up from where he had been cowering in his blankets on the rocky ground
between the steel tracks. The Count could hear his teeth clattering in
his skull like typewriter keys.
"Send the driver to fetch Major Castelani, immediately."
"Immediately." Gino's head disappeared, and a few moments later
appeared again so abruptly that the Count let out a startled cry and
pointed the loaded pistol between his eyes.
"Excellency,"squawked Gino.
"Idiot," snarled the Count, his voice husky with terror. "I could have
killed you, don't you realize I have the reactions of a leopard?"
"Excellency, may I enter the machine?".
Aldo Belli thought about the request for a moment, and then enjoyed a
perverse pleasure in refusing.
"Make me a cup of coffee," he ordered, but when it came he found that
the incessant cacophony of drums that filled his head had worked on his
nerves to the point where he could not hold the mug steady, and the rim
rattled against his teeth.
"Goat's urine!" snapped the Count, hoping that Gino had not noticed
the unsteady hand. "You are trying to poison me," he accused and
tossed the steaming liquid over the side, and at that moment the stocky
figure of the Major loomed out of the darkness of the gorge.
"The men are standing to, Colonel he growled. "In another fifteen
minutes it will be light enough-"
"Good. Good." The Count cut him short. "I have decided that I should
return immediately to headquarters. General Badoglio will expect
me-"
"Excellent Colonel,"
the Major interrupted in his turn. "I have received intelligence that
large bands of the enemy have infiltrated our lines, and are operating
in the rear areas.
There is a good chance you might be able to bring them to account."
Castelani, by this time, knew his man intimately.
"Of course, with the small escort that can be spared, it will be a
desperate business."
"On the other hand, the Count mused aloud, "I
wonder if my heart does not lie here with my boys? There comes a time
when a warrior must trust his heart rather than his head and I
warn you, Castellani, my fighting blood is aroused."
"Indeed, Colonel."
"I shall move up immediately," announced Aldo Belli, and glanced
anxiously back into the dark depths of the gorge. His intention was to
place his command tank fairly in the centre of the armoured column,
protected from both front and rear.
The drumming continued, booming and pounding against his brain until he
felt he must scream aloud.
It seemed to emanate from the very earth, out of the fierce dark slope
of rock directly ahead, and it bounced and reverberated from the rock
walls of the gorge, driving in upon him in great hammers of sound.
Suddenly, the Count realized that the darkness was dispersing. He
could make out the shape of a stunted cedar tree on the scree slope
above his position where, moments before, there had been only black
shades. The tree looked like some misshapen monster, and quickly the
Count averted his eyes and looked upwards.
Between the mountains the narrow strip of sky was defined, a paler pink
light against the black brooding mass of rock. He dropped his gaze and
looked ahead, the darkness retreated rapidly, and the dawn came with
dramatic African suddenness.
Then the beat of the drums stopped. It was so abrupt, the transition
from a pounding sea of sound to the deathly, unearthly silence of the
African dawn in the mountains.
The shock of it held Aldo Belli transfixed and he peered, blinking like
an owl, up the gorge.
There was a new sound, thin and high as the sound of night birds
flying, plaintive and weird, an ululation that rose and fell so that it
was many moments before he recognized it as the sound of hundreds upon
hundreds of human voices; Suddenly he started, and his chin snapped
up.
"Mary, Mother of God," he whispered, as he stared up the gorge.
It seemed that the rock was rolling down swiftly upon them like a dark
fluid avalanche, and the ululation rose, becoming a wild loolooing
clamour. Swiftly the light strengthened and the Count realized that
the avalanche was a sweeping tide of human shapes.
"Pray for us sinners," breathed the Count and crossed himself swiftly,
and at that instant he heard Castelani's voice, like the bellow of a
wild bull, out of the darkened Italian positions.
Instantly the machine guns opened together in a thunderous hammering
roar that drowned out all other sound.
The tide of humanity seemed no longer to be moving forward; like a wave
upon a rock it broke on the Italian guns, and milled and eddied about
the growing reef of their own fallen bodies.
The light was stronger now strong enough for the Count to see clearly
the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the massed charge of
Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead,
as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front
of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber
over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a
wall of bodies.
The Count's terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle.
