Cry Wolf

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 ru

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 begi

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

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 whi

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 gu

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 ru

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.