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."
Derynook 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."
Chapter Seven
The Leviathan was a few miles distant when its bomb bay doors opened. Bales of dried beef fell in ten-second intervals. As each one dropped, the airship rose a little higher in the air.
"An ingenious distraction, I'll admit," Mr. Tesla said. "Of course, if you'd brought this food earlier, I'd still have an airship."
Deryn gave him a hard look. He'd spoken so lightly of what he'd done, feeding not only his airbeast, she realized now, but also the horses and mammothines of his cargo train to the fighting bears. And all to stay a few more weeks in this blighted place.
"What were you doing here, anyway, Mr. Tesla?"
"I should think that would be obvious, boy. I am studying the phenomenon around us."
"Did you find out what caused it?"
"I have always known the cause. I was only curious about the results." The man raised a hand. "I must remain secretive at the moment, but soon the world will know."
He had a mad gleam in his eye, and as Deryn turned away toward the Leviathan, a twitchy feeling came over her.
This was, of course, the same Mr. Tesla who'd invented the Tesla cannon, a lightning weapon that had twice almost destroyed the Leviathan. He was a Clanker boffin, a maker of German secret weapons, and yet the czar had given him free run of Darwinist Russia.
None of it made sense.
She thought of the mysterious device hidden belowdecks back on the Leviathan, and wondered why this man had wanted it smuggled here. It certainly wouldn't have been much use for fending off bears.
The airship's engines changed pitch. The bomb run was finished.
"They'll be coming about now," Deryn said. "We should head for the clearing."
Mr. Tesla waved his walking stick in the air, calling out in what Deryn reckoned was Russian. A group of the men ran into one of the buildings and came back with large packs on their shoulders.
"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't bring all that gear. We're too barking heavy as it is!"
"I am hardly going to abandon my photographs and samples, young man. This expedition took years to prepare!"
"But if the ship can't take off, it's all lost anyway. Along with us!"
"You shall have to make room, then. Or leave my men behind."
"Are you mad?" Deryn cried, then shook her head. "Listen, sir, if you want to stay here with your samples until the bears eat you, that's fine. But these men are coming with me, without any of that extra weight!"
Mr. Tesla laughed. "You'll have to explain that to them, I'm afraid. How good is your Russian, Mr. Sharp?"
"It's barking fluent," she lied, then turned to the men. "Do any of you speak English?"
They stared back at her, looking a bit confused. One offered up a choice curse in English, but then shrugged, apparently having exhausted his vocabulary.
Deryn clenched her teeth, wishing Alek were here. For all his useless knowledge, he could speak a fair number of languages. And this mad boffin might listen to another Clanker.
She looked at the men again. Some of them must have crewed the dead airship, so they would have to understand weight limits. . . .
But there wasn't time to put on a pantomime. The howls of the bears were echoing through the still, stripped trees. They'd already found the first of the food, and had fallen to fighting over it.
"Just get your men moving, sir," she said. "We'll discuss this at the ship."
It took a few minutes to reach the edge of the standing trees, and another ten to find a level field large enough for the Leviathan to land upon. "Level" was hardly the word for it, though. Here near the center of the destruction, the fallen trees weren't laid out so neatly. They were jumbled together like in a game of Spellican sticks, with jagged splinters thrusting up from their stumps.
Deryn scrambled across the fallen trunks, hoping she could estimate distances properly in all this muddle. She pointed and waved at the Russians, like a cricket captain setting a field, and she soon had them arranged in a long oval a little larger than the Leviathan's gondola.
"The ship's light after dropping all that beef," she explained to Tesla. "Normally the captain would vent hydrogen to land, but not if he wants to get back up quickly. We'll have to use ropes to drag it down."
The man lifted an eyebrow. "Are there enough of us?"
"Not a chance. If a gust of wind came along, we'd all be yanked into the air. So when the ropes fall, have your men tie them to the trees." She pointed at a fallen pine as big around as a rum barrel. "The bigger the better."
"But we won't be strong enough to pull the ship down."
"Aye, the ship pulls itself down, with winches inside the gondola. Once it's low enough, we'll go aboard and cut the ropes, and the ship pops back up like a cork in water."
Deryn paused, listening. Low growls rolled through the forest, setting her small hairs on end. The bears sounded a squick closer now, or maybe it was just her nerves.