black steel hulls, swarmed out to tear the wall down, they met another
wave of Ethiopian defenders who rose from where they had been lying
behind the wall, and immediately attackers and defenders had become so
entwined in a single struggling mass that the artillery and machine
guns could not fire for fear of gunning down their own.
Three times during the morning the infantry had been thrown back from
the wall, and the heavy artillery barrage that they had directed
against it made no impression on the granite boulders. When the tanks
came clanking and squealing like great black beetles hunting for a
breach, there was none, and the trace had clawed sparks from the rock
but been unable to lift the great weight of steel at the acute angle
necessary to climb the wall.
Now there was a lull that had lasted almost half an hour, and
Gareth and Jake sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one of the
massive granite blocks. Both of them were staring upwards at the
sky,
and it was Jake who broke the silence.
'There is the blue.' They saw it through the last eddying banks of
cloud that still clung like the white arms of a lover to the shoulder
of the mountain, but were slowly smeared away by the fresh dry breeze
off the desert.
A ray of brilliant sunlight burst into the valley, and threw a rainbow
of vivid colour in a mighty arc from mountain to mountain.
'That's beautiful,' murmured Gareth Softly, staring upwards.
Jake drew the watch from his pocket, and glanced at the dial.
'Seven minutes past eleven.' He read the hands. 'Just about right now
they'll radio them that the clouds are open.
They'll be sitting in the cockpits, eager as fighting cocks.' He
patted the watch back into his pocket. 'In just thirty-five minutes
they'll be here.' Gareth straightened up and pushed the lank blond
hair off his forehead.
'I know one gentleman who won't be here when they come.
'Make that two, 'Jake agreed.
'That's it, old son. We've done our bit. Old Lij Mikhael can't grouse
about a couple of minutes. It will be as close to noon as pleasure is
to sin.'
'What about these poor devils?' Jake indicated the few hundreds of
Harari who crouched with them behind the wall of rock all that remained
of Ras Golam's army.
'As soon as we hear the bombers coming, they can beat it. Off into the
mountains like a pack of long dogs-' after a bitch, 'Jake finished for
him, and grinned.
'Precisely.'
'Someone will have to explain it to them.'
'I'll go and fetch young Sara to tell them,' and he crawled away, using
the wall as cover from the Italian snipers who had taken up position in
the cliffs above them.
Priscilla the Pig was parked five hundred yards back in a grassy
wrinkle of ground, under a screen of cedar trees, beside the road.
Gareth saw immediately that Vicky had recovered from the state of
