by Wilbur Smith
up into the soft underbelly of the hull. It blew the engine block off
its seating, tore off the big front wheels like wings from a roast
chicken, and stove in the steel floor of the hull with a great
Thor's hammer stroke.
If Gareth Swales's feet had been in contact with the steel floor of the
hull, the shock would have been transmitted directly into the bones of
his feet and legs, and he would have suffered that dreadful but
characteristic wound of the tank man below the knees his legs would
have been transformed into bags of shattered bone.
He was, however, suspended half in and half out of the driver's hatch
with both legs kicking frantically in the air, and the shock of the
blast came up like carbon dioxide in a bottle of freshly opened
champagne. He was the cork and he was shot out of the hatch, still
kicking.
The effect on the Ras was the same. He came out of the turret,
propelled high by the blast and he met Gareth at the top of his
trajectory. The two of them came down to earth simultaneously, with
the Ras seated between Gareth's shoulder blades, and the wonder of it
was that neither of them was impaled upon the war sword which went with
them and finally pegged deep into the earth six inches from Gareth's
ear as he lay face down and feebly tried to dislodge the Ras from his
back.
"I warn you, old chap," he managed to gasp. "One day you are going to
go too far." The sound of oncoming engines, many of them and all
roaring in high revolutions, made Gareth's efforts to dislodge the
Ras more determined. He sat up spitting sand and blood from his
crushed lips, and looked up to see the remaining Italian transports
bearing down on them like the starting grid of the Le Mans Grand
Prix.
"Oh my God!" gasped Gareth, his scattered wits reassembling hastily,
and he crawled frantically into the shattered and still smoking carcass
of the Hump, beginning to shrink down out of sight before he realized
that the Ras was no longer with him.
"Rassey, you stupid old bastard come back, he shouted despairingly. The
Ras, once again armed with his trusty broadsword,
was staggering out on unsteady stork's legs, stunned by the shell burst
but still fighting mad, and there was no doubting his intentions. He
was going to take on the entire motorized column single-handed, and as
he hurried to meet them, shouting a challenge, he loosened up with a
few hissing two-handed cuts with the sword.
Gareth had to duck under the swinging blade, going in low in a flying
rugby tackle, to bring the old warrior down in an untidy heap.
He dragged him, still shouting and struggling furiously, under cover of
the broken steel hull, just as the first Italian truck roared past
them. The pale-faced occupants paid them not the slightest attention.
they were intent on one thing only and that was following their
Colonel.
"Shut up!" growled Gareth, as the Ras tried to provoke them with some
of the foulest oaths in the Amharic language. Finally he had to hold
the Ras down, wrap his sham ma around his head, and sit on it while the
Italian Fiats thundered past, and the rolling clouds of dust spread
over them as though driven by the khamsin.
Once through the dust and confused stampede of trucks, Gareth thought
he glimpsed the hump-backed shape of Priscilla the Pig, and he released
the Ras for a moment to wave and shout, but the car disappeared almost
instantly, hard on the trail of a lumbering Fiat,
and Gareth heard the short crashing burst of the Vickers clearly, even
above the thunder of many engines.
Then suddenly they were all past, streaming away, the engine sounds
fading, the dust settling and then there was another sound,
faint yet but growing with every second.
Although most of the Harari and Galla horsemen had long ago given up
the pursuit in favour of the more enjoyable and profitable occupation
of looting the capsized and damaged Italian trucks, a few hundred of
the more hardy souls still flogged on their foundering mounts.
This thin line of horsemen came sweeping forward, ululating and
casually cutting down the Italian survivors from the destroyed trucks
who fled before them on foot.
"All right, Rassey." Gareth unwound the sham ma from around his head.
"You can come out now. Call your boys up, and tell them to get us out
of here." In the few moments of respite while the main body of
motorized infantry came through the batteries, Major Castelani hurried
from gun to gun, lashing with tongue and cane until he had contained
the infectious panic of his gunners and had them under his hand
again.
Then out of the dust clouds, appearing at short pistol range as
suddenly as a ghost ship, but with the Vickers machine gun in its
turret crackling wickedly and the muzzle blast flickering in an angry
throbbing red glow, was a second Ethiopian armoured car.
It was enough to destroy the semblance of control that Castelani had
forced heavy-handedly upon the gun crews.
As the armoured car swung across their line at point-blank range,
raking the exposed guns with a withering. burst of machine-gun fire,
the loaders dropped their ready shells and almost knocked the layers
from their seats in their anxiety to get behind the armoured shield of
the gun. They all huddled there with their heads well down. The
driver of the armoured car, after that one rapid pass down the front of
the batteries, swung the vehicle abruptly back into the screen of
dust.
