Gregorius looked to the mountains, and the clouds upon them, and he said softly, "Soon it will rain." He looked up to where Jake Barton sat like a statue on the turret of Priscilla the Pig. Jake had swathed his head and upper body in a white linen sham ma to protect it from the sun and he held the binoculars in his lap. Every few minutes, he would lift them to his eyes and make one slow sweep of the land ahead before slumping motionless again.
Slowly the shadows crept out from the hulls of the cars, the sun turned across its zenith and gradually lost its white glare, its rays toned with yellows and reds. Once again, Jake lifted the binoculars and this time paused midway in his automatic sweep of the horizon.
In the lens the familiar dun feather of the distant cloud once again wavered softly at the line where pale earth and paler sky joined.
He watched it for five minutes, and it seemed that the dust cloud was fading shrivelling, and that the shimmering pillars of heat-distorted air were rising, screening his vision.
Jake lowered the glasses and a warm flood of sweat broke from his hairline, trickled down his forehead into his eyes.
He swore softly it the sting of salt and wiped it away with the hem of the linen sharnma. He blinked rapidly, and then lifted the glasses again and felt his heart jump in his chest and the prickle of rising hair on the nape of his neck.
The freakish Currents and whirlpools of heated air cleared suddenly, and the dust cloud that minutes before had seemed remote as the far shores of the ocean was now so close and crisply outlined against the pale blue white sky that it filled the lens. Then his heart jumped again below the rolling spreading cloud he could make out the dark insect shapes of many swiftly moving vehicles. Suddenly the viscosity of the air changed again, and the shapes of the approaching column altered becoming monstrous, looming through the mist of duSt. closer, every second closer and more menacing.
Jake shouted, and Gareth was beside him in an instant.
"Are you crazy?" he gasped. "They'll overrun us in a minute."
"Get started," Jake snapped. "Get the engines started," and slid down into the driver's hatch. There was a flurry of sudden frantic movement around the cars. The engines were cranked into reluctant life, surging and missing and backfiring as the volatile fuel turned to vapour in the heat and starved the engines.
The Ras was lifted into the turret of Gareth's car by half a dozen of his men at arms, and installed behind the Vickers gun. Their job accomplished, his men were leaving him and hurrying to mount their ponies when the Ras let out a series of shrieks in Amharic and pointed at the empty cave of his own mouth, devoid of teeth and big enough to hibernate a bear.
There was a brief moment of consternation I until the senior and eldest man at arms produced a large leather covered box from his saddle bag and hurried with it to kneel humbly on the sponson of the car and proffer the open box to the Ras. Mollified, the Ras reached into the box and brought out a magnificent set of porcelain teeth, big and white and sharp enough to fit in the mouth of a Derby winner, complete with bright red gums.
With only a short struggle he forced the set into his mouth, and then snapped them like a brook trout rising to the fly, before peeling back his lips in a death's head grin.
His followers cooed and exclaimed with admiration, and Gregorius told Jake proudly, "My grandfather only wears his teeth when he is fighting or pleasuring a lady," and Jake spared a brief glance from the advancing Italian army to admire the dazzling dental display.
"Makes him look younger, not a day over ninety, "he gave his opinion, and revved the engine, carefully manoeuvring the car into a hull-down position below the bank from where he could keep the Italians under observation. Gareth brought the other car up alongside and grinned at him from the open hatch. It was a wicked grin, and Jake realized that the Englishman was looking forward to the coming clash with anticipation.
It was no longer necessary to use binoculars. The Italian column was less than two miles distant, moving swiftly on a course that was carrying it parallel to the dry river-bed, beyond the curved horns of the ambush into the open unprotected funnel of flat land between the mountains.
Another fifteen minutes at this rate of advance and it would have turned the Ethiopian flank and would be able to drive without resistance to the mouth of the gorge and Jake knew better than to hope to be able to reorganize the rabble of cavalry once their formations were shattered. Instinctively he knew that they would fight like giants as long as the tide carried them forward, but any retreat would become a rout, and they would race for the hills like factory workers at five o'clock. They were accustomed to fighting as individuals, avoiding set piece battles, but snatching opportunity as it was offered, swift as hawks, but giving instantly before any determined thrust by an enemy.
"Come on!" he muttered to himself, pounding his fist against his thigh impatiently, and with the first stirring of alarm. Unless the bait was offered within the next few moments. Because they fought as individuals, each man his own general, and because the art of ambush and entrapment came as naturally to the Ethiopian as the feel of a rifle in his hand, Jake need not have fretted.
Seeming to rise from the flat scorched earth under the wheels of the leading Italian vehicles, a small galloping knot of horsemen flitted across the heat-tortured earth, seeming to float above it like a flock of dark birds. Their shapes wavering and indistinct, wrapped in pale streamers of dust, they cut back obliquely across the Italian line of march, running hard for the centre of the hidden Ethiopian line.
Almost instantly a single vehicle detached itself from the head of the column and headed on a converging course with the flying horsemen.
Its speed was frightening, and it closed so swiftly that the squadron of cavalry was forced to veer away, forced to edge out towards where the two armoured cars were hidden.
Behind the single speeding vehicle the Italian column lost its rigid shape. The front half of it swung away in a long untidy line abreast in pursuit of the horsemen. These were all larger, heavier vehicles, with high, canvas-covered cupolas, and their progress was ponderous and so slow that they could not gain perceptibly on the galloping horses.
However, the smaller faster vehicle was gaining rapidly and Jake stood higher to give himself a better view as he refocused the binoculars. He recognized instantly the big open Rolls-Royce tourer that he had last seen at the Wells of Chaldi. Its polished metalwork glittered in the sunlight, its low rakish lines enhancing the impression of speed and power, as the dust boiled out from behind its spinning rear wheels with their huge flashing central bosses.
Even as he watched, the Rolls braked and skidded broadside, coming to a halt in a furiously billowing cloud of dust. A figure tumbled from the rear seat.
Jake watched the man brace himself over the sporting rifle and the spurt of gunsmoke from the muzzle as he fired seven shots in quick succession, the rifle kicking up abruptly at the recoil and the thud thud of the discharge reaching Jake only seconds later.
The horsemen were drawing swiftly away from the Rolls, but neither the changing range nor the dust and mirage affected the marksman. At each shot a horse went down, sliding against the earth, legs kicking to the sky or plunging and rolling, as it struggled to regain its legs, falling back at last and lying still.
Then the rifleman leaped aboard the Rolls again, and the pursuit was continued, gaining swiftly on the survivors, the heavy phalanx of trucks and troop transports lumbering on behind it the whole mass of horses, men and machines rolling steadily deeper into the killing-ground that Gareth Swales had so carefully surveyed and laid out for them.
"The bastard!" whispered Jake, as he watched the Rolls skid to a standstill once more. The Italian was taking no chances of approaching the horsemen closely. He was standing well off, out of effective range of their ancient weapons, and he was picking them off one at a time, in the leisurely fashion of a shot gunner at a grouse shoot in fact, the whole bloody episode was being played out in the spirit of the hunt.