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Chapter Text

The first time he should have died was, as far as he could tell later, when he was eight years old.

There may have been times before that, of course: he would hardly have remembered if it had happened when he was a baby. And he supposed there were always chances for that - scarlet fever, diphtheria, the common ailments of childhood. But in the time he could remember, it didn’t happen until he was eight years old. And even that time he didn’t understand until long afterwards.

He had been playing down at the river with boys from the village. They were playing a game - a hunting game, he remembered, taking it in turns, one to be the hart, the others, after a suitable wait, to pursue him as the hounds, tracking their prey. It had been his turn. He had run along the bank, heading downriver, to where he knew there was a little scrub-covered sandbank island in midstream. If he could get across to it, he thought, they would never find him. Half of them couldn’t even swim. He had stripped off quickly, shoved his clothes into the mess of ferns and willows on the bank, and dived into the deep pool in the inside of the river bend. He dived down deep, among the clinging weeds, intending to swim underwater as far as he could, in case the others were watching.

His feet were caught. He twisted in the water, tried to kick free; the water was murky with silt, but he could feel the leathery tug of the weeds. He struggled more, lungs starting to burn. It only seemed to pull tighter, and now he was starting to panic, the air gusting out of him in a torrent of bubbles, the surface was so close above his head that he could almost touch it, almost reach the sunlight gleaming through the churning water, and he had just time to think I’m going to die, please, I don’t want to -

- and then he did.

They had fished him out white and limp, his old nurse had told him later in a hushed voice; white and limp and without breath. How long he had been under there none of them knew; long enough that someone had had time to run for the bargemen who were sailing down the river, shout that there was a boy missing, to begin to make a search along the banks. One of the ship’s boys had yelled that there was something white in the water: had dived in, cut the weeds with his knife, and the bargee had driven down into the silt with the long heavy pole, and helped tow the spluttering boy to the bank with his sodden burden.

“You lay on the bank like a dead thing,” she had said, in a voice that he always remembered afterwards. “There wasn’t a breath left in your body, you were white all over except where you were blue around the lips. But then - then your good angel must have spread his wings over you. Because suddenly you quivered and coughed out enough water to drown a grown man; and you sat up, and the colour was back in your cheeks, and the bargee made the sign of the cross over you, for all they’re an ungodly lot on the river, because even he could see a miracle when it happened plain in front of his face. The good Lord must have a great plan for you, my lamb, to have given you such a gift.”

To begin with, he’d hugged those words to himself; later, they frightened him. And later still, it occurred to him that it wasn’t only the good Lord who could work miracles, of a kind.

He didn’t really remember coming to; didn’t remember anything very much until he woke up, late that night, in his own bed, with the nightlight burning. He remembered the river, and the weeds, and the pain, and the fear; but all that afternoon afterwards had the vagueness of a dream.

He lay in the half darkness, drowsily aware of the fresh smell of soap from the bath, and the crisp noise the eiderdown made when he moved; and he became aware of the figure in the corner of the room.

He had seen him before: the boy who had been sitting beside him on the bank, soaking wet, pounding his back to make him cough up the last of the sour river water. Then he had been vivid, active, energetic, encouraging him in his broad broken German; now he sat very still, very silent, in the old tapestry chair where he liked to read. His face was very pale; and his hair and clothes streamed still with dark water, making a black puddle about him on the floor.

Erich lay, eyes very wide, unable to blink, hardly able even to breathe; but the boy didn’t move. If he had moved, Erich would have screamed, he knew, and run to his nurse’s room next door. But he didn’t move.

Erich lay, and watched him; and eventually, after he didn’t know how many hours, he slept.

In the morning the chair was empty, and there was no mark of damp upon the floor. It had been a dream, of course; only a dream. But he didn’t sit in the chair and read all that day, or all the next, or the day after either.

It was eight days after that that his nurse told him that she had heard that a ship’s boy had drowned in port at Danzig; and that she thought he should know, for it was the boy who had cut him free from the weeds, and Erich should remember him in his prayers. The von Stalhein family didn’t believe in that sort of superstition, of course; but Erich furtively kept the boy in his mind as they sat at Communion, and hoped that would help him.

He didn’t see him sitting in the corner of the room again. And he took to reading in his father’s study, instead of that chair.

* * *

The second time he wasn’t sure of, even long afterwards: and at the time, it didn’t even strike him as odd. A boy in another year at the Hauptkadettenanstalt had fallen ill; and by the time the Institute realised it was typhus, there were a dozen of them sick, and Erich was one of them. And most of them had got well; and one of them had died; and Erich had lain wracked with cold and shuddering with fever and with the breath panting in his chest, and watched him standing on the other side of the sick room with his great hollow eyes and the hectic flush on his cheeks. And Erich had told them - he had told them he was there, that he should be in bed, would they please send him away - but the words had come out strangely mangled, and the nurses had held whispered conferences at the foot of his bed, and in the end he couldn’t stay awake any longer and had closed his eyes -

- and had woken up the next day, his fever broken, weak and shaking and alive.

And he was sure he had seen the other boy - he hadn’t known his name, even at the time - standing in his room; but he was sure he had seen many other things that weren’t there too. So he didn’t think much more of it. That was how life was: people got ill, and sometimes they died, and sometimes they didn’t, and there didn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason behind it.

* * *

The third - the third was different. Because by then it was the war, and death didn’t creep up in equivocal ways, it was with you always, just behind your shoulder, and when it reached out for you you knew about it. It was September of 1914; they were retreating from the Marne; and he had been shot. It dropped him where he stood: he didn’t know anything about it.

He had woken up in a field hospital. There had been a nurse at his bedside when he opened his eyes, and she had called in a doctor, and he had called in another doctor, and they had told him just how lucky he was to be alive. They’d never seen a man lose so much blood and live, they said: his uniform had been soaked with the stuff. They’d never seen a man shot so close to the heart and live, either. A whisker to the left, and -

Leutnant von Stalhein had lain, half propped up on clean white pillows, while they had carefully unpeeled the bandages on his chest and made half incredulous noises about how well the wound was healing, already just an angry red mark only a week after it had happened; he should be studied, they said, a miracle of medical science, a man with a constitution of iron. He had lain, and not said a word, because sitting at the end of his bed was a young ensign from his regiment, and the breast of his grey tunic was saturated with blood, and over the heart was a hole the size of a pfennig piece, and on his back was a rather larger one, and he was - not looking at him, not precisely, but his head was half turned towards him as if waiting for him to speak.

That the doctors could not see him was quite self-evident: even doctors in a field hospital would usually register some mild concern about a man bleeding to death on their ward, especially while sitting on another patient’s bed. So he knew the other man must be a hallucination. Such things weren’t uncommon, he knew, among soldiers. So he didn’t immediately connect it with the boy from the barge, or the boy in the isolation ward; didn’t connect it with them, indeed, for another year or more.

He also knew that such hallucinations weren’t treatable, and that they sometimes meant that a man wouldn’t be passed fit for active duty; so he said nothing about it.

The man sat at the end of his bed for another four days; and then, on the morning of the fifth, he simply wasn’t there any longer. And two days after that, von Stalhein was judged healthy enough to be discharged. Indeed he was: indecently healthy, for a man who had been so close to death.

He found when he returned to his regiment that the young ensign had been killed in action a few days before.

That made him pause, for a moment: a hallucination of a man he knew, injured in the same way as he himself had been injured, didn’t make great calls on his credulity; but a premonition of that man’s death was more of a strain.

Yet, he reflected, the world was a strange and terrible place, and many people had experiences they couldn’t explain. He knew many stories of fetches and doppelgänger and death omens, stories from the dark forests and distant days, and who was he to say that there wasn’t a breath of truth in them?

He remembered the horrible wound in the ensign’s chest; touched, briefly, the place above his heart where that pfennig-sized silver-purple mark was.

* * *

The fourth time he woke up in a shell hole.

His head was on muddy earth, and not far above him on the opposite side he could see the rim of the hole, a black line against a sky of muddled cloud-scudding stars, or the on-off flashes of the big guns. He shifted; wondered if he were injured. It hadn’t been night a moment ago. He moved, gingerly, careful, waiting for the pain.

Somewhere close by someone began to scream.

“Shut up you fool!” he hissed, slithering down to the bottom of the depression, into the twenty centimetres of brown stagnant water. The man who had screamed scrabbled away from him, still making sharp, terrified, animal noises, dragging his smashed leg after him, and von Stalhein had had to clamp his hand over the man’s mouth to stop the noise.

They sat like that for a minute or more, von Stalhein listening to the rasp of his own breath and those little desperate noises of fear he couldn’t quite stifle in the man’s throat, listening for a British patrol out to dispatch survivors of the barrage. But there was only those quiet noises, and the sound of the guns.

When the man seemed to have calmed sufficiently, he slowly released his grip. The man lay, panting heavily, eyes wide, staring up at him, and said, “You were dead. I saw it. I saw it - your head was half off - “

“I’m not dead now, am I?” von Stalhein snapped.

“I tell you I saw it!”

Erich’s hand, almost without his volition, stole to his throat. It was whole - of course - but there was a great raw-feeling patch on the left side which hadn’t been there before.

“You’re mistaken,” he said roughly. “A piece of shrapnel must have clipped me. You saw the blood, that’s all.”

“I tell you your head was half off your shoulders, you think I can’t tell the difference?”

The collar and shoulder of his tunic were soaked through; he could feel it, stiff and cold and sticky and black, down past his chest.

There was another man in the shell hole too, he realised now. He was crouching on the far side, a humped shadow in the starlight and the flash bursts of artillery fire. There was something - wrong - about the way he held himself. Von Stalhein found he couldn’t stop looking at him.

The man - the other man - heaved himself round, heavy, lumpen, jerky. Erich found his mouth was dry, and he couldn’t look away.

The man - the shape - moved towards them; dragging itself, almost, on its arms. There was something in the way its head - bobbed - as it moved -

Fear clamped its hand over his mouth, around his throat, and he couldn’t even have cried out.

The shape heaved itself next to the man, close enough that Erich could have reached out and touched it, close enough that it could have reached out and touched him, and if it had - if it had -

They had the same face, the man and the thing: the same face in the starlight, in the shell bursts, same eyes and nose and mouth and little curl of moustache; but the shape’s head bobbed, loose, because its neck was half cut through -

The man didn’t move, even with the thing hanging over him; he was still looking up at Erich as though he were the most terrifying thing here.

Erich swallowed, or tried to. “We have to go,” he rasped, noticing as he spoke that his throat was sore. “Do you know which way our lines are?”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Are you mad?” said Erich, urgently, desperately. “You’ll die if you stay here. Let me help you.”

The man’s doppelgänger hung over him still; regarded Erich with patient eyes.

