Cry Wolf

"Then we will withdraw into the gorge demolishing the road as we go, and resisting at each strong place. We won't be able to use the cars again until we reach Sardi but there in the bowl of the mountains there is good open ground and room to manoeuvre. It is also the last point at which we can effectively block the Italian advance." They were silent again and the sound of an engine came up to them. They watched the armoured car reach the foot of the gorge and begin growling and nosing its way upwards, at the pace of a walking man, except where it had to back and lock hard to make one of the sleep hairpin bends in the road. The Lij roused himself and sighed with what seemed a deep weariness of the spirit.

"One thing I must mention to you, gentlemen. My father is a warrior in the old style. He does not know the meaning of fear, and he cannot imagine the effect of modern weapons especially the machine gun on massed foot soldiers. I trust you to restrain his exuberance." Jake remembered the bodies hanging like dirty laundry on the barbed wire of France, and felt the cold tickle run up his spine. Nobody spoke again until the car, still blazoned with its crimson crosses, drew up level with where they stood and they scrambled down the bank to meet it.

Vicky's head appeared in the hatch. She must have found an opportunity to bathe, for her hair was newly washed and shiny and caught behind her head in a silk ribbon. The sun had bleached her hair to a whiter gold, but the peachy velvet of her complexion had been gilded by that same sun to a darker honey colour. Immediately Jake and Gareth moved forward, neither trusting the other to be alone with her for an instant.

But she was brusque, and concerned only with the injured girl who was laid out on the floor of the cab on a hastily improvised bed of blankets and skins. Her leave-taking was off-hand and distracted while the Lij climbed in through the rear doors, and she pulled away again up the steep track followed by a squadron of the Prince's bodyguard looking like a gang of cut-throats on their shaggy mountain ponies, festooned with bandoliers of ammunition and hung with rifles and swords. They clattered away after the car, and Jake watched them out of sight. He felt a sense of deep unease that the girl should be up there in the mountains beyond any help that he could give her. He was staring after the car.

"Put your mind back in your pants," Gareth advised him cynically.

"You're gain" to need it for the Eyeties, now." from the foot of the gorge to the lip of the bowl of land in which stood the town of Sardi was a few dozen miles across the ground, but the track climbed five thousand feet and it took six hours of hard driving for Vicky to reach it.

The Prince's labour gangs were working upon the track still, groups of dark men in mud-stained shairmias, hacking away at the steep banks and piles of boulders that blocked the narrow places. Twice these men had to rope up the car to drag and shove it over a particularly treacherous stretch with the torrent roaring in its bed a hundred feet below and the wheels of the car inches from the crumbling edge of the precipice.

In the middle of the afternoon the sun passed behind the towering ramparts of stone leaving the gut of the gorge in deep shadow, and a clammy chill made Vicky shiver even as she wrestled with the controls of the heavy vehicle. The engine was running very unevenly, and back-firing explosively at the change of atmospheric pressure as they toiled upwards. Also Sara's condition seemed to be worsening rapidly.

When Vicky stopped briefly to rest her aching arms and back muscles she found that Sara was running a raging fever, her skin was dry and baking hot and her dark eyes were glittering strangely. She cut short her rest and took the wheel again.

The gorge narrowed dramatically, so the sky was a narrow ribbon of blue high above and the cliffs seemed almost to close jaws of granite upon the labouring car. Although it seemed impossible, the track turned even more steeply upwards so that the big back wheels spun and skidded, throwing out fist-sized stones like cannon balls and scattering the escort who followed closely.

Then abruptly Vicky drove the car over the crest and came out through rocky portals into a wide, gently inclined bowl of open ground hemmed in completely by the mountain walls. Perhaps twenty miles across, the bowl was cultivated in patches, and scattered with groups of the round tukuL-, the thatch and daub huts of the peasant farmers.

Domestic animals, goats and a few milk cows grazed along the course of the Sardi River where the grass was green and lush and thick forests of cedar trees found a precarious purchase along the rocky banks.

The town itself was a gathering of brick-built and white, plastered buildings, whose roofs of galvanized corrugated iron caught the last probing rays of the sun as it came through the western pass.

Here in the west, the mountains fell back, allowing a broad gentle incline to rise the last two thousand feet to the level of the plateau of the highlands. Down this slope, the narrow-gauge railway looped in a tight series of hairpins until it entered the town and ended in a huddle of sheds and stock pens.

The Catholic mission station was situated beyond the town on the slopes of the western rise. It was a sadly dilapidated cluster of tin-roofed daub buildings, grouped around a church built of the same materials.

The church was the only building that was freshly whitewashed. As they drove past the open doors, Vicky saw that the rows of rickety pews were empty, but that lighted candles burned upon the altar and there were fresh flowers in the vases.

The church's emptiness and the sorry state of the buildings were a reflection of the massive power of the Coptic Church over this land and its people. There was very little encouragement given to the missionaries of any other faith, but this did not prevent the local inhabitants from taking advantage of the medical facilities offered by the mission.

Almost fifty patients squatted along the length of the veranda that ran the full length of the clinic, and they looked up with minimal interest as Vicky parked the armoured car below them.

The doctor was a heavily built man, with short bowed legs and a thick neck. His hair was cropped close to the round skull and was silvery white, and his eyes were a pale blue. He spoke no English, and he acknowledged Vicky with a glance and a grunt, transferring all his attention to Sara. When two of his assistants rolled her carefully on to a stretcher and carried her up on to the veranda, Vicky would have followed but the Lij restrained her.

"She is in the best hands and we have work to do." The telegraph office at the railway station was closed and locked, but in answer to the Prince's shouts the station master came hurrying anxiously down the track. He recognized Mikhael immediately.

The process of tapping out Vicky's despatch on the telegraph was a long, laborious business, almost beyond the ability of the station master whose previous transmissions had seldom exceeded a dozen words at a time. He frowned and muttered to himself as he worked, and Vicky wondered in what mangled state her masterpiece of the journalistic art would reach her editor's desk in New York. The Prince had left her and gone off with his escort to the official government residence on the outskirts of the village, and it was after nine o'clock before the station master had sent the last of Vicky's despatch a total of almost five thousand words and Vicky found that her legs were unsteady and her brain woolly with fatigue when she went out into the utter darkness of the mountain night. There were no stars, for the night mists had filled the basin and swirled in the headlights as Vicky groped her way through the village and at last found the government residence.

It was a large sprawling complex of buildings with wide verandas, whitewashed and iron-roofed, standing in a grove of dark-foliaged cosa flora trees from which the bats screeched and fluttered to dive upon the insects that swarmed in the light from the windows of the main building.

Vicky halted the car in front of the largest building and found herself surrounded by silent but watchful throngs of dark men, all of them heavily armed like the Harari she knew, but these were a different people. She did not know why, but she was sure of it.

There were many others camped in the grove. She could see their fires and hear the stamp and snort of their tethered horses, the voices of the women and the laughter of the men.

The throng opened for her and she crossed the veranda and entered the large room which was crowded with many men, and lit by the smoky paraffin lamps that hung from the ceiling. The room stank of male sweat, tobacco and the hot spicy aroma of food and tej.

A hostile silence fell as she entered, and Vicky stood uncertainly on the threshold, scrutinized by a hundred dark suspicious eyes, until Lij Mikhael rose from where he sat at the far end of the room.

"Miss Camberwell." He took her hand. "I was beginning to worry about you. Did you send your despatch?" He led her across the room and seated her beside him, before he indicated the man who sat opposite him.

"This is Ras Kullah of the Gallas," he said, and despite her weariness, Vicky studied him with interest.

Her first impression was identical to that she had received from the men amongst the cosa flora trees outside in the darkness. There was a veiled hostility, a coldness of the spirit about the man, almost reptilian aura about the dark unblinking eyes.

He was a young man, still in his twenties, but his face and body were bloated by disease or debauchery so that there was a soft jelly-like look to his flesh. The skin was a pale creamy colour, unhealthy and clammy, as though it had never been exposed to sunlight. His lips were full and petulant, a startling cherry red in colour that ill suited the pale tones of his skin.

He watched Vicky, when the Prince introduced her, with the same dead expression in his eyes, but gave no acknowledgement though the flat snakelike eyes moved slowly over her body, like loathsome hands, dwelling and lingering on her breasts and her legs, before moving back to Lij Mikhael's face.

The pudgy, swollen hands lifted a buck-horn pipe to the dark cherry lips and Ras Kullah drew deeply upon it holding the smoke in his lungs before exhaling slowly.

When Vicky smelled the smoke, she knew the reason for the dead eyes in the Ras's puffy face.

"You have not eaten all day," said Lij Mikhael, and gave instructions for food to be brought to Vicky. "You will excuse me now, Miss Camberwell, the Ras speaks no English and our negotiations are still at an early stage. I have ordered a room made ready where you may rest as soon as you have eaten. We shall be talking all the night," the Lij smiled briefly, "and saying very little, for a blood feud of a hundred years is what we are talking around." He turned back to the Ras.

The hot, spicy food warmed and filled the cold hollow place in the pit of Vicky's stomach, and a mug of fiery tej made her choke and gasp, but then lifted her spirits and revived her journalist's curiosity so that she could look again with interest at what was happening around her.

The interminable discussion went on between the two men, cautious plodding negotiations between implacable luctantly drawn together by a greater danger and enemies, a more powerful adversary.

On either side Ras sat two young women, pale sloe-eyed creatures, with noble regular features and thick dark hair frizzled out into a stiff round bush that caught the light of the lanterns and glowed along the periphery like a luminous halo. They sat impassively showing no emotion, even when the Ras fondled one or the other of them with the absent-minded caress that he might have bestowed on a lap dog.

Only once, as he took a fat round breast in one plump soft paw and squeezed it, the girl winced slightly and Vicky seeing the crimson linen of her blouse dampened in a wet dark patch at the nipple realized that the girl's breast was heavy with milk.

Vicky's artificial sense of well-being was fast fading now, sinking once again under the weight of her weariness, and lulled by the food in her belly, the thick smoky atmosphere and the hypnotic cadence of the Amharic language. She was on the point of excusing herself from the Lij and leaving when there was a disturbance outside the room, and the shrill angry cries of a voice creaking with age and indi nation The room was immediately electric with a charged feeling of expectation, and Ras Kullah looked up and called out querulously.

A youth of perhaps nineteen years of age was dragged into the room and held by two armed guards in the centre of the hastily cleared space before Ras Kullah. His arms were bound with rawhide that cut deeply into the flesh of his wrists, and his face was wet and shiny with the sweat of fear, while his eyes rolled wildly in their sockets.

He was followed by a shrieking crone, a wizened baboon like figure, swathed in a voluminous black sham mastiff with filth and greenish with age. Repeatedly she attempted to attack the captive youth, clawing at his face with bony hooked fingers, her toothless old mouth opened in a dark pink-lined pit as she leaped and cavorted before the terrified youth, trying again and again to reach him, while the two guys pushed her away with c ee gu aw and playful blows, never relinquishing their grip on their prisoner.

The Ras leaned forward to watch this play with awakening interest, his dark dull eyes taking on a sparkle of anticipation as he asked a question, and the crone flew to him and flung herself full-length before him.

She began to bleat out a long high-pitched plea, attempting at the same time to grasp and kiss the Ras's feet. The Ras giggled with anticipation, kicking away the old woman's hands and occasionally asking a question that was answered either by the guards or the grovelling crone.

"Miss Camberwell whispered the Prince. "I suggest that you leave now.

This will not be pleasant to watch."

"What is it?" Vicky demanded, her professional instincts roused. "What are they doing?" "The woman accuses the youth of murdering her son.

The guards are her witnesses and the Ras is trying the case.

He will give judgement in a moment, and the sentence will be carried out immediately."

Here? "Vicky looked startled.

"Yes, Miss Camberwell. I urge you to leave. The punishment will be biblical, from the Old Testament which is the centre of the Coptic faith. It will be a tooth for a tooth." Vicky hesitated to take the Prince's advice, all human experience was her field no matter how bizarre, and suddenly it was too late.

Laughingly, the Ras thrust the old woman away again with a kick to the chest that sent her sprawling across the beaten earth floor and he called a peremptory command to the guards who held the accused youth.

Flapping like a maimed black crow upon the floor, the crone set up a wailing shriek of triumph as she heard the verdict, and she tried to regain her feet. The guards guffawed again and began to strip away the condemned man's clothing, tearing it from his body until he stood completely naked except for his bonds.

The crowded room now buzzed with excitement at the coming entertainment, and the doorway and windows were packed with those who had come in from the encampment amongst the cosa flora trees. Even the two impassive madonnas who flanked the Ras had become animated, leaning forward to chatter softly to each other, smiling secretly as their dark-moon eyes shone and the full swollen breasts swung heavily under the thin material of their blouses.

The doomed youth was whimpering softly, his head turning back and forth, as though seeking escape, his naked body slim and finely muscled with dark amber skin that, glowed in the lamplight, and his arms bound tightly behind his back. His legs were long and the muscles looked hard and beautifully sculptured, and the dark bush of curls in his groin was dense and crisp-looking. His thick circumcised penis hung limply, seeming to epitomize the man's despair.

Vicky tried to tear her eyes away, ashamed to look upon a human being stripped thus of all dignity, but the spectacle was mesmeric.

The old woman hopped and flapped in front of the captive, her wrinkled brown features contorted in an expression of utter malice and she opened her toothless mouth and spat into his face. The spittle ran down his cheek and dripped on to his chest.

"Please leave now," Lij Mikhael urged Vicky, and she tried to rise, but it seemed that her legs would not respond.

One of the Galla warriors sitting opposite Vicky drew the narrow-bladed dagger from the tooled leather sheath on his hip. The handle was carved from the horn of a kudu bull and bound with copper wire, the blade was slightly curved and viciously pointed, twice the span of a man's hand in length. He shouted to attract the woman's attention, then sent the weapon skidding across the floor towards her and she pounced upon it with another gleeful shriek and pranced before the cringing youth, brandishing the knife while the watchers shouted encouragement to her.

The captive began to twist and struggle, watching the knife with the fixed concentration of despair and terror, but the two tall guards held him easily, chuckling like a pair of gaunt ogres, watching the knife also.

The old woman let out one more high-pitched shriek, and leapt at him the long skinny black arm lunged out, the point of the blade aimed at his heart. The woman's strength was too frail to drive it home, and the point struck bone and glanced aside, skidding around the ribcage, opening a long shallow cut that exposed the white bone in its depths for the instant before blood flooded out between the lips of the wound.

A howl of delight went up from the assembled Gallas, and they goaded on the avenger with mocking cries and yips like those of a pack of excited jackals.

Again and again the old woman struck, and the youth kicked and struggled, his guards roaring with laughter and the blood from the shallow wounds flying and sparkling in the lamplight, splattering the old woman's knife arm and speckling her angry screeching face. Her frustration made her blows more wild and feeble.

Unable to penetrate his chest, she turned her attack upon his face. One blow split his nose and upper lip, and the next slashed across his eye, turning the socket instantly into a dark blood-glutted hole. The guards let him fall to the floor.

The old woman leapt upon his chest and, clinging to him like a huge, grotesque vampire bat, she began to saw determinedly at the youth's throat until at last the carotid artery erupted, dousing her robes and puddling the floor on which they rolled together while the Galla watchers roared their approbation.

Only then could Vicky move; she leapt to her feet and pushed her way through the throng that jammed the doorway and ran out into the cool night. She realized that her blouse was damp with the sweat of nausea and she leaned against the stem of a cosa flora tree, trying to fight it, unavailingly; then she doubled over and retched tearingly, choking up her horror.

The horror stayed with her for many hours, denying her the sleep her body craved. She lay alone in the small room that Lij Mikhael had ordered for her, and listened to the drums beating and the shouts of laughter and bursts of singing from the Galla encampment amongst the cosa flora trees.

When she slept at last, it was not for long, and then she awoke to a soft tickling movement on her skin and the first fiery itch across her belly.

Disgusted by the loathsome touch she threw aside the single blanket and lit the candle. Across the flat smooth plain of her belly, the bites of vermin were strung like a girdle of angry red beads and she shuddered, her whole body crawling with the thought of it.

She spent what remained of the night huddled uncomfortably on the floor of the armoured car. The mountain cold struck through the steel of Miss Wobbly's hull, and Vicky shivered into the dawn, scratching morosely at the hot lumps across her stomach. Then she filled the growling ache of her empty stomach with a tin of cold corned beef from the emergency rations in the locker under the driver's seat, before driving up the slope of the western pass to the German mission station where she experienced the first lift of spirits since the horrors of the night.

Sara had responded almost miraculously to the treatment she was receiving, and although she was still weak and a little shaky, the fever had abated, and she was once more able to give Vicky the benefit of her vast wisdom and worldly experience.

Vicky sat beside the narrow iron bedstead in the overcrowded ward, while other patients coughed and groaned around her, and held Sara's thin dry hand from which the flesh seemed to have wasted overnight and poured out to her the horrors still pent up inside her.

"Ras Kullah," Sara made a moue of disgust. "He is a degenerate man, that one. Did he have his milk cows with him?" Vicky was for a moment at a loss, until she remembered the two madonnas. "His men scour the mountains to keep him supplied with pretty young mothers in full milk ugh!" She shuddered theatrically, and Vicky felt her unsettled stomach quail. "That and his hemp pipe and the sight of blood. He is an animal. His people are animals they have been our enemies since the time of Solomon, and it shames me now that we must have them to fight beside us." Then she changed the subject in her usual mercurial fashion.

"Will you go down the pass again today?"

"Yes," Vicky said, and Sara sighed.

"The doctor says that I cannot go with you not for many days still."

"I will fetch you, as soon as you are ready."

"No. No," she protested. "It is shorter and easier on horseback. I will come immediately but until then carry My love to Gregorius. Tell him my heart beats with great fury for him, and he walks through my thoughts eternally."

"I will tell him," agreed Vicky, delighted at the sentiment and the choice of words. At that moment a tall young man in a white jacket, with the face of a brown pharaoh and huge dark eyes, came to record Sara's temperature, stooping solicitously over her and murmuring softly in Amharic as he felt for her pulse with delicate finely shaped hands.

Sara was transformed instantly into a languid wanton, with smouldering eyes and pouting lips, but when the orderly left, she was instantly herself again, giggling delightedly as she drew Vicky's head down to whisper in her ear.

"Is he not as beautiful as the dawn? He studies to be a doctor, and goes soon to the University at Berlin. He has fallen in love with me since last night and as soon as my leg is less painful I shall take him as a lover." And when she saw Vicky's startled glance, she went on hurriedly, "But just for a short time, of course. Only until I am well enough to ride back to Gregorius." When Lij Mikhael came, riding with his wild horsemen.

They waited outside in the sun while the Prince came into the ward to take farewell of his daughter. His sombre mood lightened momentarily as he embraced Sara, and he saw how well she was recovered. Then he told the two women, "Yesterday at noon, the Italian army under General De Bono crossed the Mareb River in force and has begun to march on A owa and Ambo Aradam. The wolf is into the sheepfold. There has already been fighting and the Italian aeroplanes are bombing our towns.

We are now at war."

"It is no surprise," said Sara. "The only surprise is that. they took so long."

"Miss Camberwell, you must return as swiftly as you can to my father at the foot of the gorge, and warn him that he must be ready to meet an enemy attack." He drew out a gold pocket watch and glanced at it.

