Cry Wolf Part 16

The Ras's cannon boomed again, speeding them on their way, and Vicky slowed the car as they came up to him. Jake reached down and helped the ancient gentleman aboard.

His eyes were bloodshot and he smelled like an abandoned brewery, but his wizened old face was crinkled into a wicked grin of satisfaction.

"How do you do?" he asked, with evident relish.

"Not bad, sir, "Jake a.s.sured him. "Not bad at all." little before noon, the formation of armoured cars parked in the open gra.s.sland twenty miles beyond the wells. A halt had been called here to allow the straggling ma.s.s of refugees that had escaped the slaughter at Chaldi to come up with them, and this was the first opportunity that Vicky had to work on Sara's leg. It had stiffened in the last hour, and the blood had clotted into a thick dark scab. Though Sara made no protest, she had paled to a muddy colour and was sweating in tiny beads across her forehead and upper lip as Vicky cleaned the wound and poured half a bottle of peroxide into it. Vicky sought to distract her as she worked by bringing up the subject of the dead they had left scattered about the water, holes under the Italian guns.

Sara shrugged philosophically. "Hundreds die every day of sickness and hunger and from the fighting in the hills.

They die without purpose or reason. These others have died for a purpose. They have died to tell the world about us--" and she broke off and gasped as the disinfectant boiled in the wound.

"I am sorry," said Vicky quickly.

"it is nothing, "she said, and they were quiet for a while, then Sara asked, "You will write it, won't you, Miss Camberwell?"

"Sure," Vicky nodded grimly. "I'll write it good. Where can I find a telegraph office?"

"There is one at Sardi," Sara told her. "At the railway office."

"What I write will burn out their lines for them, "promised Vicky, and began to bind up the leg with a linen bandage from the medicine chest. "We'll have to get these breeches off you." Vicky inspected the bloodstained and tattered velvet dubiously. "They are so tight, it's a wonder you haven't given yourself gangrene."

"They must be worn so," Sara explained. "It was decreed by my great-grandfather, Ras Abullahi."

"Good Lord." Vicky was intrigued. What on earth for?"

"The ladies in those days were very naughty," Sara explained primly. "And my great-grandfather was a good man. He thought to make the breeches difficult to remove." Vicky laughed delightedly.

"Do you think it helps? "she demanded, still laughing.

"Oh no, Sara shook her head seriously. "It makes it very hard." She spoke with the air of an expert, and then thought for a moment. They come down quickly enough it's when you want to get them up again in a hurry that can be very difficult."

"Well, the only way we are going to get you out of these now is to cut you loose." Vicky was still smiling, as she took a large pair of scissors from the medicine chest and Sara shrugged again with resignation.

"They were very pretty before Jake tore them now it does not matter." And she showed no emotion as Vicky snipped carefully along the seam and peeled them off her.

"Now you must rest." Vicky wrapped her naked lower body in a woollen sham ma and helped her settle comfortably on one of the thin coir mattresses spread on the floor of the car.

"Stay with me," Sara asked shyly, as Vicky picked up her portable typewriter and would have climbed out of the rear doors.

"I must begin my despatch."

"You can work here. I will be very quiet."

"Promise?"

"I promise," and Vicky opened the case and placed the typewriter in her lap, sitting cross-legged. She wound a sheet of fresh paper into the machine, and thought for a moment. Then her fingers flew at the keys. Almost instantly, the anger and outrage returned to her and was transferred smoothly into words and hammered out on the thin sheet of yellow paper. Vicky's cheeks flamed with colour and she tossed her head occasionally to keep the tendrils of fine blonde hair out of her eyes.

Sara watched her, keeping very still and silent until Vicky paused to wind a fresh sheet into the typewriter, then she broke the silence.

"I have been thinking, Miss Camberwell,"she said.

"You have?" Vicky did not look up.

"I think it should be Jake."

"Jake?" Vicky glanced at her, baffled by this sudden s.h.i.+ft in thought.

"Yes," Sara nodded with finality. "We will take Jake as your first lover." She made it sound like a group project.

"Oh, we will will we?" The idea had already entered Vicky's head and was almost firmly rooted, but she baulked instantly at Sara's bold statement.

"He is so strong. Yes!" Sara went on. "I think we will definitely take Jake," and with that statement she dashed as low as they had ever been the chances of Jake Barton.

