Cry Wolf

"Do you hear what I think I hear?" asked Gareth.

"I think I do."

"it had to come, of course, said Gareth. "I'm only surprised it took this long. But it's a long, hard ride from Asmara to here. So that's what they were waiting for." The sound was unmistakable in the brooding silence of the gorge, tunnelled up to them by the rock walls. It was faint still, but there was no doubting the clanking clatter, and the shrill squeak of turning steel tracks. Each second it grew nearer, and now they could hear the soft growl of the engines.

"That has got to be the most unholy sound in the world," said Jake.

"Tanks," said Gareth. "Bloody tanks."

"They won't get here before dark," Jake guessed. And they won't risk a night attack."

No Gareth agreed. "They'll come at dawn."

"Tanks and Capronis instead of ham and eggs?" Gareth shrugged wearily.

"That's about the size of it, old son." Colonel Count Aldo Belli was not at all certain of the wisdom of his actions, and he thought that Gino was justified in looking up at him with those reproachful spaniel's eyes. They should have been still comfortably ensconced behind the formidable de fences of Chaldi Wells.

However, a number of powerful influences had combined to drive him forward once again.

Not the least powerful of these were the daily radio messages from General Badogho's headquarters, urging him to intersect the Dessie road, "before the fish slips through our net'. These messages were daily more harsh and threatening in character, and were immediately passed on with the Count's own embellishments to Major Luigi Castelani who had command of the column struggling up the gorge.

Now at last Castelani had radioed back to the Count the welcome news that he stood at the very head of the gorge, and the next push would carry him into the town of Sardi itself. The Count had decided, after long and deep meditation, that to ride into the enemy stronghold at the moment of its capture would so enhance his reputation as to be worth the small danger involved. Major Castelani had assured him that the enemy was broken and whipped, had suffered enormous casualties and was no longer a coherent fighting force. Those odds were acceptable to the Count.

The final circumstance that persuaded him to leave the camp, abandon the new military philosophy, and move cautiously up the Sardi Gorge was the arrival of the armoured column from Asmara. These machines were to replace those that the savage enemy had so perfidiously trapped and burned. Despite all the Count's pleading and blustering, it had taken a week for them to be diverted from Massawa, brought up to Asmara by train, and then for them to complete the long slow crossing of the Danakil.

Now, however, they had arrived and the Count had immediately requisitioned one of the six tanks as his personal command vehicle.

Once he was within the thick armoured hull, he had experienced a new flood of confidence and courage.

"Onwards to Sardi, to write in blood upon the glorious pages of history!" were the words that occurred to him, and Gino's face had creased up into that spaniel's expression.

Now in the lowering shades of evening, grinding up the rocky pathway while walls of sheer rock rose on either hand, seeming to meet the sullen purple strip of sky high above, the Count was having serious doubts about the whole wild venture.

He peered out from the turret of his command tank, his eyes huge and dark and melting with apprehension, a black polished steel helmet pulled down firmly over his ears, and one hand gripping the ivory butt of the Beretta so fiercely that his knuckles shone white as bone china.

At his feet, Gino crouched miserably, keeping well down within the steel hull.

At that moment a machine gun opened fire ahead of them, and the sound echoed and re-echoed against the sheer walls of the gorge.

"Stop! Stop this instant! shouted the Count at his driver.

The gunfire sounded very close ahead. "We will make this battalion headquarters. Right here," announced the Count, and Gino perked up a little and nodded his total agreement.

"Send for Major Castelani and Major Vita. They are to report to me here immediately." Jake awoke to the pressure of somebody's hand on his shoulder, and the light of a storm lantern in his eyes.

The effort of sitting up required all his determination and he let the damp blanket fall and screwed up his eyes against the light. The cold had stiffened every muscle in his body, and his head felt light and woolly with fatigue. He could not believe it was morning already.

"Who is it?"

"It's me, Jake," and then he saw Gregorius's dark intense face beyond the lamp.

"Take that bloody thing out of my eyes." Beside him, Gareth Swales sat up suddenly. Both of them had been sleeping fully dressed upon the same ragged strip of canvas in the muddy bottom of the dugout.

"What's going on?" mumbled Gareth, also stupid with fatigue.

Gregorius swung the lantern aside and the light fell on the slim figure beside him. Sara was shivering with cold and her light clothing was

&-soddden and muddy. Thorn and branches had scored bloody lines across her legs and arms, and ripped the fabric of her breeches.

She dropped on her knees beside Jake, and he saw that her eyes were haunted with terror and horror, her lips trembled uncontrollably, and the slim hand she laid on Jake's arm was cold as a dead man's, but it fluttered urgently.

"Miss Camberwell. They have taken her!" she blurted wildly, and her voice choked up.

"You should stay on here," Jake muttered, as they hurried up the slope to where Priscilla the Pig was parked half a mile back from the line of trenches.

"There will be a dawn attack, they'll need you."

"I'm coming on the ride, Jake," Gareth answered quietly, but firmly.

"You can't expect me to sit here while Vicky-" he broke off. "Got to keep a fatherly eye on you, old son," he went on in the old bantering tone.

"The Ras and his lads will have to take their own chances for a while."

As he spoke, they reached the hulking shape of the armoured car, parked in the broken ground below the head of the gorge. Jake began to drag the canvas cover off the vehicle, and Gareth drew Gregorius aside.

