Secret of the Turtle Men, Chapter 21
"The Battle of Djinni Valley"
by Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
"Lights!" Mahmoud called out. "Lights!" The torches were lit, for battle was now joined in earnest. While torches would guide the Djinni in to them, it would also let the humans see to fight, and would help them coordinate their attacks, the benefits now outweighed the risks.
Torches were lit as Pavel ran stumbling across the valley, for the valley floor was littered with a thousand small stones that shifted and rolled under his feet. He had never noticed this before, nor had he noticed before the distance that he had traveled in the barbed arms of the Djinni, from the exit of the tunnel where he had been held prisoner to the tunnel that had led back to Medina Jadeed; he had thought the distance quite small. Here in the night, blundering in darkness with danger all about and with a myriad of skittering stones declaring his every move, he felt it was an impossibly large distance. In actual fact, the distance was only some three-quarters of a mile, but with darkness and battle surrounding them, it was a horribly long way to travel on foot on uneven ground.
The lights of the humans coalesced first into a long trail, then into a teardrop shape with Pavel and his comrades at the point, but this teardrop fattened with every passing moment. In another short space, as the Arab forces moved quickly to protect their leaders, it would be a true circle with himself at the center. From the rear, two constalasers wielded by the Connobarans raked at the valley floor around them, wreaking havoc upon the Djinni still upon the ground or in low flight, but these could not be focused overhead where Ifriti and Djinni combatants were hopelessly intertwined. And plenty of Djinni were now airborne and overhead. The Djinni now had their lights to focus in upon, and the Arabs could not throw their bombs onto their own ranks and the Ifriti could not stop all the Djinni that now flew overhead.
Pavel's first warning was when black shapes dropped almost onto their heads. The Djinni had found them. One of them practically landed on Pavel's head, and Pavel was fending off the big hovering body and six barbed legs and a horribly long, poison-shiny-tipped stinger with his two ineffectual and unarmed hands.
Mahmoud's sword flashed golden in the torchlight, the Djinn fell into two pieces, and a small amount of slimy ooze fell onto Pavel's shoulder, Djinni blood. The Arabs closed upon him, battling on all sides, and Pavel felt so helpless crouched behind the shields which now closed tightly upon him, leaving only small spaces through which he could view the battle. He watched as a young Arab fended off and killed one Djinn, only to be impaled by the stinger of another. There was no question here of poison, for the barb thrust totally through his body, coming out of his back, and he fell, the Djinn stuck to him, and while a comrade killed the Djinn, it was too late for the young soldier. Pavel cringed, men were dying here, and it was because of his rash promise! Their deaths were on his hands. Like a bad litany, the old saying reverberated in his head, "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."
Efram was outside the shielding and Pavel watched and marveled at the weapon he had brought out. It fired not the constant dangerous beam of the constalaser, but frequent, discrete bursts of what could only be called "intelligent light." These lights had somehow been trained upon the Djinni alone, and it would arc around human and Ifriti to come to bear squarely upon the Djinn beyond them or beside them. Efram hardly needed to aim the pistol-sized device, other than to give it a general direction. Every beam he fired killed a Djinn, and it fired rapidly. More than any other single element, Efram's firing was what held the balance on the battlefield. But even this could not carry the day.
"Come on, let's go!" Efram urged, gesturing in the way they were going, toward the captives' cavern.
"But where?" Pavel gasped. "We can't go there now, there's no way out of those caverns."
"But there is!" Efram said. "Trust me on this."
Trust him? Could he trust Efram? He had no reason; this man who would sell his own men into servitude. Had he actually sent his men into the trap knowing that he could redeem them in a short time with a hundred-fold set of new captives for the Djinni's breeding chambers?
But Pavel had no time to think. One look at Efram's face and.... "Let's go!" he called out.
Efram took the lead, now firing ahead and overhead. Pavel made the shield-bearers expand out to include him within their barricade. Pavel now had less protection, but with Efram's firing and the now-massed Ifriti hovering overhead and protected themselves by Efram's barrage, he hardly needed it. Still their flanks were a morass of battle and human voices raised in anger, fighting fury and agony, but he at least was safe for now. He could only lead the way to safety (he hoped!) and see how many of his men could follow him there.
The tunnel now was not very far on, and it was open. Djinni bodies lay all about, the guards of the prison who coffer-dammed it at night and opened it to let in the morning mist. No wonder the mist struck so powerfully in the early morning here! It had all night to accumulate in the sleeping Djinni valley without the Djinni to fend it off.
