"The white men have gone?" the Ras asked concluding with a a hacking old man's cough that shook his whole frail body.
"They will return in the dawn, before the enemy attack." Gregorius defended them quickly, and went on to explain the reasons and the change of plans.
The Ras nodded, staring into the flickering fire, and when Gregorius paused, he spoke again in that rasping, querulous tone.
"It is a sign and I would have it no other way. Too long I have listened to the council of the Englishman, too long I have quenched the fire in my belly, too long I have slunk like a dog from the enemy." He coughed again, painfully.
"We have run far enough. The time has come to fight," and his officers growled angrily in the gloom around him, and swayed closer to listen to his words. "Go you to your men, rouse them, fill their bellies with fire and their hands with steel. Tell them that the signal will be as it was a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago.
Tell them to listen for my war drums," a suppressed roar of exultation came from their throats, "the drums will beat up the dawn, and when they cease, that will be the moment. "The Ras had struggled to his feet, and he stood naked above them; the blanket 2 fallen away, and his skinny old chest heaved with the passion of his anger. "In that moment, I, Ras Golam, will go down to drive the enemy back across the desert and into the sea from which they came.
Every man who calls himself a warrior and an Harari will go down with me-" and his voice was lost in the shrill loolooing of his officers, and the Ras laughed, with the high ringing laugh close to madness.
One of his officers handed him a mug of the fiery tei and the Ras poured it down his throat in a single draught, then hurled the mug upon the fire.
Gregorius leapt to his feet and laid a restraining hand upon the skinny old arm.
"Grandfather." The Ras swung to him, the bloodshot rheumy eyes burning with a fierce new light.
"If you have woman's words to say to me, then swallow them and let them choke the breath in your lungs, and turn to poison in your belly. "The Ras glared at his grandson, and suddenly Gregorius understood.
He understood what the Ras was about to do. He was a man old and wise enough to know that his world was passing, that the enemy was too strong, that God had turned his back upon Ethiopia, that no matter how brave the heart and how fierce the battle in the end there was defeat and dishonour and slavery.
The Ras was choosing the other way the only other way.
The flash of understanding passed between the youth and the ancient, and the Ras's eyes softened and he leaned towards Gregorius.
"But if the fire is in your belly also, if you will charge beside me when the drums fall silent then kneel for my blessing." Suddenly Gregorius felt all care and restraint fall away, and his heart soared up like an eagle, borne aloft by the ancient atavistic joy of the warrior.
He fell on one knee before the Ras.
"Give me your blessing, grandfather," he cried, and the Ras placed both hands upon his bowed head and mumbled the biblical words.
A warm soft drop fell upon Gregorius's neck, and he looked up startled.
The tears were running down the dark wrinkled cheeks, and dripping unashamedly from the Ras's chin. Vicky Camberwell lay face down upon the filthy earthen floor of one of the deserted tukuk on the outskirts of the burning town. The floor swarmed with legions of lice, and they crawled softly over her skin, and their bites set up a burning irritation.
Her hands were bound behind her back with strips of rawhide rope, and her ankles were bound the same way.
Outside, she could hear the rustle and crackle of the burning town, with an occasional louder crash as a roof collapsed. There were also the shouts and wild laughter of the Gallas, drunk on blood and te, and the chilling sound of the few Harari captives who had been saved from the initial massacre to provide entertainment during the long wait before Ras Kullah arrived in the captured town.
Vicky did not know how long she had lain. Her hands and feet were without feeling, for the rawhide ropes were tightly knotted. Her ribs ached from the blow that had felled her, and the icy cold of the mountain night had permeated her whole body so that the marrow in her bones ached with it, and fits of shivering racked her as though she were in fever. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her lips were blue and tight, but she could not move. Any attempt to alter her position or relieve her cramped limbs was immediately greeted with a blow or a kick from the guards who stood over her.
At last her mind blacked out, not into sleep, for she could still dimly hear the din from around the hut, but into a kind of coma in which sense of time was lost, and the acute discomfort of the cold and her bonds receded.
Hours must have passed in this stupor of exhaustion and cold, when she was roused by another kick in her stomach and she gasped and sobbed with the fresh pain of it.
She was aware immediately of a change in the volume of sound outside the hut. There were many hundreds of voices raised in an excited roar, like that of a crowd at a circus.
Her guards dragged her roughly to her feet, and one of them stooped to cut the rawhide that bound her ankles, and then straightened to do the same to those at her wrists. Vicky sobbed at the bright agony of blood flowing back into her feet and hands.
Her legs collapsed under her and she would have fallen, but rough hands held her and dragged her forward on her knees towards the low entrance of the hut. Outside, there was a dense pack of bodies that filled the narrow street.
Dark menacing figures that pressed forward eagerly as she appeared in the entrance of the hut, and a blood-crazed roar went up from the crowd.
Her guards dragged her forward along the street, and the crowd swarmed forward, keeping pace with her, and the roar of their voices was like the sound of a winter storm.
Hands clutched at her, and her guards beat them away laughingly, and hustled her onwards with her paralysed legs flopping weakly under her. They carried her forward into the goods yards of the railways, through the steel gate, past the mountainous pile of naked mutilated corpses, all that remained of men whom she had helped to nurse.
The yard was lit by the smoky fluttering light of hundreds of torches, and it was only when she was almost up to the warehouse veranda that she recognized the figure that lolled indolently upon his cushions, using the raised concrete ramp as a grandstand from which to direct and watch the execution.
Vicky's terror came rushing back like a black icy flood, and she tried desperately to twist herself free of the clutching hands, but they carried her forward and then lifted her suddenly.
Three of the heavy Galla lances had been set into the soft earth of the yard in the form of a tripod, with the steel lance tips bound firmly at the apex of the pyramid. With a force that she could not resist, her arms and legs were spread, and again she felt the lashing of rawhide at her wrists and ankles.
Her captors fell back in a circle, and she found herself suspended from the tripod of lances like a starfish, and the weight of her body cut the leather straps viciously into her flesh.
She looked up. Directly above her on the concrete ramp sat Ras Kullah. He said something to her in a high piping voice, but she did not understand the words and she could only stare in fascinated terror at his thick, soft lips. The tip of his tongue came out and ran slowly across his lips, like a fat golden cat.
He giggled suddenly and motioned to the two women who flanked him on the cushions. They came down into the yard, with their silver jewellery tinkling and the multicoloured silk of their robes glowing in the lamplight like the plumage of two beautiful birds of paradise.
As though they had rehearsed their movements, one went to each side of Vicky as she hung on the tripod of lances. Their faces were serene, remote and lovely as two exotic blooms on the long graceful stems of their necks.