by Wilbur Smith
watch the execution.
Vicky's terror came rushing back like a black icy flood, and she tried
desperately to twist herself free of the clutching hands, but they
carried her forward and then lifted her suddenly.
Three of the heavy Galla lances had been set into the soft earth of the
yard in the form of a tripod, with the steel lance tips bound firmly at
the apex of the pyramid. With a force that she could not resist, her
arms and legs were spread, and again she felt the lashing of rawhide at
her wrists and ankles.
Her captors fell back in a circle, and she found herself suspended from
the tripod of lances like a starfish, and the weight of her body cut
the leather straps viciously into her flesh.
She looked up. Directly above her on the concrete ramp sat Ras
Kullah. He said something to her in a high piping voice, but she did
not understand the words and she could only stare in fascinated terror
at his thick, soft lips. The tip of his tongue came out and ran slowly
across his lips, like a fat golden cat.
He giggled suddenly and motioned to the two women who flanked him on
the cushions. They came down into the yard, with their silver
jewellery tinkling and the multicoloured silk of their robes glowing in
the lamplight like the plumage of two beautiful birds of paradise.
As though they had rehearsed their movements, one went to each side of
Vicky as she hung on the tripod of lances. Their faces were serene,
remote and lovely as two exotic blooms on the long graceful stems of
their necks.
It was only when they reached up to touch her that Vicky saw the little
silver knives in their hands, and she wriggled helplessly,
her head twisting to watch the blades.
With expert economical movements the two women slit the fabric of
Vicky's clothing, from the yoke of her blouse at the throat, down in a
single stroke to the hem of her skirt, and the dress fell away like an
autumn leaf, and dropped into the mud below her.
Ras Kullah clapped his hands with glee, and the dense pack of dark
bodies swayed and growled, pressing a little closer.
With the same unhurried knife strokes, the sheer silk of Vicky's
underwear was cut away and discarded, and she hung there naked and
vulnerable, unable to cover her pale smooth body, with the long finely
sculptured limbs spread and pinioned.
She dropped her head forward so that the golden hair fell forward and
covered her face.
One of the Galla women moved around until she faced Vicky directly. She
reached out with the little silver knife and touched the point to the
white skin just below the base of her throat where a pulse beat visibly
like a tiny trapped animal, and slowly, achingly slowly,
she drew the blade downwards.
Vicky's whole body convulsed, every limb stiffened and her back arched
rigidly so that the shape of the muscle stood out clearly beneath the
smooth unblemished skin.
Her head flew back, her eyes wide and staring, her mouth gaping open
and she screamed.
The woman drew the knife on downwards, between the tense straining
breasts. The white skin opened to the shallow carefully controlled
razor point, and a vivid scarlet line marked the slow track of the
blade as it moved on inexorably downwards.
The voice of the crowd rose, a gathering roar like the sound of a storm
wind coming from afar, and Ras Kullah leaned forward on his cushions.
His eyes shone and the wet pink lips were parted.
Two things happened simultaneously. From the darkness beyond the
station buildings, Priscilla the Pig burst out into the torch-lit
area.
Up until that moment when Jake Barton thrust down fully on the
throttle, the gentle hum of the engine had been drowned by the animal
roar of the crowd.
The heavy steel hull, driven by the full thrust of the old Bentley
engine, ploughed into the crowd and went through it like a combine
harvester through a field of standing wheat. Without any slackening of
speed, it tore a pathway through the dense pack, directly towards the
clearing where Vicky hung on the tripod of lances.
At the same moment, Gareth Swales stepped out of the black oblong of
the warehouse door, directly behind where Ras Kullah sat.
He had the Italian rifle over the crook of his injured arm, and he
fired without lifting the butt to his shoulder.
The bullet smashed into the elbow of the Galla woman's knife arm,
and the arm snapped like a twig, the knife flew from the nerveless
fingers and the woman shrieked and collapsed into the mud at Vicky's
feet.
The second woman swirled, her right hand drew back like the head of a
striking adder, and she aimed the knife blade at Vicky's soft white
stomach; as she began the stroke that would plunge it hilt-deep,
Gareth moved the rifle muzzle fractionally and fired again.
The heavy bullet caught the woman in the exact centre of her golden
forehead. The black hole -appeared there like a third empty eye
socket, and her head snapped backwards as though from a heavy blow.
As she went down, Gareth worked the bolt of the rifle and dropped the
muzzle, again only fractionally, but as Ras Kullah twisted around
desperately on his cushions, his mouth wide open and a gurgling cry
keening from the thick wet lips, the muzzle of the rifle was aimed
directly into the pink pit of his throat and Gareth fired the third
shot. It shattered the front teeth in Ras Kullah's upper jaw, before
plunging on into his throat and then exiting through the back of the
neck. The Ras went over backwards, and flapped and jumped like a
maimed frog.
Garet stepped over him, and jumped down lightly into the yard. A
Galla rushed at him with a broadsword held high above his head. Gareth
fired again without lifting the rifle, stepped over the body and
reached Vicky's side just as Jake Barton swung the car to a skidding
halt next to them and tumbled out of the driver's hatch with a Harari
dagger in his hand.
In the turret above them, Sara fired the Vickers in a long continuous
blast, swinging it back and forth in its limited traverse and the Galla
crowd scattered panic-stricken into the night.
