eighteen inches from the Count's left ear, with a crack of disrupted
air that stunned him, before exiting through the rear wall of the blind
and howling onwards to burst a mile out in the empty desert.
"If the Count no longer needs me-" Gino snapped a hasty salute and
before the Count had recovered his wits enough to forbid it, he had
dived through the shell hole in the rear wall of the blind and hit the
ground on the far side, already running.
Gino was not alone. From each of the blinds along the line leapt the
figures of the other hunters, the sound of their hysterical cries
almost drowned by the roar of engines, the trumpeting of an angry bull
elephant and the continuous thudding roar of cannon fire.
The Count tried to rise from his chair, but his legs betrayed him and
he managed only a series of convulsive leaps. His mouth gaped wide in
his deathly pale face, but no sound came out of it. The Count was
beyond speech, almost beyond movement just the strength for one more
desperate heave, and the chair toppled forward, throwing the Count face
down upon the sunken earth floor of the blind, where he covered his
head with both arms.
At that instant, the armoured car, still under full throttle, came in
through the front wall. The thatched blind exploded around it, but the
impetus of the car's charge was sufficient to carry it in a single leap
over the dugout. The spinning wheels hurled inches over the
Count's prostrate form, showering him with a stinging barrage of sand
and loose gravel. Then it was gone.
The Count struggled to sit up, and had almost succeeded when the huge
enraged form of the bull elephant pounded over the blind. One of its
great feet struck the Count a glancing blow on the shoulder and he
screamed like a hand-saw and once again flung himself flat on the floor
of the dugout while the elephant pounded onwards towards the far
horizon, still in pursuit of the flying car.
The earth shook beneath the approach of another heavy body, and the
Count flattened himself to the floor of the dugout deafened,
dazed and paralysed with terror, until the commander of tanks stood
over him and asked solicitously, "Was the game to your liking, my
Colonel?" Even after Gino returned and Helped the Count to his feet,
dusted him down and helped him into the back seat of the Rolls,
the threats and insults still poured from the Count's choked throat in
a high-pitched stream.
"You are a degenerate and a coward. You are guilty of dereliction of
duty, of gross irresponsibility. You allowed them to escape, sir and
you placed me in deadly peril-" They eased the Count down on the
cushions of the Rolls, but as the car pulled away he jumped up to hurl
a parting salvo at the Captain of tanks.
"You are an irresponsible degenerate, sir! - a coward and a
Bolshevik and I shall personally command your firing squad-" His voice
faded into the distance as the Rolls drew away up the ridge in the
direction of the camp, but the Count's good arm was still waving and
gesticulating as they crossed the skyline.
The elephant followed them far out across the desert, long after the
pursuing tank squadron had been left behind and abandoned the chase.
The old bull lost ground steadily over the last mile or so,
until at last he also gave up and stood swaying with exhaustion but
still shaking out his ears and throwing up his trunk in that
truculent,
almost human gesture of challenge and defiance.
Gareth saluted him with respect as they drew away and left him,
like a tall black monolith, out on the dry pale plains. Then he lit
two cheroots, crouching down into the turret out of the wind, and
passed one down to Jake in the driver's compartment.
"A good day's work, (old son. We pronged two of the godless ones,
and we have put the others in the right frame of mind."
"How's that again? "Jake puffed gratefully at the cheroot.
"Next time those tank men lay eyes on us, they'll not stop to count
consequences, but they'll be after us like a pack of long dogs after a
bitch."
"And that's a good thing? "Jake removed the cheroot from his mouth to
ask incredulously.
"That's a good thing' Gareth assured him.
"Well, you could have fooled me." He drove on for a few more minutes
in silence towards the mountains, then shook his head bemusedly.
Tranged? What the hell kind of word is that?"
"Just thought of it this minute," Gareth said. "Expressive, what?" -"
The Count lay face down upon his cot; he wore only a pair of silk
shorts, of a pale and delicate blue, embroidered with his family coat
of arms.
His body was smooth and pale and plump, with that sleek well-fed sheen
which takes a great deal of money, food and drink to nourish. On the
pale skin his body hair was dark and curly and crisp as newly picked
lettuce leaves. It grew in a light cloud across his shoulders,
and then descended his back to disappear at last like a wisp of smoke
into the cleft of his milky buttocks that showed coyly above the
waistband of his shorts.
Now the smoothness of his body was spoiled by the ugly red abrasions