"One way or another, we should be back before dawn. If we aren't, you know what to do. God knows, you've had enough practice these last few days." Gregorius nodded silently.

"Hold as long as you can. Then back to the head of the gorge for the last act. Right? It's only until noon tomorrow.

We can hold them that long, tanks or no bloody tanks, can't we?"

"Yes, Gareth, we can hold them."

"Just one other thing, Greg. I love your grandfather like a brother but keep that old bastard under control, will you.

Even if you have to tie him down. "Gareth slapped the boy's shoulder, changed the captured Italian rifle into his good hand and hurried back to the car, just as Jake boosted Sara up the side of the hull and then ran to the crank handle.

Priscilla the Pig ground up the last few hundred yards of steep ground to the head of the gorge, and they passed gangs of Harari working by torchlight. They had been at it in shifts since the previous evening when Jake and Gareth had heard the Italian tanks coming up the gorge.

Although all his concern was with Vicky, yet Gareth noted almost mechanically that the work gang had performed their task well. The anti-tank walls were higher than a man's head and built from the heaviest, most massive boulders that could be carried down from the cliffs. There was only a gap narrow enough to allow the car to pass in the centre of the walls.

"Tell them to close the gap now, Sara. We won't take the car into the gorge again," Gareth instructed quietly as they went through and she called out to a Harari officer who stood on top of the highest point of the wall; he waved an acknowledgement, and turned away to supervise the work.

Jake took the car through the natural granite gates, and beyond them lay the saucer-shaped valley and the town of Sardi.

It was burning, and at the sight Jake halted the car and they stood on the hull and looked across at the ruddy glow of the flames that lit the underbelly of the clouds, and dimly defined the mountain masses that enclosed the valley.

"is she still alive?" Jake voiced all their fears, but it was Sara who answered.

"If Ras Kullah was there when they caught her, then she is dead."

Then silence again, both men staring Out into the night, with anger and dread holding them captive.

"But if he was skulking up in the hills, as he usually does, waiting for the attack to succeed before he shows himself," she spat expressively over the side of the hull, "then his men would not dare begin the execution, until he was there to watch and enjoy the work of his milch cows. I have heard they can take the skin off a living body working carefully with their little knives, every inch of skin from head to toes, and the body still lives for many hours." And Jake shuddered with horror.

fire "If you're ready, old boy. I think we could move on now!"

said Gareth, and with an effort Jake roused himself and dropped back into the driver's hatch.

There seemed to be a suggestion of the false dawn lightening the narrow strip of sky high above the mountains when Gregorius Maryam scrambled back into the front line treches.

There was activity already amongst the shadowy figures that crowded the narrow dugouts, and one of the Ras's bodyguard carrying a smoky paraffin lantern greeted him with, "The Ras asks for you. "Gregorius followed him down the trench, stepping carefully amongst the hundreds of figures that slept uncaring on the muddy floor.

The Ras sat huddled in a grey blanket, in one of the larger dugouts off the main trench. The open pit had been roofed in with the remnants of one of the leather tents, and a small fire burned smokily in the centre. The Ras was surrounded by a dozen of the officers of his bodyguard, and he looked up as Gregorius knelt quietly before him.

"The white men have gone?" the Ras asked concluding with a a hacking old man's cough that shook his whole frail body.

"They will return in the dawn, before the enemy attack." Gregorius defended them quickly, and went on to explain the reasons and the change of plans.

The Ras nodded, staring into the flickering fire, and when Gregorius paused, he spoke again in that rasping, querulous tone.

"It is a sign and I would have it no other way. Too long I have listened to the council of the Englishman, too long I have quenched the fire in my belly, too long I have slunk like a dog from the enemy." He coughed again, painfully.

"We have run far enough. The time has come to fight," and his officers growled angrily in the gloom around him, and swayed closer to listen to his words. "Go you to your men, rouse them, fill their bellies with fire and their hands with steel. Tell them that the signal will be as it was a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.

Tell them to listen for my war drums," a suppressed roar of exultation came from their throats, "the drums will beat up the dawn, and when they cease, that will be the moment. "The Ras had struggled to his feet, and he stood naked above them; the blanket 2 fallen away, and his skinny old chest heaved with the passion of his anger. "In that moment, I, Ras Golam, will go down to drive the enemy back across the desert and into the sea from which they came.

Every man who calls himself a warrior and an Harari will go down with me-" and his voice was lost in the shrill loolooing of his officers, and the Ras laughed, with the high ringing laugh close to madness.

One of his officers handed him a mug of the fiery tei and the Ras poured it down his throat in a single draught, then hurled the mug upon the fire.

Gregorius leapt to his feet and laid a restraining hand upon the skinny old arm.

"Grandfather." The Ras swung to him, the bloodshot rheumy eyes burning with a fierce new light.

"If you have woman's words to say to me, then swallow them and let them choke the breath in your lungs, and turn to poison in your belly. "The Ras glared at his grandson, and suddenly Gregorius understood.

He understood what the Ras was about to do. He was a man old and wise enough to know that his world was passing, that the enemy was too strong, that God had turned his back upon Ethiopia, that no matter how brave the heart and how fierce the battle in the end there was defeat and dishonour and slavery.

The Ras was choosing the other way the only other way.

