FOUNDLING: SAUDI DESERT ADVENTURE

BY CHRISTOPHER TOILKIEN

[ part 56 ]

Just then a male voices scream came from nowhere and everywhere at once. The male slaves trembled, eyes looked around futilely, but did not move an inch.

"Nerima is preparing the after lunch arena show" Sister B informed Barbie. "Some newly acquired local male is to be castrated then torn limb from limb by four wild bulls"

The Arena

Barbie saw first a few, then more of her schoolmates push away the overly attentive male body slaves and start walking towards a double sized doorway, quite a way down the wall of carved out building fronts.

Barbie, swept up in a growing tide of eager appearing females moved with and among them, searching for the four Arabic girls. This doorway turned out to be a tunnel entrance leading through the rock into a hundred-yard diameter arena carved out of the rock. Tiers of seats descended until the actual arena hard packed sand was only a hundred feet across. But ten feet below the rim of the lowest seats, with a waist high wall at the seat level.

A star of ropes supported more colorful sunshades, except over the actual arena.

Barbie and her four chose seats half way down to the arena, but most of their schoolmates sat lower and all around the arena hole. Then out of an iron cage door, male slaves pushed a wooden "X" on a wheeled frame into the arena; a nude male stretched out on it. Two carried a huge smoking brazier of hot coals; already holding dozens of wooden handled irons.

These males fled as a dark shape descended from above.

The gargoyle landed just in front of the tightly stretched victim and raised her arms, turning all the way around as the girls cheered. Then she reached into the brazier, withdrawing a set of white-hot claw headed pinchers, and walked towards the stringently bound victim. Her claws kicking up the sand as she walked, her raised tail eagerly swishing back and forth. He victim raised his head, saw the approaching horror and screamed.

Suddenly Barbie jumped up and rushed down to the low wall at the bottom of the stairs. She had just seen the face of the victim. The desert warrior that had kidnapped her and raped her in order that she had to become his wife.

"Nooooo" She yelled, but the din of approval from the rest of her peers, drowned out the single dissenting voice. The evil creature, smiled, reached out one hand, the iron closed on his maleness and her arm jerked back. He screamed even louder, then fainted. Barbie stood transfixed with horror.

Her parent's extensive medical knowledge implanted in her brain before birth told her the shock and physical damage should have killed him immediately. The Gargoyle therefore must have some way of extending their victims lives indefinitely, as she must have the early version of man the cave dweller represented.

The Gargoyle waved her hand and males rushed into position the "X" frame horizontal. Next four bulls were manhandled into the ring, six male slaves holding onto ropes around their necks, and still having trouble controlling them. The handlers shirked away as the Gargoyle approached each male bull, calming it with touch of her hand on its head. A chain was run from each bull's chest harness to the fetters holding the victim's limbs outstretched.

The handlers maneuvered the bulls until they were straining to pull in four directions, then when the Gargoyle nodded; they pulled the restraining bolts holding his fetters to the frame.

Again he screamed, as they lifted his limbs up and taunt, but a wide metal band still held his torso down.

Male slaves walked over to the brazier, each choosing a red-hot poker, walking back beside the bull they came from. When the Gargoyle saw they were in position, she raised her arm, the surrounding girls cheered, her arm was about to descend when first one, then shortly after four more nude females jumped down into the arena.

The Gargoyle turned to find what was going on as the first girl ran past her, grabbing a hot poker as she went and waving it in the face of the nearest male slave holding one just off his bulls back, caused him to dodge away from his target.

"Get her!" The gargoyle screamed, but her control of their minds worked against her. They were simply unable to cause harm to a female, and just stood there. So the angry Gargoyle brushed them aside, charging after the disturbing girl, dodging under the chain, catching her with a sudden uppercut backhand and sending her sprawling across the hard packed sand. She raised a clawed foot to crush the miscreant, except another jabbed her in the flank with another branding iron. She turned her tail knocking the girl flying. But another rushed in, jabbing her unprotected flank. Again she tried to swat this one, but as her attention was distracted, a third poked her tailbone, causing the Gargoyle herself to scream out.

Barbie shook her head, clearing it, heard the Gargoyle scream, looked up saw Elisha dodge in and take a hit, picked up her own poker and charged. Her bronze medallion burning her chest between her breasts. But the Gargoyle must have seen her coming as it picked her up in one clawed hand and used her to throw at Pilar, bouncing both off the death pits wall.

"Barbie" Someone cried out, and the Gargoyle turned, but was again distracted by three hot poker armed attackers. Barbie looked up as Sister B dropped down in front of her.

