Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull Page A

up the steps. He had hurt one hand trying to catch himself, and a shoulder and knee had taken harsh blows, but there was no time to really recognize the pain.
    The stairway seemed longer going up than coming down. His thighs burned with exertion. The stairway rumbled and then quaked. Cole could hear stones falling.
    He considered using his sword to climb faster, but since the stairway spiraled, he could never point it very far ahead, and little leaps didn’t seem worth the risk of falling. Beyond the top of the stairs, Cole tried to retrace the route to the courtyard. The dim corridors all looked alike, and soon he knew he had lost his way. He stayed at a full sprint, hoping that he wasn’t going in circles. The castle continued to shake in response to an ominous rumble in the foundation.
    Finally Cole saw a promising door at the end of a hall upahead. It was not where he had entered, but it opened onto the courtyard. The lifeboat was in the air at the far side, ladder still dangling.
    “I need out!” Cole screamed, rushing forward. The lifeboat banked and came his way.
    Cole considered using the sword, but he would have to leap across almost the whole courtyard. He wasn’t sure if it would pull him that far and wasn’t sure he could catch hold of the ladder if it did. Instead he held the Jumping Sword ready and ran hard.
    As the lifeboat came closer, the enormous scorpipede erupted from the ground between them, its shiny black body stretching skyward like a fairy-tale beanstalk, multiple sets of pincers grasping toward the little skycraft. Huge blocks of stone fountained like confetti and crashed down in all directions. Cole dodged a large one before the quaking ground dropped him to his knees.
    For a moment the bulk of the creature completely obscured the lifeboat. Gritty dust hung in the air. A screeching roar saturated Cole’s eardrums. By the time Cole saw the lifeboat again, it was curving up and away from the castle, passing beyond the wall, well out of jumping range.
    He had missed his ride.
    A lonely sense of doom smothered him.
    His fate was sealed.
    The towering scorpipede swiveled, then started to curl back on itself in Cole’s direction. Relatively small mouthparts clicked open and closed, eager little mandibles. The body continued to emerge from the hole it had created.Last would come the tail and the evil stinger.
    From high above, an arrow the size of a javelin lanced down. It hit the glossy carapace and rebounded harmlessly. The attack did no damage, but the scorpipede reared back in that direction to investigate.
    The oversized arrow must have come from the ballista aboard the Domingo . They were still trying to help him!
    Cole scrambled to his feet. Maybe the lifeboat would come back around. He had to buy himself time. Nobody would be able to save him if he let fifty tons of ugly mash him into paste.
    His only hope was the Jumping Sword. He scanned the courtyard, then noticed the balconies jutting from a pair of the castle’s tallest towers.
    With another ear-rending screech, the scorpipede swung back his way. Cole pointed his sword toward some bushes at the base of one of the towers and shouted, “Away!”
    He was attempting to jump farther than his previous leap. As the sword pulled him forward, the acceleration took his breath away. He skimmed over the ground at a speed that should have led to death by road rash, but again the sword slowed somewhat at the end. His feet hit the ground an instant before his momentum heaved him into a bush.
    After coming to rest, Cole realized that he was uninjured. Twigs snapped and leaves rustled as he extracted himself from the foliage. He got to his feet in time to see the tail of the scorpipede slither out of the hole and then curve up into the air, poised to sting. The monster scuttled his way.
    Cole aimed his sword at a balcony high above him. If he failed to reach it, the fall would surely kill him. “Away!”
    He had only jumped low before. This time he