Pavel was forced by his men to be the first to enter safety and chose to turn it into a scouting mission, he ran ahead of his encumbered escort, stumbling down the tunnel, barely tall enough to stand upright, and better to run crouched over to avoid the myriad projecting stones overhead. But there was no danger to encounter and the tunnel was not very long, soon he was standing on the precipice that was the pit of the blanks. Beyond them...there were the men he had come to rescue. Word had somehow reached them of his coming, or perhaps just the sound of battle overhead.
"Squeeze over, much as you can!" He called back. "Get everyone inside!" But his large force could not fit into this short tunnel. They would have to brave the pit of the blanks! Could they jump it? Impossible! Some of them would have to go inside that pit now hidden from his eyes by darkness, and give their bodies to the blanks to get the rest of them to safety. If he could put three of his men on each blank, then all would live, but how to manage that?
"Bring that light up here! And a Djinni bomb! We'll dance on their bloated bodies!" called Salim, who was next to him. He was Mahmoud's eldest son, and now Pavel's heir to the throne at Medina Jadeed, a handsome young lad with a strong resemblance to his father. Pavel hadn't even known Salim was in their group, but his blade was gory with yellow Djinni body-fluids, and he smiled in the carefree way Mahmoud had at the thought of the oncoming battle. And Mahmoud was nowhere to be seen. Where was he? Or Jethro? Or Pelen? He was alone, surrounded by the Arabs and Efram.
"Stay where you are!" Pavel called to the men across the way, for they seemed ready to dive into the pit in their eagerness to get to him. "We'll get you out of here!" He hoped!
A hundred voices were yelling a hundred things, Pavel had to scream his words right into Efram's face. "Okay, we're inside now! I've trusted you! Now what?"
"Now we get out of here." Efram said.
"Where? How?" Pavel asked.
Efram pointed into the pit. "Down there."
Salim himself wielded the torch to light the dark pit below. It was empty. No blanks were inside it at all.
The pressure of men behind him was getting uncomfortable, those who knew the situation ahead could not hold back those still trying to get in. Pavel again took the lead and jumped into the pit, a drop of some fifteen feet. It hurt, landing, but it was not a crippling fall, Pavel tumbled and rolled as he had been taught by his fathers, both to absorb the shock of landing and to get out of the way of those dropping after him.
Pelen landed nearby, and Pavel helped him to his feet and clear. Still yelling his words to be heard, he asked Efram who had landed here effortlessly. "Where do we go now?" The men were now joining him the pit from both sides, jumping so frequently that Pavel and his comrades moved to one end to avoid the man jumping, tumbling figures.
"Over here." Efram said. "Hidden by that rock; it's a fake. But know that there is a price for using this door."
"What's the price?" Pavel was exasperated. He couldn't negotiate now, his men were dying out there! "Jewels again? Don't you have enough?"
"No, not jewels this time." Efram said. "Though when you hear the price, you will wish I had asked for jewels."
"The walls!" Someone cried out. "The Djinni are coming through the very walls!"
And they were, burrowing out in various places. Black heads exploded out from solid rocks, with arms and antennae waving like obscenely questing snakes. Efram fired expertly as always, and when Djinni bodies blocked these new burrows for a short space, he said, "There is no more time."
"We'll pay the price." Pavel decided.
"You don't know what it is." Efram pointed out.
"Does it matter?"
Efram smiled. "Not really. If I couldn't bring you in willingly, I was prepared to force you in. The real reason I brought this weapon along." he waved the gun that had saved the battle. "Come on, let's go."
"Where's are we going?" Pavel asked as he followed Efram to the wall. He still didn't see a door, even up close.
"To a place we've prepared for you." Efram touched a small stone at one side, and the door opened with a stony grinding sound barely audible in the din around them. Pavel again chose to lead the way.
Beyond this door was the white hall, with but a single door at the other end. Silence fell immediately as he entered the hall.
Efram was with him. "Remember how many we are. If you've betrayed us, you will die. If you serve us, you will be rewarded." Pavel reminded him.
Efram just smiled. "A man of honor may not trust a scoundrel, but a scoundrel can always trust a man of honor. You've agreed to my price, and that's all that matters. You are safe. Come along now."
Other men were entering the hall and the crowd was pressing at Pavel's back.
"What say you, my father and leader?" Salim said, though he was of an age with Pavel.
"Let's go." Pavel led the way through the next door.
