Cry Wolf

"What is it, damn it, Sara, what are they doing?"

"Ras Kullah is playing with the Italians," Sara said quietly, and Vicky

realized that she had thought no further of the prisoners taken that

day from the routed Italian column.

"Playing, Sara? What do you mean?" And Sara spat like an angry cat, a

gesture of utter disgust.

"They are animals, those beasts of Ras Kullah. They will make sport of

them all night, and in the morning they will cut away their man's

things," she spat again. "Before they can marry, they must take a

man's things what do you call them, the two things in the little

sac?"

"Testicles," said Vicky hoarsely, almost choking on the word.

"Yes," agreed Sara. "They must kill a man and take his testicles to

the bride. It is their custom, but first they will make sport with the

Italians."

"Can't we stop them? "Vicky asked.

"Stop them?" Sara looked amazed. "They are only Italians, and it is

the Galla custom." Again came that cry, and again there was complete

silence from the revellers. It climbed high into the silent desert

air, shriek upon shriek, so that it seemed impossible that it could

come from a human lung, and their souls cringed at the dimensions of

suffering which could give vent to that pi

"Oh God! Oh God!" whispered Vicky, and she lifted her eyes from

Sara's face to that of Gareth Swales who sat beyond her.

He was silent and still, his face turned half away from her, so that

she saw the godlike profile, perfect and cold. As the cry of agony

died away, he leaned forward, took a burning twig from the fire and lit

the long black cheroot between his white teeth.

He drew deeply and held the smoke, then let it trickle out through his

nostrils. Then he turned deliberately to Vicky.

"You heard what the lady said. It's the custom." He spoke to

Vicky, but the remark was addressed to Jake Barton, and his eyes

flicked mockingly to him, a half-smile on his lips.

The two men held each other's eyes, unblinking and expressionless.

The cry of agony came again but this time weaker, the aching ringing

tone reduced to a sobbing echo on the dark night.

Jake Barton rose to his feet, coming erect with one fluid movement, and

in a continuation of the same movement he crossed to the piles of

captured Italian weapons. He stooped and picked up an officer's

automatic pistol, a 7 men. Beretta, still in its polished leather

holster, and he unbuckled the flap and drew the weapon,

discarding the leather holster and waist belt. He checked the loaded

magazine and then, with a slap of his palm, thrust it back into the

recessed butt, pumped the slide to throw a round into the breech,

flicked the safety-catch across and slipped the pistol into the pocket

of his breeches.

Without looking again at any of the others, he strode away,

disappearing beyond the firelight into the darkness, in the direction

of the Galla encampment.

"I told him a long time ago that sentimentality is an oldfashioned

luxury an expensive one in this age, and especially in this place,"

murmured Gareth, and inspected the ash of his cheroot.

"They will kill him if he goes in there alone," said Sara in a

completely matter-of-fact tone. "They will be hungry for more blood

and they'll kill him "Oh, I don't know it's as bad as that, "Gareth

demurred.

"Oh, yes. They'll kill him," said Sara, and turned back to Vicky.

"Are you going to let him go? They are only Italians," she pointed

out. For a moment, the two women stared at each other, and then Vicky

leaped to her feet and went after Jake, the blue linen swirling

gracefully around her legs and the firelight playing like liquid bronze

gold on her hair as she ran.

She caught up with Jake at the perimeter of the Galla encampment,

and she fell in beside him, taking two quick steps to each of his

strides.

"Go back," he said softly, but she did not reply and skipped to keep up

with him.

"Do what I say."

"No, I'm coming with you." He stopped and swung to face her, and she

lifted her chin defiantly, throwing back her shoulders and drawing

herself up to her full height so that she came to his shoulder.

Listen to me " he began, and then stopped as the tortured being cried

again in the night, and it was a blubbering incoherent sound,

half moan, half sob followed almost immediately by the throaty roar of

many hundred voices, the blood roar of a hunting pack, deep and

savage.

"That's what it will be like." His head was turned away from her to

listen and his eyes were haunted.

"I'm coming," she said stubbornly, and he did not reply, but broke away

and hurried forward towards the glowing reflection of the Galla fires

which turned the branches of the camel-thorns to high cathedral roofs

of ruddy light over the encampment.

There were no sentries posted, and they passed u

horse lines and the hastily thatched tukuLs and leather tents,

coming suddenly into the centre of the camp where the fires were

burning and the Gallas were assembled, a huge dark circle of squatting

figures; the firelight bronzed their eager hawk features, and the whole

assembly hummed with the charged tension that always holds the

spectators at a blood spectacle. Jake remembered it from a prize fight

in Madison Square Garden and again from a cock fight in Havana.

The blood lust was ru

pack.

"That is Ras Kullah, whispered Vicky, tugging at Jake's sleeve,

and he glanced across the open arena of beaten earth.

Kullah sat on a pile of carpets and cushions, a silk shawl striped in a

dozen brilliant colours was draped across his head and shoulders,

masking his soft smooth face with shadow but the firelight caught his

eyes and made them glitter with a peculiarly feverish fury.

One of his fat ivory-coloured hands was clenched in his lap, while his

other arm was cast around the waist of the woman who sat beside him,

and his hand kneaded and Wworled her yielding flesh. The hand seemed

to have life of its own, and it moved, pale and obscene, like a huge

slug pulsing softly as it devoured the swollen ripe fruits of the

woman's bosom.

Beyond the fires, on the far side of the circle of open earth a group

of three Italian soldiers were clustered fearfully, their faces shiny

white with sweat and terror in the firelight, and their hands bound

behind their backs. They had been stripped to their breeches,

and the exposed skin of their backs and arms was welted and bruised

where they had been beaten and abused. Their naked feet were swollen

and bloody; clearly they had been forced to march thus for long

distances across the harsh stony earth. Their dark eyes, huge with

horror, were fastened on the spectacle that was being enacted on the

open stage of bare earth in the limelight of the fires.

Vicky recognized the woman as one of Ras Kullah's favourites whom she

had last seen that night at the rest house of Sardi. Now she knelt,

heavy-breasted and intent on her work. The round mado

alight with an almost religious ecstasy, the full lips parted and the

dark sloe eyes glowing like those of a priestess at some mystic tire.