"We are not formally at war. Your presence is essential to reinforce our position." The Colonel was pressed to the point where he had no choice but to fall back a pace, and the watching Officers sighed sadly.
It was an act of capitulation. The contest of wills was over and although the Count continued to protest weakly, the Major worked him away from the Rolls the way a good sheep dog handles its flock.
"It will be dawn in an hour," said Castelani, "and as soon as it is light, we shall be in a position to evaluate the situation." At that moment the drum fell silent. Up the valley in the caves, the Ras had at last finished his dance of defiance, and to the Count the silence was cheering. He threw one last wistful look at the Rolls, and then let his gaze wander to the fifty heavily armed men of his bodyguard and took a little more heart.
He squared his shoulders and drew himself erect, throwing back his head.
"Major," he snapped. "The battalion will stand firm." He turned to his watching officers, all of whom tried to fade into insignificance and avoid his eyes. "Major Vita, take command of this detachment and move forward to clear the ground. The rest of you fall in around me."
The Colonel gave the Major and his fifty stalwarts a respectable lead, so that they might draw any hostile fire, and then, surrounded by a protective screen of his reluctant juniors and prodded forward by Luigi Castelani, he moved cautiously along the dusty path that wound down the slope of the valley to where' the battalion's forward elements had been so expertly entrenched.
Phe most junior of Ras Golam's multitudinous grooms was fifteen years of age. The previous day one of the Ras's favourite mares in his care had snapped her halter rope while he was taking her down to the water.
She had galloped out into the desert, and the boy had followed her for the whole of that day and half of the night, until the capricious creature had allowed him to come up with her and grasp the trailing end of the rope.
Exhausted by the long chase and chilled by the cold night wind, the boy had huddled down on her neck and allowed the mare to pick her own way back to the water holes. He was half asleep, clinging by instinct alone to the mare's mane, when a short while before dawn she wandered into the perimeter of the Italian base.
A nervous sentry had challenged loudly, and the startled animal had plunged into a full run through the outskirts of the camp. Now, fully awake, the boy had clung to the galloping horse, and seen the lines of parked trucks and military tents looming out of the darkness.
He had seen the stacked rifles, and recognize the shape of the helmet of another sentry who had challenged again as they passed through the outer lines.
Peering back under his own arm he had seen the flash of the rifle shot and heard the crack of the bullet pass his bowed head, and he urged the horse on with heels and knees.
By the time the groom reached the deep wadi, the Ras's following was at last succumbing to the effects of a full night's festivities.
Many of them had drifted away to find a place to sleep, others had merely huddled down in their robes and slept where they had eaten.
Only the hardened few still ate and drank, argued and sang, or sat in tejnumbed silence about the fires watching the womenfolk begin to prepare the morning meal.
The boy flung himself off the mare at the entrance to the caves, ducked under the arms of the sentries who would have restrained him and ran into the crowded, smoky and dimly lit interior. He was gabbling with fright and importance, the words tumbling over each other and making no sense until Lij Mikhael caught him by the upper arms and shook him to restore his senses.
Then the story he told made sense, and rang with urgent conviction.
Those within earshot shouted it to those further back, and within seconds the story, distorted and garbled, had flashed through the gathering and was running wildly through the whole encampment.
The sleepers awakened, every man armed and every woman and child curious and voluble. They streamed out of the caves and from the rough tents and shelters in the narrow ravines. Without command, moving like a shoal of fish without a leader but with as ingle purpose, laughing sceptic ally or shouting speculation and comment and query, brandishing shields and ancient firearms, the women clutching their infants, and the older children dancing around them or darting ahead, the shapeless mob streamed out of the broken ground and down into the saucer-shaped valley of the wells.
In the caves, Lij Mikhael was still explaining the boy's story to the foreigners, and arguing the details and implications with them and his father. It was Jake Barton who realized the danger.
"If the Italians have sent in a unit to grab the wells, then it's a calculated act of war. They'll be looking for trouble, Prince.
You'd best forbid any of your men to go down there, until we have sized up Xhe situation properly." It was too late, far too late. In the first faint glimmer of dawn, when the light plays weird tricks on a man's eyes, the Italian sentries peering over their parapets saw a wall of humanity swarming out of the dark and broken ground, and heard the rising hubbub of hundreds of excited voices.
When the drumming had begun, many of the black shirts were huddled below the firing step of their trenches, swaddled in their greatcoats and sleeping the exhausted sleep of men who had travelled all the previous day, and worked all the night.
The non-commissioned officers kicked and pulled them to their feet, and shoved them to their positions along the parapet. From here they peered, befuddled with sleep, down into the valley.
With the exception of Luigi Castelani, not a single man in the Third Battalion had ever faced an armed enemy, and now after an infinity of nerve-tearing waiting, at last the experience was upon them in the dark before the dawn when a man's vitality is at its lowest ebb.
Their bodies were chilled and their brains unclear. In the uncertain light, the mob that poured into the valley was as numerous as the sands of the desert, each figure as large as a giant and as ferocious as a marauding lion.
It was in this moment that Colonel Aldo Belli, panting with exertion and nervous strain, stepped out of the narrow communication trench on to the firing platform of the forward line of emplacements. The Sergeant in command of the trench recognized him instantly and let out a cry of relief.
"my Colonel, thank God you have come." And forgetful of rank and position he seized the Count's arm. Aldo Belli was so busy trying to fight off the man's sweaty and importunate clutches that it was some seconds before he actually glanced down into the darkened valley then his bowels turned to jelly and his legs seemed to buckle under him.
"Merciful Mother of God," he wailed. "All is lost. They are upon us.
With clumsy fingers he unbuckled the flap of his holster and as he fell to his knees he drew the pistol.
"Fire!" he screamed. "Open fire!" And crouching down well below the level of the parapet, he emptied the Beretta straight upwards into the dawn sky.
Manning the Italian parapets were over four hundred combatants; of these over three hundred and fifty were riflemen, armed with magazine-loaded bolt-action weapons, while another sixty men in teams of five serviced the cunningly placed machine guns.
Every man of this force had endured grinding nervous strain, listening to the war drums and now confronted by a sweeping mob of threatening figures. They crouched like dark statues behind their weapons, fingers curled stiffly around the triggers, and squinted over the open sights of rifle and machine gun.
The Count's-shriek of command and the crackle of the pistol shots were all that was necessary to snap the paralysing bonds of fear that held them. The firing was started around Aldo Belli's position, by men close enough to hear his command. A long line of muzzle flashes bloomed and twinkled along the forward slope of the valley, and three machine guns opened with them. The tearing sound of their long traversing bursts drowned out the crackle of musketry and their tracer flickered and flew in long white arcs out across the valley to bury itself in the dark moving blot of humanity.