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 lust of the predator, the knowledge that they
could kill without retribution made them bold and cruel.
The miserable popping and flashing 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,
brandishing 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 hit 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 carcasses, 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, crushing!
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 bloody
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 fir
e 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
shimmering 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
penis 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 passed 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 massacre." 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 bastards," 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 passed out of the wadi and were streaming out across
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 God," whispered Vicky in a tight, choked voice, as the mortar
bombing began, dropping relentlessly into the depressions where the
survivors huddled for shelter. "Oh God, 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 c
ontinue the hunt, until the woman with her two infants burst
out into the open not three hundred yards ahead of them.
"Oh God, 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 arse 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