The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

41

Kaiserschlacht

She could not breathe. Of course, breathing was a habit, not a necessity. Her chest was under something hard and heavy. All feeling was whipped out of her limbs. Jagged pain in her shoulder suggested silver.

Kate blinked in the dark. Her glasses, jammed to her face, kept dirt out of her eyes. Since turning, which had brought the vampire power of night sight, she had not known blackness so total. The silence of the grave was eaten by tiny, distant sounds. Screams, explosions, engines, single shots, machine guns.

She had been dead for years. Her condition was not changed.

A pain rushed through her shoulder, down her right arm to her hand. She made a clawed fist, digging her nails into the meat of her palm. It was hard to punch earth. She had no leverage. Her whole arm strained. Her injured shoulder wrenched. She had to press her lips tightly together to swallow the shriek that wanted to escape.

There was a crack in her coffin of earth and her arm could move. Her fingers scrabbled filth as she reached upwards. She jammed her claws into a dead man and had to reach round him. Holding the corpse's arm, bearing the pain, she pulled hard, trying to shift her whole body upwards. The bar across her chest wouldn't budge.

If she fell into her lassitude now, she might live insensible through years, centuries. Perhaps she would awake into a Utopia where mankind had outgrown war. Or perhaps she'd find Dracula absolute ruler of a desolate Earth. To sleep was to desert. Her responsibility was to the present.

Her fist burst through to the surface. She felt air on her hand and stretched out her fingers.

The thing on her chest was a beam, or maybe a heavy chunk of her ambulance. It was deeply embedded in the earth. She tried pressing herself down deeper, hoping to wriggle loose and burrow up like a worm.

If only her father could see her now.

Writhing her shoulders, she displaced soft earth beneath her. Everything was wet. Enough struggling turned packed-down dirt into moveable mud.

Someone took hold of her hand and gripped tight. She grasped a man's hand, trying to retract her nails so as not to pierce her rescuer. She tried to imagine the man. Hot pain came in her palm as a metal point - not silver - was forced through the skin into the flesh. Her saviour was shoving a bayonet into her. An eager mouth, tongue like a cat's, lapped blood from her hand, sucking greedily.

She grabbed a face, feeling a moustache, and tried to latch on to a skull with her nails. As the man who was stealing her blood stood, she was pulled through earth. The barrier scraped across her chest and hips. Then she was stuck again. Her shoulder burned. She thought her arm would be wrenched off. Then her face was out of the dirt and she was screaming.

Her glasses, miraculously unbroken, were smeared with earth, and the sun had set. But the light seemed intense. Her eyes stung. And she was assaulted by incredible din.

She stood up, still grasping the scavenger, and shook, trying to get the dirt-clumps off her clothes. Layers of earth between layers of clothes formed three or four skins of cold mud.

She let go of her captive. Her hand was enlarged and knobbly, meat stretched over a swollen skeleton. Her fingers had shot out, stretched to six-inch twigs with three-inch blades. As she thought about it, her hand dwindled. A deep-buried shape- shifting power had come with direst need.

If the new-born soldier staring at her had worn a German uniform, she would have killed him and eaten his heart. But he was a maddened Tommy, bleeding in a dozen places, her blood on his mouth. The soldier backed away and darted off, leaving Kate alone on a mound of mud. She was still enraged, fighting off the red thirst that came with this carnage.

As her eyes recovered, she distinguished pieces of her ambulance and the former trench-shorings. Dead men, smashed to pieces, lay all about. Mercifully, none was recognisable. She assumed Tietjens and Bartlett must be among them. There was no trench any more. Explosions had filled it in. She stood on the restored ground level, exposed. She saw the ditch-lines of nearby trenches. Most of the system was still intact. Men swarmed through, rushing to and away from the front.

A fragment worked its way out of her shoulder and she plucked it free. The pain was already fading.

There were explosions all around. Still ringing from the one that had nearly killed her, she was not further shocked. Turning, she looked to the front. Though her position was foolishly dangerous, she had a remarkable view. From her mound, she saw the busy line of the Allied trenches, the wire tangles of No Man's Land, and the puffs of the German guns. She even saw the distant fortifications of the enemy positions. Eerie music - Wagner? - was falling from the sky. In No Man's Land, steel monsters crawled. Above floated a leviathan of the air.

