Here Be Monsters

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By the same author

The Labyrinth Makers

The Alamut Ambush

Colonel Butler's Wolf

October Men

Other Paths to Glory

Our Man in Camelot

War Game

The '44 Vintage

Tomorrow's Ghost

The Hour of the Donkey Soldier

No More The Old Vengeful

Gunner Kelly Sion Crossing

ANTHONY PRICE

Here Be Monsters

GRAFTON BOOKS

For Shirley and John Kasik

Grafton Books

A Division of the Collins Publishing Group

Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA

Published by Grafton Books

First published in Great Britain by Victor Gollancz Ltd 1985 '

Copyright © Anthony Price 1985 ISBN 0-586-06961-

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow

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Set in Times

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This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

PROLOGUE:

The Pointe du Hoc, 1944-

He had been there before, but that other time he had arrived under the protection of darkness, and had departed fearfully in the half-light, with the dawn at his heels. So he had never seen the place before in his life.

What surprised him most was the grass. Somehow he hadn't expected the grass, although it must have been there then - some of it at least must have survived the Texas and the Satterlee and the bombers. But all he could remember from the darkness was a dreadful confusion of shell-holes and bomb-craters, occasionally and inadequately illuminated by dim torchlight and the distant flash of battle flickering from Omaha and Utah.

So the grass had surprised him, not the silence - not the silence, even though the sounds of that other time were what he chiefly remembered, far more than the fear and the excitement: the natural sound of the sea on the beach below, the crunch of boots on the pebbles… and the human sounds, of whole men whispering and cursing, and wounded men crying and cursing; and the inhuman noises, of the guns far away on the beaches, and far too close from the undefined Ranger perimeter just up ahead.

But those sounds, although he could still remember them rationally, no longer echoed in his head. They were part of a fading past, unlike the surprising grass.

And it was treacherous grass , too: it had been scuffed and trampled by yesterday's crowds, so that when he had been tempted away from the path to take an unwise look into one of the larger craters - a foolish, irrational temptation to see just what sort of hole one of those 14-inch shells from the Texas had made - he had slipped on the edge, and had sat down painfully on his bottom and slid half-way into the crater, scrabbling with heels and fingers.

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Then the boy had appeared from nowhere - of all people, a nice solicitous American boy, just like Ronnie at the same age - just like Ronnie, coming to him down by the lake in front of the cabin, when he had hooked himself carelessly, and cried out, angry with his carelessness - just like Ronnie, just as helpful and vulnerable.

The boy had insisted on helping him out of the crater. And then he had shrugged him off angrily, just as he had pushed Ronnie away, all those years ago by the lake, with the hook still embedded in his flesh.

Ronnie! he thought. And with that thought all the doubts and the realities - and the unrealities - of the past fell away from him, leaving only his raw determination of the last forty-eight hours.