Jake had been just as startled by the encounter as were the gunners;
at one moment he had been joyously tearing along after a fat
wallowing
Fiat, and at the next he had emerged from a cloud of dust to be
confronted by the gaping muzzles of the big guns.
"My God, Greg, "Jake shouted up at the boy in the turret.
"We nearly ran right into them."
"Volleyed and thundered do you remember the poem?"
"Poetry, at a time like this?" growled Jake, and he gave Priscilla the
throttle.
"Where are we going?"
"Home, and the sooner the quicker. That's a powerful argument they are
pointing at us."
"Jake-" Gregorius began to protest, when there was a bang and a flash
that glowed briefly even through the shrouds of dust, and close beside
the high turret passed a
100 men. shell. The air slammed against their eardrums and the shriek
of it made both of them flinch violently, the air.
stank of the electric sizzle of its passing, and it burst half a mile
beyond them in a tall tower of flame and dust.
"Do you see what I mean?" asked Jake.
"Yes, Jake oh yes, indeed As he spoke, the dust clouds that had
covered them so securely now subsided and drifted aside, exposing them
unmercifully to the attentions of the Italian guns, but revealed also
was another tempting target. The Ethiopian cavalry were still coming
on, and after a few futile volleys had burst around the tiny elusive
shape of the speeding car, Castelani resigned himself to the
limitations of his gunners and switched targets.
"Shrapnel," he bellowed. "Load with shrapnel fuse for air burst."
He hurried along the battery, repeating the order to each layer,
emphasizing his orders with the cane. "New target. Massed horsemen.
Range two thousand five hundred metres, fire at will." The Ethiopian
ponies were small shaggy beasts, bred for sure-footed ascent of
mountain paths, rather than sustained charges across open plains they
had, moreover, been pastured for weeks now on the dry sour grass of the
desert, and in consequence their strength was by this time almost
expended.
The first shrapnel burst fifty feet above the heads of the leading
riders. It popped open like a gigantic pod of the cotton plant,
blooming with sudden fearsome splendour the milky blue sky. It bloomed
with a crack as though the sky had shattered, and instantly the air was
filled with the humming, hissing knives of flying shrapnel.
A dozen of the ponies went down under the first burst, pitching forward
abruptly over their own heads and flinging their riders free.
Then the sky was filled with the deadly cotton balls, and the
continuous crack of the bursts sent the ponies wheeling and the riders
crouching low on their withers or swinging out of the saddle to hang
low under the bellies of their mounts. Here and there a braver soul
would kick his feet free of the stirrups and pick up a dismounted
comrade on each of the leathers, the gallant little ponies labouring
under their triple burdens. Within seconds, the entire Ethiopian army
its single remaining armoured vehicle and all its cavalry were in a
retreat every bit as headlong as that of the motorized Italian column
which was still on its way back to the Wells of Chaldi. The field was
left entirely to Castelani's artillery and the stranded crew of the
Hump.
From the shelter of the shattered hull, Gareth Swales watched his hopes
of quick rescue fading rapidly in the shape of the dwindling cavalry.
"Don't blame them, not really," he told the Ras, and then he looked
across at the speeding armoured car. Priscilla the Pig was rapidly
overhauling the cavalry.
"He saw us, - I know he did." There had "Him I do," he muttered.
been a moment when Priscilla the Pig had passed within a quarter of a
mile of them, had in fact turned directly towards them for a few
moments. "Do you know something, Rassey old fellow, I do believe we
are being set up for a couple of Patsys." He glanced at the Ras, who
lay beside him like an old hunting dog that has been worked too hard;
his chest laboured like a blacksmith's bellows, and his breathing
whistled shrilly in his throat.
"Better take those choppers out of your mouth, old chap or else you're
going to swallow them. The fighting's over for the day. Take it nice
and easy now. We've got a long walk home tonight." And Gareth
Swales transferred all his attention back to the disappearing car.
"Big-hearted Jake Barton is leaving us here and going home to spoon up
the honey. Who was the chap that David pulled the same trick on? Come
on, Rassey, you are the Old Testament expert wasn't it
Uriah the Hittite?" He shook his head sadly. Gareth was already ready
to believe the worst. "I take it very much amiss, Rassey, I can tell
you.
Probably have done exactly the same myself, mind you but I do take it
amiss gaming from a fine upright citizen like Jake Barton." The Ras
had not listened to a word of it. He was the only man in the two
armies for whom the battle had not ended.
He was just having a short rest, as behave a warrior of his advanced
years. Now, with a single bound, he was on his feet again,
snatching up his sword and heading directly for the centre of the
Italian batteries. Gareth was taken completely off balance, and the
Ras had covered fifty yards of the necessary two thousand to the enemy
positions before Gareth could overtake him.
It was unfortunate that one of the Italian gun-layers had his
binoculars focused on the derelict hull of the Hump at that moment.
