firing all the time now. So very close."
"Miss Camberwell, can you get a message to Major Swales?"
"Yes."
"Tell him I need another eighteen hours. If he can hold the Italians
until noon tomorrow, then they cannot reach the crossroads before it is
dark tomorrow night. It will give me another day and two nights. If
he can hold until noon, he will have discharged with honour all his
obligations to me, and you will all have earned the undying gratitude
of the Emperor and all the peoples of Ethiopia. You, Mr. Barton and
Major Swales."
"Yes," said
Vicky. Each word was an effort.
"Tell him that at noon tomorrow I shall have made the best arrangements
I can for your evacuation from Sardi. Tell him to hold hard until
noon, and then I will spare no effort to get all of you out of
there."
"I will tell him."
"Tell him that at noon tomorrow he is to order all the remaining
Ethiopian troops to disperse into the mountains, and I will speak to
you again on this telephone to tell you what arrangements I have been
able to make for your safety." Lij
Mikhael, what about the wounded, the ones who cannot disperse into the
hills?" The silence again, and then the Prince's voice, quiet but
heavy with grief.
"It would be best if they fell into the hands of the Italians rather
than the Gallas."
"Yes,"she agreed quietly.
"There is one other thing, Miss Camberwell." The Prince hesitated,
and then went on firmly, "Under no circumstances are you to surrender
yourselves to the Italians. Even in the most extreme circumstances.
Anything-" he emphasized the word, "anything is preferable to that."
?
"I have learned from our agents that sentence of death has been passed
on you, Mr. Barton and Major Swales. You have been declared agents
provocateurs and terrorists. You are to be handed over to Ras
Kullah for execution of sentence. Anything would be better than
that."
"I understand," said Vicky softly, and she shuddered as she thought
of
Ras Kullah's thick pink lips, and the soft bloated hands.
"If everything else fails, I will send an-" his voice was cut off
abruptly, and now there was no hiss of static across the wires, only
the dead silence of lost contact.
For another minute Vicky tried to re-establish contact, but the handset
was mute and the silence complete. She replaced it on its cradle, and
closed her eyes tightly for a moment to steady herself. She had never
felt so lonely and tired and afraid in her entire life.
Vicky paused as she crossed the yard to the warehouse, and she looked
up at the sky. She had not realized how late it was. There were only
a few hours of daylight left but the cloud seemed to be breaking up.
The sombre grey roof was higher, just on the peaks, and there were
light patches where the sun tried to penetrate the cloud.
She prayed quietly that it would not happen. Twice during these last
desperate days, the cloud had lifted briefly, and each time the
Italian bombers had come roaring at low level up the gorge. On both
occasions, the terrible damage they had inflicted had forced Gareth to
abandon his trenches and pull back to the next prepared position, and a
flood of wounded and dying had engulfed them here at the hospital.
"Let it rain," she prayed. "Please God, let it rain and rain."
She bowed her head and hurried on into the shed, into the stench and
the low hubbub of groans and wails. She saw that Sara was still
assisting at the plain wooden table, inadequately screened by a
tattered curtain of canvas, and lit by a pair of Petromax lamps.
The German doctor was removing a shattered limb, cutting below the knee
while the young Harari warrior thrashed weakly under the weight of the
four orderlies who held him down.
Vicky waited until they carried the patient away and she called to
Sara. The two of them went out and stood breathing the sweet mountain
air with relief as they leant close together under the overhanging roof
of the veranda while Vicky repeated the conversation she had held
with
"Then we were cut off. The line just went dead."
"Yes," Sara nodded. "They have cut the wires. It is only a surprise
that Ras
Kullah did not do so before. The wires cross over the top of Ambo
Sacal. Perhaps it has taken this long for them to reach it."
"Will you go down the gorge, Sara, and give the message to Major
Swales? I would go down in Miss Wobbly, but there is almost no fuel in
the tank, and I
have promised Jake not to waste it. We will need every drop later--2
"It will be quicker on horseback anyway," Sara smiled, and I will be
able to see Gregorius."
"No, it won't take long," Vicky agreed.
"They are very close." Both of them paused to listen to the Italian
guns. The thumping detonations of the high explosive reverberated
against the mountains, close enough to make the ground tremble under
their feet.
"Don't you want me to give a message to Mr. Bartonr Sara demanded
archly. "Shall I tell him that your body crave, "No," Vicky cut her
short, her alarm obvious. "For goodness sake don't go giving him one
of your salacious inventions."
"What does "salacious" mean, Miss
Camberwell?" Sara's interest was aroused immediately.
"It means lecherous, lustful."
