Текст книги "Cry Wolf"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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Chianti he had drunk at dinner was now exerting internal pressure.

Where a lesser man might have slipped without ceremony from his bed to

deal with this problem, the Count did things in greater style.

He lay back on his pillows and let out a single loud bellow, and

immediately there was the frantic activity in the night, and within

minutes Gino had arrived with a bull's-eye lantern, hastily dressed in

a camel-hair gown, and tousle-haired and owl-eyed with sleep. He was

followed by the Count's personal valet and his galloper, all in the

same state of freshly awoken bewilderment.

The Count stated his physical needs, and the dedicated group gathered

around his bed solicitously. Gino helped him up as though he were an

invalid, the valet held a dressing gown of quilted blue Chinese silk,

embroidered with ferocious scarlet dragons, and then knelt to place a

calf-skin slipper on each of the Count's feet, while his aide hastened

to kick the Count's personal guard awake and fall them in outside the

tent.

The Count emerged from the tent and a small procession, well armed and

lighted, filed down to the latrine which had been dug exclusively for

the Count's personal use. Gino entered first and checked the small

thatched edifice for snakes, scorpions and brigands. Only when he

emerged and declared it safe did the Count enter. His escort stood to

attention and listened respectfully to the copious outpouring taking

place within until they were interrupted by the sky shaking

earth-rattling, heart-stopping roar of a male lion.

The Count shot from the latrine, his face a startled glistening white

in the lantern light.

"Sweet and merciful Mother of God!" he cried. "What in the name of

Peter and all the saints is that?" Nobody could answer him, in fact

nobody showed any interest in the question whatever, and the Count had

to move swiftly to catch up with his armed escort which had already

started back towards the bivouac in a sprightly fashion.

Once within the security of his own brightly lit tent, and surrounded

by his hastily assembled staff, the Count's pulse rate returned to

normal, and one of his officers suggested that the native

Eritrean guides be sent for and questioned on the terrible night sounds

that had plunged the entire battalion into consternation.

"Lion?" said the Count, and then again, "Lion!" Instantly the

formless terrors of the night evaporated, for by this time the first

light of dawn was gleaming in the east, and the Count's breast swelled

with the fierce instincts of the huntsman.

"It appears, my Colonel, that the beasts will be feeding on the

antelope carcasses that you left lying out on the desert," the

interpreter explained. "The smell of blood has attracted them."

aGi no snapped the Count. "Fetch the Mannlicher and have the driver

bring the Rolls-Royce to my tent immediately." My Colonel,"

protested

Major Luigi Castelani. "The battalion, by your own orders, is to march

at dawn."

"I Countermanded!" snapped the Colonel. Already he imagined the

magnificent trophy skin spread before his Louis XIV desk in the library

of his castle. He would have it prepared with wide open jaws,

flashing white fangs and fierce yellow glass eyes. The picture of open

jaws and fangs suddenly reminded him with considerable force of his

nerve racking brush with the beisa oryx. "Major," he ordered, "I

want twenty men to accompany me, a truck to transport them, full battle

order, and one hundred rounds of ammunition each." The Count was not

about to take any more silly chances.

The lion was a fully mature male, six years of age, and, like most of

the desert strain of leo panthers, he was much larger than the forest

lions. He stood well over three feet high at the shoulder, and he

weighed in excess of four hundred pounds. The late sun enhanced the

sleek reddish ochre of his skin and transformed his mane into a glowing

halo of gold. The mane was dense and long, framing the broad flattened

head, reaching far back beyond the shoulder, and hanging so low under

his chest and belly as almost to sweep the earth.

He walked stiffly, head held very low and swinging heavily from side to

side with each laborious step. His breathing came with a low explosive

grunt at each exhalation, and occasionally he stopped and swung his

head to snap irritably at the buzzing blue cloud of flies that swarmed

about the wound in his flank. Then he would lick at the small dark

hole from which pale watery blood oozed steadily.

The long pink tongue curled out and, rough as shagreen, rasped against

the supple hide. The constant licking had away the hair around the

wound, giving it a pale worn shaven appearance.

