"Did you... Did you just whistle for thunder?" Drake asked.
"Only G.o.ds can make thunder," War told him. "I just whistled for him."
"Who?" Drake asked, before a horse leaped from thin air and sailed over his head. He turned and watched it gallop across the field for a few hundred metres, gradually slowing down. Shortly before it slowed to a full stop, it turned and began cantering back towards them. Drake watched its mane dance like fire in the afternoon sun.
"Oh, great," he muttered, as the red horse clopped closer. "You again."
Another piercing whistle sent him ducking for cover. He looked up to see Pestilence take both pinkie fingers out of his mouth.
"Seriously, will you please give me some warning before you do that?" Drake cried, but another boom of thunder drowned him out before the sentence was even half finished.
This time Drake was ready for the wind. He ducked his head and angled his body to avoid being shoved back. When he looked up, the front half of a white horse was slouching towards him. The back half followed a moment later. Drake saw the air round the horse ripple, as if the world itself had parted, just for a moment, to let the animal through.
The horse kept walking until it reached Pestilence. "You can pat him, if you like," Pest said encouragingly.
Drake looked up at the horse. It was almost as big as War"s. Whereas the red horse looked like it should be put on display by an art gallery, though, this one looked like it should be put down by a vet.
Weeping sores dotted the horse"s flanks, and a dark crimson liquid dripped from within its mouth and round its eyes. Its tail and mane were ragged and filthy. As it walked, Drake could see every one of its ribs beneath its dry, shrivelled skin.
The horse whinnied loudly, but the whinny became a cough and the cough, eventually, became a raspy wheeze. The animal limped over to stand beside War"s horse, which promptly took two paces in the opposite direction.
"Um... is your horse OK?" Drake asked, as diplomatically as he could. "It looks a bit, sort of, under the weather."
"Don"t let his appearance fool you," Pestilence said. "He"s fit as a fiddle, that one. Aren"t you, love?"
The horse neighed, retched, then vomited on to the gra.s.s. "Fit as a fiddle," Pestilence repeated, somewhat less confidently.
"Now it"s your turn," War said.
"My turn for what?"
"Summon your steed. Call forth the pale horse," War told him.
Drake nodded uncertainly. "How do I do that?"
"You whistle," snapped War, whose patience was rapidly approaching wafer-thinness. "Like we did."
"I can"t whistle."
War stared. A breeze blew. Pest"s horse suffered spectacular diarrhoea.
"What did you say?"
"I said I can"t whistle. Is that a problem?"
War"s teeth clamped together until there was barely room for the words to escape. "Yes," he growled. "That"s a problem. If you can"t whistle, how can you call your horse?"
"I dunno, can"t I just shout or something?"
"And what would you shout, exactly?"
"Sort of, *Here, horsey horsey," or something," Drake suggested. "Would that work?"
War shook his head. "No," he said, in a voice like two bricks rubbing together. "That wouldn"t work."
"Can you try whistling?" Pestilence asked. "You just sort of stick your fingers in your mouth and blow. It"s not that difficult."
"I"ve tried before," Drake said. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and blew, as Pest had suggested. What came out sounded almost exactly like the white horse"s last bowel movement. "See? Can"t do it."
"No, you can"t, can you?" Pest said glumly.
"I can whistle normally. A bit," Drake said. He pursed his lips together and made a warbly, high-pitched squeak. "That any use?"
"Oh, aye, that"ll be very handy if we ever need to summon a budgie," War spat.
"Keep practising and it"ll come," Pestilence said encouragingly.
"And what do you suggest we do in the meantime?" War asked.
Pestilence looked up and squinted in the glare of the sun. "It"s a lovely day," he said brightly. "What"s say we go for a ride?"
THE GROUND ROLLED by in a blur beneath the horse"s hooves. Despite appearances, Pestilence"s horse was strong. It galloped across the fields and bounded over fences, matching the pace of War"s mount without any sign of difficulty.
On its back, Pestilence clutched the reins. Drake sat behind him, holding on to a handle at the rear of the saddle, and silently praying that the horse wouldn"t go airborne.
"You OK back there?" Pest asked.
"Well, I haven"t fallen off yet," Drake replied.
Pestilence smiled. "That"s a good start." He was holding the reins with one hand. With the other, he was applying a thick white cream to his face. "Got to put this stuff on or I"ll blister something terrible in this sun," he explained. "I got so burned last time I looked like I"d been bobbing for chips."
"Shouldn"t you, you know, see a doctor?" Drake asked him.
"For sunburn?"
"For everything. It"s just, you seem to have a few medical... issues."
The horse leaped over a small stone wall. Pestilence waited for it to touch back down before he replied. "Comes with the job, don"t it? Pestilence means plague and disease and viruses and stuff. That"s me all over, that. And it"s not exactly a barrel of laughs, let me tell you."
"Is that why you wear the gloves and stuff? So you can try and avoid catching germs?"
"More the other way round," Pest explained. "I can"t catch anything from humans, but there"s no saying what they might catch from me."
Drake subtly slid himself further back in the seat. "Relax," Pest laughed. "You"re not human any more."
"What? Well, what am I, then?"
"You"re a Horseman of the Apocalypse, of course." Pestilence paused a moment, letting this information sink in. "Well, for the next ninety days, anyway."