"What the hell are you doing?" She yelled at her. "Trying to spoil our entertainment?"

But just then the Gargoyle rushed towards the one she now knew was Barbie, trying to claim her prize. But in doing so she pushed Sister B's naked body up against Barbie's pinning both against the arena wall, and full frontal body contact the hot medallion pressed between them.

Sister B's eyes blinked twice, and she shook her head. The Gargoyle's talon hands reaching past her and gripped a terrified Barbie's shoulders.

"What the hell" Sister B exclaimed as she sank her teeth into one clawed hand.

Braced her muscled limbs against the wall of the pit, shoved backwards, sending the Gargoyle sprawling. Turned, and for the first time really saw the Gargoyle creature.

"Sword" She screamed and it dropped down right in front of her.

But so was the Gargoyle, and Sister B was the only thing between it and her prize she had schemed and planned so long for. It charged seething in anger at being thwarted yet again, forgetting it should have ripped Sister B to shred's from above with her leg talons.

A possibly fatal mistake on her part.

Sister B had over a hundred victories in arenas just like this one, and there had never been a more skilled killer with a Roman Cavalryman's Spatha. It tried to rake her breasts off, but only managed to get herself a cut to the bone in her forearm. She screamed, and the entire group of males with hearing shriveled up and dropped dead, including the bulls.

Her tail sent Sister B sprawling, but the five girls, dodging in and out kept poking, and distracting her from moving in for the kill. Suddenly it was over. The Gargoyle, with one arm, flight steadying tail and thigh badly damaged, hopped first up onto the pitiful body on the horizontal frame and then up and out of the lower arena. But was not safe, as the girls on the upper seats began hurling paving cobblestones at her. Again she screamed and fled, running through the tunnel towards the plaza.

The girls pulled down the ropes holding the colored shading for their classmates to clamber up on. Sister B carrying a struggling, sobbing Barbie over her shoulder up out of the pit.

"He is as dead as all the rest of her slaves within hearing distance Barbie" She had to say repeatedly.

"Lets get out of here" Sister B ordered, dragging a reluctant Barbie along with her.

Sister B leading and the four Arabic girls with their hot pokers in support. They moved cautiously along the dark tunnel back to the pool area. Chaos reigned, as newly freed male slaves were running amok everywhere, looting and celebrating. But every few minutes one more would just keel over dead.

"We need to find our clothes and then find our camels" Sister B ordered. "First five search beyond the wall of shrubbery to the south, the next five to the north" She instructed. "Group three the east buildings, group four the western ones" These alphabetically grouped girls sped off as ordered, disappearing into the walls of potted palms or black building entrance doorways.

Just then Barbie's medallion tingled, and she screamed, as the Gargoyle swooped down at her from above.

But Sister B shoved her aside, thrusting her sword up and out, her whole body rigid. The Gargoyle was unable to swerve as her steering tail was damaged. But still managed to evade enough to get her right wing badly torn as she swooped past, instead of her torso, ending up in a crumpled heap against a carved building façade.

The five formed a battle line, centered on Sister B, but the Gargoyle slowly rose and limped into the nearest darken doorway.

"It would be suicide to follow her in to the dark" Elisha suggested.

"Then we don't, red headed Moue stated, running up out front of them with one of the lit bronze oil lamps on chains from another building. She then spun around and around, finally letting it go, right into the opening.

"Two time highland junior hammer hurling champion" She stated as it crashed up against something inside. A scream from the Gargoyles voice answered her.

"Still got it" She laughed and ran back. Smoke began billowing out of the doorway and then from carved out windows far above.

" I thought starting fires was Flames trick" Said Barbie, and smiled at an uncomprehending Moue standing close.

Just then girls came running back carrying clothes from one direction and leading camels from another. Sister B sent girls to get dressed while others harnessed the camels.

"We need to find both food and even more something to carry water in to survive the return journey," Elisha said as the four dressed Arabic girls rushed up. They split up and with a few other girls, bravely entered buildings to search. Knowing what to look for they soon located stocks of leather water bags and recruiting a few more willing hands, soon where loading up the baggage camels with as many full ones as they could carry.

"There are no more live men about, just deteriorating corpses everywhere" A few of the returning girls reported. But it was the armfuls and baskets of foodstuffs Barbie was trying to sort into the riding camels' saddlebags that were the center of everyone's attention.

"Well?" Sister B inquired, as Barbie finally stopped sorting everything out.