Again, Stalhein was high man. This time, he remained in his own shape and was detailed to the Attila.

The armoured gondola was a conclave of commanders, a nightmare of priorities eliciting a frenzy of salutes from the junior men of the airship service. The airship's captain was Peter Strasser, a fanatic for lighter-than-air flight who had carried out bombing raids on London early in the war. Outranking Strasser was Engineer Robur, director of the Imperial German Airship Service, the great designer of and propagandist for such devices. And outranking all was the Graf von Dracula, who stood alone, paces ahead of his black leather guards, looking at the mud- crawling battle through the observation ports. It was fortunate room had not been found for the Graf von Zeppelin, Field Marshal von Hindenburg and the Kaiser. The combined weight of their medals would have prevented the Attila from attaining operational altitude.

Everybody aboard the dirigible had precisely assigned duties, with the exceptions of Stalhein and the Graf von Dracula. Stalhein, feeling the cold of the height in his unshifted shape, had the sense he was being held back. JG1 would come into play soon.

From his chair, Strasser issued orders into a speaking-tube. His efficient crew scurried like uniformed monkeys through the fantastical arrangement of levers and struts.

A long shadow fell on the sunset-reddened land.

As befitted a craft of such magnificence, the Attila was equipped with a pipe organ. Robur sat at the keyboard, picking out themes from Lohengrin. The music was amplified through trumpets attached to the exterior of the ship.

Stalhein, with unaccustomed meekness, approached the observation port, a circular glass window three yards across set into the floor of the gondola. It was the eye of the Attila. The commander-in-chief of all the armies of the Vaterland stood, blunt hands resting on a brass rail, looking down on the battle. His face was grey in the artificial light, melancholy in aspect, slightly swollen. Stalhein had expected Dracula, the eternal warrior prince, to rejoice in the spilling of blood.

He had expected to feel more in the presence of the Graf. At one remove, Dracula was Stalhein's father-in-darkness. His bloodline, passed on through the elder Faustine, had given him shape-shifting aptitude. He was one of Dracula's creatures. Stalhein's blood did not sing. He did not feel compelled to kneel before his master. He joined Dracula at the port, and looked down.

There was light enough from the dying sun to see clearly. Formations of tanks crawled forwards, the first wave almost at the Entente trenches. Men advanced in their rutted wake. From this view, the troops were reduced to ants. The tanks seemed big beetles, ploughing through tiny obstacles. Bursts of flame burst throughout No Man's Land. This would be costly.

Spitting fire burst from the most advanced tanks, squirting liquid flame into the enemy trenches. Stalhein, though inured to fiery death, shuddered. This war prompted men of genius like Robur to develop weapons which could extinguish vampires as easily as gunfire and the sword killed warm men. Sections of the enemy trench system turned into rivers of fire, burning frontiers in the blackened map.

The Attila was over enemy territory, hovering above the range of anti-aircraft guns. Any heavy guns not yet overwhelmed would be occupied with the ground attack. There were no shells to spare for useless pot-shots.

A junior officer approached, terrified and awe-struck, and handed the Graf a note. He considered gravely and nodded. The officer waved an affirmation and Strasser gave orders into his tube.

Dark objects tumbled out of vents in the gondola, plunging to the ground. Mushrooming patterns of fire showed where the bombs burst. The Graf's eyes were balls of red, blood-blinded. His bloated face was lit by the fires below. He turned to Stalhein.

'God is with us,' Dracula said.

There were columns of fire all around. Kate realised how exposed she was on her mound. But, fascinated, she could not move. It was her job to be here, remember, to tell what she saw. She could not yet look away.

This was the German spring offensive, the Kaiserschlacht. Though everyone from Haig down to the dray-horses had known an attack was coming it had still taken the Allies by surprise.

As night fell, star-shells exploded above the trenches. The magnesium-flares of light stung her eyes. The land ironclads had advanced across the desert of wire and the dead, beating a path for the infantry.

'Who's that cretin up there?' someone shouted. Kate realised he meant her. 'Get his bloody head down before we have to pick it up in pieces.'

