"But you-" Sara returned to the immediate problem.
"Which of them will you try first?"
"You pick for me," Vicky invited.
"It is difficult," Sara admitted. "One is very strong and has much warmth in his heart, the other is very beautiful and will have much skill." She shook her head and sighed. "It is very difficult.
No, I cannot choose for you. I can only wish you much joy." The conversation had disturbed Vicky more than she realized, and although-she was exhausted by the long hard driven day, she could not sleep, but lay restlessly under a single blanket on the hard sun-warmed earth, considering the wicked and barely thinkable thoughts that the girl had sown in her mind. So it was that she was still awake when Sara rose from beside her and, silently as a wraith, crossed the laager to where Gregorius lay. The girl had discarded the robe and wore only the skintight velvet breeches, encrusted with silver embroidery. Her body was slim and Polished as ebony in the light of the stars and the new moon. She had small high breasts and a narrow moulded waist. She stooped over Gregorius and instantly he rose, and hand in hand, carrying their blankets, the pair slipped out of the laager, leaving Vicky more disturbed than ever. She is of the desert. Once she lay and listened to the night sound thought she heard the soft cry of a human voice in the darkness, but it may have been only the plaintive yelp of a Jackal. The two young Ethiopians had not returned by the time Vicky at last fell asleep.
The radio message that Count Aldo Belli received from General De Bono on the seventh day after leaving Asmara caused him much pain and outrage.
"The man addresses me as an inferior," he protested to his officers. He shook the yellow sheet from the message pad angrily before reading in a choked voice, "I hereby directly order you"." He shook his head in mock disbelief "No "request", no "if you please", you notice." He crumpled the message sheet and hurled it against the canvas wall of the headquarters tent and began pacing in a magisterial manner back and forth, with one hand on the butt of his pistol and the other on the handle of his dagger.
"It seems he does not understand my messages. It seems that I must explain my position in person He thought about this with burgeoning enthusiasm. The discomfort of the drive back to Asmara would be greatly reduced by the superb upholstery and suspension designed by Messrs Rolls and Royce and would be more than adequietely offset by the quasi-civilized amenities of the town. A marble bath, clean laundry, cool rooms with high ceilings and electric fans, the latest newspapers from Rome, the company of the dear and kind young hostesses at the casino all this was suddenly immensely attractive.
Furthermore, it would be an opportunity to supervise the curing and packaging of the hunting trophies he had so far accumulated. He was anxious that the lion skins were correctly handled and the numerous bullet holes were properly patched. The further prospect of reminding the General of his background, upbringing and political expendability also had much appeal.
"Gino," he bellowed abruptly, and the Sergeant dashed into the tent, automatically focusing his camera.
"Not now! Not now!" The Count waved the camera aside testily.
"We are going back to Asmara for conference with the General. Inform my driver accordingly." Twenty-four hours later, the Count returned from Asmara in a mood of bile and thunder. The interview with General De Bono had been one of the low points in the Count's entire life. He had not believed that the General was serious in his threat to remove him from his command and pack him off ignobly back to Rome until the General had actually begun dictating the order to his smirking aide de-camp, Captain Crespi.
The threat still hung over the Count's handsome curly head. He had just twelve hours to reach and secure the Wells of Chaldi or a second-class cabin on the troopship GaribaLdi, sailing five days later from Massawa for Napoli, had been reserved for him by the General.
Count Aldo Belli had sent a long and eloquent cable to Benito Mussolini, describing the General's atrocious behaviour, and had returned in high pique to his battalion completely unaware that the General had anticipated his cable, intercepted it and quietly suppressed it.
Major Castelani did not take the order to advance seriously, expecting at any moment the counter-order to be given, so it was with a sense of disbelief and rising jubilation that he found himself actually aboard the leading truck, grinding the last dusty miles through rolling landscape towards the setting sun and the Wells of Chaldi.
The heavy rainfall precipitated by the bulk of the Ethiopian massif was shed from the high ground by millions of cascades and runners, pouring down into the valleys and the lowlands. The greater bulk of this surface water found its devious way at last into the great drainage system of the Sud marshes and from there into the Nile River, flowing northwards into Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea.
A smaller portion of the water found its way into blind rivers like the Awash, or simply streamed down and sank Without trace in the soft sandy soils of the savannah and desert.
One set of exceptional geological circumstances that altered this general rule was the impervious sheet of schist that stretched out from the foot of the mountains and ran in a shallow saucer below the red earth of the plain. Runoff water from the highlands was contained and channelled by this layer, and formed a long narrow underground reservoir stretching out like a finger from the base of the Sardi Gorge, sixty miles into the dry hot savannah.
Closer to the mountains, the water ran deep, hundreds of feet below the earth's surface, but farther out, the slope of the land combined with the raised lip of the schist layer forced the water up to within forty-five feet of the surface.
Thousands of years ago the area had been the grazing grounds of large concentrations of wild elephant. These indefatigable borers for water had detected the presence of this subterranean lake. With tusk and hoof they had dug down and reached the surface of the water.
Hunters had long since exterminated the elephant herds, but their wells had been kept open by other animals, wild ass, oryx, camel, and, of course, by man who had annihilated the elephant.
Now the wells, a dozen or more in an area of two or three square miles, were deep excavations into the bloodred earth. The sides of the wells were tiered by narrow worn paths that wound down so steeply that sunlight seldom penetrated to the level of the water.
The water itself was highly mineralized, so that it had a milky green appearance and a rank metallic taste, but nevertheless it had supported vast quantities of life over the centuries. And the vegetation in the area, with its developed root systems, drew sustenance from the deep water and grew more densely and greenly than anywhere else on the dry bleak savannah.
Beyond the wells, in the direction of the mountains, was an area of confused broken ground, steep but shallow wadis and square hillocks so low as to be virtually only mounds of dense red laterite. Over the ages, the shepherds and hunters who frequented the wells had burrowed into the sides of ravine and hillock, so that they were now honeycombed with caves and tunnels.
It was as though nature had declared a peace upon the wells. Here man and animal came together in wary truce that was seldom violated.
Amongst the grey-green thorn trees and dense scrub goat and camel grazed in company with gazelle and gerenuk, oryx and greater kudu.
n In the hush of noo', the column of four armoured cars came in from the east, and the hum of their engines carried at distance to the multitude that awaited their arrival.
Jake led, as usual, followed by Vicky, then came Gregoritis with Sara riding in the turret of his car and the white stallion trailing them on a long lead rein. In the rear rode Gareth. Suddenly Sara shrieked at such a high pitch that her voice carried over the engine noise and she pointed ahead to the low valley filled with green scrub and taller denser trees. Jake halted the column and climbed up into the turret.