Cry Wolf - Smith Wilbur - Страница 60

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force.

She wanted to scream, to turn and try and claw herself free but she

knew that was what they were waiting for. It needed just that

provocation and they would hurl themselves upon her. She gathered what

was left of her reserves and put it all into her voice.

"Get out of my way," she said clearly, and the man before her smiled.

It was one of the most terrifying things she had ever seen.

Still smiling, he dropped one hand to his groin, opened the fold of his

shamnia, and made a gesture so obscene that Vicky recoiled, and she

felt the scalding blood burn her throat and her cheeks. There was no

control in her voice now as she blurted, "Oh, you swine you filthy

swine," and the man reached for her, his robe still open. As she

shrank back, she felt the others behind her thrust her forward again.

Then another voice spoke. The words were banal but the tone hissed

like the sound of a scimitar swung at the cut.

"All right, chaps. That's enough of that nonsense." Vicky felt the

pressure of bodies about her ease, and she spun around with a sob

catching in her throat.

Gareth Swales strolled down the passage that opened for him through the

dense press of robed bodies. His whole carriage seemed indolent, and

the white open-necked shirt with an Zingari scarf at the throat was

crisp and immaculate but Vicky had never before seen the expression he

wore. The rims of his nostrils were ice-white and his eyes burned with

a controlled fury.

She would have flung herself at him, sobbing with relief, but his voice

crackled again.

"Steady. We're not out yet," and she caught herself, lifted her chin

and smothered the next sob before it escaped.

"Good girl," he said, without taking his eyes from the face of the tall

Galla in the blue robe, and he kept on walking steadily towards him,

taking Vicky's arm as he drew level with her. She felt the strength of

his fingers through the thin stuff of her blouse, and it seemed to flow

into her, charging her depleted reserves, and the jelly weakness in her

legs firmed.

The Galla leader stood his ground as Gareth stepped up to him, and for

a space of time that was less than five seconds but seemed to Vicky

like a round of eternity, the two men locked gazes and wills. Blazing

blue eyes levelled with smouldering black then suddenly the Galla

broke, he glanced aside and shrugged, chuckled weakly, and turned away

to talk loudly with the man who stood beside him.

Unhurriedly, Gareth stepped through the gap the man had left and they

were at the car.

"Are you well enough to drive?" Gareth asked quietly, as he swung her

up on the sponson and she nodded.

"The engine's switched off," she blurted; they could not risk cranking

to start.

"She's on the slope," said Gareth, turning to face the crowding

Gallas and hold them off with his level gaze. "Roll her to a start."

As Vicky scrambled into the driver's hatch, Gareth placed a cheroot

between his lips, and struck a match with his thumb nail. The little

act distracted the hostile pack for an Instant, and they watched his

hands as he lit the cheroot and blew a long blue feather of smoke

towards them.

Behind him, the car began to roll, and Gareth swung himself aboard

easily with the cheroot clamped between his teeth and gave the horsemen

a mocking salute as the car gathered speed down the slope. Neither of

them spoke as they dropped swiftly downwards, two miles in silence.

Then, without taking her eyes off the track ahead, Vicky told

Gareth as he stood above and behind her in the turret, "You weren't

even afraid-2

"In a blue funk, old girl absolute blue funk."

"And I once called you a coward."

"Quite right too."

"How did you get there so fast?"

"I was up there looking for defensive positions against the jolly old

Eyeties. Saw your faithful bodyguard taking off and came to have a

look." The track ahead of Vicky dissolved in a mist of tears,

and she had to hit the brakes hard. Afterwards, she was not sure quite

how it happened but she found herself in Gareth's arms, pressing

herself to him with all of her strength and shaking violently with her

sobs.

"Oh God, Gareth, I don't know what I'll ever do to repay you for

this."

"I'm sure we will think of something," he murmured, holding her with a

practised embrace that was lulling and so wonderfully secure.

She felt then that she did not want ever to leave his arms and she

lifted her lips to his and with a mild amazement saw on his face, in

the usually mocking blue eyes, such an expression of tenderness as she

had never expected was possible.

His lips were another surprise, they were very warm and soft and tasted

of man and the bitter aromatic smoke of his cheroots; she had never

realized that he was so tall and his body so hard, or his hands so

strong. The last sob wracked her body, and then she sighed

voluptuously and shuddered softly with the strength of physical

awakening more intense than she had ever experienced in her entire

life.

For a moment, the journalist in her attempted to analyse the source of

this sudden passion, and she knew it as the product of the previous

night's sleepless horrors, of fatigue and of the day's terrors. Then

she no longer queried it, but let it spread through her whole body. The

encampment of the Ras's army at the foot of the Sardi

Gorge sprawled for four miles amongst the acacia forests, a vast

agglomeration of living things which murmured softly with life, like a

hive of honeybees at midday, and which had already cloaked itself in

blue woodsmoke and the myriad odours of human and animal ingestion and

excretion.

The camp site that Gareth and Jake had chosen was set apart from the

main body, in a denser, shadier patch of acacia, below a tall rocky

waterfall where the Sardi River fell the last steep pitch to the plain

and formed a dark restless pool in which Vicky could bathe away the

filth from her body and from her mind.

It was almost dark when she climbed back to the camp with her wet hair

bound in a towel, carrying her wash bag.

Gareth was seated upon a log beside the smouldering camp fire. He was

watching the steaks of a freshly butchered ox grilling on the coals,

and he made room for her on the log beside him and offer'd her

Scotch whisky and lukewarm water in a tin mug, which she accepted

gratefully and which tasted as good as anything she had ever drunk.

In silence they sat together, almost but not quite touching, and

watched the swift coming of the African night.

They were alone, and the faint voices from the main encampment below.

them seemed only to emphasize this aloneness.

Jake, the old Ras and Gregorius had taken out two of the armoured cars

and a camel patrol on a reconnaissance back towards the Wells of

Chaldi. In the same exercise, Jake was to train the new gunners in the

use of the Vickers machine guns. Gareth, as the military expert, had

been left to survey the gorge and to judge the ground for defence in

the event of a forced retreat up the gorge under Italian pressure.

He had been doing this when he had come across Vicky and the Galla

horsemen.

Sitting now beside the fire, under a sky that was suddenly very black

and half obscured by the mountains that towered over them, Vicky was

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