Vicky snorted derisively, and flew at the typewriter once again. She was a lady who liked to make her own decisions.

The river of moving men and animals flowed wedge shaped across the spa.r.s.ely gra.s.sed and rolling landscape beneath the mountains. Over it all hung a fine mist of dust, like sea fret on a windy day, and the sunlight caught and flashed from the burnished surfaces of the bronze war s.h.i.+elds and the lifted lance-tips. Closer came the ma.s.s of riders until the bright spots of the silk shammas of the officers and n.o.blemen showed clearly through the loom of the dust cloud.

Standing on the turret of Priscilla the Pig, Jake shaded the lens of his binoculars with his helmet and tried to see beyond the dust clouds, searching anxiously for any pursuit by the Italians. He felt goose-flesh march up his arms and tickle the thick hair at the nape of his neck as he imagined this sprawling rabble caught in a crossfire of modern machine guns, and he fretted for the arrival of their own weapons which were lost somewhere amongst that ragged army.

He felt a touch on his shoulder and turned quickly to find Lij Mikhael beside him.

"Thank you, Mr. Barton,"said the Prince quietly, and Jake shrugged and turned back to his scrutiny of the distant plains.

"It was not the correct thing but I thank you all the same." How is she?"

"I have just left her with Miss Camberwell. She is resting and I think she will be well." They were silent a while longer, before Jake spoke again.

"I'm worried, Prince. We are wide open. If the Italians chase now it will be b.l.o.o.d.y murder. Where are the guns?

We must have the guns." Lij Mikhael pointed out on to the left rear flank of the approaching host.

"There," and Jake noticed for the first time the ungainly shapes of the pack camels, almost obscured by dust and distances, but standing taller than the s.h.a.ggy little Harari ponies that surrounded them, and lumbering stolidly onwards towards where the cars waited. "They will be here in half an hour." Jake nodded with relief. He began planning how he would arm the cars immediately, so that they could be deployed to counter another Italian attack but the Prince interrupted his thoughts.

"Mr. Barton, how long have you known Major Swales?" Jake lowered the gla.s.ses and grinned.

"Sometimes I think too long," and regretted it, as he noticed the Prince's immediate anxiety.

"No. I didn't mean that. It was a bad joke. I haven't known him long."

"We checked his record very carefully before " he hesitated.

"Before tricking him into taking on this commission," Jake suggested, and the Prince smiled faintly and nodded.

"Precisely," he agreed. "All the evidence suggests that he is an unscrupulous man, but a skilled soldier with a proven record of achievement in training raw recruits. He is an expert weapons instructor, with a full knowledge of the mechanism and exploitation of modern weapons." The Prince paused.

"Just don't get into a card game with him."

"I will take your advice, Mr. Barton." The Prince smiled fleetingly, and then was serious again. "Miss Camberwell called him a coward. That is not so. He was acting under my direct orders, as a soldier should."

"Point taken," grinned Jake. "But then I'm not a soldier, only a grease monkey." But the Prince brushed the disclaimer aside.

"He is probably a better man than he thinks he is," said Jake, and the Prince nodded.

"His combat record in France is impressive. The Military Cross and three times mentioned in despatches."

"Yeah, you have me convinced," murmured Jake. "Is that what you wanted?"

"No," admitted the Prince reluctantly. "I had hoped that you might convince me," and they both laughed.

"And did you check my record also? "Jake asked.

"No," admitted the Prince. "The first time I ever heard of you was in Dares Salaam. You and your strange machines were a bonus a surprise packet." The Prince paused again, and then spoke so softly that Jake barely caught the words, "and perhaps the best end of the bargain. "Then he lifted his chin and looked steadily into Jake's eyes."

The anger is still with you," he said. "

"I can see how strong it is." With surprise, Jake realized that the Prince was correct.

The anger was in him. No longer the leaping flames that had kindled at the first shock of the atrocity. Those had burned down into a thick glowing bed in the pit of his guts, but the memory of men and women caught by the guns and the mortars would sustain that glow for a long time ahead.

"I think now you are committed to us," the Lij went on softly, and Jake was amazed at the man's perception. He had not yet recognized that commitment himself; for the first time since he had landed in Africa, he was motivated by something outside himself. He knew that he would stay now, and that he would fight with the Lij and these people as long as they needed him. In an intuitive flash he realized that if these simple people were enslaved, then all of mankind including Jake Barton were themselves deprived of a measure of freedom. A line, almost forgotten, imperfectly learned long ago and not then understood surfaced in his memory.

