The captive began to twist and struggle, watching the knife with the fixed concentration of despair and terror, but the two tall guards held him easily, chuckling like a pair of gaunt ogres, watching the knife also.
The old woman let out one more high-pitched shriek, and leapt at him the long skinny black arm lunged out, the point of the blade aimed at his heart. The woman's strength was too frail to drive it home, and the point struck bone and glanced aside, skidding around the ribcage, opening a long shallow cut that exposed the white bone in its depths for the instant before blood flooded out between the lips of the wound.
A howl of delight went up from the assembled Gallas, and they goaded on the avenger with mocking cries and yips like those of a pack of excited jackals.
Again and again the old woman struck, and the youth kicked and struggled, his guards roaring with laughter and the blood from the shallow wounds flying and sparkling in the lamplight, splattering the old woman's knife arm and speckling her angry screeching face. Her frustration made her blows more wild and feeble.
Unable to penetrate his chest, she turned her attack upon his face. One blow split his nose and upper lip, and the next slashed across his eye, turning the socket instantly into a dark blood-glutted hole. The guards let him fall to the floor.
The old woman leapt upon his chest and, clinging to him like a huge, grotesque vampire bat, she began to saw determinedly at the youth's throat until at last the carotid artery erupted, dousing her robes and puddling the floor on which they rolled together while the Galla watchers roared their approbation.
Only then could Vicky move; she leapt to her feet and pushed her way through the throng that jammed the doorway and ran out into the cool night. She realized that her blouse was damp with the sweat of nausea and she leaned against the stem of a cosa flora tree, trying to fight it, unavailingly; then she doubled over and retched tearingly, choking up her horror.
The horror stayed with her for many hours, denying her the sleep her body craved. She lay alone in the small room that Lij Mikhael had ordered for her, and listened to the drums beating and the shouts of laughter and bursts of singing from the Galla encampment amongst the cosa flora trees.
When she slept at last, it was not for long, and then she awoke to a soft tickling movement on her skin and the first fiery itch across her belly.
Disgusted by the loathsome touch she threw aside the single blanket and lit the candle. Across the flat smooth plain of her belly, the bites of vermin were strung like a girdle of angry red beads and she shuddered, her whole body crawling with the thought of it.
She spent what remained of the night huddled uncomfortably on the floor of the armoured car. The mountain cold struck through the steel of Miss Wobbly's hull, and Vicky shivered into the dawn, scratching morosely at the hot lumps across her stomach. Then she filled the growling ache of her empty stomach with a tin of cold corned beef from the emergency rations in the locker under the driver's seat, before driving up the slope of the western pass to the German mission station where she experienced the first lift of spirits since the horrors of the night.
Sara had responded almost miraculously to the treatment she was receiving, and although she was still weak and a little shaky, the fever had abated, and she was once more able to give Vicky the benefit of her vast wisdom and worldly experience.
Vicky sat beside the narrow iron bedstead in the overcrowded ward, while other patients coughed and groaned around her, and held Sara's thin dry hand from which the flesh seemed to have wasted overnight and poured out to her the horrors still pent up inside her.
"Ras Kullah," Sara made a moue of disgust. "He is a degenerate man, that one. Did he have his milk cows with him?" Vicky was for a moment at a loss, until she remembered the two madonnas. "His men scour the mountains to keep him supplied with pretty young mothers in full milk ugh!" She shuddered theatrically, and Vicky felt her unsettled stomach quail. "That and his hemp pipe and the sight of blood. He is an animal. His people are animals they have been our enemies since the time of Solomon, and it shames me now that we must have them to fight beside us." Then she changed the subject in her usual mercurial fashion.
"Will you go down the pass again today?"
"Yes," Vicky said, and Sara sighed.
"The doctor says that I cannot go with you not for many days still."
"I will fetch you, as soon as you are ready."
"No. No," she protested. "It is shorter and easier on horseback. I will come immediately but until then carry My love to Gregorius. Tell him my heart beats with great fury for him, and he walks through my thoughts eternally."
"I will tell him," agreed Vicky, delighted at the sentiment and the choice of words. At that moment a tall young man in a white jacket, with the face of a brown pharaoh and huge dark eyes, came to record Sara's temperature, stooping solicitously over her and murmuring softly in Amharic as he felt for her pulse with delicate finely shaped hands.
Sara was transformed instantly into a languid wanton, with smouldering eyes and pouting lips, but when the orderly left, she was instantly herself again, giggling delightedly as she drew Vicky's head down to whisper in her ear.
"Is he not as beautiful as the dawn? He studies to be a doctor, and goes soon to the University at Berlin. He has fallen in love with me since last night and as soon as my leg is less painful I shall take him as a lover." And when she saw Vicky's startled glance, she went on hurriedly, "But just for a short time, of course. Only until I am well enough to ride back to Gregorius." When Lij Mikhael came, riding with his wild horsemen.
They waited outside in the sun while the Prince came into the ward to take farewell of his daughter. His sombre mood lightened momentarily as he embraced Sara, and he saw how well she was recovered. Then he told the two women, "Yesterday at noon, the Italian army under General De Bono crossed the Mareb River in force and has begun to march on A owa and Ambo Aradam. The wolf is into the sheepfold. There has already been fighting and the Italian aeroplanes are bombing our towns.
We are now at war."
"It is no surprise," said Sara. "The only surprise is that. they took so long."
"Miss Camberwell, you must return as swiftly as you can to my father at the foot of the gorge, and warn him that he must be ready to meet an enemy attack." He drew out a gold pocket watch and glanced at it.
"Within the next few minutes, an aircraft will be landing here to take me to the Emperor. I would be obliged, Miss Camberwell, if you would accompany me to the-landing field." Vicky nodded, and the Lij went on.
"Ras Kullah's men are assembled there. He has agreed to send fifteen hundred horsemen to join my father, and they will follow you-" He got no further, for Sara intervened hotly.
"Miss Camberwell must not be left alone with those hyenas of Kullah's.
They would eat their own mothers." The Lij smiled and held up a hand.
"My own bodyguard will ride with Miss Camberwell, under my strict charge to protect her at all times."
"I do not like it," pouted Sara, and groped for Vicky's hand.
"I will be all right, Sara." She stooped and kissed the girl, who clung to her for an instant.
will come soon," whispered Sara, "Do nothing until I am with you.
Perhaps it should be Gareth after all," and Vicky chuckled.
"You're getting me confused."
"Yes," agreed Sara. "That's why I should be there to advise you." Mikhael and Vicky stood side by side on the hull of Miss Wobbly and shaded the sun from their eyes as they watched the aircraft come in between the peaks.
As a pilot Vicky could appreciate the difficulty of the approach, down into the bowl of Sardi, where treacherous down-draughts fell along the cliffs, creating whirlpools of turbulence. The sun had already dispelled the chill of the night making the high mountain air even thinner and more treacherous.