by Wilbur Smith
armoured car.
Those nearest the car had dismounted, and when she tried to make her
way through their ranks they gave her only minimal passage, so that she
must brush close to them.
Suddenly she realized with a fresh lunge of fear in her chest that the
Harari bodyguard of Lij Mikhael was no longer with her and she stopped
uncertainly and looked about her, trying to find where they were.
An aching silence had fallen on the Gallas, and now she saw that their
expressions were tense also. The faces, with their handsome,
high-boned features and beaky noses, turned towards her with the
predatory expectation of the hunting hawk, and the eyes burned with the
same fierce excitement with which they had watched the old crone do her
bloody work the previous night.
The Harari, where were the Harari? She looked about her wildly now but
could not find a familiar face and then in the silence she heard the
clatter of distant hooves from far down the gorge and she knew without
any shade of doubt that they had left her, they had been driven away by
the threats of their ancient enemies, who outnumbered them so
heavily.
She was alone and she turned to go back, but found that they had closed
about her, cutting off her retreat and now they pressed gradually
closer about her, with the same smouldering, gloating expression on
every face.
She had to go forward, there was no way back and she forced herself to
walk slowly on towards the car. At each step a tall robed figure stood
to block her way. She knew she must show no sign of fear,
any show of weakness at all would trigger them, and she had a single
brief image of her own pale body spread-eagled upon the rocky earth,
plaything for a thousand. She thrust the image firmly aside and walked
on slowly. At the last possible instant, each tall figure moved
aside,
but there was always another beyond to take its place and each time the
throng pressed closer upon her.
She could feel their heightening expectation, almost smell it in the
hot musk of their packed bodies the change in the faces was there too;
they watched her with a growing excitement, teeth grinning, breath
shortening and eyes like claws in her flesh.
Suddenly she could go no further; a figure taller and more compelling
than any other blocked her path. She had noticed this, man before. He
was a Gerazmach, a high Galla officer. he wore a sharnma of dark blue
silk wrapped about his throat and falling to his knees.
His hair was fluffed out in a wide halo about the lean, cruel face and
a scar ran down from the outer corner of his eye to the point of his
jaw.
He said something to her in a voice that was thick with lust, and she
did not understand the words but the meaning was clear. The crowd
around her stirred and she heard the sound of their breathing and felt
them press even closer towards her. A man laughed near her, and there
was something so ugly in the sound that it struck her like a physical
force.
She wanted to scream, to turn and try and claw herself free but she
knew that was what they were waiting for. It needed just that
provocation and they would hurl themselves upon her. She gathered what
was left of her reserves and put it all into her voice.
"Get out of my way," she said clearly, and the man before her smiled.
It was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen.
Still smiling, he dropped one hand to his groin, opened the fold of his
shamnia, and made a gesture so obscene that Vicky recoiled, and she
felt the scalding blood burn her throat and her cheeks. There was no
control in her voice now as she blurted, "Oh, you swine you filthy
swine," and the man reached for her, his robe still open. As she
shrank back, she felt the others behind her thrust her forward again.
Then another voice spoke. The words were banal but the tone hissed
like the sound of a scimitar swung at the cut.
"All right, chaps. That's enough of that nonsense." Vicky felt the
pressure of bodies about her ease, and she spun around with a sob
catching in her throat.
Gareth Swales strolled down the passage that opened for him through the
dense press of robed bodies. His whole carriage seemed indolent, and
the white open-necked shirt with an Zingari scarf at the throat was
crisp and immaculate but Vicky had never before seen the expression he
wore. The rims of his nostrils were ice-white and his eyes burned with
a controlled fury.
She would have flung herself at him, sobbing with relief, but his voice
crackled again.
"Steady. We're not out yet," and she caught herself, lifted her chin
and smothered the next sob before it escaped.
"Good girl," he said, without taking his eyes from the face of the tall
Galla in the blue robe, and he kept on walking steadily towards him,
taking Vicky's arm as he drew level with her. She felt the strength of
his fingers through the thin stuff of her blouse, and it seemed to flow
into her, charging her depleted reserves, and the jelly weakness in her
legs firmed.
The Galla leader stood his ground as Gareth stepped up to him, and for
a space of time that was less than five seconds but seemed to Vicky
like a round of eternity, the two men locked gazes and wills. Blazing
blue eyes levelled with smouldering black then suddenly the Galla
broke, he glanced aside and shrugged, chuckled weakly, and turned away
to talk loudly with the man who stood beside him.
