An aching silence had fallen on the Gallas, and now she saw that their expressions were tense also. The faces, with their handsome, high-boned features and beaky noses, turned towards her with the predatory expectation of the hunting hawk, and the eyes burned with the same fierce excitement with which they had watched the old crone do her bloody work the previous night.
The Harari, where were the Harari? She looked about her wildly now but could not find a familiar face and then in the silence she heard the clatter of distant hooves from far down the gorge and she knew without any shade of doubt that they had left her, they had been driven away by the threats of their ancient enemies, who outnumbered them so heavily.
She was alone and she turned to go back, but found that they had closed about her, cutting off her retreat and now they pressed gradually closer about her, with the same smouldering, gloating expression on every face.
She had to go forward, there was no way back and she forced herself to walk slowly on towards the car. At each step a tall robed figure stood to block her way. She knew she must show no sign of fear, any show of weakness at all would trigger them, and she had a single brief image of her own pale body spread-eagled upon the rocky earth, plaything for a thousand. She thrust the image firmly aside and walked on slowly. At the last possible instant, each tall figure moved aside, but there was always another beyond to take its place and each time the throng pressed closer upon her.
She could feel their heightening expectation, almost smell it in the hot musk of their packed bodies the change in the faces was there too; they watched her with a growing excitement, teeth grinning, breath shortening and eyes like claws in her flesh.
Suddenly she could go no further; a figure taller and more compelling than any other blocked her path. She had noticed this, man before. He was a Gerazmach, a high Galla officer. he wore a sharnma of dark blue silk wrapped about his throat and falling to his knees.
His hair was fluffed out in a wide halo about the lean, cruel face and a scar ran down from the outer corner of his eye to the point of his jaw.
He said something to her in a voice that was thick with lust, and she did not understand the words but the meaning was clear. The crowd around her stirred and she heard the sound of their breathing and felt them press even closer towards her. A man laughed near her, and there was something so ugly in the sound that it struck her like a physical force.
She wanted to scream, to turn and try and claw herself free but she knew that was what they were waiting for. It needed just that provocation and they would hurl themselves upon her. She gathered what was left of her reserves and put it all into her voice.
"Get out of my way," she said clearly, and the man before her smiled.
It was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen.
Still smiling, he dropped one hand to his groin, opened the fold of his shamnia, and made a gesture so obscene that Vicky recoiled, and she felt the scalding blood burn her throat and her cheeks. There was no control in her voice now as she blurted, "Oh, you swine you filthy swine," and the man reached for her, his robe still open. As she shrank back, she felt the others behind her thrust her forward again.
Then another voice spoke. The words were banal but the tone hissed like the sound of a scimitar swung at the cut.
"All right, chaps. That's enough of that nonsense." Vicky felt the pressure of bodies about her ease, and she spun around with a sob catching in her throat.
Gareth Swales strolled down the passage that opened for him through the dense press of robed bodies. His whole carriage seemed indolent, and the white open-necked shirt with an Zingari scarf at the throat was crisp and immaculate but Vicky had never before seen the expression he wore. The rims of his nostrils were ice-white and his eyes burned with a controlled fury.
She would have flung herself at him, sobbing with relief, but his voice crackled again.
"Steady. We're not out yet," and she caught herself, lifted her chin and smothered the next sob before it escaped.
"Good girl," he said, without taking his eyes from the face of the tall Galla in the blue robe, and he kept on walking steadily towards him, taking Vicky's arm as he drew level with her. She felt the strength of his fingers through the thin stuff of her blouse, and it seemed to flow into her, charging her depleted reserves, and the jelly weakness in her legs firmed.
The Galla leader stood his ground as Gareth stepped up to him, and for a space of time that was less than five seconds but seemed to Vicky like a round of eternity, the two men locked gazes and wills. Blazing blue eyes levelled with smouldering black then suddenly the Galla broke, he glanced aside and shrugged, chuckled weakly, and turned away to talk loudly with the man who stood beside him.
Unhurriedly, Gareth stepped through the gap the man had left and they were at the car.
"Are you well enough to drive?" Gareth asked quietly, as he swung her up on the sponson and she nodded.
"The engine's switched off," she blurted; they could not risk cranking to start.
"She's on the slope," said Gareth, turning to face the crowding Gallas and hold them off with his level gaze. "Roll her to a start."
As Vicky scrambled into the driver's hatch, Gareth placed a cheroot between his lips, and struck a match with his thumb nail. The little act distracted the hostile pack for an Instant, and they watched his hands as he lit the cheroot and blew a long blue feather of smoke towards them.
Behind him, the car began to roll, and Gareth swung himself aboard easily with the cheroot clamped between his teeth and gave the horsemen a mocking salute as the car gathered speed down the slope. Neither of them spoke as they dropped swiftly downwards, two miles in silence.
Then, without taking her eyes off the track ahead, Vicky told Gareth as he stood above and behind her in the turret, "You weren't even afraid-2 "In a blue funk, old girl absolute blue funk."
"And I once called you a coward."
"Quite right too."
"How did you get there so fast?"
"I was up there looking for defensive positions against the jolly old Eyeties. Saw your faithful bodyguard taking off and came to have a look." The track ahead of Vicky dissolved in a mist of tears, and she had to hit the brakes hard. Afterwards, she was not sure quite how it happened but she found herself in Gareth's arms, pressing herself to him with all of her strength and shaking violently with her sobs.
"Oh God, Gareth, I don't know what I'll ever do to repay you for this."
"I'm sure we will think of something," he murmured, holding her with a practised embrace that was lulling and so wonderfully secure.
She felt then that she did not want ever to leave his arms and she lifted her lips to his and with a mild amazement saw on his face, in the usually mocking blue eyes, such an expression of tenderness as she had never expected was possible.
His lips were another surprise, they were very warm and soft and tasted of man and the bitter aromatic smoke of his cheroots; she had never realized that he was so tall and his body so hard, or his hands so strong. The last sob wracked her body, and then she sighed voluptuously and shuddered softly with the strength of physical awakening more intense than she had ever experienced in her entire life.
For a moment, the journalist in her attempted to analyse the source of this sudden passion, and she knew it as the product of the previous night's sleepless horrors, of fatigue and of the day's terrors. Then she no longer queried it, but let it spread through her whole body. The encampment of the Ras's army at the foot of the Sardi Gorge sprawled for four miles amongst the acacia forests, a vast agglomeration of living things which murmured softly with life, like a hive of honeybees at midday, and which had already cloaked itself in blue woodsmoke and the myriad odours of human and animal ingestion and excretion.