He had hitched the man’s arm up and over his shoulders. One leg was mangled beyond repair, but the other still had enough bone and muscle left to help bear his weight, and he was too far gone with shock to notice the pain much. And they waited for a lull in the firing, crouched there on the edge of the shell hole; and the thing had been crouched behind them, but he hadn’t looked back to see it. They had slipped and slithered out, staggered out across the desolation, two drunken revellers back from a party, and the thing had limped and clawed its way after them, and he hadn’t looked back. Ghost or doppelgänger or death omen, he didn’t know, but he couldn’t bear to see it, and if he could snatch the man away from it he would.

They made it back: the two of them made it back, somehow, and he didn’t know about the other. He had handed the wounded man to the stretchermen, and sat down on the firing step, and stared blankly ahead; touched his throat.

“My God, Leutnant, what happened to you? Should I be sending you off on a stretcher too?”

It was a ranking officer, one he didn’t know, it wasn’t his section of the Lines - standing in front of him, staring at the great black stain on his jacket.

“Shrapnel, sir,” he said. “It only clipped me.”

He was decorated for it, afterwards; for gallantry under fire, and saving the life of a brother officer. Promoted too; and soon afterwards he was whisked away out of the mud, and sent on detachment as a military advisor to some of the Arab insurgents in Egypt, and the rest of his war had started.

He heard, before he left, that the hospital train had been shelled, on which the man he saved had been travelling back away from the lines; he’d been killed, after all his efforts.

Von Stalhein thought he could hazard a guess as to how.

* * *

The fifth, the sixth, and the seventh -

At least he thought it was only three. It might have been more.

They had only been on the u-boat for a couple of days, and already he couldn’t imagine how the regular crew managed it. His back ached from curving it around the shape of the hull, he dripped with sweat, everywhere was heat and the thick rank smells of mildew and human sweat, diesel fumes and close confinement. They were to be dropped off somewhere on the coast north of Siwa, three of them with a few crates of rifles and explosives, a little something to encourage the Grand Senussi to buck his ideas up. Von Stalhein was already half desperate for the sight of the high and brilliant sky, and the dry heat of the dunes.

And then the boat shook; rang, like a great bell; shook, and groaned, and then -

And that was the fifth time: a wall of fire coming towards him, faster than he could think of escaping, and -

And then he was lying half in and half out of water, jammed in against the officer-of-the-watch’s bunk, the deck sloping sharply, and there was nothing but the faint limning of the emergency lights, and the water lapping against his legs, and the bump of bodies in the water. And the water was rising.

He scrabbled his way upwards, hauling himself along on the pipes and wires and cables and fittings, hands slipping and sweat-soaked and grease-coated. The air was thick with smells, burnt hair, scorched flesh, and there was no one else alive down here, the explosion had taken them all, so why hadn’t it taken him -

And he knew the answer. He knew it, as he had known it in France, but in France he couldn’t bear to look at it. Now he had to look at it. Because he knew that the boat was holed, though he didn’t know how; he knew it was going down to the bottom. And if he didn’t get out he would eventually run out of air; and he would die; and die; and die; and he didn’t know how it would end, but he didn’t know if even a bullet in his brain would stop it, so he had to get out, no matter what.

He clawed his way upwards, as the boat settled at a more and more perpendicular angle. There was a water-tight bulkhead at the far side of the cramped compartment, with a circular water-tight door set into it; it led through into the crew’s space beyond, and in the crew’s space was the aft hatch.

The circular door was warped: by the explosion, he had to assume. He wedged his feet into the base of one of the fixed benches so he could reach up to try to force the wheel lock, and his hands were slick and shaking but even if they weren’t he could feel it jam. Hopeless.

He could hear his breath: short, shallow pants. Nothing but that and the gurgle of the water.

The crates. The crates they were to have been set ashore with. He could see one, still stowed in place on the other side of the companionway. There were charges in them - charges and detonators, for demolition work, for sabotage.

(The space was too small. There was no safe distance. Oh God, if he was wrong - but if he was wrong then he would die quick, and that would be better than drowning or suffocating - and if he was right - if he was right, it would only be a little pain, and then - and then on to the next problem - )

He attacked the crate with knife and fingernails and shaking hands, tearing the lid off, searching by feel in the darkness for the parcels of explosives. The water was up around his ankles already. He tucked them in his tunic, pulled himself up, arms already beginning to scream at him, but no time for that now. He wedged the charges into the door release; set the detonators; primed them; let himself drop into the water -

And that was the sixth time.

He came to floating in the water, body a mass of pain, his clothes in shreds and he didn’t dare look beneath them, and there was another body floating beside him, one of the crew he supposed, and he pushed it away.

The water had risen again, up nearly to the level where the bulkhead was, now dented and torn out of shape by the force of the blast. There was enough of it left to stand on, just about; and he pulled himself up through the gap, out of the water, into the crew room. The folded lines of hammocks against the walls made it easier to climb here; he pulled himself up, and sat for a moment cradled in the looped up fabric, and tried to catch his breath.

Down in the corner -

Down in the corner, down on the far side of the bulkhead wall, there was something crouching.

It could have been a survivor. But he couldn’t hear any breathing.

No time for terror now.

He pulled himself upwards, to the outer hatch.

It wouldn’t open.

Of course it wouldn’t open. They weren’t in deep water - they should have been nearly at their destination, in the shallow coastal waters off Egypt - but the pressure down here would still be enough to keep it forced close.

So the answer, he knew -

The answer was to wait for the water to fill the compartment, to equalise the pressure.

If the other were breathing, would he be able to hear it? Perhaps not. Not over the noise of his own breath and the pounding of his heart.

The water was rising; he could hear it, more than see it, hear the gurgle and purl of it. But now it seemed tortuously slow.

How much of the room would need to fill, before the pressure differential would be reduced enough to open the hatch? How long would he have, to get the hatch open before the air ran out? A more modern boat might have had escape apparatus, but in this old tub it hadn’t been deemed an important enough use of valuable space.

And how deep were they? Deep enough to crush him? Deep enough that he’d drown before reaching the surface? Deep enough that the gases in solution in his body would bubble out into his muscles, into his blood?

He couldn’t see the shape in the darkness any more. That somehow was worse.

The water had risen as far as his perch. He climbed higher; up towards the engine room. Then he waited, in the dark and the quiet, with only the sound of the water and the gasps of his breath.

The third time he dived down to the hatch, he felt it at last begin to give. He felt the water wash past him around the sides; kicked back up to the surface, the last six inches of air below the bulkhead, tipped his head back to keep his mouth and nose above the water, took six breaths, as long and deep as he could -

- and dived.

He didn’t know how long it took to pull the hatch open. Too long. By the time he kicked through his lungs were already burning, and the water outside was dark, and he knew he was too deep. His ears were ringing, he stretched up -

Something moved past him in the water; a dark shape. Bloated, horrible, drowned.

The last air rushed out of him.

He woke up on the shore.

He lay on the beach; felt the blaze of the sun drying the salt on his skin, the tattered remnants of his uniform growing stiff and sticky with salt water. The blowlamp of the sun, the rub of his clothes, the mixture of sharp shell fragments in the coarse sand under his hand - alive.

Impossibly, alive.

He rolled over; vomited up sea water and whatever else was left in his stomach. (His stomach had been ripped open, he was sure of it, by the explosion; his uniform was scorched and torn to ribbons.) He was sick until there was nothing else coming, just empty, wretched heaves he couldn’t stop.

And eventually, he sat down, clasped his shaking hands together, buried his head in his arms.

No ignoring it now; no escaping, no rationalising. How could anyone rationalise this? He had died; he had felt it. No one could live through that. And then he was alive. He had felt -

His stomach lurched again; he pushed the thought away.

He was a rational man. And rationality didn’t consist in denying the evidence of your senses, even when your senses told against everything you thought you knew about human life, human death, the nature of the world. He had died; then he was alive. And -

(And this was the hard thing, the terrible thing, the thing that made his stomach rebel - )

And somewhere there were three men -

(Only three?)

Three men who were dead now, or soon would be, and who perhaps should have been alive.

He had known it since France, but he hadn’t dared to look at it.

He couldn’t pretend to understand how it could happen, let alone why. He could only observe; accept the evidence of his senses. He should have died - had died - and when he did, someone else was sacrificed in his place. And then - he was alive.

He curled up around that knowledge, feeling it clench in the pit of his stomach.

And what was he to do now, now that he knew it for sure? He wanted to run: because to risk his own life was a choice he could make, a choice he made willingly, for his country and his family and his pride; but how could he face that choice, when failure meant putting a gun to the head of a comrade and blowing their brains out?

But he would have to make that choice: to go on making it. It was the nature of war.

And even if he ran, things wouldn’t change. He remembered, now, that time in the isolation ward: the schoolmate, with the hectic flush and hollow eyes. There were plenty of ways for a man to die, even out of the fighting. He had never been reckless: only a soldier, knowing there are times that you have to take a risk or be lost. He had never sought death, only tried not to flinch when it came his way. He could be knocked down by a cart, die of a disease, be stabbed in a back-alley by a cut-purse - and then wake up, and know that another sacrifice had been made for his wasted life.

No.

No, if sacrifices had to be made, then let them be worth the making.

(‘Had to be made’. He caught it, even as he thought it: that verbal twisting. Sacrifices would be made: he would be the one making them. No good shying away or turning a blind eye. He had to look it in the face. They deserved that much respect.)

He knew himself: knew himself to be brave enough, fast enough, strong enough, cunning enough, to do something for his country that no one else could. Let that be the price then: if others were going to die for him - if he was going to kill them, whether he asked for it or not - then let his life be worth the bargain.

He scrubbed the back of his hand over his mouth, wiping away the traces of vomit.

The shame clawed at him: for all he had done, all that he still would do, which would smash those around him and would leave him unscathed. But he would bear it. He would carry that shame, hold it close, like the Spartan boy hiding the fox cub in his tunic as it lacerated his belly: he would carry it, because he could do things for his country that no one else could. And his country didn’t need his guilty conscience, or his moral scruples: it needed his skill. So he would carry it, and continue as before.

* * *

The eighth - at any rate he thought it was the eighth, his reckoning was already adrift - the eighth was at Zabala.

It had been nearly two years. He knew it had sometimes been more by luck than by judgement, this failure to die: he had tried, as anyone would have tried, not to die, but sometimes the risk had to be taken, there was no shirking or dodging it. But he hadn’t died: not in the deep desert, not smashed against the ground by a parachute failing to open, not exposed and executed by the British. He had done something no one else could do.

Then a young pilot called Brunow had arrived. And, shortly afterwards, while he was waiting on the apron for Brunow to return from a scouting expedition over British lines, another new arrival: Leffens, his pilot, still in the shreds of the uniform he had worn that morning, burned almost beyond recognition, sitting on a crate in the shade of the hangar, watching him.