Jake slashed the thongs that held Vicky suspended and she fell forward
into his arms.
Gareth stooped and gathered Vicky's torn clothing out of the mud and
bundled it under his injured armpit.
"Shall we move on now, old son?" he asked Jake genially.
"I think the fun is over," and between them they lifted Vicky up the
side of the hull.
The drums brought Count Aldo Belli out of a troubled dream-plagued
sleep and he sat bolt upright from his hard couch on the floorboards of
the hull, with his eyes wide and staring, and -fumbled frantically for
his pistol.
"Gino!" he shouted. "Gino!" and there was no reply. Only that
terrible rhythm in the night, pounding against his head so that he
thought it might drive him mad. He tried to close his ears, pressing
the palms of his hands to them, b
ut the sound came through, like a
gigantic pulse, the heartbeat of this cruel and savage land.
He could bear it no longer, and he crawled up inside the hull until he
reached the rear hatch of the tank, and thrust his head out.
"Gino!" He was answered instantly. The little sergeant's head popped
up from where he had been cowering in his blankets on the rocky ground
between the steel tracks. The Count could hear his teeth clattering in
his skull like typewriter keys.
"Send the driver to fetch Major Castelani, immediately."
"Immediately." Gino's head disappeared, and a few moments later
appeared again so abruptly that the Count let out a startled cry and
pointed the loaded pistol between his eyes.
"Excellency,"squawked Gino.
"Idiot," snarled the Count, his voice husky with terror. "I could have
killed you, don't you realize I have the reactions of a leopard?"
"Excellency, may I enter the machine?".
Aldo Belli thought about the request for a moment, and then enjoyed a
perverse pleasure in refusing.
"Make me a cup of coffee," he ordered, but when it came he found that
the incessant cacophony of drums that filled his head had worked on his
nerves to the point where he could not hold the mug steady, and the rim
rattled against his teeth.
"Goat's urine!" snapped the Count, hoping that Gino had not noticed
the unsteady hand. "You are trying to poison me," he accused and
tossed the steaming liquid over the side, and at that moment the stocky
figure of the Major loomed out of the darkness of the gorge.
"The men are standing to, Colonel he growled. "In another fifteen
minutes it will be light enough-"
"Good. Good." The Count cut him short. "I have decided that I should
return immediately to headquarters. General Badoglio will expect
me-"
"Excellent Colonel,"
the Major interrupted in his turn. "I have received intelligence that
large bands of the enemy have infiltrated our lines, and are operating
in the rear areas.
There is a good chance you might be able to bring them to account."
Castelani, by this time, knew his man intimately.
"Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a
desperate business."
"On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, "I
wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time
when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I
warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused."
"Indeed, Colonel."
"I shall move up immediately," announced Aldo Belli, and glanced
anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to
place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column,
protected from both front and rear.
The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he
felt he must scream aloud.
It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope
of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock
walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.
Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He
could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope
above his position where, moments before, there had been only black
shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the
Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.
Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink
light against the black brooding mass of rock. He dropped his gaze and
looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with
dramatic African suddenness.
Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition
from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the
African dawn in the mountains.
The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like
an owl, up the gorge.
There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds
flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it
was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon
hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped
up.
"Mary, Mother of God," he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.
It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark
fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing
clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that
the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.
"Pray for us sinners," breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly,
and at that instant he heard Castelani's voice, like the bellow of a
wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.
Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering
roar that drowned out all other sound.
The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave
upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about
the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.
The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly
the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the massed charge of
Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead,
as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front
of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber
over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a
wall of bodies.
The Count's terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle.
The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like
ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat,
and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in
deep windrows.
Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the
barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords,
and were through.
Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the
Italian trenches, shot to bloody pieces by close range volleys of rifle
fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures
leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and
dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.
They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.
He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball,
and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried
only a sword, as long as the spread of a man's arms and as broad as the
span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as
he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.
The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles
which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long
thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword
above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up
the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall
leader
came on at a dead run.
The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by
the man's persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.
In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing
burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly
and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust
from the warrior's robes, and leaving bloody splotches across his chest
yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of
trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed
as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His
charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very
close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see
the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity
of the man's rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with
dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the
air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.
The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the
man's body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh
fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards,
staggering and dragging the sword beside him.
The last burst of fire struck him, and the sword dropped from his hand;
he sank to his knees, but kept crawling now he had seen the Count and
his eyes fastened on the white man's face. He tried to shout
something, but the sound was drowned in a bright flooding gout of blood
that filled his open mouth. The crawling, mutilated figure reached the
hull of the stationary tank, and the Italian almost as though in awe of
the man's tenacity. guns fell silent
Laboriously, the dying warrior dragged his broken body up towards the
Count, watching him with a terrible dying anger, and the Count fumbled
nervously with the ivory butt of the Beretta, slipping a fresh clip of
cartridges into the recessed butt.
"Stop him, you fools," he cried. "Kill him! Don't let him get in."
But the guns were silent.
With shaking hands, the Count slapped the magazine home and lifted the
pistol. At a range of six feet he sighted briefly into the crawling
Ethiopian.
He emptied the magazine of the Beretta in frantic haste, the shots
crashing out in rapid succession in the sudden silence that hung over