Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

and the note of her engine changed momentarily, missing and stuttering,

power falling off then suddenly she picked up again and roared onwards

at full power.

"Good little darling. "Jake peered ahead through the visor, and swung

slightly out to the left, to come in under cover of the Italians"

own shell-bursts and the capsized hull of the Hump.

A shell burst directly ahead, and Jake weaved the big car expertly

around the gaping smoking crater, pulled in sharply and spun around to

a sliding halt, facing back the way he had come, ready for a quick

pull-away. He was hard up under cover of the destroyed hull, partially

screened from the Italians, and ten paces from where Gareth Swales was

sitting holding the Ras's frail body on his lap.

"Gary!" yelled Jake, sticking his head out of the hatch, and

Gareth looked up at him with a startled unbelieving expression. He had

been so deafened by shell-bursts that he had not realized that Jake had

come back for him. Jake had to shout again.

"Come on, damn you to hell," and this time Gareth moved with alacrity.

He picked up the Ras like a bundle of dirty laundry and ran with him to

the car. A shell burst so close that it almost knocked him off his

feet, and stones and clouds of earth splattered against the armoured

steel.

However, Gareth kept his feet and handed up the Ras to the willing

hands and loving care of his grandson.

"Is he all right?" Greg demanded anxiously.

"Hit by a stone, he'll be all right," Gareth grunted, and leaned for an

instant against the side of the car, his breathing sobbing painfully in

his throat, his hair and mustache thick with white dust,

and the sweat cutting deep wet runners down his filth-caked cheeks.

He looked up at Jake. "I thought you weren't coming back," he

croaked.

"It crossed my mind." Jake reached down and took his hand. He boosted

him up the side of the car, and Gareth held his hand for a second

longer than was necessary, squeezing slightly.

owe you one, old son."

"I'll call on you, "Jake grinned.

"Any time. Any time at all." At that moment, Priscilla the Pig roared

heroically, then abruptly backfired in opposition to the Italian

shell-bursts.

Her engine spluttered, surged, farted despairingly, and then fell

silent. "Oh, you son of a bitch!" said Jake with great and passionate

feeling."

"Not now!"

"Reminds me of a girl I knew in Australia,-"

Later, "Jake told him. "Get on the crank handle."

"My pleasure, old boy," and a near miss burst beside them and knocked

him off his precarious perch on the sponson.

Gareth picked himself up and dusted his lapels fastidiously as he

limped to the crank handle.

After a full minute at the handle, spinning it like a demented

organ-grinder with no effect at all, Gareth fell back panting again.

"I say, old chap, I'm a bit bushed," and they changed places quickly.

Jake stooped over the crank handle, ignoring the tempest of bursting

shells and swirling dust clouds, and the thick muscles in his arm

writhed as he spun the crank.

"She's dead, Gareth shouted after another minute. Jake persevered, his

face turning darkly red and the veins in his throat swelling into thick

blue cords but at last even he released the handle with disgust and

stepped back gasping.

"The tool kit is under the seat, "he said.

"You aren't going to do your handyman act here and now?"

Incredulously Gareth made a wide gesture that took in the bloody

battlefield, the Italian guns and the bursting shells.

"You've got a better idea?" Jake asked brusquely, and Gareth looked

about him forlornly, suddenly straightening his slumping shoulders, the

droop of his mouth lifting into that eternally jaunty grin.

"Funny you should risk, old son. It just so happens-" and like a

conjurer he indicated the apparition that appeared suddenly out of the

curtains of leaping dust and fuming cordite.

Miss Wobbly slammed to a dead stop beside them and both hatches flew

open. Sara's dark head appeared in one and Vicky's golden one in the

other.

Vicky leaned across towards Jake, cupping her hands to her mouth as she

shouted in the storm of shellfire, "What's wrong with

Priscilla?" And Jake gasped, still red-faced and sweating. "She's

thrown one of her fits."

"Grab the tow rope," Vicky instructed. "We'll pull you out." The

Ethiopian camp swarmed with victorious swaggering warriors; their

laughter was loud and their voices boastful. Admiring womenfolk, who

watched them from the cooking fires, were preparing the night's feast.

