Leviathan Read Online Free PDF Page B

turn to you in these anxious times.”

“He hated my mother more than any of them.” Alek closed his eyes again. The red-tinged forest outside was too bleak to stare at anymore. A patch of uneven ground set the cabin shuddering, as if the world were unsteady in its path around the sun. “I just want to go home.”

“Not until we can be sure it’s safe, young master,” said Otto Klopp. “We promised your father.”

“What do promises matter if he’s—”

“Silence!” Volger cried.

Aleksandar looked up at him in shock. He opened his mouth to protest, but the wildcount’s hand clenched his shoulder.

“Cut the engines!”

Master Klopp wrenched the Stormwalker to a halt, cycling the Daimlers down to a low rumble. The hiss of pneumatics settled around them.

Alek’s ears rang in the sudden quiet, his body shuddering with echoes of the walker’s motion. Through the viewport the leaves were motionless, the air without a breath of wind. No birds sang, as if the forest had been startled into silence by the walker’s abrupt halt.

Volger’s eyes closed.

Then Alek felt it. The slightest shudder passed through the metal frame of the Stormwalker—the tread of something larger, heavier. Something that shook the earth.

Count Volger stood, opening the hatchway overhead. Dawn light spilled in as he pulled himself halfway out.

The shudder came again. Through the viewport Alek saw the tremor passing through the forest, leaves shivering in its wake. It unsettled the pit of his stomach, like an angry look from his father.

“Your Highness,” Volger called, “if you would join me.”

Alek stood and balanced on the commander’s chair, hoisting himself up through the hatch.

Outside, his eyes squinted against the half-risen sun; dawn had turned the sky a deep orange around them. The Stormwalker stood a little taller than the young hornbeam trees, and the horizon seemed enormous after hours of peering through the viewport.

Volger pointed back the way they had come. “There are your enemies, Prince Aleksandar.”

Alek squinted against the rising sun. The other machine was kilometers away, towering twice as tall as the trees. Her six huge legs moved unhurriedly, but men scurried like ants across the gun deck, raising signal flags and manning the turrets. Along her flank stretched the letters of her name: S.M.S. Beowulf .

Alek watched a massive foot plant itself upon the forest floor. Long seconds later another tremor arrived, rippling across the trees around them and up through the Stormwalker’s metal frame. As the next step fell, a distant treetop flailed and then vanished, torn down by the giant walker’s stride.

The red and black stripes of the Kaiser’s Landforce Jack flew from her spar deck, whipping in the breeze.

“A German land dreadnought,” Alek said softly. “But aren’t we still in Austria-Hungary?”

“Yes,” Volger said, “but all those who want chaos and war are hunting us, Your Highness. Or do you still doubt me?”

But what if it’s a rescue mission? Alek thought. Maybe his kidnappers had been lying after all, and Father and Mother were still alive. A vast search for Alek had been launched, with the German land navy helping! Why else would this monstrosity be allowed on Austrian soil?

Then Alek saw that the machine was changing direction, slowly turning sideways across the sunrise… .

He held up his hand and waved. “Here! Over here !”

“They already see us, Your Highness,” Count Volger said quietly.

Alek was still waving when the first broadside erupted, bright flashes rippling along the dreadnought’s flank, puffs of cannon smoke swelling into a hazy veil around her. The sound followed moments later—a rolling thunder that broke into sharp, tearing bursts from every direction. The treetops churned around them, concussions shaking the Stormwalker and throwing clouds of leaves into the sky.

Then Volger was dragging him back down into the cabin, the engines roaring back