Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 59

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mountains. For an instant she thought of checking the telegraph office

for a reply to her despatch, but dismissed the idea immediately. There

was no chance that her editor would yet have received, let alone

replied to her communication. Now she looked around her and identified

the knot of men and horses that comprised Lij Mikhael's bodyguard, but

they seemed very little different from the greater mass of Gallas.

Little comfort there, and she climbed quickly down into the driver's

hatch of the car and engaged the low gear.

She bumped over the rough ground and found the track that led down

along the river towards the tall grey stone portals of the gorge. She

was aware of the long untidy column Of Mounted men that followed her

closely, but her t mind leapt ahead to her arrival at the foot of the

gorge, to her reunion with Jake and Gareth. Suddenly those two were

the most important persons in her whole existence and she longed for

them, both or either of them, with a strength that showed in the white

knuckles of her hands as she gripped the steering-wheel.

The descent of the gorge was a more terrifying experience than the

ascent. The steeper stretches fell away before Vicky with the

gut-swooping feel of a ski-run, and once the heavy cumbersome car was

committed to it, its own weight took charge and it went down bucking

and skidding. Even with the brakes locking all four wheels, it kept

plunging downwards, with very little steering control transmitted to

the front wheels.

A little after noon, Vicky had come more than halfway down the gorge,

and she remembered that this final pitch was the truly terrifying part,

where the track clung to the precipice high above the roaring river in

its rocky bed. Her arms and back were painfully cramped with the

effort of fighting the kicking wheel, and-sweat had drenched the hair

at her temples and stung her eyes. She wiped it away with her forearm,

and went at the slope, braking hard the moment that the car began

rolling down the thirty-degree incline.

With rock and loose earth kicking and spewing out from under the big

wheels, they descended in a heavy lumbering rush, and halfway down

Vicky realized that she had no control and that the vehicle was

gradually slewing sideways and swinging its tail out towards the edge

of the cliff.

She felt the first lurch as one rear wheel dropped slightly,

riding out over the hundred-foot drop, and instinctively she knew that

in this instant of its headlong career, the car was critically hanging

at the extreme edge of its balance. In a hundredth of a second, it

would go beyond the point of recovery, and she made without conscious

thought a last instinctive grasp at survival. She jumped her foot from

the brake pedal, swung the wheel into the line of skid and thrust her

other foot down hard on the throttle. One wheel hung over the cliff,

the other caught with a vicious jerk as the engine roared at full

power, and the huge steel hull jumped like a startled gazelle, and

hurled itself away from the cliff edge, struck the far bank of earth

and rocky scree and was flung back, miraculously, into its original

line of track.

At the bottom of the pitch, the slope eased. Vicky fought the car to a

standstill there and dragged herself out of the driver's hatch.

She found that she was shaking uncontrollably, and that she had to get

to a private place off the track, for in reaction she was close to

vomiting and her control of her other bodily functions was shaken by

that terrible sliding, bucking ride.

She had left the column of horsemen far behind, and could only faintly

hear their voices and the clatter of hooves on the rocky track as she

scrambled and clawed her way up the side of the gorge to a thicket of

dwarf cedar trees, where she could be alone.

There was a spring of clear sweet water amongst the cedars and when her

body had purged itself and she had it under control again, she knelt

beside the rocky pool and bathed her face and neck. Using the surface

of the shining water as a mirror, she combed her hair and rearranged

her clothing.

The reaction to extreme fear had left her feeling lightheaded and

slightly apart from reality. She picked her way out of the cedar

thicket, and down to where the car stood upon the track. The Galla

horsemen had arrived and they and their mounts crowded the entire

area,

back up the track for half a mile, and in a solid mob about the

armoured car.

Those nearest the car had dismounted, and when she tried to make her

way through their ranks they gave her only minimal passage, so that she

must brush close to them.

Suddenly she realized with a fresh lunge of fear in her chest that the

Harari bodyguard of Lij Mikhael was no longer with her and she stopped

uncertainly and looked about her, trying to find where they were.

An aching silence had fallen on the Gallas, and now she saw that their

expressions were tense also. The faces, with their handsome,

high-boned features and beaky noses, turned towards her with the

predatory expectation of the hunting hawk, and the eyes burned with the

same fierce excitement with which they had watched the old crone do her

bloody work the previous night.

The Harari, where were the Harari? She looked about her wildly now but

could not find a familiar face and then in the silence she heard the

clatter of distant hooves from far down the gorge and she knew without

any shade of doubt that they had left her, they had been driven away by

the threats of their ancient enemies, who outnumbered them so

heavily.

She was alone and she turned to go back, but found that they had closed

about her, cutting off her retreat and now they pressed gradually

closer about her, with the same smouldering, gloating expression on

every face.

She had to go forward, there was no way back and she forced herself to

walk slowly on towards the car. At each step a tall robed figure stood

to block her way. She knew she must show no sign of fear,

any show of weakness at all would trigger them, and she had a single

brief image of her own pale body spread-eagled upon the rocky earth,

plaything for a thousand. She thrust the image firmly aside and walked

on slowly. At the last possible instant, each tall figure moved

aside,

but there was always another beyond to take its place and each time the

throng pressed closer upon her.

She could feel their heightening expectation, almost smell it in the

hot musk of their packed bodies the change in the faces was there too;

they watched her with a growing excitement, teeth grinning, breath

shortening and eyes like claws in her flesh.

Suddenly she could go no further; a figure taller and more compelling

than any other blocked her path. She had noticed this, man before. He

was a Gerazmach, a high Galla officer. he wore a sharnma of dark blue

silk wrapped about his throat and falling to his knees.

His hair was fluffed out in a wide halo about the lean, cruel face and

a scar ran down from the outer corner of his eye to the point of his

jaw.

He said something to her in a voice that was thick with lust, and she

did not understand the words but the meaning was clear. The crowd

around her stirred and she heard the sound of their breathing and felt

them press even closer towards her. A man laughed near her, and there

was something so ugly in the sound that it struck her like a physical

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