The big, black iron pots bubbled with a dozen varieties of wat, and the

smell of spices and meat lay heavily on the evening cool.

Vicky Camberwell bent over her typewriter, seated under the flap of her

tent, and her long supple fingers flew at the keys as the words tumbled

from her describing the courage and fighting qualities of a people who,

armed only with sword and horse, had routed a modern army equipped with

all the most fearsome weapons of war. When she was in literary flight,

Vicky sometimes overlooked small details that might detract from the

dramatic impact of her story the fact that the biblical warriors of

Ethiopia had been supported by armoured cars and

Vickers machine guns were details of this type, and she ignored them as

she ended, "But how much longer can these proud, simple and gallant

people continue to fight off the greedy lusting hordes of a modern

Caesar intent on Empire? A miracle happened here today on the plains

of Danakil, but the age of miracles is passing and it is clear even to

those who have thrown in their lot with this fair land of Ethiopia that

she is doomed unless the sleeping conscience of a civilized world is

aroused, unless the voice of justice rings out clearly, calling to the

tyrant Hands off, Benito Mussolini!"

"That's wonderful, Miss

Camberwell," said Sara, leaning over to read the last words as they

tapped out on the roller of the machine. "It makes me want to cry,

it's so sad and "I'm glad you like it, Sara. I wish you were my

editor." Vicky stripped the page from the machine and checked it

swiftly, crossing out a word and inking in another before she was

satisfied, and she folded the despatch into a thick brown envelope and

licked the flap.

"Are you sure he is reliable?" she asked Sara.

"Oh, yes, Miss Camberwell, he is one of my father's best men."

Sara took the envelope and handed it to the warrior who had been

waiting an hour outside the tent, squatting at the head of his saddled

horse.

Sara spoke to him with great fire and passion, and the man nodded

vehemently as she exhorted him and then flung himself into the saddle

and dashed away towards the darkening mouth of the gorge, where the

smoky blue shadows of evening were enfolding the harsh cliffs and

jagged peaks of the mountains.

"He will be at Sardi before midnight. I have told him not to pause

along the way. Your message will go on to the telegraph at dawn

tomorrow morning."

"Thank you, Sara dear." Vicky rose from the camp table and as she

covered her typewriter, Sara eyed her speculatively.

Vicky had bathed and changed into the one good dress she had brought

with her, a light Irish linen in a pale blue, cut with a fashionably

low waist and skirt that covered her knees but displayed rounded calves

and the narrow delicately shaped ankles which gleamed in their sheaths

of fine silk stockings.

"Your dress is pretty," said Sara softly, "and your hair is so soft and

yellow." She sighed. "I wish I were beautiful like you are.

I wish I had a lovely white skin like you."

"And I wish I had a beautiful golden skin like yours," Vicky countered

swiftly, and they laughed together.

"Are you dressed like that for Gareth? He will love you very much when

he sees you. Let us go and find him."

"I've got a better idea,

Sara. why don't you go and find Gregorius. I am sure he is looking

for you." Sara thought about that for a moment, torn between duty and

pleasure.

"Are you certain you'll be all right on your own, Miss

Camberwell?"

"Oh, I think so thank you, Sara. If I get into trouble

I'll call you."

"I'll come right away," Sara assured her.

Vicky knew exactly where she would find Jake Barton, and she came up

silently beside the tall steel hull and watched for a while as he

worked, completely absorbed and totally oblivious of her presence.

She wondered how she had been so blind as not to have seen him properly

before, not to have seen beneath the boyish freshness the strength and

quiet assurance of a full mature man. It was an ageless face, and she

knew that even when he was an old man the illusion of youth and

freshness would remain with him. Yet there was an intensity in the

eyes, a steely purpose in the heavy line of the jaw that she had never

noticed before. She remembered the dream of his that he had told her

the factory building his own engine and in a clairvoyant flash she knew

that he had the determination and the strength to make it become

reality. Suddenly she longed to share it with him, and knew that their

two dreams could be placed together, his engine and her book, they

could be created together, each gathering strength from the other,

pooling their determination and their creative reserves. it would be

worth while to share both dreams with a man like Jake Barton.

