Pestilence turned to look at War, but War didn"t look back, leaving the other Horseman to stare at the back of the giant"s head. "That"s why you changed direction, is it?" War asked. "We were watching you."
"Yeah," Drake said. "And thanks for telling me about the Deathblade Guardian, by the way. I mean, it wasn"t a big problem," he said coolly. "I was able to beat it and everything, but it would"ve been nice to know about it beforehand."
"Right, aye, sorry," War said. He scratched his chin through his beard. "So, just to recap: you heard the Deathblade calling to you and leading you here, and you managed to defeat its guardian?"
Without really meaning to, Drake puffed out his chest. "That"s right."
"You hear that, Pest? The scythe spoke to him, and he leathered seven shades out of the Deathblade Guardian. Amazing that, eh?"
"It is," Pestilence agreed. "It"s, um, it"s certainly amazing."
Drake shrugged, but couldn"t hide his grin. "Yeah, I suppose it was pretty impressive."
"Oh, no, that"s not what I meant," War explained. "I didn"t mean you were amazing. What"s amazing is that the scythe cannae talk. It"s just a scythe." He took another step closer until his shadow seemed to block out the glow of the overhead lights. "And," War continued, "there is no Deathblade Guardian."
The words trundled around inside Drake"s head, not quite making any sense. "Yes, there is," he said at last. "And yes, it can. It spoke to me. It said someone had been playing silly beggars with its wardrobe."
To his credit, War"s face remained completely impa.s.sive. "Its wardrobe?"
"Look, I"ll show you, it"s in here," Drake insisted. He made for the entrance to the cave. "It"s just alonga""
The mountain beneath their feet trembled as an explosion tore through the cave. Drake and Pestilence hurled themselves to the floor. Only War remained standing as the fire spat, and choking clouds of melting plastic began to spew from the hole in the cliff wall.
Drake raised his head and coughed as the fumes swirled round him. He looked into the cave and saw the darkness licked away by a flickering wall of flame.
"The Deathblade!" he yelped.
"It isn"t there," War told him. "It was never there. It"s down by the ridge, where Pest hid it yesterday."
Drake looked up at War, then back into the burning cave. Gloopy strands of melting plastic dangled like stalact.i.tes from the ceiling. Or was it stalagmites? He could never remember.
"So... if it wasn"t the scythe calling me," he began, voicing the question that was bothering all three of them, "what was it?"
"I don"t know," War admitted gravely. "But I suggest we don"t hang around to find out. All in favour?"
"Seconded," said Pestilence, raising a rubber-gloved hand from his position, face-down on the floor.
"Sounds good to me," Drake agreed. "But it"s a steep climb."
"We took the stairs up," War said. He hoisted both Drake and Pest on to their feet, one in each hand. "It"s a pretty safe bet they go all the way back down too."
"I didn"t know there were stairs."
"Did you look?"
Drake was about to shoot War a sarcastic response, when he heard the thunk, thunk, thunk of plodding, heavy footsteps approaching. He didn"t bother to tense up this time, and waited instead for the gargantuan shape to heave itself up the final few steps.
Famine"s face was a bright scarlet red when he finally dragged his blubbery frame on to the clifftop. He doubled over after the last step, his slab-like hands resting on his staggeringly bulky knees as he gulped in lungful after lungful of smoky air.
Finally, with several low grunts and groans, Famine straightened himself up. He looked at the others and did his best to fold his gummy lips into a smile. "All right?" he puffed. "What"d I miss?"
DRAKE OPENED THE shed door and looked out. He saw his garden, beyond which lay his house, and, beyond that, his world.
The journey back across the desert of Limbo had been uneventful enough. Before they left the Junk Room, War had collected the Deathblade, which was tightly wrapped in a sheet of blue plastic, and Pestilence had reluctantly agreed to carry the Robe of Sorrows.
Drake had offered to carry both, but had been told by War in no uncertain terms that he was *nowhere near ready". And so he had followed behind the two hors.e.m.e.n, doing his best to encourage the waddling Famine along.
From somewhere off in the distance, an a cappella version of House of the Rising Sun a" without the twiddly bits a" had floated tunelessly across the sand. This had made them all pick up their pace, and in no time they were back at the shed. Just a few seconds after that, they were back in Drake"s garden.
"So, the second challenge," Drake said, still looking out at the high gra.s.s of the garden. "I failed it, didn"t I?"
"Yes," War said.
You could"ve heard a pin drop in the shed.
"What happens now?" Drake asked.
War took almost a full thirty seconds to reply. When he did he sounded hesitant, as if he were unsure of what he was saying. "We"ll call it *outside interference"," he said.
Drake turned to face him. War was back in his usual seat at the table, his face serious, his fingers steepled in front of him. Pestilence was quietly setting up the board game, Guess Who? while Famine, for his part, was eating a Twix.
"So what does that mean?" Drake asked.
"The challenge is void. You get an automatic pa.s.s."
"Oh, right." Drake thought about this. "Good."
"Yay!" said Pest, shuffling a deck of very small cards with the flair of a Vegas dealer.
Something had been bothering Drake all the way back from the Junk Room. He decided to voice it. "The Deathblade Guardian. Or... whatever it was. It was a robot," he said. "Like those ball things at the school. They were... What did you call it again? Techno-mystical...?"
