speed,
dropping with a gut swooping dive down the far side.
Jake cut the engine before she had come to rest, and he and
Gregorius sprang out of the opened hatches and went panting back up the
dune, labouring in the heavy loose footing, and panting as they reached
the crest and looked down into the trough at almost the same instant as
the four Italian tanks came over the crest opposite them.
Their racks boiling in the loose sand, they came crashing over the top
of the dune, and roared down into the trough.
They tore into the thick bank of scrub, and immediately the bush was
alive with naked black figures. They swarmed around the monstrous
wallowing hulls like ants around the bodies of shiny black scarab
beetles.
Twenty men to each steel rail, using it like a battering ram, they
charged in from each side of every tank, thrusting the end of the rail
into the sprocketed jockey wheels of the tracks.
The rail was caught up immediately, and with the screech of metal on
metal was whipped out of the hands of the men who wielded it, hurling
them effortlessly aside. To an engineer, the sound that the machines
made as they tore themselves to pieces was like the anguish of living
things, like that terrible death squeal of a horse.
The steel rails tore the jockey wheels out of them, and the tracks
sprang out of their seating on the sprockets and whipped into the
air,
flogging themselves to death in a cloud of dust and torn vegetation.
It was over very swiftly, the four machines lay silent and stalled,
crippled beyond hope of repair and around them lay the broken bodies of
twenty or more of the Ethiopians who had been caught up by the flailing
tracks as they broke loose. The bodies were torn and shredded, as
though clawed and mauled by some monstrous predator.
Those who had survived the savage death of the tanks, hundreds of
almost naked figures, swarmed over the stranded hulls, loolooing wildly
and pounding on the steel turrets with their bare hands.
The Italian gunners still inside the hulls fired their machine guns
despairingly, but there was no power on their traversing gear and the
turrets were frozen. The guns could not be aimed. They were blinded
also for Jake had armed a dozen Ethiopians each with a bucket of engine
oil and dirt mixed to a thick paste. This they had slapped in gooey
handfuls over the drivers" and gunners" visors. The tank crews were
helplessly imprisoned and the attackers pranced and howled like
demented things. The din was such that Jake did not even hear the
approach of the other car.
It stopped on the crest of the dune opposite where Jake stood.
The hatches were flung open, and Gareth Swales and Ras Golam leaped out
of the hull.
The Ras had his sword with him, and he swung it around his head as he
charged down the slope to join his men around the crippled tanks.
Across the valley that separated them, Gareth threw Jake a cavalier
salute, but beneath the mockery, Jake sensed real respect.
Each of them ran down into the trough and they met where the gallon
cans of gasoline were buried under a fine layer of sand and cut
branches.
Gareth spared a second to punch Jake lightly on the shoulder.
"Hit the beggars for six, what? Good for you," and then they stooped
to drag the cans out of the shallow hole, and with one in each hand
staggered through the waist-deep scrub to the tank carcasses.
Jake passed a can up to Gregorius who was already perched on the turret
of the nearest tank where his grandfather was trying to prise open the
turret hatch with the blade of his broad-sword. His eyes flashed and
rolled wildly in his wrinkled black head, and a high-pitched incoherent
"Looloo" keened from the mouthful of flashing artificial teeth for the
Ras was transported into the fighting mania of the berserker.
Gregorius hefted the gasoline can up on to the tank's sponson, and
plunged his dagger through the thin metal of the lid. The clear liquid
spurted and hissed from the rent, under pressure of its own volatile
gases.
"Wet it down good!" shouted Jake, and Gregorius; grinned and
splattered gasoline over the hull. The stink of it was sharp, as it
evaporated from the hot metal in a shimmering haze.
Jake ran on to the next tank, unscrewing the cap of the can as he
clambered up over the shattered jockey wheels.
Avoiding the stationary barrel of the forward machine gun, he stood
tall on the top of the turret and splashed gasoline over the hull,
until it shone wetly in the sunlight and little rivulets of the stuff
found the joints and gaps in the plating and splattered into the
interior.
"Get back," shouted Gareth. "Everybody back." He had doused the other
steel carcasses and he stood now on the slope of the dune with an unlit
cheroot in the corner of his mouth and a box of Swan Vestas in his left
hand.
Jake jumped lightly down from the hull, laying a trail of gasoline from
the can he carried as he backed up to where Gareth waited.
"Hurry. Everybody out of the way," Gareth called again.
Gregorius was laying a wet trail of gasoline back to Gareth.
"Somebody go get that old bastard out of the way" Gareth called with
exasperation. A single figure pranced and howled and loolooed on the
nearest tank, and Jake and Gregorius dropped the empty cans and raced
back. Ducking under the swinging arc of the sword, Jake got an arm
around the Ras's skinny, bony chest, swung him bodily off his feet and
passed him down to his grandson. Between them they carried him away to
safety, still how ling and struggling.