"Perhaps being in love allows one to see more clearly," she thought, as

she watched him with secret pleasure. "Or perhaps it simply makes it

easy to kid yourself," and she felt annoyance that her natural cynicism

should overtake her now.

"No," she decided. "It's not make believe. He is strong and good and

he'll stay that way," and immediately she thought that perhaps she was

trying too hard to convince herself.

Unbidden, the memory of the night she had spent so recently with

another man flooded back to her, and for a moment she found herself

confused and uncertain. She tried to thrust the memory firmly aside,

but it nagged at her, and she found herself comparing two men,

remembering the wanton and wicked delights she had known,-and doubting

wistfully that she might ever recapture them.

Then she looked closer at the man she thought she loved, and saw that

although his arms were thick and dark with hair, and his hands were

large and heavy-knuckled, yet the thick spatulate fiLigers worked with

an almost sensuous skill and lightness, and she tried to imagine them

moving on her skin and the image was so clear and voluptuous that she

shuddered and drew in her breath sharply.

Immediately Jake looked up at her, the surprise in his eyes changing

instantly to pleasure, and that slow warm smile spreading over his face

as he ran his eyes swiftly from the top of her silken head down to the

silken ankles.

"Hello, haven't I met you somewhere before?" he asked, and she laughed

and pirouetted, flaring the dress.

"Do you like it?" she asked. He nodded silently and then asked,

"Are we going somewhere special?"

"The Ras's feast, didn't you know?"

not sure I can stan another of his feasts, don't know which is more

dangerous an Italian attack or that liquid dynamite he serves."

"You'll have to be there you're one of the heroes of the great victory,

and Jake grunted and returned his attention to Priscilla the Pig's

internal processes.

"Have you found the trouble?"

"No." Jake sighed with resignation.

"I've taken her to pieces and put her together again and I can't find a

thing." He stood back, shaking his head and wiping his greasy hands on

a wad of cotton waste. "I don't know. I just don't know."

"Have you tried starting her again?"

"No point in that not until I find and cure the trouble."

"Try,"said Vicky, and he grinned at her.

"It's no use but to humour you." He stooped to the crank handle,

and Priscilla fired at the first swing, caught and ran smoothly,

purring like a great hump-backed cat in front of the fire.

"My God." Jake stepped back and stared in amazement.

"There's just no logic to it."

"She's a lady," Vicky explained.

"You know that and there isn't necessarily logic in the way a lady

behaves." He turned to face her directly and grinned at her, such a

knowing expression in his eyes that she felt herself flushing.

"I'm beginning to find that out," he said, and stepped towards her, but

she raised both hands protectively.

"You'll put grease on this dress-"

"If I were to bath first?"

"Bath," she ordered. "And then we'll talk again, mister."

In the last few minutes of daylight, a rider had come down the gorge,

clattering and sliding on the rough footing, and then hitting the level

ground and galloping into the Ras's camp on a blown and lathered

horse.

Sara Sagud took the message he carried, came flying up to the cluster

of tents under the flat-topped camel-thorn trees and burst into

Vicky Camberwell's tent waving the folded cablegram, without dreaming

of announcing her entrance.

Vicky was deep in a bearlike enfolding embrace into which Jake

Barton had taken her moments before, and the interruption came just

as

Vicky was abandoning herself to the pleasure of the moment. Jake

towered over her, freshly scrubbed and smelling of carbolic soap, with

his hair still wet and newly combed. Vicky broke out of his arms and

turned furiously to the girl.

"Oh!" exclaimed Sara, with the natural interest and fascination of a

born conspirator discovering a fresh intrigue.

"You are busy."

"Yes, I am, "snapped Vicky, cheeks aflame with embarrassment and

confusion.

"I'm sorry, Miss Camberwell. But I thought this message must be

important-" and Vicky's irritation faded, as she saw the cablegram.

"I

thought you would want it." Vicky snatched it from her, broke the seal

and read avidly. Her anger faded as she read, and she looked up with

shining eyes at Sara.

"You were right thank you, my dear," and she spun back to Jake,

dancing up to him and flinging both arms around his neck, laughing and

gay.

