Goliath Read Online Free Page A

Newkirk were no more than twenty yards above the ground. He yelped as his boots skimmed the top of a tall pine tree, sending off a burst of needles shiny with ice.
    Deryn looked ahead . . . and saw the fighting bear.
    She and Alek had spotted a few that morning, their dark shapes winding along the Trans-Siberian Trailway. They’d looked impressive enough from a thousand feet, but from this altitude the beast was truly monstrous.Its shoulders stood as tall as a house, and its hot breath coiled up into the freezing air like chimney smoke.
    A large cargo platform was strapped to its back. A pallet waited there, a flattened loop of metal ready for Newkirk’s grappling hook. Four crewmen in Russian uniforms scampered about the bear, checking the straps and netting that held the secret cargo.
    The driver’s long whip flicked into the air and fell, and the bear began to lumber away. It was headed down a long, straight section of the trailway aligned with the
Leviathan
’s course.
    The beastie’s gait gradually lengthened into a run. According to Dr. Busk, the bear could match the airship’s speed only for a short time. If Newkirk didn’t get the hook right on the first pass, they’d have to swing around in a slow circle, letting the creature rest. The hours saved by not landing and loading in the normal way would be half lost.
    And the czar, it seemed, wanted this cargo at its destination barking fast.
    As the airship drew closer to the bear, Deryn felt its thundering tread bruising the air. Puffs of dirt drifted up from the cold, hard-packed ground in its wake. She tried to imagine a squadron of such monsters charging into battle, glittering with fighting spurs and carrying a score of riflemen each. The Germans must have been
mad
toprovoke this war, pitting their machines not only against the airships and kraken of Britain, but also the huge land beasts of Russia and France.
    She and Newkirk were over the straightaway now, safe from treetops. The Trans-Siberian Trailway was one of the wonders of the world, even Alek had admitted. Stamped flat by mammothines, it stretched from Moscow to the Sea of Japan and was as wide as a cricket oval—room enough for two bears to pass in opposite directions without annoying each other.
    Tricky beasties, ursines. All last night Mr. Rigby had regaled Newkirk with tales of them eating their handlers.
    The
Leviathan
soon caught up to the bear, and Newkirk signaled for Deryn to pull him to port. She angled her wings, feeling the tug of airflow surround her body, and she briefly thought of Lilit in her body kite. Deryn wondered how the girl was doing in the new Ottoman Republic. Then shook the thought from her head.
    The pallet was drawing near, but the loop Newkirk was preparing to grab rose and fell with the bounding gait of the giant bear. Newkirk began to lower the grappling hook, trying to swing it a little nearer to its target. One of the Russians climbed higher on the cargo pallet, reaching up to help.
    Deryn angled her wings a squick, drawing Newkirk still farther to port.

“HOOKING THE PACKAGE.”
     

He thrust out the grappling hook, and metal struck metal, the rasp and clink of contact sharp in the cold wind—the hook snapped into the loop!
    The Russians shouted and began to loosen the straps that held the pallet to the platform. The bear’s driver waved his whip back and forth, the signal for the
Leviathan
’s pilots to ascend.
    The airship angled its nose up, and the grappling hook tightened its grip on the loop, the thick cable going taut beside Deryn. Of course, the pallet didn’t lift from the fighting bear’s back—not yet. You couldn’t add two tons to an airship’s weight and expect it to climb right away.
    Ballast began to spill from the
Leviathan
’s ports. Pumped straight from the gastric channel, the brackish water hit the air as warm as piss. But in the Siberian wind it froze instantly, a spray of glittering ice halos in the air.
    A moment later the ice stung