"Within the next few minutes, an aircraft will be landing here to take me to the Emperor. I would be obliged, Miss Camberwell, if you would accompany me to the-landing field." Vicky nodded, and the Lij went on.

"Ras Kullah's men are assembled there. He has agreed to send fifteen hundred horsemen to join my father, and they will follow you-" He got no further, for Sara intervened hotly.

"Miss Camberwell must not be left alone with those hyenas of Kullah's.

They would eat their own mothers." The Lij smiled and held up a hand.

"My own bodyguard will ride with Miss Camberwell, under my strict charge to protect her at all times."

"I do not like it," pouted Sara, and groped for Vicky's hand.

"I will be all right, Sara." She stooped and kissed the girl, who clung to her for an instant.

will come soon," whispered Sara, "Do nothing until I am with you.

Perhaps it should be Gareth after all," and Vicky chuckled.

"You're getting me confused."

"Yes," agreed Sara. "That's why I should be there to advise you." Mikhael and Vicky stood side by side on the hull of Miss Wobbly and shaded the sun from their eyes as they watched the aircraft come in between the peaks.

As a pilot Vicky could appreciate the difficulty of the approach, down into the bowl of Sardi, where treacherous down-draughts fell along the cliffs, creating whirlpools of turbulence. The sun had already dispelled the chill of the night making the high mountain air even thinner and more treacherous.

Vicky recognized the aircraft type immediately, for she had trained for her own pilot's licence on a similar model.

It was a Puss Moth, a small sky-blue high-winged monoplane, powered by the versatile De Havilland four-cylinder aero engine. It would carry a pilot and two passengers in a tricycle arrangement of seating, the pilot up front in an enclosed cabin under the broad sweep of the wings. Seeing the familiar aircraft reminded her, with a fleeting but bitter pang, of those golden untroubled days before October 1929, before that black Friday of evil reputation. Those idyllic days when she had been the only daughter of a rich man, spoilt and pampered, plied with such toys as motor cars and speed boats and aircraft.

All that had been swept away in a single day. Everything had gone, even that adoring godlike figure that had been her father dead by his own hand. She felt the chill of it still, the sense of terrible loss, and she turned her thoughts aside and concentrated on the approaching aircraft.

The pilot came in down the western pass under the cliffs, then turned steeply and side-slipped in towards the only piece of open ground in the valley that was free of rocks and oles- It was used as a stockyard, gymkhana ground or polo field as the need arose and at the moment the ankle-deep grass was providing grazing for fifty goats.

Ras Kullah's horsemen drove the goats from the field at a gallop, and then as the Puss Moth touched down, they wheeled and tore down the field at its wing-tips, firing their rifles into the air and vying with each other to perform feats of horsemanship.

The pilot taxied to where the car stood and opened the side window. He was a burly young white man, with a suntanned face and curly hair. He shouted above the engine rumble in an indeterminate colonial accent Australian, New Zealand or South African, "Are you Lij Mikhael?" The Prince shook hands briefly with Vicky before jumping down. With his sham ma fluttering wildly in the slipstream from the propeller, he hurried to the aircraft and climbed into the tiny cabin.

The pilot was watching Vicky with a lively interest through the side window and when she caught his eye he pursed his lips and made a circle with thumb and forefinger in the universal sign of approval.

His grin was so frank and boyishly open that Vicky had to grin back.

"Room for one more!" he shouted, and she laughed and shouted back, "Next time, perhaps."

"it will be a pleasure, lady," and he gunned the motor and swung away lining up on the short rough-surfaced runway.

Vicky watched the Puss Moth climb laboriously up towards the mountain crests. As the busy buzzing of its engine faded, a feeling of terrible aloneness fell over her and she glanced around apprehensively at the hordes of swarthy horsemen who surrounded the armoured car. Suddenly she realized that not one of all these men could speak her language, and that now there was a small cold cramp of fear at the base of her belly to go with the aloneness.

Almost desperately, she longed for some contact with the world which she knew, rather than these savage horsemen in this land of wild mountains. For an instant she thought of checking the telegraph office for a reply to her despatch, but dismissed the idea immediately. There was no chance that her editor would yet have received, let alone replied to her communication. Now she looked around her and identified the knot of men and horses that comprised Lij Mikhael's bodyguard, but they seemed very little different from the greater mass of Gallas.

Little comfort there, and she climbed quickly down into the driver's hatch of the car and engaged the low gear.

She bumped over the rough ground and found the track that led down along the river towards the tall grey stone portals of the gorge. She was aware of the long untidy column Of Mounted men that followed her closely, but her t mind leapt ahead to her arrival at the foot of the gorge, to her reunion with Jake and Gareth. Suddenly those two were the most important persons in her whole existence and she longed for them, both or either of them, with a strength that showed in the white knuckles of her hands as she gripped the steering-wheel.

The descent of the gorge was a more terrifying experience than the ascent. The steeper stretches fell away before Vicky with the gut-swooping feel of a ski-run, and once the heavy cumbersome car was committed to it, its own weight took charge and it went down bucking and skidding. Even with the brakes locking all four wheels, it kept plunging downwards, with very little steering control transmitted to the front wheels.

A little after noon, Vicky had come more than halfway down the gorge, and she remembered that this final pitch was the truly terrifying part, where the track clung to the precipice high above the roaring river in its rocky bed. Her arms and back were painfully cramped with the effort of fighting the kicking wheel, and-sweat had drenched the hair at her temples and stung her eyes. She wiped it away with her forearm, and went at the slope, braking hard the moment that the car began rolling down the thirty-degree incline.

With rock and loose earth kicking and spewing out from under the big wheels, they descended in a heavy lumbering rush, and halfway down Vicky realized that she had no control and that the vehicle was gradually slewing sideways and swinging its tail out towards the edge of the cliff.

She felt the first lurch as one rear wheel dropped slightly, riding out over the hundred-foot drop, and instinctively she knew that in this instant of its headlong career, the car was critically hanging at the extreme edge of its balance. In a hundredth of a second, it would go beyond the point of recovery, and she made without conscious thought a last instinctive grasp at survival. She jumped her foot from the brake pedal, swung the wheel into the line of skid and thrust her other foot down hard on the throttle. One wheel hung over the cliff, the other caught with a vicious jerk as the engine roared at full power, and the huge steel hull jumped like a startled gazelle, and hurled itself away from the cliff edge, struck the far bank of earth and rocky scree and was flung back, miraculously, into its original line of track.

At the bottom of the pitch, the slope eased. Vicky fought the car to a standstill there and dragged herself out of the driver's hatch.

She found that she was shaking uncontrollably, and that she had to get to a private place off the track, for in reaction she was close to vomiting and her control of her other bodily functions was shaken by that terrible sliding, bucking ride.

She had left the column of horsemen far behind, and could only faintly hear their voices and the clatter of hooves on the rocky track as she scrambled and clawed her way up the side of the gorge to a thicket of dwarf cedar trees, where she could be alone.

There was a spring of clear sweet water amongst the cedars and when her body had purged itself and she had it under control again, she knelt beside the rocky pool and bathed her face and neck. Using the surface of the shining water as a mirror, she combed her hair and rearranged her clothing.

The reaction to extreme fear had left her feeling lightheaded and slightly apart from reality. She picked her way out of the cedar thicket, and down to where the car stood upon the track. The Galla horsemen had arrived and they and their mounts crowded the entire area, back up the track for half a mile, and in a solid mob about the armoured car.

Those nearest the car had dismounted, and when she tried to make her way through their ranks they gave her only minimal passage, so that she must brush close to them.

Suddenly she realized with a fresh lunge of fear in her chest that the Harari bodyguard of Lij Mikhael was no longer with her and she stopped uncertainly and looked about her, trying to find where they were.

An aching silence had fallen on the Gallas, and now she saw that their expressions were tense also. The faces, with their handsome, high-boned features and beaky noses, turned towards her with the predatory expectation of the hunting hawk, and the eyes burned with the same fierce excitement with which they had watched the old crone do her bloody work the previous night.

The Harari, where were the Harari? She looked about her wildly now but could not find a familiar face and then in the silence she heard the clatter of distant hooves from far down the gorge and she knew without any shade of doubt that they had left her, they had been driven away by the threats of their ancient enemies, who outnumbered them so heavily.

She was alone and she turned to go back, but found that they had closed about her, cutting off her retreat and now they pressed gradually closer about her, with the same smouldering, gloating expression on every face.

She had to go forward, there was no way back and she forced herself to walk slowly on towards the car. At each step a tall robed figure stood to block her way. She knew she must show no sign of fear, any show of weakness at all would trigger them, and she had a single brief image of her own pale body spread-eagled upon the rocky earth, plaything for a thousand. She thrust the image firmly aside and walked on slowly. At the last possible instant, each tall figure moved aside, but there was always another beyond to take its place and each time the throng pressed closer upon her.

She could feel their heightening expectation, almost smell it in the hot musk of their packed bodies the change in the faces was there too; they watched her with a growing excitement, teeth grinning, breath shortening and eyes like claws in her flesh.

Suddenly she could go no further; a figure taller and more compelling than any other blocked her path. She had noticed this, man before. He was a Gerazmach, a high Galla officer. he wore a sharnma of dark blue silk wrapped about his throat and falling to his knees.

His hair was fluffed out in a wide halo about the lean, cruel face and a scar ran down from the outer corner of his eye to the point of his jaw.

He said something to her in a voice that was thick with lust, and she did not understand the words but the meaning was clear. The crowd around her stirred and she heard the sound of their breathing and felt them press even closer towards her. A man laughed near her, and there was something so ugly in the sound that it struck her like a physical force.

She wanted to scream, to turn and try and claw herself free but she knew that was what they were waiting for. It needed just that provocation and they would hurl themselves upon her. She gathered what was left of her reserves and put it all into her voice.

"Get out of my way," she said clearly, and the man before her smiled.

It was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen.

Still smiling, he dropped one hand to his groin, opened the fold of his shamnia, and made a gesture so obscene that Vicky recoiled, and she felt the scalding blood burn her throat and her cheeks. There was no control in her voice now as she blurted, "Oh, you swine you filthy swine," and the man reached for her, his robe still open. As she shrank back, she felt the others behind her thrust her forward again.

Then another voice spoke. The words were banal but the tone hissed like the sound of a scimitar swung at the cut.

"All right, chaps. That's enough of that nonsense." Vicky felt the pressure of bodies about her ease, and she spun around with a sob catching in her throat.

Gareth Swales strolled down the passage that opened for him through the dense press of robed bodies. His whole carriage seemed indolent, and the white open-necked shirt with an Zingari scarf at the throat was crisp and immaculate but Vicky had never before seen the expression he wore. The rims of his nostrils were ice-white and his eyes burned with a controlled fury.

She would have flung herself at him, sobbing with relief, but his voice crackled again.

"Steady. We're not out yet," and she caught herself, lifted her chin and smothered the next sob before it escaped.

"Good girl," he said, without taking his eyes from the face of the tall Galla in the blue robe, and he kept on walking steadily towards him, taking Vicky's arm as he drew level with her. She felt the strength of his fingers through the thin stuff of her blouse, and it seemed to flow into her, charging her depleted reserves, and the jelly weakness in her legs firmed.

The Galla leader stood his ground as Gareth stepped up to him, and for a space of time that was less than five seconds but seemed to Vicky like a round of eternity, the two men locked gazes and wills. Blazing blue eyes levelled with smouldering black then suddenly the Galla broke, he glanced aside and shrugged, chuckled weakly, and turned away to talk loudly with the man who stood beside him.

Unhurriedly, Gareth stepped through the gap the man had left and they were at the car.

"Are you well enough to drive?" Gareth asked quietly, as he swung her up on the sponson and she nodded.

"The engine's switched off," she blurted; they could not risk cranking to start.

"She's on the slope," said Gareth, turning to face the crowding Gallas and hold them off with his level gaze. "Roll her to a start."

As Vicky scrambled into the driver's hatch, Gareth placed a cheroot between his lips, and struck a match with his thumb nail. The little act distracted the hostile pack for an Instant, and they watched his hands as he lit the cheroot and blew a long blue feather of smoke towards them.

Behind him, the car began to roll, and Gareth swung himself aboard easily with the cheroot clamped between his teeth and gave the horsemen a mocking salute as the car gathered speed down the slope. Neither of them spoke as they dropped swiftly downwards, two miles in silence.

Then, without taking her eyes off the track ahead, Vicky told Gareth as he stood above and behind her in the turret, "You weren't even afraid-2 "In a blue funk, old girl absolute blue funk."

"And I once called you a coward."

"Quite right too."

"How did you get there so fast?"

"I was up there looking for defensive positions against the jolly old Eyeties. Saw your faithful bodyguard taking off and came to have a look." The track ahead of Vicky dissolved in a mist of tears, and she had to hit the brakes hard. Afterwards, she was not sure quite how it happened but she found herself in Gareth's arms, pressing herself to him with all of her strength and shaking violently with her sobs.

"Oh God, Gareth, I don't know what I'll ever do to repay you for this."

"I'm sure we will think of something," he murmured, holding her with a practised embrace that was lulling and so wonderfully secure.

She felt then that she did not want ever to leave his arms and she lifted her lips to his and with a mild amazement saw on his face, in the usually mocking blue eyes, such an expression of tenderness as she had never expected was possible.

His lips were another surprise, they were very warm and soft and tasted of man and the bitter aromatic smoke of his cheroots; she had never realized that he was so tall and his body so hard, or his hands so strong. The last sob wracked her body, and then she sighed voluptuously and shuddered softly with the strength of physical awakening more intense than she had ever experienced in her entire life.

For a moment, the journalist in her attempted to analyse the source of this sudden passion, and she knew it as the product of the previous night's sleepless horrors, of fatigue and of the day's terrors. Then she no longer queried it, but let it spread through her whole body. The encampment of the Ras's army at the foot of the Sardi Gorge sprawled for four miles amongst the acacia forests, a vast agglomeration of living things which murmured softly with life, like a hive of honeybees at midday, and which had already cloaked itself in blue woodsmoke and the myriad odours of human and animal ingestion and excretion.

The camp site that Gareth and Jake had chosen was set apart from the main body, in a denser, shadier patch of acacia, below a tall rocky waterfall where the Sardi River fell the last steep pitch to the plain and formed a dark restless pool in which Vicky could bathe away the filth from her body and from her mind.

It was almost dark when she climbed back to the camp with her wet hair bound in a towel, carrying her wash bag.

Gareth was seated upon a log beside the smouldering camp fire. He was watching the steaks of a freshly butchered ox grilling on the coals, and he made room for her on the log beside him and offer'd her Scotch whisky and lukewarm water in a tin mug, which she accepted gratefully and which tasted as good as anything she had ever drunk.

In silence they sat together, almost but not quite touching, and watched the swift coming of the African night.

They were alone, and the faint voices from the main encampment below. them seemed only to emphasize this aloneness.

Jake, the old Ras and Gregorius had taken out two of the armoured cars and a camel patrol on a reconnaissance back towards the Wells of Chaldi. In the same exercise, Jake was to train the new gunners in the use of the Vickers machine guns. Gareth, as the military expert, had been left to survey the gorge and to judge the ground for defence in the event of a forced retreat up the gorge under Italian pressure.

He had been doing this when he had come across Vicky and the Galla horsemen.

Sitting now beside the fire, under a sky that was suddenly very black and half obscured by the mountains that towered over them, Vicky was aware of a feeling of complete acceptance, an Arabic kismet of the spirit, as though fate had arranged this moment and the effort of avoiding it was too great.

They were alone, and that was how it was meant to be.

The deep physical arousal and feeling of utter commitment that she had experienced earlier, on their escape from the threatening horde of Gallas, still lingered still filled her body and her conscious mind with an ethereal glow.

She ate a little of the grilled meat, hardly tasting it, not looking at the man beside her, but staring dreamily at the brilliant diamond-white sparkle of the stars above the dark peaks, yet fully and electrically aware of him of the nearness of him, so close that although they were still not touching she could feel the warmth emanating from his body upon her arm like the caress of a desert wind.

She could almost feel his eyes as he watched her quietly. His gaze was so compelling that at last she could no longer pretend not to be aware of it, and she turned her head and met his eyes steadily.

The ruddy glow of the coals enhanced the clean regular lanes of his face, and gilded the red gold of his hair. In that moment, she believed he was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen and it required an effort to tear her eyes away from him.

As she stood up and walked away she felt her heart hammering within her chest, like a wild -animal trying to escape its cage, and she heard the roar of blood in her own ears.

The interior of her tent was lit softly by the firelight through the canvas, and she did not light the lamp, but undressed slowly in the semi-darkness and dropped her clothing carelessly across the folding chair beside the entrance. Then she lay down upon the narrow cot, and the woollen blanket was rough against the naked skin of her buttocks and back. Each breath was an effort now, and she lay rigidly with her hands clenched at her sides almost afraid, almost exultant, her head propped on the single pillow and staring down at her body, aware of it as never before. Watching, with a sense of wonder, how each breath changed the shape of her heavily rounded breasts and how the nipples firmed slowly and thrust out, darkening perceptibly until they were so tight and hard that they pained her exquisitely.

She heard the crunch of his footsteps approach the tent, and her breathing jammed, and she thought with a small shock that she might suffocate and die. Then the flap of the tent swung open, and he stooped through and stood tall, letting the flap fall closed behind him.

Instinctively she covered herself, one arm folding across her chest and the other hand spreading protective fingers over the mound of fine fluff at the base of her belly.

He stood silently, outlined against the fire glow on the canvas, and she began to breathe again, quick and shallow.

It seemed that he stood there for ever, silent and watchful, and she felt the skin of her arms and thighs prickle with goose-flesh at the slow steady scrutiny. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and let it slide to the earth. The fire glow flickered on his finely muscled arms, they rippled with a red gold sheen, like wet marble, as he moved.

He came at last to her bed and stood over her, and she wondered that the body of a man could be so slim and supple, with such lovely line and balance then she remembered how she had once stood before the statue of Michelangelo's David with just the same depth of awe.

She lifted the hands that covered her own body, reached up like a supplicant, and drew him down upon herself.

She woke once during the night, and the fire had died away outside the tent, but a bright white moon had sailed up over the mountains and it glowed now with a silvery light through the canvas above them, striking down directly upon them.

The strange white light divested Gareth's sleeping face of all colour.

It was pale now, like that of a statue or of a corpse and Vicky experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. There was a small dull weight at the back of her mind. When she examined it closely, she found that it was guilt and she experienced a mild anger at a society that had burdened her with that guilt. That she could not enjoy a man, that her body could not be used as nature had intended without this backlash of emotion.

She raised herself on one elbow, careful not to disturb the man beside her, and she studied his face pondering this new sense of guilt, and exploring her feelings for him.

Slowly she realized that the two were bound inextricably together.

There was no real depth to her feelings for Gareth Swales, she had been carried along on a treacherous tide of fatigue and reaction from fear and horror. The guilt she had experienced was a consequence of this lack of substance, and she felt suddenly confused and sad.

She lay back beside the long fine length of his body, but now she had moved slightly, so that they no longer touched.

She knew that after love, all animals are sad, but she thought that there was more to her feelings than that.

Suddenly, without really knowing why, she thought of Jake Barton and the depth and cold of her sadness deepened. It was long before she slept again, but then she slept late and the morning sunlight was striking through the canvas and outside there was the sound of engines and many voices.

