she saw the godlike profile, perfect and cold. As the cry of agony
died away, he leaned forward, took a burning twig from the fire and lit
the long black cheroot between his white teeth.
He drew deeply and held the smoke, then let it trickle out through his
nostrils. Then he turned deliberately to Vicky.
"You heard what the lady said. It's the custom." He spoke to
Vicky, but the remark was addressed to Jake Barton, and his eyes
flicked mockingly to him, a half-smile on his lips.
The two men held each other's eyes, unblinking and expressionless.
The cry of agony came again but this time weaker, the aching ringing
tone reduced to a sobbing echo on the dark night.
Jake Barton rose to his feet, coming erect with one fluid movement, and
in a continuation of the same movement he crossed to the piles of
captured Italian weapons. He stooped and picked up an officer's
automatic pistol, a 7 men. Beretta, still in its polished leather
holster, and he unbuckled the flap and drew the weapon,
discarding the leather holster and waist belt. He checked the loaded
magazine and then, with a slap of his palm, thrust it back into the
recessed butt, pumped the slide to throw a round into the breech,
flicked the safety-catch across and slipped the pistol into the pocket
of his breeches.
Without looking again at any of the others, he strode away,
disappearing beyond the firelight into the darkness, in the direction
of the Galla encampment.
"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfashioned
luxury an expensive one in this age, and especially in this place,"
murmured Gareth, and inspected the ash of his cheroot.
"They will kill him if he goes in there alone," said Sara in a
completely matter-of-fact tone. "They will be hungry for more blood
and they'll kill him "Oh, I don't know it's as bad as that, "Gareth
demurred.
"Oh, yes. They'll kill him," said Sara, and turned back to Vicky.
"Are you going to let him go? They are only Italians," she pointed
out. For a moment, the two women stared at each other, and then Vicky
leaped to her feet and went after Jake, the blue linen swirling
gracefully around her legs and the firelight playing like liquid bronze
gold on her hair as she ran.
She caught up with Jake at the perimeter of the Galla encampment,
and she fell in beside him, taking two quick steps to each of his
strides.
"Go back," he said softly, but she did not reply and skipped to keep up
with him.
"Do what I say."
"No, I'm coming with you." He stopped and swung to face her, and she
lifted her chin defiantly, throwing back her shoulders and drawing
herself up to her full height so that she came to his shoulder.
Listen to me " he began, and then stopped as the tortured being cried
again in the night, and it was a blubbering incoherent sound,
half moan, half sob followed almost immediately by the throaty roar of
many hundred voices, the blood roar of a hunting pack, deep and
savage.
"That's what it will be like." His head was turned away from her to
listen and his eyes were haunted.
"I'm coming," she said stubbornly, and he did not reply, but broke away
and hurried forward towards the glowing reflection of the Galla fires
which turned the branches of the camel-thorns to high cathedral roofs
of ruddy light over the encampment.
There were no sentries posted, and they passed unnoticed through the
horse lines and the hastily thatched tukuLs and leather tents,
coming suddenly into the centre of the camp where the fires were
burning and the Gallas were assembled, a huge dark circle of squatting
figures; the firelight bronzed their eager hawk features, and the whole
assembly hummed with the charged tension that always holds the
spectators at a blood spectacle. Jake remembered it from a prize fight
in Madison Square Garden and again from a cock fight in Havana.
The blood lust was running high, and they growled like an animal
pack.
"That is Ras Kullah, whispered Vicky, tugging at Jake's sleeve,
and he glanced across the open arena of beaten earth.
Kullah sat on a pile of carpets and cushions, a silk shawl striped in a
dozen brilliant colours was draped across his head and shoulders,
masking his soft smooth face with shadow but the firelight caught his
eyes and made them glitter with a peculiarly feverish fury.
One of his fat ivory-coloured hands was clenched in his lap, while his
other arm was cast around the waist of the woman who sat beside him,
and his hand kneaded and Wworled her yielding flesh. The hand seemed
to have life of its own, and it moved, pale and obscene, like a huge
slug pulsing softly as it devoured the swollen ripe fruits of the
woman's bosom.
Beyond the fires, on the far side of the circle of open earth a group
of three Italian soldiers were clustered fearfully, their faces shiny
white with sweat and terror in the firelight, and their hands bound
behind their backs. They had been stripped to their breeches,
and the exposed skin of their backs and arms was welted and bruised
where they had been beaten and abused. Their naked feet were swollen
