Jake Ransom and the Howling Sphinx (22 page)

He stared over the rail. Ka-Tor lay two miles below, still shadowed by the night. He could make out an outline of the city, lit by fires set along the walls. Politor had told Jake that it was rare for a skyship to travel so high. It
took an extraordinary amount of fuel to heat the balloon and drive the ship to this height. To keep them here, the crew continually pumped the bellows and dumped bushels of the ruby-skinned gourds into the balloon's furnace.

At this height, the air was thin and cold. Jake's head pounded with a headache, a symptom of altitude sickness from lack of oxygen, or maybe it was from the fitful sleep he'd had. Jake had been plagued by nightmares of his mother being attacked by a giant grakyl, one that spewed fire. When awake, he just stared into the dark, plagued by worries of Kady and his friends.

“You'd better eat,” a soft voice said from behind him.

He turned to find Nefertiti standing with a steaming bowl of porridge. The scent of cinnamon and spice wafted to him in the cool breeze. She was wrapped in a heavy cloak against the cold.

“You should keep up your strength,” she said, passing him the bowl. “Uncle Shaduf taught me that a hunter is only as strong as his belly is full.”

Jake took the porridge and sank to the deck. He ate it with his fingers, as was the custom here. The heat warmed him, pushing back the cold fear in his gut.

Nefertiti sat nearby, her eyes on the sky as she hugged her knees. It looked as if she hadn't slept much either. She chewed her lower lip, worry etched into every line of her face.

“We'll rescue them,” he said. “We'll make it all right.”

She was silent for a long moment. “But how did it get so wrong?” She swallowed and stared down at her knees. “After Father fell into his great slumber, I spent most of my days in the desert, hunting. All the while, Kree was slithering into position. Why didn't I see it?”

Jake imagined that such desert escapes were her way of coping with the loss of her father. She and her sister had no one, and Kree slipped into that gap with his handsome looks and oily words.

“It weren't just you,” a craggy voice said from beyond the rail.

Jake and Nefertiti turned and peered overboard. Politor hung there outside a hatch, tightening some cables on the hull. His eyes were on his work, but his words were for them.

“It were all of us. Those wearing the collar”—he tapped the bronze ring around his neck with his wrench—“and those who were not. We turned a blind eye to what was happening just as surely as you.”

Jake remembered how everyone in the city shunned the boarded-up houses sealed with the Blood of Ka's mark, refusing even to look at them.

“That's how freedom is lost,” Politor said. “One grain of sand at a time.”

Jake remembered something his father quoted about this very subject. He whispered it aloud. “‘All that is
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.'”

“Aye, well-spoken.” Politor nodded to Jake, then turned his sky blue eyes on Nefertiti. “The people of Ka-Tor—
all
of us—have been sleeping as deeply as your father.”

Nefertiti stood up, fire entering her voice. “Then it's time we all woke up.”

A shout rose from the stern.

“It begins,” Politor said, and swung back into the hatch and vanished.

Jake gained his feet and spotted Djer standing beside Skymaster Horus. He was bent over the rail, a spyglass fixed to his eye. Jake hurried toward them, leaping up the steps from the middeck. Nefertiti followed just as swiftly.

“The people gather toward the arena,” Djer said. “It will not be long before Ra's first rays touch the obelisk and start the games.”

“Can I see?” Jake asked.

Djer passed him the spyglass. Horus slipped a second one from inside his cloak and handed it to Nefertiti.

“Ready the ship!” Horus called out.

As the crew bustled to obey, Jake leaned over the rail and stared through the spyglass. It took him several scared breaths to focus and find the wide pit of sand surrounded by stone bleachers.

“We used to have grand plays and great circuses there,” Nefertiti mumbled sadly. “Now it is a monstrous place,
where blood waters the sands and nothing but fear grows.”

The spyglass was dizzyingly powerful, pulling Jake to a bird's-eye view of the arena. In the darkened streets, people filed toward the stadium from all directions. It looked as if the entire population was coming to this game, to bear witness. Such attendance was not voluntary. Splashes of torchlight revealed soldiers herding people toward the arena.

“Kree means to mark his coming to power with blood,” Nefertiti said. “To show his strength, to threaten all.”

Nefertiti could watch no longer, but Jake focused his glass back to the arena. The sand pit was oval in shape and appeared to be the size of a football field. In the center rose a black obelisk with a golden tip pointing skyward. The place reminded Jake of the coliseum in Calypsos, but the games now played here were deadlier.

“Raise the sails!” Horus called out.

Jake straightened enough to see the ship's wings unfurl, cranked wide by the crew on both sides of the middeck. With a rattle of bony struts, the rubbery sails snapped into place.

Djer joined Jake. “We will have only the one chance. Timing is critical.”

Shoulder to shoulder, they kept vigil on the city below. Jake watched the new day creep across the landscape, stretching through the desert, over the outer walls, across the city—and finally reaching the arena.

Spectators packed the stadium, which was ringed on the outside by a solid mass of guards. Kree was daring the rebels to risk a rescue. But none thought to look
up
. Even if they did, the windrider flew so high that it would appear but a speck in the sky, a slowly circling hawk.

Djer nudged Jake and pointed farther out from the stadium. Jake followed with his spyglass. Slipping silently through the empty streets from the west, a force of men flowed toward the stadium led by a giant, who, even from so far away, Jake recognized. It was Grymhorst, the red-bearded gatekeeper from the Crooked Nail. The ragtag force he led could not hope to defeat the mass of royal guards. They were outnumbered four to one. Instead their goal was to distract them, to draw them off, to keep them busy. Hopefully long enough for the
Breath of Shu
to complete a rescue.

Jake returned his attention to the arena floor. As he watched, holding his breath, the golden tip of the black obelisk was struck by the first rays of the new day. It burst into radiance.