"Yes, if we eat the fruits, nuts, breads and other perishables first, we should be just about starving by the time we get back out of the encircling stone teeth" Barbie replied. "But at least if we allow the camels to drink their fill now, all the water bags will carry just enough" She continued and then slumped down.

"Now what?" Sister B inquired. "As if I did not have enough to worry about"

"My prize frying pan is missing" She sadly replied.

"I'll buy you a frying pan factory if we survive Sweetcheeks" Sister B premised sweeping Barbie up and planting a kiss full on her even more than usual pouty red lips, and setting the startled Barbie back down on her feet. Strode off to organize everything else.

An hour later, they were all ready to go. Camels watered and loaded up. Girls dressed in their Arabic or in the gargoyle attacked fives case, borrowed replacement desert outfits. Sister B in the lead, Barbie next and the four Arabic girls at the tail end.

When they entered the curving tunnel, they saw its previously bare rock walls had been covered with symbols and paintings of erect walking humanoid people and the animals they hunted in lush rain forests and long grassed Savannah's.

"These are very similar to the ones found in the caves in France" Nestra indicated. "Drawn sometime during the earliest period of mans existence on this earth"

"These show how this land appeared before the Gargoyle came, absorbing the life force of first the inhabitants, then the very land itself" Elisha stated sadly. "Whoever drew these indicates it has a lot to answer for"

As they exited the tunnel into the flat hard packed desert and strung out in a single file, each girl's assigned group of pack camels behind. A hairy male walked out of the shadow of the near rock face Barbie and the Arabic four had escaped from.

"I think he is waiting for you" Sister B called to a slumped in her saddle Barbie.

At this she perked up and guiding her camel over, jumped down and approached were he squatted waiting for her. When she approached, he bent head to earth, but Barbie raised his face in her hands, kissing him on the forehead. She saw his eyes were alive with intelligence and purpose.

Obviously the gargoyle had nothing to do with his longevity, as he was the last male anything alive in her now ruined domain.

Then a cry of joy came from Barbie's lips as he lifted out from under the sand were he squatted, Barbie's backpack containing her prized frying pan. Barbie reached out for it, but stopped, then digging into her clothing lifted the strange bronze medallion from around her neck and then slipping it over his head to place it around his hairy neck. Now he would know when his age old nemesis the Gargoyle was close.

He lay the backpack down scratching first a symbol, then a wavy line, then another symbol into the pack leather front. He then held it out for Barbie to take. Barbie again kissed his forehead and stepping backwards moved away. When she reached her camel, he stood partially erect and then surprised them all by moving swiftly into the passageway leading to the Gargoyles lair.

"The ageless hunter goes to hunt his ageless foe" Sister B informed Barbie as she rejoined the caravan.

{Much later Barbie was informed the symbols meant she was forever under the hunter's protection, and he knew they both would be around at least that long ; -}

It was a very harrowing, tiring journey back to the palm-shrouded oasis were the fierce desert raised Arabic males waited their charges. But finally they stumbled into the camp, almost falling of their camels or simply almost too far-gone to care if they did or not. The warriors lined up to honor the deep desert traveler's, but quickly turned into rescuers. Rushing up to untie many of the girls, as that was the only way most were still aboard their camels, and laying them out under the shadows of the palm trees.

They were well versed in the physical toll the desert took on those who dared to cross it without enough supplies and worked competently to poor sips of water in dry throats and damp towels on fevered brows.

Barbie, they laid out under the shadows of their own tents along with Sister B.

"You have quite a suntan, Barbie dear" That English accent coming out of an Arabic face as it patted her face with a damp cloth, opened her eyes wide.

"We made it?" She croaked.

"Well back to the Oasis, which is halfway home" He quietly replied.

"How many?" She continued.

"So far all of you, but most will probably not make it further without quite a bit more medical attention than we can give them here" He softly informed her. "Sister B is unconscious and as bad off as the rest"

"Can you bring me Sister B's saddlebags" She pleaded.

"You are too weak to do anything" He told her. "But I will do as you ask"

Sometime later, he gently shook Barbie awake, wondering why she looked even thinner than before, but her exposed skin closer to her natural tanned instead of the sun burnt red previously. Were she previously cracked lips healed, or was it just the onrushing twilight?

"Can I have some raw meat to eat?" She begged, and after retrieving his portion of tonight's meal from the cook, he watched as two skewers of uncooked lamb was swiftly devoured.

"No spices?" She whispered.

"He tries his best" He replied. "But now you know why they really miss your efforts" He laughed.

