The 13th Horseman

by Barry Hutchison

  “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 assured 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. God 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 grass. Pest brought his own horse to a halt beside him. The animal broke wind loudly.

  “Ooh, better out than in!” laughed Pestilence.

  With a hoarse hacking sound, the horse coughed blood on to the grass.

  “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 grass 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 th
em.”

  Drake looked at the wide-open space 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.

  “Out here?”

  “Yes, out here, where there’s less chance of you accidentally killing anyone.”

  Drake’s stomach went tight. “I’m not killing anyone,” he said quickly. “Is that what I’m supposed to do? I’m not doing that.”

  “Accidentally killing anyone, I said,” War growled. “No one’s asking you to kill anyone on purpose.”

  “But isn’t that what I do, though?” Drake asked. He was suddenly realising exactly what he might have got himself into. “I mean, if I’m Death, that’s what I do, right?” He clamped a hand over his mouth. “Oh my God, I’m evil, aren’t I? Death, War, Famine, Pestilence; we’re all evil!”

  “No one has to kill anyone,” Pestilence explained. “All we’re supposed to do is ride the horses across the sky come Judgement Day. We’re like mascots, really. Just sort of cutting the ribbon to declare Armageddon open for business.”

  “And we’re not evil,” War said. His nostrils were flared in a sneer, as if the very suggestion offended him. “Wars can lead to freedom. A plague or a famine have no will of their own, they’re natural events.”

  “But what about me?” Drake asked quietly. “Death’s evil, isn’t it?”

  “Murder’s evil,” War said. “But death? No. Death can be the end of suffering. Death can be a welcome visitor. I have seen people begging for death, and weeping with relief when it finally came. Most people fear death, but sometimes, in the end, it’s the only friend they’ve got.”

  “And on that cheerful note,” said Pest, doing his best to ease the tension, “let’s get on with the training!”

  Drake rapped his knuckles against the side of the tin hut. Clang, clang, clang. He turned to War. “You want me to do what?”

  War sighed. “Enter the shack.”

  “But not through the door?”

  “No, not through the door. What would be the point in that? ‘Here’s your third challenge – walk through a door.’ No, I don’t think so.”

  Drake studied the wall of the hut again. It was made of a heavy corrugated iron, rusted in patches, but still completely solid.

  “But I can’t walk through the wall,” Drake said. “I mean, it’s impossible.”

  “To Drake Finn, maybe, but not to Death,” War explained. “Death can go anywhere. Nothing can hold it out, not distance, not magic and certainly not a rusty sheet of metal.”

  “It’s a belief thing,” Pestilence said encouragingly. “I believe you can do it. The question is – do you?”

  “No,” said Drake, shaking his head. “I don’t.”

  “Go on, give it a try,” said Pest. “I bet you’ll be a natural.” Drake looked doubtful. He brushed a hand against the metal. It still felt solid.

  “OK, I’ll try,” he said, prompting a short burst of excited applause from Pestilence.

  Taking two paces back, Drake lined himself up with the side of the metal shack. He straightened his back, held his head high and closed his eyes.

  “Here goes,” he muttered, then he took one pace, two paces, thr—

  THUD.

  Drake opened his eyes. His face was pressed against the side of the shack.

  “Oh, aye, a natural,” War snorted.

  “It’s impossible,” Drake insisted. “I can’t do it.”

  “Because you didn’t believe you could,” War said. “You shuffled up there like you were queuing for your pension. You were just waiting to hit the wall.”

  “Of course I was!” Drake snapped. “I knew I was going to.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” War roared. Startled by the sound, a flock of nearby birds took to the air in panic. “There is no wall! Not to you! Nothing can keep you out!”

  He pointed to a spot some ten metres away from the shack. “Get over there,” he growled. “Take a run up at it, don’t slow down, just pretend it’s not there and you’ll sail right through.”

  “But—”

  “Now! ” War bellowed. Drake could tell from the way the veins were standing out on the giant’s forehead that he probably shouldn’t argue. He walked over to the spot and turned to face the hut. It suddenly looked to be a long way away.

  “Right, now run,” War barked.

  “Fast as you can.”

  “Fast as I can,” Drake said. “Right.”

  He sprang forward like a sprinter off the blocks, his hands bunched tightly into fists.

  “You can do it, Drake,” he heard Pest cry, and then he was past the other horsemen, powering on, throwing himself at full speed at the rigid metal barrier...

  A flash of panic filled his head. Rigid metal barrier.