And so in addition to having to pull together nearly a year’s worth of delicate negotiations with a dozen local tribal leaders, in addition to co-ordinating an attack on British lines that might turn the whole course of the war in the Middle East, in addition to the way Brunow distracted and confused and infuriated him and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end -

In addition to those things, he had Leffens: silent, horrible, sitting in the corner of his office or in the quarters he barely had time to go to, to let him know what he had shortly to look forward to.

He hadn’t burned to death before. That hadn’t been how he had expected this all to end.

He couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Though by the time it actually happened, of course, and everything had gone about as wrong as they could go, and it was the end of all his plans and strategies and risks and schemes -

Well. It was hardly a relief. But at least it was over.

* * *

He wondered about it, over the years. How could he not?

What were the mechanics of the thing? What caused it? Was it some freak of his own constitution, that it could pull the life out of another? Or was it something that had been imposed upon him from without?

And how was the other chosen? The method of death brought them together, he thought - but was it pure coincidence, or did the form of one death trigger the other? If Leffens had, say, bailed out of his plane before it hit the ground, would he, von Stalhein, also have been killed by a fall? Or was his own death locked in place, and a different substitute would have been found to fit?

He prodded it; niggled away at it; shuffled around his meagre evidence. He couldn’t stop himself; and goodness knew, he had a lot of time to think after the war ended.

It was striking, how often the substitute was someone he knew, someone physically close to him. It made him stand-offish; unwilling to obtrude himself into people’s lives. In war, a soldier accepted the risk of death; but did his peacetime colleagues? His friends? His sister, or Marie?

Better to keep one’s distance.

He wondered - often - if he was responsible for it. He dimly remembered that first time: the weeds around his legs, the sunlit surface of the water just beyond his reach. He remembered that desperate, all-consuming desire to live. He had lost the faith of his fathers, but there was still within him some unquiet certainty that such loud desires, even if never spoken, might be heard, by something outside himself, whether good or bad. He had not accepted his death, as he knew he should; in his soul, he had been prepared to offer anything, anything, to ward it off. What if his bargain had been accepted?

But people on the edge of death tried to bargain all the time, he knew it better than most. And he’d never yet seen their prayers answered. Why should he be different?

He wondered, too, how long it would last. For ten years he hadn’t seen one of them: had the blessing been rescinded, the curse removed? Had it just been until the end of the great war, until he had done the one remarkable thing he was destined for (or, as it turned out, failed dismally in the attempt)? Or would he trudge through life trailing a line of horrors at his heels, until at last -

What, at last? Would the curse break in the end? Or would the world be sacrificed to keeping him alive, dragging his bones back from rest again, and again, and again?

He couldn’t think of it.

Then the second war came, and it was his duty, and his country, and risks had to be taken, and sacrifices had to be made; and then came afterwards, when he was so lost to himself that even the shame of it began to lose its full bitterness, because it was mixed with so many other sources of shame that he could hardly tease them apart. And sometimes he thought that perhaps it didn’t matter, that he worked alongside men like Zorotov and Ling Soo, because they were bullies, thugs, irredeemable brutes that the world would be better off without, and perhaps if he continued to work with them and take wretched unforgivable risks then perhaps one day they would be the one to catch the bullet that he was courting.

He thought that about them too, sometimes - Bigglesworth and his team: a sour rush of hatred, for all the times they had bested him, smashed his cunning devices, set flames to all his arduous plans, for all that he had lost because of them and their kind. If they kept dogging his heels, then one day one of them might end up the silent dark-eyed ghost at the foot of his bed, a neat hole drilled through their head.

The thought brought him up short.

He had few enough consistencies in his life. He would -

He found he would regret it.

He had lost track of the number of ghosts, after that mess in South America. He never tried to count the number of times he died there: crocodiles, snakes, hunger, thirst. He shut his eyes to it; kept trudging onward. He didn’t see that he had much choice.

And it was only after it was all over - after Inagua and his trial and all that came after - after the flood had passed and he had found himself washed ashore in a dingy flat in Kensington, and everything had come to nothing in the end - that he realised quite how far he had drifted. He had grown too used to death always at his shoulder and not having to fear it; to seeing it as an ally rather than an enemy. Bigglesworth had seen it, in that ancient fortress in Kurdistan: had drawn his attention to it, with that evaluating narrowing of hazel eyes, I do not like the idea of sitting still waiting to die, let us make it quick -

And he had felt no great shame for it then, he remembered. Too long since he had been concerned for the lives he was throwing away.

Now it was time to stop. Perhaps death would still come for others in his stead; but he didn’t have to keep pushing them forward any more. No more duty, no more sacrifice. He could hide from death for a few years. He could keep himself away from other people, and hope that death wouldn’t find them either. And perhaps if he let go of life, then one day life would lose its grip on him.

Except -

Except there was Bigglesworth. Turning up on his doorstep, with that expression he probably fondly imagined was unreadable: tentative, a little guarded, hopeful with a thin veneer of feigned diffidence: an expression like a hand that reached out to grab him as he drowned in dark waters. Asking his advice; seeking out his company; asking him to dinner. Diffident, cautious, hopeful, unrelenting. It wrenched something loose inside him, and he wanted -

He was hiding: keeping his head down, playing it safe, paying his penance. But Bigglesworth wouldn’t let him disappear. And if he left everything else in life behind, he found he couldn’t quite leave this: sitting with Bigglesworth at a table with a view over the Thames, as the low red sun set flashes off the windows of the pleasure boats and the barges, trying to recreate himself from the memories that the two of them shared: the light of Bigglesworth’s certainties driving away the ghosts for a while.

Chapter Text

”’The wine here is excellent - on no account should you visit, or you may find yourself significantly out of pocket!’ What the devil is that supposed to mean?”

“It means even dear Erich has got more sense than to think you should throw yourself into the middle of this mess. He’s warning you off, can’t you see?”

“If he is, he’s got a funny way of doing it. Why send a card at all if he just wants me to stay out of it?”

“If he’s asking for anything, it’s money. If you need to slip him a few bob for his train ticket home then go to it, but don’t for heaven’s sake go wading in yourself. He’s as good as telling you not to.”

“First time I’ve ever heard you lining up with him on anything.”

“First time he’s ever talked good sense. Why can’t you just keep your nose out of his business for a change?”

Algy was right, of course. Biggles could see what the message had meant as clearly as he could. And yet here he was: Rodnitz, Czechoslovakia, the Café Wagner, with Erich’s postcard still folded in his pocket, and the flimsiest of plans at his back.

“Looks just like the postcard, what?” murmured Bertie. “Extraordinary how they made it look just like the picture.”

“I rather suspect the café came first,” said Biggles. “By about four hundred years, by my reckoning.”

“Even more extraordinary then, by Jove,” Bertie went on, as they entered the smoky, noisy undercroft. “Fancy being able to make it look just like the picture four hundred years before the picture was taken.”

There was something grounding about Bertie’s chatter; he found himself grateful for it. It helped him keep the sharp itch of excitement buried down deep, to keep the jitter of tension contained. They found an empty table; Bertie ordered the wine, tasted it, the performative good cheer of an English gentleman abroad. It meant Biggles didn’t have to pretend to be convivial: could let his eyes flick from face to face to face, looking for -

“I can’t see him,” he muttered.

“Early days yet, old man,” said Bertie cheerfully. “No need to get tied in knots over it yet. He might not be here every evening. Perhaps he doesn’t even come here himself - it might just be a forwarding address. We’ve got time.”

“Maybe, but I’ll feel happier once I know what he’s up to.”

“Couldn’t agree more, old thing. Though of course, if anyone can take care of himself, it’s old Erich. Vanishes faster than a cat up a tree. No good expecting him to turn up to meet us off the train. I’m sure he’ll be along in his own good time.”

And of course Bertie was right too: no one was more capable of looking after himself than Erich von Stalhein. And Ginger had been right, back in London also: perhaps Erich had found Marie, sorted things out with her, decided to settle down and grow petunias in a little cottage somewhere with nice views of the Vlatava, though for the life of him he couldn’t imagine it. Perhaps he was just butting in. They were all three of them right, in their different ways. But here he was all the same: trying to stop von Stalhein from slipping through his fingers once again.

“I fancy that violinist chappy is going to give us a turn,” Bertie remarked, eyes on the little band in the corner, fingers tapping in idle rhythm against his wine glass in time with the music. “I’ve noticed him looking our way a few times now.”

Biggles cast a glance over; he hadn’t paid much attention to the musicians, any more than he’d paid attention to the whitewash on the walls. Yes, the violinist was making his way over to their table, stopping off at others on the way, treating them to a short piece, a flourish, a burst of noise. He supposed he must be competent; at any rate the other patrons seemed to be enjoying it. He searched in his pocket for change, steeled himself for the ordeal of being serenaded -

- and looked up into a pair of brilliant blue-grey eyes. And for a moment he couldn’t breath; because he had seen Erich angry, he had seen him stern and proud and unbending, but he wasn’t certain he’d ever seen him so coldly furious as he was now.

He hadn’t recognised him, not dressed as he was: not in the baggy blouse that hid his slim shape, not in the stooped pose that hid his height, not in the over-long hair and the stubble of beard and the extraordinary delicacy of his hand on the bow. But there was no missing those eyes; and it felt like the breath had been knocked out of him.

Von Stalhein finished his piece; Biggles belatedly picked up his cue from Bertie and the people at the surrounding tables, and managed to applaud as von Stalhein bowed, stiffly, a startlingly characteristic movement. Biggles held out the handful of silver coins, and as von Stalhein’s hand covered his and took the money, he heard words close by his ear:

“In the back courtyard at a quarter past twelve. By the gents’ toilet. Be careful. Someone may be watching.”

And then he was gone; and Biggles let out his breath, carefully, as though someone watching might learn something just from that.

“What did he say?” asked Bertie. “I couldn’t hear for the noise. Did he speak English or did I imagine it?”

“We spoke English. Didn’t you realise who he was?”

“No. Why should l?”

“Von Stalhein.”

Bertie’s eyes opened wide. “It isn’t true!”

Biggles smiled, faintly. “And in a pretty poisonous mood with us. Or with me, at any rate. If looks could kill I’d have been struck down on the spot.”

“Well I like that!” exclaimed Bertie indignantly. “Of all the bally ungrateful - Here we are, traipsing half way across Europe to pull his bacon out the fire - “

“Considering he didn’t ask us to pull anything from anywhere, I don’t think we can really grumble if he’s a little put out with us.”

“You just watch me, old man,” Bertie muttered. “What did he say?”

The waited until the band packed up for the night; waited in a corner of the moonless courtyard, until von Stalhein slipped out of the door of the inn and into the old wooden doorway opposite; waited longer, until the man watching his door from the shadows had seen the lamp safely lit in the upstairs room and vanished into the street.

“Phew!” Bertie breathed. “Looks like old Erich was right on the mark about being followed. Do we go up, or not?”

