Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur (книги онлайн без регистрации полностью .TXT) 📗

neck. The Ras went over backwards, and flapped and jumped like a

maimed frog.

Garet stepped over him, and jumped down lightly into the yard. A

Galla rushed at him with a broadsword held high above his head. Gareth

fired again without lifting the rifle, stepped over the body and

reached Vicky's side just as Jake Barton swung the car to a skidding

halt next to them and tumbled out of the driver's hatch with a Harari

dagger in his hand.

In the turret above them, Sara fired the Vickers in a long continuous

blast, swinging it back and forth in its limited traverse and the Galla

crowd scattered panic-stricken into the night.

Jake slashed the thongs that held Vicky suspended and she fell forward

into his arms.

Gareth stooped and gathered Vicky's torn clothing out of the mud and

bundled it under his injured armpit.

"Shall we move on now, old son?" he asked Jake genially.

"I think the fun is over," and between them they lifted Vicky up the

side of the hull.

The drums brought Count Aldo Belli out of a troubled dream-plagued

sleep and he sat bolt upright from his hard couch on the floorboards of

the hull, with his eyes wide and staring, and -fumbled frantically for

his pistol.

"Gino!" he shouted. "Gino!" and there was no reply. Only that

terrible rhythm in the night, pounding against his head so that he

thought it might drive him mad. He tried to close his ears, pressing

the palms of his hands to them, but the sound came through, like a

gigantic pulse, the heartbeat of this cruel and savage land.

He could bear it no longer, and he crawled up inside the hull until he

reached the rear hatch of the tank, and thrust his head out.

"Gino!" He was answered instantly. The little sergeant's head popped

up from where he had been cowering in his blankets on the rocky ground

between the steel tracks. The Count could hear his teeth clattering in

his skull like typewriter keys.

"Send the driver to fetch Major Castelani, immediately."

"Immediately." Gino's head disappeared, and a few moments later

appeared again so abruptly that the Count let out a startled cry and

pointed the loaded pistol between his eyes.

"Excellency,"squawked Gino.

"Idiot," snarled the Count, his voice husky with terror. "I could have

killed you, don't you realize I have the reactions of a leopard?"

"Excellency, may I enter the machine?".

Aldo Belli thought about the request for a moment, and then enjoyed a

perverse pleasure in refusing.

"Make me a cup of coffee," he ordered, but when it came he found that

the incessant cacophony of drums that filled his head had worked on his

nerves to the point where he could not hold the mug steady, and the rim

rattled against his teeth.

"Goat's urine!" snapped the Count, hoping that Gino had not noticed

the unsteady hand. "You are trying to poison me," he accused and

tossed the steaming liquid over the side, and at that moment the stocky

figure of the Major loomed out of the darkness of the gorge.

"The men are standing to, Colonel he growled. "In another fifteen

minutes it will be light enough-"

"Good. Good." The Count cut him short. "I have decided that I should

return immediately to headquarters. General Badoglio will expect

me-"

"Excellent Colonel,"

the Major interrupted in his turn. "I have received intelligence that

large bands of the enemy have infiltrated our lines, and are operating

in the rear areas.

There is a good chance you might be able to bring them to account."

Castelani, by this time, knew his man intimately.

"Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a

desperate business."

"On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, "I

wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time

when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I

warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused."

"Indeed, Colonel."

"I shall move up immediately," announced Aldo Belli, and glanced

anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to

place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column,

protected from both front and rear.

The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he

felt he must scream aloud.

It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope

of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock

walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.

Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He

could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope

above his position where, moments before, there had been only black

shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the

Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.

Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink

light against the black brooding mass of rock. He dropped his gaze and

looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with

dramatic African suddenness.

Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition

from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the

African dawn in the mountains.

The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like

an owl, up the gorge.

There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds

flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it

was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon

hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped

up.

"Mary, Mother of God," he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.

It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark

fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing

clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that

the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.

"Pray for us sinners," breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly,

and at that instant he heard Castelani's voice, like the bellow of a

wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.

Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering

roar that drowned out all other sound.

The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave

upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about

the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.

The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly

the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the massed charge of

Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead,

as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front

of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber

over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a

wall of bodies.

The Count's terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle.

The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like

ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat,

and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in

deep windrows.

Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the