Last Continent (20 page)

‘The cartwheels is good,' said another shearer, lighting his pipe. ‘I mean, for sheep.'

Rincewind just hung on to the shears. They had a life of their own. The sheep flung themselves against the clippers as if in a real hurry to get into something more comfortable. Fleeces curled around his ankles, then around his knees, rose
above his waist . . . and then the shears were slicing the air, and sizzling as they cooled down.

Several dozen dazed sheep were watching him very suspiciously. So were the sheep-shearers.

‘Er . . . have we started the competition yet?' he said.

‘You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!' roared Daggy.

‘Is that good?'

‘Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep.'

‘Well, I'm
sorry
, but I can't go any faster.'

The shearers went into a huddle. Rincewind looked around for the ram, but it didn't seem to be there any more.

Finally, something seemed to have been settled. The shearers approached him in the cautious, oblique way of men trying to hang back and walk forward at the same time.

Daggy stepped forward, but only comparatively; in fact, his mates had all, without discussion, taken one step backwards in the choreography of caution.

‘G'day!' he said nervously.

Rincewind gave him a friendly wave, and it was only halfway through when he remembered that he was still holding the shears. Daggy hadn't forgotten about them.

‘Er . . . we ain't got five hundred squids till we get paid—'

Rincewind wasn't certain how to deal with this. ‘No worries,' he said. This covered most things.

‘. . . so if yew're gonna be around . . .'

‘I just want to get to Bugarup as soon as possible,' said Rincewind.

Daggy kept smiling but turned around and went into another huddle with the rest of the shearers. Then he turned back.

‘. . . maybe we could sell a few things . . .'

‘I'm not bothered about the money, actually,' said Rincewind loudly. ‘Just point me in the direction of Bugarup. No worries.'

‘Yew don't
want
the money?'

‘No worries.'

There was another huddle. Rincewind heard hissed comments of ‘Get him outta here right
now
.'

Daggy turned back. ‘I got a horse you can have,' he said. ‘It's worth a squid or two.'

‘No worries.'

‘And then you'll be able to ride away . . . ?'

‘She'll be right. No worries.'

It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just . . . made things better. A shark's got your leg? No worries. You've been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You're dead? She'll be right! No worries! Oddly enough, it seemed to work.

‘No worries,' he said again.

‘Got to be worth a squid or two, that horse,' Daggy said again. ‘Practically a bloody racehorse.'

There was some sniggering from the crowd.

‘No worries?' said Rincewind.

Daggy looked for a moment as if he was entertaining the suggestion that maybe the horse was worth more than five hundred squid, but
Rincewind was still dreamily holding on to the shears and he thought better of it.

‘Get you to Bugarup in no time, that horse,' he said.

‘No worries.'

A couple of minutes later it was obvious even to Rincewind's inexperienced eye that while you could race this horse, it wouldn't be sensible to race it against other horses. At least, ones that were alive. It was brown, stubby, mostly a thatch of mane, with hooves the size of soup bowls, and it had the shortest legs Rincewind had ever seen on anything with a saddle. The only way you could fall off would be to dig a hole in the ground first. It looked ideal. It was Rincewind's kind of horse.

‘No worries,' he said. ‘Actually . . . one
small
worry.'

He dropped the shears. The shearers took a step back.

Rincewind went over to the corral and looked down at the ground, which was churned from the hoofprints of the sheep. Then he looked at the back of the shearing shed. For a moment he was sure there was the outline of a kangaroo . . .

The shearers approached him cautiously as he banged on the sun-bleached planks, shouting, ‘I know you're in there!'

‘Er, that's what we call wood,' said Daggy. ‘Woo-od,' he added, for the hard-of-thinking. ‘Made into a wa-all.'

‘Did you see a kangaroo walk into this wall?' Rincewind demanded.

‘Not us, boss.'

‘It was a sheep at the time!' Rincewind added. ‘I mean, it's normally a kangaroo but I'll swear it turned into that sheep!'

The shearers shuffled uneasily.

‘You're not going to say anything about woolly jumpers, are you?' said one, almost timorously.

‘What? What's knitwear got to do with it?'