Gareth struck one of the Swan Vestas and casually lit the cheroot in
his mouth. When it was drawing nicely, he cupped the match to let the
game flare brightly.
"Here we go, chaps," he murmured. "Guy Fawkes, Guy.
Stick him in the eye. Hang him on a lamp post' he flicked the burning
match on to the gasoline-sodden earth, and leave him there to die." For
a moment nothing happened, and then with a thump that concussed the air
against their eardrums, the gasoline ignited.
Instantly the belt of scrub turned to atoll roaring red inferno, and
the flames boiled and swirled, leaped and drummed high into the desert
air, engulfing the four stranded tanks in sheets of fire that obscured
their menacing silhouettes.
The Ethiopians watched from the dunes, awed by the terrible pageant of
destruction they had created. Only the Ras still danced and howled at
the edge of the flames, the blade of his sword reflecting the red
leaping flames.
The hatches of the nearest tank were thrown open, and out into the
searing air leaped three figures, indistinct and shadowy through the
flames. Beating wildly at their burning uniforms, the tank crew came
staggering out on to the slope of the dune.
The Ras flew to meet them, the sword hissing and glinting as it swung.
The head of the tank commander seemed to leap from his fire-blackened
shoulders, as the blade
cut through. The head struck the ground behind
him and rolled back down the dune like a ball, while the decapitated
trunk dropped to its knees with a fine crimson spray from the neck
pumping straight up into the air.
The Ras raced on towards the other survivors, and his men roared
angrily and swarmed forward after him. Jake uttered a horrified oath
and started forward to restrain them.
"Easy, old son." Gareth caught Jake's arm, and swung him away.
"This is no time for one of your boy scout acts." From below them rose
the ugly blood roar of the destroyers, as they fell upon the survivors
of the other tanks, and the Italians" screams cut like a whiplash
across Jake's nerves.
"Let's leave them to it." Gareth drew Jake away. "Not our business,
old boy. The beggars have got to take their own chances.
Rules of the game." Across the crest of the dune they leaned together
against the steel hull of Priscilla. Jake was panting heavily from his
exertions and his horror. Gareth found him a slightly crumpled cheroot
in the inside pocket of his tweed jacket, and straightened it carefully
before placing it between Jake's lips.
"Told you before, your sentimental but endearing ways will get us both
into trouble. They'd have torn you to pieces also if you'd gone down
there." He lit Jake's cheroot.
"Well, old boy-" he changed the subject diplomatically.
"That takes care of our biggest problem. No tanks no worries,
that's an old Swales family motto," and he chuckled lightly. "We'll be
able to hold them at the mouth of the gorge for another week now. No
trouble at all." Abruptly the sunlight was obscured, and instantly the
temperature dropped sharply. Both of them glanced up involuntarily at
the sky, at the gloom and the sudden chill.
In the last hour, the masses of cloud had come slumping down from the
mountains, blotting them out completely, and spreading out on to the
fringes of the Danakil desert.
From this thick, dark mattress of swirling cloud, fine pale streamers
of rain were already spiralling down towards the plain. Jake felt a
droplet splatter against his forehead and he wiped it away with the
back of his hand.
"I say, we're in for a drop or two," murmured Gareth, and as if in
confirmation the deep mutter of thunder echoed down from the
cloud-shrouded mountains, and lightning flared sulkily, trapped within
the towering cloud masses and lighting them internally with a
smouldering infernal glow.
"That's going to make things-" Gareth cut himself off, and both of them
cocked their heads.
"Hello, that's decidedly odd." Faintly on the brooding air,
carrying above the mutter of thunder, came the popping of musketry and
the sound of machine-gun fire, like the sound of tearing silk, made
indistinct and un warlike by distance and the muting banks of heavy
cloud.
"Deuced odd." Gareth repeated. "There should not be any firing from
there." It was in their rear, seeming to come from the very mouth of
the gorge itself.
"Come on," snapped Jake, picking his binoculars out of Priscilla's
hatch and scrambling through the loose red sand for the crest of the
tallest dune.
The cloud and misty streamers of rain obscured the mouth of the gorge,
but now the sound of gunfire was continuous.
"That's not just a skirmish," muttered Gareth.
"It's a full-scale fire fight," Jake agreed, peering through the
binoculars.
"What is it, Jake?" Gregorius came up the dune to where they stood. He
was followed by his grandfather but the old man moved slowly, exhausted
and stiff with age and the aftermath of burned-out passions.
"We don't know, Greg. "Jake did not lower the binoculars.
"I don't understand it." Gareth shook his head. "Any Italian probe
from the south would have run into our positions in the foothills, and
from the north it would have run into the Gallas. Ras
Kullah is in a pretty strong spot there. We would have heard the
fighting. They can't have gone through there-"
"And we are here in the centre, "Jake added, "they didn't come through
here."