Unhurriedly, Gareth stepped through the gap the man had left and they
were at the car.
"Are you well enough to drive?" Gareth asked quietly, as he swung her
up on the sponson and she nodded.
"The engine's switched off," she blurted; they could not risk cranking
to start.
"She's on the slope," said Gareth, turning to face the crowding
Gallas and hold them off with his level gaze. "Roll her to a start."
As Vicky scrambled into the driver's hatch, Gareth placed a cheroot
between his lips, and struck a match with his thumb nail. The little
act distracted the hostile pack for an Instant, and they watched his
hands as he lit the cheroot and blew a long blue feather of smoke
towards them.
Behind him, the car began to roll, and Gareth swung himself aboard
easily with the cheroot clamped between his teeth and gave the horsemen
a mocking salute as the car gathered speed down the slope. Neither of
them spoke as they dropped swiftly downwards, two miles in silence.
Then, without taking her eyes off the track ahead, Vicky told
Gareth as he stood above and behind her in the turret, "You weren't
even afraid-2
"In a blue funk, old girl absolute blue funk."
"And I once called you a coward."
"Quite right too."
"How did you get there so fast?"
"I was up there looking for defensive positions against the jolly old
Eyeties. Saw your faithful bodyguard taking off and came to have a
look." The track ahead of Vicky dissolved in a mist of tears,
/> and she had to hit the brakes hard. Afterwards, she was not sure quite
how it happened but she found herself in Gareth's arms, pressing
herself to him with all of her strength and shaking violently with her
sobs.
"Oh God, Gareth, I don't know what I'll ever do to repay you for
this."
"I'm sure we will think of something," he murmured, holding her with a
practised embrace that was lulling and so wonderfully secure.
She felt then that she did not want ever to leave his arms and she
lifted her lips to his and with a mild amazement saw on his face, in
the usually mocking blue eyes, such an expression of tenderness as she
had never expected was possible.
His lips were another surprise, they were very warm and soft and tasted
of man and the bitter aromatic smoke of his cheroots; she had never
realized that he was so tall and his body so hard, or his hands so
strong. The last sob wracked her body, and then she sighed
voluptuously and shuddered softly with the strength of physical
awakening more intense than she had ever experienced in her entire
life.
For a moment, the journalist in her attempted to analyse the source of
this sudden passion, and she knew it as the product of the previous
night's sleepless horrors, of fatigue and of the day's terrors. Then
she no longer queried it, but let it spread through her whole body. The
encampment of the Ras's army at the foot of the Sardi
Gorge sprawled for four miles amongst the acacia forests, a vast
agglomeration of living things which murmured softly with life, like a
hive of honeybees at midday, and which had already cloaked itself in
blue woodsmoke and the myriad odours of human and animal ingestion and
excretion.
The camp site that Gareth and Jake had chosen was set apart from the
main body, in a denser, shadier patch of acacia, below a tall rocky
waterfall where the Sardi River fell the last steep pitch to the plain
and formed a dark restless pool in which Vicky could bathe away the
filth from her body and from her mind.
It was almost dark when she climbed back to the camp with her wet hair
bound in a towel, carrying her wash bag.
Gareth was seated upon a log beside the smouldering camp fire. He was
watching the steaks of a freshly butchered ox grilling on the coals,
and he made room for her on the log beside him and offer'd her
Scotch whisky and lukewarm water in a tin mug, which she accepted
gratefully and which tasted as good as anything she had ever drunk.
In silence they sat together, almost but not quite touching, and
watched the swift coming of the African night.
They were alone, and the faint voices from the main encampment below.
them seemed only to emphasize this aloneness.
Jake, the old Ras and Gregorius had taken out two of the armoured cars
and a camel patrol on a reconnaissance back towards the Wells of
Chaldi. In the same exercise, Jake was to train the new gunners in the
use of the Vickers machine guns. Gareth, as the military expert, had
been left to survey the gorge and to judge the ground for defence in
the event of a forced retreat up the gorge under Italian pressure.
He had been doing this when he had come across Vicky and the Galla
horsemen.
Sitting now beside the fire, under a sky that was suddenly very black
and half obscured by the mountains that towered over them, Vicky was
aware of a feeling of complete acceptance, an Arabic kismet of the
spirit, as though fate had arranged this moment and the effort of
avoiding it was too great.
They were alone, and that was how it was meant to be.
The deep physical arousal and feeling of utter commitment that she had
experienced earlier, on their escape from the threatening horde of
Gallas, still lingered still filled her body and her conscious mind
with an ethereal glow.
