Her legs collapsed under her and she would have fallen, but rough hands held her and dragged her forward on her knees towards the low entrance of the hut. Outside, there was a dense pack of bodies that filled the narrow street.
Dark menacing figures that pressed forward eagerly as she appeared in the entrance of the hut, and a blood-crazed roar went up from the crowd.
Her guards dragged her forward along the street, and the crowd swarmed forward, keeping pace with her, and the roar of their voices was like the sound of a winter storm.
Hands clutched at her, and her guards beat them away laughingly, and hustled her onwards with her paralysed legs flopping weakly under her. They carried her forward into the goods yards of the railways, through the steel gate, past the mountainous pile of naked mutilated corpses, all that remained of men whom she had helped to nurse.
The yard was lit by the smoky fluttering light of hundreds of torches, and it was only when she was almost up to the warehouse veranda that she recognized the figure that lolled indolently upon his cushions, using the raised concrete ramp as a grandstand from which to direct and watch the execution.
Vicky"s terror came rushing back like a black icy flood, and she tried desperately to twist herself free of the clutching hands, but they carried her forward and then lifted her suddenly.
Three of the heavy Galla lances had been set into the soft earth of the yard in the form of a tripod, with the steel lance tips bound firmly at the apex of the pyramid. With a force that she could not resist, her arms and legs were spread, and again she felt the lashing of rawhide at her wrists and ankles.
Her captors fell back in a circle, and she found herself suspended from the tripod of lances like a starfish, and the weight of her body cut the leather straps viciously into her flesh.
She looked up. Directly above her on the concrete ramp sat Ras Kullah. He said something to her in a high piping voice, but she did not understand the words and she could only stare in fascinated terror at his thick, soft lips. The tip of his tongue came out and ran slowly across his lips, like a fat golden cat.
He giggled suddenly and motioned to the two women who flanked him on the cushions. They came down into the yard, with their silver jewellery tinkling and the multicoloured silk of their robes glowing in the lamplight like the plumage of two beautiful birds of paradise.
As though they had rehea.r.s.ed their movements, one went to each side of Vicky as she hung on the tripod of lances. Their faces were serene, remote and lovely as two exotic blooms on the long graceful stems of their necks.
It was only when they reached up to touch her that Vicky saw the little silver knives in their hands, and she wriggled helplessly, her head twisting to watch the blades.
With expert economical movements the two women slit the fabric of Vicky"s clothing, from the yoke of her blouse at the throat, down in a single stroke to the hem of her skirt, and the dress fell away like an autumn leaf, and dropped into the mud below her.
Ras Kullah clapped his hands with glee, and the dense pack of dark bodies swayed and growled, pressing a little closer.
With the same unhurried knife strokes, the sheer silk of Vicky"s underwear was cut away and discarded, and she hung there naked and vulnerable, unable to cover her pale smooth body, with the long finely sculptured limbs spread and pinioned.
She dropped her head forward so that the golden hair fell forward and covered her face.
One of the Galla women moved around until she faced Vicky directly. She reached out with the little silver knife and touched the point to the white skin just below the base of her throat where a pulse beat visibly like a tiny trapped animal, and slowly, achingly slowly, she drew the blade downwards.
Vicky"s whole body convulsed, every limb stiffened and her back arched rigidly so that the shape of the muscle stood out clearly beneath the smooth unblemished skin.
Her head flew back, her eyes wide and staring, her mouth gaping open and she screamed.
The woman drew the knife on downwards, between the tense straining b.r.e.a.s.t.s. The white skin opened to the shallow carefully controlled razor point, and a vivid scarlet line marked the slow track of the blade as it moved on inexorably downwards.
The voice of the crowd rose, a gathering roar like the sound of a storm wind coming from afar, and Ras Kullah leaned forward on his cushions. His eyes shone and the wet pink lips were parted.
Two things happened simultaneously. From the darkness beyond the station buildings, Priscilla the Pig burst out into the torch-lit area.
Up until that moment when Jake Barton thrust down fully on the throttle, the gentle hum of the engine had been drowned by the animal roar of the crowd.
The heavy steel hull, driven by the full thrust of the old Bentley engine, ploughed into the crowd and went through it like a combine harvester through a field of standing wheat. Without any slackening of speed, it tore a pathway through the dense pack, directly towards the clearing where Vicky hung on the tripod of lances.
At the same moment, Gareth Swales stepped out of the black oblong of the warehouse door, directly behind where Ras Kullah sat.
He had the Italian rifle over the crook of his injured arm, and he fired without lifting the b.u.t.t to his shoulder.
The bullet smashed into the elbow of the Galla woman"s knife arm, and the arm snapped like a twig, the knife flew from the nerveless fingers and the woman shrieked and collapsed into the mud at Vicky"s feet.
