Castle Keep

Inside the Chateau du Malinbois, night was eternal. By day, the mediaeval slit windows were shuttered, the stone hallways lit only by infrequent candles. Deep in the damp guts of the castle, even a vampire felt the cold. Tiny drips of water were as constant as the granite-muffled pounding of the guns. Only the scientists' work quarters made use of electricity. In the examination room, dark corners were banished. Light shone without mercy. Merely to lie on the table was to expose one's interior workings.

Leutnant Erich von Stalhein wondered if General Karnstein had chosen Malinbois to give the fliers a feeling of being buried alive, to increase their desire to get into the air. Aloft, with the freedom of the currents and the strength of the moon, they were loosed from the shackles of earth.

Stalhein lay prone as Professor Ten Brincken checked another series of measurements. A brooding bear with shocks of grey hair on his beetle brows, the director was more dockyard bruiser than scientist. Perhaps his craze for the physical improvement of mankind sprang from awareness of his own ursine appearance.

An arrangement of directed lamps was fixed above the table. Stalhein's bloodline throve on moonbeams but glowing wires in glass bulbs were no use to him. Cold, artificial light was unsatisfying.

Dr Caligari, Jagdgeschwader 1's alienist, was in the room. Stalhein heard his clumsy waddling, smelled his reeking clothes. He privately thought Caligari a quack. Like Ten Brincken, he was fascinated by the vampire condition. In interviews, he always tried to draw Stalhein out, asking question after question about feeding.

'The muscles of the neck and chest are more developed,' Ten Brincken told Caligari. 'It is pronounced enough to be calibrated. There would seem to be overall change. An evolution.'

The scientists discussed him as if he were a truly dead corpse, dissected for their edification. Stalhein was accustomed to this treatment. It was his duty to the Kaiser to endure such examinations. No flier of JG1 was exempt, not even the Baron.

Ten Brincken signalled the end of the examination by turning off the overhead lamps. With vampire quickness, Stalhein slid off the table and stood. Caligari, stared, cringed inside an ancient tailcoat. Stalhein dressed, pulling on breeches and boots, slipping into a good shirt. Ten Brincken, suddenly unctuous as a valet, held up his tunic. He backed into the sleeves, then fastened buttons from belly to collar.

'Fine, fine, Leutnant,' Ten Brincken cooed. 'Most excellent.'

Naked, Stalhein was an object for study. In uniform, he was close to a demon prince.

Ten Brincken's lair was a fusion of ancient and modern. The walls were fourteenth-century stone, obscured by scientific charts of various vintages. The director scrawled hieroglyphics in a brassbound tome which seemed a thing of the monasteries, but the eye was caught by an array of shining surgical implements in a steel and glass stand. Ten Brincken and Caligari and the others - Dr Krueger, Engineer Rotwang, Dr Orlof, Professor Hansen - called themselves scientists, but alchemy was mixed in with their prattle of evolution and genetic heritage.

To men of Stalhein's father's generation, the vampire was a mythical beast. Within a lifetime, ancient magic had become a tolerated field of modern science. Understandably, the two scrambled. General Karnstein, the Graf von Dracula's overseer, was an elder; he had lived through centuries of persecution, perhaps believing himself a creature of darkness, only to emerge in the twentieth century and be restored to high estate.

Stalhein saluted and left the laboratory. His night eyes were better suited to the gloom of the narrow passageway, which ended in the staircase that led to the Great Hall. Music drifted down. A Strauss waltz.

Vaguely troubled, he climbed up to the Hall. Ten Brincken's endless examinations were rarely painful but always perturbed Stalhein. A secret purpose was kept from him. He told himself his duty was to do, not to understand. The fliers were not uninformed, but focused. Each victory was a building brick of the greater victory to come. He should pity the short-lived warm kind; they could never know what it was to master the skies, to taste the blood of a foe, to drink the light of the moon.

He wanted to be flying, bearing down on his prey. To feel the kick of discharging guns, to hear the whining of the air over his wings, to watch an aeroplane spiral in flames: this convinced him he was alive. His score was a respectable nineteen victories. In an ordinary jasta, such a record would be outstanding; but in this Circus, he was one of the lesser hunters. If he lasted long enough, he hoped to change that. The high-tide mark was the Baron von Richthofen's score, which stood currently at seventy-one.

The faded portraits and mouldy animal heads that had been on display in the Great Hall were consigned to cellars. The circus had replaced them with twentieth-century trophies. Above a fireplace the size of a railway tunnel was crucified the top wing of an RE8, its forty-three-foot span of stiff linen dotted with bullet-holes. Hanging in the fireplace, anchored to the mantel by chains, was a rigged-up chandelier: the front of an engine, its cylinder heads stuck with lit candles. Spreading out from the centrepieces was an overlapping patchwork of serial numbers hacked from the fabric of Allied aeroplanes, many half-burned or badly holed. JG1 had collected specimens of Bristol Fighter, Dolphin, Spad, Vickers, Tabloid, Nieuport-Delage, Bantam, Kangaroo and Caproni. Also mounted in the display were scavenged guns, compasses and altimeters, human heads, leather helmets, single boots, broken cameras, bones, Constantinesco gears, propellers.