“We go up,” Biggles replied, quietly. “We won’t find out what’s going on by lurking here until they chuck us out. That tail was clearly following Erich, not us, so I don’t think we’ll be risking much by going in.”

The door was an ancient one, half sunk on its hinges, and along the top edge was a half inch gap which made the staircase beyond as chilly as the outside air. The treads were bare and wooden, and creaked abominably; Biggles set his teeth against the noise, against the creep along his spine, the sensation of being overlooked. At the top, a narrow landing, and a line of light at the bottom of another door. He signalled to Bertie to wait; crossed, and scratched softly at the wooden panels with his fingernails.

Von Stalhein answered, instantly, still in britches and boots, but in plain white shirtsleeves rather than the baggy blue blouse. Biggles was a little taken aback by the fact that he held no gun: not openly in his hand, nor concealed in hip pocket or hidden by the turn of his body. He’d have answered the door with greater care in his flat in London. He was outlined against the lamp-lit room behind: a perfect target.

“Wait; I will put out the light. It would be better so,” he said shortly. He turned back into the room; the lamp flared once, then died, and there was nothing but the thin light from the unshaded window. Steps, and a movement by the door; a darker outline against the darkness. “Come in.”

Biggles stepped inside the doorway, reaching out with his hands to find the doorjambs, and catching the shape of the room in his peripheral vision, where the dim light seemed less dim: a narrow bed against the wall, a chair, a dark mass against the far wall that might have been a washstand.

“May we sit?” he asked, quietly. “I rather think we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

A rustle in the darkness: Erich, he supposed, pulling the shred of flimsy fabric across the window. It wouldn’t keep in the light, but it would hide them from prying eyes, providing they didn’t make shadows of themselves against the blinds.

“Wait,” came the answer. “I’ll light a candle.”

The flare of a match, brilliant against the blackness; a spill of yellow light, and there was the candle on a low footstool, between the chair and the bed.

“Not there - “

The words sounded - odd. A jarring burst of sound, bitten off short: as if Bertie were about to sit on something precious, or dangerous, and not just on a corner of perfectly squared-off bedclothes. Erich’s eyes were on that corner of the bed too; not on Bertie at all.

“Rather, old thing, you just point me to the seat and I’ll cheerfully sit in it,” said Bertie, straightening up quickly.

“The middle of the bed - will be fine,” said Erich, with an effort; and with an effort he forced his eyes away from that blank space.

Biggles glanced at that empty spot: could see nothing particularly sinister about it, except maybe a small patch of damp on the limewashed wall. He sat down on the other side of Bertie, towards the head of the bed, and leaned forward, elbows on knees.

“Now. Perhaps you’d care to fill us in on what’s been going on.”

Von Stalhein was standing near the window, still; as if deliberately showing himself against the thin screen of the curtain. “Perhaps you would first do me the courtesy of informing me what you are doing here.”

Biggles frowned. “We’re here to do the same job as I assume you are: trying to find Marie, and bring her home safe if she needs it. And to make sure that you come home safe, too, if you want to. When we got your postcard - ”

“I did not ask you to come.”

There was an odd, vibrating edge of tension in von Stalhein’s voice; it struck an answering vibration in Biggles, like a wine-glass chimes when a gong is struck. “Look, if you elect to vanish off the face of the earth after telling me that you’ll be in touch, you mustn’t be entirely surprised if I decide to follow my own line,” he snapped. “And as for not asking me to come - if you didn’t want us here, then why on earth did you drop us a helpful line to let us know where you were?”

“I wanted money,” said Erich, in a low, rapid voice. “I had no one else to whom I could apply. I did not ask you to come. I did not wish for you to come. I addressed the postcard to Lacey at least in the hope that someone with some common sense might read it and point out that fact to you. It is clear that I should have known better.”

“Yes, perhaps you should,” Biggles shot back. “Look here, what is this? You’re angry with us, obviously, but I’m damned if I can see why. I’m sorry if you think I’m queering your pitch, but I could hardly have just ignored the business. Having yoinked you out of a prison camp once I didn’t especially want to have to give a repeat performance, and I’d rather not have to perform that office for Marie at all.”

“‘Queering my pitch’ - my God, do you imagine that I would be angry at you for that?” There was an odd note of laughter in his voice, and when he got the cigarette packet - a packet, not a case - out of his pocket, his usually deft fingers fumbled to open it. “I hoped I would be able to bring Marie to London - that I would be able to knock on the door of your flat and show you that she was safe, and then - Oh, but what does it matter now!”

That edge of tension wasn’t just in his voice: Biggles could see it now, even by candlelight, in the set of his shoulders, the tight line of his jaw, the choppy, abortive movements of the hand that held the cigarette. It was strange, to see him bringing the cigarette to his lips without the usual holder, Biggles thought: and perhaps that was why he kept thinking of Sakhalin this evening. The over-long hair, the stubble of beard, the cigarette held between his fingers, the eye not covered by the monocle: he remembered them all, and the odd air of fragility it gave him.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Biggles said, slowly. “I suppose it doesn’t. Still, now we are here, we might as well make ourselves useful. Can you tell us what’s been going on at your end of things?”

“I tell you it hardly matters now!” von Stalhein snapped; then, visibly, the iron self-control clamped down, and he stood a little straighter, a little stiffer. “Still, perhaps we may be able to help Marie, at least. Perhaps then - “

He broke off; drew on his cigarette. He didn’t sit; just stood with one hand against the back of the chair, so Biggles had to look up at him.

“Very well. I will tell you what I have learned.”

Briefly, cogently, he outlined the state of affairs: that Marie did indeed reside in Rodnitz; that she was under house arrest in the ancient castle that overlooked the river valley a little downstream of the town; that the local people were broadly sympathetic to her family, but not sufficiently to discourage the local Soviet agents from threatening and intimidating her. That he himself had been spotted, almost as soon as he arrived, by an old colleague with a grudge; that his movements were dogged, his activities noted; that he would put her in danger if it were known that he were enquiring after her.

And all the while, his eyes would flicker: from the cigarette, to the candle, to that space in the corner where nothing sat.

“That’s a fair parcel of news,” Biggles observed, evenly. “What rotten luck, to have been rumbled by that swine Reinhardt so early in the game! Still, you’ve managed to turned up a lot, one way and another.”

“Luck!” von Stalhein said; and there was that half a breath of laughter, again. In another man, Biggles would have said his nerve was going. He knew those gulps of laughter that you couldn’t keep down; how they would force their way out of you at the worst possible moments. But it seemed impossible to imagine of Erich von Stalhein. “Yes, the luck was against me - it was all against me, and I pushed it all the same. And now - “

Another sharp break in the words.

“So what do you plan to do now?” Biggles asked. “If your position is as bad as all that, you might as well go back to England and leave us to carry things on here.”

A short, harsh laugh. “What would be the use? The worst has already happened.”

“I don’t see that,” said Biggles, frowning. “Reinhardt may have made you, but he can’t have twigged that you ought to be in a prison camp on the other side of the world, or you’d already be on your way back there. For my money, he’s stumped: he can’t fathom what you’re doing here. So he’s waiting for word from his superiors, to decide what to do about you.” He smiled, mirthlessly. “That’s the downside of a political system like this, of course - no one dares to plough their own furrow. And if his superiors don’t get round to answering his enquiries for a week or two, then we can be home clear before they even start after us.”

“We shall not be.”

The words were so flat and final that they quite pulled Biggles up; and he felt Bertie stir uneasily at his side.

“Here, I say - never say die and all that sort of thing, old boy,” he murmured.

For a moment, an expression of such stricken horror crossed von Stalhein’s usually impassive face that Biggles wondered if it could have been some strange trick of the candlelight; but it was there and gone in an instant, and he couldn’t be sure.

“Why are you so certain that it’s all going to blow up in our faces?” asked Biggles, curiously. “You had some bad luck with Reinhardt, it’s true, but in my experience the luck won’t be against you forever.”

“Then your experience is very different from mine.”

Biggles felt a flare of annoyance. “You of all people should know better than to talk like this. All right, it’s a sticky situation, but we’ve both been in stickier. If you go into a job like this expecting to be sunk, then sunk you’ll be. And if you’re already determined that we’re going to sink, then perhaps you should go back to England before you scuttle the lot of us.”

“If I thought my ‘determination’ would make one whit of difference this way or that, perhaps I would,” von Stalhein spat. “Unfortunately, it is too late. You could not bear to stay out of things - just as I should have known you would not. You came here, though I asked you to stay away - just as I should have known you would. And now you are going to die, and it is my fault, and it is - insupportable.”

And for the first time since that moment in the Café Wagner he met Biggles’ eye: and the cold fury was still there, but with it was an utter, unbearable desolation.

“I haven’t yet,” said Biggles, slowly. “I don’t intend to start now.”

Von Stalhein shook his head. “You do not have a choice. No one does.”

“Erich - “

He flinched, when Biggles used his given name; flinched as if he had been lashed.

“Of course there’s a risk,” Biggles went on. “There’s a risk with any job like this. But it’s hardly an unprecedented one. Yes, any time you get shot at could be the last time - “ A tiny, abrupt movement: Erich’s hand gripping the back of the chair till the knuckles whitened. “ - but I’m not sure that this Reinhardt fellow is more likely to bowl me out than the fellow who shot at me last week, or the week before that.”

“It is not your skill that is in question,” said Erich; and there was a slow, weary patience in his voice now, as of someone explaining something for the tenth time and still expecting to be misunderstood. “Nor your luck, nor your experience. It is my fault. I made a mistake; I pushed my luck, even though I knew my luck was bad; and now you have to pay the price for it.” He turned; stubbed out the cigarette in a saucer on the washstand; stood, for a moment, turned away from them, and the candlelight didn’t reach his face. “I do not expect you to believe me,” he said, softly. “I would not, if circumstances were - otherwise.”

“You could try me,” Biggles answered. He wanted to move to him: to turn his face to the candlelight, so perhaps he would understand; but he couldn’t cross between the candle and the window, couldn’t afford to give their presence away. He knotted his fingers together, tight, to keep himself from reaching for him. “I’ve had a fair amount of practice at believing the unbelievable. I might not quite be able to manage six impossible things before breakfast, but I’m sure I could cope with two or three, and it’s hours until breakfast yet.”

Von Stalhein sat down, slow and careful, on the rickety chair; leaned forward to light another cigarette from the candle. His eyes were on that empty space again. “Perhaps I might, if it would do any good. But it would not. And there is nothing we can do to change things - not one single thing.”

“Am I to understand that you’ve had - I don’t know how to say it - some premonition of my death?” asked Biggles, awkwardly.

Another breath of laughter. “Something of the kind.”