The 9.3 Marmlicher bullet had caught him at the instant he had begun to

turn away to run. It had angled in from two inches behind the last

rib, striking with a force of nine tons that had bowled the lion down,

rolling him in a cloud of pale dust. The copper-jacketed bullet was

tipped with soft expanding lead, and it mushroomed as it raked the

belly cavity, lacerating the bowels and tearing four large abdominal

veins. The slug had passed close enough to the kidneys to bruise both

of them severely, so now, when the lion stopped, arched his back and

crouched to pass a spattering of bloodstained urine, he groaned like

the roll of drums at an execution. Then, finally, the bullet had

struck the arch of the pelvic girdle and lodged there against the

bone.

After the first massive shock of impact, the lion had rolled to his

feet and flattened into a dead streaking run, jinking away below the

level of the coarse scrub. Although a dozen more bullets had thrown up

soft jumping spurts of dust around him, one so close as to throw grit

into his eyes, not another touched him.

There had been seven lions in the pride. Another older, heavier,

darker-maned male, two younger daintier breeding females, one with her

lithe-wasted body thickened with the heavy bearing of young in her

womb, and three immature animals still dappled with their cub spots and

boisterous as kittens.

The younger male was the only one to survive that long shattering roll

of rifle fire, and now as he moved on he felt the thick jelly-like

weight of congealing blood sloshing back and forth across his belly

cavity at each step. There was a heavy lethargy slowing his

movements,

but thirst drove him onwards. Thirst was a scalding agony that

consumed his whole body, and the lower pools of the Awash River were a

dozen miles ahead.

In the dawn Priscilla the Pig was heavily bogged down on her belly with

all four wheels helpless in the porridge of pale salt mire below the

crust of the pan.

Jake stripped to the waist and swung the long two handed axe

relentlessly, while the others gathered the piles of thorny scrub he

mowed down, and, cursing at the pricks and scratches, carried them out

across the snowy surface of the pan.

Jake worked with a self punishing fury, angry with his lack of

attention which had bogged the car and was going to cost them a day at

the least. It was no valid excuse that exhaustion and heat had clouded

his judgement that he had not recognized the treacherous smooth white

surface of the pan for Gregorius had warned him specifically of this

hazard. He worked with the axe from an hour before sunrise until the

heat had climbed with the sun and a small mountain of cut branches

stood beside the car.

Then Gareth helped him build a firm foundation of flat stones and

thicker branches under the engine compartment of the car. They had to

lie on their sides and grovel in the dust to get the big screw jack set

up on the base and they slowly lifted the front of the car, turning the

handle between them.

As the front wheels rose an inch at a time, Vicky and Gregorius packed

the wiry scrub branches under them. It was slow and laborious work

which had to be repeated at the rear of the car.

it was past noon before Priscilla the Pig stood forlornly balanced on

four piles of compacted branches but her belly was clear of the surface

"What do we do now?" Gareth asked. "Drive her back?"

"One spin of the wheels will kick that trash out and she'll bog down

again," Jake grunted, and wiped his sweat glistening chest on the

bundled shirt in his hand. He looked at Gareth and felt a flare of

irritation that after five hours" work in the sun, after grovelling on

his belly in the dust, and heaving on the jack handle, the man had

barely raised a/

sweat, his clothes were unmarked and final provocation his hair was

still neatly combed.

Working under Jake's direction, they cut and laid a corduroy of

branches back to the hard ground at the edge of the pan. This would

distribute the weight of the vehicle and prevent it breaking through

the crust again.

Then Vicky manoeuvred and reversed Miss Wobbly down to the edge of the

pan and lined her up with the causeway of branches. The men joined

three coils of the thick manila line and carried it out to the stranded

vehicle, unrolling it behind them as they went, until at last the two

cars were joined by that fragile thread.

Gareth climbed in and took the wheel of Priscilla while Jake and

Gregorius, armed with two of the thickest branches, stood ready to

lever the wheels.

"You any good at praying, Gary? "Jake shouted.

"Not my strong suit, old son."

"Well, stiffen the old upper lip then. "Jake mimicked him, and then

let out a bellow at Vicky who acknowledged with a wave before her

golden head disappeared into the driver's hatch of Miss Wobbly. The

engine beat accelerated and the line came up taut as Miss Wobbly rolled

forward up the incline above the pan.

"Keep the wheels straight," shouted Jake, and he and Gregorius threw

their weight on the branches, giving just that ounce of leverage

sufficient to transfer part of the vehicle's weight on to the

corduroyed pathway.

Slowly, ponderously, the cumbersome vehicle rolled back across the pan,

until she reached the hard ground and the four of them shouted with

relief and triumph.