The flash of understanding passed between the youth and the ancient, and the Ras's eyes softened and he leaned towards Gregorius.

"But if the fire is in your belly also, if you will charge beside me when the drums fall silent then kneel for my blessing." Suddenly Gregorius felt all care and restraint fall away, and his heart soared up like an eagle, borne aloft by the ancient atavistic joy of the warrior.

He fell on one knee before the Ras.

"Give me your blessing, grandfather," he cried, and the Ras placed both hands upon his bowed head and mumbled the biblical words.

A warm soft drop fell upon Gregorius's neck, and he looked up startled.

The tears were running down the dark wrinkled cheeks, and dripping unashamedly from the Ras's chin. Vicky Camberwell lay face down upon the filthy earthen floor of one of the deserted tukuk on the outskirts of the burning town. The floor swarmed with legions of lice, and they crawled softly over her skin, and their bites set up a burning irritation.

Her hands were bound behind her back with strips of rawhide rope, and her ankles were bound the same way.

Outside, she could hear the rustle and crackle of the burning town, with an occasional louder crash as a roof collapsed. There were also the shouts and wild laughter of the Gallas, drunk on blood and te, and the chilling sound of the few Harari captives who had been saved from the initial massacre to provide entertainment during the long wait before Ras Kullah arrived in the captured town.

Vicky did not know how long she had lain. Her hands and feet were without feeling, for the rawhide ropes were tightly knotted. Her ribs ached from the blow that had felled her, and the icy cold of the mountain night had permeated her whole body so that the marrow in her bones ached with it, and fits of shivering racked her as though she were in fever. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her lips were blue and tight, but she could not move. Any attempt to alter her position or relieve her cramped limbs was immediately greeted with a blow or a kick from the guards who stood over her.

At last her mind blacked out, not into sleep, for she could still dimly hear the din from around the hut, but into a kind of coma in which sense of time was lost, and the acute discomfort of the cold and her bonds receded.

Hours must have passed in this stupor of exhaustion and cold, when she was roused by another kick in her stomach and she gasped and sobbed with the fresh pain of it.

She was aware immediately of a change in the volume of sound outside the hut. There were many hundreds of voices raised in an excited roar, like that of a crowd at a circus.

Her guards dragged her roughly to her feet, and one of them stooped to cut the rawhide that bound her ankles, and then straightened to do the same to those at her wrists. Vicky sobbed at the bright agony of blood flowing back into her feet and hands.

Her legs collapsed under her and she would have fallen, but rough hands held her and dragged her forward on her knees towards the low entrance of the hut. Outside, there was a dense pack of bodies that filled the narrow street.

Dark menacing figures that pressed forward eagerly as she appeared in the entrance of the hut, and a blood-crazed roar went up from the crowd.

Her guards dragged her forward along the street, and the crowd swarmed forward, keeping pace with her, and the roar of their voices was like the sound of a winter storm.

Hands clutched at her, and her guards beat them away laughingly, and hustled her onwards with her paralysed legs flopping weakly under her. They carried her forward into the goods yards of the railways, through the steel gate, past the mountainous pile of naked mutilated corpses, all that remained of men whom she had helped to nurse.

The yard was lit by the smoky fluttering light of hundreds of torches, and it was only when she was almost up to the warehouse veranda that she recognized the figure that lolled indolently upon his cushions, using the raised concrete ramp as a grandstand from which to direct and watch the execution.

Vicky's terror came rushing back like a black icy flood, and she tried desperately to twist herself free of the clutching hands, but they carried her forward and then lifted her suddenly.

Three of the heavy Galla lances had been set into the soft earth of the yard in the form of a tripod, with the steel lance tips bound firmly at the apex of the pyramid. With a force that she could not resist, her arms and legs were spread, and again she felt the lashing of rawhide at her wrists and ankles.

Her captors fell back in a circle, and she found herself suspended from the tripod of lances like a starfish, and the weight of her body cut the leather straps viciously into her flesh.

She looked up. Directly above her on the concrete ramp sat Ras Kullah. He said something to her in a high piping voice, but she did not understand the words and she could only stare in fascinated terror at his thick, soft lips. The tip of his tongue came out and ran slowly across his lips, like a fat golden cat.

He giggled suddenly and motioned to the two women who flanked him on the cushions. They came down into the yard, with their silver jewellery tinkling and the multicoloured silk of their robes glowing in the lamplight like the plumage of two beautiful birds of paradise.

As though they had rehearsed their movements, one went to each side of Vicky as she hung on the tripod of lances. Their faces were serene, remote and lovely as two exotic blooms on the long graceful stems of their necks.

It was only when they reached up to touch her that Vicky saw the little silver knives in their hands, and she wriggled helplessly, her head twisting to watch the blades.

With expert economical movements the two women slit the fabric of Vicky's clothing, from the yoke of her blouse at the throat, down in a single stroke to the hem of her skirt, and the dress fell away like an autumn leaf, and dropped into the mud below her.

Ras Kullah clapped his hands with glee, and the dense pack of dark bodies swayed and growled, pressing a little closer.

With the same unhurried knife strokes, the sheer silk of Vicky's underwear was cut away and discarded, and she hung there naked and vulnerable, unable to cover her pale smooth body, with the long finely sculptured limbs spread and pinioned.