"Techno-magic mumbo jumbo," said War quietly.
"That"s it. Techno-magic mumbo jumbo. Do you think the same person made both of them?"
"Oh, yes," Pest said. He cut the deck, then expertly furrowed the cards back together. "It"ll be the old Death. He was right into all his techno-magic mumbo jumbo. I expect he"s trying to kill you."
Drake was taken aback by the matter-of-fact tone of that last statement. "Why would he be trying to kill me?"
Pest shrugged. "Jealousy, I"d imagine."
"But he quit! It wasn"t my fault!"
Famine shook his head. The movement made his whole upper body wobble like half-set jelly. "No, he went mental, remember? Flipped his lid. No saying what he"s capable of now."
Drake blinked. "Oh, well, thanks for that. That"s really rea.s.sured me, that has."
"Don"t worry about it," War said. "Sit down, we can talk about it while we play."
Drake hesitated, then lowered himself on to the seat across from War. They both had a Guess Who? board in front of them.
"We"ll do it in rounds," Pest explained. "The winner of you two plays the winner of me and Famine." He fanned the cards and held them out. Drake took one and propped it up in a slot on the board.
For the first time, he looked properly at the little cartoon faces lined up before him. He"d played this game before, but it hadn"t looked like this. He read the characters" names aloud.
"Abraham, Jacob, Joseph... What"s all this?"
"It"s the Bible version," War explained, as he took a card from Pest. He looked at it impa.s.sively, then placed it on his board. "I"ll start."
"New boy should go first," Famine said. "Only fair."
"That"s true," Pest agreed.
"Oh, all right," War scowled. "Get on with it, then."
Drake looked down at the board. He blew out his cheeks. The problem was, most of them looked pretty similar. Near identical, in fact. He decided to take a wild stab. "Do they have a beard?"
War clicked his tongue against his front teeth and leaned back in his chair. "No," he said quietly.
Drake looked at his board. Then he flipped down every face but one. "Is it the Virgin Mary?"
"Yes," War sighed. He held the card up for the others to see, then threw it down on the table. "Stupid b.l.o.o.d.y game, anyway."
"Well done, Drake," Pest beamed, as he took back the cards and set the boards up for himself and Famine to play.
"So..." began Drake, looking across at War. "So what?"
"The old Death. You said we"d talk about him."
War crossed his arms over his chest. "What do you want to know?"
"Well, if he"s trying to kill me, I want to know everything," Drake replied.
"He was here for a thousand years. Everything might take a while."
"Well, I never liked him, I don"t mind telling you," Pest offered. He was staring intently at his board. "Right, then," he said, eyeballing Famine. "Did he lead the children of Israel out of Egypt?"
Famine shook his head. "Nope."
Pest flipped down the cartoon Moses. "Your turn."
"Why didn"t you like him?" Drake asked.
"He just never really fitted in," Pest shrugged. "You"d never catch him doing this, for example."
"Did he beget Isaac?" Famine asked.
"It"s not Abraham, no," Pest said. He turned to Drake. "He was more into tinkering with his gadgets. Little robotic creations and what not, like them metal b.a.l.l.s and the guardian thing. It was like he preferred their company to ours."
"Really?" asked Drake, trying not to sound sarcastic.
"He was obsessed with the Apocalypse too," Famine added.
Drake frowned. "Aren"t you all, though? I mean, isn"t that the whole point of you being here?"
"Oh, I mean we"re all interested in the Apocalypse," Famine said. "We"re all interested in it, yeah, but he was over the top, he was."
"Was he beheaded?" Pest asked.
Famine blinked. "What, Death?"
"No, the person on your card."
Famine looked down at the board, as if suddenly remembering it was there. "Oh. No," he said. There were a couple of clacks as Pest flipped down two more faces.
"I don"t understand. In what way was he obsessed?" Drake asked.
"He just banged on about it a lot," War said. "Always wondering what it was going to be like, always complaining that it was taking too long. He just wanted it to hurry up."
"And the longer he waited, the worse he got," Pest added. "On and on he went. On and on."
"Don"t you all want it to hurry up, though?" Drake asked.
For a fraction of a second, War said nothing. "Well, aye," he nodded. "Course we do, but the difference is, we don"t keep harping on about it."
"Did he beget Achaz?" asked Famine.
"Don"t just ask if they begot someone," Pest said. "That makes it boring. Think of other questions."
"All right, all right," Famine grumbled. He looked long and hard at the board in front of him. In the silence of the shed, Drake could almost hear the horseman"s brain working.
"Right," Famine said, at last. "Was he the father of Achaz?"
Pest sighed. "No."
Famine nodded. "Right." His eyes went across the faces on his board. "Who was the father of Achaz again?"
"So, that"s why he left?" Drake asked, ignoring the ensuing bickering between Pestilence and Famine. "He didn"t want to wait any more."
"That"s about the size of it," War said. "He said he was going off to make it happen. Said it was his responsibility to make sure it happened."
"And what did you say?"
"*Good riddance, ya nutter.""
Pest and Famine were still arguing. Drake raised his voice to be heard over them. "And what do you think? Can he actually do it?"
War took a moment to consider this. "He"s human now, so probably not."