Jake retrieved two celebratory bottles of Tusker beer from his secret

hoard, but the liquid was so warm that half of it exploded in a fizzing

gush from the mouth of each bottle as it was opened, and there was only

a mouthful for each of them.

"Can we reach the lower Awash by nightfall?" Jake demanded, and

Gregorius looked up and judged the angle of the sun before replying.

"If we don't waste any more time," he said.

Still on a compass heading, and giving the salt-white pans a wide

berth, the column ground on steadily into the west.

In the mid afternoon they reached the sand desert, with its towering

whale-backed dunes throwing lovely lyrical shadows in the hollows

between. The colour of the sand varied from dark purple to the softest

pinks and talcum white, and was so fine and soft that the wind blew

long smoke-like plumes from the crest of each dune.

Under Gregorius's direction they turned northwards, and within half an

hour they had found the long narrow ridge of ironstone that bisected

the sand desert and formed a narrow causeway through the shifting

dunes. They crept following its winding course slowly across this

rocky bridge, for twelve miles, while the dunes rose on each side of

them.

Vicky thought that this was much like the passage of the Red Sea by the

fleeing Israelites. Even the dunes seemed like frozen waves that might

at each moment come crashing down to swamp them and she despaired that

she could ever adequately describe the wild and disordered beauty of

this multicoloured sea of sand.

They emerged at last and with startling suddenness into the dry flat

grasslands of the Ethiopian lowlands. The desert proper was at last

behind them and although this was a harsh and and savannah,

there was, at least, the occasional thorn tree and an almost unbroken

carpet of se red grass the grass was so amongst the low thorny scrub.

Altho fine and dry that all colour had been bleached from it by the

sun, it shone silver and stiff as though coated with hoar frost.

Most cheering of all was the distant but discernible blue outline of

the far mountains. Now they hovered at the edge of their awareness,

a far beacon calling them onward.

Over the short crisp grass, the four vehicles roared forward joyously,

bumping through an occasional ant-bear hole and flattening the clumps

of low them that stood in their way as they plunged ahead.

In the last glimmering of the day, just when Jake had decided to halt

the day's march, the flat land ahead of them opened miraculously and

they looked down into the steep boulder-strewn gorge of the Awash

River fifty feet below them. They climbed out of the parked vehicles

and gathered stiffly in a small group on the lip of the ravine, "There

is Ethiopia, two hundred yards away. It's two years since last I stood

upon the soil of my own country," said Gregorius, his big dark eyes

catching the last of the light.

He stopped himself and explained. "The river rises in the high country

near Addis Ababa and comes down one of the gorges into the lowland. A

short distance downstream from here it ends in a shallow swamp. There

its waters sink away into the desert sand and disappear.

Here we are standing on French territory still, ahead of us is

Ethiopia, there far to the north is Italian Eritrea."

"How far is it to the Wells of Chaldi?"Gareth interrupted.

That for him was the end of the rainbow and the pot of gold.

Gregorius shrugged. "Another forty miles, perhaps."

"How do we get across this lot?" Jake muttered, staring down into the

dim depths of the ravine where the shallow pools still glowed dull

silver.

"Upstream there is an old camel route to J ibuti," Gregorius told him.

"We might have to dig out the banks a little, but I think we'll be able

to cross."

"I hope you are right," Gareth told him. "It's a long way home, if we

have to go back." The view of water that she had glimpsed in the

depths of the ravine haunted Vicky Camberwell during the night. She

dreamed of foaming mountain streams and spilling waterfalls, of

moss-covered boulders, swaying green ferns about a deep cold pool, and

she awoke, restless and tired, with sweat plastering her hair to her

neck and forehead. There was just the first promise of dawn in the

sky.

She thought that she was the only one awake and she crept into the

vehicle and fetched her towel and toilet bag, but as she jumped down to

the ground she heard the clink of spanner on steel and she saw Jake

stooped over the engine compartment of his car.

She tried to sneak away before he saw her, but he straightened

suddenly.

"Where are you going?" he demanded. "As if I didn't know. Listen,

Vicky, I don't like you wandering around out of camp on your own."

"Jake Barton, I feel so filthy I can smell myself. Nothing and nobody

is going to stop me getting down to the river." Jake hesitated. "I'd

better come down with you."

