Cry Wolf Part 18

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

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

The old woman let out one more high-pitched shriek, and leapt at him the long skinny black arm lunged out, the point of the blade aimed at his heart. The woman's strength was too frail to drive it home, and the point struck bone and glanced aside, skidding around the ribcage, opening a long shallow cut that exposed the white bone in its depths for the instant before blood flooded out between the lips of the wound. A howl of delight went up from the a.s.sembled Gallas, and they goaded on the avenger with mocking cries and yips like those of a pack of excited jackals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Will you go down the pa.s.s again today?"

"Yes," Vicky said, and Sara sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is no surprise," said Sara. "The only surprise is that.

they took so long."

"Miss Camberwell, you must return as swiftly as you can to my father at the foot of the gorge, and warn him that he must be ready to meet an enemy attack." He drew out a gold pocket watch and glanced at it. "Within the next few minutes, an aircraft will be landing here to take me to the Emperor. I would be obliged, Miss Camberwell, if you would accompany me to the-landing field." Vicky nodded, and the Lij went on. "Ras Kullah's men are a.s.sembled there. He has agreed to send fifteen hundred hors.e.m.e.n to join my father, and they will follow you-" He got no further, for Sara intervened hotly.

"Miss Camberwell must not be left alone with those hyenas of Kullah's. They would eat their own mothers." The Lij smiled and held up a hand. "My own bodyguard will ride with Miss Camberwell, under my strict charge to protect her at all times."

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

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

will come soon," whispered Sara, "Do nothing until I am with you. Perhaps it should be Gareth after all," and Vicky chuckled.

"You're getting me confused."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ras Kullah's hors.e.m.e.n drove the goats from the field at a gallop, and then as the Puss Moth touched down, they wheeled and tore down the field at its wing-tips, firing their rifles into the air and vying with each other to perform feats of horsemans.h.i.+p.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Get out of my way," she said clearly, and the man before her smiled. It was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And I once called you a coward."

"Quite right too."

"How did you get there so fast?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had been doing this when he had come across Vicky and the Galla hors.e.m.e.n.

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