympathetically. “You should
have rested,” she scolded.
“You’re not recovered from your ordeal and we have to get
that arrow out of your shoulder.”
Larra slowly turned her
head. Raising her hand she held
up an object that glinted a bright blue even in the subdued
light.
“The Eye!”
Melissa gasped.
“It was easier getting it down than it
was getting it up,”Larra said with a wan grin.
“No wonder they couldn’t find it,”
Melissa said. “But what
are you going to do with it?”
“Well, there’s no sun down here,
but there is the next best thing.”
“The
flare? Do you think it will
work?”
“Let’s find
out.” Larra moved to the
door. She could barely place
one foot in front of the other. If
what she planned did not work she and her companions would be
doomed.
Limping badly, Melissa followed her out into
the hell-hole and stood in front of the great
flare. Raising the
Eye
of Thoth Larra angled it so the light shone through it, bathing both
her and Melissa in its strange light.
Once again the searing pain surged through
both of the women. Larra opened
her mouth and screamed in agony, but held the gem
steady. And then the pain passed,
replaced by a feeling of wholeness.
Both women got to their feet.
They were naked and unarmed, but once more their strength was
restored. Incredibly, the healing
process had pushed the arrow from Larra’s shoulders and the painful
thorns from Melissa’s breasts.
“Let’s go get the others,” said
Melissa. Larra nodded
grimly. There was murder in her
eyes. When she and Melissa had
been in the secret corridor they could hear the animal sounds as their comrades
were violated.
They picked up the spears of the two guards
Larra had killed and then jogging down the hall launched themselves into
the pack of brutes who were raping their
friends.
The assault caught every man off
guard. The first man to die was
the high priest. Melissa disemboweled
him as he backed away in shocked
surprise. Screaming and clutching
at his entrails he died on the floor while the two determined women cut a
swath through the men surrounding their two
friends. Panicked, the priests
and soldiers fled, trampling one another
underfoot. In the confined space
of the stone vault many were crushed as the fleeing men pushed against one
another.
Larra and Melissa did not
follow. Instead they went to
their comrades. Amy was weeping
uncontrollably, and Katie and Jia Li were so battered they could barely
move. “Come,” commanded
Larra. “We will help
you. We have to get to the
surface.”
“I know the way,” said Jia Li,
displaying the remarkable resilience and discipline that distinguished her
from other women. Limping badly
as a result of her ordeal, she led the way, while Larra and Melissa helped
the other two women.
It was a tough climb to the canyon of the
waterfall where the three women had entered the cavern, but somehow they
made it. In the sunlight, Larra
repeated her performance with the
Eye
of Thoth, restoring her three other
companions.
“Well, we’re together again,”
said Katie. “Now
what?”
“We don’t have much of a choice,”
said Larra. “I doubt we
can go back into the cavern. It
is far too dangerous. We will
have to chance the desert.”
“I can’t be any worse than what
we have already been through,” Katie
replied. “I prefer death
by thirst to going through that again.”
The others
nodded. Amy seemed to have recovered
some of her spirit after her exposure to the
Eye of Thoth, but she
was not the same woman she had been
before. It was best not to expose
any of them to any more torment than they had already
experienced.
“Alright,” said Larra,
“let’s go.”
They were poorly equipped for a trip through
the desert. Melissa had salvaged
a few garments from the men they had killed – enough to protect them
from the sun, but not much more.
They had no shoes and only a few crude
weapons. However, there was one
thing. They retrieved the water
skins from where Jia Li, Katie, and Amy had left them and filled them from
the falls. It would last them
a little while, perhaps long enough to reach the Egyptian
city.
Larra had a simple
plan. Travel to the city by night
and acquire some transport. They
needed horses to cross the desert.
If they were lucky perhaps the Egyptians would not be expecting them
from the direction of the
Sheik Abd al-Majiid Ibn Al-Mansur peered through
the lenses of the Italian binoculars her had acquired during his short stint
in the pay of the Italian army. A
slow smile creased his handsome features.
With a nod to his men he urged his camel
forward.
