Goliath

SIX

It was Newkirk who spotted them first.

He was up in a Huxley ascender, a thousand feet above the Leviathan in the cold white sky. His flight suit was stuffed with old rags to keep him from freezing, making his arms and legs bulge, like a tattie bogle waving semaphore flags….

T-R-E-E-S—A-L-L—D-O-W-N—A-H-E-A-D.

Deryn lowered her field glasses. “Did you get that, Mr. Rigby?”

“Aye,” the bosun said. “But I’ve no idea what it means.”

“T-R-E-E-S,” Bovril added helpfully from Deryn’s shoulder. The beastie could read semaphore as fast as any of the crew, but couldn’t turn letters into words. Not yet, anyway.

“Perhaps he’s seen a clearing. Shall I go up to the bow for a look, sir?”

Mr. Rigby nodded, then signaled to the winch man to give Newkirk more altitude. Deryn headed forward, making her way through the colony of fléchette bats scattered across the great airbeast’s head.

“D-O-W-N,” Bovril said.

“Aye, beastie, that spells ‘down.’”

Bovril repeated the word, then shivered in the cold.

Deryn was feeling the cold too, on top of her night of missing sleep. Barking Alek and his love of contraptions. Sixteen long hours putting the mysterious machine together, and they still had no idea what its purpose was! An utter waste of time, and yet it was the happiest she’d seen Alek since the two of them had returned to the Leviathan.

Gears and electricals were all the boy really cared about, however much he claimed to love the airship. Just like Deryn, who’d spent a whole month in Istanbul without ever feeling at home among walkers and steam pipes. Perhaps Clankers and Darwinists would always be at war, if only in their hearts.

When she reached the prow of the ship, Deryn raised her field glasses to scan the horizon. A moment later she saw the trees.

“Barking spiders.” The words coiled like smoke in the freezing air.

“Down,” Bovril said.

Ahead of the airship was an endless fallen forest. Countless trees lay on their sides, plucked clean, as if a huge wind had blown them over and stripped their branches and leaves. Strangest of all, every stripped-bare trunk was pointed in the same direction: southwest. At the moment, straight at Deryn.

She’d heard of hurricanes strong enough to yank trees up from the ground, but no hurricane could make landfall here, thousands of miles from any ocean. Was there some manner of Siberian storm she’d never heard of, with icicles flying like scythes through the forest?

She whistled for a message lizard, staring uneasily at the fallen trees while she waited. When the lizard appeared, Deryn made her report, trying to keep the fear from her voice. Whatever had cut down these full-grown evergreens, which had been as hard as nails and sunk deep into the frozen tundra, would tear an airship to bits in seconds.

She made her way back to the winch, where Mr. Rigby was still taking signals from Newkirk. The Huxley was almost a mile above the ship now, its swollen hydrogen sack a dark squick upon the sky.

The bosun dropped his glasses. “At least thirty miles across, he says.”

“Blisters,” Deryn swore. “Might an earthquake have done this, sir?”

Mr. Rigby gave this a think, then shook his head. “Mr. Newkirk says all the fallen trees point outward, toward the edges of the destruction. No earthquake would’ve been that neat. Nor would a storm.”

Deryn imagined a great force spreading out in all directions from a central point, knocking down trees and stripping them as clean as matchsticks as it passed.

An explosion…

“But we can’t stand here theorizing.” Mr. Rigby raised his field glasses again. “The captain has ordered us to prepare for a rescue. There are people down there, it seems.”

A quarter hour later Newkirk’s flags began to wave again.

“B… O… N… E… S,” Bovril announced, its sharp eyes needing no field glasses to read the distant signals.

“God in heaven,” Mr. Rigby breathed.

“But he can’t mean ‘bones,’ sir,” Deryn said. “He’s too high up to see anything as small as that!”

She stared ahead, trying to think what letters poor shivering Newkirk might have sent wrong. Domes? Homes? Was he was begging for some hot scones to be sent up?