"It doesn't make sense." At that moment, the Ras reached the crest. He
paused wearily and removed the teeth from his mouth, wrapped them
carefully in a kerchief and tucked them away in some secret recess of
his sham ma The mouth collapsed into a dark empty pit, and immediately
he looked his age again.
Quickly Gregorius explained this new phenomenon to the old man,
and while he listened he ran the blade of his sword into the dune
between his feet, scrubbing it clean of the clotted black blood in the
dry friable sand. He spoke suddenly in his tremulou's old man's
voice.
"My grandfather says that Ras Kullah is a piece of dried dung of a
venereal hyena," Gregorius translated quickly.
"And he says my uncle, Lij Mikhael, was wrong to treat with him,
and that you were wrong to trust him."
"Now what the hell does that mean?" Jake demanded fretfully, and
lifted the binoculars sweeping again towards the mouth of the Sardi
Gorge away across the undulating golden plain then he exclaimed again.
"Damn it to hell, everything is blowing up. That crazy woman! She
promised me, she swore on oath that she would keep out of it for once
and now here she comes again!"
Emerging through the curtains of rain, indistinct under the dark
rolling mass of cloud, throwing no dust column on the rain-dampened
earth, the tiny sand-coloured shape of Miss Wobbly came bowling towards
them with its distinctive stately gait. Even at this distance, Jake
could make out the dark speck of Sara's head in the hatch of the
old-fashioned turret.
Jake started to run down the slip-face of the dune to meet the oncoming
car.
"Jake!" Vicky screeched above the engine beat, before she came to a
halt, her head thrust out of the driver's hatch, her golden hair
shaking in the wind and her eyes huge in the pale intense face.
"What the hell are you doing? "Jake shouted back angrily.
"The Gallas," Vicky screeched. "They've gone! Every last man of them!
Gone!" She braked hard and tumbled down to the ground so that
Jake had to catch and steady her.
"What do you mean gone?" Gareth demanded, coming up at that moment and
Sara answered him from Miss Wobbly's turret with her dark eyes
sparkling hotly.
"They went, like smoke, like the dirty hill bandits they are."
"The left flank-"Gareth exclaimed.
"Nobody there. The Italians have come through without firing a shot.
Hundreds and hundreds of them. They are at the gorge, they have
overrun the camp."
"Jake, they would have cut off all our own Harari,
it would have been a massacre Sara gave the order, in her grandfather's
name, she ordered them to abandon the right flank."
"Oh,
good Christ!"
"They are trying to fight their way back into the gorge now but the
Italians are covering the mouth with machine gun
s. It's terrible,
Jake, oh the desert is thick with the dead."
"We've lost it all. Everything we gained, at a single throw, it's all
gone. This was a feint, the tanks were sent to draw us off. The main
attack was through the left but how did they know the Gallas had
deserted?"
"As my grandfather says, never trust either a snake or a Galla."
"Oh Jake,
we must hurry." Vicky shook his arm. "They'll cut us off."
"Right," snapped Gareth. "We'll have to get back into the gorge and
rally them on the first line of defence in the gorge itself otherwise
they'll run straight back to Addis Ababa." He swung around to
Gregorius. "If we try and take these men, and he indicated the
hundreds of halfnaked, unarmed Harad who were now straggling out of the
dunes, "if we try to take them back through the mouth of the gorge,
they'll be shot to pieces by the Italian guns. Can they find their own
way on foot up the mountain slopes?"
"They are mountain men,
Gregorius answered simply.
"Good. Tell them to work their way back and assemble at the first
waterfall in the gorge. That's the rallying point the first
waterfall." He turned back to the others. "On the other hand, we'll
have to use the gorge the only way to save the cars. We'll rush the
mouth in a tight formation and pray that the Eyeties haven't had a
chance to bring up their artillery yet. Let's go!" He grabbed Ras
Golam by the shoulder and dragged him, at an awkward run, back towards
where they had left their armoured car parked on the crest of the first
dune.
"Get back in the car," Jake instructed Vicky. "Keep the engine
running. We'll bring up the two other cars. I want you in the centre
of the line, then go like hell. Don't stop for anything until we are
into the gorge. Do you hear me?" Vicky nodded grimly.
"Good girl he said, and would have turned away, but Vicky held his arm
and pressed herself to him. She reached up and kissed him full on the
lips, her mouth open and wet and soft and sweet.
"I love you, "she whispered huskily.
"Oh my darling, what a hell of a time you picked to tell me."
"I
only just found out," she explained, and he crushed her fiercely to his
chest.
"Oh, that's lovely," cried Sara from the turret above them.
"That's beautiful." She clapped her hands delightedly.