She sat up hurriedly, still half asleep, clutching the rough blanket to her breast, confused and owl-eyed, to discover that she was alone upon the cot and all that remained of the night was the indentation and warmth of Gareth's body upon the blanket beside her, and the swollen aching feeling deep within her where he had been.

Then Vicky threw on her clothes hurriedly and, still tying her hair, went out into the sunlight, she was just in time to witness the arrival of a sorry procession.

In the lead was Jake's car, Priscilla the Pig. No longer glossy white and blazoned with the insignia of the International Red Cross, it was painted instead a sandy tan colour with patches of darker camouflage in an earthy brown to break up the outline of the big angular hull and turret.

The thick barrel of -a Vickers machine gun protruded belligerently from the mounting.

Above the turret fluttered the tri coloured green, yellow and red pennant of Ethiopia and below that the dark blue field and golden lion of the Ras's household standard and everything was covered with a thick coating of fine red dust.

Close behind the Pig, and attached to her by a stout towline, came Tenastelin - Gregorius's car similarly daubed with dull camouflage paint and flying the standards of Ethiopia and Ras, and with her gun ports filled with lethal hardware. However, despite the warlike trappings, the machine had an air of dejection as it was dragged ignobly into the camp and from its rear end came a frightful grinding clatter that brought Gareth Swales hurrying half-dressed from his tent, with an angry question to shout as Jake's head appeared in the driver's hatch.

"What the hell happened?" and Jake's face was red and scowling with outrage.

"That old,--and at a loss for a suitable expletive, he indicated with a jerk of his thumb the Ras, who sat proudly in the turret of the crippled car, showing no remorse whatsoever, but beaming fondly and toothlessly on Gareth.

"Not content with firing off a thousand rounds of Vickers ammunition, he kicked Gregorius out of the driver's seat and gave us a demonstration that would have looked good at Indianapolis!"

"Oh my God!" groaned Gareth.

"How do you do?" shouted the Ras cheerfully, . acknowledging the applause.

"Why didn't you stop him? "demanded Gareth.

"Stop him! Jesus, have you ever tried to stop a charging rhinoceros! I chased him halfway to the coast before I caught him-" "What's the damage?"

"He's stripped the gearbox, and burned out the clutch he may have thrown a con rod but I haven't gotten up enough courage to look yet."

Jake climbed wearily from the driver's hatch, raising his dust goggles. Red dust had sifted into the thick mop of his curls and clung in the stubble of his beard, and the protected skin around his eyes was pale and naked-looking, giving him an innocent wide-eyed expression. He began beating the dust out of his trousers and shirt, still berating the happily grinning Ras.

"The old bastard is as happy as a pig in a mud wallow.

Look at his face. Reconnaissance in force! It was more like a bloody circus." At that moment, Jake noticed Vicky for the first time, and the scowl disappeared miraculously, to be replaced by an expression of such transparent delight that she felt her guilt return swiftly and deeply, so that it gave her a cold sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Vicky!" Jake called. "God, I was worried about you!" Vicky was able to purge a little of the feeling of guilt by busying herself at the cooking fire, in a fine show of domesticity, and she served the men with griddle cakes and grilled steaks. the last of the potatoes they had brought with them and a pan full of the pigeon-sized eggs laid by the scrawny native fowls. The camp table was set out under the acacias, in the dappled early-morning sunlight, and as Vicky worked at the fire, Jake reported the results of the reconnaissance.

" once the Ras had tired of firing the Vickers, shooting up every tree and rock we passed, and we were just about out of ammunition, we were able to circle out northwards, keeping the speed down to avoid dust, and we found a good piece of ground from which to observe the road from Massawa to the Wells. There was a bit of traffic, transports mostly with motorized escort, but we couldn't stay too long as the Ras, God bless his friendly little soul, wanted to continue his target practice on them. We had a job stopping him. So I pulled back and we came in towards the Wells from the west again. "Jake paused to sip at the mug of coffee, and Gareth turned to Vicky as she squatted, rosy-faced, over the cooking fire. my dear?" he said. It was "How's breakfast coming along, not the words nor the endearment, but rather the proprietorial tone, that made Jake glance sharply at Vicky. The tone Gareth had used was that which a man uses to his own woman. For a second, Vicky held Jake's glance, and then she turned busily back to her cooking, and Jake dropped his eyes thoughtfully at the steaming mug in his hands.

"How close did you get?" Gareth asked easily. He had noticed the silent exchange between Vicky and Jake and he was relaxed and contented, lolling back in the camp chair and rolling a cheroot between his fingers.

"I left the cars in the broken ground, and went in on foot.

Didn't want to take the Ras too close. I was able to watch the Eyetie position for a couple of hours. They have dug in well, and I saw gun positions with a good field of fire placed along the ridge.

They are in a hell of a defensive position and it would be crazy to attack them there. We will have to wait for them to come to us." Vicky brought the food to them, and as she leaned across Gareth he touched her bare upper arm in a casual caress.

She drew back quickly and went to fetch the pan of eggs.

Jake had noticed the gesture, yet his voice was even and unruffled as he went on, "I wanted to circle out and to figure the chances of attacking their positions from the rear, but that was when the old Ras got bored and gave us a demonstration of hell-driving. My God, I'm hungry." Jake filled his mouth with food, and then asked in a muffled voice, "How did you get on, Gary?"

"There is good defensive ground in the gorge. I have the construction gangs digging positions in the slopes. We should be able to give a good account, if the Eyeties try to force their way through."

"Well, we have got scouts watching them.

Gregorius picked a hundred of his best men for the job. We will know as soon as they begin to move from the Wells, but I would like to know how much time we have before they move.

Every day will give us more time to prepare, to decide on our tactics, and train the Harari teach them how to fight with modern weapons.-" Vicky came back to the camp table and sat down.

"You haven't got time," she said. "No time at all."

"What does that mean? "Jake looked up.

"The Italians crossed the Mareb yesterday at noon. They crossed in force, and they have begun bombing the towns and the roads. It's war now. It's begun." Jake whistled softly.

"Hey ho! Here we go!" he said, and then turned to Gareth. "You'd best be the one who tells the Ras. You are the only one who can control him."

"I'm touched by your faith," murmured Gareth mildly.

"I have a pretty good idea what the Ras's reaction will be.

He'll want to rush straight out there and start throwing punches.

He's likely to get his whole tribe wiped out. You've got to calm him down."

"How do you suggest I do that? give him a shot of morphine or hit him over the head?"

"Get him into a gin-rummy game," suggested Jake maliciously. He scooped the last of the egg into his mouth and stood up from the table still chewing. "Good chow, Vicky but I reckon I'd better have a look at the damage the Ras did to Tenastelin. See if we can get her running again for the Eyeties to shoot at." For two hours, Jake worked alone on Tenastelin, rigging the block and tackle from one of the main branches of the big acacia tree and loosening the bolts to lift out the entire gearbox. Twenty yards away, Vicky sat at the table in front of her tent, and hammered out her next despatch on the little portable typewriter. Both of them were very much aware of each other as they worked, but their behaviour was elaborately unconcerned and they each made a show of concentrating all their attention on their separate tasks.

At last, Jake strained on the tackle and the dismembered gearbox lifted jerkily off its seating and swayed, dripping grease from the acacia branch. Jake stood back and wiped his hands on a lump of cotton waste soaked in gasoline.

"Coffee break," he said, and went to the fire. He poured two mugs full of black coffee and took them to where Vicky sat.

"How are you doing?" he asked, glancing at the page in her typewriter.

"Pulitzer stuff, is it?" Vicky laughed, as she accepted the mug of coffee. "Prizes never go to the best man."

"Or to those who really want them," agreed Jake, sitting down opposite her, and she felt a flare of annoyance that he had turned the conversation so neatly.

"Damn you, Jake Barton. I don't have to answer to you or to anybody," she said softly.

"Right," he said. "Quite right. You're a big girl now but just remember that you're playing with the big boys. And some of them play very rough."

"Is there any charge, counsellor?" She looked up at him defiantly, and then she saw the look in his eyes and the anger shrivelled within her.

"I don't want to fight with you, Vicky," he said softly.

"That's the last thing in the world I want to do." He swallowed the last of his coffee. "Well," he said, "back to work.

"You give up easily, don't you?" Vicky didn't realize she had spoken until the words were out, and then she wanted them back but Jake cocked an eye, at her, and he grinned that big boyish grin of his.

"Giving up?" Now he laughed aloud. "Oh, lady! If you believe that then you do me wrong, - a grave injustice." And he moved slowly towards where she sat and stood over her.

The laughter faded from his voice and from his eyes as he spoke in a new husky tone.

"You really are very lovely."

"Jake." She held his eyes. "I wish I could explain but I just don't understand myself" He touched her cheek and stooped down to her. "No, Jake, please don't-" she said and made no effort to avoid his lips, but before they touched hers, there was the -urgent sound of galloping hooves, coming up through the forest.

The two of them drew slowly apart, still watching each other's eyes and Gregorius Maryarn rode into the camp on a shaggy little mountain pony.

"Jake," he called, sliding down off the saddle. "It's war! It's begun! The Italians have crossed the Mareb. Gareth has just told my grandfather."

"The timely messenger," murmured Vicky, but her voice was a little shaky, and her smile lopsided.

"I've come to help you fix my car, Jake. We must be ready to fight," called Gregorius, and tossed his reins to the servant who followed him.

"Let's get to work. There is little time my grandfather has called all his commanders to a war council at noon. He wants you there."

Gregorius turned away and hurried to the gutted hulk of Tenastelin. For a moment longer Jake stood over Vicky, and then he shrugged with resignation.

Just remember," he threatened her mildly, "I don't give up, and he followed Gregorius.

An hour later they had stripped the gearbox and spread its component parts on a sheet of clean canvas. Jake rocked back on his heels.

"Well, grand pappy has cooked his goose," he said, and Gregorius apologized solemnly.

"He is a very impetuous gentleman, my grandfather."

"It's getting on towards noon." Jake stood up. "Let's go down and hear what next he has in store for us, that impetuous gentleman." The Ras's encampment was set a little apart from the main body of his army, and housed only his personal entourage. There were at least two acres of hastily erected tukuLs, made of sapling frames covered with a range of material from thatch to flattened paraffin cans. Through this encampment wandered the naked snotty-nosed children and the Ras's multitudinous female retainers, together with goats, mangy dogs, donkeys, and camels.

The Ras's tent was set up in the centre of this community. It was a large marquee, patched so often that little of the original canvas was visible. His bodyguard was grouped protectively at the entrance.

Beyond the Ras's tent was a large area of open sandy ground, almost completely covered by rank upon rank of patiently squatting warriors.

"My God," exclaimed Jake. "Everyone gets to the war council."

"It's the custom," explained Gregorius. "All may attend, but only the commanders may speak." To one side, separated from the Harari troops by a small space of beaten earth and centuries of rankling hostility, were the Galla contingent, and Vicky pointed them out to Jake.

"Pretty bunch," he murmured. "With allies like that, who needs enemies?" Gregorius led them directly to the Ras's tent, and the guards stood aside for them to enter. The interior was dark and hot, redolent with the smell of the rank native tobacco and spiced food. At the far end of the tent, a knot of silent men squatted in a tense circle about two figures the Ras, swathed in dark woollen robes, and Gareth Swales in a light silk shirt and white flannels.

For a moment Jake thought that the two central figures were deeply immersed in planning the strategy and defence of the Sardi Gorge then he saw the neat piles of paste, board spread out on the golden Afghanistan rug between them.

"My God," said Jake. "He took me at my word." Gareth looked up from the fan of cards he held in his right hand.

"Thank God." His face showed obvious relief. "I only wish it had been an hour earlier."

"What's the trouble."

"This old bastard is cheating," said Gareth, with barely suppressed outrage quivering in his voice. "He has caught me for almost two hundred quid this morning.

I'm utterly appalled, I must say. They obviously have no scruples, these people-" and here Gareth glanced at Gregorius, no offence meant, of course. But I must admit I am staggered." And the Ras nodded and grinned happily, his eyes sparkling with triumph, as he waved Jake and Vicky to a seat on a pile of cushions beside him.

"If he's cheating don't play with him," suggested Vicky, and Gareth looked pained.

"You don't understand, old girl. I haven't been able to figure how he's doing it. He's invented a method new to science and the gambling halls of the world. He might be an absolutely unscrupulous old rogue, but he must be some sort of genius as well. I've just got to keep on playing with him until I work out his system." Gareth's doleful expression became radiant. "My God, when I do Monte Carlo here I came!" He discarded a six of spades. The Ras leapt upon it with a cackle of triumph and began laying out his hand.

"Oh my God," groaned Gareth. "He's done it again." The tense group of counsellors and elders around the game exploded in a delighted burst of cheers and felicitations, and the Ras acknowledged their congratulations like a victorious prizefighter. Grinning and snuffling he leaned across the rug and with a loud cry of "How do you do!" he punched Gareth's arm playfully, and Gareth winced and massaged the limb tenderly.

"He does that every time he wins. He's got a touch like a demented blacksmith I'm black and blue."

"How do you do!" cried the \ Ras again, louder than before, and he shaped up to punch once more, but Gareth hastily produced his purse, and the Ras relaxed.

"He keeps punching until I pay." Gareth counted out the coins, while the Ras and his followers watched in heavy-breathing concentration, which only broke into smiles and laughter again when the pile of coins in front of Gareth reached the stipulated amount. "No credit in this game," Gareth explained, as he shoved the money across.

"Cash on the nail, or you get your arm broken. This old bastard Gareth glanced again at Gregorius, I no offence, of course.

But this old bastard wouldn't trust his own mother, probably with good reason. I'm absolutely appalled! I've met some shockers in my time but this chap takes the biscuit." There was a deep respect in Gareth's tone, which changed to mild alarm as the Ras gathered the cards preparatory to the next deal, and he turned to Gregorius.

"Please explain to your dear grandfather that, though I'd be delighted to accommodate him at a future date, I do think he should now concentrate a little of his skills on confounding the common enemy.

The armies of Italy are waiting. Reluctantly, the Ras laid the cards aside and, with a sharp speech in Amharic, put the war council into session, then immediately turned to Jake Barton.

"My grandfather wishes to know the state of his armoured squadron.

He is impressed with the cars, and is certain that they can be used to great advantage."

"Tell him that he has wrecked a quarter of his armoured squadron. We've got three runners left." The Ras showed no remorse at this rebuke, but turned to his commanders and launched into a long vivid account of his exploits as a driver, his wide gestures describing the speed and dash of his evolutions. The account was punctuated by loyal exclamations of wonder from his officers, and it was some minutes before he turned back to Jake.

"My grandfather says that three of these wonderful machines will be enough to send the Italians running back into the sea."

"I wish I shared his confidence," remarked Gareth, and Jake went on, "There is one other small problem, we are short of crews drivers and gunners for the cars. We'll need a week or two to train your men." The Ras interrupted fiercely, almost as though he had understood Jake, and there was a fierce murmur of agreement from his commanders.

"My grandfather intends to attack the Italian positions at the Wells of Chaldi. He intends to attack immediately." Jake glanced at Gareth, who rolled his eyes to the heavens. "Give him the word, old son," he said, but Jake shook his head.

"It'll come better from you." Gareth drew a deep breath and launched into a long explanation as to the suicidal futility of a frontal attack, even with armoured support, against guns dug into a commanding position.

"The Italians must advance. That is when our chance will come."

It took all Gareth's eloquence to make the Ras agree, albeit reluctantly, to wait for the enemy to make the first move, to watch with his forward scouts for the moment when the Italians left their fortified positions above the Wells and moved out into the open grassland where they would be more vulnerable.

Once the Ras had agreed, scowling and muttering, to cool his ardour that long, then Jake could take over from Gareth and suggest the tactics that might best be employed.

"Please tell your grandfather that we come back to my original warning we do not have crews for all three cars."

"I can drive,"

interrupted Vicky Camberwell, suddenly aware that she was being squeezed out of consideration.

Gareth and Jake exchanged glances again, and were both instantly in complete agreement, but it was Gareth who spoke for them.

"It's one thing acting as a ferry driver, and another as a combatant, my dear. You are here to write about the fighting, not get mixed up in it." Vicky flashed a scornful glance at him and turned to Jake.

Jake she began.

"Gareth's right." He cut her short. "I agree with that all the way."

Vicky subsided angrily, knowing there was no profit in arguing now not accepting their lordly decrees, but willing to bide her time.

She listened quietly as the discussion flowed back and forth. Jake explained how the cars should be used to shock the enemy and punch open the Italian de fences so that the Ethiopian cavalry could stream through and exploit the disordered infantry.

The Ras's scowls smoothed away, and an unholy grin replaced them.

His eyes glowed like black coals in their beds of dark wrinkled flesh, and when at last he gave his orders, he spoke with the ringing and final authority of a royal warrior that brooked no further argument.

"My grandfather decrees that the first attack will be made upon the enemy as soon as they advance beyond the caves of Chaldi. It will be made by all the horsemen of both Harari and Galla, and led by two armoured cars. The infantry, the Vickers guns and one armoured car will be held in reserve here at the Sardi Gorge."

"What about the crews for the cars?" asked Jake.

"You and I, Jake, in one car, and in the other car Major Swales will be the driver and my grandfather will be the gunner."

"I can't believe it's happening to me," groaned Gareth.

"That old bastard is stark raving bloody mad. He's a menace to himself and everyone within a fifty-mile range."

"Including the Italians," agreed Jake.

"It's all very well for you to grin like that you won't be locked up in a tin can with a maniac. Gregorius, tell him-" "No, Major Swales." Gregorius shook his head, and his expression was remote and frosty. "My grandfather has given his orders. I will not translate your objections though if you insist I will give him an exact translation of what you have just said about him."

"My dear chap."

Gareth held up his hands in a gesture of capitulation. "I count it an honour to be selected by your grandfather and my remarks were made in fun, I assure you. No offence, old chap, no offence at all." And he watched helplessly, as the Ras picked up the pack of playing cards and began to deal the next hand.

"I just hope the jolly old Eyeties get a move on. I can't afford much more of this." Major Luigi Castelani saluted from the entrance of the tent.

"As you ordered, my Colonel." Count Aldo Belli nodded to him in the full-length mirror a brief acknowledgement before he switched his attention back to his own image.

"Gino," he snapped. "Is that a mark on the toecap of my left boot?"

and the little sergeant dropped to his knees at the Count's feet and breathed heavily on the boot, dulling the glossy surface before polishing it lovingly with his own sleeve. The Count glanced up and saw that Castelani still lingered in the entrance. His expression was so lugubrious and doom-laden that the Count felt his anger return.

"Your face is enough to sour the wine, Castelani."

"The Count knows my misgivings."

"Indeed," he thundered. "I have heard nothing but your whines since I gave my orders to advance."

"May I point out once more that those orders are in direct-" "You may not. 11 Duce, Benito Mussolini himself, has placed a sacred trust upon me. I will not fail that trust."

"My Colonel, the enemy-" "Bah!" Scorn flashed from the dark, heavily fringed eyes.

"Bah, I say. Enemy, you say savages, I say. Soldiers, you say rabble, say U "As my Colonel wishes, but the armoured vehicle-" "No!

Castelani, no! It was not an armoured vehicle, but an ambulance."

The Count had truly convinced himself of this. "I will not let this moment of destiny slip through my fingers. I refuse to creep about like a frightened old woman.

It is not in my nature, Castelani, I am a man of action of direct action. It is in my nature to spring like a leopard at the jugular vein of my enemy. The time of talking is over now, Castelani.