The five women did not see him until he was
almost upon them. They all appeared
to be somewhat the worse for wear, their clothing torn and
dirty. A considerable amount
of female flesh was revealed, a bit more than Al-Majiid approved
of. Still, he found it hard to
tear his eyes away from the abundant charms of the woman to whom he had once
made love.
Al-Majiid and his men had come out of the
setting sun. None of the women,
not even Jia Li had seen him coming.
“A good man to have on my side,” thought
Larra. She stepped toward the
sheik.
“Salaam,” she said, sweeping her
arm in the customary Bedu greeting.
Al-Majiid nodded, a smiling lighting his
face. It was not customary for
a man to receive such a greeting from a
woman. But he had learned that
the violet-eyed Englishwoman was unusual in the
extreme. He decided to treat
her like an equal. After all,
hadn’t he spent the best part of two weeks trying to track her
down?
“Greetings, Miss Court,” he
replied. “Please be so gracious
as to accept my assistance once more.
I would be honoured to have you as a guest in my
tent.”
“I gladly accept,” Larra replied,
“provided your offer extends to my
companions.”
“How could it not?” replied the
sheik with another smile. “I
have already met the delightful Miss Gallant, and if the rest of your companions
are anything like you it would give me great pleasure to offer them my
hospitality.”
Larra returned the
smile. It seemed that her luck
had indeed returned. She remembered
the last time she had been a guest of the
sheik. His hospitality had gone
beyond anything she had expected.
She smiled to herself.
Perhaps with any luck, history would
repeat.
“Aahhh!”
Larra
elevated her hips so that the sheik could penetrate her more
deeply. Her nails raked his back,
leaving deep scratches as he plunged in an out of
her. With a deep hoarse cry she
wrapped her legs around his waist and attempted to draw him deeper within
her.
Al-Majiid groaned ecstatically at the same
time gasping for air. He was
close to physical collapse. By
Mohammed’s beard, the English winch had
endurance. They had been going
at if for more than three hours and she was showing no sign of
tiring. She was incredibly demanding,
but he would not have it any other way.
Since that first night with her he had been unable to get her out
of his mind. It had taken all
of his desert skills and a good deal of luck to track her
down. But he had finally caught
up with her and now he was enjoying his
reward. He grinned savagely in
the dark of the tent.
Before morning he
would have her walking bowlegged.
His honour depended on it.
He could not let a woman outlast
him.
Melissa
smiled. The sheik’s tents
were partitioned for privacy, but they did very little to screen out any
noise. She rolled over and looked
into Jia Li’s smiling face.
All of the women were
awake. “It looks like at
least one of us is having a little bit of fun this time,” Amy
whispered.
“Larra always seems to have that sort
of luck,” agreed Katie.
“But I have a hunch she’s going to pay the price in the
morning.”
The other women smiled and nestled back down
into the bedclothes. Larra was
welcome to her Bedu lover. For
now they were content to rest. They
had a long way to go before this adventure was
over.
Mudada cried out as the lash bit into his
skin.
“Work faster dog,” said the dark-skinned
man who wielded it.
“I’m going as fast as I can,
Master,” the ex-slaver replied.
He raised his crude pick and hacked into the
rock. He had never worked so
hard in his life. The sweat poured
off his whip-scarred body.
The overseer
smiled. He had come full
circle. How could he have guessed
that after being sold into slavery he would be placed in charge of the very
man who had kidnapped him from his
village? “See that you keep
up that pace, dog. I will be
watching you.” Turning he
moved farther down the line of
ex-slavers. The spirits had been
kind to him. He wondered if it
was some sort of reward for helping the three white women who had been treated
so badly by Mudada and his
men. He wondered what had happened
to them. He shook his
head. They had been great
ladies. He hoped things had turned
out all right for them.
Isetnofret grunted as the young priest pushed himself off
her. She was tired, covered with
sweat, and desperately wanted a bath, but she knew that there would be no
rest for her yet. It had been
like this for the last few days, ever since the terrible commotion in the
temple. Something incredible
had taken place, but she did not know
what. No one told her
anything. Why should they? -
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