"This isn't the Folies Berg&e, my dear," she laughed, and he had

learned enough not to argue with this lady. He watched her hurry to

the lip of the ravine and disappear down the steep slope with vague

misgivings, for which he could find no real substance.

The earth and loose stone rolled easily underfoot, and Vicky restrained

her impatience and picked her way carefully towards the water, until

she reached a narrow game trail that tipped down at a more comfortable

angle, and she followed it with relief. Her footsteps, falling

silently on to the soft earth, followed faithfully the string of round

five– toed pad marks, larger than a saucer, which had been plugged

deeply by the heavy weight of the animal that had made them. Vicky did

not look down, however, and if she had, it was doubtful if she would

have recognized what she was seeing. The faintly reflected light of

the pools drew her like a beacon.

When she reached the bottom of the ravine, she found that the river was

so shrunken that it was no longer flowing.

The pools were shallow, stagnant and still warm from the previous day's

sun. The storm waters of the awash had cut down through the softer

upper layers of earth until they exposed the sheet of hard black

ironstone that formed the floor of the ravine.

Vicky stripped off her sweat-damp clothing and stepped down into one of

the shallow pools, sighing with the pleasurable feel of water on her

skin. She sat waist-deep and scooped handfuls of water over her face

and breasts, washing away the dust and salt-sticky sweat of the

desert.

Then she waded to the edge of the pool and selected a bottle of shampoo

from her bag. The water was so soft that she swiftly worked up a thick

coating of white suds that covered her head and ran down her neck on to

her bare shoulders.

She rinsed the soap off and bound the towel around her wet head like a

turban, before kneeling in the shallow pool and soaping her entire

body, delighting at the slipperiness of the suds and their fragrance.

By the time she was finished, the light had strengthened and she knew

that the others would be up and chafing to resume the march.

She stepped out on to the flat black rock that surrounded the pool and

stood for a moment to feel the first gentle movement of the morning

breeze against her naked skin, and suddenly she had a strong sensation

that she was being watched. She, turned swiftly, half crouching, her

hands flying instinctively to cover her bosom and her groin.

The eyes that watched her were of a savage golden colour, and the

pupils were glistening black slits. The stare was steady and

unblinking.

The huge reddish-gold beast crouched on a level ledge of rock,

halfway up the far bank of the ravine. It lay with its forepaws drawn

up under its chin, and there was a sense of deadly stillness about it

that was chilling, although Vicky did not readily recognize what she

was seeing.

Then very slowly the dark ruff of the mane came erect, swelling out

around the head and exaggerating its already impressive bulk. Then the

tail twitched and began to slash back and forth with the steady beat of

a metronome.

Suddenly Vicky knew what it was. She heard again in her imagination

the echoes of that terrible sound in the night and she screamed.

Jake had just completed the adjustments he was making to the ignition

of his car and closed the engine cowling. He picked up the fluted

bottle of Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia to dissolve the grease from his hands.

At that instant he heard the scream and he began to run without a

conscious thought.

The scream was so high and shrill, an expression of mortal terror,

that Jake's heart raced in sympathy and when the scream came again, if

anything shriller still, he leaped the bank and went sliding and

running down the steep slope of the ravine.

It was only seconds from when he heard the first scream until he came

skidding and sliding down on to the rocky floor of the ravine beside

the pool.

He saw the naked girl crouching at the edge of the pool, both hands

pressed to her mouth. Her body was pale and slim, with the small tight

round buttocks of a lad and long graceful legs.

"Vicky," he shouted. "What is it?" And she turned quickly to him,

her breasts swinging heavily at the movement, round and white with

large pink nipples standing out tightly with cold and shock. Even in

the extremity of the moment, he could not help but glance down at the

smooth velvety plain of her belly and the fluffy dusky triangle at its

base. Then she was running towards him on those long coltish legs, and

her face was deadly white, and the speckled green eyes huge and

swimming with rampant terror.

"Jake," she cried. "Oh God, Jake," and then he saw movement beyond

her, halfway up the bank of the water course.

The wound had stiffened during the night, almost paralysing the lion's

hindquarters, and the torn entrails were leaking poison and infection

into the belly cavity. It had slowed the animal so drastically that

the natural reflexive anger which the sight of a human form had roused

was not strong enough to precipitate the charge.

However, the sound of the human voice immediately invoked memories of

the hunters who had inflicted this terrible aching agony "and the anger

flared higher.

