Long seconds later the shells hit. The shock wave battered his ears, spraying dirt into his face and lifting the walker beneath him.
Alek felt its massive feet hit the ground again, the machine staggering like a newborn colt. He opened his eyes - just in time to duck beneath a tree branch whipping across the walker's head.
Now there was no sound except the ringing in his ears, and his eyes stung with debris and smoke. But he could feel Klopp righting the walker, regaining control.
The frigate would have their range now. Each time they fired, the shells would land closer.
Alek stooped again and raised the saber, hacking at the sticky flare, sending up sparks and angry gouts of smoke. Embers fell from the blade onto his uniform, burning into the leather piloting jacket like hot coals. He smelled his own hair singeing in the heat.
A volley of flares shot past, the retreating scouts taking one last shot at the Stormwalker. Alek ignored the near misses and kept battering at the flame.
Finally a big chunk came free, sticking to his saber like honey on a stick. He waved the blade back and forth in the wind, but that only drove the flare brighter.
Alek swore. The frigate's guns would be loaded again in another few seconds. There was only one thing to do.
He rose into a half crouch, one arm wrapped around an exhaust pipe.
"Sorry, Father," he whispered, and threw the ancient saber as hard as he could into the forest.
He kicked at the last few burning pieces clinging to the Stormwalker's armor, then crawled toward the open hatch.
"Klopp!" he shouted down. "Go straight ahead, as fast as you can!"
Alek glanced back before climbing inside. The ancient sword was still burning back among the trees, sending up red smoke. The gunners on the frigate would think that the Stormwalker had staggered to a halt, or fallen after that last barrage. Hopefully they'd pound the spot a few more times before sending the scouts back in to check.
And by that time the walker would be kilometers away.
As Alek's adrenaline faded, his body began to throb with pain. His hands and knees were bruised and burned, and the leather of his uniform smelled like scorched meat. He hoped Volger had something for burns along with his supply of family heirlooms and pointless secrets.
As Alek lowered himself into the hatchway, Volger's eyes widened, taking in his singed hair and smoldering uniform.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," he said, collapsing into the commander's chair. "Just keep moving."
The mountains were rising taller in the viewport. The border couldn't be far now; the sky up ahead was empty of flares. Soon they'd been in friendly darkness again.
The frigate's guns rumbled again, but the shells hit far behind them, hardly breaking the Stormwalker's stride. The Germans were still firing at his father's sword.
Alek smiled - so much for their secret weapons.
He let his eyes close. After a month of running, finally he could rest. Maybe his life would begin to make sense again, once the Stormwalker had reached safety.
No more surprises for a while.
NINETEEN
"I should like to see your bees, Mr. Sharp."
Deryn looked up tiredly from the sketch pad, putting her pencil aside. Her last watch of the day had just ended - four nervous hours of keeping an eye out for German aircraft - but Dr. Barlow never seemed to sleep. She looked well spruced in traveling coat and bowler hat, and Tazza bounced at the boffin's side, always happy to be exploring the ship.
"My bees, ma'am?"
"Don't be tiresome, Mr. Sharp. I meant, of course, the Leviathan's bee colonies. Do you always draw while shaving?"
Deryn glanced at her straight razor in its mug, remembering that half her face was covered in lather. She'd been waiting for someone to pass the open cabin door and witness the deception. But after a few minutes she'd given up posing by the mirror. Even copying sketches from the Manual of Aeronautics's chapter on thermal inversions was more interesting than pretending to shave.
She wiped her face with a towel. "That's the life of a middy, ma'am. Always studying ... and giving tours to visiting boffins, of course."
"Of course," Dr. Barlow said sweetly. In her two days aboard she'd toured practically every inch of the airship, dragging Newkirk and Deryn from deck to deck, onto the topside, even to the Huxley rookeries in the gut of the whale. There was no fobbing the duty off. Only two middies remained aboard, thanks to the weight of Dr. Barlow's pet thylacine, her numerous outfits, and the mysterious cargo secured in the machine room.
Deryn missed having the others about, if only to share the work of altitude readings and feeding the fléchette bats. The only brilliant thing - besides that bum-rag Fitzroy being gone - was that Deryn and Newkirk each had a private cabin now. Of course, Dr. Barlow's boffin studies didn't seem to have covered the subject of privacy.
"Come on, Tazza," Deryn muttered, taking the beastie's leash as she slipped into the corridor.
She led Dr. Barlow up the aft stairs to the top deck of the gondola. The riggers and sailmakers slept up here, though Deryn couldn't see how they managed. The airbeast's gastric channel filled the air with a smell like rotten onions and cow farts.
The off-duty watch swung in hammocks on either side of the corridor, some of them curled up with their hydrogen sniffers for warmth. The airship was cruising at eight thousand feet, hopefully too high for the German aeroplanes that had been stalking them all day, and the air up here was as cold as a brass monkey's bum.
None of the riggers glanced at Dr. Barlow or the thylacine as they passed. The ship's officers had announced that anyone making a fuss over the lady passenger would be put on report. This was no time for navy superstitions, after all. Germany had declared war on France yesterday and had gone after Belgium today. The rumor was that Britain would be in it tomorrow unless the kaiser put a stop to the whole mess by midnight.
And nobody thought that very likely.
At the gut hatch Deryn took Tazza into her arms and climbed up and out. In the cold, narrow gap between airbeast and gondola, the ventral camouflage cells shone a dull silver, taking on the color of the snowy moonlit peaks below. The Swiss Alps were rising beneath them. The Leviathan was a third of the way to the Ottoman Empire, Deryn reckoned.
Tazza scrambled out of her arms and up, curious to explore the strange mix of smells: clart from the gastric channel, the bitter almond of leaking hydrogen, and the salty scent of the airbeast's skin.