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

sparsely grassed and rolling landscape beneath the mountains. Over it

all hung a fine mist of dust, like sea fret on a windy day, and the

sunlight caught and flashed from the burnished surfaces of the bronze

war shields and the lifted lance-tips. Closer came the mass of riders

until the bright spots of the silk shammas of the officers and noblemen

showed clearly through the loom of the dust cloud.

Standing on the turret of Priscilla the Pig, Jake shaded the lens of

his binoculars with his helmet and tried to see beyond the dust clouds,

searching anxiously for any pursuit by the Italians. He felt

goose-flesh march up his arms and tickle the thick hair at the nape of

his neck as he imagined this sprawling rabble caught in a crossfire of

modern machine guns, and he fretted for the arrival of their own

weapons which were lost somewhere amongst that ragged army.

He felt a touch on his shoulder and turned quickly to find Lij Mikhael

beside him.

"Thank you, Mr. Barton,"said the Prince quietly, and Jake shrugged and

turned back to his scrutiny of the distant plains.

"It was not the correct thing but I thank you all the same." How is

she?"

"I have just left her with Miss Camberwell. She is resting and I think

she will be well." They were silent a while longer, before Jake spoke

again.

"I'm worried, Prince. We are wide open. If the Italians chase now it

will be bloody murder. Where are the guns?

We must have the guns." Lij Mikhael pointed out on to the left rear

flank of the approaching host.

"There," and Jake noticed for the first time the ungainly shapes of the

pack camels, almost obscured by dust and distances, but standing taller

than the shaggy little Harari ponies that surrounded them, and

lumbering stolidly onwards towards where the cars waited. "They will

be here in half an hour." Jake nodded with relief. He began planning

how he would arm the cars immediately, so that they could be deployed

to counter another Italian attack but the Prince interrupted his

thoughts.

"Mr. Barton, how long have you known Major Swales?" Jake lowered the

glasses and grinned.

"Sometimes I think too long," and regretted it, as he noticed the

Prince's immediate anxiety.

"No. I didn't mean that. It was a bad joke. I haven't known him

long."

"We checked his record very carefully before " he hesitated.

"Before tricking him into taking on this commission," Jake suggested,

and the Prince smiled faintly and nodded.

"Precisely," he agreed. "All the evidence suggests that he is an

unscrupulous man, but a skilled soldier with a proven record of

achievement in training raw recruits. He is an expert weapons

instructor, with a full knowledge of the mechanism and exploitation of

modern weapons." The Prince paused.

"Just don't get into a card game with him."

"I will take your advice, Mr. Barton." The Prince smiled fleetingly,

and then was serious again. "Miss Camberwell called him a coward. That

is not so. He was acting under my direct orders, as a soldier

should."

"Point taken," grinned Jake. "But then I'm not a soldier, only a

grease monkey." But the Prince brushed the disclaimer aside.

"He is probably a better man than he thinks he is," said Jake, and the

Prince nodded.

"His combat record in France is impressive. The Military Cross and

three times mentioned in despatches."

"Yeah, you have me convinced," murmured Jake. "Is that what you

wanted?"

"No," admitted the Prince reluctantly. "I had hoped that you might

convince me," and they both laughed.

"And did you check my record also? "Jake asked.

"No," admitted the Prince. "The first time I ever heard of you was in

Dares Salaam. You and your strange machines were a bonus a surprise

packet." The Prince paused again, and then spoke so softly that Jake

barely caught the words, "and perhaps the best end of the bargain.

"Then he lifted his chin and looked steadily into Jake's eyes."

The anger is still with you," he said. "

"I can see how strong it is." With surprise, Jake realized that the

Prince was correct.

The anger was in him. No longer the leaping flames that had kindled at

the first shock of the atrocity. Those had burned down into a thick

glowing bed in the pit of his guts, but the memory of men and women

caught by the guns and the mortars would sustain that glow for a long

time ahead.

"I think now you are committed to us," the Lij went on softly, and Jake

was amazed at the man's perception. He had not yet recognized that

commitment himself; for the first time since he had landed in Africa,

he was motivated by something outside himself. He knew that he would

stay now, and that he would fight with the Lij and these people as long

as they needed him. In an intuitive flash he realized that if these

simple people were enslaved, then all of mankind including Jake Barton

were themselves deprived of a measure of freedom. A line, almost

forgotten, imperfectly learned long ago and not then understood

surfaced in his memory.

"No man is an island," - " he said, and the Lij nodded and continued

the quotation.

"entire of itself. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am

involved in mankind"." The Lifs dark eyes glowed. "Yes, Mr. Barton,

John Donne. I think that in you I have been lucky. You are fire, and

Gareth Swales is ice. It will work for me. Already there is a bond

between you."

"A bond?" and Jake laughed, a brief harsh bark of laughter, but then

stopped and thought about the Prince's words. The man had even greater

perception than Jake had at first realized. He had a knack of turning

over unrecognized truths.

"Yes. A bond," said the Lij. "Fire and ice. You will see." They

were silent for a while, standing high on the steel turret of the car,

bare-headed in the sun, each man thinking his own thoughts.

Then the Lij roused himself and turned to point into the west.

"There is the heart of Ethiopia,"he said. "The mountains." They both

lifted their heads to the soaring peaks, and the great flat-topped

Ambas that characterized the Ethiopian highlands.

Each table land was divided from the next by sheer walls of riven rock,

blue with distance and remote as the clouds into which they seemed to

rise, and by the deep dark gorges that looked to split the earth like

the axe-stroke of a giant, plunging thousands upon thousands of feet to

the swiftly raging torrents in their depths.

"The mountains protect us. For a hundred miles on each side no enemy

may pass. "The Prince swept his arms wide to encompass the curving

blue wall of rock that faded both north and south into the smoky

distances where they merged with the paler bright blue of the sky.

"But there is the Sardi Gorge. "Jake saw it cleave the wall of

mountains, a deep funnel driving into the rock perhaps fifteen miles

across at its widest point, but then narrowing swiftly and climbing

steeply towards the distant heights.

"The Sardi Gorge," the Prince repeated. "A lance pointed into the