The magnificent horn of the new gramophone rang with an aria from Die Fledermaus. Hammer, smugly wearing the Pour le Merite awarded him on his fortieth kill, played cards with Kretschmar-Schuldorff, the intelligence officer, and Ernst Udet, a promising flier neck and neck with Stalhein in victories. Grouped around an oil lamp, they were dwarfed by the vaulted space. Hammer was buried in a huge bearskin coat that made him look like a troll. Theo puffed on a cigarette whose smoke cloud was still rising but had not yet reached the distant ceiling. Udet, having succumbed to the latest vampire fashion, sported a fresh rack of antlers. Hung with ragged velvet, they sprouted through steadily trickling wounds in his forehead.

Night was hours away. Stalhein was down for the twilight patrol. He conquered impatience.

There were other fliers in the darks of the Great Hall, as eager as Stalhein for sunset and the chase. The sounds of tender feeding came from a curtained recess. The insatiable Bruno Stachel was lapping up the juice of another of his French girls. Stalhein thought a nosferatu should not feed by day; it made him duller when the time for real hunting came. A rare JG1 flier without a 'von' to his name, Stachel did not quite fit; in a cadre of hunters, he was merely a murderer. His score stood at thirty-one.

'Erich, hail,' shouted a young blond vampire, touching his fat hand to his cap-peak. 'General Karnstein sends his congratulations. Word is in. Your kill of two nights gone has been confirmed.'

Goring was the Circus's record-keeper. He maintained a chart of the individual victories.

Two nights ago, Stalhein had cruised low, hiding in pools of cloud, listening for engine drone. He rose sharply under an Avro 504J, firing into its underside. The aeroplane lurched off, fire spreading along its wings. He followed the descent, intending to land by the wreck and drain the pilot, but the Avro limped over the lines and came down in No Man's Land. Machine gun bursts from the British trenches kept him in the air and he had no opportunity to finish the kill. Standing orders were that he was not to be sighted properly by the enemy; at least, not by an enemy who lived to give a report.

'The Britisher's name was Mosley. Of good family, apparently. A career has been ended before it was begun.'

Stalhein remembered bared fangs under an absurd fleck of British moustache, the rest of the face covered by goggles and helmet. It was a mediocre victory.

'Aren't you pleased, Erich?' Goring asked. 'You have twenty, now.'

'I did not drink blood,' Stalhein admitted.

'But you scored a victory. That is what counts.'

'Not to me.'

There was almost more frustration in a bloodless "win than if Mosley had escaped altogether. At the end of the hunt, bloodlust must be slaked.

Goring clapped him on the back anyway. He had drawn ahead of the antlered Udet. At the beginning of the war, twenty kills would have earned the Pour Le Merite; now, with so many competing, the number necessary for an automatic Blue Max was doubled.

'The Baron's kill, also, was confirmed,' Goring confided. 'A victory under the noses of the British. Captain James Albright, twenty-eight victories. A Yankee, one understands.'

Mosley was probably on a second or third patrol. An experienced pilot would not have been taken as easily. Yet his poor corpse counted as much as Richthofen's defeat of a gloried knight of the air. Goring, so boringly fascinated with statistics that he sometimes seemed close to Ten Brincken, had an alternative chart, ranking fliers not by individual victories but by totting up the victories of those they bested. By this rating, the Baron's lead was even more unassailable. Early in the war, before the death of the great Boelcke, Richthofen had killed mainly sluggish spotters and stragglers; now his blood was up, he sought worthier prey.

Stalhein had been shot down once, by the modest British ace James Bigglesworth. That was long before he was skilled enough in the air to earn a place in JG1. The scars on his face and back took months to heal. He survived only through the good fortune of being thrown clear of his burning Fokker. There would be glory and honour in repaying that debt. Bigglesworth, twenty-two victories, was a prize worth the taking. According to Kretschmar-Schuldorff, the pilot was stationed at Maranique, in the same unit as the late Captain Albright.

A curtain was whipped from its rail by a living projectile and dragged across the flagstones. Something child-sized and barrel-shaped was wrapped in the cloth. It squealed, leaving puddles of blood in its wake. Lothar von Richthofen stepped out of the uncurtained passage mouth, holding a candelabrum. He grinned like a dog, blood smeared over his face and chest.

If Lothar was the dog, his brother was his master.

'Manfred falls back on the pursuits of his youth,' Goring commented.

The blood stench stung Stalhein's nostrils and eyes. Every vampire in the hall was alert. The squealing was like the scratch of claws on a blackboard. The bundle struggled with the weight of the curtain and shook free. Terrified animal eyes glittered.