The time for action is upon us."

"As my Colonel wishes."

"It is not what I wish, Castelani. It is what the gods of war decree, and what I as a warrior must obey." There did not seem a reply to this and the Major stood silently aside as the Count swept out of the tent, with chin upheld, and with a firm, deliberate tread. astelani's strike force had been ready since dawn.

Fifty of the heavy troop transporters made up a single column, and he had spent most of the night deliberating on the order of march.

His final disposition was to leave a full company in the fortified position above the Wells of Chaldi, under the command of one of the Count's young captains. All other troops had been included in the flying column which was to drive hard on the gorge, seize the approaches and fight its way up to the highlands.

In the van, Castelani had placed five truckloads of riflemen, and immediately behind them were the machinegun sections, which he knew he could bring into action within minutes. Another twenty truck-loads of infantry followed them ten in the extreme rear. Under his eye and hand, he had placed his field artillery.

In the event of the column running into real trouble, he was relying on the infantry to buy him the precious time needed to unlimber and range his Howitzers. Under their protective muzzles, he was mildly confident that he could extricate the column from any predicament into which the Count's newfound courage and vaunting visions of glory might lead them mildly, but not entirely, confident.

Beside each stationary truck the driver and crew were sprawling on the sandy earth, bareheaded, tunics unbuttoned and cigarettes lit.

Castelani threw back his head, inflated his lungs and let out a bellow that seemed to echo against the clear high desert sky.

"Fall in!" and the sprawling figures scrambled into frenzied activity, grabbing weapons and adjusting uniforms as they formed ragged ranks beside each truck.

"My children," said Aldo Belli, as he began to pace down the line.

"My brave boys," and he looked at them, not really seeing the mis-buttoned tunics, the stubble on their chins, nor the hastily pinched-out cigarettes behind the ears. His vision was misted with sentiment, his imagination dressed them in burnished breastplates and horsetail plumes.

"You are thirsty for blood?" the Colonel asked, and threw back his head and laughed a reckless carefree laugh. "I will give you buckets of it," he said. "Today you will drink your fill. The men within earshot shuffled their feet and glanced uneasily at each other. There was a definite preference for Chianti amongst them.

The Count stopped before a thin rifleman, still in his teens, with a dark shaggy mop of hair hanging out from under his helmet.

"Bambino," said the Count, and the youth hung his head and grinned in sickly embarrassment. "We will make a warrior out of you today," and he embraced the boy, then held him off at arm's length and studied his face. "Italy gives of her finest, none are too young or too noble to be spared sacrifice on the altar of war." The boy's ingratiating grin changed swiftly to real alarm. -Sing, bambino, sing!" cried the Count, and himself opened "La Giovinezza" in his soaring baritone while the youth quavered uncertainly below him. The Count marched on, singing, and reached the head of the column as the song ended. He nodded to Castelani, too breathless to speak, and the Major let out another bull bellow.

"Mount up!" The formations of black-shirted troopers broke up into confused activity as they hurried to the cumbersome trucks and climbed aboard.

The Rolls-Royce stood in pride of place at the head of the column, Giuseppe sitting ready at the wheel with Gino beside him, his camera at the ready.

The engine was purring, the wide back seat packed with the Count's personal gear sports rifle, shotgun, travelling rugs, picnic hamper, straw wine carrier, binoculars, and ceremonial cloak.

The Count mounted with dignity and settled himself on the padded leather. He looked at Castelani.

"Remember, Major, the essence of my strategy is speed and surprise. The lightning blow, swift and merciless, delivered by the steel hand at the enemy's heart." Sitting beside the driver in the rear truck of the column, eating the dust of the forty-nine trucks ahead, and already beginning to sweat freely in the oven heat of the steel cab, Major Castelani inspected his watch.

"Mother of God," he growled. "It's past eleven o'clock.

We will have to move fast if we At that moment, the driver swore and braked heavily, and before the truck had come to a halt, Castelani had leapt out on to the running board and climbed high on to the roof of the cab.

"What is it?"he shouted to the driver ahead.

"I do not know, Major," the man shouted back.

Ahead of them the entire column had come to a halt, and Castelani braced himself for the sound of firing certain that they had run into an ambush. There was confused shouting of question and comment from the drivers and crews of the stranded convoy, as they climbed down and peered ahead.

Castelani focused his binoculars, and at that moment the sound of gunfire carried clearly across the desert spaces, and the swift order to deploy his field guns was on Castelani's lips as he found the Rolls-Royce in the lens of his binoculars.

The big automobile was out on the left flank, racing through the scrubby grass, and in the back seat the count was braced with a shotgun levelled over the driver's head.

Even as Castelani watched, a flock of plump brown francolin burst from the grass ahead of the speeding Rolls, rising steeply on quick wide wings. Long blue streamers of gunsmoke flew from the muzzles of the shotgun, and two of the birds exploded in puffs of soft brown feathers, while the survivors of the flock scattered away, and the Rolls came to a halt in a skidding cloud of dust.

Castelani watched Gino, the little Sergeant, jump from the Rolls and run to pick up the dead birds and carry them to the Count.

Torco Dio!" thundered the Major, as he watched the Count pose for the camera, still standing in the rear of the Rolls, holding the dangling feathered brown bodies and smiling proudly into the lens.

There was a rising feeling of despondency and alarm in the Ras's army.

Since the middle of the morning, through a day of scalding heat and unrelenting boredom, they had waited.

The scouts had reported the first forward movement of the Italian force at ten o'clock that morning, and immediately the Ras's forces had moved forward into their carefully prepared positions.

Gareth Swales had spent days selecting the best possible ground in which to meet the first Italian thrust, and each contingent of the wild Ethiopian cavalry had been carefully drilled and properly cautioned as to the sequence of ambush and the necessity of maintaining strict discipline.

The chosen field was situated between the horns of the mountains, in the mouth of the funnel formed by the debouchment of the Sardi Gorge. It was obvious that this was the only approach route open to the Italians, and it was nearly twelve miles wide.

The attackers must be led in close to the southern horn of the funnel, where the Vickers machine guns had been sited on the rocky slopes, and where a minor water course had chiselled its way down to the plain. The water course was dry now, and it meandered out into the plain for five miles before vanishing, but it was deep and wide enough to conceal the large contingents of Harari and Galla horsemen.

This mass of cavalry had been waiting all day, squatting beside their mounts in the sugar-white sand of the river bed.

The two separate factions had been diplomatically separated. The Harari were placed at the head of the trap, nearest the rocky slope of the mountain with the Vickers gunners hidden on their flank in strong posts amongst the rocks.

The Galla, under the scar-faced Gerazmach in the blue sham ma were grouped farther out on the open plain at a point where the dry water course turned sharply and angled out towards the grassland.

Here in the bend, the banks were still steep enough to conceal fifteen hundred mounted men. These, with almost three thousand of the Ras's own cavalry, formed a formidable offensive army especially if thrown in unexpectedly against and unbalanced enemy. The mood of the Ethiopians, ever sanguinary, was aggravated by the many hours of enforced inactivity, crouching without cover from the blinding sun on a white sand bed which reflected its rays like a mirror. The horses were already distressed by the heat and lack of water while the men were murderous.

Gareth Swales had contrived a net, using the natural wide curve of the water course, into which he hoped to lure the Italian column. Two miles farther out in the plain, beyond where he now stood on the turret of the Hump, a fold of ground concealed the small band of mounted men who were to provide the bait. They had been waiting there since the scouts had first reported the Italian movement early that morning.

Like everybody else they must by this time be restless, bored and thoroughly uncomfortable. Gareth wondered that this huge amorphous body of undisciplined, independent, spirited hills men had so long maintained cohesion. He would not have been surprised if by this stage half of them had lost interest and had set off homewards.

The only person who was occupied and seemed happy enough was Jake Barton, and Gareth lowered his binoculars and regarded what he could see of him with irritation. The front upper half of that gentleman was completely hidden within the engine compartment of Priscilla the Pig, and only his legs and backside protruded. The muffled strains of "Tiger Rag" whistled endlessly added to Gareth's irritation.

"How are you coming along there?" he called, merely to stop the music, and Jake's tousled head emerged, one cheek smeared with black oil. think I've found it," he said cheerfully. "A lump of muck in the carb," and he wiped his hands on the lump of cotton waste that Gregorius handed him. "What are the Eyeties up to?"

"I think we've got a small problem, old son," Gareth murmured softly, turning once more to resume his vigil, and his expression for once was serious and concerned. "I must admit that I banked on the old Latin dash and swagger to bring them charging down here without a backward glance."

Jake came across from his car and clambered up beside J Gareth. The two armoured cars were parked at the extreme end of the curved water course, just before it lost its identity and vanished into the limitless sea of grass and rolling sandy hills. Here the banks of the river were only just enough to cover the hulls of the two cars, but they left the turrets partially exposed. A light cover of cut Thorn branches made them inconspicuous, while allowing them to act as observation posts for the crews.

Gareth handed Jake his binoculars. "I think we've got ourselves a really wily one here. This Italian commander isn't rushing. He's coming on nice and slow, taking his time," Gareth shook his head worriedly, "I don', like it at all."

"He's stopped again," Jake said, watching the distant dust cloud that marked the position of the advancing column.

The dust cloud shrivelled, and subsided.

"Oh my God!" groaned Gareth, and snatched the binoculars. "The bastard is up to something, I'm sure of it. This is the seventh time the column has halted and for no apparent reason at all. The scouts can't work it out and nor can I. I've got a nasty hollow feeling that we are up against some sort of military genius, a modern Napoleon, and it's making me nervous as hell." Jake smiled and advised philosophically, "What you really need is a soothing game of gin. The Ras is waiting for you." As if on cue, the Ras looked up brightly and expectantly from the ammunition box set in the small strip of shade under the hull. He had laid out a pattern of playing cards on the lid which he had been studying. His bodyguard were grouped behind him.

They also looked up expectantly.

"They've got me surrounded," groaned Gareth. "I'm not sure which one is the most dangerous that old bastard down there, or that one out there." He raised the binoculars again and swept the long horizon below the mountains. There was no longer any sign of dust.

"What the hell is he up to?" In fact this seventh halt called by Count Aldo Belli was to be the briefest of the day, and yet one of the most unavoidable.

It was in fact an occasion of the utmost urgency, and while the Count's portable commode was hastily unloaded from the truck carrying his personal gear, he twisted and wriggled impatiently on the back seat of the Rolls while Gino, the batman, tried to comfort him.

"It is the water from those wells, Excellency," he nodded sagely.

Once the commode had been set up, with a good view of the distant mountains before it, a small canvas tent was raised around it to hide the seat from the curious gaze of five hundred infantry men.

The job was completed, only just in time, and a respectful and expectant hush fell over the entire column as the Count climbed carefully down from the Rolls and then dashed like an Olympic athlete for the small lonely canvas structure and disappeared. The silence and expectation lasted for almost fifteen minutes and was shattered at last by the Count's shouts from within the tent.

"Bring the doctor!" Five hundred men waited with all the genuine suspense of a movie audience, speculation and rumour running wildly down the column until it reached Major Castelani. Even he, convinced as he was that he had seen it all, could not believe the cause of this fresh delay, and he went forward to investigate.

He arrived at the tent to find the Count and his medical advisers crowded around the commode and avidly discussing its contents. The Count was pale, but proud, like a new mother whose infant is the centre of attention. He looked up as Castelani appeared in the doorway, and the Major recoiled slightly as, for a moment, it seemed the Count might invite him to join in the examination.

He saluted hastily, taking another step backwards.

"Has your Excellency orders for me?"

"I am an ill man, Castelani," and the Count struck a pose, drooping visibly, his head lolling weakly. Then slowly he drew back his shoulders, and his chin came up. A wan but brave smile tightened his lips. "But that is of no account.

We advance, Castelani. Onwards! Tell the men I am well.

Hide the truth from them. If they know of my illness, they will despair. They will panic." Castelani saluted again. "As you wish, my Colonel."

"Help me to the car, Castelani," he ordered, and reluctantly the Major took his arm. The Count leaned heavily upon him as they crossed to the Rolls, but he smiled gallantly at his men and waved to the nearest of them.

"My poor brave boys," he muttered. "They must never know. I will not fail them now." What the hell is happening out there?" fretted Gareth Swales, glancing up anxiously at Jake on the turret of the car above him.

"Nothing!" Jake assured him. "No sign of movement." don't like it," reiterated Gareth morosely, and his expression hardly altered as the Ras let out one of his triumphant cries and began laying out his cards.

"I don't like that either," he said again, and reached for his wallet before the Ras reminded him. While the Ras shuffled and dealt the next hand, he continued his conversation with Jake.

"What about Vicky? Nothing from that quarter either?"

"Not a peep, "Jake assured him.

"That's another thing I don't like. She took it too calmly.

I expected her to put in an appearance long ago despite my orders."

"She won't be coming," Jake assured him, raising the binoculars again and sweeping the empty horizon.

"I wish I was that confident," muttered Gareth, picking up his cards.

"I've been expecting to see her car driving up at any minute.

It isn't like her to sit meekly in camp, while the action is going on out here. She's a front-ranker, that one.

She likes to be right there when anything is happening."

"I know," Jake -agreed. "She had that mean look in her eye when she agreed to stay at the gorge. So I just made sure she wasn't going to use Miss Wobbly. I took the carbon rod out of the distributor." Gareth began to grin. "That's the only good news I've had today. I had visions of Vicky Camberwell arriving in the middle of a fire fight."

"Poor bloody Italians," observed Jake, and they both laughed.

"Sometimes you surprise me. Do you know that?" said Gareth, and he drew a cheroot from his breast pocket and tossed it up to where Jake stood. "Thanks for" looking after what is mine, "he said. "I appreciate that." Jake bit the tip off the cigar, and gave him a quizzical look as he flicked a match across the rough steel of the turret and held the flame in his cupped hands to burn off the sulphur.

"They are all mavericks until somebody puts a brand on them.

That's the law of the range, old buddy," he answered, and lit the cigar.

Vicky Camberwell had selected five full-grown men from the Ras's camp attendants, rewarded each one with a silver Maria Theresa dollar, and worn each of them down to the fine edge of exhaustion. One after the other, they had taken hold of Miss Wobbly's crank handle and turned it like a squad of demented organ-grinders while Vicky shouted encouragement and threats at them from the driver's hatch, her eyes blazing and cheeks fiery with frustration.

After an hour of this she was convinced that sabotage had been employed to keep her safely out of the way, and she began to check out Miss Wobbly's internal organs. She was one of those unusual women who liked to know how things-worked, and throughout her life had plagued a long series Of mechanics, boyfriends and instructors with her questions. It was not enough for her to switch on a machine and steer it. She had made herself an excellent driver and pilot, and in the process she had acquired a fair idea of the workings of the internal combustion engine.

"All right, Mr. Barton let's find out what you've done," she muttered grimly. "Let's start on the fuel system." She rolled up her sleeves and tied a scarf firmly around her hair. Her five hefty helpers watched with awe as she approached the engine compartment and lifted the cowling, and then they crowded forward to get a good view and offer their advice. She had to beat them back and shoo them away before she could begin work, but then she was completely absorbed in her task, and in half an hour had checked an tested the fuel system, making sure that gasoline was travelling freely from the tank along the lines to carburettor and cylinders, and that the pump was functioning smoothly.

"Right, now let's check out the electrics, she muttered to herself, and turned irritably as an insistent hand tugged at her belt, breaking her concentration.

"Yes, what is it?" Her expression changed, lighting up happily as she saw who it was.

"Sara!" She embraced the girl. "How on earth did you get here?"

"I escaped, Miss Camberwell. It was so boring in the hospital. I had my father's men bring a horse for me and I climbed out of the window and rode down the gorge."

"What about your friend the young doctor?"

Vicky demanded, still holding the girl and surprised by the strength of her affection for her.

"Oh, him!" Sara's voice held a world of scorn and contempt. "He was the most boring thing in the hospital.

Doctor! Ha! He knows nothing about how a body works I had to try and teach him, and that was no fun."

"And your leg?" she asked.

"How is your leg?"

"It is nothing almost well." Sara tried to dismiss the injury but Vicky saw that she was drawn and haggard. The long, rough ride down the gorge must have taxed her, and as Vicky led her tenderly to a seat in the shade of the acacias, she favoured the injured leg heavily.

"I heard there is going to be a battle. That's really why I came.

I heard the Italians are advancing-" She looked round her brightly, seeming to thrust her pain and weariness aside. "Where are Jake and Gareth? Where is Gregorius? We must not miss the battle, Miss Camberwell "That's what I am working on." Vicky's smile faded. "They have left us behind."

"What!" Sara's bright look became bellicose and then outraged as Vicky explained how they had been edged out.

"Men! You cannot trust them, "fumed Sara. "If they aren't trying to tip you on your back, then it's something worse.

We aren't going to let them do it, are we?"

"No," Vicky agreed.

"We are most certainly not." With Sara beside her, it was impossible to continue her work on the armoured car, for the girl made up for a total ignorance of the mechanism by an unbounded curiosity and when Vicky should have been inspecting the magneto, she found instead that she was looking closely at the back of Sara's head which had been interposed.

After she had forcibly elbowed her aside for the sixth time, she asked with exasperation, "Do you know how to fire a Vickers machine gun?"

"I am a mountain girl," boasted Sara. "I was born with a gun in one hand and a horse between my legs."

"Or what have you?" murmured Vicky, and the girl grinned impishly.

"But have you ever fired a Vickers?"

"No," admitted Sara reluctantly, and then brightened.

"But it won't take me long to find out how it works."

"There!"

Vicky indicated the thick water-jacketed barrel that protruded from the turret. "Go ahead." When Sara scrambled awkwardly on to the sponson, still favouring the leg, Vicky could return to her inspection. It was another half hour before she exclaimed, "He has taken the carbon rod out of the distributor. Oh, the sneaky swine." Sara's head popped out of the turret. "Gareth?"she asked.

"No," answered Vicky. "Jake."

"I didn't expect it of him." Sara climbed down beside Vicky to inspect the damage.

"They're all the same."

"Where has he hidden it?"

"Probably in his own pocket."

"What are we going to do?" Sara wrung her hands anxiously.

"We'll miss the battle!" Vicky thought a moment and then her expression changed. "In my bag, in the tent, is an Ever-Ready flashlight.

There is also a leather cosmetic case. Bring them both to me, please." One of the flashlight dry-cell batteries, split open by the curved blade of the dagger from Sara's belt, yielded a thick carbon rod from its core, and Vicky shaped it carefully with the nail-file from her cosmetic case, until it slipped neatly into the central shaft of the distributor and the engine fired at the first swing of the crank.

"You are really very clever, Miss Camberwell, said Sara, with such patent and solemn sincerity that Vicky was deeply touched. She smiled up at the girl who stood above the driver's seat, her head and shoulders in the turret and her knees braced against the back of the driver's seat.

"Think you can work that gun yet?" she asked, and Sara nodded uncertainly and placed her slim dark hands on the clumsy mahogany pistol grips, standing on tiptoe to squint through the sights.

"Just take me to them, Miss Camberwell." Vicky let out the clutch and swung the car in a tight lock out from under the acacia" trees and on to the steep rocky track which led to the wide open grassland in the funnel of the mountains.

am very angry with Jake," declared Sara, clutching wildly for support as the car pounded and thumped over the rough track. "I did not expect him to behave that way hiding the carbon rod. That is more like Gareth. I am disappointed in him."