"Salacious," Sara repeated,
memorizing it. "It's a fine word," and with gusto she tried it out.
"My body craves you with a great salacious yearning."
"Sara, if you tell Jake that I said that, I will murder you with my
bare hands,"
Vicky warned her, laughing for the first time in many days, and her
laughter was cut off in mid flight by the single ringing scream of
terror, and the wild animal roar that followed it.
Suddenly the goods yard was filled with racing figures; they poured out
of the thick stand of cedar trees that flanked the railway line, and
they crossed the tracks in a few leaping bounds. There were hundreds
of them and they poured into the warehouse and fell like a pack of
wolves on the rows of helpless wounded.
"The Gallas," whispered Sara huskily, and for a moment they stood
paralysed with horror, staring into the gloomy cavern of the shed.
Vicky saw the old German doctor run to meet the Galla wave, with his
arms spread in a gesture of appeal, trying to prevent the slaughter. He
took the thrust of a broadsword full in the centre of his chest, and a
foot of the blade appeared magically from between his
shoulder-blades.
She saw a Galla, armed with a magazine-loaded rifle, run down a line of
wounded, pausing to fire a single shot at pointblank range into each
head.
She saw another with a long dagger in his hand, not bothering even to
slit the throat of the Harari wounded, before he jerked aside the
covering of coarse jute bags and his dagger swept in a single cutting
stroke across the exposed lower belly.
; She saw the shed filled with frenzied figures, their sword-arms rising
and falling, their gunfire crashing into the supine bodies, and the
screams of their victims ringing against the high roof, blending with
the high excited laughter and the wild cries of the Galla.
Sara dragged Vicky away, pulling her back behind the sheltering wall of
the shed. It broke the spell of horror which had mesmerized
Vicky and she ran beside the girl on flying feet.
The car," she panted. "If we can reach the car." Miss Wobbly was
parked beyond the station buildings under the lean-to of the loco shed
where it was protected from the rain. Running side by side, Vicky
and
Sara turned the corner of the shed and ran almost into the arms of a
dozen Gallas coming at a run in the opposite direction.
Vicky had a glimpse of their dark faces, shining with rain and sweat,
of the open mouths and flashing wolf-like teeth, the mad staring eyes,
and she smelt them, the hot excited animal smell of their sweat.
Then she was twisting away, like a hare jinking out of the track of a
hound. A hand clutched at her shoulder, and she felt her blouse tear,
then she was free and running, but she could hear the pounding of their
chased.
Sara ran with her, drawing slightly ahead as they reached the corner of
the station building. There was the flash and the crack of a
rifle-shot out on their left, and the bullet slammed into the wall
beside them. From the corner of her eye Vicky saw other running
Gallas,
racing in from the main road of the village, their long shammas
flapping about them as they ran to head them off.
Sara was drawing away from her. The girl ran with the grace and speed
of a gazelle, and Vicky could not keep pace with her. She rounded the
corner of the station building ten paces ahead of Vicky, and stopped
abruptly.
Under the lean-to shelter, the angular shape of Miss Wobbly was
wreathed in furious petals of crimson flame, and the black oily smoke
poured from her hatches. The Gallas had reached her first. She had
clearly been one of their first targets, and dozens of them pranced
around her as she burned and then scattered as the Vickers ammunition
in the bins began exploding.
Sara had halted for only a second, but it was long enough for
Vicky to reach her.
"The cedar forest," gasped Sara, a hand on Vicky's arm as they changed
direction.
The forest was two hundred yards away across the tracks, but it was
dense and dark, covering the broken ground along the river. They raced
out into the open, and immediately twenty other Gallas took up the
chase, their voices raised in the pack clamour.
The open yard seemed to stretch to eternity as Vicky ran on ahead of
the Gallas. The ground was slushy, so that she sank to the ankles with
each step, and the clinging red mud sucked one of the shoes off her
foot. So she ran on lopsidedly her feet sliding and her knees turning
weak under her.
Sara raced on lightly ahead, leaping the steel railway track, and her
feet flying lightly over the muddy ground.
The edge of the forest was fifty feet away.
Vicky felt a foot catch as she tried to jump the tracks and she went
down sprawling in the mud. She dragged herself to her knees. On the
edge of the forest Sara looked back, hesitating, her eyes huge and
glistening white in her smooth dark face.
"Run," screamed Vicky. "Run. Tell Jake," and the girl was gone into
the dark forest, with only a flicker of her passing like a forest
doe.
The butt 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 shell 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 Capronis came in very low,
their wing-tips seeming to scrape 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 glass cockpits.
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
shell 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, "God, I'd give one testicle
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