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On the great dry plain, outside of Iron Man bow shot range, and in a place unlikely to have scouts nearby, the genie conjured once more. This time the results came quickly. What appeared was an army of one hundred magnificently uniformed light cavalry, and a towering white stallion for Aladdin to ride as leader of these men. The genie reclothed himself to look like a somewhat drab officer's aide.
"Time for you to do your part." said the genie to Aladdin, "You must lead these men to distract the Iron Men, and to get a detachment of them to follow you to the secret location."
Aladdin breathed deeply, "Right! And I'm ready!" The genie motioned for him to continue.
Aladdin started with a princely and commanding speech -- his princely thinking told him it was the right way to start a battle. He then lead the men close to the Iron Man camp, and launched a lightning raid on the back side.
It was a devastating success. The Iron Men were not expecting a night attack, and certainly not from the desert side. Many of the Iron Men panicked and for about ten minutes the attack was a complete success -- many iron men fell, and no genie men fell.
But the Iron Men were battle hardened, and they had traveled many miles and many days to get here. They did not stay spooked for long. After the first ten minutes, Iron Man units came together. First they formed squares of resistance to stop the deaths, then they started shooting back. Once the squares formed, only a few Iron Men fell, and when five genie men fell, Aladdin called for a retreat back into the desert. The genie army moved back into the desert as quickly as it had come. It regrouped there, and waited.
The Iron Men response took about an hour to organize. The Iron Men commander was prepared to do nothing but post more guards, until he inspected the bodies of the dead genie soldiers. He noted that their uniforms were magnificent, and each soldier wore a belt of gold chain that was buckled with a large ruby. He smelled treasure... fine treasure.
He told his best lieutenant, "Find them, and find out where they came from." Scouts reported that the genie army was reorganizing outside the camp; the lieutenant organized three hundred men for desert travel, and headed out to do some "intensive interrogation."
As the lieutenant's troop came within long arrow range, the genie's army launched a volley, then retreated. They moved back to a low ridge, then stood their ground again. The lieutenant was no fool. He spread his army wide, like a crescent, and let the two wings advance ahead of the center. This time, when Aladdin's army retreated after firing a few volleys, they did so under a hail of Iron Man arrows, and ten more fell.
"Ouch!" said the genie, "You are down to eighty five men. Be careful. Your army must last the night!"
Aladdin nodded grimly.
The running battle did continue all night, with Aladdin's army leading the Iron Man army into bad lands north of the Tyre-Induslan road. There, the armies played cat-and-mouse in a warren of gullies and valleys that grew up between the buttes, mesas and higher flatland to the east, and the lower flatland that was the great plain to the west. The cat-and-mouse was deadly, and harder on the Iron Men, but they continued to play because each dead genie soldier uniform gave them a new fortune to share.
As the dawn was lightening the sky in the east, the genie army had dwindled from one hundred to thirty men, and the Iron Man army was down from three hundred to sixty. But the Iron Man army commander was happy: he had sixty men who each had a small fortune in uniforms, and he had a large one. He was about to return to camp when the amazing happened....
As they turned up one last gully, they saw the thirty man genie army standing it's ground. The amazing part was that behind the little genie army was a big genie army!! -- probably one hundred men -- and behind that was a magnificent walled city. The city was magnificent because the walled were trimmed in gold!! Fine, lustrous gold!!
"No wonder these soldiers are so rich!" muttered the commander. But he didn't have time to do more than wonder. The genie army advanced!
"RETREAT!" commanded the lieutenant, "WE WILL FINISH THIS FIGHT ANOTHER DAY."
For half a day, the Iron Man army and the genie army continued to play cat-and-mouse, but reversed this time. Now the genie army was hunting down Iron Man soldiers, and the Iron Man soldiers were trying to find their way out of the badlands warren, and back to camp. In the end, only thirty men made it back to camp, and they were hot, tired and half crazed with thirst from their long day on the hot plain.
They were half-crazed, but full of treasure, and full of stories about a Golden City to the north.
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