She ate a little of the grilled meat, hardly tasting it, not looking at
the man beside her, but staring dreamily at the brilliant diamond-white
sparkle of the stars above the dark peaks, yet fully and electrically
aware of him of the nearness of him, so close that although they were
still not touching she could feel the warmth emanating from his body
upon her arm like the caress of a desert wind.
She could almost feel his eyes as he watched her quietly. His gaze was
so compelling that at last she could no longer pretend not to be aware
of it, and she turned her head and met his eyes steadily.
The ruddy glow of the coals enhanced the clean regular lanes of his
face, and gilded the red gold of his hair. In that moment, she
believed he was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen and it
required an effort to tear her eyes away from him.
As she stood up and walked away she felt her heart hammering within her
chest, like a wild -animal trying to escape its cage, and she heard the
roar of blood in her own ears.
The interior of her tent was lit softly by the firelight through the
canvas, and she did not light the lamp, but undressed slowly in the
semi-darkness and dropped her clothing carelessly across the folding
chair beside the entrance. Then she lay down upon the narrow cot, and
the woollen blanket was rough against the naked skin of her buttocks
and back. Each breath was an effort now, and she lay rigidly with her
hands clenched at her sides almost afraid, almost exultant, her head
propped on the single pillow and staring down at her body, aware of it
as never before. Watching, with a sense of wonder, how each breath
changed the shape of her heavily rounded breasts and how the nipples
firmed slowly and thrust out, darkening perceptibly until they were so
tight and hard that they pained her exquisitely.
She heard the crunch of his footsteps approach the tent, and her
breathing jammed, and she thought with a small shock that she might
suffocate and die. Then the flap of the tent swung open, and he
stooped through and stood tall, letting the flap fall closed behind
him.
Instinctively she covered herself, one arm folding across her chest and
the other hand spreading protective fingers over the mound of fine
fluff at the base of her belly.
He stood silently, outlined against the fire glow on the canvas,
and she began to breathe again, quick and shallow.
It seemed that he stood there for ever, silent and watchful, and she
felt the skin of her arms and thighs prickle with goose-flesh at the
slow steady scrutiny. Then he unbuttoned his shirt and let it slide to
the earth. The fire glow flickered on his finely muscled arms, they
rippled with a red gold sheen, like wet marble, as he moved.
He came at last to her bed and stood over her, and she wondered that
the body of a man could be so slim and supple, with such lovely line
and balance then she remembered how she had once stood before the
statue of Michelangelo's David with just the same depth of awe.
She lifted the hands that covered her own body, reached up like a
supplicant, and drew him down upon herself.
She w
oke once during the night, and the fire had died away outside the
tent, but a bright white moon had sailed up over the mountains and it
glowed now with a silvery light through the canvas above them,
striking down directly upon them.
The strange white light divested Gareth's sleeping face of all colour.
It was pale now, like that of a statue or of a corpse and
Vicky experienced a sudden revulsion of feeling. There was a small
dull weight at the back of her mind. When she examined it closely, she
found that it was guilt and she experienced a mild anger at a society
that had burdened her with that guilt. That she could not enjoy a man,
that her body could not be used as nature had intended without this
backlash of emotion.
She raised herself on one elbow, careful not to disturb the man beside
her, and she studied his face pondering this new sense of guilt, and
exploring her feelings for him.
Slowly she realized that the two were bound inextricably together.
There was no real depth to her feelings for Gareth Swales, she had been
carried along on a treacherous tide of fatigue and reaction from fear
and horror. The guilt she had experienced was a consequence of this
lack of substance, and she felt suddenly confused and sad.
She lay back beside the long fine length of his body, but now she had
moved slightly, so that they no longer touched.
She knew that after love, all animals are sad, but she thought that
there was more to her feelings than that.
Suddenly, without really knowing why, she thought of Jake Barton and
the depth and cold of her sadness deepened. It was long before she
slept again, but then she slept late and the morning sunlight was
striking through the canvas and outside there was the sound of engines
and many voices.
She sat up hurriedly, still half asleep, clutching the rough blanket to
her breast, confused and owl-eyed, to discover that she was alone upon
the cot and all that remained of the night was the indentation and
warmth of Gareth's body upon the blanket beside her,
and the swollen aching feeling deep within her where he had been.
Then Vicky threw on her clothes hurriedly and, still tying her hair,
went out into the sunlight, she was just in time to witness the arrival
of a sorry procession.
In the lead was Jake's car, Priscilla the Pig. No longer glossy white