Deryn wished she could be aloft herself, and not stuck down here wondering. But the captain wanted her standing by for a gliding descent, to prepare for a landing in rough terrain.

“Did you feel that shudder, lad?” Mr. Rigby pulled off a glove, kneeling to place his bare hand on the ship’s skin. “The airbeast is unhappy.”

“Aye, sir.” Another shiver passed along the cilia on the membrane, like a gust of wind through grass. Deryn smelled something in the air, the scent of corrupted meat.

“Bones,” Bovril said, staring straight ahead.

As Deryn raised her field glasses, she felt a trickle of cold sweat inside her flight suit. There they were on the horizon, a dozen huge columns arcing into the air….

It was the rib cage of a dead airbeast, half the size of the Leviathan and gleaming white in the sun. The ribs looked like the skeletal fingers of two giant hands, clutching the wreck of a gondola between them.

No wonder the giant creature beneath her feet was twitchy.

“Mr. Rigby, sir, there’s an airship wreck ahead.”

The bosun dropped his gaze to the horizon, then let out a whistle.

“Do you think it got caught in the explosion, sir?” she asked. “Or whatever it was?”

“No, lad. Airbeast bones are hollow. The force that snapped all these trees would’ve shattered them. The poor beastie must have come along afterward.”

“Aye, sir. Shall I whistle for another lizard and inform the bridge?”

In answer the engines slowed to quarter speed. After two days at full-ahead, the great forest around them seemed to echo with the sudden quiet.

Mr. Rigby spoke softly. “They know, lad.”

As the Leviathan drew closer to the dead airbeast, Deryn spotted more bones among the fallen trees below. The skeletons of mammothines, horses, and smaller creatures were scattered like tenpins across the forest floor.

A growling chorus rolled up through the freezing air. Deryn recognized the sound at once, from during the cargo snatch-up, when the ballast had put too many smells into the wind.

“Fighting bears ahead, sir. Angry ones.”

“Angry’s not the word, Mr. Sharp. Have you noticed that we haven’t spotted any caribou or reindeer herds since we reached this place? With the forest fallen, there isn’t much hunting hereabouts.”

“Oh, aye.” Deryn looked closer at the bones of the smaller beasties. They’d all been gnawed clean, and when the distant roars came again, she heard the hunger in them.

The bears came into sight soon, a dozen at least. They were skinny and hollow-eyed, their fur matted and their faces scarred, as if they’d been fighting among themselves. A few of them stared up at the Leviathan, scenting the air.

The Klaxon began to sound, the long-short ring of an upcoming ground attack.

“That’s a bit odd,” Mr. Rigby said. “Do the officers think aerial bombs can hit those beasties?”

“We’re not dropping bombs, sir. That secret Russian cargo was mostly dried beef.”

“Ah, for a distraction. Nice of the czar to provide a bit of help.”

“Aye, sir,” Deryn said, though she wondered how long two tons of beef would distract a dozen starving bears the size of houses.

“There we are, lad,” Mr. Rigby said with satisfaction. “An encampment.”

She raised her field glasses again.

Here, deep in the devastated area, a large circle of trees remained standing. They were stripped bare like the others, as if the blast had come from directly above. In a clearing among them was a handful of simple timber buildings, surrounded by barbed wire. Wispy columns of smoke rose from their chimneys, and small forms were spilling out, waving at the airship overhead.

“But how are these people still alive, sir?”

“I’ve no idea, Mr. Sharp. That wire wouldn’t hold back a single bear, much less a dozen.” The bosun lifted Bovril from her shoulder. “I’ll have this beastie taken down to the lady boffin. Go prepare your Huxley for descent.”

“Aye, sir,” Deryn said.

“Get those men set for a rope-and-winch landing, and be quick about it. If we come about and you’re not ready, we’ll have to leave you all behind.”

As she glided toward the ground, Deryn took a closer look at the fallen forest.