Then suddenly there was another of the hated two-legged figures,

more noise and movement, all of this enough to counter the stiffness

and paralysing lethargy. The lion rose slightly out of his crouch and

he growled.

Jake ran four paces to meet Vicky and she tried to throw her arms about

his neck for protection, but he avoided the embrace and grasped her

upper arm with his left hand, his fingers digging so deeply into her

flesh that the pain steadied her. Using the impetus of her run, he

swung her on towards the path that climbed the slope.

"Run," he shouted. "Keep running." And he turned back to face the

crippled animal as it launched itself from the ledge into the bed of

the river.

It was only then that Jake realized that he still carried a full bottle

of Scrubbs Ammonia in his hand. The lion came bounding swiftly through

the shallow stagnant pool towards him. Despite the wounds, it followed

with lithe and sinuous menace. it was so close that he could see each

stiff white whisker in the curled upper lip and hear the rattle of air

in its throat. He let it come on, for to turn and run was suicide.

At the last moment he reared back like a baseball pitcher and hurled

the bottle. It was an instinctive action, using the only weapon

however puny that was at hand.

The bottle flew straight at the lion's head, catching it in the direct

centre of its broad forehead as it lunged smoothly upwards towards the

ledge where Jake stood.

The bottle exploded in a burst of sparkling glass splinters and a

creamy gush of the pungent liquid. It filled both the lion's eyes,

blinding it instantly, and the stench of concenits open mouth and

flaring nostrils killed trated ammonia in its sense of smell and

shocked its whole system so violently that it missed its footing and

fell, roaring with the agony of scalded eyeballs and burning throat,

into the shallow water where it rolled helplessly on its back.

Jake ran forward, seizing the few seconds of advantage he had gained.

He stooped to pick up a water-worn ironstone boulder the shape and size

of a football, and swung it up above his head with both hands.

As he poised himself on the ledge above the pool, the lion recovered

its balance and came up at him blindly. Jake swung the boulder down

from on high and, like a cannon ball, it smashed into the back of the

animal's neck, where the sodden mane covered the juncture of skull and

vertebrae, crushing both so that the dreadfully mutilated beast

collapsed and rolled on to its side, half in the water and half on the

black rock ledge.

For long seconds Jake stood over it, panting with exertion and

reaction, then he leaned forward and touched with his fingertip the

long pale lashes that fringed the lion's open staring golden eye.

Already the sheen of the eyeball was clouded by the corrosive liquid.

At Jake's touch there was no blinking reflex, and he knew that the

animal was dead.

He turned to find that Vicky had not obeyed his instruction to run. She

stood frozen where he had left her, naked and vulnerable, so that he

felt his heart shift within him and he went to her quickly.

With a sob she flew into his arms and clung to him with startling

strength. Jake knew that the embrace was the consequence of terror not

affection, but as his own heart-beat slowed and the tingle of the

adrenalin in his blood receded, he thought that he had achieved a solid

advantage. If you save a girl's life, she just has to take you

seriously, he reasoned, and grinned to himself still a little

unsteadily. All his senses were enhanced by the high point of recent

danger. He could smell the perfumed soap and the stink of ammonia. He

could feel with excruciating clarity the slim hard length of the girl's

body pressed to his and the smooth warmth of her skin under his

hands.

"Oh Jake!" she whispered brokenly, and with sudden aching certainty he

knew that in this moment she was his to take, to possess right here on

the black rock bank of the Awash, beside the warm carcass of the

lion.

The knowledge was certain and his hands moved on her body,

receiving instant confirmation her body was quick and responsive, and

her face turned up to his. Her lips trembled and he could feel her

breath upon his mouth.

"What the hell is going on down there?" Gareth's voice rang across the

murky depths of the gorge. He stood at the top of the bank high above

them. He had one of the Lee Enfield bolt-action rifles under his arm

and seemed on the point of coming down to them.

Jake turned Vicky, shielding her with his own big body and slipping off

his moleskin jacket to cover her nakedness.

The jacket reached halfway down her thighs and folded voluminously

around under her armpits. She was still shivering like a kitten in a

snowstorm, and her breathing was broken and thick.

"Don't worry about it," Jake called up at Gareth. "You weren't in time

to help, and you aren't needed now." He groped in his hip pocket and

Produced a large, slightly grubby handkerchief, which Vicky accepted

with a tearful, quivering smile.

