"If you hear a Klaxon ringing in pairs, tell your men to throw anything they can out the windows - including your precious samples - or the bears will be having us all for dinner!"
The man nodded and began to instruct his men in Russian, waving his walking stick as he called to them. Deryn guessed he was leaving out the part about the ballast alert, but there was nothing she could do about that. She pulled out a short length of line and began to tie herself a friction hitch, in case she needed to climb.
Soon the airship was overhead, its engines rumbling as the crew pulled it to a halt. Heavy cables fell from the cargo deck portholes, a swaying forest of rope tumbling into place around them.
The Russians began to scramble about, gathering the cables and tying them onto the trees. Deryn could tell the airmen among them by their knots - at least a dozen of the men had been in the fallen airship's crew. Surely they would understand that if the bears were on their way and the ship wasn't rising, the boffin's precious baggage would have to go overboard. And no decent airman would hesitate to disobey Mr. Tesla, after what he'd done to that airbeast.
When the last man had stepped back from his knots, Deryn pulled out her semaphore flags and sent the ready signal. The ropes went taut, shuddering and creaking as the winches started to turn.
At first the airship didn't seem to move at all. But a few of the smaller trees began to stir, shifting along the ground. Deryn ran toward the nearest and jumped on to add her weight to it. The Russians understood, and soon all the nervously stirring trees had men standing on them. Mr. Tesla watched impassively, as if the operation were some sort of physics experiment and not a rescue mission.
It was almost noon, and the Leviathan's shadow lay over them all, slowly widening as the airship descended.
Deryn listened again, and frowned. The sounds of bears in the distance had faded. Were they so far away she couldn't hear them anymore? Or had the last scrap of beef been found and eaten, and now the creatures were charging toward the scent of airbeast?
"Quite large, your hydrogen breather," Mr. Tesla said, then frowned. "Does that say 'Leviathan'?"
"Aye, so you've heard of us."
"Indeed. You've been in the - " The wind gave a violent start, and the tree Deryn was standing on was pulled into the air, knocking Mr. Tesla to the ground. The Leviathan drifted twenty feet or so, dragging along a small host of Russians on their fallen logs.
They clung on gamely, though. Soon the wind died, the airship settling earthward again.
"Are you all right, sir?" Deryn called.
"I'm fine." Mr. Tesla stood, dusting off his traveling coat. "But if your ship can lift these trees, then why complain about a bit of extra luggage?"
"That was a gust of wind. Do you want to bet your life on getting another one!"
Deryn looked up. The Leviathan was close enough for her to see one of the officers leaning out of the front bridge window. There were semaphore flags fluttering in his hands. . . .
B-E-A-R-S - H-E-A-D-E-D - T-H-I-S - W-A-Y - F-I-V-E - M-I-N-U-T-E-S.
"Blisters," Deryn said.
The airship was still a dozen yards up when Deryn spotted the first fighting bear.
It was loping through the area of standing trees, huffing coils of condensation into the freezing air. The bear was a small one, its shoulders barely ten feet high. Perhaps the others had kept it away from the spoils of dried beef.
It certainly didn't look like a beastie that had already eaten lunch.
"Climb!" Deryn shouted, pointing up her own rope. "Tell them to climb!"
Mr. Tesla didn't say a word, but his men needed no translation. They began to pull their way up toward the portholes, hand over hand on the thick mooring ropes. None of them thought to drop his pack, or perhaps they were too scared of the Clanker boffin to leave anything behind.
But there was nothing Deryn could do for them now. She scampered up her own line, glad for the friction hitch she'd tied earlier.
As the men's weight was added to the ropes, the lines began to slacken, the airship settling closer to the ground. This was the situation Deryn had wanted to avoid - another gust of wind would pop the ropes taut again, flinging off the men holding them.
She looked over her shoulder. The small bear had broken into the open, and larger shapes loomed behind it.
"Sharp!" Mr. Rigby's voice called from the porthole above her head. "Get those men to drop their packs!"
"I've tried, sir. They don't speak English!"
"But can't they see the bears coming! Are they mad?"
"No, just afraid of that fellow there." She jerked her chin toward Mr. Tesla, who still stood on the ground, impassively rarding the approaching bear. "He's the mad one!"
The whoosh of a compressed air gun split the air, and Deryn heard a howl. The anti-aeroplane bolts had hit the closest bear and sent it tumbling among the fallen trees.
A moment later it stood again and shook its head. A fresh mark gleamed on the beastie's scarred and patchy fur, but it let out a defiant roar.
"I think you've just made it angry, sir!"
"Not to worry, Mr. Sharp. We're putting that tranquilizer to good use."
Deryn glanced backward as she climbed, and saw that the bear looked unsteady on its feet now, ambling across the fallen trees like an airman full of too much drink.
When Deryn reached the porthole, Mr. Rigby stuck out a hand and pulled her in.
"The spare cargo's ready to drop," the bosun said, "so we've plenty of lift. But with bears closing in, the captain won't take us any closer to the ground. Can the rest of those men climb?"
"Aye, sir. About half of them are airmen, so they should - "
"Good heavens," Mr. Rigby interrupted, peering out the porthole. "What in blazes is that man doing?"
Deryn crowded in beside the bosun. Mr. Tesla was still on the ground, facing three more bears that had broken from the trees.