"Can I be alone?" Barbie requested, when she had retrieved a PDF out of the saddlebag.

She lifted it to her lips and hopped her soul mate Cindy was right when she told her it would work anywhere anytime.

"Help?" She croaked.

"Barbie?" A voice replied.

"Rescue required immediately, medical emergency, this location" She replied.

"On the way, arrival in, one hour" The voice replied. "Look for it from above"

Night comes swiftly in the desert. The sun swoops down, as shadows seem to race across the landscape. And suddenly the arctic tundra replaces the sandy furnace that was the day, that is the night. With no heat absorbing moisture in the air to soften the transformation.

The girls had been split up and placed in the Arabic warrior's own tents, with braziers of anything that would burn to keep off the chill. The warriors themselves wrapped in thick hooded capes, huddling around a cracking fire.

A worried Bernard was walking towards his tent were Barbie and Sister B lay wrapped in his own sleeping bag. They had both requested, of all things, raw meat and had consumed every morsel he could lay his hands on. Not easy to do without raising any questions from the men who thought he was both one of them and the Emir's cousin.

Looking up at the starlit sky he thought. "So far from home, but maybe if I can pull this mission off, I can hold my head up at the dinner table again. Being assigned to lead these Saudi desert guards, may not be a glamorous Attaché' job. But if I can keep locally raised terrorists from returning home to raise more fanatical followers, well it is at least a job I can handle"

Bernard was looking for the polar star, but it was suddenly blocked out, as was a large part of the stars just above were he stood. Suddenly there right in front of him, without a single sound appeared a huge black spearhead shape. Its bottom unfolded like a reverse flower blooming and a dozen shapes appeared to flit out. Or did they, as he no longer could see them.

Then out strode a wave of people in pairs carrying folded stretchers, lead by Sister A herself.

"Were are they Bernard?" She requested.

"In the tents of my men, Headmistress" He replied, leading the way.

He rushed ahead to defuse any situation that may arise between his warriors and, as he knew they would see them, these interloping foreign devils.

"They are here to provide the medical aid we cannot" He explained as they formed a battle line between the unarmed medical rescuers and their tents. Bernard thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, flikering shapes moving to suround his men. But descided it must be just the flickering firelight playing tricks.

"Everyone except our little blue eyed one" His most senior warrior stated. "She is of our household, and under our care"

"Agreed" Came from Sister A behind his back, "But a least let us tend to her"

The warriors lowered their weapons and allowed the recovery people to pass through their lines and enter their tents. Soon they returned each litter carrying a white shrouded female.

"It will take approximately an hour for us to transport them all back to the main school" Sister A informed him. As they began checking the medical teams tending to the worst cases immediately and triaging the rest for shipment out "Let us use that time to see how my most aggravating student is doing.

"So what took you so long?" Barbie asked, but her hands flew to her mouth as she saw Sister A behind Bernard. She dashed towards her headmistress, throwing herself down in front of her black shrouded form, and began kissing her booted feet.

"I will miss you dear Barbie" Sister A laughed, "But I assure you I will get over it"

"Now get up and explain why these fierce Arabic warriors demand your body in return for allowing us to rescue everybody else?" She inquired, still with an unusually humorous lilt to her voice. "You have not been screwing every single one of them have you? As the only heterosexual female out her, I for one, being very familiar with your substantial prowess and sexual proclivity would not put it past you.

"They love my cooking, mistress" Barbie sheepishly replied.

"Then you, Cindy and Becky Sue can stay with them" Sister A informed Bernard. "But let them know she can only stay until they return to were this adventure started out from"

"What if they refuse to let her go?" Bernard worried.

"Mavis" Sister A said. And a shimmering coalesced into a heavily armored female warrior brandishing a mini chain gun, right in front of him.

"They I suggest you find a way before I do" She continued and the Valkeiri just vanished.

"They will not be pleased, but I will tell them her wedding date approaches" He said smiling. "And her husband expects his bride to appear at it. That is something they will understand"

"Cindy is here?" Barbie interjected.

"The ship will bring them here when it returns for the next load" Sister B laughed. "But I do not think the rest of your triumvirate will be too pleased at the prospect of cooking out in the rough with dried camel dung for the next few weeks."

"Probably not, or you would not be sending them, my headmistress" Barbie ruefully replied.

"I am so glad you understand my need to give back a little of the bother you have put me through the last few years Barbie dear" Sister A replied, and stunned Barbie by kissing her on the forehead.

As Bernard walked off out of the tent she turned and whispered "Be careful little sister, our master send his blessing" And was gone.