The second woman swirled, her right hand drew back like the head of a striking adder, and she aimed the knife blade at Vicky"s soft white stomach; as she began the stroke that would plunge it hilt-deep, Gareth moved the rifle muzzle fractionally and fired again.
The heavy bullet caught the woman in the exact centre of her golden forehead. The black hole -appeared there like a third empty eye socket, and her head snapped backwards as though from a heavy blow.
As she went down, Gareth worked the bolt of the rifle and dropped the muzzle, again only fractionally, but as Ras Kullah twisted around desperately on his cushions, his mouth wide open and a gurgling cry keening from the thick wet lips, the muzzle of the rifle was aimed directly into the pink pit of his throat and Gareth fired the third shot. It shattered the front teeth in Ras Kullah"s upper jaw, before plunging on into his throat and then exiting through the back of the neck. The Ras went over backwards, and flapped and jumped like a maimed frog.
Garet stepped over him, and jumped down lightly into the yard. A Galla rushed at him with a broadsword held high above his head. Gareth fired again without lifting the rifle, stepped over the body and reached Vicky"s side just as Jake Barton swung the car to a skidding halt next to them and tumbled out of the driver"s hatch with a Harari dagger in his hand.
In the turret above them, Sara fired the Vickers in a long continuous blast, swinging it back and forth in its limited traverse and the Galla crowd scattered panic-stricken into the night.
Jake slashed the thongs that held Vicky suspended and she fell forward into his arms.
Gareth stooped and gathered Vicky"s torn clothing out of the mud and bundled it under his injured armpit.
"Shall we move on now, old son?" he asked Jake genially.
"I think the fun is over," and between them they lifted Vicky up the side of the hull.
The drums brought Count Aldo Belli out of a troubled dream-plagued sleep and he sat bolt upright from his hard couch on the floorboards of the hull, with his eyes wide and staring, and -fumbled frantically for his pistol.
"Gino!" he shouted. "Gino!" and there was no reply. Only that terrible rhythm in the night, pounding against his head so that he thought it might drive him mad. He tried to close his ears, pressing the palms of his hands to them, but the sound came through, like a gigantic pulse, the heartbeat of this cruel and savage land.
He could bear it no longer, and he crawled up inside the hull until he reached the rear hatch of the tank, and thrust his head out.
"Gino!" He was answered instantly. The little sergeant"s head popped up from where he had been cowering in his blankets on the rocky ground between the steel tracks. The Count could hear his teeth clattering in his skull like typewriter keys.
"Send the driver to fetch Major Castelani, immediately."
"Immediately." Gino"s head disappeared, and a few moments later appeared again so abruptly that the Count let out a startled cry and pointed the loaded pistol between his eyes.
"Excellency,"squawked Gino.
"Idiot," snarled the Count, his voice husky with terror. "I could have killed you, don"t you realize I have the reactions of a leopard?"
"Excellency, may I enter the machine?".
Aldo Belli thought about the request for a moment, and then enjoyed a perverse pleasure in refusing.
"Make me a cup of coffee," he ordered, but when it came he found that the incessant cacophony of drums that filled his head had worked on his nerves to the point where he could not hold the mug steady, and the rim rattled against his teeth.
"Goat"s urine!" snapped the Count, hoping that Gino had not noticed the unsteady hand. "You are trying to poison me," he accused and tossed the steaming liquid over the side, and at that moment the stocky figure of the Major loomed out of the darkness of the gorge.
"The men are standing to, Colonel he growled. "In another fifteen minutes it will be light enough-"
"Good. Good." The Count cut him short. "I have decided that I should return immediately to headquarters. General Badoglio will expect me-"
"Excellent Colonel,"
the Major interrupted in his turn. "I have received intelligence that large bands of the enemy have infiltrated our lines, and are operating in the rear areas.
There is a good chance you might be able to bring them to account." Castelani, by this time, knew his man intimately.
"Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a desperate business."
"On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, "I wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused."
"Indeed, Colonel."
"I shall move up immediately," announced Aldo Belli, and glanced anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column, protected from both front and rear.
The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he felt he must scream aloud.
It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.
Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope above his position where, moments before, there had been only black shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.
Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink light against the black brooding ma.s.s of rock. He dropped his gaze and looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with dramatic African suddenness.
Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the African dawn in the mountains.
The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like an owl, up the gorge.
There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped up.
"Mary, Mother of G.o.d," he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.
It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.
"Pray for us sinners," breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly, and at that instant he heard Castelani"s voice, like the bellow of a wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.
Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering roar that drowned out all other sound.
The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.
The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the ma.s.sed charge of Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead, as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a wall of bodies.
The Count"s terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle. The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat, and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in deep windrows.
Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords, and were through.
Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the Italian trenches, shot to b.l.o.o.d.y pieces by close range volleys of rifle fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.