‘That's a mercy, anyway,' the small shearer mumbled.

‘You know, it's been doing that
all the time
,' said Rincewind. ‘I
thought
there was something wrong with that beer poster!'

‘Something wrong with the beer, too?'

‘I'm not putting up with any more kangaroo nonsense. I'm off home,' said Rincewind. ‘Where's that horse?'

It was standing where they'd left it. He waved a finger at it.

‘And no talking!' he said, as he swung his leg over it. This simply resulted in him standing over the horse.

He was sure that somewhere under the overhanging mane something sniggered.

‘Yew got to kinda sag down,' said Daggy. ‘And then you kinda lift your legs kinda up.'

Rincewind did so. It was like sitting on an armchair.

‘You
sure
this is a horse?'

‘Won it in a game of Two Up from a bloke from Goolalah,' said Daggy. ‘Got to be tough, coming from the mountains. They breeds 'em special to be sure-footed. He said it won't fall off
anything
.'

Rincewind nodded. His type of horse, all right. The quiet, dependable type.

‘Which way's Bugarup?'

The men pointed.

‘Right. Thank you. Giddyup . . . What's this horse called?'

Daggy seemed to think for a moment and then said, ‘Snowy.'

‘Why Snowy? That's an odd name for a horse.'

‘I . . . used to have a dog called Snowy.'

‘Oh, right. That makes sense. Sense for here, anyway. I suppose. Well . . . g'day, then.'

The shearers watched him go, which, at Snowy's pace, took some time.

‘Had to get rid of him,' said Daggy. ‘He could put us on the dole in a day.'

One of the men said, ‘Why din't you tell him about the drop-bears over that way?'

‘He's a wizard, ain't he? He'll find out.'

‘Yeah, but only when they bloody drop on his head.'

‘Quickest way,' said Daggy.

‘Daggy?'

‘Yup?'

‘How long did you say you'd had that horse?'

‘Ages. Won it off a bloke.'

‘Right?'

‘Right.'

‘Right . . .'

‘What?'

‘Only . . . did yew always have it ages half an hour ago?'

Daggy's wide brow furrowed a little. He took off his hat and wiped his head with his arm. He looked at the disappearing horse, and then at the sheds, and then at the other men. Several times he started to speak, shut his mouth before he could get the first word out, and glared around him again.

‘Yew all
know
I've had it for bloody ages, right?' he demanded.

‘'s right.'

‘Ages.'

‘Won it off'f a bloke.'

‘Right. Yeah. Right. You must've done.'

Mrs Whitlow sat on a rock, combing her hair. A bush had sprouted several twigs with rows of blunt, closely set thorns just when she needed them.

Large, pink and very clean, she relaxed by the water like an amplified siren. Birds sang in the trees. Sparkling beetles hummed to and fro across the water.

If the Senior Wrangler had been present someone could have scraped him up and carried him away in a bucket.

Mrs Whitlow did not feel in any danger. The wizards were around, after all. She was mildly worried that the maids would be getting lazy since she wasn't there, but she could look forward to making their lives a living hell when she got back. The possibility of not getting back never entered her head.

A lot of things never entered Mrs Whitlow's head. She'd decided a long time ago that the world was a lot nicer that way.

She had a very straightforward view of foreign parts, or at least those more distant than her sister's house in Quirm where she spent a week's holiday every year. They were inhabited by people who were more to be pitied than blamed because, really, they were like children.
¹⁵
And they acted like savages.
¹⁶

On the other hand, the scenery was nice and the weather was warm and nothing smelled very bad. She was definitely feeling the benefit, as she'd put it.

Not to put too fine a point on it, Mrs Whitlow had left her corsets off.

The thing that the Senior Wrangler insisted on calling the ‘melon boat' was, even the Dean admitted, very impressive.

There was a big space below deck, dark and veined and lined with curved black boards, very like giant sunflower seeds.

‘Boat seeds,' said the Archchancellor. ‘Probably
make good ballast. Senior Wrangler, don't eat the wall, please.'

‘I thought perhaps we could do with more cabin space,' said the Senior Wrangler.

‘Cabins possibly, staterooms no,' said Ridcully, heaving himself back on to the deck.

