Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 57

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are they doing?" "The woman accuses the youth of murdering her son.

The guards are her witnesses and the Ras is trying the case.

He will give judgement in a moment, and the sentence will be carried

out immediately."

Here? "Vicky looked startled.

"Yes, Miss Camberwell. I urge you to leave. The punishment will be

biblical, from the Old Testament which is the centre of the Coptic

faith. It will be a tooth for a tooth." Vicky hesitated to take the

Prince's advice, all human experience was her field no matter how

bizarre, and suddenly it was too late.

Laughingly, the Ras thrust the old woman away again with a kick to the

chest that sent her sprawling across the beaten earth floor and he

called a peremptory command to the guards who held the accused youth.

Flapping like a maimed black crow upon the floor, the crone set up a

wailing shriek of triumph as she heard the verdict, and she tried to

regain her feet. The guards guffawed again and began to strip away the

condemned man's clothing, tearing it from his body until he stood

completely naked except for his bonds.

The crowded room now buzzed with excitement at the coming

entertainment, and the doorway and windows were packed with those who

had come in from the encampment amongst the cosa flora trees. Even the

two impassive madonnas who flanked the Ras had become animated, leaning

forward to chatter softly to each other, smiling secretly as their

dark-moon eyes shone and the full swollen breasts swung heavily under

the thin material of their blouses.

The doomed youth was whimpering softly, his head turning back and

forth, as though seeking escape, his naked body slim and finely muscled

with dark amber skin that, glowed in the lamplight, and his arms bound

tightly behind his back. His legs were long and the muscles looked

hard and beautifully sculptured, and the dark bush of curls in his

groin was dense and crisp-looking. His thick circumcised penis hung

limply, seeming to epitomize the man's despair.

Vicky tried to tear her eyes away, ashamed to look upon a human being

stripped thus of all dignity, but the spectacle was mesmeric.

The old woman hopped and flapped in front of the captive, her wrinkled

brown features contorted in an expression of utter malice and she

opened her toothless mouth and spat into his face. The spittle ran

down his cheek and dripped on to his chest.

"Please leave now," Lij Mikhael urged Vicky, and she tried to rise, but

it seemed that her legs would not respond.

One of the Galla warriors sitting opposite Vicky drew the narrow-bladed

dagger from the tooled leather sheath on his hip. The handle was

carved from the horn of a kudu bull and bound with copper wire, the

blade was slightly curved and viciously pointed, twice the span of a

man's hand in length. He shouted to attract the woman's attention,

then sent the weapon skidding across the floor towards her and she

pounced upon it with another gleeful shriek and pranced before the

cringing youth, brandishing the knife while the watchers shouted

encouragement to her.

The captive began to twist and struggle, watching the knife with the

fixed concentration of despair and terror, but the two tall guards held

him easily, chuckling like a pair of gaunt ogres, watching the knife

also.

The old woman let out one more high-pitched shriek, and leapt at him

the long skinny black arm lunged out, the point of the blade aimed at

his heart. The woman's strength was too frail to drive it home, and

the point struck bone and glanced aside, skidding around the ribcage,

opening a long shallow cut that exposed the white bone in its depths

for the instant before blood flooded out between the lips of the wound.

A howl of delight went up from the assembled Gallas, and they goaded on

the avenger with mocking cries and yips like those of a pack of excited

jackals.

Again and again the old woman struck, and the youth kicked and

struggled, his guards roaring with laughter and the blood from the

shallow wounds flying and sparkling in the lamplight, splattering the

old woman's knife arm and speckling her angry screeching face. Her

frustration made her blows more wild and feeble.

Unable to penetrate his chest, she turned her attack upon his face. One

blow split his nose and upper lip, and the next slashed across his eye,

turning the socket instantly into a dark blood-glutted hole. The

guards let him fall to the floor.

The old woman leapt upon his chest and, clinging to him like a huge,

grotesque vampire bat, she began to saw determinedly at the youth's

throat until at last the carotid artery erupted, dousing her robes and

puddling the floor on which they rolled together while the Galla

watchers roared their approbation.

Only then could Vicky move; she leapt to her feet and pushed her way

through the throng that jammed the doorway and ran out into the cool

night. She realized that her blouse was damp with the sweat of nausea

and she leaned against the stem of a cosa flora tree, trying to fight

it, unavailingly; then she doubled over and retched tearingly, choking

up her horror.

The horror stayed with her for many hours, denying her the sleep her

body craved. She lay alone in the small room that Lij Mikhael had

ordered for her, and listened to the drums beating and the shouts of

laughter and bursts of singing from the Galla encampment amongst the

cosa flora trees.

When she slept at last, it was not for long, and then she awoke to a

soft tickling movement on her skin and the first fiery itch across her

belly.

Disgusted by the loathsome touch she threw aside the single blanket and

lit the candle. Across the flat smooth plain of her belly, the bites

of vermin were strung like a girdle of angry red beads and she

shuddered, her whole body crawling with the thought of it.

She spent what remained of the night huddled uncomfortably on the floor

of the armoured car. The mountain cold struck through the steel of

Miss Wobbly's hull, and Vicky shivered into the dawn, scratching

morosely at the hot lumps across her stomach. Then she filled the

growling ache of her empty stomach with a tin of cold corned beef from

the emergency rations in the locker under the driver's seat, before

driving up the slope of the western pass to the German mission station

where she experienced the first lift of spirits since the horrors of

the night.

Sara had responded almost miraculously to the treatment she was

receiving, and although she was still weak and a little shaky, the

fever had abated, and she was once more able to give Vicky the benefit

of her vast wisdom and worldly experience.

Vicky sat beside the narrow iron bedstead in the overcrowded ward,

while other patients coughed and groaned around her, and held Sara's

thin dry hand from which the flesh seemed to have wasted overnight and

poured out to her the horrors still pent up inside her.

"Ras Kullah," Sara made a moue of disgust. "He is a degenerate man,

that one. Did he have his milk cows with him?" Vicky was for a moment

at a loss, until she remembered the two madonnas. "His men scour the

mountains to keep him supplied with pretty young mothers in full milk

ugh!" She shuddered theatrically, and Vicky felt her unsettled stomach

quail. "That and his hemp pipe and the sight of blood. He is an

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