stuttering wildly and his hand shook as he pointed down into the bloody
shambles of the valley.
"The enemy have taken cover in the water holes, they must be flushed
out and destroyed. Mortars, Castelani, bomb them out." Aldo Belli did
not want it to end. It was the most deeply satisfying experience of
his life. If this was war, he knew at last why the sages and the poets
had invested it with such In glory. This was man's work, and Aldo
Belli knew himself born to it.
"Do you question my orders?" he shrieked at Castelani.
"a) your duty, immediately."
"Immediately," Castelani repeated bitterly, and for a moment longer
stared stonily into the Count's eyes before he turned away.
The first mortar bomb climbed high into the clear desert dawn, before
arcing over and dropping vertically down into the valley. It burst on
the lip of the nearest well. It kicked up a brief column of dust and
smoke, and the shrapnel whinnied shrilly. The second bomb fell
squarely into the deep circular pit, bursting out of sight below ground
level.
Mud and smoke gushed upwards, and out of the water hole into the open
ground crawled and staggered three scarecrow figures with their
tattered and dirty robes fluttering like flags of truce.
Instantly the rifle fire and machine-gun fire burst over them, and the
earth around them whipped by the bullets seemed to liquefy into a
cascade of flying dust, into which they tumbled and at last lay
still.
Aldo Belli let out a hoot of excitement. It was so easy and so deeply
satisfying. "The other holes, Castelani!" he screamed. "Clean them
out! All of them!" Concentrating their fire on one hole at a time,
the mortars ranged in swiftly. Some of the holes were deserted, but at
most of them the slaughter was continued. A few survivors of the
shimmering bursts of shrapnel staggered out into the open to be cut
down swiftly by the waiting machine guns.
The Count was by now so emboldened that he climbed up on the parapet,
the better to view the field and watch the mortars fire on the
remaining holes, and to direct his machine gunners.
The hole nearest the wadis and broken ground at the head of the valley
was the next target, and the first bomb was over, crumping in a tall
jump of dust and pale flame.
Before the next bomb fell, a woman jumped up over the lip and tried to
reach the mouth of the wadi. Behind her she dragged a child of two or
three years, a naked toddler with fat little bow legs and a belly like
a brown ball. He could not keep up with the mother and lost his
footing, so she dragged him wailing along the sandy earth. Straddling
her hip and clutched with desperate strength to her breast was another
younger infant, also naked, also wailing and kicking frantically.
For several seconds, the running, heavily burdened woman drew no fire,
and then a burst from a machine gun fell about her and a bullet struck
and severed the arm by which she held the child. She staggered in a
circle, shrieking dementedly and waving the stump of the arm like the
spout of a garden hose. The next burst smashed through her chest, the
same bullets shattering the body of the infant on her hip, and she fell
and rolled like a rabbit hit by a shotgun.
The guns fell silent again and remained silent while the naked toddler
stood up uncertainly.
He began to wail again, standing solidly at last on the fat dimpled
legs, a string of blue beads around the tightly bulging belly and his
penis sticking out like a tiny brown finger.
From the mouth of the wadi emerged a running horse, a rawboned and
rangy white stallion galloping heavily over the sandy ground with a
frail boyish figure lying low along its neck, a black sham ma flying
out wildly behind. The rider drove the stallion on towards where the
child stood weeping, and had almost covered the open ground before the
gunners realized what was happening.
The first machine gun traversed on the galloping animal, but this
lead-off was stiff and the bullets kicked dust slightly high and
behind. Then the horse reached the child and the rider reined in
sharply, sending it rearing on its hind quarters, and the rider swung
down to make the pick-up.
At that moment, two other machine guns opened up on the stationary
target.
Jake Barton realized that there was only one way To prevent a
confrontation between the Italian force which had appeared so silently
and menacingly at the wells and the undisciplined mob of warriors and
camp followers of the Ras's entourage. there was no chance that he
could make himself heard in the hubbub of anxiously raised voices and
emotional outbursts of Amharic as the Ras tried to make his view heard
above the attempts of fifty of his chieftains and captains to do
exactly the same thing.
Jake needed an interpreter and he thrust his way towards Gregorius
Maryam, grabbed him firmly by the arm and dragged him out of the cave.
It needed considerable force, for Gregorius was as intent as everybody
else in having his views and suggestions aired.
Jake was surprised to find how light it was outside the caves, and that