"You are?"

"Yes, I think we should punish him."

"How?"

"I think Gareth should be your lover," Sara stated firmly.

"I think that is how we will punish Jake." In between wrestling with the heavy steering, and dancing her feet over the steel pedals of brake and clutch, Vicky thought about what Sara had said. She thought also of Jake's broad rangy shoulders, and thickly muscled arms she thought about his mop of curly hair and that wide boyish grin that could change so quickly to a heavy frown.

Suddenly she realized how very much she wanted to be with him, and how she would miss him if he were gone.

"I must thank you for sorting out my affairs for me," she called to the girl in the turret. "You have a knack."

"It's a pleasure, Miss Camberwell," Sara called back. "It is just that I understand these things." As the afternoon wore on, so thunderheads of cloud "Aformed upon the mountains in the west. They soared into a sky of endless sapphire blue, smoothly rounded masses of silver that rolled and swirled with a ponderous majesty, swelling high and darkening to the colour of ripening grapes and old bruises.

Yet over the plain the sky was open, clear and high, and the sun burned down and heated the earth so that the air above it shimmered and danced, distorting vision and distance. At one moment the mountains were so close that it seemed they reached to the heavens and they must topple upon the small group of men crouched in the shade of the two concealed armoured cars; at the next they seemed remote and miniaturized by distance.

The sun had heated the hulls of the cars so that the steel would blister skin at a touch and the men who waited, all of them except Jake Barton and Gareth Swales, crawled like survivors of a catastrophe beneath the hulls, seeking relief from the unrelenting sun.

The heat was so intense that the gin rummy game had long been abandoned, and the two white men panted like dogs, the sweat drying instantly on their skins and crusting into a thin film of white salt crystals.

Gregorius looked to the mountains, and the clouds upon them, and he said softly, "Soon it will rain." He looked up to where Jake Barton sat like a statue on the turret of Priscilla the Pig. Jake had swathed his head and upper body in a white linen sham ma to protect it from the sun and he held the binoculars in his lap. Every few minutes, he would lift them to his eyes and make one slow sweep of the land ahead before slumping motionless again.

Slowly the shadows crept out from the hulls of the cars, the sun turned across its zenith and gradually lost its white glare, its rays toned with yellows and reds. Once again, Jake lifted the binoculars and this time paused midway in his automatic sweep of the horizon.

In the lens the familiar dun feather of the distant cloud once again wavered softly at the line where pale earth and paler sky joined.

He watched it for five minutes, and it seemed that the dust cloud was fading shrivelling, and that the shimmering pillars of heat-distorted air were rising, screening his vision.

Jake lowered the glasses and a warm flood of sweat broke from his hairline, trickled down his forehead into his eyes.

He swore softly it the sting of salt and wiped it away with the hem of the linen sharnma. He blinked rapidly, and then lifted the glasses again and felt his heart jump in his chest and the prickle of rising hair on the nape of his neck.

The freakish Currents and whirlpools of heated air cleared suddenly, and the dust cloud that minutes before had seemed remote as the far shores of the ocean was now so close and crisply outlined against the pale blue white sky that it filled the lens. Then his heart jumped again below the rolling spreading cloud he could make out the dark insect shapes of many swiftly moving vehicles. Suddenly the viscosity of the air changed again, and the shapes of the approaching column altered becoming monstrous, looming through the mist of duSt. closer, every second closer and more menacing.

Jake shouted, and Gareth was beside him in an instant.

"Are you crazy?" he gasped. "They'll overrun us in a minute."

"Get started," Jake snapped. "Get the engines started," and slid down into the driver's hatch. There was a flurry of sudden frantic movement around the cars. The engines were cranked into reluctant life, surging and missing and backfiring as the volatile fuel turned to vapour in the heat and starved the engines.

The Ras was lifted into the turret of Gareth's car by half a dozen of his men at arms, and installed behind the Vickers gun. Their job accomplished, his men were leaving him and hurrying to mount their ponies when the Ras let out a series of shrieks in Amharic and pointed at the empty cave of his own mouth, devoid of teeth and big enough to hibernate a bear.

There was a brief moment of consternation I until the senior and eldest man at arms produced a large leather covered box from his saddle bag and hurried with it to kneel humbly on the sponson of the car and proffer the open box to the Ras. Mollified, the Ras reached into the box and brought out a magnificent set of porcelain teeth, big and white and sharp enough to fit in the mouth of a Derby winner, complete with bright red gums.

With only a short struggle he forced the set into his mouth, and then snapped them like a brook trout rising to the fly, before peeling back his lips in a death's head grin.

His followers cooed and exclaimed with admiration, and Gregorius told Jake proudly, "My grandfather only wears his teeth when he is fighting or pleasuring a lady," and Jake spared a brief glance from the advancing Italian army to admire the dazzling dental display.

"Makes him look younger, not a day over ninety, "he gave his opinion, and revved the engine, carefully manoeuvring the car into a hull-down position below the bank from where he could keep the Italians under observation. Gareth brought the other car up alongside and grinned at him from the open hatch. It was a wicked grin, and Jake realized that the Englishman was looking forward to the coming clash with anticipation.

It was no longer necessary to use binoculars. The Italian column was less than two miles distant, moving swiftly on a course that was carrying it parallel to the dry river-bed, beyond the curved horns of the ambush into the open unprotected funnel of flat land between the mountains.

Another fifteen minutes at this rate of advance and it would have turned the Ethiopian flank and would be able to drive without resistance to the mouth of the gorge and Jake knew better than to hope to be able to reorganize the rabble of cavalry once their formations were shattered. Instinctively he knew that they would fight like giants as long as the tide carried them forward, but any retreat would become a rout, and they would race for the hills like factory workers at five o'clock. They were accustomed to fighting as individuals, avoiding set piece battles, but snatching opportunity as it was offered, swift as hawks, but giving instantly before any determined thrust by an enemy.

"Come on!" he muttered to himself, pounding his fist against his thigh impatiently, and with the first stirring of alarm. Unless the bait was offered within the next few moments. Because they fought as individuals, each man his own general, and because the art of ambush and entrapment came as naturally to the Ethiopian as the feel of a rifle in his hand, Jake need not have fretted.

Seeming to rise from the flat scorched earth under the wheels of the leading Italian vehicles, a small galloping knot of horsemen flitted across the heat-tortured earth, seeming to float above it like a flock of dark birds. Their shapes wavering and indistinct, wrapped in pale streamers of dust, they cut back obliquely across the Italian line of march, running hard for the centre of the hidden Ethiopian line.

Almost instantly a single vehicle detached itself from the head of the column and headed on a converging course with the flying horsemen.

Its speed was frightening, and it closed so swiftly that the squadron of cavalry was forced to veer away, forced to edge out towards where the two armoured cars were hidden.

Behind the single speeding vehicle the Italian column lost its rigid shape. The front half of it swung away in a long untidy line abreast in pursuit of the horsemen. These were all larger, heavier vehicles, with high, canvas-covered cupolas, and their progress was ponderous and so slow that they could not gain perceptibly on the galloping horses.

However, the smaller faster vehicle was gaining rapidly and Jake stood higher to give himself a better view as he refocused the binoculars. He recognized instantly the big open Rolls-Royce tourer that he had last seen at the Wells of Chaldi. Its polished metalwork glittered in the sunlight, its low rakish lines enhancing the impression of speed and power, as the dust boiled out from behind its spinning rear wheels with their huge flashing central bosses.

Even as he watched, the Rolls braked and skidded broadside, coming to a halt in a furiously billowing cloud of dust. A figure tumbled from the rear seat.

Jake watched the man brace himself over the sporting rifle and the spurt of gunsmoke from the muzzle as he fired seven shots in quick succession, the rifle kicking up abruptly at the recoil and the thud thud of the discharge reaching Jake only seconds later.

The horsemen were drawing swiftly away from the Rolls, but neither the changing range nor the dust and mirage affected the marksman. At each shot a horse went down, sliding against the earth, legs kicking to the sky or plunging and rolling, as it struggled to regain its legs, falling back at last and lying still.

Then the rifleman leaped aboard the Rolls again, and the pursuit was continued, gaining swiftly on the survivors, the heavy phalanx of trucks and troop transports lumbering on behind it the whole mass of horses, men and machines rolling steadily deeper into the killing-ground that Gareth Swales had so carefully surveyed and laid out for them.

"The bastard!" whispered Jake, as he watched the Rolls skid to a standstill once more. The Italian was taking no chances of approaching the horsemen closely. He was standing well off, out of effective range of their ancient weapons, and he was picking them off one at a time, in the leisurely fashion of a shot gunner at a grouse shoot in fact, the whole bloody episode was being played out in the spirit of the hunt.

Even at the range of almost a thousand yards, Jake seemed able to sense the blood passion of the Italian marksman, the man's burning urge to kill merely for the sake of inflicting death, for the deep gut thrill of it.

If they intervened now, cutting into the flank of the widespread and disordered column, they might save the lives of many of the frantically fleeing horsemen. But the Italian column was not yet fully enmeshed in the trap that had been laid. Swiftly, Jake traversed the glasses across the dust-swirling and heat-distorted plain and for the first time he noticed that a dozen trucks of the Italian rear guard had not joined the mad, tear arse helter-skelter stampede after the Ethiopian horsemen. This small group had halted, seemingly under some strict control, and now they had been left two miles behind the roaring, dusty avalanche of heavy vehicles. Jake could spare no more attention to this group, for now the slaughter was being continued, the wildly flying horsemen being cut down by the crack rifleman from the Rolls.

The temptation to intervene now overwhelmed Jake. He knew it was not the correct tactical moment, but he thought, "The hell with it, I'm not a general, and those poor bastards out there need help." He shoved his right foot down hard on the throttle and the engine bellowed, but before he could pull forward and run at the bank, he was forestalled by Gareth Swales. He had been watching Jake, and the play of emotion over his face was plain to read. At the moment he revved the engine, Gareth swung the front end of the Hump across his bows, blocking him effectively.

"I say, old chap, don't be an idiot," Gareth called across the narrow space. "Calm the savage breast, you'll spoil the whole show."

"Those poor, Jake shouted back angrily.

"They've got to take their chances. "Gareth cut him short.

"I told you once before your sentimental old-fashioned ideas would get us both into trouble." At this stage the argument was drowned by the Ras. He was standing tall in the turret above Gareth. He had armed himself with the broad, two-handed war sword, and now the excitement became too much for him to bear longer in silence. He let out a series of shrill ululating war cries, and swung the sword in a great hissing circle around his head both the silver blade and his brilliant set of teeth catching the sun and flashing like semaphores.

He punctuated his shrill war cries with wild kicks at his driver, urging him in heated Amharic to have at the enemy, and Gareth ducked and twisted out of the way of his flying feet.

"A bunch of maniacs!" protested Gareth as he dodged.

"I've got myself mixed up with a bunch of maniacs!"

"Major Swales!" shouted Gregorius, unable to stay out of the argument a moment longer. "My grandfather orders you to advance!"

"You tell your grandfather to-" but Gareth's reply was cut short as a foot caught him in the ribs.

"Advance!" shouted Gregorius.

"Come on, for chrissake," yelled Jake.

"Yaahooo!" hooted the Ras, and swung around in the turret to wave on his men at arms. They needed no further invitation. In a loose mob, they spurred their ponies past the stymied cars and, brandishing their rifles above their heads, robes streaming in the wind like battle ensigns, they lunged up the steep bank into the open and galloped furiously on to the flank of the scattered Italian column.

"Oh my God," sighed Gareth. "Every man a bloody general-" "Look!"

shouted Jake, pointing back down the course of the dry river-bed, and they all fell abruptly silent at the spectacle.

It seemed as though the very earth had opened, disgorgeing rank upon rank of wildly galloping horsemen. \Where a moment before the sweep of land below the mountains had been empty and silent, now it swarmed with men and horses, hundreds upon hundreds of them, dashing headlong upon the lumbering Italian column.

The dust hung over it all, rolling forward like the fog off a winter sea, shrouding the sun, so that horses and machines were dark infernal shapes below the sombre clouds, and the ruddy sun glinted dully on the steel of rifle and sword.

"That does it," Gareth agreed bitterly, and reversed his car to clear Jake's front, before swinging away, engine roaring and the wheels spinning for purchase in the steep loose earth of the river-bank.

Jake turned wide of the other car and took the bank at an angle to lessen the gradient, and the two cumbersome machines burst out into the plain, wheel to wheel.

Before them was the open flank of massed soft-skinned vehicles, as tempting a target as they had ever been offered in their long and warlike careers. The two iron ladies swept forward together, and it seemed to Jake that there was a new tone to the deep engine note as though they sensed that once again they were fulfilling the true reason for their existence. Jake glanced quickly at the Hump as she sailed along beside him. Her angular steelwork, with its flat abrupt surfaces from which rose the tall turret, still gave her the ugly old-maidish silhouette, but there was a new majesty in the way she plunged forward her bright Ethiopian colours fluttered gaily as a cavalry pennant and the high thin, rimmed wheels spurned the sandy earth like the hooves of a thoroughbred. Beneath him, Priscilla drove forward as gamely, and Jake felt a warm flood of affection for his two old ladies.

"Have at them, girls!" he shouted aloud, and Gareth Swales, head protruding from the driver's hatch of the Hump, turned towards him.

There was a freshly lit cheroot clamped in the corner of his mouth, seeming to have sprouted there miraculously of its own accord, and Gareth grinned around it.

"Nob Xegitind carbomndum!" Jake caught the words faintly above the roar of wind and motor, then turned his full attention back to controlling the racing machine, and bringing her as swiftly as possible into the gaping breach in the Italian line.

Abruptly the pattern of movement ahead of him changed. The exultantly pursuing Italian warriors had realized belatedly that the roles had been neatly switched.

The Count picked up the horseman in the sight, and led off just a touch, a hair's breadth, for the Marmlicher was a high-velocity rifle and the range was not more than a hundred metres.

He saw the hit clearly, the man lurched in the saddle and sprawled forward over the horse's neck, but he did not fall. The rifle dropped from his hands and cartwheeled across the earth, but the man clung desperately to the horse's mane while quick crimson spread across the shoulder of his dirty white robe.

The Count fired again, aiming for the junction of the horse's neck and shoulder, and saw the jarring impact spin the animal off its feet, so that it fell heavily upon its wounded rider, crushing the air from his lungs in a short high wail.

The Count laughed, wild with excitement. "How many, Gino? How many is that?"

"Eight, my Colonel."

"Keep counting. Keep counting," he urged, as he swung the rifle, seeking the next target, peering eagerly over the open vee sight. Then suddenly he froze, the rifle barrel wavering and sinking to point at his glossy toe caps His lower jaw unhinged and slowly sank, as if in sympathy with the rifle barrel. His recent affliction, forgotten in the excitement of the chase, returned suddenly with a force that turned his bowels to water and his legs to rubber.

"Merciful Mary!" he whispered.

The entire horizon was moving, an Unbroken line from one edge of his vision to the other. It took him many seconds to assimilate what he was seeing, to realize that instead of fifteen horsemen, there were suddenly thousands upon thousands, and that rather than running before him they were now moving towards him at a velocity which he would not have believed possible. As he stared, he saw rank upon rank of the enemy seemingly rising from the very earth ahead of him, and rushing towards him through a curtain of fine pale dust. He saw the lowering sun glint red as blood upon the naked blades, and the drumming of galloping hooves sounded like the thunder of a giant waterfall. Yet faintly through the thunder, he heard the blood-freezing war shrieks of the horsemen.

"Giuseppe," he gasped. "Take us away from here fast!

Very fast." This was the sort of appeal that went directly to the driver's heart. He spun the big car so nimbly that the Count's considerably weakened legs collapsed and he fell backwards onto the leather seat.

Spread over a front of a quarter of a mile behind and on each side of the Rolls came thirty of the dun coloured Fiat troop-carriers.

Despite their most fervent efforts, they had lost ground steadily to the thrusting Rolls and they now lumbered along almost a thousand yards behind. However, the excitement of the chase had affected the occupants and they had climbed up on the cabs and cupolas, and hung there hooting and yelling as they watched the sport, like runners at a fox hunt.

This solid phalanx of vehicles, advancing almost wheel to wheel over the rough ground, at a speed which would have horrified the manufacturers, was suddenly faced with the urgent necessity of reversing its headlong career without any loss of speed.

The drivers of the two leading trucks whose need was most critical solved the problem by spinning_ the wheels to hard lock, one left and the other right, and they came together radiator to radiator at a combined speed in excess of sixty miles per hour. In a roaring cloud of steam, splintering glass and rending metal, their cargoes of black shirted infantry men were scattered like wheat upon the earth, or impaled on various metal projections of the vehicle bodies. The trucks, inextricably locked into each other, settled slowly on their shattered suspensions, and no sooner had the dust begun to drift away than there was a belly baking thump as the contents of their shattered fuel tanks ignited in a tall volcanic spout of flame and black smoke.

The other vehicles managed to reverse their courses without serious collision and streamed away into their own dust-clouds, pursued by a horde of galloping, gibbering cavalry.

Count Aldo Belli could not bring himself to glance back over his shoulder, certain that he would find a razor-edged sword swishing inches from his cringing rear, and he leaned over his driver, spurring him to greater speed by beating on his unprotected head and shoulders with a fist clenched like a hammer.

"Faster!" shouted the Count, his fine baritone rising to an uncertain contralto. "Faster, you idiot or I will have you shod" and he hit the driver again behind one ear, experiencing a small spark of relief as the Rolls overtook the rear vehicles in the disordered herd of fleeing trucks.

Now at last he judged it safe to look back, and his relief was more intense when he realized that the Rolls was easily capable of out

-running a mounted man. He experienced a warm flood of returning courage.

"My rifle, Gino," he shouted. "Give me my rifle." But the Sergeant was trying to focus his camera on the pursuing horde, and the Count hit him a blow over the top of his head.

"Idiot. This is war," he bellowed. "And I am a warrior give me my rifle!" Giuseppe, the driver, hearing him, reluctantly decided that he was expected to slow the Rolls to give the Count an opportunity to follow his warlike intentions but, at the first diminution of speed, he received another lusty crack on the centre of his pate and the Count's voice went shrill again.

"Idiot," he screeched. "Do you want to get us killed?

Faster, man, faster!" and with unbounded relief the driver pushed his foot flat on the throttle and the Rolls leapt forward again.

Gino was down on his hands and knees at the Count's feet, and now he came up with the Mannlicher in his hands and handed it to the Count.

"It's loaded, my Count."

"Brave boy!" The Count braced himself with the rifle held at his hip, and looked about for something to shoot at.

The Ethiopian cavalry had fallen well behind at this stage, and the Rolls had overtaken most of the troop-carriers they were between the Count and the enemy. The Count was considering ordering Giuseppe to work his way out on to the flank, and thus give him an open field of fire weighing the pleasure of shooting down the black riders at a respectable range against any possible physical danger to himself and he turned on his precarious perch in the back seat to look out in that direction.

He stared incredulously at what he saw. Two great humpbacked shapes were sailing in across the open grassland. They looked like two deformed camels, coming on swiftly with a curious loping progress that was at once comical and yet dreadfully menacing.

The Count stared at them uncomprehendingly, until with a sudden jolt of shock and a new warm flood of adrenalin into his bloodstream, he realized that the two strange vehicles were moving fast enough and at such an angle as to cut off his retreat.