Whatever he had expected, it was not what he found there. For one thing, every piece of his clothing was magically gone as he stepped through to the other side. A large room, circular in form, and made of the same white walls. There appeared to be no exit. Efram, too, was gone.
"Have we come into a trap?" Salim asked him, as if he would tear Efram apart with his bare hands if he could.
"I see nothing but bare walls." Pavel agreed. "We at least are safe now from the Djinni. Let's move everyone toward the walls, it will be a tight fit in here with everyone inside."
"Do you trust this man?" Salim was skeptical.
"I'm not sure why, but I do." Pavel said. "He does everything for a price, and we have money to offer him. We may empty the treasury, but we'll live through this, and lives are more important to me."
"But what is the price we are to pay?" Salim persisted.
The din in the room of bewildered men was increasing asymptotically as their numbers increased. Pavel didn't see a single wound on any of these men. He hoped that they were being cared for, the door he had entered seemed to be able to choose where it sent the ones who crossed its threshold.
Connobarans were coming through the door, a mass of mostly blond heads, and then it was the last of the men. They were indeed crowded in this large, large room.
The room was a buzzing roar of many human voices, bewildered, scared, angry, confused.
I must speak to them, Pavel realized.
And then it struck.
Suddenly, and without any preparatory sensation at all, Pavel felt the onrush of orgasm! His balls slammed against his cock, his mind swirled with the rush of climax, his cock slammed itself erect and so hard it hurt, and then he was jetting his wad pell-mell into the crush of man-flesh around him.
It had hit the entire room at once! Every one of these warriors, some three hundred strong, a huge force for this planet, was suddenly crumpling at the knees, cocks shot jism into the air, against their neighbors, clashed with other jets, rattled on the floor so heavily that it was as the sound of rain. Pavel reached out and clutched for whomever or whatever he could, his body was suddenly incapable of supporting him, and he grabbed someone's body who was also buckling, and he fell with this comrade in climax to the floor, while his cock pummeled the young man with a heavy explosion of jism. On and on, he felt like his mind would burst from the extended, distended ejaculation, it wrung every ounce of strength from his body and every iota of thought from his brain, until at last it was over and he was gasping, groaning, writhing in a mass of fellow sufferers on the cold, white floor, the floor the color of pearl, the color of oysters, the color of jism. His body was splattered and soaked with jism, his own and others.
Pavel looked at one lithe Arab fighter, whose body was a whiplash of slender but sinewy muscle, his body jerked and spasmed in post-coital quakes.
Pavel then looked at the sandy-bodied man he had grabbed. Salim.
"I'm sorry." He gasped out to the climax-tendered features. "I didn't mean to, I didn't know it was you."
"Nor did I, and I forgive you." Salim panted, equally spent, beads of sweat peppering his brow though the battle hadn't brought him such sweat.
Pavel would have said more, but again, he felt the building in his body. He groaned, and released Salim--for a man to hold his son in lust was an Arab taboo, the reason he had apologized--and turned, reached for whomever was near at hand, to hold somebody while his body wrenched with renewed excitement, for his body belied his recent climax, he felt as if he had just begun to enjoy the pleasures of the body.
As if brand-new, his body again climbed the height of passion, again he groaned as his mind was wracked with pleasure, again he groaned as his cock surged to life.
Some one of his men had found his pud, was suckling it into his mouth, and Pavel was grateful for this, he clutched down at the hard lump of head at his crotch and he grunted, moaned, and spurted his load into the waiting mouth. And again all around him, his men were in the same tempo of lust, though now few or none were on their feet, they were reaching for each other, wishing to share as much as they could the pleasure of their body. Pavel himself found a sturdy broad, muscled chest, the body a deep brown, and he clutched to this shred of humanity, he grasped and suckled at the huge nipple it bore, and was rewarded by a male groan of appreciation.
Come was pumping out of his mouth into the sucking maw of his fellow fighter, jism was splashing at his back as some hapless soul squirted it against him without any other contact, the smell of jizz assaulted his body, it smelled as if the entire room was now covered with sperm. And from the load he had shot and was shooting again, it probably was!
He found his consciousness receding as he was again pounded by orgasm, he felt as if his very brain would explode, for it felt like it throbbed bodily from the sensations of joy, joy, joy!
Again he sprayed a huge load, so big that the one who had grabbed him was forced to let go or drown in jism, and Pavel spewed his wad onto that dark face, watching with glazed-over eyesight as his seed striped this brown face with white streamers of jizz, soaking the small beard and then the face receded as he felt his grasp on reality fading. At the height of darkness, his passion released him, and he was gasping back to life.
