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.'
22
Troglodytes
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.