A Poet's Warrior

There was whispering in the Chateau du Malinbois, rustling and cooing through passages and halls, slicing through cracks between great stone blocks. Poe's senses were ajangle with the murmurs of living and dead, the chattering of rats in the walls. He tried to shut out the eternal susurrus of words, words, words ...

Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff visited his room to give him a greatcoat.

in this fastness, even the dead feel the cold,' the intelligence officer explained.

Poe accepted the gift with thanks. It was inches too long but of good quality, with a double row of shiny buttons. Rank insignia were unpicked from the shoulders.

'We'll have you fit for inspection, Eddy.'

'I was a good soldier, Theo. In wars fought before you were born. When alive, I served in the ranks and rose to sergeant by my own merits. As a new-born, I was an officer of the Confederacy.'

'I did not think poets made good soldiers. All the regulations and impositions . .

'When I first joined the army, I wished to take a holiday from poetic thought. And the war of Southern Independence was the poets' war, dreamers and idealists against factory-owners and puritans. Just as this is a poets' war.'

Theo was surprised by the statement.

'We fight for the future, Theo. The Graf von Dracula embodies the glories of the past but is not blinded by them. Under his standard, the world will change. To be a vampire is the essence of modernity.'

The officer shrugged. 'You are a rare patriot.'

'I see no other honourable choice.'

Theo ambled about the room, trying to sneak a look at the papers on the desk. Poe instinctively hunched over, a schoolboy trying to prevent fellows seeing his work in an examination. The officer laughed at the game. Poe straightened and relaxed.

'You've begun then? Ewers complains you drag your boots.'

Theo's opinion of Hanns Heinz Ewers had not improved.

*I have begun,' Poe admitted.

'And is it a fine tale of blood and glory?'

'It may be.'

'Our hero is a strange beast?'

'We are all strange beasts.'

'You would do well in my job, Eddy. You give so little away. Just like our Red Baron.'

Through a thousand fresh starts and strikings-out, Poe had assembled a patchwork of words and phrases into a chapter. Failing to find an avenue into Baron von Richthofen through the hero's own account, he had fallen back on his own impressions and sensibilities and constructed a narrative of his arrival at Malinbois, his first sight of the magnificent creatures of air and darkness.

'You'll have more glories to chronicle soon. I have been overruled.'

Theo argued in favour of deploying JG1 sparingly, believing the gradual spread of rumour would harry the Allies more effectively. He considered the shape-shifters a terror weapon, like gas. His belief was that JG1 were more useful for the enormous hurt they could do to enemy morale than for the limited, if impressive, damage they could inflict in the field.

'We are soon to show our hand.'

'A spring offensive?'

Theo shrugged. 'The worst-kept secret in military history. How does one conceal a million men? The British and French will throw up twenty-foot-thick walls all along their lines and pour Yankees into every emplacement.'

'Walls can be flown over.'

Whispering still pestered his ears. There were conspiracies in every corner. Each man was his own conspiracy, against all others. Alliances shifted and reversed, policies evaporated and reformed, loyalties strained and snapped. In this whispering was weakness. If the Kaiserschlacht was to succeed, the Central Powers must be forged into an iron hammer. In this castle, individuals were unstable atoms, whirling against each other.

'We shall have important visitors, I am told. You'll be close to the heart of things.'

Poe had a sense of the moment. It was dizzying, a maelstrom of history.

'Tonight, you should be in the tower. The Baron is going out. He will increase his score.'

'You are here,' barked Ten Brincken as Poe stepped into the vaulted space. 'Good.'

The professor, once suspicious, had been persuaded Poe's book would serve his lasting reputation. He was given to addressing himself to the poet, phrasing statements as if they were suitable for publication.

Even wrapped in Theo's greatcoat (which, he realised, had come from the wardrobe of a dead officer), Poe was frozen. Exposed to homicidal winds, the tower was an arctic trap. Ice rinds mortared the walls. Every day, soldiers with mallets swarmed up scaffolding to knock off the night's icicles.

Baron von Richthofen stood in the centre of the chamber, to attention, in human shape. Poe gave Richthofen a salute which was not returned. The flier wore a long, quilted dressing gown. Scientists swarmed around. Ten Brincken brusquely directed operations, a corrupt priest hurrying through a devotion. The professor's colleagues were a half-mystical lot, caught between mediaevalism and modernity. Dr Caligari, the alienist, was a fount of peculiar practice and arcane theory. He lurked shabbily in the jagged shadows, scrawling his notes in runic scribble.

if you would be so gracious,' Ten Brincken addressed himself to Richthofen. 'Shift your shape.'

Richthofen nodded curtly and removed his robe. A naked Siegfried, he closed his eyes in concentration. His attendants stood close by, bearing the apparatus to be piled on the night warrior. Kurten was bent under the weight of the Baron's guns.

Something grew inside Richthofen. His shoulders broadened, his spine extended. He became wider and taller. Muscles swelled like wet sponges. Veins rose like firehoses under pressure. Fur swarmed over skin, coating now-leathery hide with a thick pelt. Bones distended, lengthened and reshaped. The face darkened. Horny skull-spurs prodded out around the eyes and the jaw. Bat-ears unfurled. The Baron's eyes opened, large as fists. The calm blue was unmistakable, a continuity between man and superman. Richthofen outstretched his changing arms. Joints grew spindly and sinewy as leather curtains fell, coalescing into wings.