"Just hold still, all of you." Efram was saying. "You get a short rest now, and we'll clean you up. When we've collected enough, we'll give you a free trip back to your own valley."
"My men?" Pavel gasped out. "The wounded, and dead?"
"The wounded were taken to our hospital; they get a free ride." Efram assured him. Pavel saw clothed legs move toward him, Efram had sought him out. "Your dead are still in the Valley of the Djinni, and I will bargain with them for the bodies on behalf of their relatives."
"For the right price." Pavel groaned.
"Of course." Efram seemed surprised. "What are you complaining about? You wanted a fight and you got one. Your losses were minor compared to the Djinni. Less than twenty dead and another fifteen that will probably die despite our advanced hospital facilities. We have no cure for Djinni poison. And you rescued sixty-five men. I call that a fair trade. The Djinni have learned that they can't keep humans hostage."
"What are you doing, then?" Salim's voice challenged him.
"Just borrowing you for a while, in exchange for your lives." Efram said. "Any who want to are welcome to go back out the door you came in and take your chances back there. But I warn you that the Djinni have decided against keeping humans captive in the future. From now on, we're their sworn enemies, and they'll kill any human on sight."
Something warm and wet was crawling over Pavel, but it didn't stain him, it cleansed him. He felt it pay special attention to his sperm-soaked back, and he actually enjoyed it, it was a sort of minor massage in the pulsing way it suctioned him clean.
Then he looked around. Small green creatures were crawling all over the prostrate bodies of his men.
"What are these things?" Another man beat Pavel to the question.
"Dew harvesters, we call them." Efram said. "From another valley humans haven't entered yet. But they love jism, too. Of course, on this planet, what doesn't, eh?" And Efram laughed and Pavel had to smile with him. Yes, the battle could have gone far worse but for his help.
"Very well." He said. "We'll stay long enough for your, uh, harvesters to collect what they need. Only what are you going to do with that much human sperm?"
"Sell it to the Angels, of course." Efram said. "Where do you think the blanks were taken? The Angels have to impregnate them fast before they starve. Then they hope to convince the Djinni to create more for them and let them keep and care for them. They can use their own Turtle Men in their own valley with the blanks. I think the Djinni Queens will come around. Sooner or later."
"You know a lot about what's going on." Pavel observed grimly.
Efram was near him now, he shrugged. "We have plenty of tools, but you already know that." he said. "You might say we found Stepwith's tool room."
Tool room. What an image that brought out. Pavel's memories of his father's tales of the odd alien which had brought them all to this planet and had abandoned it to them at the conclusion of the war with Connobar. Of course he had left tools behind, and these men had found it. The thought of such power in such greedy hands scared him no end.
Pavel got groggily to his feet, the harvesters were through with him. "So we won the battle with the Djinni? No more captives, ever?"
"That's right." Efram said. "Of course, they're going to kill humans on sight for an indefinite period to come. The mountains are less safe than ever for humans."
"Well, we have the tunnel you sold us, we can go under the mountains." Pavel grinned, looked around at the many lust-spent human bodies lying on the floor or kneeling in weariness or clutching each other for support or for comfort or for love.
"That's right." Efram said. "You and the Ifriti can build a world around the Angel and Djinni Valley. Of course, what about the Turtle Men?"
"Where is my father?" Salim called out. "My other father!"
Efram frowned. "He was stung by a Djinni. You didn't notice?"
"No!" Pavel said, suddenly worried. "Is he...?" He couldn't bring himself to say the word in front of Mahmoud's son.
"No, but he's very ill. He's in our hospital. You can visit him when we're done with you. Okay, rest time's over." he clapped his hands. "Choose your partners and don't catch the jizz this time. More you drink, the less the harvesters get and the longer this takes."
"One last question." a man said. "Where are we now? What is this place?"
"A place we built for the Angels." Efram said. "You're in the heart of the Angel City. When we're done, they'll feed you and give you your clothes back, and escort you to the door that takes you back into the tunnel I sold you."
And with that, Efram vanished away like a lost memory. Or a ghost. Better than holograms, Pavel was certain he had actually been in the room and transported like that.
Power, indeed.
And orgasm again clawed at his mind. He wondered with the last vestige of his thought how many gallons of jism the Angels needed!
END OF CHAPTER 21