They flew east, away from the sunset. The sky was red, darkness crowding around.
The RE8 tilted as Courtney executed a textbook aerial turn, following Cundall's lead. They were angling towards Malinbois.
The air whipped like a storm of fish-hooks. He tried to let go of the Lewis grips, but found his fingers wouldn't move. Biting on frustration, he forced his hands to work.
He fumbled for the camera toggle. He would have to sight the camera accurately, yet keep any spare eyes out for hostile fliers. Even by day, an enemy aircraft could seem the tiniest gnat in an unpeopled expanse of sky a couple of seconds before it was close enough to get in a killing shot. He needed a head like a multi-faceted sphere, with a compound eye on each facet. He wondered if there were vampires like that.
He turned round to his extreme right and saw the back of Courtney's helmet. The pilot held up his gloved hand, thumb up.
Beyond Courtney, the Snipes flew. Beyond them was shadow. The flight descended through thin cloud. A towered shape rose above the landscape. It was familiar from drawings and photographs as the Château du Malinbois.
Winthrop's arm tensed. He didn't know if he had the strength in his elbow to pull the camera toggle.
Something black and winged zoomed past. The RE8 banked, twisting away. The roaring in Winthrop's ears contained the tiny noise of gunfire. He adjusted to his new alignment. It was easier to think of whatever lay under his feet as down, even if the RE8 flew almost on its side. Sixty per cent of his field of vision was taken up by landscape. Against fields and roads, things were moving in the air.
He fixed on a field of virgin snow, a largeish patch of white in the muddy grey. Something black darted across it and he angled his Lewis to aim in its path. He depressed the trigger and was shaken by the mule kick of the gun. He knew enough to fire only a short burst rather than waste limited ammunition in a futile spray. He could not tell if he hit anything.
The Harry Tate climbed and whirled. Amazingly, the formation was intact. Dark shapes flitted around the edges of the arrow, darting up. A line of painfully bright flashes ripped by. Tracer bullets.
The RE8 wheeled round above the castle. Winthrop pulled the camera toggle, waited a few seconds, and pulled again. Shadows passed over the spotter. Winthrop took his last two exposures and forgot the camera. He had both fists around the gun- handles.
They were in the middle of a dog-fight, an aerial melee. God knows how many fliers darted around, popped off guns, swore under their breaths, wrestled wings through wind resistance, prayed for victory or even another night of life.
His last letter was entirely inadequate. Catriona deserved better than a few lines of scribble.
Something knifed downward in flames, screeching. He couldn't tell what markings were on its wings. It was impossible to count the shapes in the air.
Damn, he was going to die! Not in some remote white-haired future surrounded by grandchildren, but in the next few moments. He should have turned. But Courtney was a vampire and he was going to die too. Being undead was no use if you went down in flames.
They wove from side to side, up and down. Courtney must be some breed of genius to get so much out of a poor old bloody old Harry Tate. He dodged the best the Boche could put in the air. Clearly, Cundall's Condors were battling with Jagdgeschwader 1. Out there in the growing darkness was the Bloody Red Baron.
The Germans moved faster even than the Snipes, registering on the eye as an evil black blur. The darker it got, the more they blended with the night. Winthrop imagined the Snipes were luminous, attracting fire from all round.
The sky was beneath them and the castle was above his head. Courtney had flipped the spotter over. Winthrop's Lewis pointed down and backwards. Something climbed fast, a killer fish rising from the depths, eyes blazing red. Wings beat, displacing a great volume of air.
Tracer spurted up towards the RE8's tail. Winthrop returned fire, spitting bursts at the winged thing. Every tenth bullet was supposed to be silver. He realised he was firing not at an aircraft, but at a shape-shifted creature with multiple sets of batwings.
A creature with machine-guns.
He remembered the dark shape that had plucked Albright from his SE5a. And killed him.
A huge head, grinning bloodily, soared towards him, darting through gunfire. Terror reached out from the flying thing and clutched his heart. He was frozen, hung upside-down in his cockpit, unable to press with his thumbs.
Cat!
He did not know if he had shouted or prayed. There was a savage twist and the Harry Tate rolled right-side-up again. Winthrop saw two Snipes diving towards the Boche, spitting tracer.
Courtney climbed, trying to get above the fight. Winthrop looked down and saw dots of movement. There were bullet- holes in the underside of the spotter. His left foot stung; he wondered if he had been shot.
Before sunset, he had only fired guns in training. His whole war had been a staff officer's, fought in meetings and at desks. Dying and killing were not a part of it.
Courtney was clearing out. Though he could not know for sure, he must assume Winthrop had got his photographs. The primary objective achieved, it was now his duty to get home intact.
Red Albright had got his photographs too.
The problem was that, though the fighters offered more of a challenge and thus more opportunities for honourable victory, it would now be the duty of the German creatures to bring down the contemptible Harry Tate and prevent intelligence getting back to the Allies.
Winthrop still heard gunfire. His Lewis had been alarmingly loud and the echoes of his own fire-bursts tumbled around his skull. Forcing numbed fingers to unimaginable dexterity, he lifted the empty ammunition drum off the spike and replaced it with the fresh one stored under his seat. He fired a few shots to keep the barrel clear, hoping for a lucky hit on a darting batwing.
Little tears in the fabric of the upper fuselage flapped as they flew. The bat-thing had comprehensively shot them. Winthrop was sure the warm stickiness in his boot was blood. When would agony would set in?
He looked down the tail at the Château du Malinbois. The famous tower was open to the skies, vast bats swarming around it. With a gasp, Winthrop realised what the diving-board arrangement was for. The shape-shifted fliers used it for takeoff, leaping away from the tower to catch wind under their wings.
There were still at least three Snipes aloft, maybe more. The flaming thing that had rushed past had been one of Cundall's Condors. There was a bonfire on the ground near the castle, where the Snipe had crashed.
The creatures were as fast as Snipes and much more manoeuvrable. In the instant when the thing was bearing up at the RE8, Winthrop had taken it all in. Now, he remembered details. Slung round a thick neck was a harness with twin guns, hanging below a knife-edge breastbone. The large red eyes were those of a night-sighted beast. A human intelligence, a malevolence, made the vampire creature seem a refugee from Fuseli's nightmares. When he had called the shadow on Albright's photograph a gargoyle, Courtney had not been far wrong.
Winthrop shivered with fear, eyes forced open by the cold. He was not thinking clearly. It was important he live to report this development. It was important to live.
Albright had been pursued back as far as Maranique before being killed. That showed a fine sporting instinct. The flier who claimed that victory was Baron von Richthofen. Could the bat- creature that had swooped up at the RE8 be the Red Baron? Winthrop doubted he would still be alive if that were so. Richthofen was not one to let a juicy victory escape him. He must have Harry Tates for breakfast.