Ten Brincken consulted his pocket-watch. His shock-haired associate Rotwang wrote down a figure on a form.

'Each time, Herr Poe, the process is more swift. Soon, it will bean eye-blink.'

Kurten and Haarmann helped the changed Richthofen into his boots and, scrambling up a climbing frame to reach, hung the guns round his neck. With arms turned to wings, the Baron grew fresh arms. Less rudimentary than the last time Poe had seen the transformed flier. Now, they looked like real human arms, skinned in leather. The hands, flexible and four-fingered, got a grip on the gun-handles. The barrels stuck up vertically.

'His shape improves with each shift,' Ten Brincken explained. 'The ideal we have created becomes more perfectly attainable.'

Poe heard the beating of the Baron's enlarged heart, a strong pulse.

'Eventually this will be the true Baron von Richthofen. The mere human frame will be a disguise he may assume.'

'Might the change become permanent?'

Ten Brincken shook his head and grinned like a gorilla. 'Nothing will ever be permanent, Herr Poe. The forms of these creatures will forever be fluid. They will adapt to conditions wherever they are required to fight.'

The Baron folded his wings, still at attention, and looked through the aperture in the tower walls. Out there, stars glinted like razor-edges. The camouflage netting blew in. A strong wind swept the floor of the tower room. Scientists clutched rebellious notes. Poe shivered in his coat.

Ten Brincken and Rotwang circled the shape-shifted flier with prayerlike mutterings. Poe trailed after them, unable to resist the creature's pull. Manfred von Richthofen was no longer human. Animal smell seeped around him, raising tears in Poe's eyes and a sting in his nostrils. The musk was so strong it could be tasted like pepper.

Poe tried to conceive of comparisons: a gargantuan gargoyle, a beast warrior, a killer angel, a Teuton demigod. None would do. As the Baron said, he was himself and that was all there was.

The scientists backed away, leaving Poe at the giant's feet, looking up. The netting was removed from the aperture and Richthofen walked to the platform. His bootfalls shook the flagstones. Poe kept pace, striding in the shadow of the Baron's wings.

Drawing his shoulders in and bowing his head, Richthofen eased through the gap in the wall and stood on the platform. His chest expanded. His wings filled out, air pouring into them.

Poe followed, ignoring the windblast. The platform was suspended over empty space. Below was a sea of darkness. The stars mirrored in the lake were the only nearby indication of ground level. Fire-flashes marked out the trenches a few miles distant. Tiny screams persisted in the thunder of bombardment.

Richthofen stood on the lip of the platform, wings spread like black sails. Kurten, roped at the waist to Haarmann lest he be swept off the platform, fastened the hooks of the Baron's boots, binding his legs together up to the knee. Leather pouches slung round the flier's thighs were packed with extra drums of ammunition. An armoured helm fitted over his head, cut away from the flaring ears. Some of the Baron's comrades wore protective goggles in their shapeshifted form, but Richthofen scorned such comforts. His eye-sockets had risen into gogglelike ridged orbits.

Poe fought the wind and moved nearer the Baron. Theo called, telling him to be careful. Under his breath, Ewers prayed Poe be carried off into the air and dropped into the forest.

The Baron turned to look back and opened his mouth, baring foot-long fang-teeth. The inside of his mouth was a startling red, a wound in his black-furred face.

'I'm hungry, poet,' he said. 'How does their nursery rhyme go, "I smell the blood of an Englishman"?'

Poe was startled. He had not thought the shape-shifted Baron capable of ordinary speech. His voice was surprisingly little changed.

'If you have to, write my obituary.'

Richthofen's shoulder-joints revolved as his wings lifted. He tipped forward, falling stiffly from the platform. His wings caught the air. A backwash forced Poe to his hands and knees.

The Baron dipped beneath the platform. Then he soared above it, spiraling towards stars. He did not flap his wings constantly, but glided on the currents, forcing himself through the air by will-power. An occasional beat was enough to keep him aloft.

Poe tried to stand, but was struck shivering. His boot slipped and he fell hard, sliding towards the edge. The Baron had been a wind-break. Now Poe was the only speck on the platform, winds threatened to dash him away. He stood again, carefully, and made a firm footing. Richthofen was nearly over the trenches, visible only because fires gave his underside a faint reddish glow. His flight was swift and elegant.

Returning to the tower, Poe was pulled inside by Theo.

'You should be more careful, Eddy. I'd have a thorny time explaining your loss to Mabuse.'

Poe was still shivering.

The scientists huddled, filling out forms, arguing minor points. The attendants put things away. General Kamstein stood where the Baron had changed, looking down at Richthofen's abandoned robe. Like a valet, Kurten whisked the garment away and brushed it off.

Theo clicked his heels and saluted. Karnstein returned the honour.

'Manfred is a brave lad,' the elder said. 'I pray he'll return safely.'

if I chose to worry about anyone, I should save my fears for those who will be hunted down by Baron von Richthofen. He is, after all, invincible.'

Karnstein's face was grey, true age showing through apparent middle years.

'Kretschmar-Schuldorff,' he said wearily, 'no one is invincible.'