Lichen was growing over the snapped-off tree stumps, so the destruction had happened months ago, perhaps years. That was comforting, she supposed.

But this was no time for pondering. The Leviathan was already headed back, preparing to scatter the dried beef a few miles away. Hopefully searching through the broken trees for food would keep the beasties busy for a while.

Deryn landed the Huxley softly, just inside the ring of barbed wire. About thirty men had come out to greet her, hungry- and astonished-looking, as if they couldn’t quite believe that rescue had arrived. But a half dozen of them took hold of the Huxley’s tentacles with the efficiency of experienced airmen.

Among those watching was a tall, slender man with dark hair, a mustache, and piercing blue eyes. The others’ furs were threadbare, but he wore a fine traveling coat and carried a peculiar walking stick. He watched as the Huxley was secured, then he addressed Deryn in an unfamiliar accent.

“You are British?”

She struggled out of the piloting harness and made a bow. “Aye, sir. Midshipman Dylan Sharp, at your service.”

“How annoying.”

“Excuse me?”

“I specifically requested that no powers other than Russia be involved in this expedition.”

Deryn blinked. “I don’t know about that, sir. But you do seem to be in a spot of bother.”

“I will grant you that.” The man pointed his walking stick at the airship overhead. “But what on earth is a British airship doing in deepest Siberia?”

“We’re barking rescuing you!” Deryn cried. “And we haven’t any time to debate the matter. The ship will be dropping food for those beasties a few miles from here, like a trail of breadcrumbs leading away from us. But it won’t keep them busy for long.”

“There is no need for haste, young man. This compound is quite secure.”

Deryn looked at the coils of barbed wire a few yards away. “I doubt that, sir. Those bears have already eaten one airbeast. If they get wind of another on the ground, that wire won’t stop them!”

“It will stop any living creature. Observe.” The man strode toward the fence, extending his walking stick before him. When he prodded the wire with the stick’s metal tip, a flurry of sparks shot into the air.

“What in blazes?” Deryn cried.

“An invention of mine, a crude improvisation with many defects in its current form. But necessary under the circumstances.”

Deryn looked up at her Huxley in horror, but the other men had already pulled it a fair distance from the wire. At least they weren’t all barking mad down here.

“I shall call it the ‘electrical fence,’ I think.” The man smiled. “The bears are quite wary of it.”

“Aye, I’m sure they are!” Deryn said. “But my airship’s a hydrogen breather. You’ll have to turn that electricity off, or you’ll blow us all to bits!”

“Well, obviously. But the bears won’t know that the fence has been disarmed. The work of Dr. Pavlov is quite instructive in this case.”

Deryn ignored his blether. “This clearing’s too small for my airship, anyway. We’ll have to get out of these trees and into the fallen area.” She turned in a slow circle, counting the men around her. There were twenty-eight in all, perhaps a thousand pounds heavier than the cargo the airship had just dropped. “Is this everyone? It’ll be tricky, making a quick ascent with this much weight.”

“I’m aware of the difficulties. I arrived here by airship.”

“You mean that dead airbeast we saw? What on earth happened to it?”

“We fed it to the bears, Mr. Sharp.”

Deryn took a step back. “You what?”

“In outfitting my expedition, the czar’s advisers didn’t take into account the desolation of this region. We were undersupplied, and the bears of my cargo train began to lack for hunting. I was too close to a breakthrough to abandon the project.” He twirled his walking stick. “Though, if I’d known a British ship would come meddling as a result, I might have chosen otherwise.”

Deryn shook her head, still not believing. How could he have done such a thing to a poor innocent beastie? And how had the czar dared to send a British airship to rescue this madman, after he’d fed his own ship to the bears?

“Pardon me for asking, sir, but who in blazes are you?”

The man stood straighter, extending his hand with a courtly bow.

“I am Nikola Tesla. Pleased to meet you, I suppose.”