A piercing screech cut through the air between the two windriders. Heka was screaming from the bow of the royal barge. Her call came echoing back—from the storm clouds, from a thousand throats.

“Harpies!” Skymaster Horus boomed out.

Jake raised his spyglass toward the storm. As the view zoomed to him, he saw that the captain was right. The sky was packed with the churning, writhing bodies of thousands of beastly creatures. The witch had given a clarion call to the harpy horde, drawing them out of their nesting grounds in the Great Wind.

What had Marika called the witch?

A grakyl brood queen.

Jake stared at the storm rolling toward them, screeching for blood. Like a queen bee, Heka had summoned her hive to battle.

Jake turned to see the royal barge closing in behind them.

Pindor’s eyes shone with fear, but he was never one to miss a clever bit of strategy. “It was a trap all along,” he said. “And we flew right into it. They’ve boxed us against the Flame Forest. There’s nowhere we can go. Death lies in every direction.”

“Maybe not,” Jake said. He ran toward Horus, leading the others.

Busy rallying his crew, the skymaster frowned as Jake confronted him. “What do you want?”

“I think I know a way to escape this noose.”

Horus was ready to wave Jake away, but Shaduf urged patience. “Hear the boy out.”

As Jake explained his idea, the doubtful look on the skymaster’s face changed to horror.

“That’s pure madness!” Horus said.

Shaduf, already half mad, only grinned.

Politor nodded. “It might work. And it’s not like we have many options.”

Outnumbered, Horus stared to either side of the ship. The Flame Forest was on one side, the storm of harpies on the other and out in front. The royal barge had closed in behind.

The skymaster finally sighed, recognizing the grimness of their situation. He took a deep breath and bellowed to the crew: “Ready to hard port!”

The faces of the crew turned to him as if he’d gone crazy. All that lay in that direction was the Flame Forest.

“You heard me! On my mark! Go!”

The crew snapped to action, cranking wildly on their winches. Cables pulled hard, and the Breath of Shu turned sharply to the left, tipping up on one wing. Jake and his friends clutched the rail. For a moment, he was staring straight down at the desert. A flutter of vertigo made him woozy.

Then the ship’s keel evened out, and the world righted itself.

Shaduf pointed to the front of the boat. “Maybe you’d better go to the bow, get yourselves as far from the flames as possible.”

Jake recognized the wisdom of his words. “Let’s go.”

He and his friends fled down the stairs and across the lower middeck. They passed crew members hauling barrel after barrel of the ruby-red fire gourds toward the rear of the ship. His plan had to work, or Jake had just doomed the ship to a fiery end.