Cry Wolf Part 14

Their bodies were chilled and their brains unclear. In the uncertain light, the mob that poured into the valley was as numerous as the sands of the desert, each figure as large as a giant and as ferocious as a marauding lion.

It was in this moment that Colonel Aldo Belli, panting with exertion and nervous strain, stepped out of the narrow communication trench on to the firing platform of the forward line of emplacements. The Sergeant in command of the trench recognized him instantly and let out a cry of relief.

"my Colonel, thank G.o.d you have come." And forgetful of rank and position he seized the Count's arm. Aldo Belli was so busy trying to fight off the man's sweaty and importunate clutches that it was some seconds before he actually glanced down into the darkened valley then his bowels turned to jelly and his legs seemed to buckle under him.

"Merciful Mother of G.o.d," he wailed. "All is lost. They are upon us. With clumsy fingers he unbuckled the flap of his holster and as he fell to his knees he drew the pistol.

"Fire!" he screamed. "Open fire!" And crouching down well below the level of the parapet, he emptied the Beretta straight upwards into the dawn sky.

Manning the Italian parapets were over four hundred combatants; of these over three hundred and fifty were riflemen, armed with magazine-loaded bolt-action weapons, while another sixty men in teams of five serviced the cunningly placed machine guns.

Every man of this force had endured grinding nervous strain, listening to the war drums and now confronted by a sweeping mob of threatening figures. They crouched like dark statues behind their weapons, fingers curled stiffly around the triggers, and squinted over the open sights of rifle and machine gun.

The Count's-shriek of command and the crackle of the pistol shots were all that was necessary to snap the paralysing bonds of fear that held them. The firing was started around Aldo Belli's position, by men close enough to hear his command. A long line of muzzle flashes bloomed and twinkled along the forward slope of the valley, and three machine guns opened with them. The tearing sound of their long traversing bursts drowned out the crackle of musketry and their tracer flickered and flew in long white arcs out across the valley to bury itself in the dark moving blot of humanity.

Taken in the flank, the mob broke and surged away towards the dark silence of the far slope of the valley, away from the sheets of bright white tracer and the red rows of rifle fire. Leaving their dead and wounded scattered behind them, they spread like ispilled oil across the valley floor.

The silent gunners on the far slope saw them coming, held their fire for a few more confused panic-soured moments, and then, seeing themselves threatened, they opened also. The delay had the effect of allowing the survivors of the first volley to race deeply into the fields of overlapping fire that Castelani had so cleverly planned.

Caught in the open ground, hemmed in by a murderous storm of fire, the forward movement of the mob broke down, and they milled aimlessly, the women shrieking and clutching at their children, the children darting and doubling like a shoal of fish trapped in a tidal pool, some of the warriors kneeling in the open and beginning at last to return fire.

The red flashes of the black powder were long and dull and smoky and ineffectual against men in entrenched positions; they served only to intensify the ferocity of the Italian attack.

Now the surge of uncontrolled, panic-stricken humanity slowed and eventually ceased. The unarmed women who still survived gathered their children and covered them with their robes, crouching down over them as a mother hen does with her chicks, and the men crouched also, firing blindly and wildly up the slopes of the valley at the muzzle flashes that were fading now as the sun rose and the light strengthened.

Twelve machine guns, each firing almost seven hundred rounds a minute, and three hundred and fifty rifles poured a sheet of bullets down into the valley. Minute after minute the firing continued, and slowly the light strengthened, unmercifully exposing the survivors in the valley below.

The mood of the attackers changed. From panicky, nervously strung out green militia, they were transformed.

The almost drunken elation of victorious attackers gripped them, they were laughing triumphantly now as they served the guns. Their eyes bright with the blood l.u.s.t of the predator, the knowledge that they could kill without retribution made them bold and cruel.

The miserable popping and flas.h.i.+ng of ancient muskets in the valley below them was so feeble, so lacking in menace, that not a man amongst them was still afraid. Even Count Aldo Belli was now on his feet, brandis.h.i.+ng his pistol and shouting with a high, girlish hysteria.