"No man is an island," - " he said, and the Lij nodded and continued the quotation.

"entire of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind"." The Lifs dark eyes glowed. "Yes, Mr. Barton, John Donne. I think that in you I have been lucky. You are fire, and Gareth Swales is ice. It will work for me. Already there is a bond between you."

"A bond?" and Jake laughed, a brief harsh bark of laughter, but then stopped and thought about the Prince's words. The man had even greater perception than Jake had at first realized. He had a knack of turning over unrecognized truths.

"Yes. A bond," said the Lij. "Fire and ice. You will see." They were silent for a while, standing high on the steel turret of the car, bare-headed in the sun, each man thinking his own thoughts.

Then the Lij roused himself and turned to point into the west.

"There is the heart of Ethiopia,"he said. "The mountains." They both lifted their heads to the soaring peaks, and the great flat-topped Ambas that characterized the Ethiopian highlands.

Each table land was divided from the next by sheer walls of riven rock, blue with distance and remote as the clouds into which they seemed to rise, and by the deep dark gorges that looked to split the earth like the axe-stroke of a giant, plunging thousands upon thousands of feet to the swiftly raging torrents in their depths.

"The mountains protect us. For a hundred miles on each side no enemy may pa.s.s. "The Prince swept his arms wide to encompa.s.s the curving blue wall of rock that faded both north and south into the smoky distances where they merged with the paler bright blue of the sky.

"But there is the Sardi Gorge. "Jake saw it cleave the wall of mountains, a deep funnel driving into the rock perhaps fifteen miles across at its widest point, but then narrowing swiftly and climbing steeply towards the distant heights.

"The Sardi Gorge," the Prince repeated. "A lance pointed into the exposed flank of the Lion of Judah." He shook his head and his expression was troubled and once again that haunted, hunted look was in his eyes. "The Emperor, Negusa Nagast, Baile Sela.s.sie, has gathered his armies in the north.

One hundred and fifty thousand men to meet the main thrust of the Italians which must come from the north, out of Eritrea and through Adowa. The Emperor's flanks are secured by the mountains except here at the gorge. This is the only place at which a modern mechanized army might win its way to the high ground. The road up the gorge is steep and rough, but the Italians are engineering masters.

Their road making wizardry dates back to the Caesars. If they force the mouth of the gorge, they could have fifty thousand men on the highlands inside of a week." He punched his fist upward towards the far blue peaks. "They would be across the Emperor's rear, between him and his capital at Addis Ababa, with the road to the city wide open to them. It would be the end for us and the Italians know it. Their presence here at the Wells of Chaldi proves it.

What we encountered there today was the advance guard of the enemy attack which will come through the gorge."

Yes, "Jake agreed. "it seems that is so."

"The Emperor has charged me with the defence of the Sardi Gorge, said the Prince quietly. "But at the same time he has ordained that the great bulk of my fighting men must join his army which is now gathering on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Tona, two hundred miles away in the west. We will be short of men, so short that without your cars and the new machine guns you have brought to me, the task would be impossible."

"It isn't going to be a push-over, even with these beaten-up old ladies."

"I know that, Mr. Barton, and I am doing everything in my power to improve the betting in our favour. I am even treating with a traditional enemy of the Harari to form a common front against the enemy. I am trying to put aside old feuds, and convince the Ras of the Gallas to join us in the defence of the Gorge. The man is a robber and a degenerate, and his men are all s.h.i.+fta, mountain bandits, but they fight well and every lance now arms us against the common enemy." Jake was conscious of the faith that the Prince was placing in him; he was being treated like a trusted commander and his newly realized sense of involvement was strengthened.

"An untrustworthy friend is the worst kind of enemy."

"I don't recognize that quotation?" the Prince enquired.

"Jake Barton, mechanic. "Jake grinned at him. "Looks like we've got ourselves a job of work. What I want you to do is pick out some of your really bright lads. Ones that I can teach to drive a car or men that Gareth can use as gunners."

"Yes. I have already discussed that with Major Swales.

He made the same suggestion. I will hand-pick my best for you." "Young ones, "said Jake. "Who will learn quickly." The Ras sat crouched like an ancient vulture in the strip of shade thrown by Gareth's car, the Hump; his eyes were narrowed like those of a sniper and he mumbled to himself. drooling a little with excitement.