She dropped her head forward so that the golden hair fell forward and covered her face.

One of the Galla women moved around until she faced Vicky directly. She reached out with the little silver knife and touched the point to the white skin just below the base of her throat where a pulse beat visibly like a tiny trapped animal, and slowly, achingly slowly, she drew the blade downwards.

Vicky's whole body convulsed, every limb stiffened and her back arched rigidly so that the shape of the muscle stood out clearly beneath the smooth unblemished skin.

Her head flew back, her eyes wide and staring, her mouth gaping open and she screamed.

The woman drew the knife on downwards, between the tense straining breasts. The white skin opened to the shallow carefully controlled razor point, and a vivid scarlet line marked the slow track of the blade as it moved on inexorably downwards.

The voice of the crowd rose, a gathering roar like the sound of a storm wind coming from afar, and Ras Kullah leaned forward on his cushions.

His eyes shone and the wet pink lips were parted.

Two things happened simultaneously. From the darkness beyond the station buildings, Priscilla the Pig burst out into the torch-lit area.

Up until that moment when Jake Barton thrust down fully on the throttle, the gentle hum of the engine had been drowned by the animal roar of the crowd.

The heavy steel hull, driven by the full thrust of the old Bentley engine, ploughed into the crowd and went through it like a combine harvester through a field of standing wheat. Without any slackening of speed, it tore a pathway through the dense pack, directly towards the clearing where Vicky hung on the tripod of lances.

At the same moment, Gareth Swales stepped out of the black oblong of the warehouse door, directly behind where Ras Kullah sat.

He had the Italian rifle over the crook of his injured arm, and he fired without lifting the butt to his shoulder.

The bullet smashed into the elbow of the Galla woman's knife arm, and the arm snapped like a twig, the knife flew from the nerveless fingers and the woman shrieked and collapsed into the mud at Vicky's feet.

The second woman swirled, her right hand drew back like the head of a striking adder, and she aimed the knife blade at Vicky's soft white stomach; as she began the stroke that would plunge it hilt-deep, Gareth moved the rifle muzzle fractionally and fired again.

The heavy bullet caught the woman in the exact centre of her golden forehead. The black hole -appeared there like a third empty eye socket, and her head snapped backwards as though from a heavy blow.

As she went down, Gareth worked the bolt of the rifle and dropped the muzzle, again only fractionally, but as Ras Kullah twisted around desperately on his cushions, his mouth wide open and a gurgling cry keening from the thick wet lips, the muzzle of the rifle was aimed directly into the pink pit of his throat and Gareth fired the third shot. It shattered the front teeth in Ras Kullah's upper jaw, before plunging on into his throat and then exiting through the back of the neck. The Ras went over backwards, and flapped and jumped like a maimed frog.

Garet stepped over him, and jumped down lightly into the yard. A Galla rushed at him with a broadsword held high above his head. Gareth fired again without lifting the rifle, stepped over the body and reached Vicky's side just as Jake Barton swung the car to a skidding halt next to them and tumbled out of the driver's hatch with a Harari dagger in his hand.

In the turret above them, Sara fired the Vickers in a long continuous blast, swinging it back and forth in its limited traverse and the Galla crowd scattered panic-stricken into the night.

Jake slashed the thongs that held Vicky suspended and she fell forward into his arms.

Gareth stooped and gathered Vicky's torn clothing out of the mud and bundled it under his injured armpit.

"Shall we move on now, old son?" he asked Jake genially.

"I think the fun is over," and between them they lifted Vicky up the side of the hull.

The drums brought Count Aldo Belli out of a troubled dream-plagued sleep and he sat bolt upright from his hard couch on the floorboards of the hull, with his eyes wide and staring, and -fumbled frantically for his pistol.

"Gino!" he shouted. "Gino!" and there was no reply. Only that terrible rhythm in the night, pounding against his head so that he thought it might drive him mad. He tried to close his ears, pressing the palms of his hands to them, but the sound came through, like a gigantic pulse, the heartbeat of this cruel and savage land.

He could bear it no longer, and he crawled up inside the hull until he reached the rear hatch of the tank, and thrust his head out.

"Gino!" He was answered instantly. The little sergeant's head popped up from where he had been cowering in his blankets on the rocky ground between the steel tracks. The Count could hear his teeth clattering in his skull like typewriter keys.

"Send the driver to fetch Major Castelani, immediately."

"Immediately." Gino's head disappeared, and a few moments later appeared again so abruptly that the Count let out a startled cry and pointed the loaded pistol between his eyes.

"Excellency,"squawked Gino.

"Idiot," snarled the Count, his voice husky with terror. "I could have killed you, don't you realize I have the reactions of a leopard?"

"Excellency, may I enter the machine?".

Aldo Belli thought about the request for a moment, and then enjoyed a perverse pleasure in refusing.

"Make me a cup of coffee," he ordered, but when it came he found that the incessant cacophony of drums that filled his head had worked on his nerves to the point where he could not hold the mug steady, and the rim rattled against his teeth.

"Goat's urine!" snapped the Count, hoping that Gino had not noticed the unsteady hand. "You are trying to poison me," he accused and tossed the steaming liquid over the side, and at that moment the stocky figure of the Major loomed out of the darkness of the gorge.