"Giuseppe!" he shrieked, and hit the driver with the butt of the Marmlicher. It was not a heavy blow, it was meant merely to attract his attention, but Giuseppe had already taken much punishment and was by now lightly concussed.

He clung to the wheel with white knuckles and roared on directly into the path of the new enemy.

"Giuseppe!" shrieked the Count again, as he suddenly recognized the gaily coloured flashes on the turret of the nearest machine, and at the same instant saw the thick stubby cylindrical shape that protruded ahead of it. It was fluted vertically and at the far end a short pipe like muzzle thrust out of the heavy water-jacket.

"Oh, merciful Mother of God!" he howled as the machine altered course slightly and the muzzle of the Vickers machine gun pointed directly at him.

"You fool!" he shrieked at Giuseppe, hitting him again.

"Turn! You idiot, turn!" Suddenly through the tears of pain, the singing in his ears, and the blinding terror that gripped him, Giuseppe saw the huge camel-like shape looming up ahead of him and he spun the wheel again just as the muzzle of the Vickers erupted in a fluttering pillar of bright flame and the air all around them was torn by the hiss and crack of a thousand bull whips.

Castelani stood on the cab of his truck, and peered disapprovingly through his binoculars into the distant clouds of rolling dust where confused movement and shadowy indistinguishable shapes flitted without seeming purpose or pattern.

It had required all of his presence and authority to restrain the ten trucks which carried the artillery men and towed their field pieces, to keep them under his personal command and to prevent them joining in the wildly enthusiastic rush after the small contingent of Ethiopian horsemen.

Castelani was about to give the order to mount up and cautiously follow the Count's charge into history and glory, when he raised the binoculars again and it seemed that the pattern of dust-obscured movement out there had altered. Suddenly he saw the unmistakable shape of a Fiat transport emerge from the dust bank, and move ponderously back towards him. Through the glasses the men who clung to the canvas roof were all staring back in the direction from which they were coming at speed.

He panned the glasses slowly and saw another truck lumber out of the dust-mist headed back towards him. One of the soldiers on its roof was aiming and firing his rifle back into the obscuring clouds and his comrades, clinging to the roof about him, were frozen in attitudes of trepidation and alarm.

At that moment, Castelani heard something which he recognized instantly, his skin prickling at the distant ripping tearing sound.

The sound of a British Vickers machine gun.

His eye sought the direction, turning swiftly to the right flank of the extended Italian column which seemed now to be rushing back towards him in confused and completely disordered retreat.

He picked up the tall hump-backed shape instantly, standing high on the open plain, coming in fast with the strange bounding motion of a rocking horse, cutting boldly into the flank of the mass of soft-skinned Italian transports.

"Unlimber the guns," shouted Castelani. "Prepare to receive enemy armour." The Vickers machine guns in the turrets of the two armoured cars had ball-type mountings. The barrels could be elevated or depressed, but they could not traverse more than ten degrees to left or right, this being the limit of the ball mountings" turn. The driver had of necessity to act as gun-layer, swinging the entire vehicle to Within the limited traverse aim of the gun, or at least bring it of the mounting.

The Ras found this frustrating beyond all enduring. He would select a target, and shout in perfectly clear and coherent Amharic to his driver. Gareth Swales, not understanding a word of it, had already selected another target and was doing his best to line up on it while the Ras delivered a series of wild kicks at his kidneys to register his royal right of refusing to engage it.

The consequence of this was that the Hump wove a crazy, unpredictable course through the Italian column, spinning off at sudden tangents as the two crew members shouted bitter recriminations at each other, almost ignoring the sheets of rifle fire that thundered upon the steel hull from point-blank range, like hail on a galvanized roof.

Priscilla the Pig, on the other hand, was doing deadly execution.

She had missed her first burst fired at the speeding Rolls, and it had ducked away behind the screen of dust and bucking trucks. Now, however, Jake and Gregoritis were working with all the precision and mutual understanding that had developed between them.

"Left driver, left, left," called Gregorius, peering down the open sights of the Vickers at the truck that roared and bounced along a hundred yards ahead of them.

"All right, I'm on him," shouted Jake, as the vehicle appeared in the narrow field of his visor. This was a perforated steel plate that allowed only forward vision but once Jake had the truck centred, he followed its violent efforts to dislodge him, closing in rapidly until he was twenty yards behind it.

The back of the truck was packed with black-shirted infantry men. Some of them were directing wild but rapid rifle fire at the pursuing car, the bullets clanging and whining off the hull, but most of them clung white-faced to the sides of the truck and stared back with stricken eyes as the armoured death carrier bore down inexorably upon them.

"Shoot, Greg!" called Jake. Even through the cold anger that gripped him, he was pleased that the boy had obeyed his orders and held his fire until this moment. There would be no wastage now, at so short a range every round ripped into the Italian truck, tearing through canvas, flesh, bone and steel at the rate of seven hundred rounds a minute.

The truck swerved violently and its front end collapsed; it went over broadside, crashing over and over, flinging the men high in the air, the way a spaniel throws off the droplets from its back as it leaps from water to land.

"Driver, right," called Gregorius immediately. "Another truck, right, a little more right that's it, you're on." And they roared in pursuit of another panic-stricken load of Italians.

A hundred yards away on their flank the Hump scored its first success.

Gareth Swales was no longer able to accept the indignity of the Ras's flying feet, and his frenzied and completely unintelligible commands.

He left the controls of the racing car to swing an angry punch at the Ras.

"Cut that out, old chap," he snapped. "Play the game I'm on your side, damn it." The car, no longer under control, jinked suddenly.

Almost side by side with them sped a Fiat truck, filled with Italians, and the driver had not yet realized that there was another enemy apart from the pursuing hordes of Ethiopian horsemen. His head was twisted around over his shoulder at an impossible angle, and he drove by instinct alone.

The two uncontrolled vehicles came together at an acute angle and at the top of their combined speeds. Steel met steel in a storm of sparks and they staggered away from the blow, both of them veering over steeply. For a moment it" seemed that the Hump would go over; she teetered at the extreme end of her centre of gravity and then came back on to all four wheels with a crash that threw the men inside her unmercifully against her steel sides, before racing on again with Gareth wrestling at the wheel for control.

The Fiat truck was lighter and stood higher; the armoured car had caught her neatly under the cab and she did not even waver, but flipped over on her back, All four wheels still spinning as they "pointed at the sky, and the cab and canvas-covered hood were torn away instantly, the men beneath them smeared between steel and hard earth.

It was all too much for the Ras. He could no longer contain his frustration at being enclosed in a hot metal box from which he could see almost nothing, while all around hundreds of his hated enemies were escaping with complete impunity. He flung open the hatch of the turret and stuck out his head and shoulders, yipping shrilly with bloodlust, frustration, anger and excitement.

At that moment, an open sky-blue and glistening black Rolls-Royce tourer flashed across the front of the Hump. In the rear seat was an Italian officer bedecked with the glittering insignia of rank instantly Gareth Swales and the Ras were in perfect accord once again.

They had found a target eminently acceptable to both of them.

"I say, tally-ho!" cried Gareth, to be answered by a bloodcurdling "How do you do!" like the crowing of an enraged rooster from the turret above him.

Count Aldo Belli was in hysterics, for the driver seemed to have lost all sense of direction; now more than just a little concussed, he had turned at right angles across the line of flight of the Italian column.

This was as hazardous as running an ocean liner at full speed through a field of icebergs for the rolling dust-clouds had reduced visibility to less than fifty feet, and out of this brown fog the lumbering troop-carriers appeared without warning, the drivers in no fit condition to take evasive action, all looking back over their shoulders.

Ahead of them, two more monstrous shapes appeared out of the dust; one was an Italian truck and the other was one of the cumbersome camel-backed vehicles with the Ethiopian colours splashed upon its hull and a Vickers machine gun protruding from its turret.

Suddenly the armoured car swerved and crashed heavily into the side of the truck, capsizing it instantly and then swerving back towards the Rolls. It came so close, towering over them so threateningly, that it entered even Giuseppe's limited field of vision.

The effect was miraculous. Giuseppe shot bolt upright in his seat and, with the touch of an inspired Nuvolari, brought the Rolls round on two wheels, cutting finely across the armoured bows just at the moment that the hatch of the turret flew open and a wizened brown face, filled with the largest, whitest and most flashing teeth the Count had ever seen, popped out of the turret and emitted a war cry so shrill and heart-chilling that the Count's bowels flopped over like a stranded fish.

As the barrel of the Vickers swung on to the Rolls, the Ethiopian gunner ducked down into the turret, and the barrel elevated slightly until the Count found himself staring stupidly into its dark round aperture but Giuseppe had been watching also in the driving mirror, and now he spun the wheel and the Rolls flashed aside like a mackerel before the driving charge of the barracuda. The blast of shot from the Vickers tore down its left side lifting a storm of dirt and pebbles in spurting fountains high into the air.

The armoured car swung heavily to follow the Rolls" manoeuvre, the leaping dust fountains swinging with it, closing in mercilessly.

However, Giuseppe, faced with the prospect of death, hit the brakes so hard that the Count was catapulted forward, howling protests, to hang over the front seat, his ample black-clad buttocks pointing at the heavens and his glistening boots kicking wildly as he fought for balance.

The sheet of bullets from the swinging Vickers passed mere inches ahead of the Rolls, and Giuseppe swung the wheel to hard opposite lock, released the brakes and trampled hard on the throttle. The Rolls kicked over hard, wheels spinning for purchase, then bounded ahead with such impetus that the Count was thrown backwards again, crashing into a sitting position on the rear leather seat, his helmet falling over his eyes.

"I'll have you shot," he gasped, as he struggled weakly to adjust the helmet. Giuseppe was too busy to hear him. His duck and swerve had beaten the Ethiopian gunner, and the superior speed of the Rolls was carrying it swiftly out of harm's way. just a few more seconds then the ancient but splendidly toothed head of the gunner appeared once more in the turret, and the bows of the armoured car and the questing muzzle of the Vickers swung back. The gunner dropped back behind the gun and the roaring clatter of bullets sounded high above the bellow of straining engines.

Once again, the dust storm of bullets tore up the earth, swinging rapidly towards the Rolls.

Slightly ahead of the two vehicles, another growling, labouring troop-carrier loomed out of the dust on a parallel course with them, but travelling at only half the speed under its heavy load of terrified troopers.

Giuseppe touched the wheel, swaying out slightly away from the stream of bullets, then he swung hard the opposite way and as the armoured car turned to follow him he ducked neatly behind the troop-carrier, screened by its high unstable bulk from the deadly machine gun. The Ethiopian kept firing.

As the solid hose of fire tore through the canvas hood of the truck, ripping and shredding the men crowded shoulder to shoulder beneath it, the Rolls was pulling away swiftly in its lee. Suddenly, it was out of the dust clouds into the crystal desert air, with a vista of open land stretching away to the horizon a horizon which was the passionate destination of every man in the Rolls. The lumbering troop carriers were left behind, and the Rolls could make a clean run of it.

The way the Count felt at that moment, they would only stop once he was safely into his defensive positions above the Wells of Chaldi.

Then quite suddenly, he was aware of the guns on the open plain ahead of him. They were drawn up neatly in spaced-out triangular batteries, three vees of three guns each, with the gunners grouped about them and the long fit barrels covering the approaching mass of fleeing vehicles.

There was a parade-ground feeling of calm and good order about them that made the Count blubber with relief after the nightmare from which he had just emerged.

"Giuseppe, you have saved us," he sobbed. "I am going to give you a medal. "The threat of capital punishment made a few minutes earlier was forgotten. "Drive for the guns, my brave boy. You have done good work and you'll find me grateful." At that moment, emboldened by talk of safety, Gino lifted himself from the floorboards where he had been resting these last few minutes. He looked cautiously over the rear of the Rolls, and what he saw caused him to let out a single strangled cry and to drop once more into his original position on the floor.

Behind them the Ethiopian armoured car had burst out of the dust clouds and was bounding determinedly after them.

The Count took one look also, and immediately resumed his encouragement of Giuseppe, beating on his head with a fist like a judge's gavel.

"Faster, Giuseppe!" he shrieked. "If he kills us, I'll have you shot." And the Rolls raced for the protection of the guns. ready now!" intoned Major Castelani gravely, trying by the tone of his voice to quiet their nerves.

"Steady, my lads. Hold your fire. Hold your fire.

"Remember your drill," he said. "Just remember your range drill, soldier." He paused a moment beside the nearest gun layer lifting his binoculars and sweeping the field ahead.

The dust cloud was rolling rapidly towards them, but all the action was confused and indistinct.

"You are loaded with high explosive?" the Major asked quietly, and the gun-layer gulped nervously and nodded.

"Remember, the first shot is the only one you can aim with care.

Make it count."

"Sir." The man's voice was unsteady, and Castelani felt a stab of anger and contempt. They were all un blooded boys, unsteady and nervous. He had been forced to push them to their places and put the trails of the guns in their hands.

He turned abruptly, and strode to the next battery.

"Steady now, lads. Hold your fire until it counts." They turned strained, pale faces to him; one of the layers looked as though he would burst into tears at any moment.

"The only thing you have to be afraid of is me! growled Castelani. "Let one of you open fire before I give the order and you'll-" A cry interrupted him, as one of the loaders stood up and pointed out on to the field.

"Take that man's name," snapped Castelani, and turned with dignity, making a show of polishing the lens of his binoculars on his sleeve before raising them to his eyes.

Colonel Count Aldo Belli was leading his men back so enthusiastically that he had outstripped them by half a mile, and every moment was widening the gap. He was driving directly at the centre of the artillery batteries, and he was standing tall in the back seat of the Rolls, with both arms waving and gesticulating as though he was being attacked by a swarm of bees.

Even as Castelani watched, from out of the brown curtains of dust beyond the Rolls burst a machine that he recognized instantly, despite its new camouflage paint and the unfamiliar weapon in the turret. It did not need the gay pennant that flew above it to identify his enemy.

"Very well, lads," he said quietly. "Here they come. High explosive, and wait for the order. Not a moment before." The speeding armoured car fired, a long tearing ripping burst. Much too long, Castelani thought with grim satisfaction. That gun would be overheating, and they could expect a jam. An experienced gunner laid down short, spaced bursts of fire the enemy were green also, Castelani decided.

"Steady, lads, "he snapped, watching his men stir restlessly at the sound of gunfire and exchange nervous glances.

The car fired again, and he saw the fall of shot around the Rolls, kicking up swift jumping spurts of dust and earth another long ripping hail of fire. That ended abruptly and was not repeated.

"Ha!" snorted Castelani, with satisfaction. "She has jammed." His wavering gunners would not have to receive fire. It was good. It would steel them, give them confidence to shoot, without being shot at.

"Steady now. All steady. Not long to wait. Nice and steady now." His voice lost its jagged, emery-paper tone and became soothing and crooning like a mother at the cradle.

"Wait for it, lads. Easy now." The Ras did not understand what had happened, why the gun remained silent, despite all the strength of both his hands on pistol grip and triggers. The long canvas belt of ammunition still drooped from the bins and fed into the breech of the Vickers but it no longer moved.

The Ras swore at the gun, such an oath that, had he hurled it at another man, would have led immediately to a duel to the death, but the gun remained silent.

Armed with his two-handed battle sword, the Ras climbed half out of the turret and brandished it about his head.

It is doubtful if he would have realized what three batteries of modern 100 men field guns would have looked like from the business end, or, if he had recognized them, whether they would have daunted his determined pursuit of the fleeing Rolls. As it was, his reason and vision were clouded with the red mists of battle rage. He did not see the waiting guns.

Below him, Gareth Swales leaned forward in the driver's seat peering shortsightedly through the visor, which narrowed his field of vision and partially obscured it as though he was looking through the perforated bottom of a kitchen colander. His eyes were swimming from the cordite smoke, the engine fumes and the dust-motes so that he blinked rapidly as he concentrated all his efforts in following the speeding ethereal shape of the Rolls. He did not see the waiting guns.

"Shoot, damn you," he shouted. "We are going to lose him." But above him the Vickers was silent, and from his seat low down in the hull, the slight fold of ground so carefully chosen by Major Castelani half-hid the batteries.

He raced towards them, drawn on inexorably by the fleeting shape of the Rolls dancing elusively ahead of him.

Good." Castelani allowed himself a bleak little smile as he watched the enemy vehicle come on steadily.

Already it was within comfortable range for an experienced gunner, but he knew it must be half as close again before his own crews could make any certainty of their practice.

The Rolls, however, was a mere two hundred metres in front of the guns, and coming on at a speed that could not have been less than sixty miles an hour. Three terrified and chalky faces were turned towards him in dreadful appeal and three voices were raised in loud cries for succour.

The Major ignored them and swiftly turned his professional eye back to the enemy. He found it was still two thousand metres out across the plain but closing satisfactorily. He was on the point of uttering another reassurance to his edgy gunners, when the Rolls roared through the narrow gap in the centre of his batteries.

The Count had at that moment temporarily found his feet and replaced his helmet on his head. Standing on the high platform of the Rolls, his voice, powered with adrenalin and shrill with terror, carried clearly to every gunner.

"Open fire!" shrieked the Count. "Open fire immediately! or I will have you all shot!" and then, realizing that they should be encouraged to remain at their posts and cover his withdrawal, he reached frantically for inspiration and flung over his shoulder one rousing "Death before dishonour!" before the Rolls bore him away, still at sixty miles an hour, towards the long distant horizon.

The Major lifted his voice in a great bugling bellow to countermand the order, but even his lungs were no match for the thunderous volley of nine field guns fired in as close to unison as they had never been in training. Each gunner took his Colonel at his literal word when he said "immediately" and such refinements as laying and aiming were forgotten in the dire urgency of firing as furiously and as fast as possible.

In the circumstances, it was nothing short of a miracle that one high-explosive shell found a mark. This was a Fiat troop-carrier which emerged at that moment from the dust clouds a quarter of a mile behind the Ethiopian armoured car. The shell was fused to a thousandth of a second delay; it went in through the radiator, shattered the engine block, disintegrated the driver, then burst in the midst of the group of terrified infantrymen huddled under the canvas hood.

The engine and front wheel of the truck kept going forward for a few seconds before beginning to roll and bounce over the irregular ground the rest of the truck and twenty men went straight upwards, fifty feet in the air like a troupe of maniacal acrobats.

Only one other shell came close to hitting the enemy. It burst ten yards in front of the Hump, emptying in a towering pillar of flame and yellow earth, and gouging a deep round crater, four feet across, into which the speeding car plunged.

The Ras, whose head was protruding from the turret, and whose mouth and eyes were wide open, had all three of these body apertures filled with flying sand from the explosion and his war whoops were cut off abruptly, as he choked for breath and tried frantically to wipe his streaming eyes.

Gareth also had his vision abruptly closed by the pillar of flame and sand, and he drove blindly into the shell crater.

The impact threw him out of his seat, and the steering wheel hit him in the chest, driving the wind out of his lungs before snapping off short at the floorboards.

With another bound, the Hump bounced jauntily out of the shell crater with streamers of dust and shell smoke swirling about her. She was hanging over on one side with her springs snapped off by the jolt, and her front wheels locked firmly to one side, yet her engine still bellowed at full power and she went into a tight right-hand circle, around and around like a circus animal.

Wheezing for breath, Gareth dragged himself back into the driver's seat, only to find that there was no longer a steering column and that the throttle had jammed at the fully open position. He sat there for long seconds, shaking his head to clear it, and struggling desperately for breath, for the hull was filled with dust and smoke.

