"forty thousand men lay upon Ambo Aradam, cowering in their trenches and caves. They were the heart and spine of the Ethiopian armies, and the man who led them, Ras Muguletu, was the ablest and most experienced of all the warlords. But he was powerless and uncertain in the face of such strength and fury as now broke around him. He had not imagined it could be so, and he lay with his men, quiescent and stoic. There was no enemy to confront, nothing to strike out at, for the huge Caproni bombers droned high overhead and the great guns that fired the shells were miles below in the valley.
All they could do was pull their dusty shammas over their heads and endure the bone-jarring, bowel-shaking detonations and breathe the filthy fume-laden air.
Day after day the storm of explosive roared around them until they were dazed and stupefied, deafened and uncaring, enduring, only enduring not thinking, not feeling, not caring.
On the sixth night the drone of the big three-engined bombers passed overhead, and Ras Muguletu's men, peering up fearfully, saw the sinister shapes pass overhead, dark against the silver pricking of the stars.
They waited for the bombs to tumble down upon them once more, but the bombers circled above the flat-topped mountain for many minutes and there were no bombs. Then the bombers turned away and the drone of the engines died into the lightening dawn sky.
Only then did the soft insidious dew that they had sown come sifting down out of the still night sky. Gently as the fall of snowflakes, it settled upon the upturned brown faces, into the fearfully staring eyes, on to the bare hands that held the ancient firearms at the ready.
It burned into the exposed skin, blistering and eating into the living flesh like some terrible canker; it burned the eyes in their sockets, turning them into cherry-red, glistening orbs from which the yellow mucus poured thickly. The pain it inflicted combined both the seating of concentrated acid and the fierce heat of live coals.
In the dawn, while thousands of Ras Muguletu's men whimpered and cried out in their consuming agony, and their comrades, bemused and bewildered, tried unavailingly to render aid, in that dreadful moment, the first wave of Italian infantry came up over the lip of the mountain, and they were into the Ethiopian trenches before the defenders realized what had happened. The Italian bayonets blurred redly in the first rays of the morning sun.
The cloud lay upon the highlands, blotting out the peaks, and the rain fell in a constant deluge. It had rained without ceasing for the two days and three nights since the disaster of Aruba Aradarn. The rain had saved them, it had saved the thirty thousand survivors of the battle from being overtaken by the same fate as had befallen the ten thousand casualties they had left on the mountain.
High above the cloud, the Italian bombers circled hungrily; Lij Mikhael could hear them clearly, although the thick blanket of cloud muted the sound of the powerful triple engines. They waited for a break in the cloud, to come swooping down upon the retreat. What a target they would enjoy if that happened! The Dessie road was choked for a dozen miles with the slow unwieldy column of the retreat, the ragged files of trudging figures, bowed in the rain, their heads covered with their shammas, their bare feet sliding and slipping in the mud. Hungry, cold and dispirited, they toiled onwards, carrying weapons that grew heavier with every painful step still they kept on.
The rain had hampered the Italian pursuit. Their big troop-carriers were bogged down helplessly in the treacherous mud, and each engorged mountain stream, each ravine raged with the muddy brown rain waters.
They had to be bridged by the Italian engineers before the transports could be manhandled across, and the pursuit continued.
The Italian General Badoglio had been denied a crushing victory and thirty thousand Ethiopian troops had escaped him at Aradam.
It was Lij Mikhael's special charge, placed upon him -personally by the King of Kings, Baile Selassie, to bring out those thirty thousand men.
To extricate them from Badogho's talons, and regroup them with the southern army under the Emperor's personal command upon the shores of Lake Tona. Another thirty-six hours and the task would be accomplished.
He sat on the rear seat of the mud-spattered Ford sedan, huddled into the thick coarse folds of his greatcoat, and although it was worn and lulling in the sedan interior, and although he was exhausted to the point at which his hands and feet felt completely numb and his eyes as though they were filled with sand, yet no thought of sleep entered his mind. There was too much to plan, too many eventualities to meet, too many details to ponder and he was afraid. A terrible black fear pervaded his whole being.
The ease with which the Italian victory had been won at Araoam filled him with fear for the future. It seemed as though nothing could stand against the force of Italian arms against the big guns, and the bombs and the nitrogen Mustard. He feared that another terrible defeat awaited them on the shores of Lake Tona.
He feared also for the safety of the thirty thousand in his charge. He knew that the Danakil column of the Italian expeditionary force had fought its way into the Sardi Gorge and must by now have almost reached the town of Sardi itself. He knew that Ras Golam's small force had been heavily defeated on the plains and had suffered doleful losses in the subsequent defence of the gorge. He feared that they might be swept aside at any moment now and that the Italian column would come roaring like a lion across his rear cutting off his retreat to Dessie.
He must have time, a little more time, a mere thirty-six hours more.
Then again, he feared the Gallas. At the beginning of the Italian offensive they had taken no part in the fighting but had merely disappeared into the mountains, betraying completely the trust that the Harari leaders had placed in them. Now, however, that the Italians had won their first resounding victories, the Gallas had become active, gathering like vultures for the scraps that the lions left. His own retreat from Aradam had been harassed by his erstwhile allies. They hung on his flanks, hiding in the scrub Laid scree slopes along the Dessie road, awaiting each opportunity to fall upon a weak unprotected spot in the unwieldy slow-moving column. It was classical shifta tactics, the age old art of ambush, of hit and run, a few throats slit and a dozen rifles stolen but it slowed the retreat slowed it drastically while close behind them followed the Italian horde, and across their rear lay the mouth of the Sardi Gorge.
Lij Mikhael roused himself and leaned forward in the seat to peer ahead through the windscreen. The wipers flogged sullenly from side to side, keeping two fans of clean glass in the mud-splattered screen, and Lij Mikhael made out the railway crossing ahead of them where it bisected the muddy rutted road.
He grunted with so tis faction and the driver pushed the Ford through the slowly moving mass of miserable humanity which clogged the road. It opened only reluctantly as the sedan butted its way through with the horn blaring angrily, and closed again behind it as it passed.
They reached the railway level crossing and Lij Mikhael ordered the driver to pull off the road beside a group of his officers. He slipped out bareheaded and immediately the rain de wed on his bushy dark hair.
The group of officers surrounded him, each eager to tell his own story, to recite the list of his own requirements, his own misgivings each with news of fresh disaster, new threats to their very existence.