into the air. Drake gripped with his legs and wrapped the reins round his wrist and braced himself for another jarring impact.
It never came.
“Stop,” Drake whimpered, as the ground fell away and the horse’s hooves began to clatter across the wide-open sky.
A long way back along the street, War plucked the last of the barbs from his skin as he watched his horse take to the air. Even there, a hundred or more metres away, he could hear the boy’s panicked screams.
War shook his head. “I told him,” he sighed, sliding his sword back into its sheath. “What did I tell him? For God’s sake, don’t pull back on the reins.”
Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down. The words repeated in Drake’s head like a mantra. Looking down would be stupid. Looking down would be insane.
Drake looked down.
Aaaaaah, screamed his brain. Aaaaaaaaaaah!
The town spread out below him like a map. The streets, the cars, the houses – they were all tiny, and getting tinier by the second as the horse climbed steadily higher.
The rushing of the headwind stole Drake’s breath away. The horse’s hooves clip-clopped noisily on thin air. Somewhere, far off to their left, a passenger on a passing aeroplane watched the horse running across the sky, took a long, hard look at his complimentary drink, then slowly sat it down on the fold-away tray.
And behind them, unnoticed, a spinning ball of techno-magic mumbo jumbo tore across the sky.
“D-down,” Drake whimpered. “Down, boy.”
The horse tossed its head back and shook its fiery mane. It banked steeply upwards, until it was almost running vertically. Drake screamed as he slid backwards off the saddle. The reins, still wrapped round his wrists, jerked tight and he found himself dangling helplessly, his legs bicycling in mid-air.
With a snort, the horse turned sharply right and began to race towards the distant ground. Drake was flicked upwards, before gravity thudded him back down into the saddle. He felt the upsurge of wind and heard the high-pitched whine of the sphere as it soared past him, tumbling end over end.
The ball curved like a boomerang, punched through a fluffy white cloud, then rejoined the chase. Up here, with nothing to get in its way, the ball was fast. It began to close the gap almost at once. Even over the roaring of the wind, Drake could hear the whirring of the blades. He remembered the sting of the cut on his cheek. Then he imagined it a thousand times worse.
He clenched his legs round the horse’s broad back and ducked down low in the saddle. “Yah!” he cried, flicking the reins just as War had done. “Ya-aaaaaaaaaaah!”
The world went blurry round the edges. For the second time in sixty seconds, Drake was saved by the reins round his wrist as he was thrown backwards off the saddle. Still the horse galloped faster, until it was dragging Drake along, his legs stretched out behind him.
“Not yah,” he cried. “I’ve changed my mind. Not yah! Not yah! ”
The animal gave a long, loud whinny. It sounded, Drake thought, suspiciously like a laugh.
The roar of gunfire erupted behind them. The horse banked sharply to the right and something whistled past Drake’s head. Several somethings. He glanced back and caught a glimpse of a gun barrel poking out from within the sphere.
“Yes yah. Definitely yah!” Drake cried. “Yah, yah, yah!”
Fire spat from the barrel of the gun. The horse went into freefall and Drake felt the bullets streak by just above him. He looked down to find the ground racing up. He’d barely begun to scream when the horse levelled off, clattering him back down into the saddle.
They were racing just a few metres above an open field now, kilometres outside the town. A road ran alongside them a kilometre or so to the left. Down on the right, a narrow river meandered towards an old stone bridge.
Twisting in the seat, Drake searched the sky. The ball was nowhere to be seen. “Where did it go? Did you see it?” he cried. He hesitated, then added, “Why am I asking a horse? I mean, it’s not like you can understand what I’m saying.” Another pause. “You can’t understand what I’m saying, can you?”
The horse shook its head.
“Good,” said Drake. “That would’ve just been too weir— Look out ! ”
The sphere rose up from behind the bridge, spraying bullets in a wide horizontal arc. The horse neighed loudly, startled by the gunfire. Stumbling, it plunged into the river. The