through the moving traffic, their blades puncturing the tyres and chewing the metal of every vehicle they passed. Horns blared, people screamed, more alarms joined in the chorus, but it was all just background noise to the clattering of the horse’s hooves.
Drake turned in the saddle. “They’re still coming!” he cried, though his voice was almost lost to the wind.
War nodded. “Aye.”
“What do we do?”
A hesitation. “Can you ride?”
“What... you mean ride a horse?”
“Naw, a bike,” War spat. “Aye, a horse.”
Drake shook his head. “No.”
“Well, that’s just bloody marvellous,” War muttered. “A horseman that cannae ride a horse.”
“What? I can’t hear you, it’s too noisy!”
“Doesn’t matter,” War said more loudly. “Can you hold a rope?”
Brakes screeched behind them, followed by the crunch of metal colliding with other metal.
“What kind of question’s that? Of course I can hold a rope.”
War’s hand reached back over his shoulder and plucked the boy from the saddle. Drake barely had time to realise what was happening before he was plonked down again. He recoiled in the force of the sudden wind. He was in front of War now, the big man’s body no longer shielding him. A rein was pressed into Drake’s hands. He heard the shhnnk of a sword being drawn from a sheath. “Good,” War intoned. “Hold that, and for God’s sake don’t—”
The end of the sentence was lost as War rolled sideways off the horse’s back. He hit the ground shoulder-first, rolled on the tarmac, then sprang to his feet, his broadsword raised and ready.
Drake felt himself sliding in the saddle and clutched the reins tightly to his chest. “Don’t what?” he cried. “Don’t what?”
But War was too far away to hear. He stood his ground before the spinning orbs, eyes flitting from one to the other. They crisscrossed along the street, moving over, around and occasionally through the now stationary traffic.
“Ye want some?” the giant growled, twirling his sword round in his right hand. “Come get some.”
The blades screamed through the air. One of the spheres raced ahead, closing in for the kill. War planted his size nineteens, put his weight on his front leg, and swung. The first ball exploded before the sword could connect. A hail of razor-sharp metal barbs burst forth. They rattled against War’s armour and dug into the few exposed patches of his leathery skin.
He gave a low grunt as the hooks tore into his flesh, but followed through with his swing. The sword whistled through the space the first orb should’ve been occupying, then arced round in a full circle. He spun on the spot, bringing the blade back round, directly into the path of the second sphere.
The ball dipped sharply, dodging the sword and clattering against the ground beside War. He brought up a foot, slammed it down with a ker-ack, but the sphere was past him. It bounced twice, like a basketball, then spluttered back into the air. With blades whirring, it streaked off after the horse, and the boy on the horse’s back.
“Aw,” grimaced War. He pulled the first of the hooks from his arm and watched the ball rocketing away. “Bugger.”
Drake bounced violently in the saddle, his knuckles white on the reins, his face fixed in a mask of terror. The horse’s breath snorted in and out through its wide, flared nostrils, slow and steady, as if even this frenzied pace was taking no effort to maintain.
“Slow down!” he wailed. “Whoa! Stop! Whatever it is you do!”
Drake hadn’t seen War’s encounter with the armoured spheres, but that didn’t matter. They were a distant memory now, a distant threat. The threat of falling off and splattering like an egg against the ground – that one was much more pressing.
The horse thundered on, muscles moving beneath its ruby flanks, its mane blazing like an inferno. They were almost at the end of the street now, surely moving far too fast to take the ninety-degree bend that was racing up to meet them. A row of shops lined the road dead ahead. Drake could see himself reflected in the glass fronts, four identical versions of himself on four identical horses, all about to be caught up in the same identical crash.
“Look. Building!” Drake cried, leaning down and shouting directly into the horse’s ear. The ear flicked, as if swatting away a fly, but the horse’s gallop didn’t falter. “Come on,” he begged. He bounced backwards in the saddle and gave a sharp yank on the reins. “We need to—”
With a whinny, the horse leaped