plunged into a full run through the outskirts of the camp. Now,
fully awake, the boy had clung to the galloping horse, and seen the
lines of parked trucks and military tents looming out of the
darkness.
He had seen the stacked rifles, and recognize the shape of the helmet
of another sentry who had challenged again as they passed through the
outer lines.
Peering back under his own arm he had seen the flash of the rifle shot
and heard the crack of the bullet pass his bowed head, and he urged the
horse on with heels and knees.
By the time the groom reached the deep wadi, the Ras's following was at
last succumbing to the effects of a full night's festivities.
Many of them had drifted away to find a place to sleep, others had
merely huddled down in their robes and slept where they had eaten.
Only the hardened few still ate and drank, argued and sang, or sat in
tejnumbed silence about the fires watching the womenfolk begin to
prepare the morning meal.
The boy flung himself off the mare at the entrance to the caves,
ducked under the arms of the sentries who would have restrained him and
ran into the crowded, smoky and dimly lit interior. He was gabbling
with fright and importance, the words tumbling over each other and
making no sense until Lij Mikhael caught him by the upper arms and
shook him to restore his senses.
Then the story he told made sense, and rang with urgent conviction.
Those within earshot shouted it to those further back, and within
seconds the story, distorted and garbled, had flashed through the
gathering and was running wildly through the whole encampment.
The sleepers awakened, every man armed and every woman and child
curious and voluble. They streamed out of the caves and from the rough
tents and shelters in the narrow ravines. Without command, moving like
a shoal of fish without a leader but with as ingle purpose, laughing
sceptic ally or shouting speculation and comment and query, brandishing
shields and ancient firearms, the women clutching their infants, and
the older children dancing around them or darting ahead, the shapeless
mob streamed out of the broken ground and down into the saucer-shaped
valley of the wells.
In the caves, Lij Mikhael was still explaining the boy's story to the
foreigners, and arguing the details and implications with them and his
father. It was Jake Barton who realized the danger.
'If the Italians have sent in a unit to grab the wells, then it's a
calculated act of war. They'll be looking for trouble, Prince.
You'd best forbid any of your men to go down there, until we have sized
up Xhe situation properly.' It was too late, far too late. In the
first faint glimmer of dawn, when the light plays weird tricks on a
man's eyes, the Italian sentries peering over their parapets saw a wall
of humanity swarming out of the dark and broken ground, and heard the
rising hubbub of hundreds of excited voices.
When the drumming had begun, many of the black shirts were huddled
below the firing step of their trenches, swaddled in their greatcoats