"The men are standing to, Colonel he growled. "In another fifteen minutes it will be light enough-" "Good. Good." The Count cut him short. "I have decided that I should return immediately to headquarters. General Badoglio will expect me-" "Excellent Colonel," the Major interrupted in his turn. "I have received intelligence that large bands of the enemy have infiltrated our lines, and are operating in the rear areas.

There is a good chance you might be able to bring them to account."

Castelani, by this time, knew his man intimately.

"Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a desperate business."

"On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, "I

wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused."

"Indeed, Colonel."

"I shall move up immediately," announced Aldo Belli, and glanced anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column, protected from both front and rear.

The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he felt he must scream aloud.

It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.

Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope above his position where, moments before, there had been only black shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.

Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink light against the black brooding mass of rock. He dropped his gaze and looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with dramatic African suddenness.

Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the African dawn in the mountains.

The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like an owl, up the gorge.

There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped up.

"Mary, Mother of God," he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.

It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.

"Pray for us sinners," breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly, and at that instant he heard Castelani's voice, like the bellow of a wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.

Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering roar that drowned out all other sound.

The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.

The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the massed charge of Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead, as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a wall of bodies.

The Count's terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle.

The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat, and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in deep windrows.

Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords, and were through.

Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the Italian trenches, shot to bloody pieces by close range volleys of rifle fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.

They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.

He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball, and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried only a sword, as long as the spread of a man's arms and as broad as the span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.

The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall leader came on at a dead run.

The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by the man's persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.

In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust from the warrior's robes, and leaving bloody splotches across his chest yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity of the man's rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.

The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the man's body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards, staggering and dragging the sword beside him.

The last burst of fire struck him, and the sword dropped from his hand; he sank to his knees, but kept crawling now he had seen the Count and his eyes fastened on the white man's face. He tried to shout something, but the sound was drowned in a bright flooding gout of blood that filled his open mouth. The crawling, mutilated figure reached the hull of the stationary tank, and the Italian almost as though in awe of the man's tenacity. guns fell silent Laboriously, the dying warrior dragged his broken body up towards the Count, watching him with a terrible dying anger, and the Count fumbled nervously with the ivory butt of the Beretta, slipping a fresh clip of cartridges into the recessed butt.

"Stop him, you fools," he cried. "Kill him! Don't let him get in."

But the guns were silent.

With shaking hands, the Count slapped the magazine home and lifted the pistol. At a range of six feet he sighted briefly into the crawling Ethiopian.

He emptied the magazine of the Beretta in frantic haste, the shots crashing out in rapid succession in the sudden silence that hung over the field.

A bullet struck the warrior in the centre of his sweat-glazed forehead, leaving a perfectly round black hole in the gleaming brown skin, and the man slithered backwards and then rolled down the hull, coming to rest at last upon his back, and he stared up at the swiftly lightening sky with wide, unseeing eyes. Out between the slack lips dropped a set of artificial teeth, and the old mouth collapsed and fell inwards.

The Count was shaking still, but then quite unexpectedly a surging emotion swept away the terrors that had gripped him. He felt a vast proprietorial sense of emotional involvement with the man he had killed he wanted to take some part of him, some trophy of his kill. He wanted to scalp him, or take his head and have it cured so that he might preserve this moment for ever, but before he could move, there was the shrilling of whistles, and a bugle began urgently to sound the advance.

On the slope ahead of them, only the dead lay in their piles and mounds, while the last of those who had survived that crazy suicidal charge were disappearing like wisps of smoke back among the rocks.

The road to Sardi was open, and like the hard professional he was, Luigi Castelani seized the chance. As the bugle sang its brassy command, the Italian infantry rose from the trenches, and the formation of tanks rumbled forward.

The corpse of the ancient Harari warrior lay directly in the track of the command tank, and the rumbling steel treads pressed it into the rocky ground as it passed over, squashing it like the carcass of a rabbit on a highway, as it bore Colonel Count Aldo Belli triumphantly up the gorge to Sardi and the Dessie road.

At the wall of rock built right across the throat of the gorge, the armoured column ground to a halt, blocked at the very lip of the valley, and when the Italian infantry, who had moved under cover of the black steel hulls, swarmed out to tear the wall down, they met another wave of Ethiopian defenders who rose from where they had been lying behind the wall, and immediately attackers and defenders had become so entwined in a single struggling mass that the artillery and machine guns could not fire for fear of gunning down their own.

Three times during the morning the infantry had been thrown back from the wall, and the heavy artillery barrage that they had directed against it made no impression on the granite boulders. When the tanks came clanking and squealing like great black beetles hunting for a breach, there was none, and the trace had clawed sparks from the rock but been unable to lift the great weight of steel at the acute angle necessary to climb the wall.

Now there was a lull that had lasted almost half an hour, and Gareth and Jake sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one of the massive granite blocks. Both of them were staring upwards at the sky, and it was Jake who broke the silence.

"There is the blue." They saw it through the last eddying banks of cloud that still clung like the white arms of a lover to the shoulder of the mountain, but were slowly smeared away by the fresh dry breeze off the desert.

A ray of brilliant sunlight burst into the valley, and threw a rainbow of vivid colour in a mighty arc from mountain to mountain.

"That's beautiful," murmured Gareth Softly, staring upwards.

Jake drew the watch from his pocket, and glanced at the dial.