Biggles sat, for a moment, and looked at his face: at the sharp lines of the cheekbones, the dark shadows beneath the eyes. “Even if it were true - it wouldn’t be your fault, Erich. You didn’t ask me to be here. Postcard or no postcard, I’d have come looking in the end. If I go west tomorrow, then it’ll be because of my own actions, not - “

He broke off. Von Stalhein had covered his face with his hand.

“You do not understand,” he said.

“Of course I don’t, if you don’t tell me,” said Biggles, angrily.

Von Stalhein said nothing; only scrubbed the hand over his eyes, and went back to smoking, his eyes now on the small brilliance of the candle flame.

Biggles sighed. “All right. Have it your way. In the meantime, since there’s apparently nothing that can be done about my impending demise, perhaps we should just continue to act as though I’m going to live. Since we’ve no reason to think that Bertie and I have drawn any hostile attention yet, I suppose our next move is to scout out this castle, while you keep yourself comfortably out of sight.”

“I have already been up to the castle.”

Biggles frowned. “Wasn’t that taking rather a risk? If you were followed up there - “

Von Stalhein gave a small, rather hollow laugh. “If I can’t escape the sort of tail you pick up in a backwater like Rodnitz, then I deserve to be sent back to Sakhalin. The risk - such as it was - seemed worth taking. The difficulty - “ He paused for a moment, as if working his way around a problem. “The difficulty arises around the castle itself. There are permanent guards posted in the surrounding woods, though quite why I don’t know. I can supply you with a sketch map - “

“Thanks, but I’d like to do my own reconnoitring as well.”

“Then you must be wary,” Erich carried on, a little more rapidly. “Especially if you are there after dark. The guards are armed, and quite prepared to shoot without warning.”

Biggles hesitated. “Did you have trouble, when you went up there?”

Erich was silent; still, with the stillness of an animal trying to baffle the eyes of a hunter.

“Have you been sleeping?” Biggles asked, abruptly.

“No,” he answered, after a moment. “No, I have not.”

“Then you should try to sleep tonight. You’re no use to us or Marie if you’re dropping from exhaustion.”

Von Stalhein nodded, slowly. “You think I have been imagining things.”

“I think no man can be expected to keep working at full stretch for as long as you have,” said Biggles. “And I don’t just mean this last couple of weeks - I mean the last goodness knows how many years. It’s no shame to need some help, now and again.”

For a moment, Erich’s eyes were turned to him again: infinitely weary. “Believe me, I would far rather it were as simple as that.”

“By Jove,” murmured Bertie, as they closed the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped out into the night air. “Poor old Erich! What a bally mess.”

Biggles took a deep breath. The air up in the little attic room had been cold, but curiously stuffy, with an odd stale scent to it that he had not liked. “Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“What do you make of all that?”

“I don’t know what to make of it,” said Biggles, jamming his hands into his pockets against the bite of the frost. And more than that: he didn’t want to make anything of it. He was afraid of what it might have to be.

“I mean to say, Erich’s always had a few peculiar notions, but this - !”

Biggles smiled, without humour. “Yes, it’s not quite in his usual line, is it?”

“Well - it could be as you said, old thing. I’ve always thought of him as a fairly nerveless specimen, but I suppose everyone gets down to their last available synapse sooner or later, if they live the rackety sort of life he’s had.” Bertie blew into his cupped palms and chafed them together. “What now? I don’t suppose we can really count him in - but can we afford to count him out?”

“We’ll get him out, at any rate, if he holds up that long,” said Biggles, grimly. “And there’ll be time enough for everything else when we’ve got him home.”

* * *

But of course, as it turned out, von Stalhein had held up perfectly well -

’You carry on. Forget about me. I’ll try to reach the frontier on foot - ‘

‘The alternative is to give myself up. Perhaps I’d better do that - ‘

‘You can forget me - ’

- had held up perfectly well, except for leaving Biggles desperately wishing that he could twist his fingers into the back of Erich’s collar, in case this was the time when he actually threw himself off the cliff-edge instead of just walking right along the edge.

And he didn’t look at him enough; and he looked in dark corners too much; and when he had stumbled up the dripping hillside in the dark, and Biggles could still hear the echoes of the semi-automatic and the dull rending noise of the car crash, and could only sit digging his fingers into Bertie’s sleeve as the rain dripped down his neck and pattered on the dripping leaves -

’Are you hurt? Have you been hit?’

That had been the first thing he said, when Biggles pulled him down into the sodden bracken: and Biggles could feel Erich’s hand shaking as it pressed against his rain-soaked shoulder, and he thought, Now I know how he expects me to die.

But they had made it this far: here, the broad balcony outside Marie’s sitting room, with the rain breaking up the dark surfaces of the puddles, and scuds of cloud racing across the moon.

“You go on through,” he said to von Stalhein, pausing for a moment on the threshold of the little guards’ room. “I need to have a word with Marie. We’ll almost certainly need a rope if we’re going to get her down from here, and the sooner we get hold of one, the sooner I can sleep easy.”

The lie slipped out easily enough - not quite a lie, because a rope they certainly needed. But it wasn’t the reason he needed to speak with Marie again.

“You don’t need to make up reasons to speak with her, you know,” said Erich, quietly, a shadow amidst the shadows of the turret room. “I know you must have a lot to say to one another.”

“Nothing that can’t wait,” said Biggles. “I won’t be long.”

The wind was blowing faint scatters of rain against his cheek; inside, through the balcony door, there was a fire lit, and lamps burning, and Marie was sitting on the settee with her legs curled up catwise beneath her, as she had been when he first saw her there two days before; and for a moment he was desperately tired.

He tapped on the glass; and when she looked up, her face brightened.

“Aren’t you tired?” she asked, as she opened the door and stood aside to let him in. “Or is there something you need?”

“Not unless you’ve got a couple of camp beds and a paraffin stove handy,” he said, as lightly as he could manage. “I won’t keep you for long.”

“You’re very welcome to keep me as long as you like,” she said, with that smile that he never had quite been able to shake. “I don’t sleep much at present. Though I’ll try to do better if I have to shin down the ivy in a couple of days.”

“That’s one thing I wanted to ask about. Do you have a rope anywhere? It would make it much easier for us to get you to the ground.”

She pursed her lips. “If we ever had such a thing, I don’t imagine the Kommandant and his friends will have let us retain it. But I will ask Max. Max manages to contrive wonderfully well. He will find us a rope, if he has to plait it from his own beard.”

“Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Biggles murmured. He hesitated for a moment. The door to the balcony was closed; the fire sinking into dim red embers in the grate; and Marie was looking up into his face, and he didn’t know her well enough to read what he saw in her expression.

“And for the other thing you want to ask about - ,” she said, slowly. “I think you wish to talk to me about Erich.”

He let out his breath. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

She nodded: swift, decisive, as a sparrow or robin cocks its head. “Will you sit with me for a moment? I get cold away from the fire.”

She curled up once again, precise and fastidious; he sat in an armchair, then stood, crossed to the fireplace, picked a spill from the little pot on the mantelpiece, began to untwist and retwist it.

“You have not changed as much as I would have expected,” she said. “You still cannot sit still, I see.”

“Has Erich been all right while he’s been here?” he asked, abruptly.

She folded her hands in her lap. “You are worried about him.”

“Yes,” he said. “I am.”

“Has he said anything to worry you?”

The paper of the spill was beginning to break apart in his damp fingers; he dropped it into the fire. “He says he thinks I’m going to die. And he seems to hold himself responsible for it.”

There was a peculiar gravity to her expression that he didn’t think he’d ever seen on her face before; but then, he knew so little of her truly. “He has not said anything of that kind to me. But - it would not entirely surprise me. He said something like that to me once before - when he had just recently returned from Palestine. I’m sure you remember the occasion.”

“I remember,” said Biggles.

“He told me a curious story,” said Marie, slowly, frowning into the remnants of the fire, like a child trying to recall a recitation. “He told me that he had crashed an aeroplane. He was quite certain about it. And he said that a young man who had acted as his pilot had in some way stood in the way of his death, and taken it onto himself, and that was how he had come to survive.” Her wide blue eyes flicked upwards to meet his own. “Of course I reassured him that it was quite impossible; I told him that pilots, tragically, die every day in wartime; and I told him that if I had had such a narrow escape from death as he had, I should have been shaken to pieces by nerves for months afterwards. But he insisted, and I couldn’t dissuade him.”

Biggles swallowed. “No, I never had much luck with dissuading him either.” Then, after a pause: “What do you make of it? You’ve been friends with him longer than I have.”

She smiled, a very little. “Longer, perhaps. But I think perhaps that recently at least, you may have known him better.”

“He isn’t a fanciful man.”

Marie shrugged. “No. But he is a romantic one. And perhaps - one who tends to assume his decisions - his actions - have greater importance than they do?”

The fire was nearly out. He leaned down, automatically, to throw another shovelful of coal onto the glowing heart of it. “You think he’s imagining it.”

“I think,” said Marie, carefully, “that it would be easy for a romantic man who leads a dangerous life and often sees people around him die - people for whom he may feel responsible - to imagine that his continuing life was in some way responsible for their untimely deaths.”

Biggles shifted, uneasy. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve always thought Erich had a pretty decent notion of his own importance in the grand scheme of things.”

Marie’s smile was small, uncharacteristically sad: at least he thought so. “I’m glad that you and he are friends now, although I can’t really imagine how it came about.”

“We were friends,” he said, before stopping short; unable to finish the thought, unable to call it back. “I don’t know. I just want to get him home.”

“You’re frightened for him.”

“Yes.”

“And he is terrified for you. I’ve seen it, these last two days.” She stood; took three paces towards him, and put her hand, so lightly he could hardly feel the weight, on his sleeve. “For what it’s worth, he came back last time. He was himself again.”

He nodded; sharp, automatic. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I should - “

“You’re welcome to enjoy the fire here for a while longer, if you need.”

He longed to, for a moment: but only a moment. Very lightly - as lightly as her - he touched her hand. “Thank you. But you should try to sleep, and so should I. We don’t know how many quiet nights there may be left.”

She smiled at him: the smile he remembered. “Good night, Biggles. I am very happy to have seen you again.”

Outside it was a soft spatter of rain, and a cold breeze, and he took the armful of rugs and old blankets into the turret room, and only had a moment to panic on finding it empty before he noticed the spill of light from the upper room. He picked his way up the stairs in the gloom; and found an oil lamp in the middle of the floor, its pale golden light seeing off the shadows from around the chamber walls, and Erich, blocking off the narrow arrow-slit window with bundle of wadded sheet.

“Did you get an answer to your question?” he asked, not turning to look at him.

“Of a sort,” said Biggles, levelly. “I wanted to ask her how you’ve been.”

“How I’ve been sleeping, perhaps?”

“If you like.”

“You could have asked me.”

“I thought she’d be more likely to answer.”

