Arms and the Women. Reginald Hill

      It was a dark and stormy night. The wind was blowing off the sea and the guard commander bowed into it with his cloak wrapped around his face as he left the shelter of the grove and began to clamber up to the headland.

      The darkness was deep but not total. There was salt and spume in the wind giving it a ghostly visibility, and now a huge flock of white sea birds riding the blast went screeching by only a few feet over his head.

      The superstitious fools huddled round their fires in the camp below would probably take them as an omen and argue over which god was telling them what and pour out enough libations to get the whole of Olympus pissed. But the commander didn’t even flinch.

      As he neared the crest of the headland, he screwed up his eyes and peered ahead, looking for a darker outline against the black sky which should show where the wind wrapped itself around the sentry. There’d been grumblings among the weary crewmen when he’d insisted on posting a full contingent of perimeter guards. In the forty-eight hours since they made landfall, they’d found no sign of human habitation, and with the storm which had made them run for shelter blowing as hard as ever, the threat of a seaborne attack seemed negligible. With the democracy of shared hardship, they’d even appealed over his head to the Prince.

      ‘So you feel safe?’ he’d said. ‘Is that more safe or less safe than when you saw the Greek ships sail away?’

      That had shut them up. But the commander had resolved to make the rounds himself to check that none of the posted sentries, feeling secure in the pseudo-isolation of the storm, had opted for comfort rather than watch.

      And it seemed his distrust was justified. His keen gaze found no sign of any human figure on the skyline. Then a small movement at ground level caught his straining eyes. Cautiously he advanced. The movement again. And now he could make out the figure of a man stretched out on his stomach right at the cliff’s edge.

      Silently he drew his sword and moved closer. If the idle bastard had fallen asleep he was in for a painful reveille. But when he was only a pace away, his foot kicked a stone and the sentry’s head turned and their eyes met.

      Far from showing alarm, the man looked relieved. He laid a finger over his lips, then motioned to the commander to join him prostrate.

      When they were side by side, the sentry put his mouth to his ear and said, ‘I think there’s someone down there, Commander.’

      It didn’t seem likely, but this was a battle-scarred veteran who’d spent ten years patrolling the Wall, not some fresh-faced kid who saw a bear in every bush.

      Cautiously he wriggled forward till his head was over the edge and looked down.

      He knew from memory that the rocky cliff fell sheer for at least eighty feet down to a tiny shingly cove, but now it was like looking into hellmouth, where Pyriphlegethon’s burning waves drive their phosphorescent crests deep into the darkness of woeful Acheron.

      Nothing could live down there, nothing that still had dependence on light and air anyway, and he was moving back to give the sentry a tongue-lashing when suddenly the wind tore a huge hole in the cloud cover and a full moon lit up the scene like a thousand lanterns.

      Now he saw, though he could hardly believe what he saw.

      The waves had momentarily retreated to reveal the figure of a man crawling out of the sea. Then the gale sent its next wall of water rushing forward and the figure was buried beneath it. Impossible to survive, he thought. But when the sea receded, it was still there, hands and feet dug deep into the shingle. And in the few seconds of respite given by the withdrawing waters, the man scrambled forward another couple of feet before sinking his anchors once again.

      Sometimes the suction of the retreating waves was too strong, or his anchorage was too shallow, and the recumbent body was drawn back the full length of its advance. But always when it seemed certain that the ocean must have driven deep into his lungs, or the razor-edged shingle must have ripped his naked chest wide open, the figure pushed itself forward once more.

      ‘He’ll never make it,’ said the sentry with utter assurance.

      The guard commander watched a little while longer then said, ‘Six to four he does. In gold.’

      The veteran looked down at the sea which now seemed to be clutching at the body on the beach with a supernatural fury. It looked like a sure-fire bet, but he had a lot of respect for the commander’s judgement.

      ‘Silver,’ he compromised.

      They settled to watch.

      It took another half-hour for the commander to win his bet, but finally the crawling man had dragged himself right up to the foot of the cliff where a couple of huge boulders resting on the beach formed a protective wall against which the sea dashed its mountainous missiles in vain. For a while he lay there, still immersed in water from time to time, but no longer at risk of being either beaten flat or dragged back into the depths. Then, just when the sentry was hoping he might claim victory in the bet by reason of the man’s death, he sat upright.

      ‘That sod must be made of bronze and bear hide,’ said the sentry with reluctant admiration. ‘What the fuck’s he doing now?’

      For the figure on the beach had pushed himself to his feet, and as the waters drew back, he emerged from his rocky refuge and, to the observers’ amazement, began a kind of lumbering dance, following the receding waves, then backpedalling like mad as they drove forward once more. And all the while he was gesticulating, sometimes putting his left hand in the crook of his right elbow and thrusting his right fist into the air, sometimes putting both his thumbs into his mouth, then pulling them out with great force and stabbing his forefingers seawards, and shouting.

      ‘I’ve seen that before,’ said the sentry. ‘That’s what them bastards used to do under the Wall.’

      ‘Hush! I’m trying to hear what he’s