"Death to the enemy! Fire! Keep firing!" and cautiously he lifted his head another inch above the parapet. "Kill them! Ours is the victory!" The valley floor, as the first rays of sunlight touched it, was covered with thick swathes of the dead and maimed.

They lay scattered singly, piled in clumps like mounds of old clothing in a flea market, thrown haphazardly on the coal pale sandy earth or arranged in neat patterns like fish on the slab.

In the centre of the killing-ground, there was still life movement. Here and there a figure might leap up and run with robes flapping, and immediately the machine guns would follow it, quick stabbing spouts of dust closing swiftly until they met and held on the running figure, when it would collapse and roll on the sandy earth.

The warriors who still crouched over their ancient rifles, with their dark faces lifted to the slopes, were now providing good practice for the riflemen above them. The Italian officers" voices, high-pitched and excited, called down fire upon them, and swiftly each of these defiants was. .h.i.t by carefully aimed fire and fell, some of them kicking and twitching.

The firing had lasted almost twenty minutes now, and there were few targets still on offer. The machine guns traversed expectantly, firing short bursts into the heaped carca.s.ses, shattering already mutilated flesh, or tore clouds of dust and flying shale from the rounded lips of the deep water holes, from the cover of which a sporadic fire still popped and crackled.

"My Colonel. "Castelani touched Aldo Belli's arm to gain his attention, and at last he turned wild-eyed and elated to his Major.

"Ha, Castelani, what a victory what a great victory, hey? They will not doubt our valour now."

"Colonel, shall I order the cease fire?" and the Count seemed not to hear him.

"They will know now what kind of soldier I am. This brilliant victory will win for me a place in the halls-2 "Colonel! Colonel! We must cease fire now. This is a slaughter.

Order the cease fire." Aldo Belli stared at him, his face beginning to flush with outrage.

"You crazy fool," he shouted. "The battle must be decisive, crus.h.i.+ng! We will not cease now not until the victory is ours." He was stuttering wildly and his hand shook as he pointed down into the b.l.o.o.d.y shambles of the valley.

"The enemy have taken cover in the water holes, they must be flushed out and destroyed. Mortars, Castelani, bomb them out." Aldo Belli did not want it to end. It was the most deeply satisfying experience of his life. If this was war, he knew at last why the sages and the poets had invested it with such In glory. This was man's work, and Aldo Belli knew himself born to it.

"Do you question my orders?" he shrieked at Castelani.

"a) your duty, immediately."

"Immediately," Castelani repeated bitterly, and for a moment longer stared stonily into the Count's eyes before he turned away.

The first mortar bomb climbed high into the clear desert dawn, before arcing over and dropping vertically down into the valley. It burst on the lip of the nearest well. It kicked up a brief column of dust and smoke, and the shrapnel whinnied shrilly. The second bomb fell squarely into the deep circular pit, bursting out of sight below ground level.

Mud and smoke gushed upwards, and out of the water hole into the open ground crawled and staggered three scarecrow figures with their tattered and dirty robes fluttering like flags of truce.

Instantly the rifle fire and machine-gun fire burst over them, and the earth around them whipped by the bullets seemed to liquefy into a cascade of flying dust, into which they tumbled and at last lay still.

Aldo Belli let out a hoot of excitement. It was so easy and so deeply satisfying. "The other holes, Castelani!" he screamed. "Clean them out! All of them!" Concentrating their fire on one hole at a time, the mortars ranged in swiftly. Some of the holes were deserted, but at most of them the slaughter was continued. A few survivors of the s.h.i.+mmering bursts of shrapnel staggered out into the open to be cut down swiftly by the waiting machine guns.

The Count was by now so emboldened that he climbed up on the parapet, the better to view the field and watch the mortars fire on the remaining holes, and to direct his machine gunners.

The hole nearest the wadis and broken ground at the head of the valley was the next target, and the first bomb was over, crumping in a tall jump of dust and pale flame.

Before the next bomb fell, a woman jumped up over the lip and tried to reach the mouth of the wadi. Behind her she dragged a child of two or three years, a naked toddler with fat little bow legs and a belly like a brown ball. He could not keep up with the mother and lost his footing, so she dragged him wailing along the sandy earth. Straddling her hip and clutched with desperate strength to her breast was another younger infant, also naked, also wailing and kicking frantically.

