all directions.
Each time the bombers had come one after the other, endlessly hour
after hour, they left the defence so broken that the wave of infantry
that followed them could not be repelled. Each time they had been
driven out of their trenches, to toil back, upwards to the next line of
defence.
This was the last line, two miles behind them stood the granite portals
that headed the gorge, and beyond them, the town of Sardi and the open
way to the Dessie road.
"Why don't you try and get a little sleep, "Jake suggested, and
involuntarily glanced down at Gareth's arm. It was swathed in strips
of torn shirt, and suspended in a makeshift sling from around his
neck.
The discharge of lymph and pus and the coating of engine grease had
soaked through the crude bandage. It was an ugly sight covered, but
Jake remembered what it looked like without the bandage. The nitrogen
mustard had flayed it from shoulder to wrist, as though it had been
plunged into a pot of boiling water and Jake wondered how much good the
coating of greene was doing it. There was no other treatment,
however,
and at least it kept the air from the terrible injury.
"I'll wait until dark," Gareth murmured, and with his good hand lifted
the binoculars to his eyes. "I've got a funny feeling. It's too quiet
down there." They were silent again, the silence of extreme
exhaustion.
"It's too quiet, said Gareth again, and winced as he moved the arm.
"They haven't got time to sit around like this. They've got to keep
pushing pushing." And then, irrelevantly, "God, I'd give one testicle
for a cheroot. A Romeo y Juliette-" He broke off abruptly,
and then both of them straightened up.
"Do you hear what I think I hear?" asked Gareth.
"I think I do."
"it had to come, of course, said Gareth. "I'm only surprised it took
this long. But it's a long, hard ride from
Asmara to here. So that's what they were waiting for." The sound was
unmistakable in the brooding silence of the gorge, tunnelled up to them
by the rock walls. It was faint still, but there was no doubting the
clanking clatter, and the shrill squeak of turning steel tracks. Each
second it grew nearer, and now they could hear the soft growl of the
engines.
"That has got to be the most unholy sound in the world," said
Jake.
"Tanks," said Gareth. "Bloody tanks."
"They won't get here before dark," Jake guessed. And they won't risk a
night attack."
No Gareth agreed. "They'll come at dawn."
"Tanks and Capronis instead of ham and eggs?" Gareth shrugged wearily.
"That's about the size of it, old son." Colonel Count Aldo Belli was
not at all certain of the wisdom of his actions, and he thought that
Gino was justified in looking up at him with those reproachful
spaniel's eyes. They should have been still comfortably ensconced
behind the formidable de fences of Chaldi Wells.
However, a number of powerful influences had combined to drive him
forward once again.
Not the least powerful of these were the daily radio messages from
General Badogho's headquarters, urging him to intersect the Dessie
road, "before the fish slips through our net'. These messages were
daily more harsh and threatening in character, and were immediately
passed on with the Count's own embellishments to Major Luigi Castelani
who had command of the column struggling up the gorge.
Now at last Castelani had radioed back to the Count the welcome news
that he stood at the very head of the gorge, and the next push would
carry him into the town of Sardi itself. The Count had decided,
after long and deep meditation, that to ride into the enemy stronghold
at the moment of its capture would so enhance his reputation as to be
worth the small danger involved. Major Castelani had assured him that
the enemy was broken and whipped, had suffered enormous casualties and
was no longer a coherent fighting force. Those odds were acceptable to
the Count.
The final circumstance that persuaded him to leave the camp,
abandon the new military philosophy, and move cautiously up the Sardi
Gorge was the arrival of the armoured column from Asmara. These
machines were to replace those that the savage enemy had so
perfidiously trapped and burned. Despite all the Count's pleading and
blustering, it had taken a week for them to be diverted from Massawa,
brought up to Asmara by train, and then for them to complete the long
slow crossing of the Danakil.
Now, however, they had arrived and the Count had immediately
requisitioned one of the six tanks as his personal command vehicle.
Once he was within the thick armoured hull, he had experienced a new
flood of confidence and courage.
"Onwards to Sardi, to write in blood upon the glorious pages of
history!" were the words that occurred to him, and Gino's face had
creased up into that spaniel's expression.
Now in the lowering shades of evening, grinding up the rocky pathway
while walls of sheer rock rose on either hand, seeming to meet the
sullen purple strip of sky high above, the Count was having serious
doubts about the whole wild venture.
He peered out from the turret of his command tank, his eyes huge and
