dawning on his face. But it was too late - the rope connecting him to Rigby was straightening fast.
Newkirk looked up at her hopelessly, his hand moving to the rigging knife at his belt.
"No!" Deryn cried.
Then she realized what she had to do.
She turned and ran the other way, hurtling down the opposite flank of the airship. Dodging crewmen and sniffers as the membrane fell away, Deryn jumped as hard as she could into the night sky... .
The snap of the rope hit her like a punch in the stomach, the safety harness cutting into her shoulders. She rolled into a ball as her body hit the flank membrane, knocking her breath away.
Deryn bounced to a halt, then found herself skidding back up the flank of the airbeast. Rigby had to have yanked Newkirk off behind him - their combined weight was dragging her back up to the spine!
She grabbed at passing ropes, finally snaring one and bringing herself to a halt. But her safety line pulled harder, the harness squeezing the breath from her lungs.
Then the rope went slack, and Deryn looked up in horror. Had it broken? Had Newkirk cut himself loose?
On the spine a squad of riggers held her line, in a tug of war with something on the other side of the ship. They were pulling Newkirk and the injured bosun back up.
Deryn breathed a sigh of relief, her eyes closing. She held tight to the ratlines, trusting nothing but her own two hands to keep her from tumbling into the dark sky. But as the ship tipped beneath her again, she looked down and realized that two hands wouldn't be enough.
They were all falling.
The Alps rose toward the ship, the tallest peaks only a few hundred feet below. A blanket of snow covered all but a few dark outcrops of stone, like jagged black teeth waiting patiently for prey.
The wounded Leviathan was crashing slowly back to earth.
TWENTY-ONE
The old castle stood on a rugged slope, moonlit snow-drifts piled against its half-ruined walls, the windows dark and gaping. Its battlements glistened with ice in the crystal-cold air, their ragged outlines blending into the rocks behind.
Alek leaned back from the viewport. "What is this place?"
"Do you remember your father's trip to Italy?" Count Volger asked. "To look for a new hunting lodge?"
"Of course I remember," Alek said. "You went with him, and I had four glorious weeks of no fencing lessons."
"A necessary sacrifice. Our real purpose was to buy this pile of old stones."
Aleksandar gazed at the castle with a critical eye - a pile of old stones was right. It looked more like a landslide than a fortress.
"But that was two summers ago, Volger. When did you start planning my escape?"
"The day your father married a commoner."
Alek ignored the slight to his mother; the details of his birthright were meaningless now. "And no one knows about this place?"
"Look around." Count Volger pulled his fur collar tighter. "This castle was abandoned back in the Great Famine."
"Six hundred years ago," Alek said softly, his breath coiling in the moonlight.
"The Alps were warmer then. There was once a thriving town out there." Count Volger pointed at the mountain pass ahead of them, its vast expanse glowing white beneath the almost full moon. "But that glacier swallowed the entire valley centuries ago. It's a wasteland now."
"I'll take a wasteland over another night in this machine," Klopp said, shivering in his furs. "I love my walkers, but I never fancied living in one."
Volger smiled. "This castle contains unexpected comforts, you'll find."
"Anywhere with a fireplace that works," Alek said, placing his cold and tired hands on the controls.
From the inside, the little castle didn't seem so bad.
The roofs under their blanket of snow had been recently repaired. The outer walls were half fallen, but the courtyard stones were solid, holding up under the Stormwalker's weight as it shuffled through the gate. Stacks of firewood lined the interior walls, and the castle's stables were full of provisions: smoked meats, barrels of grain, and neat stacks of military rations.
Alek stared at the endless ranks of cans.
"How long are we staying here?"
"Until this madness ends," Volger said.
"This madness," of course, meant the war. And wars could last for years ... even decades. Tendrils of snow coiled through the open stable doors and across the floor - and this was the beginning of August.
What would the dead of winter be like?
"Your father and I were very thorough," Volger said, obviously pleased with himself. "We have medicines, furs,