Cry Wolf Part 25

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

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

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

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

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

"You are busy."

"Yes, I am, "snapped Vicky, cheeks aflame with embarra.s.sment and confusion.

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

"I.

thought you would want it." Vicky s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her, broke the seal and read avidly. Her anger faded as she read, and she looked up with s.h.i.+ning eyes at Sara.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it, d.a.m.n it, Sara, what are they doing?"

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

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

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

"t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es," said Vicky hoa.r.s.ely, almost choking on the word.

"Yes," agreed Sara. "They must kill a man and take his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es to the bride. It is their custom, but first they will make sport with the Italians."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jake Barton rose to his feet, coming erect with one fluid movement, and in a continuation of the same movement he crossed to the piles of captured Italian weapons. He stooped and picked up an officer's automatic pistol, a 7 men. Beretta, still in its polished leather holster, and he unbuckled the flap and drew the weapon, discarding the leather holster and waist belt. He checked the loaded magazine and then, with a slap of his palm, thrust it back into the recessed b.u.t.t, pumped the slide to throw a round into the breech, flicked the safety-catch across and slipped the pistol into the pocket of his breeches.

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

"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfas.h.i.+oned luxury an expensive one in this age, and especially in this place,"

murmured Gareth, and inspected the ash of his cheroot.

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

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

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

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

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

"Do what I say."

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

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

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

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

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

The blood l.u.s.t was running high, and they growled like an animal pack.

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

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

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

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

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

However, more prosaically the sleeves of her sham ma were drawn up in businesslike fas.h.i.+on above the elbows like those of a butcher, and her hands were b.l.o.o.d.y to the wrists. She held the thin curved dagger like a surgeon, and its silver blade was dull and red in the firelight.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jake a.s.sembled the few words of Amharic he had learned from Gregorius.

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

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

"You die," said Jake, and the man shrilled a denial to his warriors. They drew back reluctantly, fingering their knives and watching with smouldering eyes for their opportunity.

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

"Tell your men," he said, his voice thick and grating with his anger. Ras Kullah's voice quavered, high as a young girl, and the warriors who guarded the three half-naked prisoners shuffled uncertainly and exchanged glances.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pace after slow steady pace, they moved forward. Time and again their way was blocked by sullen groups of tall dark Gallas, who stood shoulder to shoulder fingering their weapons, then Jake twisted the muzzle of the pistol into Ras Kullah's soft skin. The man cried out and reluctantly the way opened, the dark warriors moving aside just sufficiently to let them pa.s.s, and then falling in behind them and following closely, so closely the leaders were always within arm's length.

Once they were clear of the pack, Jake could increase the pace and he moved steadily up the path through the camel-thorn, shepherding the terrified Italians ahead of him and dragging Ras Kullah bodily along.

"What are we going to do with them?" Vicky asked breathlessly.

"We can't keep Kullah at gun point much longer." Jake did not answer; he did not want the closely following Gallas to hear the uncertainty in his voice, yet he didn't want the girl to show signs of fear.

She was right, of course, the Gallas followed them now with an implacable malevolence, pressing closely in an avenging throng that filled the darkness.

the cars-" said Jake, as inspiration came to him. "Get them into one of the cars."

"And then?"

"One thing at a time," growled Jake.