Cry Wolf

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