She was rugby-tackled by someone permeated with the smell of years of trench life, and dragged into a hole only half-filled with loose earth.

'It's a bint,' the soldier said.

His officer swore. Her Red Cross arm-band was slimed with mud. She wiped a swathe of grime away.

'She's a nurse, sir.'

'Bloody good for her, I say.'

'I think she's dead.'

Kate's fangs were poking out of her mouth. She felt her jaw distorting into a shark mouth.

'Bloody shame,' the officer commented.

'No, sir,' the soldier said. 'Not dead, dead. You know a vampire.'

This platoon was all warm. Some regiments insisted on living cannon fodder.

'You, Lady Bloodsucker,' the officer said, prodding her. He was elderly, about thirty. 'Are all your limbs working?'

'My name is Kate Reed. I'm whole.'

'Captain Penderel, at your service. You're conscripted.'

A spade was given to her. It had bloody handprints on it.

'See that earth there? Get stuck into it.'

Penderel's men shovelled away. The trench was blocked by an earthfall. Reinforcements, brought up from rear positions, were accumulating in the bottleneck. If the obstacle were breached, they could get into the fight. She saluted and started digging. Being a reporter was shame enough for her family; she would never tell them she'd worked as a navvy.

She hurled a spadeful of dirt over the top of the trench and stuck her shovel back into the packed, blasted earth. The blade struck something soft. A chunk fell from a face frozen into a dead scream. She flinched. Tommies pitched in, found the corpse's arms and pulled him out of the wall. The dead man came out in one piece. With a one and a two, the Tommies slung him into the air and out of the way, to fall where he might.

With the corpse gone, the barrier was greatly broken up. A man could scramble past it without sticking his tin hat over the top. Penderel approved the job and directed his men to advance. As he passed Kate, he saluted. She was left behind, still holding her shovel.

The Hun has broken through, all along the lines,' said Ginger. He was the Squadron's telegraph expert. 'It's pretty much a wash-out.'

From the field, Winthrop could tell the battle was intense. The sky over the trenches was burning. The massed screaming of guns and dying men carried over the few miles.

Every man in Condor Squadron was in flying kit. Every machine was out of the hangars and fuelled.

Over the battle hung a dark shape, its underside crimsoned. It was the Attila.

'It's a big gasbag, remember,' said Bertie. 'It'll burst in flames with a few incendiaries. Like a balloon.'

'It's a hundred times bigger than a balloon,' Allard reminded the pilot. 'It takes a big spark to set off such a firework.'

'Is he really up there?'

Winthrop had imagined Dracula would radiate an aura of evil and despair which would be unmistakable.

'Intelligence confirms the Graf von Dracula is aboard the Attila,' said Mr Croft. 'Your moment has come.'

The grey man had addressed himself to Captain Allard.

'Shouldn't we be strafing ground troops?' Algy suggested. 'Our lads must be taking a terrible pasting.'

Croft looked death at the young airman. 'Nothing matters but the Attila.'

Winthrop had the sense Allard was, for once, uncertain. In the end, he would obey orders.

If Dracula was up there, so was Baron von Richthofen. Every nerve in Winthrop's body thrilled. This must be what it was like to be a vampire. His blood sang, calling for victory. Tonight, he was sure, it would end one way or another.

The pilots clustered around Jiggs, handing over letters and keepsakes. Winthrop had nothing more to give. He hadn't told Catriona he was still alive. By tomorrow's dawn he might not have to. In the end, this was kinder.

The first Camels were aloft, circling the field, waiting for the formation to come together.

Equipment was piled on to trucks. There was not an idle man in Maranique. By the time this flight was through, the airfield might be in enemy hands. If there was fuel left, the squadron were to fall back to Amiens. There would be no fuel left. Condor Squadron would fight until it could fight no more.

He hauled himself into his machine, settling comfortably at the stick.

'Contact,' he shouted.

Jiggs spun the prop. The Camel moved forwards smoothly and into the air. The sun was down, but the land was burning.

Kate squirelled along, following Penderel's men. More reinforcements were on her tail. She knew her way, following the clattering troops as they rushed to the front. The trenches were partially covered, turning into tunnels. Candle-stubs stuck in tin dishes gave points of light.

