Anno Dracula 1918 - The Bloody Red Baron (24 page)

The stairs widened and emerged in the flagstone floor of a large chamber. Moonlight sliced in through arrow-slit windows. Torches burned in sconces. A curtain billowed slightly, cold air wafting through. There was a powerful zoo-like animal smell.

He skidded to a halt in the bat-shaped shadow of a giant. The flier was taller even than he had thought. Poe's eyes were level with the tops of a pair of colossal, polished boots.

Lifting his gaze, he saw a lightly furred body still human in its underlying shape. The wings were folded, like a floor-length coat of living velvet. Hanging on the chest was a surplice affair of canvas and leather that supported a pair of machine-guns. There were other additions: straps to stiffen spines and wires to connect wings. Muscular arms grew from the wingpits, functional but inelegant, with three-fingered hands that reached the gun-handles.

A tight leather helmet became a loose cowl as the head dwindled, then was removed by orderlies who stood on elevated platforms. Fiery eyes shrank, flaring ears contracted, rows of teeth slid back into sheaths. The gaping red mouth closed, forming human lips. Fur faded like a dissolving mask.

'Herr Poe,' Kretschmar-Schuldorff said, 'this is Manfred, the Baron von Richthofen.'

Poe could say nothing.

The Red Baron was resuming human form. Orderlies swarmed around like valets, relieving him of guns, boots and straps. As he shrank, his flying gear threatened to crush him and had to be removed with care. There were racks for the equipment.

The baron's two personal orderlies worked swiftly and expertly. Surprisingly, they were warm men.

'These men have been with the baron throughout the war,' Kretschmar-Schuldorff explained. 'Feldwebel Fritz Haartmann and Kaporal Peter Kurten. They are the squires of our knight of the sky.'

Haarmann and Kurten did not bicker as they carried out their duties. Poe assumed they must be in a state of perpetual awe. Richthofen's square, blue-eyed face emerged from the bat- mask. Poe recognised him from the
Sahnke
card likenesses sold at railway stations throughout Germany.

The other fliers crowded into the chamber, pointed heads and hunched backs scraping the stone ceiling. There were dozens of ground staff to attend their transformations. There was so much activity that only Poe had the time to wonder.

'That is Professor Ten Brincken, Director of Experimentation.'

Kretschmar-Schuldorff indicated a grey-faced, broad- shouldered man, hunched in a grubby white coat. The professor growled, checking measurements against a chart.

'And this is General Karnstein, commandant of the château.'

A distinguished elder, with grey hair and a jet-black beard, stood by with quiet pride. There was something of the eighteenth century in the cut of his uniform.

Richthofen's face was completely human now. He had shrunk to eight feet or so, half the size he had been. Muscles flowed into new configurations as the skeletal structure adjusted. Haarmann and Kurten produced large, soft-bristled brushes and swept away the hair shed as the Baron changed. In an instant redistribution of bone and tissue, the flier sucked his rudimentary arms back into his midriff. The shape-shifting was fluid and painless, apparently without effort.

It was wonderful magic. Wings stretched out and became arms, leather folding up like a Chinese fan, smoothing into fair skin. Richthofen's iron face betrayed no discomfort, though other fliers yelped and groaned as joints popped and bones reset. Ten Brincken, a stern but proud parent, observed with approval.

Medical men stepped in like the trainers of a pugilist, placing stethoscopes to chests, observing wounds as they healed, taking notes. Orderlies like Haartmann and Kurten provided robes for the fliers. They folded into themselves and grew down to their human heights, settling into their usual shapes.

They all looked human now. Vampires, obviously, but human. But these men, these fliers, were gods and demons and angels. Poe understood why he was needed here. Why the insignificant Hanns Heinz Ewers would not serve. Only Edgar Poe was genius enough to do justice to this subject.

In his own shape, Richthofen was a man of medium height, with a flat, handsome face and cold, inexpressive eyes. He settled into a fur-collared dressing gown. It was obvious he held within him great strength and a greater secret, but it would have been impossible to guess its extent.

'Manfred,' Kretschmar-Schuldorff said, 'this is Edgar Poe. He is to work with you on your book.'