Lothar stood aside for his brother. Rittmeister Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen was stripped to the waist, reddish fur wet and bristling. He was the best shape-shifter in JG1, main attraction of this Flying Freak Show. Usually reserved to the point of catatonia, Richthofen was in the grip of a passion. Killing Englishmen by night was not enough for him; he must hunt wild boar by day, as he had done as a child on his estates in Silesia.

The boar, imported God knows how and at what expense, wheeled and snarled at the hunter, froth dripping from its jaws. Richthofen stalked towards it. His feet were bare, but claw- spurs clicked on the stone. The boar, startled again, dashed off to one side.

Von Emmelman loomed enormously out of shadow. He threw himself at the boar, intending to come down hard on its back. The slippery beast wriggled as the flier smacked against the floor, mossy hands closing around the animal's greasy tail. The heap-like Emmelman, permanently caught between kobold form and his former human shape, had the hog for an instant but its tail slipped through his fist. Richthofen skidded to avoid tripping over his comrade, then leaped over the fallen flier, yelling to his prey.

Lothar dashed after Richthofen, determined to be in at the kill. Stalhein and Goring were swept along in the brothers' wake. The pig's blood was foul, but stirred Stalhein's vampire spirit. Fangs grew and sharpened in his mouth. Under his shirt, fur swarmed up his back. The darkness lightened.

The boar rammed the stand of the gramophone and pitched it over. As the horn fell, a waltz was cruelly terminated. The boar shook its tusked head and scattered parts of the broken apparatus. That was an insult not to be brooked. The hog would pay for such trespass.

Fliers emerged from the shadows, devastated by the loss of the music, excited by the stench of blood. Angry red eyes followed the boar's tail as the animal sought egress. The vampires closed on the prey. Stalhein found himself in a perfect attacking formation. Richthofen was, as in the air, the point of the arrow. Stalhein was two fliers to his right, at the spur of the barb, a mirror of little Eduard Schleich on the left. Emmelman lumbered in the rear, wading as if through thick mud.

The boar was crowded towards an open doorway. The passage beyond led to the outside. Richthofen was a sportsman. By the rules, if the quarry could push through the main door of the castle, it was free and had earned the victory.

The formation advanced step by step. The boar backed away, trotters clipping stone. Richthofen had fixed the animal's eyes. He liked his kills to know him personally, to treat him with respect. As he moved forwards, his arms extended, the vestige of membrane-folds hanging beneath them. The fingers of his right hand bunched together, nails gathered into a thin pyramidal point.

The boar turned tail and ran. The fliers closed on it, bunching perfectly through the doorway with no crowding, easing out again to put on speed in the passage.

A side door opened. Caligari scuttled out, battered hat bobbing. He turned, the boar tangled in his legs, and looked aghast through pince-nez as the hunters swooped at him. Richthofen swept the alienist aside, but it seemed the boar would have the victory. At the end of the passage, a shaft of daylight hung where the door was ajar. The light fell in a stripe on the boar's back. The animal must sniff the cold air of escape.

Manfred von Richthofen braced and launched himself. He leaped a full twenty feet, arms outstretched like wings. One hand latched on to the spiny bristles of the boar's neck and gripped firm. Richthofen fell on the pig with all his weight. Blood trickled down leathery hide. The hunter dragged his prey back into the darkness away from the door.

Stalhein was intoxicated by the blood. He fought to control base desires. There was purer hunting to be had. But a victory was a victory.

Goring clapped furiously at the Baron's feat. Fat Hermann was a born toady, a long-tongued second-in-command.

Richthofen wrestled the boar, then held it up overhead. For a moment, he was Hercules lifting Proteus. His face was that of a red lion, nose flaring, mane a-tangle from the chase, fanged jaws agape. He slammed the hog to the floor, stunning it. A flagstone cracked with a report like a gunshot. The beast squirmed, fight knocked out of it. Richthofen took his killing position like a practised matador, flexing his long right arm like a sabre, drawing back his barb-tipped hand. With a roar of triumph, he punched under the hog's tail, sticking the pig perfectly. He thrust his arm deep into his prey's insides. The boar's head, eyes empty of life, jerked upwards as a bloody fist exploded through the throat. The kill was spitted on Richthofen's extended arm.

He pulled himself free and admired the gleaming red sleeve coating his arm. Then he knelt by the fallen animal and, as was his right, lapped delicately at the gouting wound in its neck. He took little; this hunt was for sport, not lifeblood. When finished, the Baron stood and let his fellows fall upon the boar, tearing it to pieces. He stood over them, a master watching his dogs take their reward. Caligari, recovered from shock but still trembling, glanced at the feeding frenzy and waddled away, tutting to himself that the hunters were out of control.

In the melee, Stalhein fought for and won a ragged pig's ear. To gain such a mighty prize, he had to tear his arm open slamming against Udet's antlers and wrench his shoulder shoving Emmelman out of the way. He turned his back to the other vampires, protecting his morsel, and sucked the torn edge. Around him, fliers chewed and swallowed and retched and supped. The taste was vile but sparkling joys burst in his brain.