The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like
ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat,
and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in
deep windrows.
Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the
barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords,
and were through.
Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the
Italian trenches, shot to bloody pieces by close range volleys of rifle
fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures
leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and
dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.
They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.
He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball,
and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried
only a sword, as long as the spread of a man's arms and as broad as the
span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as
he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.
The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles
which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long
thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword
above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up
the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall
leader came on at a dead run.
The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by
the man's persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.
In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing
burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly
and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust
from the warrior's robes, and leaving bloody splotches across his chest
yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of
trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed
as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His
charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very
close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see
the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity
of the man's rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with
dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the
air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.
The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the
man's body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh
fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards,
staggering and dragging the sword beside him.
The last burst of fire struck him, and the sword dropped from his hand;
he sank to his knees, but kept crawling now he had seen the Count and
his eyes fastened on the white man's face. He tried to shout
something, but the sound was drowned in a bright flooding gout of blood
that filled his open mouth. The crawling, mutilated figure reached the
hull of the stationary tank, and the Italian almost as though in awe of
the man's tenacity. guns fell silent
Laboriously, the dying warrior dragged his broken body up towards the
Count, watching him with a terrible dying anger, and the Count fumbled
nervously with the ivory butt of the Beretta, slipping a fresh clip of
cartridges into the recessed butt.
"Stop him, you fools," he cried. "Kill him! Don't let him get in."
But the guns were silent.
With shaking hands, the Count slapped the magazine home and lifted the
pistol. At a range of six feet he sighted briefly into the crawling
Ethiopian.
He emptied the magazine of the Beretta in frantic haste, the shots
crashing out in rapid succession in the sudden silence that hung over
the field.
A bullet struck the warrior in the centre of his sweat-glazed forehead,
leaving a perfectly round black hole in the gleaming brown skin, and
the man slithered backwards and then rolled down the hull,
coming to rest at last upon his back, and he stared up at the swiftly
lightening sky with wide, unseeing eyes. Out between the slack lips
dropped a set of artificial teeth, and the old mouth collapsed and fell
inwards.
The Count was shaking still, but then quite unexpectedly a surging
emotion swept away the terrors that had gripped him. He felt a vast
proprietorial sense of emotional involvement with the man he had killed
he wanted to take some part of him, some trophy of his kill. He wanted
to scalp him, or take his head and have it cured so that he might
preserve this moment for ever, but before he could move, there was the
shrilling of whistles, and a bugle began urgently to sound the
advance.
On the slope ahead of them, only the dead lay in their piles and
mounds, while the last of those who had survived that crazy suicidal
charge were disappearing like wisps of smoke back among the rocks.
The road to Sardi was open, and like the hard professional he was,