For several seconds, the running, heavily burdened woman drew no fire, and then a burst from a machine gun fell about her and a bullet struck and severed the arm by which she held the child. She staggered in a circle, shrieking dementedly and waving the stump of the arm like the spout of a garden hose. The next burst smashed through her chest, the same bullets shattering the body of the infant on her hip, and she fell and rolled like a rabbit hit by a shotgun.

The guns fell silent again and remained silent while the naked toddler stood up uncertainly.

He began to wail again, standing solidly at last on the fat dimpled legs, a string of blue beads around the tightly bulging belly and his p.e.n.i.s sticking out like a tiny brown finger.

From the mouth of the wadi emerged a running horse, a rawboned and rangy white stallion galloping heavily over the sandy ground with a frail boyish figure lying low along its neck, a black sham ma flying out wildly behind. The rider drove the stallion on towards where the child stood weeping, and had almost covered the open ground before the gunners realized what was happening.

The first machine gun traversed on the galloping animal, but this lead-off was stiff and the bullets kicked dust slightly high and behind. Then the horse reached the child and the rider reined in sharply, sending it rearing on its hind quarters, and the rider swung down to make the pick-up.

At that moment, two other machine guns opened up on the stationary target.

Jake Barton realized that there was only one way To prevent a confrontation between the Italian force which had appeared so silently and menacingly at the wells and the undisciplined mob of warriors and camp followers of the Ras's entourage. there was no chance that he could make himself heard in the hubbub of anxiously raised voices and emotional outbursts of Amharic as the Ras tried to make his view heard above the attempts of fifty of his chieftains and captains to do exactly the same thing.

Jake needed an interpreter and he thrust his way towards Gregorius Maryam, grabbed him firmly by the arm and dragged him out of the cave. It needed considerable force, for Gregorius was as intent as everybody else in having his views and suggestions aired.

Jake was surprised to find how light it was outside the caves, and that the night had pa.s.sed so swiftly. Dawn was only minutes away, and the dry desert air was sweet and heady after the crowded cave with its smoking fires.

In the light of the camp fires and the pale sky, he saw the mob streaming away down the wadi towards the wells, as happily excited as the crowds at a fairground.

"Stop them, Greg," he shouted. "Come on, we've got to stop them," and the two of them ran forward.

"What is it, Jake?"

"We've got to stop them running into the Eyetie camp."

"Why?"

"If somebody starts shooting, there will be a ma.s.sacre." BUt we are not at war, Jake. They can't shoot."

"Don't bet on it, buddy boy," grunted Jake grimly, and his alarm was contagious. Side by side, they caught up with the straggling rear of the column and elbowed and kicked their way through it.

"Back, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," roared Jake. "Get back, all of you, and made the meaning clear with flying fists and feet.

With Gregorius beside him, Jake reached the narrow mouth of the wadi where it debauched into the saucer shaped valley of the wells. Like the wall of a dam the two of them linked arms and managed to hold the flood of humanity there for a minute or so, but the pressure from those straining forward from the rear threatened to sweep them away, while the mood changed from high-spirited "curiosity to angry resentment at this check upon their efforts to join the hundreds of their comrades who had already pa.s.sed out of the wadi and were streaming out across the open valley.

At the moment when they were swept aside, the firing began out there upon the slopes of the valley and instantly the mob froze and their voices died away. There was no further forward movement, and Jake turned and scrambled up the steep side of the wadi for a better view out into the valley.

From there he watched the slaughter that turned the va ley into a charnel house. He watched with a sick fascination that changed slowly, as minute after minute the guns continued their clamour. He felt it become anger and outrage that outweighed all else, so that he was hardly aware of the slim cold hand that sought his, and he glanced down only for an instant at Vicky's golden head at his shoulder, before turning his entire concentration back to the dreadful tragedy being played out before them.