Von Stalhein didn’t say anything to that: just went on pushing the frayed and yellowed cotton into the window aperture, packing it in tight to keep the light hidden and the cold wind out.

Biggles pulled a heavy rug from the heap Marie had given him - an old hearth rug, to judge by the scorch marks - and shook it out. “Is here all right?”

For a moment, von Stalhein turned towards him; but he didn’t look at him, only at the rug, and an instant’s flickering glance at the wall by the door. “Yes.”

Biggles laid the rug carefully over the cold flags and the mess of ancient rooks’ nests; draped blankets over the top, more-or-less evenly; and sat down with his feet close by the lamp, knees drawn up, arms resting loosely upon them.

He looked at von Stalhein; at the dark, tense lines of him, the tight set of his jaw, the way his hands kept fretting away at the stained white fabric, pushing it more firmly into place.

“What is it you see, when you look into the corner of the room like that?” he asked, quietly.

The movement of his hands ceased, but he didn’t turn. “We should both get some sleep,” came the answer. “As you said - we’ll neither of us be much use to Marie if we’re exhausted.”

Biggles sighed. “I wish you would tell me.”

“What would be the use?”

“I might be able to help,” Biggles pointed out, though he couldn’t very well imagine how.

“I have already told you - there is nothing to be done.”

There was such a terrible bleakness in his voice.

And probably there was nothing to be done - nothing to be done here, nothing to be done tonight, nothing to be done until they got back home and Erich wasn’t always running, reacting, looking over his shoulder; but Biggles never had much cared for doing nothing.

“Then at the very least I might understand,” he insisted, stubbornly. “You say I won’t believe it. Very well, perhaps I won’t. I’m not a superstitious man, Erich, and I trust I’m not an especially credulous one, either. But I’ve seen too many things in my life that I can’t understand or explain to imagine that everything in this world is within reach of my reason. Sometimes we just have to take things on faith.”

A soft gasp of sound that might have been the edge of a laugh. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t be worse to have you believe it. At least this way I’m spared your contempt.”

Biggles frowned. “When have I ever shown you contempt?”

The answer was steady; unemotional; precise. “I despise myself. I cannot believe that you would do otherwise.”

Of course not. Of course he would never imagine that anyone would ever regard him with anything but the same ruthlessness with which he regarded himself. Biggles swallowed down a dozen responses, because it was no good, no good trying to engage Erich this way, with softness and common sense. Far better to push: to push, and push, until in the end he pushed back. “You say that I’m going to die,” he said, abruptly. “And you say that you’re responsible for my death. Well then - I think on your own logic you at least owe me an explanation. Don’t you?”

Von Stalhein shook his head. “You won’t believe it.”

“But you do.”

Biggles looked at him, in the darkness, and asked again, quietly: “What is it you see by the stairs, Erich?”

A stutter of breath: a diver, readying himself for the plunge into cold sea water. Then: “I - cannot die.”

Biggles’ hand closed about his other wrist: nails digging in hard enough to sting. “Everybody dies,” he said, evenly.

Von Stalhein turned then; hands in pockets, back against the wall of the chamber, eyes to the doorway. “Lacey once asked me how it was that I escaped from the plane crash in Palestine, at the end of that business at Zabala when we first met. Do you remember it?”

He could still hear the sickeningly dull crunch of wooden struts and canvas planes folding up as they struck the hard sand: a mundane noise, like a kite plummeting down onto an empty hillside, like a chair smashed against a wall. “I remember.”

He could see the faint, familiar turn of Erich’s half smile. “I told him that I was like a cat, and that the life I lost at Zabala was my eighth. I’m not wholly sure how accurate my reckoning was, but I don’t believe I was out by much.” He shrugged. “But don’t ask me how many times I’ve died since then - I lost track so long ago. When I die, somehow death turns aside from me. It takes someone else - sometimes before, sometimes after. Always the same way. In Zabala it was Leffens - do you remember him? I believe you shot him down. He burned to death. So did I, a few days later.”

The words were so perfectly calm, that was the thing that most struck him: not at all like that conversation in the loft above the inn yard in Rodnitz, all half-turned phrases and the lash of regret. This was - calm. Rational.

He thought he had burned to death.

And no pilot - especially not one who had flown back in those days of dope and canvas and wood and tracer bullets - no pilot could hear that and not feel a familiar creep across their skin: a creep like the fire which burned the skin to charred paper, which rendered the fat, which made men jump from the cockpit a thousand feet from the ground -

“Men don’t walk away from that, Erich,” he said, voice catching in the tightness of his throat.

“I know it,” he said. “But I did.”

He stood, for a moment, in the light of the lamp; then, slowly, his hands went to the buttons of his jacket, and began to undo them: fingers deft, methodical, precise.

“Here, no need for that,” said Biggles, as the other man shrugged off his jacket, laid it down carefully flat on the ground, began work on his black tie, his collar, his shirt buttons. “Erich, for heaven’s sake, it can’t be much above forty in here, you’ll freeze.”

A quick smile, sharp as ice. “Are you worried I’ll catch my death? I am at something of an advantage there.”

The light from the lamp was not bright, the wick turned down low to prevent the wash of light down the stairs and out onto the balcony from attracting attention; so Biggles didn’t see much, at first: only enough to make him frown; to lean forward; to twist round to face him, then stop.

Von Stalhein laid each piece of clothing out flat, an orderly pile of shirt, tie, undershirt; knelt, on the cold flagstones, his weight resting back against his heels; bowed his head, shut his eyes, and held up his left arm towards him. “Look.”

And Biggles got to his feet; picked up the lamp; looked.

He started at the arm, as that was clearly what Erich intended. It was - There were faint, mottled patterns in the skin: a tracery of silver lines, like spirals of frost. They ran all the way from the hand, up the forearm, past the elbow and around the upper arm - he touched the lower side of Erich’s arm with his fingers, and Erich lifted it, obediently, without a word, so he could see better. Up the arm and across the shoulder, down to the chest, down the sternum -

“That was the fire, at Zabala.”

But here, a confusion. Not one tracery of lines, but several, crossing, superimposed. This one, short and straight; this one, jagged-edged, a little sunken in the centre. Here, a neat, small silver-grey circle, just to the right of the heart: when he touched the edge of it with the tip of his finger, he could feel the dull pulse beneath the skin, a touch faster than his own.

“If you’re looking at that one, you should look at my back too.”

His voice was level, even; and Biggles went to look.

His skin was still warm - or at any rate Biggles felt it so, but perhaps that was because his own fingers were chilled. Sometimes as they passed, the skin would shiver, leaving behind a line of goose-bumps, the hair rising on end.

There was another mark on his back, Biggles found: positioned in such a way that it precisely corresponded to that circle on his chest. A larger, uneven patch of silver-purple: not so neat.

“It’s the exit wound,” Erich explained, softly, an oddly sing-song tone. “That was from the beginning of the first war.”

Here there was another broader patch, just where the neck met the shoulder, extending halfway across the throat, just below where his collar sat. There were stripes, mostly vertical, sometimes crossing diagonally, across the shoulders, down the lightly-muscled planes of his back, down to the waist, where there was a ragged half circle that vanished beneath the waistband of his trousers.

Erich’s breath was coming a little fast, shallow: like a man who has been running, or a man in fever.

For a moment, Biggles could picture himself, as if from the outside: a thin, intent face, lit up by the lamp held close beside it, poring over Erich’s body as an explorer pores over a chart of newfound lands; as a medical student leans over the cadaver on the slab.

He went to the front of him again. The scars were all old ones; all pale, silver pale, not puckered or uncomfortable looking: as if they had all healed cleanly and quickly and a long time ago; but -

But there were so many of them. He couldn’t think of anyone he had seen with more individual scars.

“And this?” he said quietly, and reached out to touch the one exception: a dull red-brown circle, up on the left side of the chest, below the collarbone.

He could see the shudder run through him; but Erich kept his eyes closed, his head sunk forward, shuttered as the empty castle down below them in the darkness. He spoke softly, still: “That is the shot which will kill you.”

Biggles set the lamp down on the floor between them; sat down on his heels, consciously mirroring. “My God,” he said; and something in his voice made Erich turn his head, an abrupt jerk, as if trying to escape a fly or a wasp.

He stood up, stiffly; began to pull his clothes back on, squaring himself away. “You don’t understand yet,” he said. “But that’s a first step. You know enough of injuries to know how many of those I could not have survived.”

He was fastening up the last of his shirt buttons as he spoke; and Biggles’ hand drifted up to touch his own throat, tracing the length of that long, cold, impossible laceration below Erich’s collar on his own skin.

“I don’t begin to understand,” he said. “But I understand about Leffens. Yes, I shot him down. Yes, he burned. He was unconscious. I tried to drag him from the cockpit, but the flames - “ He swallowed down the bile, the unavoidable wash of sense memory, still vivid, precise, horrible, undimmed by the years. “But that was war. He didn’t die because of you. If he’s on anyone’s conscience it should be mine.”

Von Stalhein shook his head. “No. No, you may have fired the shot; but the responsibility was mine. The failure was mine. Believe me, he let me know it. All that week he was at my heels. It was a blessed relief to be in the saddle or in an aeroplane, at least he couldn’t follow me there.”

Biggles hesitated; followed the line of von Stalhein’s gaze.

“What do you see on the stairs?” he asked.

And then, for the first time that evening - for the first time in what seemed like days - von Stalhein looked at him. “You,” he said, simply. “You, with a bullet in your lung.”

And Biggles cast a glance at the dark archway of the door; and there was nothing there.

“I don’t know what it is,” von Stalhein went on, in a low voice. “I never have known. I see them - between their death and my own. Not always. Only when they want me to see them. I was terrified at first. Now - “

And that shudder went through him again; and his eyes were drawn back to the doorway, iron filings to a magnet.

Biggles stood; and deliberately, firmly set himself between von Stalhein and the door.

“All right,” he said. “Again. From the beginning.”

They sat side by side on the heap of old rugs and blankets, with the oil lamp burning low and throwing their composite shadow on the wall; and Erich wouldn’t sit with his back to the door, but Biggles blocked his view of it as much as he could. There was a smell of dust, and damp, and cold air, and the cigarettes that Biggles had bought in Rodnitz. And Erich told him: about the river; and the shell hole; and the submarine; and the rest. About the human shapes in the darkness. About the pain.

“It hurts like I’m dying every time,” he said. “But there are worse things than pain.”

Biggles closed his eyes for a moment; saw in his imagination the boy in the river, reaching for the sunshine. “You were so young,” he said.

“I did not understand it, at first. I thought - well, I thought that I had seen a ghost, something of that kind, even though I told myself I did not believe in them. I did not understand until years afterwards.”

“I’m glad of that, at any rate.“ Little enough to be glad of: that he had had ten, fifteen years of only thinking he was mad or haunted, before the fullness of the horror had settled upon him.

