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 shift 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
sparsely grassed 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 shields and the lifted lance-tips. Closer came the mass of riders
until the bright spots of the silk shammas of the officers and noblemen
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 bloody 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 shaggy 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
glasses 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. Yo
u 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 pass. "The Prince swept his arms wide to encompass 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 Selassie, 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 shores 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
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 shifta, 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 snatched it up. Then he
hammered on the box like an auctioneer and began laying out his hand.
"Skunked, by God!" 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 illustrate
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 shivers 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 nobody, 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 passed fleetingly
behind his eyes. "I am a compassionate man, Castelani but I am also a