"That's going to make things-" Gareth cut himself off, and both of them cocked their heads.
"Hello, that's decidedly odd." Faintly on the brooding air, carrying above the mutter of thunder, came the popping of musketry and the sound of machine-gun fire, like the sound of tearing silk, made indistinct and un warlike by distance and the muting banks of heavy cloud.
"Deuced odd." Gareth repeated. "There should not be any firing from there." It was in their rear, seeming to come from the very mouth of the gorge itself.
"Come on," snapped Jake, picking his binoculars out of Priscilla's hatch and scrambling through the loose red sand for the crest of the tallest dune.
The cloud and misty streamers of rain obscured the mouth of the gorge, but now the sound of gunfire was continuous.
"That's not just a skirmish," muttered Gareth.
"It's a full-scale fire fight," Jake agreed, peering through the binoculars.
"What is it, Jake?" Gregorius came up the dune to where they stood. He was followed by his grandfather but the old man moved slowly, exhausted and stiff with age and the aftermath of burned-out passions.
"We don't know, Greg. "Jake did not lower the binoculars.
"I don't understand it." Gareth shook his head. "Any Italian probe from the south would have run into our positions in the foothills, and from the north it would have run into the Gallas. Ras Kullah is in a pretty strong spot there. We would have heard the fighting. They can't have gone through there-" "And we are here in the centre, "Jake added, "they didn't come through here."
"It doesn't make sense." At that moment, the Ras reached the crest. He paused wearily and removed the teeth from his mouth, wrapped them carefully in a kerchief and tucked them away in some secret recess of his sham ma The mouth collapsed into a dark empty pit, and immediately he looked his age again.
Quickly Gregorius explained this new phenomenon to the old man, and while he listened he ran the blade of his sword into the dune between his feet, scrubbing it clean of the clotted black blood in the dry friable sand. He spoke suddenly in his tremulou's old man's voice.
"My grandfather says that Ras Kullah is a piece of dried dung of a venereal hyena," Gregorius translated quickly.
"And he says my uncle, Lij Mikhael, was wrong to treat with him, and that you were wrong to trust him."
"Now what the hell does that mean?" Jake demanded fretfully, and lifted the binoculars sweeping again towards the mouth of the Sardi Gorge away across the undulating golden plain then he exclaimed again.
"Damn it to hell, everything is blowing up. That crazy woman! She promised me, she swore on oath that she would keep out of it for once and now here she comes again!"
Emerging through the curtains of rain, indistinct under the dark rolling mass of cloud, throwing no dust column on the rain-dampened earth, the tiny sand-coloured shape of Miss Wobbly came bowling towards them with its distinctive stately gait. Even at this distance, Jake could make out the dark speck of Sara's head in the hatch of the high, old-fashioned turret.
Jake started to run down the slip-face of the dune to meet the oncoming car.
"Jake!" Vicky screeched above the engine beat, before she came to a halt, her head thrust out of the driver's hatch, her golden hair shaking in the wind and her eyes huge in the pale intense face.
"What the hell are you doing? "Jake shouted back angrily.
"The Gallas," Vicky screeched. "They've gone! Every last man of them!
Gone!" She braked hard and tumbled down to the ground so that Jake had to catch and steady her.
"What do you mean gone?" Gareth demanded, coming up at that moment and Sara answered him from Miss Wobbly's turret with her dark eyes sparkling hotly.
"They went, like smoke, like the dirty hill bandits they are."
"The left flank-"Gareth exclaimed.
"Nobody there. The Italians have come through without firing a shot.
Hundreds and hundreds of them. They are at the gorge, they have overrun the camp."
"Jake, they would have cut off all our own Harari, it would have been a massacre Sara gave the order, in her grandfather's name, she ordered them to abandon the right flank."
"Oh, good Christ!"
"They are trying to fight their way back into the gorge now but the Italians are covering the mouth with machine guns. It's terrible, Jake, oh the desert is thick with the dead."
"We've lost it all. Everything we gained, at a single throw, it's all gone. This was a feint, the tanks were sent to draw us off. The main attack was through the left but how did they know the Gallas had deserted?"
"As my grandfather says, never trust either a snake or a Galla."
"Oh Jake, we must hurry." Vicky shook his arm. "They'll cut us off."
"Right," snapped Gareth. "We'll have to get back into the gorge and rally them on the first line of defence in the gorge itself otherwise they'll run straight back to Addis Ababa." He swung around to Gregorius. "If we try and take these men, and he indicated the hundreds of halfnaked, unarmed Harad who were now straggling out of the dunes, "if we try to take them back through the mouth of the gorge, they'll be shot to pieces by the Italian guns. Can they find their own way on foot up the mountain slopes?"
"They are mountain men, Gregorius answered simply.
"Good. Tell them to work their way back and assemble at the first waterfall in the gorge. That's the rallying point the first waterfall." He turned back to the others. "On the other hand, we'll have to use the gorge the only way to save the cars. We'll rush the mouth in a tight formation and pray that the Eyeties haven't had a chance to bring up their artillery yet. Let's go!" He grabbed Ras Golam by the shoulder and dragged him, at an awkward run, back towards where they had left their armoured car parked on the crest of the first dune.
"Get back in the car," Jake instructed Vicky. "Keep the engine running. We'll bring up the two other cars. I want you in the centre of the line, then go like hell. Don't stop for anything until we are into the gorge. Do you hear me?" Vicky nodded grimly.
"Good girl he said, and would have turned away, but Vicky held his arm and pressed herself to him. She reached up and kissed him full on the lips, her mouth open and wet and soft and sweet.
"I love you, "she whispered huskily.
"Oh my darling, what a hell of a time you picked to tell me."
"I only just found out," she explained, and he crushed her fiercely to his chest.
"Oh, that's lovely," cried Sara from the turret above them.
"That's beautiful." She clapped her hands delightedly.
"Until later," whispered Jake. "Now get out of here!" and he turned her away and pushed her towards the car. He turned himself and ran lightly back into the dunes, with his heart singing.
"Oh, Miss Camberwell, I am so pleased for you." Sara reached down to help Vicky up on to the hull. "I knew it was going to be Mr. Barton.
I picked him for you long ago, but I wanted you to find out for yourself."
"Sara, my dear. Please don't say any more." Vicky hugged her briefly before dropping into the driver's hatch. "Or the whole thing will turn upside down again." Ras Golam was so tired and drained that he could move only at a creaking walk up the dune, even though Gareth tried to prod him into a trot. He plodded on up the dune dragging the sword behind him.
Suddenly there was a sound in the sky above them, as though the heavens had been split by all the winds of hell.
A rising, rattling shriek that passed and then erupted in a towering column of sand and yellow swirling fumes against the side of the dune ahead of them, fifty paces below the car that was silhouetted upon the crest.
"Guns,"said Gareth unnecessarily. "Time to go, Grandpa," and he would have prodded the Ras again, but there was no need. The sound of gunfire had rejuvenated the Ras instantly; he leaped high in the air, uttering that dreadful screech of a challenge and hunting frantically for his teeth in the folds of his sham ma "Oh no, you don't." Grimly, Gareth forestalled the next wild suicidal charge by grabbing the Ras and dragging him protestingly towards the car. The Ras had tasted blood now, and he wanted to go in on foot with the sword the way a real warrior fights and he was frantically searching the open horizons for the enemy, as Gareth towed him away backwards.