The b.u.t.t of a rifle struck Vicky in the side, below the ribs, and she went down with an explosive grunt of pain into the cold red mud.

Then there were hands tearing at her clothing, and she tried to fight, but she was blinded by the clinging wet tresses of her hair, and crippled with the pain of the blow. They hoisted her to her feet, and suddenly a new authoritative voice cracked like a whiplash, and the hands released her.

She lifted her head, hunched up over her bruised belly and side.

Through eyes blurred with tears and mud, she recognized the scarred face of the Galla Captain. He still wore the blue sham ma sodden now with rain, and the scar twisted his grin, making it seem even more cruel and vicious.

The front edge of the trench had been reinforced with sandbags and screened with brush, and through the square observation aperture the view down the gorge was uninterrupted.

Gareth propped one shoulder against the sandbags and peered down into the gathering gloom. Jake Barton squatted on the firing step beside him and studied the Englishman's face. Gareth Swales's usually immaculate turnout was now red with dried mud, and stained with sweat, rainwater and filth.

A thick golden stubble of beard covered his jaw like the pelt of an otter, and his mustache was ragged and untrimmed. There had been no opportunity to change clothing or bathe in the last week. There were new lines etched deeply into the corners of his mouth, his forehead, and around his eyes, lines of pain and worry, but when he glanced up and caught Jake's scrutiny, he grinned and lifted an eyebrow, and the old devilish gleam was in his eyes. He was about to speak when from below them another sh.e.l.l came howling up through the deep shades of the gorge, and both of them ducked instinctively as it burst in close, but neither of them remarked. There had been hundreds of bursts that close in the last days.

"It's breaking for certain," Gareth observed instead, and they both looked up at the strip of sky that showed between the mountains.

"Yes," Jake agreed. "But it's too late. It will be dark in twenty minutes." It would be too late for the bombers, even if the cloud lifted completely. From bitter experience they knew how long it took for the aircraft to reach them from the airfield at Chaldi.

"It will clear again tomorrow Gareth answered.

"Tomorrow is another day," Jake said, but his mind dwelt on the big black machines. The Italian artillery fired smoke markers on to their trenches just as soon as they heard the drone of approaching engines in the open cloudless sky. The Cap.r.o.nis came in very low, their wing-tips seeming to sc.r.a.pe the rocky walls on each side of the gorge. The beat of their engines rose to an unbearable, ear-shattering roar, and they were so close that they could make out the features of the helmeted heads of the airmen in the round gla.s.s c.o.c.kpits.

Then, as they flashed overhead, the black objects detached from under their fuselage. The 100, kilo bombs dropped straight, their flight controlled by the fins, and when they struck, the explosion shocked the mind and numbed the body. In comparison the burst of an artillery sh.e.l.l was a squib.

The canisters of nitrogen mustard were not aerodynamically stable, and they tumbled end over end and burst against the rocky slopes in a splash of yellow, jellylike liquid that sprayed for hundreds of feet in all directions.

Each time the bombers had come one after the other, endlessly hour after hour, they left the defence so broken that the wave of infantry that followed them could not be repelled. Each time they had been driven out of their trenches, to toil back, upwards to the next line of defence.

This was the last line, two miles behind them stood the granite portals that headed the gorge, and beyond them, the town of Sardi and the open way to the Dessie road.

"Why don't you try and get a little sleep, "Jake suggested, and involuntarily glanced down at Gareth's arm. It was swathed in strips of torn shirt, and suspended in a makeshift sling from around his neck.

The discharge of lymph and pus and the coating of engine grease had soaked through the crude bandage. It was an ugly sight covered, but Jake remembered what it looked like without the bandage. The nitrogen mustard had flayed it from shoulder to wrist, as though it had been plunged into a pot of boiling water and Jake wondered how much good the coating of greene was doing it. There was no other treatment, however, and at least it kept the air from the terrible injury.

"I'll wait until dark," Gareth murmured, and with his good hand lifted the binoculars to his eyes. "I've got a funny feeling. It's too quiet down there." They were silent again, the silence of extreme exhaustion.

"It's too quiet, said Gareth again, and winced as he moved the arm. "They haven't got time to sit around like this. They've got to keep pushing pushing." And then, irrelevantly, "G.o.d, I'd give one t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e for a cheroot. A Romeo y Juliette-" He broke off abruptly, and then both of them straightened up.

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

"I think I do."

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

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

"Tanks," said Gareth. "b.l.o.o.d.y tanks."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is it?"

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

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

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

Gregorius swung the lantern aside and the light fell on the slim figure beside him. Sara was shivering with cold and her light clothing was &-soddden and muddy. Thorn and branches had scored b.l.o.o.d.y lines across her legs and arms, and ripped the fabric of her breeches.

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

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

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

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

"I'm coming on the ride, Jake," Gareth answered quietly, but firmly. "You can't expect me to sit here while Vicky-" he broke off. "Got to keep a fatherly eye on you, old son," he went on in the old bantering tone.

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

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

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

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

We can hold them that long, tanks or no b.l.o.o.d.y tanks, can't we?"

"Yes, Gareth, we can hold them."

"Just one other thing, Greg. I love your grandfather like a brother but keep that old b.a.s.t.a.r.d under control, will you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He fell on one knee before the Ras.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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