had never slept in a barn before. Of course, he'd done a lot of new things in the last two weeks.
Klopp, Bauer, and Master Engineer Hoffman were snoring nearby. The Stormwalker crouched in the halflit barn, its head almost level with the hayloft. Alek had maneuvered the machine inside late last night, shuffling at half height in the darkness to squeeze it in. A tricky bit of piloting.
Morse code crackled again through the walker's open viewport.
Count Volger, of course. The man was allergic to sleep.
The gap between the hayloft and the walker's head was barely the length of a sword, an easy jump.
Alek landed softly, his bare feet silent on the metal armor. He eased himself over the edge to peek in through the viewport. Volger sat facing away in the commander's chair, a wireless earphone pressed against his head.
Slowly, silently, Alek lowered one foot to the edge of the viewport... .
"Careful not to fall, Your Highness."
Alek sighed, wondering if he would ever manage to sneak up on his fencing master. He slid through the viewport and dropped into the pilot's chair.
"Don't you ever sleep, Count?"
"Not with that racket." Volger glared out at the hayloft.
"You mean the snoring?" Alek frowned. He'd grown used to sleeping through the noises of men and machines, but somehow the tiny crackle of dots and dashes from the wireless had woken him. Two weeks of being hunted had altered his senses. "Anything about us?"
Volger shrugged. "The codes have changed again. But there's more chatter than I've ever heard before; the army is preparing for war."
"Maybe they've forgotten me," Alek said. In those first days land dreadnoughts had stalked the hills in every direction, lookouts swarming their spar decks. But lately the fugitives had seen only an occasional aeroplane buzzing overhead.
"You are not forgotten, Your Highness," Volger said flatly. "Serbia simply presents an easier target."
"Unlucky for them," Alek said softly.
"Luck had nothing to do with it," Volger muttered. "The empire has wanted a war with Serbia for years now. The rest is an excuse."
"An excuse?" Alek said, anger rising as he imagined his murdered parents' faces. But he couldn't argue with Volger's logic. The dreadnoughts hunting him were German and Austrian, after all. His family had been destroyed by old friends, not some hapless gang of Serbian schoolboys. "But my father always argued for peace."
"And he can argue no longer. Clever, isn't it?"
Alek shook his head. "You horrify me, Volger. I sometimes think you admire the people behind this."
"Their plans have a certain elegance - assassinating a peacemaker to start a war. But they made one very foolish mistake." The man turned and faced him. "They left you alive."
"I don't matter, not anymore."
Chapter 7
Volger switched off the wireless, and the cabin fell into silence. The flutter of birds filtered down from the rafters of the barn.
"You matter more than anyone knows, Aleksandar."
"How? I have no parents, no real title." Alek looked down at himself, dressed in stolen farmer's clothes and covered with hay. "I haven't even had a proper bath in two weeks."
"No, indeed." Volger sniffed. "But your father planned carefully for the coming war."
"What do you mean?"
"When we get to Switzerland, I will explain." Volger switched the wireless on again. "But that won't happen unless we can buy fuel and parts tomorrow. Go wake the men."
Alek raised an eyebrow. "Did you just give me an order, Count?"
"Go wake the men if you please, Your Serene Highness."
"I know you're only being insolent to distract me from your little secret, Count. But that doesn't make it any less annoying."
Volger let out a laugh. "I suppose not. But I can't give up my secret yet. I promised your father to wait till the proper time."
Alek's fists tightened. He was growing tired of being treated like this, never told what Volger's plans were until the last moment. Maybe he'd been a child the day his parents had died, but no longer.
In the last two weeks he'd learned how to start a fire, how to replace the engines' glow plugs, how to track their nighttime progress toward Switzerland with a sextant and the stars. He could squeeze the Stormwalker under bridges and into barns, and strip and clean the Spandau machine guns as easily as washing his own clothes - another thing he'd learned to do. Hoffman had even taught him to cook a little, boiling dried meat to soften it, adding the vegetables they'd gathered while trampling some unlucky farmer's field.
But most important, Alek had learned to shut