"Hey," Jake laughed with her, holding her awkwardly in front of the

girl, "What's this all about?"

"It's from my editor," she told him.

"My story about the attack at the Wells was an international scoop.

Headlines around the world and there is to be an emergency session of

the League of Nations." Sara snatched the cable form back from her,

and read it as though by right.

"This is what my father believed you could do for us, Miss

Camberwell for our land and our people." Sara was weeping, fat oily

tears breaking from the dark gazelle eyes and clinging in her long

lashes. "Now the world knows. Now they will come to save us from the

tyranny." The girl's faith in the triumph of good over evil was

childlike, and she pulled Vicky from Jake's arms and embraced her

instead.

"Oh, you have given us a chance again. We will always be grateful to

you." Her tears smeared Vicky's cheek, and she drew back, sniffing

wetly, and wiped her own tears from Vicky's face with the palm of her

hand. "We will never forget you," she said, and then smiled through

the tears. "We must go and tell my grandfather." They found it

impossible to convey to the Ras the exact nature of this new

advancement of the Ethiopian cause. He was very hazy in his exact

understanding of the role and importance of the League of Nations, or

the power and influence of the international press. After the first

few pints of tej he had made sure in his own mind that in some

miraculous fashion the great Queen of England had espoused their

cause,

and that the armies of Great Britain would soon join him in the

field.

Both Gregorius and Sara spoke to him at great length, trying to explain

his error, and he nodded and grinned benevolently at them but remained

completely unshaken in his conviction, and ended by embracing Gareth

Swales, making a long rambling speech in Amharic, hailing him as an

Englishman and a comrade in arms. Then, before the speech ended, the

Ras fell suddenly and dramatically asleep in mid-sentence, falling face

forward into a large bowl of mutton wat. The day's battle, the

excitement of learning of his new and powerful ally, and the large

quantities of tej were too much for him, and four of his bodyguard

lifted him from the bowl and carried him snoring loudly to his

household tent.

"Do not worry," Sara told his guests. "My grandfather will not be gone

for long after a small rest he will return."

"Tell him not to put himself out," murmured Gareth Swales. "I for one

have seen about enough of him for one day." The glow of the bonfires

turned the sky ruddy and paled the moon that sailed above the mountain

peaks. It shone on the steel and polished wood of the huge pile of

captured weapons, rifles and pistols and ammunition bandoliers, that

were heaped triumphantly in the open space before the royal party.

The sparks from the fires rose straight upwards into the still night

and the laughter and voices of the guests became more unrestrained as

the tej gourds circulated.

Farther along the valley, also within the acacia grove, the Gallas of

Ras Kullah were celebrating the victory also, and there was the

occasional faint outburst of drunken shouts and a fusillade of shots

from captured Italian rifles.

Vicky sat between Gareth and Jake. She had not arranged it so,

and if given the choice would have sat alone with Jake, but Gareth

Swales had not been as easily discouraged as she had believed he

might.

Sara came from her place beside Gregorius. Crossing the squatting

circle of feasting guests, she knelt on the pile of leather cushions

beside Vicky, pushing herself in between Gareth and the girl and she

leaned close to Vicky, an arm around her shoulder and her lips touching

her ear.

"You should have told me," she accused her sadly. "I did not know that

you had decided on Jake first. I would have advised you-" At that

instant a sound carried from the camp of the tance and Gallas to where

they sat. It was muted by ths almost obscured by the closer hubbub of

the feasting Harari filling yet the terrible heart-stopping quality of

it pierced Vicky so that she gasped and clutched Sara's wrist.

Beside her Jake and Gareth had stiffened and were listening also,

their heads turned to catch the sound that rose and died in a

long-drawn-out rending sob.

"You have not handled them correctly, Miss Camberwell." Sara went on

speaking as if she had heard nothing.

"Sara, what is it what was that?" Vicky shook her arm urgently.

"Ah!" Sara made a gesture of disdain and contempt. "That fat pervert

Ras Kullah has come down from his hiding-place.

the victory, he has come to enjoy Now that we have won the booty.