"Seven minutes past eleven." He read the hands. "Just about right now they'll radio them that the clouds are open.

They'll be sitting in the cockpits, eager as fighting cocks." He patted the watch back into his pocket. "In just thirty-five minutes they'll be here." Gareth straightened up and pushed the lank blond hair off his forehead.

"I know one gentleman who won't be here when they come.

"Make that two, "Jake agreed.

"That's it, old son. We've done our bit. Old Lij Mikhael can't grouse about a couple of minutes. It will be as close to noon as pleasure is to sin."

"What about these poor devils?" Jake indicated the few hundreds of Harari who crouched with them behind the wall of rock all that remained of Ras Golam's army.

"As soon as we hear the bombers coming, they can beat it. Off into the mountains like a pack of long dogs-" after a bitch, "Jake finished for him, and grinned.

"Precisely."

"Someone will have to explain it to them."

"I'll go and fetch young Sara to tell them," and he crawled away, using the wall as cover from the Italian snipers who had taken up position in the cliffs above them.

Priscilla the Pig was parked five hundred yards back in a grassy wrinkle of ground, under a screen of cedar trees, beside the road.

Gareth saw immediately that Vicky had recovered from the state of collapse in which they had found her, although she was haggard and pale, and the torn rags of her clothing were filthy, stained with dried blood from the long flesh wound between her breasts. She was helping Sara with the boy who lay on the floorboards of the cabin, and she looked up with an expression which told of regained strength and determination.

"How is he doing? "Gareth asked, leaning forward through the open rear doors. The boy had been hit twice and been carried back from the killing-ground of the gorge by two of his loyal tribes men.

"He will be all right, I think," said Vicky, and Gregorius opened his eyes and whispered, "Yes, I'll be all right."

"Well, that's more than you deserve," grunted Gareth. "I left you in charge not leading the charge."

"Major Swales." Sara looked up fiercely, protective as a mother. "It was the bravest-" "Spare me from brave and honest men," Gareth drawled.

"Cause of all the trouble in the world." And before Sara could flash at him again he went on, "Come along with me, my dear. Need you to do a bit of translating." Reluctantly she left Gregorius and climbed down out of the car. Vicky followed her, and stood close to Gareth beside the side of the hull.

"Are you all right? "she asked.

"Never better," he assured her, but now she noticed for the first time the flush of unnatural colour in his cheeks and the feverish glitter in his eyes.

Quickly she reached out and before he could prevent it she took the hand of his injured arm. It was swollen like a balloon, and it had turned a sickly greenish purple. She leaned forward to sniff the filthy stained rags that covered the arm, and she felt her gorge rise at the sweet stench of putrefaction.

Alarmed, she reached up and touched his cheek.

"Gareth, you are hot as a furnace."

"Passion, old girl. The touch of your lily-white, "Let me look at your arm, "she demanded.

"Better not." He smiled at her, but she caught the iron in his voice.

"Let sleeping dogs lie, what? Nothing we can do about it until we get back to civilization."

"Gareth-" "Then my dear, I will buy you a large bottle of Charlie, and send for the preacher man."

"Gareth, be serious."

"I am serious." Gareth touched her cheek with the fingers of his good hand. "That was a proposal of marriage, "he said, and she could feel the fiery heat of the fever in his finger, tips.

"Oh Gareth! Gareth!"

"By which I take it you mean thanks, but no thanks." She nodded silently, unable to speak.

"Jake?"he asked, and she nodded again.

"Oh well, you could have done a lot better. Me, for instance," and he grinned, but the pain was there with the fever in his eyes, deep and poignant. "On the other hand, you could have done a lot worse." He turned away abruptly to Sara, taking her arm. "Come along, my dear."

Then over his shoulder, "We'll be back as soon as the bombers come.

Get ready to run."

"Where to? "she called after them.

"I don't know," he grinned. "But we'll try to think of a pleasant place." Jake heard them first, so far off that it was only the hive-sound of bees on a drowsy summer's day, and almost immediately it was gone again, blanketed by the mountains.

"Here they come," he said, and almost immediately, as if in confirmation, a shell burst under the lee of the rock wall, fired from the Italian battery a mile down the gorge. The yellow smoke from the marker poured a thick column into the still sunlit air.

"Move!" shouted Gareth, and placed the silver command whistle between his lips and blew a series of sharp blasts.

But by the time they had hurried along the wall, making certain that all the Harari had understood and were running back down the valley into the cedar forests, the drone of approaching engines was growing louder.

"Let's go!" called Jake urgently, and caught Gareth's good arm.

They turned and ran, pelting back across the open ground to the lip of the valley, and Jake looked back over his shoulder as they reached it.

The first gigantic bomber came out of the mouth of the gorge, and the spread of its black wings seemed to darken the sky. Two bombs fell from under it; one burst short but the second struck the wall, and the blast knocked them both off their feet, slamming them savagely against the earth.

When Jake lifted his head again, he saw through the fumes and smoke the gaping breach it had blown in the rock wall.

"Well, now the party is definitely over," he said, and hauled Gareth to his feet.

Where are we going?" shouted Vicky from the cabin below them, and neither Jake in the driver's seat nor Gareth in the turret replied.

"Can't we just drive up the road to Dessie?" Sara demanded; she sat cross-legged on the floor of the cabin with Gregorius's head cushioned on her lap. "We could fight our way through those cowardly Gallas."