"Barking spiders!" Deryn breathed. "I didn't think he was this mad."
The largest of the creatures was hardly twenty yards from Tesla, leaping across the fallen trees in huge bounds. The man calmly raised his walking stick. . . .
A bolt of lightning leapt from its tip, with a sound like the air itself tearing. The beast reared onto its hind legs and howled, trapped for a split second in a jagged cage of light. The brilliance faded instantly, but the bear howled and turned to flee, the other beasties following in its wake.
Mr. Tesla inspected the end of his walking stick, which was black and smoking, then turned toward the airship.
"You may land your ship properly now," he called up. "Those beasts will be wary for an hour or so."
The bosun nodded dumbly, and before he could call for a message lizard, the winches started up, inching the ship lower again. The officers were in agreement.
"REPULSION OF THE STARVING WAR BEASTS."
Mr. Rigby found his voice a moment later. "It's not just the bears that should be wary, Mr. Sharp."
She nodded slowly. "Aye, sir. We'll have to keep an eye on that fellow."
Chapter Eight
Alek awoke to a thunderclap, a buzzing sound, and then a monstrous roar.
He sat up and blinked his eyes, convinced for a moment that some awful dream had shaken him from sleep. But the sounds kept coming - shouting, the creak of ropes, and beastly growls. The air smelled of lightning.
Alek swung his boots to the floor and ran to his stateroom window. He'd only meant to doze for an hour, but the sun was high and the Leviathan had arrived at its destination. Dozens of mooring lines stretched to the earth below. The figures manning them were dressed in furs instead of airmen's uniforms, all of them shouting in . . . Russian?
The ground was littered with fallen trees - hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Chimney smoke rose from a distant cluster of buildings. Was this some sort of logging camp?
Then Alek heard another roar, and saw fighting bears among the fallen trees. They had no riders, not even harnesses, and their matted fur looked wild. He took an involuntary step back from the window. The ship was low enough for the giant beasts to reach it!
But they seemed to be running away.
Alek remembered the thunderclap that had woken him. The ship's crew must have scared the creatures off somehow.
He leaned out the window as the Leviathan settled to the ground. Gangways were dropped, and the Russians, at least two dozen of them, climbed aboard. Soon a wailing siren swept through the ship, warning of a fast ascent.
Alek pulled himself back inside just in time. The air crackled with the sound of ropes being cut, and the airship shot straight up, rising as fast as the steam elevators he'd ridden in Istanbul.
What was this place? The jumble of fallen trees stretched as far as the horizon, the area far more vast than any logging camp could be. Even as the Leviathan climbed into the sky, no end to the destruction came into sight.
Alek turned toward his cabin door, wondering where to go for answers. The Darwinists might involve him when they needed his Clanker expertise, but they wouldn't be calling for him now.
Where would Dylan be at a time like this? In the cargo bay?
At the thought of the boy, Alek remembered the newspaper lying by his bed. The questions he'd fallen asleep asking welled up again. But this was hardly the time to wonder about the mysterious Dylan Sharp.
The corridors of the ship were teaming with the Russians who'd come aboard. They were unshaven and haggard, half starved beneath their thick furs. The Leviathan's crew was trying to relieve them of their heavy packs, but the men were resisting, English and Russian colliding with little effect.
Alek looked about, wondering how the ship could lift them all. The crew must have dumped every last bit of spare supplies.
A gloved hand landed on his shoulder. "It's you, Alek. Perfect!"
He turned to find Dylan before him. The boy was wearing a flight suit, his boots muddy.
"You were out there?" Alek asked. "With those bears?"
"Aye, but they're not so bad. Can you speak any Russian?"
"All the Russians I've met have spoken French." Alek looked at the starving, unkempt men around him and shrugged. "And I think they were a different class of Russian."
"Well, ask them anyway, you ninny!"
"Of course." Alek began to push his way through the corridor, repeating, "Parlez-vous français?"
A moment later Dylan was imitating him, calling out the phrase with a distinctly Scottish lilt. One of the Russians looked up with a spark of recognition, and led them both to a small man wearing pince-nez glasses and a blue uniform beneath his furs.
Alek bowed. "Je suis Aleksandar, Prince de Hohenberg."
The man bowed in return and said in perfect French, "I am Viktor Yegorov, captain of the Czar's Airship Empress Maria. Are you in charge here?"
"No, sir. I'm only a guest on this ship. You're the captain of these men?"
"The captain of a dead airship, you mean!" The man glared over Alek's shoulder. "That fool is in charge."
Among the crowd was a tall man dressed in civilian clothes, being led away by two of the ship's officers.
Alek turned to Dylan. "This man is Yegorov, an airship captain." He pointed. "But he says that fellow is in charge."
Dylan snorted. "Aye, him I've met already. That's Mr. Tesla, the Clanker boffin, and he's barking mad!"
"Tesla the inventor?" Alek asked. "You must be mistaken."
Captain Yegorov heard the name and spat on the floor. "He cost me my ship, and almost got us all killed! An utter fool, with the czar's men behind him."
Alek said in careful French. "It isn't Nikola Tesla, is it? I thought he was working for the Clankers."
"Of course he was!" the captain said. "The Germans funded his experiments when no one else would, and he designed plenty of weapons for them. But now that war is here, he's seen what they've done to his motherland! He's a Serb."