Vaguely he was aware that Vicky was sobbing beside him, and that she had gripped his hand so tightly that the nails were driven deep into his palm. Yet even in his dreadful anger, Jake was studying the ground and marking the Italian positions. On his other hand, Gregorius Maryam was praying softly, his smooth young face turned to a muddy grey with horror and the words of the prayer forced between tight lips like the last breaths of a dying man.

"Oh G.o.d," whispered Vicky in a tight, choked voice, as the mortar bombing began, dropping relentlessly into the depressions where the survivors huddled for shelter. "Oh G.o.d, Jake, what can we do?" But he did not answer and it went on and on. They were caught in the nightmare of it, powerless in the grip of this horror watching the mortars continue the hunt, until the woman with her two infants burst out into the open not three hundred yards ahead of them.

"Oh G.o.d, oh please Jesus," whispered Vicky. "Please don't let it happen. Please make it stop now." The guns hunted the woman and they watched her die, and the child rise to its feet and stand lost and bewildered beside the mother's corpse. The thud of galloping hooves sounded in the wadi below them and Gregorius swung around and cried, "Sara! No!" as the girl rode out, crouched low over the stallion's neck. She rode bare-backed, a tiny dark figure on the big white animal.

"Sara!" Gregorius cried again, and would have followed her, running out alone into that deadly plain, but Jake grabbed his arm and held him easily, though he struggled and cried out again in Amharic.

The girl rode on unscathed through the storm of fire, and Vicky's breathing stopped as she watched. It was impossible that Sara could reach the child and return. It was stupid, so stupid as to make her anger leap even higher and yet there was something so moving about that frail beautiful child riding out to her death, that it filled Vicky with a sense of her own inadequacy, a sense of great humility for even in this proud moment, she was aware that she was incapable of such sacrifice.

She watched the stallion rear, and the girl lean out to gather the small brown infant, saw the machine guns find their target at last, and the stallion whinnied and went down in a tangle of flailing hooves, pinning both the girl and the child, while the bullets continued to spurt dust and slap loudly against the still kicking body of the stallion.

Gregorius was still struggling and blab bering his horror, and Jake turned and struck him an open-handed blow across the face.

"Stop that!" Jake snarled, his own anger and outrage making him brutal. "Anybody who goes out there is going to get his a.r.s.e shot off." The blow seemed to steady Gregorius.

"We have got to get her, Jake. Please, Jake. Let me fetch her." "We'll do it my way," snapped Jake. His face seemed carved from hard brown stone, but his eyes were ferocious and his jaws clamped closed with his anger. Roughly he shoved Gregorius ahead of him down into the wadi, and he dragged Vicky after him. She tried to resist, leaning back against his strength, her head turned towards the plain, and her reluctant feet sliding in the loose earth.

"Jake, what are you doing?" she protested, but he ignored her.

"We'll mount the guns. It won't take long." He was planning through his rage, as he dragged them back along the wadi to where the cars were parked beyond the caves.

Vicky and Gregoflus were helpless in the ferocity of his grip, swept along by his strength and his anger.

"Vicky, you will drive for me. I'll serve the gun," he told her. "Greg, you drive for Gareth." Jake's breathing was shallow and fast with his rage. "We can only man two cars, one we will use as a diversion you and Gareth swing south along the back of the ridge and that will keep them busy while Vicky and I pick up Sara and as many of the others as we can find alive." The two of them listened to him, and were swept forward with a fresh urgency. As they ran back along the wadi, a final brief storm of machine-gun fire and exploding mortar bomb preceded the deep aching silence which now fell over the desert.

The three of them turned the final bend in the course of the wadi and came upon a scene of utter pandemonium.

The ravine was filled solidly with those who had escaped the Italian fire struggling to load their possessions, their tents and bedding, their chickens and children, on to the panicky bellowing camels and the skittering braying mules and donkeys.

Already hundreds of riders were galloping away, climbing the sides of the wadi or disappearing into the labyrinth of broken ground. New widows wailed in the uproar and their grief was catching, the children shrieked, and whimpered in sympathy, and over it all hung a blue miasma of smoke from the cooking fires and dust from the trampling hooves and milling feet.

The four cars stood in their solid orderly rank, aloof from the ma.s.ses of humanity, gleaming in their coats of white paint with the vivid red crosses emblazoned upon their sides.

