The corpse of the ancient Harari warrior lay directly in the track of the command tank, and the rumbling steel treads pressed it into the rocky ground as it passed over, squashing it like the carcass of a rabbit on a highway, as it bore Colonel Count Aldo Belli triumphantly up the gorge to Sardi and the Dessie road.
At the wall of rock built right across the throat of the gorge, the armoured column ground to a halt, blocked at the very lip of the valley, and when the Italian infantry, who had moved under cover of the black steel hulls, swarmed out to tear the wall down, they met another wave of Ethiopian defenders who rose from where they had been lying behind the wall, and immediately attackers and defenders had become so entwined in a single struggling mass that the artillery and machine guns could not fire for fear of gunning down their own.
Three times during the morning the infantry had been thrown back from the wall, and the heavy artillery barrage that they had directed against it made no impression on the granite boulders. When the tanks came clanking and squealing like great black beetles hunting for a breach, there was none, and the trace had clawed sparks from the rock but been unable to lift the great weight of steel at the acute angle necessary to climb the wall.
Now there was a lull that had lasted almost half an hour, and Gareth and Jake sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one of the massive granite blocks. Both of them were staring upwards at the sky, and it was Jake who broke the silence.
"There is the blue." They saw it through the last eddying banks of cloud that still clung like the white arms of a lover to the shoulder of the mountain, but were slowly smeared away by the fresh dry breeze off the desert.
A ray of brilliant sunlight burst into the valley, and threw a rainbow of vivid colour in a mighty arc from mountain to mountain.
"That's beautiful," murmured Gareth Softly, staring upwards.
Jake drew the watch from his pocket, and glanced at the dial.
"Seven minutes past eleven." He read the hands. "Just about right now they'll radio them that the clouds are open.
They'll be sitting in the cockpits, eager as fighting cocks." He patted the watch back into his pocket. "In just thirty-five minutes they'll be here." Gareth straightened up and pushed the lank blond hair off his forehead.
"I know one gentleman who won't be here when they come.
"Make that two, "Jake agreed.
"That's it, old son. We've done our bit. Old Lij Mikhael can't grouse about a couple of minutes. It will be as close to noon as pleasure is to sin."
"What about these poor devils?" Jake indicated the few hundreds of Harari who crouched with them behind the wall of rock all that remained of Ras Golam's army.
"As soon as we hear the bombers coming, they can beat it. Off into the mountains like a pack of long dogs-" after a bitch, "Jake finished for him, and grinned.
"Precisely."
"Someone will have to explain it to them."
"I'll go and fetch young Sara to tell them," and he crawled away, using the wall as cover from the Italian snipers who had taken up position in the cliffs above them.
Priscilla the Pig was parked five hundred yards back in a grassy wrinkle of ground, under a screen of cedar trees, beside the road.
Gareth saw immediately that Vicky had recovered from the state of collapse in which they had found her, although she was haggard and pale, and the torn rags of her clothing were filthy, stained with dried blood from the long flesh wound between her breasts. She was helping Sara with the boy who lay on the floorboards of the cabin, and she looked up with an expression which told of regained strength and determination.
"How is he doing? "Gareth asked, leaning forward through the open rear doors. The boy had been hit twice and been carried back from the killing-ground of the gorge by two of his loyal tribes men.
"He will be all right, I think," said Vicky, and Gregorius opened his eyes and whispered, "Yes, I'll be all right."
"Well, that's more than you deserve," grunted Gareth. "I left you in charge not leading the charge."
"Major Swales." Sara looked up fiercely, protective as a mother. "It was the bravest-" "Spare me from brave and honest men," Gareth drawled.
"Cause of all the trouble in the world." And before Sara could flash at him again he went on, "Come along with me, my dear. Need you to do a bit of translating." Reluctantly she left Gregorius and climbed down out of the car. Vicky followed her, and stood close to Gareth beside the side of the hull.
"Are you all right? "she asked.
"Never better," he assured her, but now she noticed for the first time the flush of unnatural colour in his cheeks and the feverish glitter in his eyes.
Quickly she reached out and before he could prevent it she took the hand of his injured arm. It was swollen like a balloon, and it had turned a sickly greenish purple. She leaned forward to sniff the filthy stained rags that covered the arm, and she felt her gorge rise at the sweet stench of putrefaction.
Alarmed, she reached up and touched his cheek.
"Gareth, you are hot as a furnace."
"Passion, old girl. The touch of your lily-white, "Let me look at your arm, "she demanded.
"Better not." He smiled at her, but she caught the iron in his voice.
"Let sleeping dogs lie, what? Nothing we can do about it until we get back to civilization."
"Gareth-" "Then my dear, I will buy you a large bottle of Charlie, and send for the preacher man."
"Gareth, be serious."
"I am serious." Gareth touched her cheek with the fingers of his good hand. "That was a proposal of marriage, "he said, and she could feel the fiery heat of the fever in his finger, tips.
"Oh Gareth! Gareth!"
"By which I take it you mean thanks, but no thanks." She nodded silently, unable to speak.
"Jake?"he asked, and she nodded again.
"Oh well, you could have done a lot better. Me, for instance," and he grinned, but the pain was there with the fever in his eyes, deep and poignant. "On the other hand, you could have done a lot worse." He turned away abruptly to Sara, taking her arm. "Come along, my dear."
Then over his shoulder, "We'll be back as soon as the bombers come.
Get ready to run."
"Where to? "she called after them.
"I don't know," he grinned. "But we'll try to think of a pleasant place." Jake heard them first, so far off that it was only the hive-sound of bees on a drowsy summer's day, and almost immediately it was gone again, blanketed by the mountains.
"Here they come," he said, and almost immediately, as if in confirmation, a shell burst under the lee of the rock wall, fired from the Italian battery a mile down the gorge. The yellow smoke from the marker poured a thick column into the still sunlit air.
"Move!" shouted Gareth, and placed the silver command whistle between his lips and blew a series of sharp blasts.
But by the time they had hurried along the wall, making certain that all the Harari had understood and were running back down the valley into the cedar forests, the drone of approaching engines was growing louder.
"Let's go!" called Jake urgently, and caught Gareth's good arm.
They turned and ran, pelting back across the open ground to the lip of the valley, and Jake looked back over his shoulder as they reached it.
The first gigantic bomber came out of the mouth of the gorge, and the spread of its black wings seemed to darken the sky. Two bombs fell from under it; one burst short but the second struck the wall, and the blast knocked them both off their feet, slamming them savagely against the earth.
When Jake lifted his head again, he saw through the fumes and smoke the gaping breach it had blown in the rock wall.
"Well, now the party is definitely over," he said, and hauled Gareth to his feet.