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, damn 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?"
"Testicles," said Vicky hoarsely, almost choking on the word.
"Yes," agreed Sara. "They must kill a man and take his testicles 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 God! Oh God!" 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 godlike 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 butt, 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
"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfashioned
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 passed 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 assembled, a huge dark circle of squatting
figures; the firelight bronzed their eager hawk features, and the whole
assembly 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 cock fight in Havana.
The blood lust 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 cushions, 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 clustered fearfully, their faces shiny
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 bloody; 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 fashion above the elbows like those of a butcher, and her
hands were bloody 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 assembled 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 bloody hands sank to her haunches and a great
waiting silence gripped the assembly. 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 cocked 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 massaged 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 compassion 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 a
nd 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 pass, 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.
"Let's get them into the car first." And they moved steadily up the
path, the Gallas pressing them more closely. One of the tall cloaked
figures jostled Jake roughly, trying him, beginning to push harder,