bloomed and twinkled along the forward slope of the valley, and three
machine guns opened with them. The tearing sound of their long
traversing bursts drowned out the crackle of musketry and their tracer
flickered and flew in long white arcs out across the valley to bury
itself in the dark moving blot of humanity.
Taken in the flank, the mob broke and surged away towards the dark
silence of the far slope of the valley, away from the sheets of bright
white tracer and the red rows of rifle fire. Leaving their dead and
wounded scattered behind them, they spread like ispilled oil across the
valley floor.
The silent gunners on the far slope saw them coming, held their fire
for a few more confused panic-soured moments, and then, seeing
themselves threatened, they opened also. The delay had the effect of
allowing the survivors of the first volley to race deeply into the
fields of overlapping fire that Castelani had so cleverly planned.
Caught in the open ground, hemmed in by a murderous storm of fire, the
forward movement of the mob broke down, and they milled aimlessly, the
women shrieking and clutching at their children, the children darting
and doubling like a shoal of fish trapped in a tidal pool, some of the
warriors kneeling in the open and beginning at last to return fire.
The red flashes of the black powder were long and dull and smoky and
ineffectual against men in entrenched positions; they served only to
intensify the ferocity of the Italian attack.
Now the surge of uncontrolled, panic-stricken humanity slowed and
eventually ceased. The unarmed women who still survived gathered their
children and covered them with their robes, crouching down over them as
a mother hen does with her chicks, and the men crouched also, firing
blindly and wildly up the slopes of the valley at the muzzle flashes
that were fading now as the sun rose and the light strengthened.
Twelve machine guns, each firing almost seven hundred rounds a minute,
and three hundred and fifty rifles poured a sheet of bullets down into
the valley. Minute after minute the firing continued, and slowly the
light strengthened, unmercifully exposing the survivors in the valley
below.
The mood of the attackers changed. From panicky, nervously strung out
green militia, they were transformed.
The almost drunken elation of victorious attackers gripped them, they
were laughing triumphantly now as they served the guns. Their eyes
bright with the blood lust of the predator, the knowledge that they
could kill without retribution made them bold and cruel.
The miserable popping and flashing of ancient muskets in the valley
below them was so feeble, so lacking in menace, that not a man amongst
them was still afraid. Even Count Aldo Belli was now on his feet,
brandishing his pistol and shouting with a high, girlish hysteria.
"Death to the enemy! Fire! Keep firing!" and cautiously he lifted
his head another inch above the parapet. "Kill them! Ours is the
victory!" The valley floor, as the first rays of sunlight touched it,
was covered with thick swathes of the dead and maimed.
They lay scattered singly, piled in clumps like mounds of old clothing
in a flea market, thrown haphazardly on the coal pale sandy earth or
arranged in neat patterns like fish on the slab.
In the centre of the killing-ground, there was still life movement.
Here and there a figure might leap up and run with robes flapping, and
immediately the machine guns would follow it, quick stabbing spouts of
dust closing swiftly until they met and held on the running figure,
when it would collapse and roll on the sandy earth.
The warriors who still crouched over their ancient rifles, with their
dark faces lifted to the slopes, were now providing good practice for
the riflemen above them. The Italian officers" voices, high-pitched
and excited, called down fire upon them, and swiftly each of these
defiants was hit by carefully aimed fire and fell, some of them kicking
and twitching.
The firing had lasted almost twenty minutes now, and there were few
targets still on offer. The machine guns traversed expectantly, firing
short bursts into the heaped carcasses, shattering already mutilated
flesh, or tore clouds of dust and flying shale from the rounded lips of
the deep water holes, from the cover of which a sporadic fire still
popped and crackled.
"My Colonel. "Castelani touched Aldo Belli's arm to gain his
attention, and at last he turned wild-eyed and elated to his Major.
"Ha, Castelani, what a victory what a great victory, hey? They will
not doubt our valour now."
"Colonel, shall I order the cease fire?" and the Count seemed not to
hear him.
"They will know now what kind of soldier I am. This brilliant victory
will win for me a place in the halls-2
"Colonel! Colonel! We must cease fire now. This is a slaughter.
Order the cease fire." Aldo Belli stared at him, his face beginning to
flush with outrage.
"You crazy fool," he shouted. "The battle must be decisive, crushing!
We will not cease now not until the victory is ours." He was