She used the shovel as a scythe, getting things out of her way. She was stripped down to the animal, acting on instinct. No purpose but to be in the thick of it.

Popping out of a tunnel into the main trench, she found herself facing a fifteen-foot wall of collapsing sandbags. Men held ladders against them, but their upper reaches snapped.

A terrible grinding assaulted her ears. The treads of a tank churned at the top of the wall, shredding sandbags. The motorised juggernaut was jammed in mud and wire. Soldiers fired upwards at the plate-iron shell of the tank. Bullets spanged off metal, leaving dents. The tank lurched forward a yard, great flat nose protruding over the trench, shadow cast down on the squirming men below.

Fumes leaked from inside the thing. Kate coughed, fearing gas. Gun turrets in the war-beast's side swivelled. She threw herself down into the liquid depths of the trench. A shell shot across the gap and burst against the mouth of the tunnel. Someone had drawn a bead on her former position.

The fire-flash lit the tank, showing every bolt on its side. It was a castle, with arrow slits and battlements. Shrapnel and fire spattered around. Men were pierced and fell, writhing bloodily.

Kate wanted to kill.

The tank's centre of gravity eased over the lip of the trench. The nose swung downwards, threatening to crush the men who crawled in the bed. The treads snagged on the rear wall and ground on, getting a purchase, pulling the machine level. It could roll over the trench as if it were a crack in the road. Men fired at the iron underbelly as it passed.

Kate bent low, like a frog, and leaped upwards, extending clawed hands, pushing against the ground with all her vampire strength. She shot level with the tank and grasped at the steadily moving tread. The grinding wheels caught a fold of her coat and pulled her into the side of the beast. She would be turned to paste as if thrown into the workings of a flour mill, but her broken body would stop this thing. A war cry began in her lungs and emerged as a death scream.

Poe had intended to present his manuscript to Theo this evening, but events had overtaken them. It started when the Attila detached itself from the castle, the signal for the offensive to begin. All along the lines, tanks trundled out of concealed positions, and men fixed bayonets to go over the top. The might of the Central Powers thrust forwards, trampling over the Entente. This would be victory.

On the tower, they watched fliers prepare to join the battle they could hear all around and see in the middle distance. It was still an awesome sight, the transformation of the fliers, but it had become almost familiar.

Poe and Theo watched Richthofen as he changed. Upon the death of his brother, he had shown no trace of anger or passion. But his armour, opening in cracks as Poe teased out material for his book, was entire again, locking inside whatever there was of him that had been alive.

Richthofen's calm face disappeared under fur. Poe thought the flier not even aware of their presence, but, as Kurten and Haarmann stood away, he bowed to his biographer, flourishing a wing-tip as if it were a courtier's cloak. Poe wished Richthofen farewell. The Baron leaped from the tower, followed by his fellows. The fliers swarmed around the Attila.

Theo watched his comrades slip into the night, eyes shaded by the peak of his cap.

'It is almost as if our duties here were over,' he said, at last. 'After tonight, what more use will we be?'.

Ten Brincken's disciples had packed their records, preparing to withdraw. Karnstein was redeployed to the Italian front. Poe assumed the Schloss Adler was converted for use as the Graf's headquarters. As the castle became more significant militarily, its scientific purpose was wound down. Reports were written and despatched. The experiment was concluded.

'They will have won the war, Theo.'

Theo shrugged. 'That was what Dracula made them for, winning the war. But as Manfred said, there is no "after the war". They are the instruments of conquest, not rule.'

'There will always be conquests.'

'Eddy, my friend, sometimes for one with such foresight you are remarkably blind.'

Poe was shocked.

Though scientists were left behind along with ground crew, and Orlok scuttled about somewhere, the Schloss Adler seemed abandoned with the departure of JG1. The fliers could be seen converging on the Attila, tiny as flies. Poe's keen eyes distinguishing them from the morass of night.

In his last chapters, Poe had written of the Baron's reaction to the loss of his brother. It was as if both Richthofens had died, but he was cursed to walk the Earth a while.

'Poor Manfred,' Theo said, understanding Poe's mind. 'He is a loyal dog, for all else,'

'I'd give anything to be with them, Theo.'