‘Avast shipmate!' shouted the Dean, throwing a bunch of bananas on to the boat and climbing up behind them.

‘Quite so. How do we sail this vegetable, Dean?'

‘Oh, Ponder Stibbons knows all about that sort of thing.'

‘And where is he?'

‘Didn't he go off to fetch some bananas?'

They looked down at the beach, where the Bursar was stockpiling seaweed.

‘He did seem a bit . . . upset,' said Ridcully.

‘Can't imagine why.'

Ridcully glanced up at the central mountain, glowing in the afternoon sun.

‘I suppose he wouldn't have done anything stupid, would he?' he said.

‘Archchancellor, Ponder Stibbons is a fully trained wizard!' said the Dean.

‘Thank you for that very concise and definite answer, Dean,' said Ridcully. He leaned down into the cabin. ‘Senior Wrangler! We're going to look for Stibbons. And we ought to go and fetch Mrs Whitlow, too.'

There was a shriek from below. ‘Mrs Whitlow! How could we have forgotten her!'

‘In your case, only by having a cold bath, Senior Wrangler.'

* * *

As horses went, this one went slowly. It moved in a stolid, I-can-do-this-all-day manner that clearly said the only way you get me to go faster will be to push me off a cliff. It had a curious gait, somewhere faster than a trot but slower than a canter. The effect was a jolting slightly out of synchronization with the moment of inertia in any known human organ, causing everything inside Rincewind to bounce off everything else. Also, if he forgot for a second and lowered his legs, Snowy went on without him, and this meant that he had to run ahead and stand there like a croquet hoop until he caught him up.

But Snowy didn't bite, buck, roll over or gallop insanely away, which were the traits Rincewind had hitherto associated with horses. When Rincewind stopped for the night the horse wandered off a little way and ate a bush covered with leaves the thickness, smell and apparent edibility of linoleum.

He camped beside what he had heard called a ‘billybong', which was just an expanse of churned earth with a tiny puddle of water welling up in the middle. Little green and blue birds were clustered around it, cheeping happily in the late afternoon light. They scattered when Rincewind lay down to drink, and scolded him from the trees.

When he sat up, one of them landed on his finger.

‘Who's a pretty boy, then?' said Rincewind.

The noise stopped. Up on the branches the birds
looked at one another. There wasn't much room in their heads for a new idea, but one had just turned up.

The sun dropped towards the horizon. Rincewind poked very cautiously inside a hollow log and found a ham sandwich and a plate of cocktail sausages.

Up in the trees the budgerigars were in a huddle.

One of them said, very quietly, ‘Wh . . . ?'

Rincewind lay back. Even the flies were merely annoying. Things began to sizzle in the bushes. Snowy went and drank from the tiny pool with a noise like an inefficient suction pump trying to deal with an unlucky turtle.

It was, nevertheless, very peaceful.

Rincewind sat bolt upright. He knew what was about to happen when things were peaceful.

Up in the darkening branches a bird muttered, ‘. . . pre'y b'y . . . ?'

He relaxed, but only a little.

‘. . . 'sa prit' b'y . . . ?'

Suddenly the birds stopped.

A branch creaked.

The drop-bear . . . dropped.

It was a close relative of the koala, although this doesn't mean very much. After all, the closest relative of the common elephant is about the size and shape of a rabbit. The drop-bear's most notable feature was its posterior, thick and heavily padded to provide the maximum shock to the victim with the minimum shock to the bear. The initial blow rendered the prey unconscious, and
then the bears could gather round to feed. It was a magnificent method of killing, since in other respects the bears were not very well built to be serious predators, and it was therefore particularly unfortunate for this bear that it chose, on this night, to drop on a man who might well have had ‘Victim' written all over him but also had ‘Wizzard' written on his hat, and that this hat, most significantly, came to a point.

Rincewind lumbered to his feet and ran into a few trees while he tried, with both hands on the brim, to lift his hat off his head. He managed it at last, stared in horror at the bear and its peculiarly confused expression, and shook it off and into the bushes. There were thumps around him as more bears, disoriented by this turn of events, hit the ground and bounced wildly.