Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online

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With a few more turns of the winch the medusa was over the proving grounds, safely away from the prison’s smoking chimneys.

But then the wind switched direction. The airbeast billowed again, pulled in a half circle toward the other end of the Scrubs.

The Huxley let out a screech above the wind, like the horrible sound when one of Da’s air bladders would spring a leak.

“No, beastie! We’re almost safe!” Deryn shouted.

But the medusa had been tossed about once too often. Its gasbag was contracting, the tentacles coiled as tight as rattlesnakes.

Deryn Sharp smelled the hydrogen spilling into the air, the scent like bitter almonds. She was falling …

But the wind still carried them, changing direction without rhyme or reason. It tossed the airbeast about like a crumpled piece of paper, pulling Deryn behind it.

They had to be heavier than air by now, but in a gale like this, Deryn fancied you could fly a bowler hat on a bit of string.

At the other end of the cable the ground men were watching helplessly, the flight captain ducking as the gyrating cable sliced overhead. If they tried to crank her any closer, they’d pull the airbeast straight down into the ground.

    Jaspert was running across the field toward her, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting something… .

She caught the sound of his voice, but the wind whipped the words away.

Deryn’s feet now dangled a few yards above the ground, which raced by as if she were on horseback. She peeled off her heavy, sodden jacket and tossed it overboard.

The prison loomed close again as the Huxley sped along. Smashing into its walls at this speed would turn her and the airbeast into bloody splotches.

Her fingers scrambled at the pilot’s rig, searching for a way to escape the harness. Deryn reckoned her chances were better dropping onto muddy grass than crashing into a wall. And with her weight gone the Huxley would rise back into the air.

Of course, that clart-rag of a coxswain hadn’t bothered showing her how to unbuckle the rig. The leather straps were swollen with rain, cinched as tight as a duck’s bum. Evidently the Service didn’t trust recruits not to wriggle out in a panic and fall to their deaths.

Then Deryn saw the knot over her head—the cable that bound the airbeast to the ground!

She looked at the cable stretched out between her and the winch … about three hundred feet of it now. That length of rain-soaked hemp had to weigh more than one skinny wee lassie and her wet clothes.

If she could set the Huxley free, it might still have enough hydrogen to carry her up to safety.

But the ground was rising again, shining wet grass and puddles blurring past just beneath her feet—the prison walls ahead. Reaching up with one hand, Deryn felt the half-familiar shape of the knot… .

It was nothing but a backhanded mooring hitch! She remembered Jaspert telling her how Air Service riggers used sailor’s knots, the same ones she’d tied a thousand times on Da’s balloons!

As Deryn struggled to free the wet cable from its knot, her boots struck the ground with a bone-jarring thud, skidding across the wet grass.

But the real danger wasn’t below—it was the approaching prison walls. Deryn and the Huxley were seconds away from smashing into that shining expanse of wet stone.

Finally her fingers pushed the cable’s working end free. The knot spilled, the rope twisting like a live thing, skinning her fingers as it slipped from the steel ring.

As the weight of three hundred feet of wet hemp dropped away, the airbeast soared, clearing the prison walls with yards to spare.

Deryn’s breath caught as a belching chimney passed beneath her feet. She imagined raindrops tumbling down its mouth to the coal fires below, spitting steam, the sparks rising up to ignite the angry mass of hydrogen over her head.

But the wind whipped the sparks away—moments later the Huxley had cleared the southernmost prison buildings.

As she climbed, Deryn