"What happens after ninety days?" Drake asked.
Pestilence smiled, but Drake couldn"t see it. "You"re going to quit, remember?"
"Oh, yeah. So I am," Drake nodded. "Is Famine going to be OK?"
"Hmm? Oh, he"ll be fine. Just over-exerted himself a bit. Best to let him sleep it off."
Up ahead, War"s horse cleared a five-metre-wide stream in a single leap. Pest slipped his suncream into his jacket pocket and gave the reins a flick. Drake felt the ground fall away as the horse jumped. It seemed to hang in mid-air for several seconds, before landing on the opposite bank with a jarring jolt.
"What"s my horse like?" Drake asked. He had to admit, he was a little disappointed he hadn"t been able to summon it.
"No idea," Pestilence replied. "Every Death has had a different horse. Yours doesn"t exist yet. It won"t exist until you summon it."
"War keeps saying I"m the rider on the pale horse, though."
"Just a Bible quotation," Pest shrugged. "I think the first Death"s horse was a sort of sickly green colour, but there"s been all sorts since then. Death Eight"s horse was made of living magma. Used to ruin his trousers whenever he sat on it." Pest sighed sadly. "No wonder the poor beggar killed himself. The goldfish had a lime-green one, if I remember right."
"The goldfish had a horse?" Drake gaped. "What, you mean even it could whistle?"
"After a fashion," Pest said. "If you squeezed it hard enough."
"You didn"t!"
"Of course the goldfish didn"t have a horse," laughed the horseman. "It borrowed mine. But anyway, the point is your horse might be pale, or it might be bright purple, we"ll just have to wait and see. War just likes his Bible quotes."
"I don"t think he likes me," Drake said.
There was a lengthy pause before Pestilence spoke again. "He doesn"t like anyone. Not really. And he"s... not convinced you"re a suitable choice for Death."
"And what do you think?"
"I think we could"ve done a lot worse."
"Thanks," Drake said. "But what if he"s right? What if there"s been a mistake? Maybe I"m not supposed to be Death."
"The powers that be don"t make mistakes," Pest a.s.sured him.
"What about the goldfish?"
"The powers that be don"t make mistakes very often. That was a one-off."
Drake stayed quiet for a while after that. The horses galloped across the wide fields, racing up the hills and thundering down the dales. Despite the blinding speed and the nagging worry that he could fall off at any moment, Drake actually found himself enjoying the journey.
A suspicion had been nagging at him for the past few hours, though, and Pestilence had been pretty forthcoming with information so far.
"The old Death," he said. "Death Nine. What did he look like?"
"A sort of big, black wraith figure. Like a living version of the Robe of Sorrows, if you can imagine such a thing."
"Oh, right," said Drake, a little disappointed. "Not a skinny old man with a big hooked nose, then?"
"Ah, you mean what did he look like in human form?" Pest asked. "Dark and sinister, probably, but that"s just a guess. We never got to see him. He wasn"t human when he started."
"What was he?"
"Just an ominous black shape, really. We"ve had a few Deaths like that. G.o.d knows where they get them."
"But he definitely turned human when he left?" Drake asked.
"Oh, yes. That"s in the contract, that. Terminate the agreement in any way and you"ll take human form, regardless of what form you might"ve been to begin with."
"War said that he could do it. The old Death, I mean. That he could bring on Armageddon."
Pestilence spoke hesitantly. "He said he might be able to do it, but only if he"d planned things well in advance."
"The robotic demon in the Junk Room, and the sphere things at school," Drake said quietly. "They must"ve been planned in advance, right?"
"Yes," Pest admitted. "I"d think they must have."
"How will we know if he does do it?"
"We"ll get a phone call. And, of course, there"ll be signs."
"What kind of signs?" asked Drake.
Pest shrugged. "Oh, the usual. Earthquakes. Raining blood. Plagues of locusts. That sort of thing."
He gave another flick of the reins and the horse bounded over the remains of an old stone cottage.
"They"ve got this book, see? Them upstairs. The Book of Everything. It tells them... well, it tells them everything, like you might expect. But most importantly, as far as we"re concerned, it tells them when the end of the world is coming, so they can start rolling out the signs. It"s a pretty foolproof system."
War"s horse slowed to a stop and the giant leaped down on to the gra.s.s. Pest brought his own horse to a halt beside him. The animal broke wind loudly.
"Ooh, better out than in!" laughed Pestilence.
With a hoa.r.s.e hacking sound, the horse coughed blood on to the gra.s.s.
"Probably better in than out, that one," Pest said weakly. He swung his leg down into an expert dismount. He and War watched as Drake slid awkwardly in the saddle, kicked frantically in mid-air, then landed in a heap on the ground.
"Aw, smoothly done," War said, clapping his hands together slowly.
Drake stood up and tried to brush the gra.s.s stains from his trousers. They smudged a little, but didn"t go away. Mum wasn"t going to be happy about that.
"Yeah, very funny. What did you stop for?" Drake asked.
"Last night you asked about Death"s abilities," War intoned. "I thought now might be a good time to discuss them."
Drake looked at the wide-open s.p.a.ce around them. Aside from a small tin shack at the foot of one of the hills, there was nothing in any direction but fields and trees and dirt-track roads.