Читать книгу Afterworlds: The 13th Horseman - Barry Hutchison - Страница 15

DRAKE DUCKED, KEEPING his head behind War’s as they crashed through the hole in the wall and out into the car park. War took two big paces, then jumped, clearing a waist-high wall with ease. The ground quaked when he touched down on the other side, and Drake had to kick frantically until he found a foothold on the giant’s back.

War scanned the car park, his eyes flitting from vehicle to vehicle. Behind them, the floating spheres came in single file through the gap. Drake craned his neck to see them. They were back to moving slowly, creeping cautiously across the tarmac, weaving between the parked cars. Their blades spun, but they were hanging back, as if aware of the danger War posed.

“They’re getting closer,” Drake warned. “Shouldn’t we be running? What are you doing?”

“Trying to remember where I parked,” War muttered. His gaze swept across the rows of vehicles.

“What? You mean... you’ve got a car?”

War shrugged. The sharp movement almost made Drake lose his grip. “Not exactly,” he said. He ran up the bonnet of the closest car and thudded on to the roof. The metal dented where his feet slammed down, and an alarm began to wail in complaint.

The school minibus was parked right next to the car. War raised his arms and placed his palms flat against the minibus roof. With a grunt of effort, he pulled them both up on to it.

“Aha!” he said, looking down. “There you are.”

Drake heaved himself high enough to look over War’s shoulder. A horse stood on the other side of the minibus. But a horse like none Drake had ever seen.

It was bigger than a normal horse, but that was only to be expected. War, after all, was bigger than a normal man. Much, much bigger.

The horse’s skin was a bright, brilliant red, that shone like a ruby in the mid-morning sun. Its mane and tail were shades of orange and yellow. They danced like fire when the horse turned towards the minibus roof.

A worn leather saddle was slung across the horse’s wide expanse of back. War leaped from the roof and landed expertly astride the saddle. The horse gave a loud snort, but otherwise didn’t react to the sudden weight on its back. The spheres did react, though. They swooshed forward, suddenly appearing at either end of the minibus, their blades spinning into overdrive.

“Yah!” War roared, giving the horse’s reins a flick. It sprang into action, clearing the next parked car from a standing start. The car behind it wasn’t so lucky. Its roof caved in, shattering the windows and spraying glass in all directions.

The impact was too much for Drake. His grip slipped, and he found himself sliding down War’s back. War shifted his weight forward, making room for Drake to land on the saddle.

“I told you not to let go,” War said.

“Well... sorry.”

“Don’t do it again.”

War’s shoulder armour was held on by two thick leather straps. Drake caught hold of them just as the horse bounded forward again. It cleared the whole row of cars this time, landing on the road. The road surface cracked beneath its hooves, but there was no stopping it now. With another leap it cleared the low wall that surrounded the car park, and they were out on the open road, leaving the school behind.

Another alarm squealed. Drake looked back to see the spheres slicing through the air after them, their blades tearing through everything in their path. Four cars, five, fell apart like broken toys. The wall became bricks, the bricks became dust, and the balls of death were after them once again.

The horse galloped along the road, Drake’s teeth rattling in his head with each thunderous footstep. The ground whizzed by, a speeding blur of grey. Up ahead, a car’s rear lights flashed red as its brakes began to squeal. Drake caught a glimpse of the driver’s wide eyes in the rear-view mirror, before the horse was leaping again, soaring over the car then resuming its run on the other side.

“That... that was incredible,” Drake said.

“That? That was nothing,” War told him. His beard was being blown backwards over his shoulder. Drake had to lean to the left to avoid swallowing the thing. As he shifted in the saddle, he saw the traffic lights looming ahead. They were on red. A steady stream of traffic flowed across the street just beyond them. War flicked the reins. “Watch this!”

Drake could see the faces of every passenger on the bus. They wore matching expressions of amazement as they watched the horse hurl itself into the sky. Its hooves skitted across the flat metal roof, showering the street with sparks. And then it was plunging back towards the ground, and Drake could feel his stomach being tossed up somewhere around his ears. The landing bounced him out of the saddle. He opened his mouth to scream, before War’s hand wrapped round his ankle and pulled him back down.

“Thanks,” he croaked.

“No bother.”

The spheres sliced 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 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.”