Another shell, bursting somewhere close beside the hull, roused him from the stupors of shock, and he reached up, unlatched the driver's hatch and stuck his head out into the open air. At what seemed like point-blank range, three full batteries of Italian field guns were firing at him.

"Oh my God!" he gasped painfully, as another volley of high explosive erupted around the rapidly circling car, the blast jarring his eyeballs and rattling his teeth in his head.

"Let's go home!" he said and began to hoist himself out of the narrow hatch-way. His feet came clear of the steel flooring of the hull only just in time to save every bone below his knees in both legs from being shattered into small fragments.

a thousand yards away across the plain Major Castelani was fighting for control against the panic that the Count had instilled in his gunners.

They were loading and firing with such single-minded passion that all the other refinements of gunnery were completely forgotten. The layers were no longer making a pretence of seeking a target, but merely jerking the lanyard at the very moment the breech block clanged shut.

Castelani's bellows made no impression on the half deafened and almost completely dazed gunners. The Count's last injunction to death had shattered their nerves completely and they were all of them beyond reason.

Castelani dragged the nearest layer from his seat behind the gun shield, and prised open the man's death grip on the lanyard. Cursing bitterly at the quality of the men under his command, he pedalled the traverse and elevating handles of the gun with a smooth expert action.

The thick barrel dropped and swung until the insect speck of the armoured car loomed suddenly large in the magnifying prism of the gunsight. It was tearing in a crazy circle, clearly out of control, and Castelani picked up the rhythm of its circle and hit the lanyard with a short hard jerk of the wrist. The barrel flew back, arrested at last by the hydraulic pistons of the shock absorber, and the fifteen-pound cone-shaped steel shell was hurled on an almost flat trajectory across the plain.

It was aimed fractionally low. It passed inches below the tall shuttered bows of the car, between the two front wheels, and struck the earth directly below the driver's compartment.

The released energy. of the blast was deflected by the earth's surface up into the soft underbelly of the hull. It blew the engine block off its seating, tore off the big front wheels like wings from a roast chicken, and stove in the steel floor of the hull with a great Thor's hammer stroke.

If Gareth Swales's feet had been in contact with the steel floor of the hull, the shock would have been transmitted directly into the bones of his feet and legs, and he would have suffered that dreadful but characteristic wound of the tank man below the knees his legs would have been transformed into bags of shattered bone.

He was, however, suspended half in and half out of the driver's hatch with both legs kicking frantically in the air, and the shock of the blast came up like carbon dioxide in a bottle of freshly opened champagne. He was the cork and he was shot out of the hatch, still kicking.

The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret, propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with the Ras seated between Gareth's shoulder blades, and the wonder of it was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth's ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his back.

"I warn you, old chap," he managed to gasp. "One day you are going to go too far." The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth's efforts to dislodge the Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand Prix.

"Oh my God!" gasped Gareth, his scattered wits reassembling hastily, and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carcass of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized that the Ras was no longer with him.

"Rassey, you stupid old bastard come back, he shouted despairingly. The Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword, was staggering out on unsteady stork's legs, stunned by the shell burst but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.

Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.

He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention.

they were intent on one thing only and that was following their Colonel.

"Shut up!" growled Gareth, as the Ras tried to provoke them with some of the foulest oaths in the Amharic language. Finally he had to hold the Ras down, wrap his sham ma around his head, and sit on it while the Italian Fiats thundered past, and the rolling clouds of dust spread over them as though driven by the khamsin.

Once through the dust and confused stampede of trucks, Gareth thought he glimpsed the hump-backed shape of Priscilla the Pig, and he released the Ras for a moment to wave and shout, but the car disappeared almost instantly, hard on the trail of a lumbering Fiat, and Gareth heard the short crashing burst of the Vickers clearly, even above the thunder of many engines.

Then suddenly they were all past, streaming away, the engine sounds fading, the dust settling and then there was another sound, faint yet but growing with every second.

Although most of the Harari and Galla horsemen had long ago given up the pursuit in favour of the more enjoyable and profitable occupation of looting the capsized and damaged Italian trucks, a few hundred of the more hardy souls still flogged on their foundering mounts.

This thin line of horsemen came sweeping forward, ululating and casually cutting down the Italian survivors from the destroyed trucks who fled before them on foot.

"All right, Rassey." Gareth unwound the sham ma from around his head.

"You can come out now. Call your boys up, and tell them to get us out of here." In the few moments of respite while the main body of motorized infantry came through the batteries, Major Castelani hurried from gun to gun, lashing with tongue and cane until he had contained the infectious panic of his gunners and had them under his hand again.

Then out of the dust clouds, appearing at short pistol range as suddenly as a ghost ship, but with the Vickers machine gun in its turret crackling wickedly and the muzzle blast flickering in an angry throbbing red glow, was a second Ethiopian armoured car.

It was enough to destroy the semblance of control that Castelani had forced heavy-handedly upon the gun crews.

As the armoured car swung across their line at point-blank range, raking the exposed guns with a withering. burst of machine-gun fire, the loaders dropped their ready shells and almost knocked the layers from their seats in their anxiety to get behind the armoured shield of the gun. They all huddled there with their heads well down. The driver of the armoured car, after that one rapid pass down the front of the batteries, swung the vehicle abruptly back into the screen of dust.

Jake had been just as startled by the encounter as were the gunners;

at one moment he had been joyously tearing along after a fat wallowing Fiat, and at the next he had emerged from a cloud of dust to be confronted by the gaping muzzles of the big guns.

"My God, Greg, "Jake shouted up at the boy in the turret.

"We nearly ran right into them."

"Volleyed and thundered do you remember the poem?"

"Poetry, at a time like this?" growled Jake, and he gave Priscilla the throttle.

"Where are we going?"

"Home, and the sooner the quicker. That's a powerful argument they are pointing at us."

"Jake-" Gregorius began to protest, when there was a bang and a flash that glowed briefly even through the shrouds of dust, and close beside the high turret passed a 100 men. shell. The air slammed against their eardrums and the shriek of it made both of them flinch violently, the air. stank of the electric sizzle of its passing, and it burst half a mile beyond them in a tall tower of flame and dust.

"Do you see what I mean?" asked Jake.

"Yes, Jake oh yes, indeed As he spoke, the dust clouds that had covered them so securely now subsided and drifted aside, exposing them unmercifully to the attentions of the Italian guns, but revealed also was another tempting target. The Ethiopian cavalry were still coming on, and after a few futile volleys had burst around the tiny elusive shape of the speeding car, Castelani resigned himself to the limitations of his gunners and switched targets.

"Shrapnel," he bellowed. "Load with shrapnel fuse for air burst."

He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer, emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Massed horsemen.

Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian ponies were small shaggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour grass of the desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost expended.

The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant, blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.

A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.

Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton balls, and the continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was left entirely to Castelani's artillery and the stranded crew of the Hump.

From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.

"Don't blame them, not really," he told the Ras, and then he looked across at the speeding armoured car. Priscilla the Pig was rapidly overhauling the cavalry.

"He saw us, - I know he did." There had "Him I do," he muttered.

been a moment when Priscilla the Pig had passed within a quarter of a mile of them, had in fact turned directly towards them for a few moments. "Do you know something, Rassey old fellow, I do believe we are being set up for a couple of Patsys." He glanced at the Ras, who lay beside him like an old hunting dog that has been worked too hard; his chest laboured like a blacksmith's bellows, and his breathing whistled shrilly in his throat.

"Better take those choppers out of your mouth, old chap or else you're going to swallow them. The fighting's over for the day. Take it nice and easy now. We've got a long walk home tonight." And Gareth Swales transferred all his attention back to the disappearing car.

"Big-hearted Jake Barton is leaving us here and going home to spoon up the honey. Who was the chap that David pulled the same trick on? Come on, Rassey, you are the Old Testament expert wasn't it Uriah the Hittite?" He shook his head sadly. Gareth was already ready to believe the worst. "I take it very much amiss, Rassey, I can tell you.

Probably have done exactly the same myself, mind you but I do take it amiss gaming from a fine upright citizen like Jake Barton." The Ras had not listened to a word of it. He was the only man in the two armies for whom the battle had not ended.

He was just having a short rest, as behave a warrior of his advanced years. Now, with a single bound, he was on his feet again, snatching up his sword and heading directly for the centre of the Italian batteries. Gareth was taken completely off balance, and the Ras had covered fifty yards of the necessary two thousand to the enemy positions before Gareth could overtake him.

It was unfortunate that one of the Italian gun-layers had his binoculars focused on the derelict hull of the Hump at that moment.

The belligerence of the Italian gunners was in inverse proportion to the number and proximity of the enemy and all of them were giddy with elation at the total and unexpected victory that had dropped into their laps.

The first shell dropped close beside the broken hull of the Hump, as Gareth caught up with the Ras. Gareth stooped and picked up a rounded stone, about the size of a cricket ball.

"Frightfully sorry, old chap," he panted, as he cupped the stone in his right hand. "But we really can't go on like this." He made allowance for the brittle old bone of the Ras's skull, and with the stone he tapped him carefully, almost tenderly, above the ear, on the polished black bald curve of the Ras's pate.

As the Ras dropped, Gareth caught him, one arm under his knees and the other around the shoulders, as though he was a sleeping child. The shells were falling heavily about him as Gareth ran back for cover, carrying the Ras's unconscious form across his chest.

Jake Barton heard the crumping explosion of the shells, and shouted up at Gregorius, "What are they shooting at now?" Gregorius climbed higher out of the turret and peered back. The crushed hull of the Hump would have been unnoticed at that range, just another speck like a clump of camel-thorn or an amorphous pile of black rock.

Indeed, both men had looked at it fifty times in the last few minutes without recognizing it, but the shell bursts, which began to leap about it in fleeting graceful ostrich feathers of dust and smoke, drew Gregorius's eye immediately.

"My grandfather!" he cried . anxiously. "They have been hit, Jake."

Jake swung the car and halted it, clambering out of the hatch, blowing dust from the lens of his binoculars and then focusing them. The picture of the destroyed car leaped into close-up and he recognized instantly the two distant figures, one in tailored tweeds, the other in flowing robes and swirling skirts; the two of them were locked together breast to breast and for an unbelieving moment Jake thought they were doing a Strauss waltz in the midst of an artillery barrage. Then he saw Gareth lift the Ras off the ground and stagger with him to the shelter of the overturned car.

"We must rescue them, Jake," Gregorius exclaimed passionately.

"They will be killed out there, if we do not." Perhaps it was the telepathic transfer of Gareth Swales's suspicions, but Jake experienced the sudden guilty prick of temptation. At that moment he knew he loved Vicky Camberwell, and there was an easy way to clear the field.

"Jake!" Gregorius called again, and suddenly Jake felt himself so sickened by his own treacherous thoughts that there was a hollow nauseous feeling in the centre of his gut, and he felt the swift flow of saliva from under his tongue.

"Let's go," he said, and dropped down into the driver's hatch. He swung Priscilla the Pig in a tight skidding turn and ran straight for the forest of shell-bursts.

They drew no fire, the Italians were concentrating on the stationary target and they seemed to be making better practice as they figured the range. It was a matter of seconds before the Hump took a direct hit, and Jake pressed the throttle flat to the floorboards, but Priscilla the Pig chose this moment to show her true nature. He felt her baulk, and the note of her engine changed momentarily, missing and stuttering, power falling off then suddenly she picked up again and roared onwards at full power.

"Good little darling. "Jake peered ahead through the visor, and swung slightly out to the left, to come in under cover of the Italians" own shell-bursts and the capsized hull of the Hump.

A shell burst directly ahead, and Jake weaved the big car expertly around the gaping smoking crater, pulled in sharply and spun around to a sliding halt, facing back the way he had come, ready for a quick pull-away. He was hard up under cover of the destroyed hull, partially screened from the Italians, and ten paces from where Gareth Swales was sitting holding the Ras's frail body on his lap.

"Gary!" yelled Jake, sticking his head out of the hatch, and Gareth looked up at him with a startled unbelieving expression. He had been so deafened by shell-bursts that he had not realized that Jake had come back for him. Jake had to shout again.

"Come on, damn you to hell," and this time Gareth moved with alacrity.

He picked up the Ras like a bundle of dirty laundry and ran with him to the car. A shell burst so close that it almost knocked him off his feet, and stones and clouds of earth splattered against the armoured steel.

However, Gareth kept his feet and handed up the Ras to the willing hands and loving care of his grandson.

"Is he all right?" Greg demanded anxiously.

"Hit by a stone, he'll be all right," Gareth grunted, and leaned for an instant against the side of the car, his breathing sobbing painfully in his throat, his hair and mustache thick with white dust, and the sweat cutting deep wet runners down his filth-caked cheeks.

He looked up at Jake. "I thought you weren't coming back," he croaked.

"It crossed my mind." Jake reached down and took his hand. He boosted him up the side of the car, and Gareth held his hand for a second longer than was necessary, squeezing slightly. owe you one, old son."

"I'll call on you, "Jake grinned.

"Any time. Any time at all." At that moment, Priscilla the Pig roared heroically, then abruptly backfired in opposition to the Italian shell-bursts.

Her engine spluttered, surged, farted despairingly, and then fell silent. "Oh, you son of a bitch!" said Jake with great and passionate feeling."

"Not now!"

"Reminds me of a girl I knew in Australia,-" Later, "Jake told him. "Get on the crank handle."

"My pleasure, old boy," and a near miss burst beside them and knocked him off his precarious perch on the sponson.

Gareth picked himself up and dusted his lapels fastidiously as he limped to the crank handle.

After a full minute at the handle, spinning it like a demented organ-grinder with no effect at all, Gareth fell back panting again.

"I say, old chap, I'm a bit bushed," and they changed places quickly.

Jake stooped over the crank handle, ignoring the tempest of bursting shells and swirling dust clouds, and the thick muscles in his arm writhed as he spun the crank.

"She's dead, Gareth shouted after another minute. Jake persevered, his face turning darkly red and the veins in his throat swelling into thick blue cords but at last even he released the handle with disgust and stepped back gasping.

"The tool kit is under the seat, "he said.

"You aren't going to do your handyman act here and now?"

Incredulously Gareth made a wide gesture that took in the bloody battlefield, the Italian guns and the bursting shells.

"You've got a better idea?" Jake asked brusquely, and Gareth looked about him forlornly, suddenly straightening his slumping shoulders, the droop of his mouth lifting into that eternally jaunty grin.

"Funny you should risk, old son. It just so happens-" and like a conjurer he indicated the apparition that appeared suddenly out of the curtains of leaping dust and fuming cordite.

Miss Wobbly slammed to a dead stop beside them and both hatches flew open. Sara's dark head appeared in one and Vicky's golden one in the other.

Vicky leaned across towards Jake, cupping her hands to her mouth as she shouted in the storm of shellfire, "What's wrong with Priscilla?" And Jake gasped, still red-faced and sweating. "She's thrown one of her fits."

"Grab the tow rope," Vicky instructed. "We'll pull you out." The Ethiopian camp swarmed with victorious swaggering warriors; their laughter was loud and their voices boastful. Admiring womenfolk, who watched them from the cooking fires, were preparing the night's feast.

The big, black iron pots bubbled with a dozen varieties of wat, and the smell of spices and meat lay heavily on the evening cool.

Vicky Camberwell bent over her typewriter, seated under the flap of her tent, and her long supple fingers flew at the keys as the words tumbled from her describing the courage and fighting qualities of a people who, armed only with sword and horse, had routed a modern army equipped with all the most fearsome weapons of war. When she was in literary flight, Vicky sometimes overlooked small details that might detract from the dramatic impact of her story the fact that the biblical warriors of Ethiopia had been supported by armoured cars and Vickers machine guns were details of this type, and she ignored them as she ended, "But how much longer can these proud, simple and gallant people continue to fight off the greedy lusting hordes of a modern Caesar intent on Empire? A miracle happened here today on the plains of Danakil, but the age of miracles is passing and it is clear even to those who have thrown in their lot with this fair land of Ethiopia that she is doomed unless the sleeping conscience of a civilized world is aroused, unless the voice of justice rings out clearly, calling to the tyrant Hands off, Benito Mussolini!"

"That's wonderful, Miss Camberwell," said Sara, leaning over to read the last words as they tapped out on the roller of the machine. "It makes me want to cry, it's so sad and "I'm glad you like it, Sara. I wish you were my editor." Vicky stripped the page from the machine and checked it swiftly, crossing out a word and inking in another before she was satisfied, and she folded the despatch into a thick brown envelope and licked the flap.

"Are you sure he is reliable?" she asked Sara.

"Oh, yes, Miss Camberwell, he is one of my father's best men."

Sara took the envelope and handed it to the warrior who had been waiting an hour outside the tent, squatting at the head of his saddled horse.

Sara spoke to him with great fire and passion, and the man nodded vehemently as she exhorted him and then flung himself into the saddle and dashed away towards the darkening mouth of the gorge, where the smoky blue shadows of evening were enfolding the harsh cliffs and jagged peaks of the mountains.

"He will be at Sardi before midnight. I have told him not to pause along the way. Your message will go on to the telegraph at dawn tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, Sara dear." Vicky rose from the camp table and as she covered her typewriter, Sara eyed her speculatively.

Vicky had bathed and changed into the one good dress she had brought with her, a light Irish linen in a pale blue, cut with a fashionably low waist and skirt that covered her knees but displayed rounded calves and the narrow delicately shaped ankles which gleamed in their sheaths of fine silk stockings.

"Your dress is pretty," said Sara softly, "and your hair is so soft and yellow." She sighed. "I wish I were beautiful like you are.

I wish I had a lovely white skin like you."

"And I wish I had a beautiful golden skin like yours," Vicky countered swiftly, and they laughed together.

"Are you dressed like that for Gareth? He will love you very much when he sees you. Let us go and find him."

"I've got a better idea, Sara. why don't you go and find Gregorius. I am sure he is looking for you." Sara thought about that for a moment, torn between duty and pleasure.

"Are you certain you'll be all right on your own, Miss Camberwell?"

"Oh, I think so thank you, Sara. If I get into trouble I'll call you."

"I'll come right away," Sara assured her.

Vicky knew exactly where she would find Jake Barton, and she came up silently beside the tall steel hull and watched for a while as he worked, completely absorbed and totally oblivious of her presence.

She wondered how she had been so blind as not to have seen him properly before, not to have seen beneath the boyish freshness the strength and quiet assurance of a full mature man. It was an ageless face, and she knew that even when he was an old man the illusion of youth and freshness would remain with him. Yet there was an intensity in the eyes, a steely purpose in the heavy line of the jaw that she had never noticed before. She remembered the dream of his that he had told her the factory building his own engine and in a clairvoyant flash she knew that he had the determination and the strength to make it become reality. Suddenly she longed to share it with him, and knew that their two dreams could be placed together, his engine and her book, they could be created together, each gathering strength from the other, pooling their determination and their creative reserves. it would be worth while to share both dreams with a man like Jake Barton.

"Perhaps being in love allows one to see more clearly," she thought, as she watched him with secret pleasure. "Or perhaps it simply makes it easy to kid yourself," and she felt annoyance that her natural cynicism should overtake her now.

"No," she decided. "It's not make believe. He is strong and good and he'll stay that way," and immediately she thought that perhaps she was trying too hard to convince herself.