The belligerence of the Italian gunners was in inverse proportion to
the number and proximity of the enemy and all of them were giddy with
elation at the total and unexpected victory that had dropped into their
laps.
The first shell dropped close beside the broken hull of the Hump,
as Gareth caught up with the Ras. Gareth stooped and picked up a
rounded stone, about the size of a cricket ball.
"Frightfully sorry, old chap," he panted, as he cupped the stone in his
right hand. "But we really can't go on like this." He made allowance
for the brittle old bone of the Ras's skull, and with the stone he
tapped him carefully, almost tenderly, above the ear, on the polished
black bald curve of the Ras's pate.
As the Ras dropped, Gareth caught him, one arm under his knees and the
other around the shoulders, as though he was a sleeping child. The
shells were falling heavily about him as Gareth ran back for cover,
carrying the Ras's unconscious form across his chest.
Jake Barton heard the crumping explosion of the shells, and shouted up
at Gregorius, "What are they shooting at now?" Gregorius climbed
higher out of the turret and peered back. The crushed hull of the Hump
would have been unnoticed at that range, just another speck like a
clump of camel-thorn or an amorphous pile of black rock.
Indeed, both men had looked at it fifty times in the last few minutes
without recognizing it, but the shell bursts, which began to leap about
it in fleeting graceful ostrich feathers of dust and smoke, drew
Gregorius's eye immediately.
"My grandfather!" he cried . anxiously. "They have been hit, Jake."
Jake swung the car and halted it, clambering out of the hatch, blowing
dust from the lens of his binoculars and then focusing them. The
picture of the destroyed car leaped into close-up and he recognized
instantly the two distant figures, one in tailored tweeds, the other in
flowing robes and swirling skirts; the two of them were locked together
breast to breast and for an unbelieving moment
Jake thought they were doing a Strauss waltz in the midst of an
artillery barrage. Then he saw Gareth lift the Ras off the ground and
stagger with him to the shelter of the overturned car.
"We must rescue them, Jake," Gregorius exclaimed passionately.
"They will be killed out there, if we do not." Perhaps it was the
telepathic transfer of Gareth Swales's suspicions, but Jake experienced
the sudden guilty prick of temptation. At that moment he knew he
loved
Vicky Camberwell, and there was an easy way to clear the field.
"Jake!" Gregorius called again, and suddenly Jake felt himself so
sickened by his own treacherous thoughts that there was a hollow
nauseous feeling in the centre of his gut, and he felt the swift flow
of saliva from under his tongue.
"Let's go," he said, and dropped down into the driver's hatch. He
swung Priscilla the Pig in a tight skidding turn and ran straight for
the forest of shell-bursts.
They drew no fire, the Italians were concentrating on the stationary
target and they seemed to be making better practice as they figured the
range. It was a matter of seconds before the Hump took a direct hit,
and Jake pressed the throttle flat to the floorboards, but Priscilla
the Pig chose this moment to show her true nature. He felt her baulk,
and the note of her engine changed momentarily, missing and stuttering,
power falling off then suddenly she picked up again and roared onwards
at full power.
"Good little darling. "Jake peered ahead through the visor, and swung
slightly out to the left, to come in under cover of the Italians"
own shell-bursts and the capsized hull of the Hump.
A shell burst directly ahead, and Jake weaved the big car expertly
around the gaping smoking crater, pulled in sharply and spun around to
a sliding halt, facing back the way he had come, ready for a quick
pull-away. He was hard up under cover of the destroyed hull, partially
screened from the Italians, and ten paces from where Gareth Swales was
sitting holding the Ras's frail body on his lap.
"Gary!" yelled Jake, sticking his head out of the hatch, and
Gareth looked up at him with a startled unbelieving expression. He had
been so deafened by shell-bursts that he had not realized that Jake had
come back for him. Jake had to shout again.
"Come on, damn you to hell," and this time Gareth moved with alacrity.
He picked up the Ras like a bundle of dirty laundry and ran with him to
the car. A shell burst so close that it almost knocked him off his
feet, and stones and clouds of earth splattered against the armoured
steel.
However, Gareth kept his feet and handed up the Ras to the willing
hands and loving care of his grandson.
"Is he all right?" Greg demanded anxiously.
"Hit by a stone, he'll be all right," Gareth grunted, and leaned for an
instant against the side of the car, his breathing sobbing painfully in
his throat, his hair and mustache thick with white dust,
and the sweat cutting deep wet runners down his filth-caked cheeks.
He looked up at Jake. "I thought you weren't coming back," he
croaked.
"It crossed my mind." Jake reached down and took his hand. He boosted
him up the side of the car, and Gareth held his hand for a second
longer than was necessary, squeezing slightly.