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,
the lips drawn back from his teeth in a fixed snarl and his eyes
rolling in their sockets until the whites showed, and the tears of pain
poured freely down his cheeks, glinting in the firelight like dew on
the yellow petals of a rose.
Vicky cut the rawhide bindings at the Italians' wrists and elbows,
and they massaged the circulation back into their arms, huddling
together, their pale faces still smeared with dirt and dried blood and
their eyes terrified and ... uncomprehending.
Quickly, Vicky crossed back to Jake and stood close beside him.
Somehow there was safety and security when she was near to him. She
stayed beside him as Jake forced Ras Kullah, step by step, across the
open ground to where the maimed, half-destroyed thing still moved
weakly and drew each agonized breath of air with a bubbling sigh.
Jake stooped slightly away from Ras Kullah, but still holding him,
and Vicky saw the compassion alter the fierce expression in his eyes
for a moment, She did not realize what he was going to do until he
dropped the pistol from Ras Kullah's face, and extended his arm at full
stretch.
The crack of the pistol was sharp and cutting in the stillness,
and the bullet hit the mutilated Italian in the centre of his
forehead,
leavin a dark blue hole in the gleaming '9 white skin of the brow. His
eyelids fluttered like the wings of a dying dove, and the arched
straining body sagged and relaxed. A long gusty sigh came up the
tortured throat, the sigh a man might make at the very edge of sleep
and then he was still.
Without another look at the man to whom he had given peace, Jake lifted
the pistol to Ras Kullah's face again, and with fresh pressure on his
arm he forced him to turn and walk slowly back.
With a curt inclination of the head, he signalled the three
Italians to move. They went first, moving slowly, still shrinking
together, then Vicky followed them, one hand for comfort reaching back
to touch Jake's shoulder. Jake held Ras Kullah twisted off balance,
and forced him step by step onwards. He knew they must not hurry, must
not Show weakness, for the flimsy bonds which held the Gallas frozen
would snap at the least strain, and they would be upon them down under
them in a pack, bearing the press of bodies, and hacking and tearing