Theo looked at him and tried to smile. 'It's too late for anyone to take any notice of what we do. There's a Junkers J1 fuelled, ready for an observation tour. Would you care to accompany me?'

'You can fly?'

'Only in an aeroplane.'

Pillars of fire rose from the battle. Poe thought of the skies over the decisive conflict.

'I've never been up in . .

'For a prophet of futurity, a sad omission.'

'Very well.'

Theo grinned, with some of his old sparkle. 'The raven has wings.'

In her last seconds, Kate would have liked to forgive everybody. But she couldn't.

Her coat tightened like a straight-jacket as more cloth pulled into the wheels of the tank-tread. She smelled heavy oil and grease as she was dragged into the killing gears. Then the engine inside the tank died and she was held, crucified against the machine's side. A mechanical failure or a chance bullet or the hand of God had saved her. Briefly.

One of her hands was free. She bunched her fingers and made a knife-point of her nails. She punched the taut sheet of her coat at the shoulder and tore. Stitching broke and she was free. She fell, but got her hand round the rim of one of the stalled wheels, gritting her teeth as her barbed nails scraped against greasy steel. Hand over hand, she climbed on top of the tank. The metal was heated, as fire had recently played across it.

There were enemies inside this moving cage. Warm or vampire, they throbbed with blood she needed to drink. A rifle barrel poked through a slit and angled round. She wheeled to stay out of range and took hold of the gun. With a wrench, she pulled the thing free - raising hochdeutsch oaths from inside - and hurled it off behind her.

Putting her face to the slit, she snarled like a beast. She smelled funk inside, heard tank-men scrabbling and panicking, trapped by the stalling of their wonderful war device. Fire would pour in and cook them.

Her face was close to a pair of boots. The only polished, ready-for-inspection boots in the whole of the armies of Europe. She looked up at the soldier who stood calmly atop the tank, uncringing as if the silver and lead bullets flying around were hailstones. He wore the uniform of the United States but this vampire was older than the country.

His boots grew insubstantial, whitening into a mist. She'd heard of the trick but never seen it done. The vampire gathered himself into a wraith-shape, glowing faintly. His clothes and kit dissolved with his body, as much a part of him as his hair. A bullet struck nearby, clanging against the tank. She cringed, but was mesmerised by the elder. A man-shaped cloud floated over the slit. It elongated and funnelled down, like a puff of smoke suddenly inhaled by a smoker.

Screams cut through layers of iron and steel, shaking her to the teeth. A pistol was discharged, shot rebounding in the confined space. A red cloud burst from the firing slit, spattering her face with warm blood. She licked her face, impassioned by the blood, swallowing the terror that came with it.

Not waiting for the elder to emerge from the tank, she vaulted off the machine's back and felt earth under her. Looking back, No Man's Land was No Man's no more. Strung-out lines of grey uniforms advanced through the night in implacable ranks, stepping over their fallen, walking on in a human tide towards the Allied trenches.

A machine-gun, maybe thirty yards away, started up, and a fan of the advancing troops were scythed down. More men filled the gap. The gun ranged again, cutting more down. Then the gun was overwhelmed and silenced. The gunners were torn apart by the undead soldiers, blood splashing all around. The Germans' mouths were red.

The elder floated above the tank, reconstituting himself pretty face reddened with fresh blood.

Someone shot Kate but only with a lead bullet. It slipped through her calf. The hole healed over immediately. She heard the shot long after the stab of pain passed.

Another tank spat a line of burning petrol towards the Allies, spreading fire on the ground. All about her, men retreated, falling back or just falling.

The elder drifted towards the second tank. He must be ancient to have such control of his form. Older than Dracula or Genevieve. Pre-mediaeval. Perhaps pre-Christian. An awesome thing to have hidden among mankind for so long.

He'd have numberless names.

The flame-thrower hitched upwards and belched another burst, catching the elder full in the chest. He burned like a butterfly. Centuries of unchronicled life were extinguished in an uncaring instant, blasted to sparking shreds by brute modernity.

Someone took her arm and saved her tiny life, pulling her backwards, along with the mass of men fleeing the front lines.

'Retreat, man,' someone told her.