filthy stained rags that covered the arm, and she felt her gorge rise
at the sweet stench of putrefaction.
Alarmed, she reached up and touched his cheek.
"Gareth, you are hot as a furnace."
"Passion, old girl. The touch of your lily-white, "Let me look at your
arm, "she demanded.
"Better not." He smiled at her, but she caught the iron in his voice.
"Let sleeping dogs lie, what? Nothing we can do about it until we get
back to civilization."
"Gareth-"
"Then my dear, I will buy you a large bottle of Charlie, and send for
the preacher man."
"Gareth, be serious."
"I am serious." Gareth touched her cheek with the fingers of his good
hand. "That was a proposal of marriage, "he said, and she could feel
the fiery heat of the fever in his finger, tips.
"Oh Gareth! Gareth!"
"By which I take it you mean thanks, but no thanks." She nodded
silently, unable to speak.
"Jake?"he asked, and she nodded again.
"Oh well, you could have done a lot better. Me, for instance,"
and he grinned, but the pain was there with the fever in his eyes, deep
and poignant. "On the other hand, you could have done a lot worse." He
turned away abruptly to Sara, taking her arm. "Come along, my dear."
Then over his shoulder, "We'll be back as soon as the bombers come.
Get ready to run."
"Where to? "she called after them.
"I don't know," he grinned. "But we'll try to think of a pleasant
place." Jake heard them first, so far off that it was only the
hive-sound of bees on a drowsy summer's day, and almost immediately it
was gone again, blanketed by the mountains.
"Here they come," he said, and almost immediately, as if in
confirmation, a shell burst under the lee of the rock wall, fired from
the Italian battery a mile down the gorge. The yellow smoke from the
marker poured a thick column into the still sunlit air.
"Move!" shouted Gareth, and placed the silver command whistle between
his lips and blew a series of sharp blasts.
But by the time they had hurried along the wall, making certain that
all the Harari had understood and were running back down the valley
into the cedar forests, the drone of approaching engines was growing
louder.
"Let's go!" called Jake urgently, and caught Gareth's good arm.
They turned and ran, pelting back across the open ground to the lip of
the valley, and Jake looked back over his shoulder as they reached
it.
The first gigantic bomber came out of the mouth of the gorge, and the
spread of its black wings seemed to darken the sky. Two bombs fell
from under it; one burst short but the second struck the wall, and the
blast knocked them both off their feet, slamming them savagely against
the earth.
When Jake lifted his head again, he saw through the fumes and smoke the
gaping breach it had blown in the rock wall.
"Well, now the party is definitely over," he said, and hauled
Gareth to his feet.
Where are we going?" shouted Vicky from the cabin below them, and
neither Jake in the driver's seat nor Gareth in the turret replied.
"Can't we just drive up the road to Dessie?" Sara demanded; she sat
cross-legged on the floor of the cabin with Gregorius's head cushioned
on her lap. "We could fight our way through those cowardly
Gallas."
"We've got enough gas to take us about another five miles."
"Our best bet is to drive to the foot of Ambo Sacal." Gareth pointed
to the towering bulk of the mountain that rose sheer into the southern
sky. "Ditch the car there and try and make it on foot across the
mountains." Vicky crawled up into the turret beside him, and thrust
her head out of the hatch. Together they stared up at the sheer sides
of the Ambo.
"What about Gregorius?"she asked.
"We'll have to carry him."
"We'll never make it. The mountains are crawling with Gallas."
"Have you got a better idea?" Gareth asked,
and she looked despairingly around her.
Priscilla the Pig was the only thing that moved in the whole valley.
The Harari had vanished into the rocky ground on the slopes of the
mountains, and behind them the Italian tanks had not yet come in over
the lip of the valley.
She lifted her eyes to the sky again, where only a few wreaths of cloud
still clung to the peaks, and suddenly her whole mood changed.
Her chin came up, and new colour flooded into her cheeks her hand shook
as she pointed up between the peaks.
"Yes," she cried. "Yes, I've got a better idea. Look! Oh, won't "you
look!" The tiny blue aircraft caught the sun as it banked in steeply,
turning in under the rearing granite cliffs, and it flashed like a
dragonfly in flight.
"Italian?" Gareth stared up at it.
"No! No! Vicky shook her head. "It's Lij Mikhael's plane.
I recognize it. It came to fetch him here before." She was laughing
almost hysterically, her eyes shining. "He said he would send it,
that's what he was trying to tell me before he was cut off."
"Where will it land?" Gareth demanded, and Vicky scrambled down into
the driver's compartment to direct him towards the polo field beyond
the burned and still smoking town.
They watched anxiously, all of them except Gregorius, standing on the
edge of the open field close beside the bulk of the car, all their