Poe presented his hand. The Baron declined to shake it, less through arrogance than through awkwardness. There was a choirboyish prissiness to the hero. A man of action, he had Hotspur's distaste for the frills and comforts of life. He would have little use for poets.

Herr Baron,' Poe stammered, 'I did not dream ...'

'I do not dream either,' Richthofen said, turning away, if you will excuse me, I have a report to write. For some of us, words do not come easily.'

In No Man's Land, it was impossible accurately to calculate the passage of time and distance. When fire-flashes lit up the burned-out Snipe, the sorry extent of their progress was revealed. It seemed hours had gone by, yet they had covered only a painful hundred yards.

He had assumed he would have to carry Ball on his back, but, despite fearful wounds, the pilot was the more fit to make headway. Ball surmounted obstacles that forced him to detours. The vampire was a miracle of the will to endure. It was as if the flaming crash had burned away all but the essential parts. He crawled crab-fashion, using his hands as adeptly as his feet, squirming over the terrain as if born to it. Through cracks in his black carapace of burned flesh and cloth, muscles and tendons glistened, working like oiled pistons.

Winthrop resolved to be like Albert Ball, to jettison excess mental cargo and concentrate solely on the needs of the moment. He was thinking too much of Catriona, of Beauregard, of Richthofen. He must think only of Edwin Winthrop.

Fingers of light waved in the sky behind them. If it was dawn, they were heading the wrong way, towards the German lines. It must be fire. After a pause, there were explosions, safely remote.

Winthrop found a French helmet for which the owner could have no further use. He detached it, without distaste, from an unrecognisable protruberance. Besides protection, the ridged Adrian helmet gave him an Allied silhouette. Now, he was less in danger from his own side. Of course, any good German they ran into would shoot him on sight. He doubted the Boche regularly sent night patrols this far into No Man's Land, but if the big push everyone expected was in the offing there might be sneak parties out making maps and clearing paths. And there were probably Germans wandering around as lost as he was, in traditional blind, trigger-happy panic.

'And we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,' he remembered from 'Dover Beach', 'where ignorant armies clash by night.' Matthew Arnold was one of the prophets of the age.

While Winthrop outfitted himself through grave-robbery, Ball scrambled over the ridge of a shell-crater. Winthrop clambered over a shattered gun-carriage and, leaning heavily on his prop, looked down into the dark where Ball was crawling. In most circumstances, he would have found a vampire like Albert Ball disquieting.

His back, turned to Hunland, prickled. He anticipated bullets that would rip through him, ending this nightmare excursion. Suddenly alert, he jumped off the lip of the ridge and slid down in Ball's wake. His panic passed. He had no idea what had spooked him.

The jump jarred his bad knee and he almost lost hold of the propeller blade. He swore loudly and extensively. Not recommended conduct in a young officer eager to be advanced.

The crater was deeper than any they had yet passed. Under its rim darkness was complete, but the muddy bottom was gently moonlit. Another star-shell flared. At least from inside the hole they could not see the damned skeleton Snipe.

Ball made it to the bottom of the hole and waited for Winthrop. The pilot stood, limbs unkinking like the fake cripple faith-healed in
The Miracle Man.
His outstretched arms bent the wrong way.

Out of the firing lines of both trenches, the crater was an oasis of safety in a desert of peril. By the time Winthrop got to him, Ball had cracked open a pocket in his Sidcot, or possibly his skin, and slipped out a copper cigarette case.

'Care for a gasper?'

Ball stuck a cigarette into his mouth, nipping the end between between exposed teeth, and patted his pockets for a box of matches. Winthrop took a cigarette and found his own matches.

'Ta, old son,' Ball said as Winthrop struck a light. 'Mine went off in the bad business back there.'

Without lips, Ball slurred his consonants badly. It was hard for him to suck flame to the tobacco, but a few strong draughts did the trick. His fused nostrils popped open as he exhaled.

Winthrop relished the tang of smoke. It was a living taste.

The crater was full of forgotten war dead, jumbled together, pounded into mud. Corpses of all nations were under them everywhere they trod. It was a mass grave waiting for earth to be shovelled in.

'This must be the proverbial pretty pass things come to.'

Ball looked around the hole. His eyelids were burned away. Winthrop saw the red tangle of muscle around his eyeballs. The crater was about thirty yards across.

