spills, drama, adventure. That’s what being a horseman should be about, not sitting in a shed for a thousand years playing Snap. I should have ended the world centuries ago.”
“You’re not going to end the world. We stopped you,” Drake reminded him.
“Oh, come on, Drake, you think I didn’t have a back-up plan?” He flexed the hydraulic muscles of the metal suit. “Mystical battle armour,” he crowed. “What do you think? Does everything the big robot did, but in an all-new slimline package. You were right, the giant robot was a little on the old-fashioned side, but this? This is the future.”
“I’ll tear it to pieces, with you inside.”
“Them’s fighting words!” Mr Franks laughed. With one robotic arm he reached round to his back. A long, loosely wrapped bundle of blue polythene landed on the ground at Drake’s feet. “So, let’s do this properly. Let’s settle it. A fight,” he beamed, “to the Death.”
Not taking his eyes off the teacher, Drake unfolded the bundle. A long-handled scythe rolled out. Its blade looked brand new, but Drake somehow sensed that the weapon was as old as time itself.
“So, you’re the one who took it.”
“The Deathblade,” Mr Franks announced. “Pick it up. Embrace your destiny. And then, I’m going to kill –” he breathed in deeply through his nose – “everyone.”
The wooden handle vibrated gently beneath Drake’s grip as he hoisted the Deathblade up. It stood taller than he did, but it felt almost weightless in his hands.
“Not if I kill you first,” Drake said.
“Man, I love this! It’s so... exciting!” Mr Franks cackled. “OK then, Drake, try to kill me. Try to save your girlfriend,” he said. With a click of his heels, two compact jet-engines unfolded from the backs of his metal-clad legs. “Catch me if you can!”
With a roar from his rocket-boots, Mr Franks propelled himself vertically upwards towards the clouds far, far overhead.
Drake didn’t stop to think. His hand was moving before his brain had fully realised what was happening. He curled his thumb and index finger. He put them in his mouth, and he whistled. Finally, he whistled, long and shrill and loud.
And he heard, as it were, the noise of thunder.
THE SONIC BOOM whipped up the air around Drake. He didn’t flinch, not even when the horse tore from the air directly in front of him.
Its front hooves came down hard on the ground, but they didn’t make a sound. Its back hooves also fell silently on to the tarmac surface of the road. The horse reared up on to its hind legs, and Drake realised it was bigger than even War’s mighty steed.
War had called it ‘the pale horse’, and it was pale, but not in the way Drake had been expecting. It wasn’t so much pale in terms of colour, as pale in terms of solidity. Light flowed through it, bending and warping as if passing through a crystal.
The animal wasn’t completely transparent, though. Swirls of living white heaved deep beneath its glassy skin, forming patterns that shifted and whirled every time it moved. When it stood still, as it did now, it could be mistaken for an ice sculpture.
There was no saddle on the horse’s back, and there were no reins with which to hold on. Neither of those things made Drake hesitate. In one leap he was sitting on the animal’s broad back, the Deathblade clutched in his right hand.
He had expected the horse to be cold, like ice, but it felt neither cold nor warm beneath him. It just felt... there.
Drake didn’t give the horse any command. He didn’t say anything to make it take to the air. He just thought the instruction and the horse obeyed. Up, he thought, and up the horse went, moving swiftly and silently in a steep uphill curve.
The faster the horse moved, the less tangible it became. It no longer resembled an ice sculpture. Now it was a horse-shaped cloud, a silvery vapour trail billowing out in its wake.
Up it went, higher and higher, until the ground was little more than a distant memory. They were running almost straight up now, but Drake was having no problem staying on the horse’s back, despite the oncoming wind and gravity’s insistent pull. It was as if he and the horse were one creature, inseparable until he decided otherwise.
Over the howling of the wind, Drake heard another sound. The horse banked right, just as the roar of engines filled the air. The robot battle armour whistled by them,