“And by then it was the war, you see. We all knew that we could die at any time. And I thought - I thought that for a man to die because of me - well, perhaps it wasn’t so very different from dying for any other reason. ‘Niemand hat größere Liebe denn die‘ - did they read that text to you on a Sunday?”

“When they could find anyone to listen.”

Erich’s voice was calm, now; flat. “I thought that if I could make their deaths worthwhile, then perhaps their lives would not have been wasted. And I could not simply stop. Even if I wished to, I could not simply put a bullet in my brain and put an end to it. And there was work that only I could do. It had to be worthwhile, do you see? Already so many people had died so I could live - it could not be for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” said Biggles; but behind his words he could hear ten years of his own speeches, pointing out the ways that Erich had wasted his life, had failed in his duty, the decisions he should have made differently, the different paths he should have taken, and it made the words ring hollow. “God knows we’ve had our differences over the years, but I’ve never doubted your ability, or your sense of duty, or of honour. Perhaps you didn’t win the war or raise Germany to greatness again single-handed, but no one could have done more.”

A sharp hiss of breath: as though something sharp had been pressed to his skin. “You speak to me of honour? I tell you, I have none. I have tried to live by the code of an honourable man, but it is - empty. What honour can there be to me? I have lived the life I have - I have taken the risks I have taken - knowing that if I failed, the ultimate price would be paid not by me, but by another. It is the life of a coward. A man who would push another in front of him when he faces death is no man. But I could not stop, do you see? It had to be for something.” And he put his hand over his eyes, as if to shield them. “And then it was over, and it was all for nothing after all. I could have run away at the beginning. And perhaps those people I hid behind would still be alive.”

“You don’t know that,” said Biggles, stubbornly. “It was war. People die, even without the intervention of Erich von Stalhein. I shot Leffens down, because he knew too much, and he came after me, and I was a better pilot than him. I can’t believe things would have been any different, even if you’d been a thousand miles away, or lying in a soldier’s grave in Belgium. You can’t take everything on yourself.”

Once again, his eyes strayed to the doorway. Biggles didn’t look. He reached out; took Erich’s hand; gripped it, ungently, until Erich looked down at it instead. “It wasn't your fault. You didn't ask for any of this.”

His voice was wretched. “Perhaps I did. I did not want to die. From the beginning, I did not want to die.”

“No one does,” said Biggles, sharply. “Certainly no boy of eight. But boys of eight die every day. It wasn't anything you did that changed things.”

And that was the horror of it, really, wasn’t it? It truly hadn’t been anything he had done. No pact with the devil, no cat with nine lives: no explanations, no mystery to be solved. Just this inexplicable, terrible thing: that a man who lived and died by his honour and his duty and his pride should by forced to live without honour, should fail in his duty, should shatter his pride, because death shunned him, and took others in his place.

“It had to be worth something,” von Stalhein repeated; and it was like a catechism, like a prayer, and Biggles wondered how many times he had repeated it to himself. “But it all came to nothing in the end. It was for nothing. And I thought - at least that would be the end of it. No more ghosts. I hoped for a quiet end.” He shook his head. “But I had to push my luck one last time, even though I knew the luck was bad. And now you will pay the price for it.”

“What happened?”

“I went up to the castle. It was shortly after I sent the card, asking you for money - mine had been stolen, and I didn’t stand much chance of getting Marie home if I couldn’t at the least afford to buy a train ticket and to bribe the odd official. If I’d known, I’d never have sent it, and perhaps - “ He paused; picked another cigarette from the pack in front of them, and lit it at the lamp. “No matter. The card was sent, I went up to the castle, I was shot. Here.” He touched that place under his shoulder, where the red mark was beneath his clothes. “It was dark. I fell down part of the hillside in the darkness; the guards did not see where I fell, and it was too wet for them to bother searching for long. I am sure they came back in the morning and were disappointed not to find me. I, meanwhile, woke up at the bottom of a small cliff, my clothes soaked through with blood and rain water; and sitting on a rock a few feet away I saw you.” He almost smiled. “You know, I was pleased to see you, to begin with. It would be just like you, I thought, to have arrived when I least expected you. It was only half light. I didn’t see the wound. And then - then I did. And I knew that you were going to come after me.” He put the cigarette to his lips; drew in smoke, making the tip glow bright in the gloom. “I thought I had lost everything that I could lose, but it turned out there was a little more.”

And there was part of him that wanted to say: But you didn’t need to be here. And I've watched you, this last twenty years. I've seen you stand at the edge of the cliff and look over, again and again; and perhaps it's to your credit that you never took that step off, knowing that you would walk away from the smash; but you never flinched from the drop, either. And how many people had died, because you wouldn't just walk away? Am I going to die, because it had to be worth something?

But he crushed it down; because he knew that voice, sharp and biting and insistent. Because it was true: but it wouldn’t help.

And he was angry: so coldly, furiously angry over this meaningless, horrible thing that had happened. Angry at von Stalhein; angry at himself, even: because if he had only known - five, ten, twenty years ago - then surely he could have helped. Surely he could have tried. Surely he could have stopped Erich from haring off into the jungles of South America with nothing more than the shirt on his back, to die again, and again, and again, and to drag others into death alongside him. He wanted to ask who they were: all those nameless people whose deaths Erich had been forced to accept. But he didn't suppose Erich knew.

Angry at the whole miserable business. And it would do no good.

So instead he repeated the meaningless words: it wasn’t your fault, you weren’t to blame; and when he took Erich’s hand again, and Erich didn’t pull it away, he let them rest together, on the rug and the blankets between them. And he thought that perhaps the attempts at kindness were worse than condemnation would have been; but it was all he had to offer.

“You are going to die,” said Erich, quietly. “It is insupportable.”

Biggles looked at him in the lamplight; his face in profile in the glow of the lamp, as still and spare and inexpressive as ever. He smiled, crookedly. “Well - let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I’ve spent a long time not dying. I don’t intend to break my duck now.”

“There is nothing that can be done.”

“There’s always something,” he insisted, fierce and final. “You may have given up, but I haven’t.”

Chapter Text

Bigglesworth was lying close up against him, his face only a foot or so away; and he thought, for the first time in years, about that evening at Zabala, when he had crept into Brunow’s quarters, and seen him asleep in the moonlight, with the reek of whisky heavy in the air. He hadn’t known him then; not as he did now. Now he would be able to tell if Bigglesworth were shamming.

The lamp was turned down to its lowest, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to put it out, and Bigglesworth hadn’t pushed him. The consideration had been needles in his skin, had made him feel how far he had slipped in the other man’s estimation - having to leave a nightlight burning, like a frightened child. Yet still, he couldn’t put it out.

Bigglesworth’s hand still held his own, as if he still thought he were going to make a break for it; but his grip had softened as he fell into sleep, and he was able to slip free. He got to his feet; and crept down the stairs.

It was there: as von Stalhein had known it would be.

There was the faintest wash of light from the balcony doors, a single light left burning inside, and by it and the rags of moonlight he could see it: a slender shape, sitting on the parapet; elbows resting on knees, leaning forward, intent and alert, as he had seen him a hundred times.

He came up to within six paces of it, but could go no further.

“Do you speak?” he asked; and it was all he could do to get the words out.

“Funny,” said the shape; and it was his voice, his voice but wet, a bubbling edge to it. A bullet in one’s lung would do that. “You’ve never asked before.”

“I didn’t have anything to say before.”

“And you do now?”

He was glad of the darkness. He didn’t want to see him, not clearly. “How far are you - him? Really?”

“As opposed to what?”

“You tell me.”

The shape shrugged its shoulders: a familiar movement. “I wish I could. It’s been rather a long time. I’m him enough to remember shooting down a blue and silver Pfalz near an oasis in the desert; but I can remember the bullets hitting my machine too, and the smash, and the flames. Or perhaps I can only remember imagining them. You imagined them a lot, didn’t you, that week.”

“I want to know what you are,” he said, carefully, trying to keep his voice steady. “I want to know why you have done this.”

“Don’t know. Ask me another.”

He could see the seep of blood, where the white shirt showed it: against the dark suit jacket the spreading black stain was almost invisible. But he had seen it so often, these last few days. “What will it take to stop this?”

“Another question you’ve never thought to ask before. Were none of the others worth saving?”

“I tried.”

“Not often.”

Von Stalhein gritted his teeth. “I dragged a man through no man’s land to keep him from you!”

The thing cocked its head. It was looking at him. “Wouldn’t you have done that anyway?”

He had his hands balled into fists, he realised, as he felt the cut of his nails digging into his palms. Absurd. As if he could bring himself to fight it. As if it would do any good. “And you took him all the same.”

“I’m not sure why you think it’s my fault,” said the thing, lightly. “You’re the one who nearly got your head blown off.”

“Mine, yes - not his.”

“We can all only play the cards we’re dealt, you know. What matters is how you play them.”

He hated the way his breath shook as he drew it in, cold and damp and scented with wet earth, cold stone. Blood. “I do not wish to play this game any longer.”

“It’s taken you a long time to decide that. Haven’t you enjoyed it? You’ve certainly profited by it enough, over the years.”

“I would rather,” he said, very deliberately, “have died in that river when I was eight, than live like this.”

The thing leaned forward a little further. “Liar.”

“How would you know?”

“I’ve known you an awfully long time,” it said.

Slowly - carefully - von Stalhein moved over to the parapet wall of the balcony - as close to the thing as he could bear, far enough away that it wouldn’t be able to reach for him without a lunge - and rested his weight back against it. Perhaps that would help to shore up the weakness in his legs. “If I’ve profited by it, I’ve lost by it too. And who knows? Perhaps I’d have done as well without your dubious aid.”

“Perhaps,” it said, carelessly. “You’ve always kept rather a tenacious grip on life, haven’t you? Even when I haven’t been lending a hand. Not actually getting any enjoyment out of it, of course, or making any very good use of it either. But you cling on to it all the same. What’s the use, when your life isn’t doing much good to you or anyone else?”

“If I have kept a grip on life, it is because you will not allow me to take leave of it!” von Stalhein spat.

“I don’t recall you trying.”

He felt the twist in his gut. “Was I supposed to? Is that all it would take?

The other shrugged. “Ask me another.”

“If I had killed myself,” said von Stalhein, “you would simply have battened on to someone else and dragged me back.”

The other stirred a little, restlessly; von Stalhein felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck, every muscle clenched for flight. “I suppose it would have shown proof of intent, at any rate,” it said. “Instead of which you insist on going on, and on, and on. Neither use nor ornament, as the saying goes.” He was fidgeting with his hands, von Stalhein noted: picking away at a patch of moss on the damp stonework. The gesture clutched at him, again, with a horrible familiarity. “Or perhaps you were just a coward all along. Couldn’t get up the nerve to actually face the thing. Living to fight another day is a plausible enough line, if you can’t come up with a better one.”

