Jake risked a glance to Nefertiti, who stood over the body of the huge grakyl. She’d speared it through an eye. Horus sat against the rail, cradling a broken arm, his face slashed by claws, still dazed.
Kady came running up, her fencing sword in hand. “Hold the ship steady, Jake! Bach’uuk and Pindor are dropping a rope to Mari!”
Jake wanted to run and help, but he dared not abandon his hold on the rudder. With the keel even, men found their footing and fought on. Steps away, Kady and Nefertiti fought side by side to hold the horde back from Jake so he could keep the ship flying straight.
Eventually the grakyl got the message. Like a ship passing out of a squall, the war suddenly ended. The surviving beasts swooped and cartwheeled away.
Horus’s broken arm was in a crude sling made from his own cloak, but he’d regained enough of his rattled senses to man his post again. The skymaster patted Jake on the shoulder, thanking him, and took over.
Relieved of duty, Jake ran and leaped off the steps. He reached Pindor and Bach’uuk in time to see them grab Marika’s arms and haul the girl over the rail.
The four friends all slumped to the deck.
“Don’t do that again,” Pindor scolded her.
Marika elbowed him. “I’m not planning on it!”
* * *
A half hour later, it was hard to say that any battle had taken place. The corpses of the beasts were tossed overboard, the injured taken down below, and the decks washed clean. Only a few stains and the snapped balloon tether gave any indication of the bloody fight.
During the cleanup, Jake and his friends had returned to their spots at the front of the boat. But the crew’s attitude toward them had changed. Sailors nodded and waved. Fresh water was brought to them, along with platters of something that looked like cheese but was sweeter and chewier.
Even Nefertiti spent time with Kady on the middeck, examining her sword. The two talked with much gesturing. Jake caught glimpses of a smile on the princess’s lips.
Pindor sat cross-legged next to Jake, his chin resting on his knuckles as he watched the two girls.
Standing a step away, Bach’uuk dug a broken claw from the railing. Jake pictured again the grakyl leering down at him before being ripped away by an aerial hook.
Bach’uuk came over and squatted beside Jake and Marika, then placed the claw on the deck. “Not a grakyl.”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“None had swords. Just claws.” Bach’uuk stared at Jake with his sharp blue eyes and nudged the broken bit he’d dug out. “And teeth.”
Marika scooted closer. “He’s right. None of them had any weapons. And these beasts certainly didn’t look exactly like the grakyl back home.”
“They looked like them to me.”
Marika shook her head. “Did you not see how gnarled their limbs were? Also their heads were too small, their ears too long. These attackers looked both smaller and more beastlike.”
Jake remembered those yellow eyes locking on to his, shining with bloodlust and hunger—and nothing else. Back in Calypsos, the grakyl’s eyes and faces had shone with a vicious intelligence, nearly humanlike. He’d seen none of that here. The attack on the windriders had been savage, ill planned.
Marika offered an explanation. “Maybe the grakyl started out as these beasts. Maybe the Skull King was sniffing around these lands and discovered them. Then Kalverum Rex took their forms and changed them, twisted them with his bloodstone alchemies, forged their flesh into his monstrous army.”
Jake’s stomach churned sickeningly. “If these beasts aren’t grakyl, then what are they?”
The answer came from behind him. “We call them harpies.” Jake turned to find Nefertiti standing with Kady. “Hundreds of years ago, one of our slave tribes gave them that name. Said the winged beasts matched stories from their own land: great stinking, winged creatures that were half human.”
Jake nodded, recognizing the name. According to Greek mythology, the Harpyiai—or Harpies—were born from a union of Achilles’s mare and the god of the West Wind. It’s no wonder that some Lost Tribe of Greeks picked that name for the winged creatures here.
“They nest within the Great Wind,” Nefertiti continued. “They make their home inside that endless howling storm. We seldom see flocks so far from the Great Wind.”
“What’s this Great Wind you keep talking about?” Jake asked.
Nefertiti looked at him as if he were stupid, then sighed. She pointed to the horizon, toward that haziness blurring the place where sky and land met.
“See that mighty sandstorm? It circles the lands of Deshret. No one can pass through that storm without having their flesh scoured from their bones. One ship tried to sail over it, but it was broken apart and cast back into the desert. You five are the first to come through in hundreds of years.”
“Lucky us,” Pindor mumbled.
So the storm must be some sort of barrier, Jake thought.
He pictured the volcanic rim that enclosed the valley of Calypsos and the protective shield generated by the great Temple of Kukulkan. Was this never-ending storm another form of that? A barrier around these people’s homes to protect them? But if so, that meant something had to be generating such a force, along with supplying the people here with the All-World tongue.
But what?
Nefertiti continued, “Within the Great Wind lay the ruins of our original home, a majestic city named Ankh Tawy. We were driven into these lands as the winds rose. Six generations ago. Our loremasters keep the memory alive in the Temple of Time. Pictures, carvings, sculptures. The bits of Ankh Tawy recovered before the winds rose. We preserve them for eternity.”
Like some sort of museum.
Jake had to get a look inside that place.
Marika spoke. “Can you tell us more about what happened? How Ankh Tawy was destroyed?”
Anger grew in Nefertiti’s voice. “Outlanders came to us, of a most strange sort. They disturbed the sleeping Sphinx. It woke in fury and howled out the Great Winds, driving us from our homes.” Her eyes sparked, going hard. “They were travelers from Calypsos.”
“I’ve never heard of such a story,” Marika insisted. “We know nothing about any of this.”
Nefertiti looked down her nose at Marika. “That is what we will discover in Ka-Tor. The masters of the Blood of Ka will get the truth from you.”
A horn blared under Jake’s feet, cutting off their conversation. Then a moment later, another horn answered from far away, sounding like an echo.