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"I’et started" She turned toward herparty put on brave faces, but their eyes stayed glued to the passing landscape As the Sphinx drew closer, the airship slowed, turning into the stiff breeze co off the ocean But the officers couldn’t co the sultan and his round beneath theht in front of a nation’s sovereign

The bosun consulted his watch "Twenty seconds, I’d say"

"Clip your lines!" Deryn ordered Her heart was starting to race now, driving out her glooet stuffed She could always toss hi beneath the ship now, turning froht was the Sphinx, a natural forod

"Get ready, lads" She shouted, "Three, two, one "and jury and piping hot in the sea breeze She heard her co cables slicing through the air

The ground came up fast, and Deryn snapped on a second clip The friction doubled, jerking her into a slower fall But solid rock and scrub grass still blurred beneath her, too fast for comfort

Then she felt it, a sway in her line The airship was slowing just a squick Her rope swung forith herbackward, so that her position was alround below

"Now!" Deryn cried, and pulled her second clip fro hard sand and loose, flat rocks that crunched and powdered under her boots The i to keep her feet The rest of the cable whipped through her safety clip, smacked her hand spitefully, then skipped across the beach toward the sunset

As the Leviathan slid away into the distance, its engine noise faded into the crash of the waves Deryn felt her gloo left behind

She turned around, counting three other figures on the ridge At least none of her coht?" she called

"Aye, sir!" two calls froroan

It was Matthews, ten yards away and still not on his feet Deryn scraht ball

"It’s my ankle, sir," he said, teeth clenched "I’ve turned it"

"All right Let’s see if you can stand" Deryn waved for the other ed out of her heavy pack She knelt and checked the glass case that held the vitriolic barnacles; it hadn’t broken

When Airmen Spencer and Robins had made their way over, she had theht settled on the twisted right ankle, he cried out in pain

"Set him down," she ordered, then let out a slow breath

The man’s ankle was stuffed There was no way he could walk two miles across the rocky peninsula and back

"You’ll have to wait here, Matthews"

"Aye, sir But when are they picking us up?"

Deryn hesitated Of the four of them, only she knew exactly when the Leviathan would return to the Sphinx That way, if the men were captured, the Ottomans couldn’t set a trap for the airship

As for Deryn herself, well, she was a decorated hero, wasn’t she? The Otto the truth from her

"I can’t tell you, Matthews Just wait here, and don’t let anyone see you" The ain, and she added, "Trust me, the captain won’t leave us behind"

They knelt and divided the four packs a Matthews most of the water and a little bully beef Then Deryn, Robins, and Spencer headed down the ridge toward the strait, leaving him all alone

A few minutes into her first command, and she was already one man down

Chapter Twenty-Four

Two miles hadn’t looked very far on the map, but the real Gallipoli was a different h steep-sided ridges, as if iant claws The valleys betere choked with dry, brittle undergrowth And whenever Deryn and her party rested, ants round to tors worse, the Royal Navy’sonly a fraction of the ridgelines and overgrown ravines Deryn kept an eye on her coraphy still forced her into tortured zigzags

By the time they reached the other side of the peninsula, it was after ht