A listening silence had fallen upon the revelling throng around the bonfires, and the silence persisted for a few then there was a seconds longer after the scream had ended, murmur of comment and here and there a burst of careless, cruel laughter.
"What is it, damn it, Sara, what are they doing?"
"Ras Kullah is playing with the Italians," Sara said quietly, and Vicky realized that she had thought no further of the prisoners taken that day from the routed Italian column.
"Playing, Sara? What do you mean?" And Sara spat like an angry cat, a gesture of utter disgust.
"They are animals, those beasts of Ras Kullah. They will make sport of them all night, and in the morning they will cut away their man's things," she spat again. "Before they can marry, they must take a man's things what do you call them, the two things in the little sac?"
"Testicles," said Vicky hoarsely, almost choking on the word.
"Yes," agreed Sara. "They must kill a man and take his testicles to the bride. It is their custom, but first they will make sport with the Italians."
"Can't we stop them? "Vicky asked.
"Stop them?" Sara looked amazed. "They are only Italians, and it is the Galla custom." Again came that cry, and again there was complete silence from the revellers. It climbed high into the silent desert air, shriek upon shriek, so that it seemed impossible that it could come from a human lung, and their souls cringed at the dimensions of suffering which could give vent to that pinnacle of agonized sound.
"Oh God! Oh God!" whispered Vicky, and she lifted her eyes from Sara's face to that of Gareth Swales who sat beyond her.
He was silent and still, his face turned half away from her, so that she saw the godlike profile, perfect and cold. As the cry of agony died away, he leaned forward, took a burning twig from the fire and lit the long black cheroot between his white teeth.
He drew deeply and held the smoke, then let it trickle out through his nostrils. Then he turned deliberately to Vicky.
"You heard what the lady said. It's the custom." He spoke to Vicky, but the remark was addressed to Jake Barton, and his eyes flicked mockingly to him, a half-smile on his lips.
The two men held each other's eyes, unblinking and expressionless.
The cry of agony came again but this time weaker, the aching ringing tone reduced to a sobbing echo on the dark night.
Jake Barton rose to his feet, coming erect with one fluid movement, and in a continuation of the same movement he crossed to the piles of captured Italian weapons. He stooped and picked up an officer's automatic pistol, a 7 men. Beretta, still in its polished leather holster, and he unbuckled the flap and drew the weapon, discarding the leather holster and waist belt. He checked the loaded magazine and then, with a slap of his palm, thrust it back into the recessed butt, pumped the slide to throw a round into the breech, flicked the safety-catch across and slipped the pistol into the pocket of his breeches.
Without looking again at any of the others, he strode away, disappearing beyond the firelight into the darkness, in the direction of the Galla encampment.
"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfashioned luxury an expensive one in this age, and especially in this place," murmured Gareth, and inspected the ash of his cheroot.
"They will kill him if he goes in there alone," said Sara in a completely matter-of-fact tone. "They will be hungry for more blood and they'll kill him "Oh, I don't know it's as bad as that, "Gareth demurred.
"Oh, yes. They'll kill him," said Sara, and turned back to Vicky.
"Are you going to let him go? They are only Italians," she pointed out. For a moment, the two women stared at each other, and then Vicky leaped to her feet and went after Jake, the blue linen swirling gracefully around her legs and the firelight playing like liquid bronze gold on her hair as she ran.
She caught up with Jake at the perimeter of the Galla encampment, and she fell in beside him, taking two quick steps to each of his strides.
"Go back," he said softly, but she did not reply and skipped to keep up with him.
"Do what I say."
"No, I'm coming with you." He stopped and swung to face her, and she lifted her chin defiantly, throwing back her shoulders and drawing herself up to her full height so that she came to his shoulder.
Listen to me " he began, and then stopped as the tortured being cried again in the night, and it was a blubbering incoherent sound, half moan, half sob followed almost immediately by the throaty roar of many hundred voices, the blood roar of a hunting pack, deep and savage.
"That's what it will be like." His head was turned away from her to listen and his eyes were haunted.
"I'm coming," she said stubbornly, and he did not reply, but broke away and hurried forward towards the glowing reflection of the Galla fires which turned the branches of the camel-thorns to high cathedral roofs of ruddy light over the encampment.
There were no sentries posted, and they passed unnoticed through the horse lines and the hastily thatched tukuLs and leather tents, coming suddenly into the centre of the camp where the fires were burning and the Gallas were assembled, a huge dark circle of squatting figures; the firelight bronzed their eager hawk features, and the whole assembly hummed with the charged tension that always holds the spectators at a blood spectacle. Jake remembered it from a prize fight in Madison Square Garden and again from a cock fight in Havana.
The blood lust was running high, and they growled like an animal pack.
"That is Ras Kullah, whispered Vicky, tugging at Jake's sleeve, and he glanced across the open arena of beaten earth.
Kullah sat on a pile of carpets and cushions, a silk shawl striped in a dozen brilliant colours was draped across his head and shoulders, masking his soft smooth face with shadow but the firelight caught his eyes and made them glitter with a peculiarly feverish fury.
One of his fat ivory-coloured hands was clenched in his lap, while his other arm was cast around the waist of the woman who sat beside him, and his hand kneaded and Wworled her yielding flesh. The hand seemed to have life of its own, and it moved, pale and obscene, like a huge slug pulsing softly as it devoured the swollen ripe fruits of the woman's bosom.
Beyond the fires, on the far side of the circle of open earth a group of three Italian soldiers were clustered fearfully, their faces shiny white with sweat and terror in the firelight, and their hands bound behind their backs. They had been stripped to their breeches, and the exposed skin of their backs and arms was welted and bruised where they had been beaten and abused. Their naked feet were swollen and bloody; clearly they had been forced to march thus for long distances across the harsh stony earth. Their dark eyes, huge with horror, were fastened on the spectacle that was being enacted on the open stage of bare earth in the limelight of the fires.
Vicky recognized the woman as one of Ras Kullah's favourites whom she had last seen that night at the rest house of Sardi. Now she knelt, heavy-breasted and intent on her work. The round madonna face was alight with an almost religious ecstasy, the full lips parted and the dark sloe eyes glowing like those of a priestess at some mystic tire.
However, more prosaically the sleeves of her sham ma were drawn up in businesslike fashion above the elbows like those of a butcher, and her hands were bloody to the wrists. She held the thin curved dagger like a surgeon, and its silver blade was dull and red in the firelight.
The thing over which -she worked still wriggled and moved convulsively against its bonds, still breathed and sobbed, but it was no longer recognizable as a man. The knife had stripped away all resemblance and now as the waiting crowd growled and swayed and sighed, the woman worked doggedly at the base of the disembowelled belly, cutting and tugging, so that the victim screamed again, but feebly and the woman leapt to her feet and held aloft the mutilated handful she had cut free.