By the time the groom reached the deep wadi, the Ras's following was at
last succumbing to the effects of a full night's festivities.
Many of them had drifted away to find a place to sleep, others had
merely huddled down in their robes and slept where they had eaten.
Only the hardened few still ate and drank, argued and sang, or sat in
tejnumbed silence about the fires watching the womenfolk begin to
prepare the morning meal.
The boy flung himself off the mare at the entrance to the caves,
ducked under the arms of the sentries who would have restrained him and
ran into the crowded, smoky and dimly lit interior. He was gabbling
with fright and importance, the words tumbling over each other and
making no sense until Lij Mikhael caught him by the upper arms and
shook him to restore his senses.
Then the story he told made sense, and rang with urgent conviction.
Those within earshot shouted it to those further back, and within
seconds the story, distorted and garbled, had flashed through the
gathering and was running wildly through the whole encampment.
The sleepers awakened, every man armed and every woman and child
curious and voluble. They streamed out of the caves and from the rough
tents and shelters in the narrow ravines. Without command, moving like
a shoal of fish without a leader but with as ingle purpose, laughing
sceptic ally or shouting speculation and comment and query, brandishing
shields and ancient firearms, the women clutching their infants, and
the older children dancing around them or darting ahead, the shapeless
mob streamed out of the broken ground and down into the saucer-shaped
valley of the wells.
In the caves, Lij Mikhael was still explaining the boy's story to the
foreigners, and arguing the details and implications with them and his
father. It was Jake Barton who realized the danger.
"If the Italians have sent in a unit to grab the wells, then it's a
calculated act of war. They'll be looking for trouble, Prince.
You'd best forbid any of your men to go down there, until we have sized
up Xhe situation properly." It was too late, far too late. In the
first faint glimmer of dawn, when the light plays weird tricks on a
man's eyes, the Italian sentries peering over their parapets saw a wall
of humanity swarming out of the dark and broken ground, and heard the
rising hubbub of hundreds of excited voices.
When the drumming had begun, many of the black shirts were huddled
below the firing step of their trenches, swaddled in their greatcoats
and sleeping the exhausted sleep of men who had travelled all the
previous day, and worked all the night.
The non-commissioned officers kicked and pulled them to their feet, and
shoved them to their positions along the parapet. From here they
peered, befuddled with sleep, down into the valley.
With the exception of Luigi Castelani, not a single man in the Third
Battalion had ever faced an armed enemy, and now after an infinity of
nerve-tearing waiting, at last the experience was upon them in the dark
before the dawn when a man's vitality is at its lowest ebb.
Their bodies were chilled and their brains unclear. In the uncertain
light, the mob that poured into the valley was as numerous as the sands
of the desert, each figure as large as a giant and as ferocious as a
marauding lion.
It was in this moment that Colonel Aldo Belli, panting with exertion
and nervous strain, stepped out of the narrow communication trench on
to the firing platform of the forward line of emplacements. The
Sergeant in command of the trench recognized him instantly and let out
a cry of relief.
"my Colonel, thank God you have come." And forgetful of rank and
position he seized the Count's arm. Aldo Belli was so busy trying to
fight off the man's sweaty and importunate clutches that it was some
seconds before he actually glanced down into the darkened valley then
his bowels turned to jelly and his legs seemed to buckle under him.
"Merciful Mother of God," he wailed. "All is lost. They are upon us.
With clumsy fingers he unbuckled the flap of his holster and as he fell
to his knees he drew the pistol.
"Fire!" he screamed. "Open fire!" And crouching down well below the
level of the parapet, he emptied the Beretta straight upwards into the
dawn sky.
Manning the Italian parapets were over four hundred combatants; of
these over three hundred and fifty were riflemen, armed with
magazine-loaded bolt-action weapons, while another sixty men in teams
of five serviced the cunningly placed machine guns.
Every man of this force had endured grinding nervous strain, listening
to the war drums and now confronted by a sweeping mob of threatening
figures. They crouched like dark statues behind their weapons, fingers
curled stiffly around the triggers, and squinted over the open sights
of rifle and machine gun.
The Count's-shriek of command and the crackle of the pistol shots were
all that was necessary to snap the paralysing bonds of fear that held
them. The firing was started around Aldo Belli's position, by men
close enough to hear his command. A long line of muzzle flashes
