and her ankles were bound the same way.
Outside, she could hear the rustle and crackle of the burning town,
with an occasional louder crash as a roof collapsed. There were also
the shouts and wild laughter of the Gallas, drunk on blood and te,
and the chilling sound of the few Harari captives who had been saved
from the initial massacre to provide entertainment during the long wait
before Ras Kullah arrived in the captured town.
Vicky did not know how long she had lain. Her hands and feet were
without feeling, for the rawhide ropes were tightly knotted. Her ribs
ached from the blow that had felled her, and the icy cold of the
mountain night had permeated her whole body so that the marrow in her
bones ached with it, and fits of shivering racked her as though she
were in fever. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her lips were
blue and tight, but she could not move. Any attempt to alter her
position or relieve her cramped limbs was immediately greeted with a
blow or a kick from the guards who stood over her.
At last her mind blacked out, not into sleep, for she could still dimly
hear the din from around the hut, but into a kind of coma in which
sense of time was lost, and the acute discomfort of the cold and her
bonds receded.
Hours must have passed in this stupor of exhaustion and cold, when she
was roused by another kick in her stomach and she gasped and sobbed
with the fresh pain of it.
She was aware immediately of a change in the volume of sound outside
the hut. There were many hundreds of voices raised in an excited roar,
like that of a crowd at a circus.
Her guards dragged her roughly to her feet, and one of them stooped to
cut the rawhide that bound her ankles, and then straightened to do the
same to those at her wrists. Vicky sobbed at the bright agony of blood
flowing back into her feet and hands.
Her legs collapsed under her and she would have fallen, but rough hands
held her and dragged her forward on her knees towards the low entrance
of the hut. Outside, there was a dense pack of bodies that filled the
narrow street.
Dark menacing figures that pressed forward eagerly as she appeared in
the entrance of the hut, and a blood-crazed roar went up from the
crowd.
Her guards dragged her forward along the street, and the crowd swarmed
forward, keeping pace with her, and the roar of their voices was like
the sound of a winter storm.
Hands clutched at her, and her guards beat them away laughingly,
and hustled her onwards with her paralysed legs flopping weakly under
her. They carried her forward into the goods yards of the railways,
through the steel gate, past the mountainous pile of naked mutilated
corpses, all that remained of men whom she had helped to nurse.
The yard was lit by the smoky fluttering light of hundreds of torches,
and it was only when she was almost up to the warehouse veranda that
she recognized the figure that lolled indolently upon his cushions,
using the raised concrete ramp as a grandstand from which to direct and
watch the execution.
Vicky's terror came rushing back like a black icy flood, and she tried
desperately to twist herself free of the clutching hands, but they
carried her forward and then lifted her suddenly.
Three of the heavy Galla lances had been set into the soft earth of the
yard in the form of a tripod, with the steel lance tips bound firmly at
the apex of the pyramid. With a force that she could not resist, her
arms and legs were spread, and again she felt the lashing of rawhide at
her wrists and ankles.
Her captors fell back in a circle, and she found herself suspended from
the tripod of lances like a starfish, and the weight of her body cut
the leather straps viciously into her flesh.
She looked up. Directly above her on the concrete ramp sat Ras
Kullah. He said something to her in a high piping voice, but she did
not understand the words and she could only stare in fascinated terror
at his thick, soft lips. The tip of his tongue came out and ran slowly
across his lips, like a fat golden cat.
He giggled suddenly and motioned to the two women who flanked him on
the cushions. They came down into the yard, with their silver
jewellery tinkling and the multicoloured silk of their robes glowing in
the lamplight like the plumage of two beautiful birds of paradise.
As though they had rehearsed their movements, one went to each side of
Vicky as she hung on the tripod of lances. Their faces were serene,
remote and lovely as two exotic blooms on the long graceful stems of
their necks.
It was only when they reached up to touch her that Vicky saw the little
silver knives in their hands, and she wriggled helplessly,
her head twisting to watch the blades.
With expert economical movements the two women slit the fabric of
Vicky's clothing, from the yoke of her blouse at the throat, down in a
single stroke to the hem of her skirt, and the dress fell away like an
autumn leaf, and dropped into the mud below her.
Ras Kullah clapped his hands with glee, and the dense pack of dark
bodies swayed and growled, pressing a little closer.