They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.
He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball, and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried only a sword, as long as the spread of a man"s arms and as broad as the span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.
The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall leader came on at a dead run.
The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by the man"s persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.
In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust from the warrior"s robes, and leaving b.l.o.o.d.y splotches across his chest yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity of the man"s rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.
The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the man"s body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards, staggering and dragging the sword beside him.
The last burst of fire struck him, and the sword dropped from his hand; he sank to his knees, but kept crawling now he had seen the Count and his eyes fastened on the white man"s face. He tried to shout something, but the sound was drowned in a bright flooding gout of blood that filled his open mouth. The crawling, mutilated figure reached the hull of the stationary tank, and the Italian almost as though in awe of the man"s tenacity. guns fell silent Laboriously, the dying warrior dragged his broken body up towards the Count, watching him with a terrible dying anger, and the Count fumbled nervously with the ivory b.u.t.t of the Beretta, slipping a fresh clip of cartridges into the recessed b.u.t.t.
"Stop him, you fools," he cried. "Kill him! Don"t let him get in." But the guns were silent.
With shaking hands, the Count slapped the magazine home and lifted the pistol. At a range of six feet he sighted briefly into the crawling Ethiopian.
He emptied the magazine of the Beretta in frantic haste, the shots crashing out in rapid succession in the sudden silence that hung over the field.
A bullet struck the warrior in the centre of his sweat-glazed forehead, leaving a perfectly round black hole in the gleaming brown skin, and the man slithered backwards and then rolled down the hull, coming to rest at last upon his back, and he stared up at the swiftly lightening sky with wide, unseeing eyes. Out between the slack lips dropped a set of artificial teeth, and the old mouth collapsed and fell inwards.
The Count was shaking still, but then quite unexpectedly a surging emotion swept away the terrors that had gripped him. He felt a vast proprietorial sense of emotional involvement with the man he had killed he wanted to take some part of him, some trophy of his kill. He wanted to scalp him, or take his head and have it cured so that he might preserve this moment for ever, but before he could move, there was the shrilling of whistles, and a bugle began urgently to sound the advance.
On the slope ahead of them, only the dead lay in their piles and mounds, while the last of those who had survived that crazy suicidal charge were disappearing like wisps of smoke back among the rocks.
The road to Sardi was open, and like the hard professional he was, Luigi Castelani seized the chance. As the bugle sang its bra.s.sy command, the Italian infantry rose from the trenches, and the formation of tanks rumbled forward.
The corpse of the ancient Harari warrior lay directly in the track of the command tank, and the rumbling steel treads pressed it into the rocky ground as it pa.s.sed over, squashing it like the carca.s.s of a rabbit on a highway, as it bore Colonel Count Aldo Belli triumphantly up the gorge to Sardi and the Dessie road.
At the wall of rock built right across the throat of the gorge, the armoured column ground to a halt, blocked at the very lip of the valley, and when the Italian infantry, who had moved under cover of the black steel hulls, swarmed out to tear the wall down, they met another wave of Ethiopian defenders who rose from where they had been lying behind the wall, and immediately attackers and defenders had become so entwined in a single struggling ma.s.s that the artillery and machine guns could not fire for fear of gunning down their own.
Three times during the morning the infantry had been thrown back from the wall, and the heavy artillery barrage that they had directed against it made no impression on the granite boulders. When the tanks came clanking and squealing like great black beetles hunting for a breach, there was none, and the trace had clawed sparks from the rock but been unable to lift the great weight of steel at the acute angle necessary to climb the wall.
Now there was a lull that had lasted almost half an hour, and Gareth and Jake sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one of the ma.s.sive granite blocks. Both of them were staring upwards at the sky, and it was Jake who broke the silence.
"There is the blue." They saw it through the last eddying banks of cloud that still clung like the white arms of a lover to the shoulder of the mountain, but were slowly smeared away by the fresh dry breeze off the desert.
A ray of brilliant sunlight burst into the valley, and threw a rainbow of vivid colour in a mighty arc from mountain to mountain.
"That"s beautiful," murmured Gareth Softly, staring upwards.
Jake drew the watch from his pocket, and glanced at the dial.
"Seven minutes past eleven." He read the hands. "Just about right now they"ll radio them that the clouds are open.
They"ll be sitting in the c.o.c.kpits, eager as fighting c.o.c.ks." He patted the watch back into his pocket. "In just thirty-five minutes they"ll be here." Gareth straightened up and pushed the lank blond hair off his forehead.
"I know one gentleman who won"t be here when they come.
"Make that two, "Jake agreed.
"That"s it, old son. We"ve done our bit. Old Lij Mikhael can"t grouse about a couple of minutes. It will be as close to noon as pleasure is to sin."