decent gun sight.”
“Or a decent gun!”
“These spice bombs were your idea, I seem to—”
The elephant’s main turret roared to life, sending a shell screaming overhead. The explosion came seconds later, rocking the djinn on its feet.
“They overshot us!” Alek cried. “But they have our range now. Can I fire yet?”
“Hold on!” Deryn watched the needle climb. The loris dug its claws deep into her shoulder, imitating the whistle and boom of the near miss.
The needle passed nine hundred meters, but she needed another fifty at least.…
“Fire!” she finally cried.
The great arm swung again, rocking the cabin backward. The moment the bomb had flown, Alek grabbed the controls and took them charging ahead.
Through the rocking viewport Deryn watched the war elephant disappear into a roiling cloud of red dust.
“Bull’s-eye!” she cried.
But the walker’s crew still managed to fire—the main gun blazed again, setting the dust cloud around the elephant into a massive whirlwind. The air cracked once more as the shot zoomed past.
The djinn reeled from the blast—the shell had landed right where they’d been standing, Deryn reckoned. Alek struggled with the controls as the walker staggered forward.
The machine gun on the elephant’s trunk opened up, setting the path ahead of them jittering with plumes of dirt. Then came a chorus of bullets striking metal, as loud as pistons misfiring.
“We need steam cover!” Alek cried.
“No chance!” Deryn stared at the motionless pressure gauge. The engines were too busy keeping the walker moving to recharge its boilers.
But the elephant’s main turret didn’t fire again. Only its left front leg was moving, like a dog’s pawing at the ground. The searchlight swung away aimlessly into the sky.
“They’ve got a snootful!” Deryn cried. Even hundreds of yards away, her eyes were starting to prickle from the spices. She pulled the goggles up from around her neck and snapped them on.
“Snootful,” Bovril said, chuckling, then sneezed.
Alek twisted the saunters, putting the djinn’s hands out for balance. But he kept the walker charging ahead.
“I’m going to knock them over. Brace yourself.”
Deryn checked her straps. “Hold on, beastie!”
The elephant was stumbling in circles now, another of its legs trying to move. But the turret stayed motionless. Had the spice bomb struck it dead-on?
Then Deryn saw the airflow patterns made visible by red dust, and realized what had happened—the cannon’s recoil had sucked the spices right into the main turret. The elephant’s crew had done themselves in with their own shot.
“They must be positively gagging!”
“Not for long, though,” Alek said. “Hold on!”
The war elephant had turned sideways, stumbling into a barbed wire fence just behind it. As the djinn charged into the swirling red clouds, Deryn’s throat began to burn, and she was glad for her goggles. But Alek didn’t waver—he tipped the djinn’s left shoulder down …
Metal crunched and tore around them, a shock wave thundering through the djinn’s huge frame. The world spun in the viewport, sky and ground and darkness flashing past. Alek swore, twisting at the controls, and a lungful of spices set Deryn coughing.
Finally the djinn stopped spinning; it was listing at a crazy angle. Deryn sprayed a squick of steam to clear the air, unstrapped herself, and leaned out the viewport.
The white clouds around them parted, revealing the elephant lying motionless on its side.
“We got them!”
“Snootful!” Bovril shouted.
“But why are we leaning like this?” Alek cried. “And what in blazes is holding us up?”
Deryn leaned out farther, and saw glittering metal everywhere. The djinn had stumbled through the barbed wire fence, pulling up a quarter mile of it.
“We’re tangled in that barking wire!”
Alek worked his foot pedals, and wires snapped and scraped. “There’s more of them ahead. We need steam cover—now.”
Deryn stoked the boilers, then looked through the viewport. Two miles in the distance the Tesla cannon rose up from the cliffs, half as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
Around its base three more war elephants stood waiting, their smokestacks belching to life.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Are the others anywhere about?” Alek asked.
Deryn leaned out the viewport, looking backward. There was nothing on the horizon but the silhouettes of short salt-sheered trees along the cliff tops. Then she spotted them—a trio of smoke trails against the starlight, no more than two miles away.
“Aye, all of them! Three kilometers or so behind us.” She glanced at the pressure gauge, which was only now beginning to climb again. “And a good thing too. It’ll be a few minutes before we can throw again.”
“We don’t have that much time. Give us some cover while I shake this wire off.”
As Deryn reached for the steam cannon lever, one of the war elephants fired. The shell landed short, but close, and Deryn was thrown backward from the controls. Gravel and dirt spat through the viewport, leaving a scratch on her goggles.
“If you please, Mr. Sharp?” Alek asked.
“
Deryn scrambled up from the floor to pull the lever, and hissing filled her ears. The pilot’s cabin was suddenly as hot and humid as a greenhouse.
Outside the viewport the world disappeared behind a veil of white.
Alek worked the pedals and saunters, blindly tearing at the tangle of barbed wire. More gunfire boomed beyond the steam cloud, but the answering explosions sounded in the distance.
“They’re shooting at the others,” Deryn said.
“Then now’s the time to attack! Get me some pressure in my throwing arm.”
“I’d be happy to, Your Highness.” Deryn pulled the engine stokers again. “But we’ve emptied the boilers to make this steam, and now you’re dancing about like a loon, which is taking even more power!”
“Fine, then,” Alek said, bringing the djinn into a crouched halt. As the engines idled, the ranging gauge began to climb again.
Through the whiteness came the clatter of machine guns—the Ottomans were firing into the bank of steam clouds, listening to see where their bullets hit metal.
“They’ll find us soon enough,” Alek said. He pulled the release, and Deryn heard a third spice bomb rattle into place.
She wiped condensation from the ranging gauge. “Three hundred meters and climbing.”
“That’s enough—if we charge them!”
“Are you daft? There’s