  He hit it shoulder-first and his whole skeleton shook with the impact. There was a sharp squeal that Drake at first thought must be Pestilence, but then the wall collapsed, and Drake’s momentum carried him through on top of it.

  There was more squealing from the other walls as the metal tore, and they slowly folded in like a house of cards on top of him.

  Drake didn’t think he could feel any pain, but he couldn’t be entirely sure. He lay there, just in case, pinned beneath the corrugated iron. Eventually, a pair of powerful hands lifted the walls away.

  “Well, that was one way to get inside,” Pestilence said, smiling cheerfully. “But maybe we should try something else?”

  Drake looked down at his school uniform. It was stained with patches of orange, where it had come into contact with the rust. His shoulder throbbed where it had connected with the metal. More than that, though, there was another sensation niggling at him. Shame. He was embarrassed by his performance. Behind War’s beard, Drake was sure the giant was laughing.

  He looked up and saw that the sky overhead was slowly darkening.

  “No more training,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  The veins on War’s head stood out again, but he didn’t shout this time. Instead, he stomped past Drake and swung himself up into the saddle of his ruby red horse. “I tell you,” he muttered, “this ninety days can’t end soon enough.”

  With a “Yah! ” and a tug of the reins, War and his horse took to the sky and were quickly lost among the clouds.

  “He doesn’t mean it,” said Pest softly.

  Drake sniffed. “I don’t care,” he said. “Just take me home.”

  DRAKE LAY IN bed, listening to the ticking of his clock. He’d stopped looking at it a few hours ago, when the hands had been creeping past one o’clock. No matter how hard he’d tried since then, he couldn’t fall asleep.

  He put it down to worry. He could never sleep when he was worried, and right now things were queuing up to be worried about.

  Someone was trying to kill him. Someone had tried to kill him. Twice. That was one of the things bothering him, but that wasn’t even the biggie.

  Armageddon. The end of the world. It sounded ridiculous – the idea that the whole world could just suddenly and abruptly come to a stop. How could one man destroy the whole world and everyone on it? It seemed impossible.

  And yet both Pestilence and War had said it was possible. And, of course, Death Nine wasn’t just any normal man.

  Drake thought about that. The old Death was human now – someone ‘dark and sinister’ if Pestilence was right. That pointed to one obvious suspect. And the metal sphere had come from inside his classroom.

  Could Dr Black be the old Death? Drake had been relieved when Mr Franks showed up to take him away from the history teacher’s classroom, but now he couldn’t help but wonder what he might have found out if he’d hung around.

  The cupboard, he thought, might still hold some answers, even if it didn’t hold the bodies of Bingo and his cohorts. It was worth a look, anyway. He’d have to find some way of unlocking the door, of course, but maybe there’d be something in there to help him figure out if Dr Black
really was Death number nine. And, if he was, maybe there’d be some sort of clue as to whether he really was capable of ending the world.

  Drake rolled over, making the bed creak. A few nights ago he’d been lying awake worrying about starting school. Now he was lying awake worrying about the Apocalypse. A lot had happened since Monday.

  Drake got up, tiptoed to the window and looked out. Through the darkness, he could just make out a small red roof at the far end of the garden.

  Pulling on a jumper and wriggling his feet into his shoes, Drake undid the window latch, and quietly slid the wooden frame open.

  Famine was sitting on the grass outside the shed, his back leaning against a side wall. He looked up as Drake approached, revealing a face smeared with streaks of brown. The fat man’s fingers dipped into a jar of chocolate spread he held between his thighs. He scooped out a dollop of the stuff, licked the finger clean, then clamped a pudgy hand over the jar.

  “It’s mine,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Drake said. “I’m not hungry, anyway.”

  “Lucky you,” Famine replied, as he scooped out some more of the gooey spread.

  Drake sat on the grass beside him. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “Thought some fresh air might help.”

  “It won’t,” Famine said. “You don’t need as much sleep now. Hardly any, really.”

  “Really? I don’t know if that’s good or bad,” Drake admitted.

  “Bad,” Famine told him. “Very bad. Being awake’s overrated.”

  Drake thought about this. “I suppose you could get lots done, though, without sleep.”

  “Maybe. If you had something worth doing,” Famine said. “All we have to do is wait. You don’t need to be awake to wait.”

  He reached the bottom of the jar. Drake watched in horrified fascination as the horseman stuck his tongue into the container and began licking the inside clean.

  “You’re doing the right thing, I reckon,” Famine said, when the jar was spotless.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jacking it in. We’ve been waiting on the call for what, six or seven thousand years now? Starting to drag a bit, if I’m being honest. You’re best getting out when you can.”