“I have tried to let go of life,” he insisted. If it had been Bigglesworth - truly Bigglesworth - he would have reached out towards him; taken him by the arm; arrested that constant fuss of movement. His hand ached to reach out; and at the same time it was all he could do not to turn and run. It was the thing in the darkness; it was Bigglesworth, with a bleeding wound in his chest. “I have tried. I gave up everything I could.”

“Not everything.”

He swallowed. “Is this - what I must give up? Will this end it?”

In the darkness, he thought he saw the flash of a familiar smile. “Ask me another.”

“No.”

The other half turned his head.

“If this is the price, then I will not let him pay it for me.”

He was surprised by his own voice: it sounded far stronger than he felt.

“Do you think you have a choice?” the other asked, the wreck of a voice laced with curiosity.

“No,” said von Stalhein. “But I have been proved wrong before.”

“You didn’t send me that postcard because you wanted money,” he said, softly. “You sent it because you wanted me to come.”

“I did not send you anything.”

He waved a hand: one of his hands, slender and subtle. “Semantics.”

“You - he - never fails. I thought - “ He paused; swallowed. “If it’s as you say, then perhaps it is because I hoped you could produce a miracle.”

“Perhaps you hoped we’d go down together.”

“No.”

“Never crossed your mind?” He sounded amused, now; entertained. “I know it has done mine. That this might have to be the end of it.”

“Not like this. Never like this.”

“Liar.”

He covered his face with his hand.

A short, soft laugh. “Your trouble is that you give up too easily.”

There was that feeling again: the feeling he’d been pushing down for the last week, of laughter trapped in his chest, and if he let it out he didn’t know how it would stop or where it would end. “I thought you said I clung to life too much.”

“There’s more than one way of giving up, you know.” The other jumped down from his perch on the wall, landing light-footed; von Stalhein jerked away, reflexively, the ancient stonework of the wall pressing wet and freezing against the back of his legs. “Slogging on up the mountain or chucking yourself off the ledge - is that really all you can think of? Is that the best you can do?”

The voice was his. Not the words, not quite: more like the words that von Stalhein always assumed Bigglesworth would use, words sharp and precise that filletted him open and laid out the anatomy of his shame, his failure; words that Bigglesworth never quite seemed to wield as effectively as he could. But the voice - it was injured, rasping, a wet drag to every word, but undoubtedly, horribly his. And the answering flare of warm, bright anger came from him, too: that response that Bigglesworth somehow managed to coax from him, even now, when it was all over and in vain. The desire to push back.

“Do you have a better answer?” he snapped.

The other smiled again, that familiar slightly off-centre smile, small and knowing and heart-rending. “Are you asking me for a miracle?”

And von Stalhein took a deep breath: and steeled himself: and plunged into the dark water. “I am.”

The other looked at him; and again he had that impression of - curiosity: as if there were something cold and slow and ancient at the back of those dark eyes which, for a moment, had caught a glimpse of something new.

“Then you’ve chosen a good time to ask,” the shape said. “I think I can manage at least two or three impossible things before breakfast.”

And he believed it: he always had.

“What must I do?” he asked.

“You claim you’ve been given a gift you never asked for and didn’t want,” said the shape. “Did you ever consider simply refusing it?

“And how precisely was I to do that?” said von Stalhein, shortly. “In my experience, it’s difficult to refuse being raised from the dead. I don’t recall my permission being asked.”

The other made one of those small, swift gestures that clawed at him: Bigglesworth, arrested in mid flight in the middle of his plots and extrapolations, impatiently waiting for him to catch up. “But that’s only part of the bargain, isn’t it? The other part comes when someone else pays the price for you.”

“I tell you, I have tried! You took them all the same!”

The other shook his head. “Of course. I had kept my part of the bargain. So they had to keep yours. You sent them to me, you didn’t push them aside.”

He stood for a moment; considered.

“Is it possible?” he asked, quiet and quick. “Could I pay the price in his stead? Could I - is it possible to push him aside?”

The other regarded him. “At least it would show proof of intent,” he said.

He found his hand had drifted to that point below his shoulder where the half-healed wound was; where there was blood on the other’s shirt. “But even if I did - what difference would it make? If I - if I died in his place - what’s to say that you wouldn’t bring me back and come for him again, and again?”

He looked at the other, standing across from him in the strengthening moonlight: skin silver pale, a smear of blood from lips to cheek where it had dripped from his mouth and been half swiped away. His fingers were tapping idly at his trouser leg: never still, never at rest. Impatient.

“You would have to help me,” said von Stalhein, slowly.

“Of course. You certainly couldn’t manage it without me.”

“You would have to not pass on to someone else. And not bide your time and try to take him another day.”

“Yes.”

He managed to take a step towards the slight figure; a step, but no more. “Would you do it?”

“Would he?” he asked.

He thought of Bigglesworth: on the doorstep of his flat in London, hopeful and relentless, not letting him disappear. “Yes.”

“Then perhaps I will too.”

* * *

They didn’t speak again, in the days or nights that came after; but it wasn’t quite the same, still. He could look at other things: not only at that still, silent figure, sitting on the other side of the room.

He didn’t talk of it again to Bigglesworth; and Bigglesworth did not ask. They talked of practical things: washing, shaving, food and drink, the river in flood and the barbed wire fences. It was a peculiar kind of domesticity; but it didn’t weigh on him as he had thought it would. And if Bigglesworth would sometimes fall silent, and absent-mindedly rub at that place below his collarbone - well, that was hardly to be wondered at.

He felt oddly calm.

The plan to get Marie clear of the castle had gone well - of course it had, it was Bigglesworth’s plan, and he had the devil’s own luck - and he found that curious calmness stayed with him, even as they crossed the swollen river, even when his legs were washed out from under him and they had to haul him in to the bank like a fish. Bigglesworth wasn’t going to drown, after all.

For a while, as he stood in the darkness of the makeshift landing field, and heard the rumble of the wheels as the Dove touched, he wondered if they might actually get away clear. It was a startling thought; but he supposed it wouldn’t really make much difference. He knew what was coming. Like the soldier from the shell hole who had died on the hospital train: you couldn’t outrun it.

Then they were at the plane, Hebblethwaite helping Marie up through the cabin door, Bigglesworth snapping at them from half a dozen paces away to get a move on -

And a light hit them: a car’s headlights, a mobile searchlight, he didn’t know. He looked up, and back: saw Bigglesworth, still standing silhouetted against the light.

Then, so close at his ear that he should have been able to feel the breath:

“It’s now,” said his voice. “Now or never.”

Then let it be now, he thought.

He left Marie; ran back.

“Get on board, can’t you?” Bigglesworth snapped.

He shook his head. “Help her,” he said. “Take care of her.”

He gave him a push - one push, to get him moving towards the machine. And as he did so, he felt it slam into him: a blow like a hammer, just at the place where the bullet had struck him a week ago.

Shouts; more gunfire; hands under his arms.

“Get away - “ he managed.

Bigglesworth, shaking his head. “Not on your life,” he said, grimly, pulling von Stalhein’s arm over his narrow shoulders, and there was Marie helping to support his weight, and Hebblethwaite on his other side, and the dimness of the cabin with the roar of the engines rising -

“Don’t take the same track home,” Bigglesworth was yelling. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

Hands at his collar, a weight at his shoulder, Marie’s face pale and narrow-focussed, his head resting in someone’s lap, Bigglesworth leaning over him, pressing something against his chest -

“All right, Erich, we’ve got you, you’re in safe hands - you idiot, did you think you could cope with being shot any better than I could - “

And on the other side, kneeling calm and patient amidst the jagged red-edged shadows, was the other; blood at his chest, in the same place as his own.

Erich reached out; managed to wrap his fingers around one thin, cold wrist; gripped hard.

“Stay - “ he whispered.

“I’m not going anywhere,” came another voice, similar but different: alive. Alive, when he should have been dead. “And neither are you.”

He closed his eyes; tightened his grip. He mustn’t let go.

* * *

And he woke up.

A bed; a hospital. White sheets and chemical smells. Sunshine through a window. Half reclining, and the tightness of bandages around his chest and shoulder.

Alive.

And there was no figure in the dimmest corner of the room.

And the first thing he felt was the great, blurring rush of shame, and pity, and he had to shut his eyes tight against it, turn his head on the pillow to press it to his face. Because - had it been as easy as that? If he had tried - ten, twenty, thirty years ago - would he have escaped?

His movement pulled at his hand - the right hand, the one on the sound side - and he found it caught.

He opened his eyes again.

Bigglesworth. Of course. Sprawled half sideways in an uncomfortable chair; head uncomfortably rested on his wadded up jacket; implausibly, sleeping. Gripping his hand in his sleep.

And he understood, abruptly, why it would never have worked before. Why it had to be him. Why the Erich von Stalhein who lay here in this hospital bed in this moment with this hand covering his own could have done this thing; but the him of ten, twenty, thirty years ago could not.

He had plunged into the dark waters; and when a hand had reached out for him, he had taken it.

“They had to prise you off him to get you into surgery.”

The voice was pitched consciously quiet: Hebblethwaite, sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, a magazine laid open on his lap.

“Marie?” he croaked.

Hebblethwaite smiled. “All well. She’s been here nearly as much as he has. Biggles tried to get her to go back with Bertie in the Dove but she wouldn’t hear of it, so now we’re all kicking our heels here for a bit. We’re in Nancy, by the way - our friend in the sureté helped fix it up, though probably for the best if you don’t go blurting out your credentials too often.” He stood up. “I’ll go and give Marie a call at the hotel, let her know you’re back in the land of the living.”

He swallowed, mouth and throat dry. “Did I leave it?”

“Well, not quite,” Hebblethwaite conceded. “Pretty close-run thing though. The doctor said that another inch or so to the left and - “ He pulled a very expressive face. “You’ve got more lives than a cat.”

“I think - “ He swallowed again. “I think that might have been my last spare.”

“Is there anything I can get you? Shall I call a nurse?”

He thought. His mouth was dry, his throat sore, and there was the beginnings of discomfort at the wound site - he had a feeling this one wouldn’t heal as quick and clean as the others. But it was nothing he couldn’t manage. “No. Thank you. Don’t wake him.”

Hebblethwaite trotted out, soft-footed; and he lay, and looked in all the corners of the room, and didn’t find anything.

His hand was half on its side; Bigglesworth’s, small and delicate, clever-fingered, deft and strong, laid over the top, so Erich’s thumb was trapped beneath his palm. He withdrew it, gently; rested it against the back of his hand, so they were twined together. Waited for him to wake up.

He had thought - before - that he might succeed in letting his life go by allowing himself only the tiniest portion of it: consuming only the smallest fragments of existence, bare white walls, old sticks of furniture, scraps of conversation, the least that he could manage. But now -

Now he began to wonder what he could do with the half a life that remained to him.