'Been in worse. Last time, I was shot down in Hunland and had to slog through their trenches. That show was considerably bloodier than this jaunt.'

'But last time you were shot down by somebody in an aeroplane.'

'True enough, but wings are wings.'

Winthrop shook his head. It would not do to dwell on what had happened in the air. Not yet.

'Time to push on,' Ball said, stubbing out his cigarette on the steep incline of the crater's side.

They walked across the bottom of the hole. When he stood straight, Winthrop's back ached. He'd been crouching and cringing for hours, trying to present a smaller target.

Ball stopped and held his head like a dog cocking an ear, sensing danger. Before Winthrop could ask what was the matter, darkness swarmed up around them.

They were surrounded by a forest of living scarecrows. Suddenly electrified corpses rose from shallow graves or random piles. Guns were produced and pointed, and cold hands laid on them. Winthrop felt a clutch of pain at his throat and the prod of a bayonet-tip at his ribs. Again, he knew he was seconds from death. Foul breath wafted at his face. If the grip on his throat had relaxed, he would have choked on it.

He could not immediately identify the uniform of the soldier who held him. Tatters were applied to the body with mud, as if the man were an African savage. A cloak of camouflage netting was threaded with twigs and leaves. A necklace of cartridge cases and fingerbones hung on his chest.

A match struck and a thick-bearded face loomed close to his own. Red eyes shone from a mask of filth. Jagged vampire teeth gnashed, wet with bloody spittle.

'Who goes there? Friend or foe?'

The voice was British, but not officer-class. Winthrop would have put the soldier down as a Northcountryman. His terror eased.

'Lieutenant Winthrop,' he said, through a constricted throat, 'Intelligence.'

The creature laughed and Winthrop's terror returned. The throat-grip did not slacken. There were still malice and hunger in the red eyes.

'I know you,' the British corpse said. 'You're a poacher.'

Winthrop was slowly strangling.

'Hunting rights in this estate are exclusive,' the soldier said, indicating the death-strewn wilderness. 'I represent those who hold them.'

Another of the risen dead came to examine the catch. This one was well off his territory: the remnants of an Austrian uniform suggested he had deserted from the Eastern Front to get here. A gasmask, lenses gone from the eyeholes, made his head bulbous. Runic symbols were etched into the leather and a curly moustache was painted on the snoutlike filter.

'Ho, Svejk,' said Winthrop's captor, 'we've netted a representative of Intelligence.'

Svejk laughed too, a muffled malignance. Under the mask, his eyes were maddened.

'Good work, Mellors. Intelligence is a thing we've too little of.'

Svejk spoke thickly accented English.

Among the pack, Winthrop saw French, British, German,

American and Austrian gear. Some combined equipment from different combatant countries. A golden-haired youth, face painted or dyed scarlet, wore a French tunic and a German helmet, and carried an American carbine.

Winthrop and Ball were manhandled to the other side of the shell-hole. Winthrop's propeller was torn away. He bit down on a scream as his knee exploded again. It would not do to show too much funk.

In the side of the crater was an opening disguised by netting and debris. A dirty curtain whisked aside. They were hustled into a tunnel.

'These used to be Froggie trenches,' Mellors, Winthrop's captor, explained. 'Then they were Fritzie trenches. Now, they're our bailiwick.'

'Who are you?' Winthrop asked.

'Nous sommes les troglodytes
,' said a Frenchman.

'Correct, Jim,' barked an Austrian. 'We are the cave-dwellers, the primitives ...'

'That's Jules for you,' said the Frenchman. 'Always explaining. I make the poetry, he adds footnotes.'

'We've gone to earth,' Mellors said. 'Down here, there is no war.'

After a few yards of downwards slope, the earth floor was boarded over and the roof was shored up by stout wooden pit- props.

'German workmanship,' Mellors said. 'More concern for the comfort of the fighting man.'

There was more laughter at this remark. Especially from Germans.

These were renegades, deserters from all sides. All seemed
nosferatu.
Winthrop had heard tales of such degraded creatures, maddened by continual combat, hiding in the thick of war, scavenging for survival. Up to now, he had classed the stories among the legends that had sprung up throughout the war, successors to the ghost bowmen of Mons, the crucified Canadians and the Russians with snow on their boots.