Jake pushed a way through for them, towering head and shoulders above the throng, and when they reached the nearest car Jake grasped Vicky about the waist and swung her easily up into the sponson. For a moment his expression softened.

"You don't have to come," he said. "I guess I went a little mad then, you don't have to drive Gareth and I will take one car." Her face was deathly pale also, and there were deep bruised smears under her eyes from a night without sleep and the horrors of the slaughter. Her tears had dried, leaving dirty smears down her cheeks, but she shook her head fiercely.

"I'm coming," she said. "I'll drive for you."

"Good girl," said Jake. "Help Gregorius top up. We will need full fuel tanks. I'll get the Vickers." He turned away, shouting to Gregorius. "We'll use Miss Wobbly and Tenastelin Vicky will help you refuel." A detail from the Ras's personal bodyguard were already bringing the wooden cases of weapons and munitions out of the storage cave as Jake arrived. Each case was carried between four straining troopers to where the camels knelt.

It was then lifted into the pannier on each side of the hump and hastily lashed down.

"Hey, you lot." Jake came up with a group carrying a crated Vickers. "Bring that along this way." They paused in understanding until Jake made unmistakable signs, but at that moment a captain of the guard hurried up to intervene. After one shouted exchange Jake realized that the language barrier was insurmountable. The man was obstinate and time was wasting.

"Sorry, friend," he apologized. "But I am in a bit of a hurry," and he hit him a roundhouse clout that ended the argument conclusively and sent the man flying backwards into the outstretched arms of two of his men.

"Come along." Jake pushed the guards with the crate towards where the cars stood. The thought of Sara lying out there in the valley was driving him frantic. He imagined her bleeding slowly to death, her bright young blood draining away into the sandy soil and he hustled the two men forward through the press of animals and human beings.

As he came up, Gregorius was swinging the crank handle on Miss Wobbly and the engine caught and ran smoothly as Vicky eased back the ignition.

"Where is Gareth? "Jake shouted.

"Can't find him," answered Gregorius. "We'll have to go in one car," and then both of them swung round at the familiar bantering laugh. Gareth Swales was leaning nonchalantly against the side of the car, looking as unruffled and calm as ever, his hair neatly combed and the tweed suit as immaculate as if it had just come from his tailor.

"say," smiled Gareth, crinkling his eyes against the drift of blue smoke from the cheroot between his lips. "Big Jake Barton and his two eager ducklings about to take on the entire Italian army." Vicky's head appeared in the driver's hatch.

"We've been looking for you," she shouted furiously.

"Ah," quoth Gareth lightly. "We will now hear from the Girl Guides a.s.sociation."

"Sara is out there." Gregorius ran to Gareth. "We are going to fetch her. You and I will take the one car, Vicky and Jake the other."

"n.o.body is going anywhere." Gareth shook his head, and Gregorius seized the lapels of his suit and shook them urgently. "Sara. You don't understand she's out there! We have to fetch her." say, old lad, would you mind unhanding me, "murmured Gareth and removed Gregorius" hands from his lapel. "Yes.

We know about Sara, but--2 Vicky yelled from the driver's hatch. "Leave, him, Gregorius. We don't need anyone who is afraid-" and Gareth straightened up abruptly, his expression grim and his eyes snapping.

"I have been called many things in my life, my dear young lady. Some of them justified, but n.o.body has ever called me a coward."

"Well, there is always a first time, buster," shouted Vicky, her face crimson with anger and streaked with dirt, her blonde hair ruffled and hanging into her eyes and she pointed one quivering finger at Gareth, "and for you this is that first time!" They stared at each other for a moment longer before Lij Mikhael strode between them, his dark face set but commanding.

"Major Swales is acting on my express orders, Miss Camberwell. I have ordered that the cars and all my father's troops will fall back immediately."

"Good G.o.d, man." Vicky transferred her anger from Gareth to the Prince. "That's your daughter lying out there."

"Yes," said the Prince softly. "My daughter on the one hand my country on the other.

There is no doubt which I must choose."

"You're not making sense, "Jake interposed roughly.