When Gregorius reached out and tried to view the fan of cards that the Ras held secretively to his bosom, his hand was slapped away angrily, and a storm of Amharic burst about him. Gregorius was justly put out of countenance by this, for he was, after all, his grandfather's interpreter. He complained to Gareth, who squatted opposite the Ras holding his own cards carefully against the front of his tweed jacket.

"He does not want me to help him any more," protested Gregorius. "He says he understands the game now."

"Tell him he is a natural." Gareth squinted around the smoke that spiralled upwards from the cheroot in the corner of his mouth. "Tell him he could go straight into the salon priva at Monte Carlo." The Ras grinned and nodded happily at the compliment, and then scowled with concentration as he waited for Gareth to discard.

"Anyone for the ladies?" Gareth asked innocently as he laid the queen of hearts face up on the inverted ammunition box that stood between them, and the Ras squawked with delight and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up. Then he hammered on the box like an auctioneer and began laying out his hand.

"Skunked, by G.o.d!" Gareth's face crumpled in a convincing display of utter dismay and the Ras nodded and twinkled and drooled.

"How do you do?" he asked triumphantly, and Gareth judged that the Christmas turkey was now sufficiently fattened and ready for plucking.

"Ask your venerable grandfather if he would like a little interest on the next game. I suggest a Maria Theresa a point?" and Gareth held up one of the big silver coins between thumb and forefinger to ill.u.s.trate the suggestion.

The Ras's response was positive and gratifying. He summoned one of his bodyguard, who drew a huge purse of lion skin from out of his voluminous sham ma and opened it.

"Hallelujah!" breathed Gareth, as he saw the sparkle of golden sovereigns in the recesses of the purse. "Your deal, old sport!" The controlled dignity of the Count's bearing was modelled aristocratically on that of the Duce himself. It was that of the aristocrat, of the man born to command. His dark eyes flashed with scorn, and his voice rang with a deep beauty that sent s.h.i.+vers up his own spine.

"A peasant, reared in the gutters of the street. I am amazed that such a person can have reached a rank such as Major. A person like yourself-" and his right arm shot Out with the accusing finger straight as a pistol barrel, you are a n.o.body, an upstart. I blame myself that I was soft-hearted enough to place you in a position of trust. Yes, I blame myself. That is the reason I have until this time overlooked your impudence, your importunity. But this time you have over reached yourself, Castelani. This time you have refused to obey a direct command from your own Colonel in the face of the enemy. This I cannot ignore!" The Count paused, and a shadow of regret pa.s.sed fleetingly behind his eyes. "I am a compa.s.sionate man, Castelani but I am also a soldier.

I cannot, in deference to this honoured uniform that I wear, overlook your conduct. You know the penalty for what you have done, for disobeying your superior officer in the face of the enemy." He paused again, the chin coming up and dark fires burning in his eyes. "The penalty, Castelani, is death.

And so it must be. You will be an example to my men. This evening, as the sun is about to set, you will be led before the a.s.sembled battalion and stripped of your badges of rank, of the beloved insignia of this proud command, and then you will meet your just deserts before the rifles of the firing squad It was a longish speech, but the Count was a trained baritone and he ended it dramatically with arms spread wide. He held the pose after he had finished and watched himself with gratification in the full-length mirror before which he stood. He was alone in his tent, but he felt as though he faced a wildly applauding audience. Abruptly he turned from the mirror, strode to the entrance of the tent and threw back the flap.

The sentries sprang to attention and the Count barked, "Have Major Castelani summoned here immediately."

"Immediately, my Colonel," snapped the sentry, and the Count let the flap drop back into place.

Castelani came within ten minutes and saluted smartly from the entrance of the tent.

"You sent for me, my Colonel?"

"My dear Castelani." The Count rose from his desk; the strong white teeth contrasted against the dark olive-gold tan, as he smiled with all his charm and went to take the Major's arm. "A gla.s.s of wine, my dear fellow?" Aldo Belli was enough of a realist to see that without Castelani's professional eye and arm guiding the battalion, it would collapse like an unsuccessful souffle, or more probably like a dynamited cliff upon his head. Pa.s.sing sentence of death on the man had relieved the COUnt's feelings, and now he could feel quite favourably disposed towards him.