"We've got enough gas to take us about another five miles."

"Our best bet is to drive to the foot of Ambo Sacal." Gareth pointed to the towering bulk of the mountain that rose sheer into the southern sky. "Ditch the car there and try and make it on foot across the mountains." Vicky crawled up into the turret beside him, and thrust her head out of the hatch. Together they stared up at the sheer sides of the Ambo.

"What about Gregorius?"she asked.

"We'll have to carry him."

"We'll never make it. The mountains are crawling with Gallas."

"Have you got a better idea?" Gareth asked, and she looked despairingly around her.

Priscilla the Pig was the only thing that moved in the whole valley.

The Harari had vanished into the rocky ground on the slopes of the mountains, and behind them the Italian tanks had not yet come in over the lip of the valley.

She lifted her eyes to the sky again, where only a few wreaths of cloud still clung to the peaks, and suddenly her whole mood changed.

Her chin came up, and new colour flooded into her cheeks her hand shook as she pointed up between the peaks.

"Yes," she cried. "Yes, I've got a better idea. Look! Oh, won't "you look!" The tiny blue aircraft caught the sun as it banked in steeply, turning in under the rearing granite cliffs, and it flashed like a dragonfly in flight.

"Italian?" Gareth stared up at it.

"No! No! Vicky shook her head. "It's Lij Mikhael's plane.

I recognize it. It came to fetch him here before." She was laughing almost hysterically, her eyes shining. "He said he would send it, that's what he was trying to tell me before he was cut off."

"Where will it land?" Gareth demanded, and Vicky scrambled down into the driver's compartment to direct him towards the polo field beyond the burned and still smoking town.

They watched anxiously, all of them except Gregorius, standing on the edge of the open field close beside the bulk of the car, all their heads craning to watch the little blue aircraft circle.

"What the hell is he doing? "Jake demanded angrily. "The Eyeties will be here before he makes up his mind."

"He's nervous," Gareth guessed. "He doesn't know what the hell is going on down here. From where he is, he can see the town has been destroyed, and he can probably see the tanks and the trucks following us down from the gorge." Vicky turned from them and ran back to the car; she climbed up on to the turret and stood high, waving both arms above her head.

On the next circuit the little blue Puss Moth dropped lower, and they could see the pilot's face in the side window of the cockpit peering down at them. He banked steeply over the smoking remains of the town, with the lower wing pointing directly at the earth and then he came back at them, this time only ten feet above the field.

He was staring at Vicky, and with a lift of her heart she recognized the same young white pilot as had flown Lij Mikhael. He recognized her at the same instant, and she saw him grin and lift a hand in salute as he flashed past.

As he came out of his next turn, he was lined up on the field for his landing and he touched down and taxied tail-up to where they stood.

As the light aircraft rolled to a halt, they crowded up to the cabin door. The wash of the propeller buffeted them savagely and the pilot slid back the pane of his window and shouted above the noise of his engine.

"I can take three small ones or two big ones." Jake and Gareth exchanged a single brief glance and then Jake jerked the cabin door and roughly they thrust the two girls into the tiny cramped cabin.

"Hold it," Gareth shouted into the pilot's ear. "We've got another small one for you." They carried Gregorius between them, trying to be as gentle as haste would allow. The pilot was already turning the machine into the wind and they staggered after it lifting the boy's body into the open door as it was moving.

"Jake-"Vicky shouted, and her eyes were wild with grief.

"Don't worry," Jake shouted back, as they tumbled Greg. onus across the girls" laps. "We'll get out just remember I love you."

"I love you, too," Vicky called back, and her eyes swam with bright tears. "Oh Jake-" He was struggling to close the cabin door, running beside the fuselage as the aircraft gathered speed for the take-off, but one of Gregorius's feet was holding it open. Jake stopped to free the foot, and rifle-fire snapped past his head, and twanged into the canvas fabric of the fuselage.

He looked up in time to see the next shot star the side window of the cockpit and then go on to strike the young pilot in the temple, killing him instantly, and knocking his body sideways so that it hung drunkenly out of the seat, held only by the shoulder straps.

The aircraft slewed sideways at the loss of control, and Jake saw Vicky reach over the pilot's body and close the throttle, but he was turning away and running back towards Priscilla the Pig.

More rifle-fire kicked up spurts of dust around them as they ran.

"Where are they? "he shouted at Gareth.

"On the left." Jake twisted his head and glimpsed the Italians in the scrub and grass two hundred yards away on the edge of the field.

Beyond them was parked the transport that had carried them ahead of the lumbering tank formation.

Priscilla's engine was still running, and he headed her in . k turn for the riflemen in the grass. Above him, a qUIC Gareth fired the Vickers and the Italians jumped up and ran like rabbits.

One quick pass scattered them and a burst of Vickers fire exploded the transport in a dragon's breath of flame, and then Jake swung the car back to where the little blue aircraft stood forlornly on the edge of the field. He parked the tall steel hull close beside her to screen her from Italian snipers.

Sara and Vicky between them had dragged the pilot's body out of the cockpit. He was a big man, heavy in the shoulder and belly, and the blood oozed from the bullet hole in his temple into the thick mop of his hair as he lay on his back in the short grass under the wing.

