Alek pulled away. “So what do we do with this … piece of paper? How do we let people know?”
“We don’t,” Volger said. “We keep your father’s promise and say nothing until the emperor dies. He’s an old man, Alek.”
“But while we hide, this war goes on.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Alek turned away. The freezing wind still blew against his face, but he could hardly feel it. He’d spent his whole life wishing for an empire, but he’d never realized the price would be so high. Not just his parents, but the war itself.
He remembered the soldier he’d killed. Over the next years there would be thousands more dead—tens of thousands. And he could do nothing but hide here in the snow, clutching this piece of paper.
This frozen wasteland was his kingdom now.
“Alek,” Volger said softly, gripping his arm. “Listen …”
“I think I’ve heard enough for one night, Count.”
“No, listen. Do you hear that?”
Alek glared at the man, then sighed and closed his eyes again. There was the sound of Bauer chopping wood, the moan of the wind, the ticking of the Stormwalker’s metal parts still cooling. And somewhere out on the edge of his awareness … the rumble of engines.
His eyes sprang open. “Aeroplanes?”
Volger shook his head. “Not at this altitude.” He leaned out over the parapets and scanned the valley floor, muttering, “They can’t have followed us. They can’t have.”
But Alek was sure the sound came from the air. He squinted into the icy wind, until finally he saw a shape forming in the moonlit sky. But what he saw made no sense at all.
It was huge, like a dreadnought flying through the air.
TWENTY-TWO
“It’s a zeppelin!” Alek shouted. “They’ve found us!”
The wildcount looked up. “An airship, certainly. But that doesn’t sound like a zeppelin.”
Alek frowned, listening hard. Other noises, tremulous and nonsensical, trickled over the distant hum of engines— squawks, whistles, and squeaks, like a menagerie let loose.
The airship lacked the symmetry of a zeppelin: The front end was larger than the stern, the surface mottled and uneven. Clouds of tiny winged forms fluttered around it, and an unearthly green glow clung to its skin.
Then Alek saw the huge eyes… .
“God’s wounds,” he swore. This wasn’t a machine at all, but a Darwinist creation!
He’d seen monsters before, of course—talking lizards in the fashionable parlors of Prague, a draft animal displayed in a traveling circus—but nothing as gigantic as this. It was like one of his war toys come to life, a thousand times larger and more incredible.
“What are Darwinists doing here?” he said softly.
Volger pointed. “Running from danger, it would seem.”
Alek’s eyes followed the gesture, and he saw the jagged trails of bullet holes down the creature’s flank, flickering with green light. Men swarmed in the rigging that hung from its sides, some wounded, some making repairs. And alongside them climbed things that weren’t men.
As the airship passed, almost overhead, Alek half ducked behind the parapets. But the crew seemed too busy to notice anything below them. The ship slowly turned as it settled into the valley, dropping below the level of the mountains on either side.
“Is that godless thing coming down?” Alek asked.
“They seem to have no choice.”
The vast creature glided away toward the white expanse of glacier—the only place in sight large enough for it to land. Even wounded, it fell as slowly as a feather. Alek held his breath for the long seconds that it remained poised above the snow.
The crash unfolded slowly. White clouds rose up in the skidding airship’s wake, its skin rippling like a flag in the wind. Alek saw men thrown from their perches on its back, but it was too far away for their cries to reach him, even through the cold, clear air. The ship kept sliding away, farther and farther, until its dark outline disappeared behind a shroud of white.
“The highest mountains in Europe, and the war reaches us so quickly.” Count Volger shook his head. “What an age we live in.”
“Do you think they saw us?”
“In all that chaos? I’d think not. And this ruin won’t look like much from a distance, even when the sun comes up.” The wildcount sighed. “But no cooking fires for a while. And we’ll have to set a watch until they leave.”
“What if they don’t leave?” Alek said. “What if they can’t?”
“Then they won’t last long,” Volger said flatly. “There’s nothing to eat on the glacier, no shelter, no fuel for a fire. Just ice.”
Alek turned to stare at Volger. “But we can’t leave shipwrecked men to die!”
“May I remind you that they’re the enemy, Alek? Just because the Germans are hunting us doesn’t make Darwinists our friends. There could be a hundred men aboard that ship! Perhaps enough to take this castle.” Volger’s voice softened as he peered into the sky. “Let’s just hope no rescue comes for them. Aircraft overhead in daylight would be a disaster.”
Alek looked out across the glacier again. The snow thrown up by the crash was settling around the airship, revealing that it lay half on one side, like a beached fish. He wondered if Darwinist creations died from the cold as quickly as natural beasts. Or men.
A hundred of them out there …
He looked down at the stables below—food enough for a small army. And medicine for the wounded, and furs and firewood to keep them warm.
“We can’t sit here and watch them die, Count. Enemies or not.”
“Haven’t you been listening?” Volger cried. “You’re heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Your duty is to the empire, not those men out there.”
Alek shook his head. “At the moment there isn’t much I can do for the empire.”
“Not yet. But if you keep yourself alive, soon enough you’ll gain the power to stop this madness. Don’t forget: The emperor is eighty-three, and war is unkind to old men.”
With those last words Volger’s voice broke, and suddenly he looked ancient himself, as if the last five weeks had finally caught up with him. Alek swallowed his answer, remembering what Volger had sacrificed—his home, his rank—to be hunted and hounded, to go sleepless listening to wireless chatter. And with safety finally at hand, this obscene creature had fallen from the sky, threatening to wreck years of planning.
No wonder he wanted to ignore the airbeast dying on the snows a few kilometers away.
“Of course, Volger.” Alek took his arm and led him down from the cold and windy parapet. “We’ll watch and wait.”
“They’ll probably repair that godless beast,” Volger said on the stairs. “And leave us behind without a second glance.”
“No doubt.”
Halfway across the courtyard, Volger brought Alek to a sudden halt, his expression pained. “We’d help them if we could. But this war could leave the whole continent in ruins. You see that, don’t you?”
Alek nodded and led the count into the great hall of the castle, where Bauer was piling wood into the fireplace. Seeing the food laid out and ready to cook, Volger let out a tired sigh and told the other men about the crashed airship—another week without fires, and long, cold watches every night.
But eating in a castle, even a cold one, was still a pleasure after all those meals huddled in the Stormwalker’s iron belly. The storerooms held luxuries that none of them had enjoyed for weeks: smoked fish for dinner, dried fruit and canned peaches for dessert. The wine was excellent, and when Alek offered to take the first watch, the others drank to him deeply.