He arrived an hour ago with his fat milch cows and now he feasts and

entertains himself." The sound came again. It was inhuman, a terrible

high pitched screech that tore across Vicky's nerves. It rose higher

and higher, until Vicky wanted to cover her ears with both hands. At

the instant that it seemed her nerves must snap, the sound was cut off

abruptly.

A listening silence had fallen upon the revelling throng around the

bonfires, and the silence persisted for a few then there was a seconds

longer after the scream had ended, murmur of comment and here and there

a burst of careless, cruel laughter.

"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 pinnacle of agonized sound.

"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 unnoticed through the

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 running high, and they growled like an animal

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 madonna face was

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.

However, more prosaically the sleeves of her sham ma were drawn up in

businesslike fashion above the elbows like those of a butcher, and her

hands were bloody to the wrists. She held the thin curved dagger like

a surgeon, and its silver blade was dull and red in the firelight.

The thing over which -she worked still wriggled and moved convulsively

against its bonds, still breathed and sobbed, but it was no longer

recognizable as a man. The knife had stripped away all resemblance and

now as the waiting crowd growled and swayed and sighed, the woman

worked doggedly at the base of the disembowelled belly, cutting and

tugging, so that the victim screamed again, but feebly and the woman

leapt to her feet and held aloft the mutilated handful she had cut

free.

She did a triumphant circuit of the arena, holding her prize high,

laughing, dancing on shuffling swaying feet, and the blood trickled

down her raised forearm and dripped from the crook of her elbow.

"Stay close," Jake said softly, but Vicky had never heard that tone in

his voice before. She tore her horrified gaze from the spectacle, and

saw that his face was stern and drawn, his jaw clenched hard and his

eyes terrible.

He drew the pistol from his pocket, and held it against his thigh,

his arm hanging loosely at his side, and he moved swiftly, thrusting

his way through the press of bodies with such strength that he cleared

a path for her to follow him.

Every single Galla was concentrating with all his attention on the

dancing woman, and Jake reached Ras Kullah before any of them realized

his presence.

Jake took the soft thick upper arm in his left hand, his fingers

digging deeply into the putty-soft flesh, and he jerked him to his feet

and held him dangling off-balance, swinging him face to face, and he

pressed the muzzle of the Beretta into his upper lip, just under the

wide nostrils.

They stared at each other, Ras Kullah cringing away from Jake's blazing

eyes, and then whimpering at the pain of the fingers cutting into his

flesh and fear of the steel muzzle bruising his upper lip.

Jake assembled the few words of Amharic he had learned from

Gregorius.

"The Italians," he said softly. "For me." Ras Kullah stared at him,

seeming not to hear then he said one word and the men nearest them

swayed forward, as though to intervene.

Jake screwed the muzzle of the pistol into Ras Kullah's lip,

twisting and smearing the soft flesh against his teeth so that the skin

tore and blood sprang swiftly.

"You die," said Jake, and the man shrilled a denial to his warriors.

They drew back reluctantly, fingering their knives and watching with

smouldering eyes for their opportunity.

The woman with the bloody hands sank to her haunches and a great

waiting silence gripped the assembly. They squatted in complete

stillness, all their faces turned towards Jake and Ras Kullah. In the

silence, the broken bleeding thing beside the fire cried out again, a

long-drawn-out breathy sound that tore at jake's nerves and made his

expression ferocious.

"Tell your men," he said, his voice thick and grating with his anger.

Ras Kullah's voice quavered, high as a young girl, and the warriors who

guarded the three half-naked prisoners shuffled uncertainly and

exchanged glances.

Jake ground the steel fiercely into Ras Kullah's face, and his voice

squeaked urgently as he repeated the order.

Reluctantly, the guards prodded the prisoners forward in a forlorn

terrified group.

"Take his dagger," Jake said quietly to Vicky, without removing his

gaze from Ras Kullah's eyes. Vicky stepped close beside the Ras and

gripped the hilt of the weapon on the embroidered belt around his

sagging paunch. It was worked in beaten gold and set with crudely cut

amethysts, but the blade was brilliant and the edge keen.

"Cut them loose," said Jake, and in the dangerous moments while she was

away from his side, he increased the brutal pressure on the pistol

barrel. Ras Kullah stood with his head cocked at an impossible angle,