The crowd in the stands surged to their feet.

A handful of figures stumbled through a gate into the open sand.

A distant bugle sounded.

With that cue, Horus bellowed from his post at the rudder, “Drop her beak! Let her dive!”

“Hold tight!” Djer warned.

Jake and Nefertiti obeyed as the prow of the ship tilted at a precarious angle. The constant roar of the balloon's furnace died. A silence spread across the ship—then the windrider dropped earthward again, diving like a hunting hawk.

Wind ripped across the decks. A barrel, poorly tied, broke free, rolled across the middeck, and crashed into splinters. Horus manned the rudder with one arm, pushing hard to turn their plummet into a circling dive.

Jake held tight to a strut of the railing as his ears popped and wind screamed in his ears. He should have thought to grab his earplugs from his backpack; but the pack was strapped behind him, and he wasn't about to let go.

Their only hope was the element of surprise. And for that to work, the attack had to be lightning fast. Jake twisted to see a squad of five men hunched to either side of the middeck. Secured to their backs were folded sets of wings.

Skyriders.

Jake continued to hold his breath. It seemed as if they were dropping forever when it was likely less than a minute. At any moment he expected to crash into the ground and shatter as surely as that loose barrel had.

Then Horus shouted, his voice full of wind and verve, “On my mark! Steady the keel, boys! Now!”

With a great creaking, the ship's prow lifted. Jake felt his stomach crash into his boots. The wings to either side
shuddered, shaking the entire ship. Then the furnace blasted with fire, stabbing deeply into the balloon. The black rubber skin glowed a dark ruby. Jake expected it to burst into flames.

But it held.

The
Breath of Shu
steadied into an even spiral.

Jake risked poking his head between the struts of the railing. The windrider glided five stories above the arena. People had flattened to the ground in terror at the unexpected arrival. Cries and shouts echoed up to the ship.

Then horns blared from outside the stadium, coming from the west.

Jake pictured Grymhorst's force attacking the guards, all to buy them enough time to snatch the prisoners off the sand.

Jake stood up and leaned over the rail. Marika, Pindor, and Bach'uuk were running across the sand. They carried cudgels and spears. Kady, armed with her sword, helped a limping Shaduf flee in the opposite direction.

Jake searched the sand, trying to see what frightened them. But the field was empty. Had the ship's arrival scared them, too? Jake leaned farther out. But none of his friends were even staring up. Instead they were staring
down
.

As Jake watched, a large fin crested out of the sand.

“Sand shark,” Nefertiti exclaimed. “With skin like stone, it's almost impossible to kill.”

Jake spotted two more fins circling the obelisk.

“We'll get your friends,” Djer said, and signaled to Horus.

A piercing whistle followed. The skyriders leaped over the railing and dove toward the arena. They plummeted for a breath, then the wings snapped wide and flames burst from their packs, turning hang gliders into one-man jets.

Each skyrider dove toward one of the prisoners.

But would they get there in time?

The dorsal fin of the shark disappeared under the sand as the creature neared the fleeing trio. His friends, sensing the attack, split apart and fled in different directions just as the sand opened up into a maw of teeth. The shark shot up, exposing most of its snakelike body, then dropped back again and slithered underground.

Still, Jake got a good look. The monster was a cross between a snake and some reptilian fish. It was also eyeless—just teeth, muscle, and armored skin: the perfect desert hunter.

One of skyriders dove and grabbed Pindor by his shoulders, pulling him off his feet and up in the air. Another managed to snatch Bach'uuk by an arm. The pair of riders shot straight up with their prizes.

A third raced low across the sand toward Marika; but before he could reach her, another shark burst out of the sand, drawn perhaps by the heat of the rider's flame. The flyer tried to get out of the way, but teeth snapped onto one wing. The skyrider crashed to the sand and tumbled end over end in a wash of flame and broken struts. He hit the stony wall of the arena hard and lay still.

Jake clutched, white knuckled, to the rail.

Marika continued to flee, clearly trying to make it to Kady and Shaduf; but they were on the opposite side of the arena. A pair of skyriders missed their first pass at Kady and Shaduf, who leaped away when two sharks came at them from opposite sides.

The sand exploded as the two hungry predators collided and began to fight.

Kady and Shaduf crawled across the sand, trying to escape.

Then a new problem arose.

Guards sprouted all around the arena, positioned on the lower stands.

Bows were raised.

The archers fired at the ship, at the skyriders. One bolt struck Shaduf in the leg, pinning him to the sand.
Scenting fresh blood, the pair of fighting sharks turned toward the old man.

A skyrider dove through a volley of arrows and grabbed Kady by the collar of her shirt and hauled her up.

“Let me go!” she screamed, twisting, plainly wanting to help Shaduf.

She got her wish. An arrow struck the skyrider's jet pack. It burst into flames, blasting them both back to the sand. The skyrider quickly shed his wings, patting flames from the seat of his pants.

Kady scrabbled for her fallen sword, grabbed it, and ran for Shaduf.

The rider went to follow her, but the ground opened beneath him. With a scream, he was yanked underground by a shark.

The entire plan was falling to pieces. Even the skyriders with Pindor and Bach'uuk could not reach the ship because of the volley of arrows.

“Bring us lower!” Horus cried out from the stern, where he manned the ship's rudder. “Drop lines over the sides!”

The roar of the bellows died, and the great ship's shadow fell over the arena as it sank until its lower keel scraped the tip of the obelisk.

Sailors tossed ropes while others fired at the archers, using everything on hand, including the fire gourds that exploded amid the bowmen. By now, everyone had fled the stadium, trampling in a mad rush to escape the fiery
battle. Several archers fell onto the sand, thrashing amid a wash of flames.