"Blow your nose," said Jake. "and get your pants on, before the whole

gang arrives to give you a hand." regorius was so impressed that he

was speechless for several minutes. In Ethiopia there is no act of

ivalour so highly esteemed as the single-handed hunting and killing of

a full-grown adult lion, The warrior who accomplishes this feat wears

the mane thereafter as a badge of his courage and earns the respect of

all. The man who shoots his lion is respected, and the man who kil

with a spear is venerated. – Gregorius had never heard of one killed

with a single rock and a bottle of ammonia.

Gregorius skinned out the carcass with his own hands.

Before he had finished, the black pinioned vultures were sailing in

wide circles overhead. He left the naked pink carcass lying in the

river bed, and carried the wet skin up to the bivouac where Jake was

fretting to continue the trek towards the Wells. He was irreverent in

his disdain of the trophy, and Greg tried to explain it to him.

"You will gain great prestige amongst my people, Jake.

Wherever you go, people will point you out to each other."

"Fine

Greg. That's just fine. Now will you kindly haul arse.

"I will have a war bonnet made for you out of the mane, Greg insisted,

as he strapped the bundle of wet skin to the sponson of Jake's car.

"With the hair combed out, it will look very grand."

"It could only be an improvement on his present hair style," Gareth

observed drily. "I agree it's been a beautiful honeymoon, and Jake is

a splendid lad but like he said, let's move on, before I am violently

ill." As they moved towards their respective cars, Gregorius fell in

beside Jake and quietly showed him the mushroomed copper-jacketed

bullet he had removed from its niche in the pelvic bone of the

carcass.

Jake paused to examine it closely, turning it in the palm of his

hand.

"Nine millimeter, or nine point three," he said. "It's a sporting

calibre not military."

"I doubt if there is a single rifle in

Ethiopia that would fire this bullet," said Greg seriously. "It's a

foreigner's rifle."

"No need to blow the bugle yet," said Jake, and flicked the bullet back

to him. "But we'll bear it in mind." Gregorius almost turned away,

then said shyly, "Jake, even if the lion was already wounded it's still

the bravest thing I ever heard of. I have often hunted for them, but

never killed one yet." Jake was touched by the boy's admiration. He

laughed roughly and slapped his shoulder.

"I'll leave the next one for you," he promised.

They followed the windings of the River Awash through the savannah

grassland, moving in towards the mountains so that with each hour

travelled the peaks stood higher and clearer into the sky. The ridges

of rock and the deep-forested gorges came into hazy focus, like a wall

across the sky.

Suddenly they intersected the old caravan road, hitting it at a point

where the steep banks of the Awash flattened a little. The ford of the

river had been deeply worn over the ages by the passage of laden beasts

of burden and the men who drove them, so that the many footpaths down

each bank were deep trenches in the red earth, that jinked to avoid any

large boulder or ridge of rock.

The three men worked in the brilliant sunlight and swung shovel and

mattock in a fine mist of red dust that powdered their hair and bodies.

They filled in the uneven ground and deeply worn trenches,

levering the boulders free and letting them roll and bounce down into

the river bed, and slept that night the deathlike sleep of utter

exhaustion that ignored the ache of abused muscle and burst blisters.

Jake had them at work before it was fully light the next morning,

clearing and levelling, shovelling and packing the dry hard-baked

earth, until at last each bank had been shaped into a rough but

passable ramp.

Gareth was to take the first car through and he stood in the turret,

somehow managing to look debonair and sartorially elegant,

under the fine layer of red dust. He grinned at Jake and shouted

dramatically, "Noli il legitimi carborundum," and disappeared into the

steel interior The engine roared and he went bounding and sliding down

the steep ramp of newly turned earth, bounced and jolted across the

black rock bottom and flew at the far bank.

When the wheels spun viciously in the loose red earth, blowing out a

storm of grit and pebbles, Jake and Gregorius were ready to throw their

weight against it and this was just sufficient to keep the vehicle

moving. Slowly it ground its way up the almost vertical climb,

the rear end kicking and yawing under the thrust of the spinning

wheels, until at last it burst out over the top, and Gareth shut down

the power and jumped out laughing.

"Right, now we can tow the other cars up the bank," and he produced a

celebratory cheroot.

"What was that piece of dog Latin you recited just then Jake asked, as

he accepted the cheroot.

"Old family war cry," Gareth explained. "Shouted by the fighting

Swales at Hastings, gin court and in the knocking shops of the