Unbidden, the memory of the night she had spent so recently with another man flooded back to her, and for a moment she found herself confused and uncertain. She tried to thrust the memory firmly aside, but it nagged at her, and she found herself comparing two men, remembering the wanton and wicked delights she had known,-and doubting wistfully that she might ever recapture them.

Then she looked closer at the man she thought she loved, and saw that although his arms were thick and dark with hair, and his hands were large and heavy-knuckled, yet the thick spatulate fiLigers worked with an almost sensuous skill and lightness, and she tried to imagine them moving on her skin and the image was so clear and voluptuous that she shuddered and drew in her breath sharply.

Immediately Jake looked up at her, the surprise in his eyes changing instantly to pleasure, and that slow warm smile spreading over his face as he ran his eyes swiftly from the top of her silken head down to the silken ankles.

"Hello, haven't I met you somewhere before?" he asked, and she laughed and pirouetted, flaring the dress.

"Do you like it?" she asked. He nodded silently and then asked, "Are we going somewhere special?"

"The Ras's feast, didn't you know?"

not sure I can stan another of his feasts, don't know which is more dangerous an Italian attack or that liquid dynamite he serves."

"You'll have to be there you're one of the heroes of the great victory, and Jake grunted and returned his attention to Priscilla the Pig's internal processes.

"Have you found the trouble?"

"No." Jake sighed with resignation.

"I've taken her to pieces and put her together again and I can't find a thing." He stood back, shaking his head and wiping his greasy hands on a wad of cotton waste. "I don't know. I just don't know."

"Have you tried starting her again?"

"No point in that not until I find and cure the trouble."

"Try,"said Vicky, and he grinned at her.

"It's no use but to humour you." He stooped to the crank handle, and Priscilla fired at the first swing, caught and ran smoothly, purring like a great hump-backed cat in front of the fire.

"My God." Jake stepped back and stared in amazement.

"There's just no logic to it."

"She's a lady," Vicky explained.

"You know that and there isn't necessarily logic in the way a lady behaves." He turned to face her directly and grinned at her, such a knowing expression in his eyes that she felt herself flushing.

"I'm beginning to find that out," he said, and stepped towards her, but she raised both hands protectively.

"You'll put grease on this dress-" "If I were to bath first?"

"Bath," she ordered. "And then we'll talk again, mister."

In the last few minutes of daylight, a rider had come down the gorge, clattering and sliding on the rough footing, and then hitting the level ground and galloping into the Ras's camp on a blown and lathered horse.

Sara Sagud took the message he carried, came flying up to the cluster of tents under the flat-topped camel-thorn trees and burst into Vicky Camberwell's tent waving the folded cablegram, without dreaming of announcing her entrance.

Vicky was deep in a bearlike enfolding embrace into which Jake Barton had taken her moments before, and the interruption came just as Vicky was abandoning herself to the pleasure of the moment. Jake towered over her, freshly scrubbed and smelling of carbolic soap, with his hair still wet and newly combed. Vicky broke out of his arms and turned furiously to the girl.

"Oh!" exclaimed Sara, with the natural interest and fascination of a born conspirator discovering a fresh intrigue.

"You are busy."

"Yes, I am, "snapped Vicky, cheeks aflame with embarrassment and confusion.

"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell. But I thought this message must be important-" and Vicky's irritation faded, as she saw the cablegram.

"I thought you would want it." Vicky snatched it from her, broke the seal and read avidly. Her anger faded as she read, and she looked up with shining eyes at Sara.

"You were right thank you, my dear," and she spun back to Jake, dancing up to him and flinging both arms around his neck, laughing and gay.

"Hey," Jake laughed with her, holding her awkwardly in front of the girl, "What's this all about?"

"It's from my editor," she told him.

"My story about the attack at the Wells was an international scoop.

Headlines around the world and there is to be an emergency session of the League of Nations." Sara snatched the cable form back from her, and read it as though by right.

"This is what my father believed you could do for us, Miss Camberwell for our land and our people." Sara was weeping, fat oily tears breaking from the dark gazelle eyes and clinging in her long lashes. "Now the world knows. Now they will come to save us from the tyranny." The girl's faith in the triumph of good over evil was childlike, and she pulled Vicky from Jake's arms and embraced her instead.

"Oh, you have given us a chance again. We will always be grateful to you." Her tears smeared Vicky's cheek, and she drew back, sniffing wetly, and wiped her own tears from Vicky's face with the palm of her hand. "We will never forget you," she said, and then smiled through the tears. "We must go and tell my grandfather." They found it impossible to convey to the Ras the exact nature of this new advancement of the Ethiopian cause. He was very hazy in his exact understanding of the role and importance of the League of Nations, or the power and influence of the international press. After the first few pints of tej he had made sure in his own mind that in some miraculous fashion the great Queen of England had espoused their cause, and that the armies of Great Britain would soon join him in the field.

Both Gregorius and Sara spoke to him at great length, trying to explain his error, and he nodded and grinned benevolently at them but remained completely unshaken in his conviction, and ended by embracing Gareth Swales, making a long rambling speech in Amharic, hailing him as an Englishman and a comrade in arms. Then, before the speech ended, the Ras fell suddenly and dramatically asleep in mid-sentence, falling face forward into a large bowl of mutton wat. The day's battle, the excitement of learning of his new and powerful ally, and the large quantities of tej were too much for him, and four of his bodyguard lifted him from the bowl and carried him snoring loudly to his household tent.

"Do not worry," Sara told his guests. "My grandfather will not be gone for long after a small rest he will return."

"Tell him not to put himself out," murmured Gareth Swales. "I for one have seen about enough of him for one day." The glow of the bonfires turned the sky ruddy and paled the moon that sailed above the mountain peaks. It shone on the steel and polished wood of the huge pile of captured weapons, rifles and pistols and ammunition bandoliers, that were heaped triumphantly in the open space before the royal party.

The sparks from the fires rose straight upwards into the still night and the laughter and voices of the guests became more unrestrained as the tej gourds circulated.

Farther along the valley, also within the acacia grove, the Gallas of Ras Kullah were celebrating the victory also, and there was the occasional faint outburst of drunken shouts and a fusillade of shots from captured Italian rifles.

Vicky sat between Gareth and Jake. She had not arranged it so, and if given the choice would have sat alone with Jake, but Gareth Swales had not been as easily discouraged as she had believed he might.

Sara came from her place beside Gregorius. Crossing the squatting circle of feasting guests, she knelt on the pile of leather cushions beside Vicky, pushing herself in between Gareth and the girl and she leaned close to Vicky, an arm around her shoulder and her lips touching her ear.

"You should have told me," she accused her sadly. "I did not know that you had decided on Jake first. I would have advised you-" At that instant a sound carried from the camp of the tance and Gallas to where they sat. It was muted by ths almost obscured by the closer hubbub of the feasting Harari filling yet the terrible heart-stopping quality of it pierced Vicky so that she gasped and clutched Sara's wrist.

Beside her Jake and Gareth had stiffened and were listening also, their heads turned to catch the sound that rose and died in a long-drawn-out rending sob.

"You have not handled them correctly, Miss Camberwell." Sara went on speaking as if she had heard nothing.

"Sara, what is it what was that?" Vicky shook her arm urgently.

"Ah!" Sara made a gesture of disdain and contempt. "That fat pervert Ras Kullah has come down from his hiding-place.

the victory, he has come to enjoy Now that we have won the booty.

He arrived an hour ago with his fat milch cows and now he feasts and entertains himself." The sound came again. It was inhuman, a terrible high pitched screech that tore across Vicky's nerves. It rose higher and higher, until Vicky wanted to cover her ears with both hands. At the instant that it seemed her nerves must snap, the sound was cut off abruptly.

A listening silence had fallen upon the revelling throng around the bonfires, and the silence persisted for a few then there was a seconds longer after the scream had ended, murmur of comment and here and there a burst of careless, cruel laughter.

"What is it, damn it, Sara, what are they doing?"

"Ras Kullah is playing with the Italians," Sara said quietly, and Vicky realized that she had thought no further of the prisoners taken that day from the routed Italian column.

"Playing, Sara? What do you mean?" And Sara spat like an angry cat, a gesture of utter disgust.

"They are animals, those beasts of Ras Kullah. They will make sport of them all night, and in the morning they will cut away their man's things," she spat again. "Before they can marry, they must take a man's things what do you call them, the two things in the little sac?"

"Testicles," said Vicky hoarsely, almost choking on the word.

"Yes," agreed Sara. "They must kill a man and take his testicles to the bride. It is their custom, but first they will make sport with the Italians."

"Can't we stop them? "Vicky asked.

"Stop them?" Sara looked amazed. "They are only Italians, and it is the Galla custom." Again came that cry, and again there was complete silence from the revellers. It climbed high into the silent desert air, shriek upon shriek, so that it seemed impossible that it could come from a human lung, and their souls cringed at the dimensions of suffering which could give vent to that pinnacle of agonized sound.

"Oh God! Oh God!" whispered Vicky, and she lifted her eyes from Sara's face to that of Gareth Swales who sat beyond her.

He was silent and still, his face turned half away from her, so that she saw the godlike profile, perfect and cold. As the cry of agony died away, he leaned forward, took a burning twig from the fire and lit the long black cheroot between his white teeth.

He drew deeply and held the smoke, then let it trickle out through his nostrils. Then he turned deliberately to Vicky.

"You heard what the lady said. It's the custom." He spoke to Vicky, but the remark was addressed to Jake Barton, and his eyes flicked mockingly to him, a half-smile on his lips.

The two men held each other's eyes, unblinking and expressionless.

The cry of agony came again but this time weaker, the aching ringing tone reduced to a sobbing echo on the dark night.

Jake Barton rose to his feet, coming erect with one fluid movement, and in a continuation of the same movement he crossed to the piles of captured Italian weapons. He stooped and picked up an officer's automatic pistol, a 7 men. Beretta, still in its polished leather holster, and he unbuckled the flap and drew the weapon, discarding the leather holster and waist belt. He checked the loaded magazine and then, with a slap of his palm, thrust it back into the recessed butt, pumped the slide to throw a round into the breech, flicked the safety-catch across and slipped the pistol into the pocket of his breeches.

Without looking again at any of the others, he strode away, disappearing beyond the firelight into the darkness, in the direction of the Galla encampment.

"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfashioned luxury an expensive one in this age, and especially in this place," murmured Gareth, and inspected the ash of his cheroot.

"They will kill him if he goes in there alone," said Sara in a completely matter-of-fact tone. "They will be hungry for more blood and they'll kill him "Oh, I don't know it's as bad as that, "Gareth demurred.

"Oh, yes. They'll kill him," said Sara, and turned back to Vicky.

"Are you going to let him go? They are only Italians," she pointed out. For a moment, the two women stared at each other, and then Vicky leaped to her feet and went after Jake, the blue linen swirling gracefully around her legs and the firelight playing like liquid bronze gold on her hair as she ran.

She caught up with Jake at the perimeter of the Galla encampment, and she fell in beside him, taking two quick steps to each of his strides.

"Go back," he said softly, but she did not reply and skipped to keep up with him.

"Do what I say."

"No, I'm coming with you." He stopped and swung to face her, and she lifted her chin defiantly, throwing back her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height so that she came to his shoulder.

Listen to me " he began, and then stopped as the tortured being cried again in the night, and it was a blubbering incoherent sound, half moan, half sob followed almost immediately by the throaty roar of many hundred voices, the blood roar of a hunting pack, deep and savage.

"That's what it will be like." His head was turned away from her to listen and his eyes were haunted.

"I'm coming," she said stubbornly, and he did not reply, but broke away and hurried forward towards the glowing reflection of the Galla fires which turned the branches of the camel-thorns to high cathedral roofs of ruddy light over the encampment.

There were no sentries posted, and they passed unnoticed through the horse lines and the hastily thatched tukuLs and leather tents, coming suddenly into the centre of the camp where the fires were burning and the Gallas were assembled, a huge dark circle of squatting figures; the firelight bronzed their eager hawk features, and the whole assembly hummed with the charged tension that always holds the spectators at a blood spectacle. Jake remembered it from a prize fight in Madison Square Garden and again from a cock fight in Havana.

The blood lust was running high, and they growled like an animal pack.

"That is Ras Kullah, whispered Vicky, tugging at Jake's sleeve, and he glanced across the open arena of beaten earth.

Kullah sat on a pile of carpets and cushions, a silk shawl striped in a dozen brilliant colours was draped across his head and shoulders, masking his soft smooth face with shadow but the firelight caught his eyes and made them glitter with a peculiarly feverish fury.

One of his fat ivory-coloured hands was clenched in his lap, while his other arm was cast around the waist of the woman who sat beside him, and his hand kneaded and Wworled her yielding flesh. The hand seemed to have life of its own, and it moved, pale and obscene, like a huge slug pulsing softly as it devoured the swollen ripe fruits of the woman's bosom.

Beyond the fires, on the far side of the circle of open earth a group of three Italian soldiers were clustered fearfully, their faces shiny white with sweat and terror in the firelight, and their hands bound behind their backs. They had been stripped to their breeches, and the exposed skin of their backs and arms was welted and bruised where they had been beaten and abused. Their naked feet were swollen and bloody; clearly they had been forced to march thus for long distances across the harsh stony earth. Their dark eyes, huge with horror, were fastened on the spectacle that was being enacted on the open stage of bare earth in the limelight of the fires.

Vicky recognized the woman as one of Ras Kullah's favourites whom she had last seen that night at the rest house of Sardi. Now she knelt, heavy-breasted and intent on her work. The round madonna face was alight with an almost religious ecstasy, the full lips parted and the dark sloe eyes glowing like those of a priestess at some mystic tire.

However, more prosaically the sleeves of her sham ma were drawn up in businesslike fashion above the elbows like those of a butcher, and her hands were bloody to the wrists. She held the thin curved dagger like a surgeon, and its silver blade was dull and red in the firelight.

The thing over which -she worked still wriggled and moved convulsively against its bonds, still breathed and sobbed, but it was no longer recognizable as a man. The knife had stripped away all resemblance and now as the waiting crowd growled and swayed and sighed, the woman worked doggedly at the base of the disembowelled belly, cutting and tugging, so that the victim screamed again, but feebly and the woman leapt to her feet and held aloft the mutilated handful she had cut free.

She did a triumphant circuit of the arena, holding her prize high, laughing, dancing on shuffling swaying feet, and the blood trickled down her raised forearm and dripped from the crook of her elbow.

"Stay close," Jake said softly, but Vicky had never heard that tone in his voice before. She tore her horrified gaze from the spectacle, and saw that his face was stern and drawn, his jaw clenched hard and his eyes terrible.

He drew the pistol from his pocket, and held it against his thigh, his arm hanging loosely at his side, and he moved swiftly, thrusting his way through the press of bodies with such strength that he cleared a path for her to follow him.

Every single Galla was concentrating with all his attention on the dancing woman, and Jake reached Ras Kullah before any of them realized his presence.

Jake took the soft thick upper arm in his left hand, his fingers digging deeply into the putty-soft flesh, and he jerked him to his feet and held him dangling off-balance, swinging him face to face, and he pressed the muzzle of the Beretta into his upper lip, just under the wide nostrils.

They stared at each other, Ras Kullah cringing away from Jake's blazing eyes, and then whimpering at the pain of the fingers cutting into his flesh and fear of the steel muzzle bruising his upper lip.

Jake assembled the few words of Amharic he had learned from Gregorius.

"The Italians," he said softly. "For me." Ras Kullah stared at him, seeming not to hear then he said one word and the men nearest them swayed forward, as though to intervene.

Jake screwed the muzzle of the pistol into Ras Kullah's lip, twisting and smearing the soft flesh against his teeth so that the skin tore and blood sprang swiftly.

"You die," said Jake, and the man shrilled a denial to his warriors.

They drew back reluctantly, fingering their knives and watching with smouldering eyes for their opportunity.

The woman with the bloody hands sank to her haunches and a great waiting silence gripped the assembly. They squatted in complete stillness, all their faces turned towards Jake and Ras Kullah. In the silence, the broken bleeding thing beside the fire cried out again, a long-drawn-out breathy sound that tore at jake's nerves and made his expression ferocious.

"Tell your men," he said, his voice thick and grating with his anger.

Ras Kullah's voice quavered, high as a young girl, and the warriors who guarded the three half-naked prisoners shuffled uncertainly and exchanged glances.

Jake ground the steel fiercely into Ras Kullah's face, and his voice squeaked urgently as he repeated the order.

Reluctantly, the guards prodded the prisoners forward in a forlorn terrified group.

"Take his dagger," Jake said quietly to Vicky, without removing his gaze from Ras Kullah's eyes. Vicky stepped close beside the Ras and gripped the hilt of the weapon on the embroidered belt around his sagging paunch. It was worked in beaten gold and set with crudely cut amethysts, but the blade was brilliant and the edge keen.

"Cut them loose," said Jake, and in the dangerous moments while she was away from his side, he increased the brutal pressure on the pistol barrel. Ras Kullah stood with his head cocked at an impossible angle, the lips drawn back from his teeth in a fixed snarl and his eyes rolling in their sockets until the whites showed, and the tears of pain poured freely down his cheeks, glinting in the firelight like dew on the yellow petals of a rose.

Vicky cut the rawhide bindings at the Italians" wrists and elbows, and they massaged the circulation back into their arms, huddling together, their pale faces still smeared with dirt and dried blood and their eyes terrified and ... uncomprehending.

Quickly, Vicky crossed back to Jake and stood close beside him.

Somehow there was safety and security when she was near to him. She stayed beside him as Jake forced Ras Kullah, step by step, across the open ground to where the maimed, half-destroyed thing still moved weakly and drew each agonized breath of air with a bubbling sigh.

Jake stooped slightly away from Ras Kullah, but still holding him, and Vicky saw the compassion alter the fierce expression in his eyes for a moment, She did not realize what he was going to do until he dropped the pistol from Ras Kullah's face, and extended his arm at full stretch.

The crack of the pistol was sharp and cutting in the stillness, and the bullet hit the mutilated Italian in the centre of his forehead, leavin a dark blue hole in the gleaming "9 white skin of the brow. His eyelids fluttered like the wings of a dying dove, and the arched straining body sagged and relaxed. A long gusty sigh came up the tortured throat, the sigh a man might make at the very edge of sleep and then he was still.

Without another look at the man to whom he had given peace, Jake lifted the pistol to Ras Kullah's face again, and with fresh pressure on his arm he forced him to turn and walk slowly back.

With a curt inclination of the head, he signalled the three Italians to move. They went first, moving slowly, still shrinking together, then Vicky followed them, one hand for comfort reaching back to touch Jake's shoulder. Jake held Ras Kullah twisted off balance, and forced him step by step onwards. He knew they must not hurry, must not Show weakness, for the flimsy bonds which held the Gallas frozen would snap at the least strain, and they would be upon them down under them in a pack, bearing the press of bodies, and hacking and tearing them to pieces.

Pace after slow steady pace, they moved forward. Time and again their way was blocked by sullen groups of tall dark Gallas, who stood shoulder to shoulder fingering their weapons, then Jake twisted the muzzle of the pistol into Ras Kullah's soft skin. The man cried out and reluctantly the way opened, the dark warriors moving aside just sufficiently to let them pass, and then falling in behind them and following closely, so closely the leaders were always within arm's length.

Once they were clear of the pack, Jake could increase the pace and he moved steadily up the path through the camel-thorn, shepherding the terrified Italians ahead of him and dragging Ras Kullah bodily along.