He must not touch it yet.
His back sang with pain. His eardrums must have burst. The blood on his chin was ice. He felt nothing from his legs.
Below the Harry Tate, the ground was near. He could see no sky.
One boot was hooked into the forward cockpit. He was crouched above Courtney's seat, wind rushing between his legs, looking down. There were rips in the floor. To get into the seat, he had to do an impossible thing. He had to let go and trust to gravity. He knew he would be torn away from the Harry Tate and whisked off to death.
He thought of God, Cat, duty and revenge. And he opened his Hands.
The seat slammed his spine as he fell. He bit his tongue. His elbows thumped the rim of the cockpit. His arms flapped in front of him like empty sleeves. He accidentally struck the stick. The Harry Tate, loyal for so long, betrayed him, banking sharply. With a terrible, slow rip, canvas detached itself from the upper plane.
He gripped the stick as if it were Excalibur's hilt and pulled it back. One of his feet found a stirrup under the rudder-bar and he pushed, flattening out the ailerons.
Once, he had kept a trainer up in mild skies for five minutes. That was not remotely preparation for this. For a start, he had never landed anything.
He pulled the stick back and pushed the rudder forwards, willing the nose up. Ignoring everything but the spirit-level, he tried to wrestle the bubble into position by force of will. The wind caught the dying propeller and whirled it. The coughing engine cleared and sounded healthier. A press of air below the Harry Tate tossed it upwards.
There was murderous ground below. Winthrop would have to deal with it. The upwards lurch was a temporary freak. Without a wing, the Harry Tate was liable to go tail-up and bury its pilot in the earth.
'Curse you, Bloody Red Baron von Richthofen, curse you and all your bloody batwing bastards.'
The thing was to get out of the sky without the petrol tank exploding. Fighting instinct, he let the stick out and relaxed his foot in the bar-stirrup. His air-speed gauge was broken, but he felt the slowing.
The important thing was to hit the ground slowly, with enough weight behind to stop the tail flipping up over the nose. The likelihood of a smooth and safe patch of earth this near the lines -if he wasn't yet over No Man's Land - was minimal.
For the moment, incredibly, he was not dying. How many of Cundall's Snipes were still aloft? Any survivors of the engagement should be making their way home. Somehow, he doubted Richthofen's Flying Freak Show - Mata Hari's apt expression - had let any prey escape. They were confident | enough to leave him to this torture. Snatching the pilot from a two-seater must seem a fearfully good joke.
A stream of fire burst up from below but Winthrop laughed as the RE8 staggered past it. He was over the lines. Beyond his failing prop was home.
He flew low enough and slowly enough to be shot at from the ground. There were only a few seconds when the men in the trenches would be able to draw a bead. They passed and he was still alive, gulping down breaths that felt like draughts of iced water laced with splinters of broken glass.
His laughter tore at the air. He had to swallow it. He fixed his mind on home.
God Save the King ... Britannia Rules the Waves ... Dieu et mon Droit... Love you, Cat...
His wheels were only feet above the earth. Bursting shells and fire pillars revealed a landscape as pitted and cratered as the surface of the moon. Bad as it had looked from on high, it Was worse from lower down. As soon as the RE8 touched a wheel to this surface, it'd be ripped off and the spotter would be strewn in pieces over a hundred yards of No Man's Land. There would not be enough left of him to bury.
He looked up. Dark shapes circled. Had the Red Baron kept pace, hoping to see the conclusion of his little jest? Another engine sounded. There was still at least one Snipe up there. The battle was not done.
He was sure the shape-shifter that had taken Courtney was Manfred von Richthofen. The fur had been reddish and the eyes had been ice-evil. No other Boche could be so complete a monster.
This was it. His last moments. If he could not be a vampire, he would have to settle for being a damned ghost. If nothing else, he would haunt his murderer.
Imagining a gap of inches between earth and wheel, he pulled back the stick, bringing up the nose. The wheels kissed ground but the tail ploughed into dirt, anchoring the machine. He was slammed against the seat as if by the slap of a giant's hand and bounced around the cockpit. He was sure the snapping he heard was his own bones. The Harry Tate screamed as it was ripped apart.
Earth was thrown up at his face. The RE8 dragged through No Man's Land. Broken wires twanged and whipped. A spar gashed the fuselage. The lower plane crumpled and was torn free. Winthrop threw his arms over his head and waited for the sudden thrust of death.
19
Biggles Flies West
Below, the British Snipes were torn apart by the fliers of JG1. Stalhein and Stachel were the high men, observing the dog-fight.
After gaining the air from the tower of the Château du Malinbois, they flew straight up and hovered over the battle. If any of the Britishers made an escape, Stalhein and Stachel were to swoop down for a quick kill. It was an honourable and necessary position but frustrating for fliers whose immediate bloodlust was up.
At this altitude, Stalhein could glide, only occasionally flapping to remain in position. The span of his upper wings was thirty feet; excluding his whiplike tail, twice the length of his body. This span, the strong crossbar of his shifted shape, corresponded to the shoulders and arms of his human form. Membranes grew from his wrists to his sides, billowing like full sails. Bunches of muscle clustered around his rudder-like breastbone, giving him subtle control of his wings.
The lower wings were shape-shifted ribs, extruded from his body, augmented by canvas sheets. The stubby, functional arms that grew from his torso and worked the Parabellum machine-guns slung on the harness round his neck were made from whole cloth, flesh and bone grown by force of will. Learning to fly in this shape was trickier than mastering the use of one of Tony Fokker's fighters, but Stalhein was more manoeuvrable and as fast as any machine.
In his bat-shape, he was cocooned against the bitter cold by a stiff layer of natural fur over leathery skin. Seven-league boots the height of his human legs were hooked together at the ankles and knees. Otherwise, he wore only in the apparatus that made him a flying weapon. The joints of his hips were locked and his vertebrae fused, turning the length of his body into an unbreakable spine.
The stink of discharged guns and burning fuel drifted up on the currents and caught in his huge open nostrils. His ears, thick-veined curls a foot across, picked up the chatter of discharged guns, the interrupted whines of failed engines, even the shouts of battling pilots.
One of the Snipes exploded. He saw a victorious Udet rise on the burst of hot air, swimming with his cloak-like wings. Stalhein heard the curtailed scream of a British pilot. Udet's score was level with Stalhein's again.
When word came in from observers that a full flight had left Maranique and was headed for Malinbois, Stalhein had assumed General Karnstein would again order a quiet night. Several times before, JG1 had been kept out of a fight because the time was not yet right to show their hand. Kretschmar-Schuldorff, whose job was to keep secrets, continually cautioned against premature deployment. Every man of the Baron's command devoutly wished to go into battle but they knew their duty. When the time came, they would serve the Kaiser as he saw fit.
The burning Snipe dwindled to a cinder as it plunged. Udet did a victory roll, easily slipping out of the path of a fusillade. There were still several Britishers aloft. JG1 was playing with them.