Vicky turned away from him and scrambled up into the cockpit settling herself behind the controls.

"Jesus!" said Jake, relief shining on his face. "She said she could fly." A . rifle bullet spranged against Priscilla's hull and went wailing away over their heads.

Gareth glanced down at the pilot's body. "He was a big one, poor beggar."

"There's room for one more now," Vicky shouted from the cockpit; "with both of you we'd never make it over the mountains," and they saw what torture the words caused her.

Another bullet clanged against steel. "We can take only one more."

"Spin you for it." Gareth had the silver Maria Theresa on his thumb and he grinned at Jake.

"Heads," said Jake and it spun silver in the sunlight and Gareth caught it in the palm of his good hand and glanced at Jake..

"It had to come your turn at last." Gareth's grin lifted the corners of his mouth. "Well done, old son. off you go." But Jake caught the wrist, and twisted it. He glanced at the coin.

"Tails," he snapped. "I always knew you were a cheat, you bastard," and he turned away towards Vicky. "I'll cover the take-off, Vicky, I'll keep Priscilla between you and the Eyeties as long as I can." Behind him, Gareth stooped and picked up a stone the size of a gull's egg out of the grass.

"Sorry, old son," he drawled. "But I owe you two already," and tenderly he tapped Jake above the right ear with the stone held in the cup of his hand, and then dropped the stone and caught him under the armpits as his legs sagged and he began to collapse.

He put his knee under Jake's backside and with a heave boosted him headfirst and unconscious through the cabin door. Then he put his foot on Jake's protruding posterior and thrust him farther into the cramped cabin until he could slam and lock the door.

Rifle-fire pounded and crashed against the screening hull of Priscilla. Gareth reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the pigskin wallet. He dropped it through the side window into Vicky's lap as she sat at the controls.

"Tell Jake if I'm not there on the first to cash the Lijs cheque and buy You a bottle of Charlie from me, and when you drink it, remember I really did love you,-" Before she could reply he had turned and darted back to the armoured car and scrambled up into the driver's hatch.

Like a team in harness, the car and the little blue aircraft ran side by side down the open field and the Italian fire drummed against the steel hull of the car.

Then slowly the heavily laden aircraft drew ahead of the speeding car, but by then they were beyond effective rifle range, and as Vicky felt the Puss Moth come alive and the wheels bumped clear of the rough turf, she glanced quickly backwards.

Gareth stood in the driver's hatch, and she saw his lips Move as he shouted after her, and he lifted his bandaged arm in a gesture of farewell.

She did not hear the words, but she read them upon his lips.

"Noli il legitimi carborundum," and saw the flash of that devilish buccaneer smile, before the aircraft lifted away from the earth and she must turn all her attention back to it.

are th halted Priscilla at the edge of the field and he stood in the hatch, shielding his eyes with his good 3hand, and watched the little blue aircraft climb laboriously into the thin mountain air.

Again it caught the sun and flashed as it turned unsteadily towards the gap in the mountains where the pass led up into the highlands.

His whole attention was fixed on the dwindling speck of blue, so that he did not see the three CV.3 tanks crawl out of the main street of the village five hundred yards away.

He was still staring upwards as the tanks stopped, rocking gently on their suspensions, and the turrets with the long Spandaus traversed around towards him.

He did not hear the crash of cannon for the shell struck long before the sound carried to him. There was only the earth stopping impact and the burst of shell that hurled him from the hatch.

He lay on the earth beside the shattered hull, and he felt downwards with his good hand, for there was something wrong with his stomach. He groped down, and there was nothing where his stomach should have been, just a gaping hole into which his hand sunk, as though into the soft warm flesh of a rotten fruit.

He tried to withdraw his hand, but it would not move.

There was no longer muscular control, and it grew darker.

He tried to open his eyes and then realized that they were wide open, staring up at the bright sky. The darkness was in his head, and the cold was in his whole body.

In the darkness and the icy cold, he heard a voice say in Italian, "E marta he is dead." And he thought with mild surprise, "Yes, I am.

This time, I am," and he tried to grin, but his lips would not move and he went on staring up at the sky with pale blue eyes.

He is dead," repeated Gino.

"Are you certain?" Count Aldo Belli demanded from the turret of the tank.

"Si, I am certain." Warily the Count climbed down the hull.

"You are right," he agreed, studying the man. "He is truly dead. "Then he straightened up and puffed out his chest.

"Gino," he commanded. "Get a picture of me with the cadaver of the English bandit." And Gino backed away, staring into the viewfinder of the big black camera.

"Chin up a little, my Colonel," he instructed.

Vicky Camberwell brought the Puss Moth out over the final crest of the pass, with a mere two hundred feet to spare, for the small overladen aircraft was fast approaching its ceiling.

Ahead of her, the highlands stretched away to Addis Ababa in the south.

Below her passed the thin raw muddy bisecting lines of the Dessie road. She saw the road was deserted. The army of Ethiopia had passed. The fish had slipped through the net but the thought gave her no pleasure.

She turned in her seat and looked back, down the long gloomy corridor of the Sardi Gorge. From the cliffs on each side of the gorge, the rain waters still fell in silver white waterfalls and muddy cataracts so that it seemed that even the mountains wept.

She straightened up in her seat, and lifting her hand to her face she found without surprise that her own cheek was wet and slick with tears.