the havoc that the entrenched machine guns made of the massed charge of
Harari warriors. They fell in thick swathes, dead upon dead,
as the guns traversed back and forth. They piled up in banks in front
of the Italian positions so that those still coming on had to clamber
over the fallen, and when the guns swung back, they too fell building a
wall of bodies.
The Count's terror was forgotten in the fascination of the spectacle.
The racing figures coming down the narrow gorge seemed endless, like
ants from a disturbed nest. Like fields of moving wheat,
and the guns reaped them with great scythe-strokes and piled them in
deep windrows.
Yet here and there, a few of the racing figures came on reached the
barbed wire that Castelani had strung, beat it down with their swords,
and were through.
Of those who breached the wire, most died on the very lips of the
Italian trenches, shot to bloody pieces by close range volleys of rifle
fire but a few, a very few came on still. A group of three figures
leaped the wire at a point where two dead Ethiopians had fallen and
dragged it down, making a breach for those who followed.
They were led by a tall, skeletal figure in swirling white robes.
He was bald, the pate of his head gleaming like a black cannon ball,
and perfect white teeth shone in the sweat-coiled face. He carried
only a sword, as long as the spread of a man's arms and as broad as the
span of his hand, and he swung the huge blade lightly about his head as
he j inked and dodged with the agility of a goat.
The two warriors who followed him carried ancient Martini-Henry rifles
which they fired from the hip as they ran, each shot blowing a long
thick blue flag of black powder smoke, while the leader swung the sword
above his head and loolooed a wild war cry. A machine gun picked up
the group neatly and a single burst cut two of them down but the tall
leader came on at a dead run.
The Count, peering over the turret of the tank, was so astonished by
the man's persistence that his own fear was momentarily forgotten.
In the tank parked beside his, the machine gun fired, a ripping tearing
burst, and this time the racing white clad figure staggered slightly
and Aldo Belli saw the bullets strike, lifting tiny pale puffs of dust
from the warrior's robes, and leaving bloody splotches across his chest
yet he came on running, still howling, and he leaped the first line of
trenches, coming straight down towards the line of tanks, and it seemed
as though he had recognized the Count as his particular adversary. His
charge seemed to be directed. at him alone, and he was suddenly very
close. Standing fascinated in the turret, Aldo Belli could clearly see
the staring eyes in the deeply lined face, and noticed the incongruity
of the man's rows of perfect white teeth. His chest was sodden with
dark red blood, but the swinging sword in his hands hissed through the
air and the dawn light flickered on the blade like summer lightning.
The machine gun fired again, and this time the burst seemed to tear the
man's body to pieces. The Count saw shreds of his clothing and flesh
fly from him in a cloud, yet incredibly he kept coming onwards,
staggering and dragging the sword beside him.
