Rincewind stood back, looked critically at his handiwork, and then showed the sheep the back of its head in the mirror, at which point the creature cracked, managed to get its feet under it and made a run for the paddock.
‘Hey, wait till I take the curlers out!’ Rincewind shouted after it.
He became aware of the shearers watching him. Finally one of them said, in a stunned voice, ‘That’s sheep-shearing where yew come from, is it?’
‘Er … what did you think?’ said Rincewind.
‘It’s a bit slow, innit?’
‘How fast was I supposed to go?’
‘Weell, Daggy here once did nearly fifty in an hour. That’s what you’ve got to beat, see? None of that fancy rubbish. Just short back, front, top and sides.’
‘Mind yew,’ said one of the shearers, wistfully, ‘that was a beautiful lookin’ sheep.’
There was an outbreak of bleating from the sheep corrals.
‘Ready to give it a real go, Rinso?’ said Daggy.
‘Ye gawds, what’s that?’ said one of his mates.
The fence shattered. A ram stood in the gap, shaking its head to dislodge bits of post from its horns. Steam rose from its nostrils.
Most of the things Rincewind had associated with sheep, apart from the gravy and mint sauce, had to do with … sheepishness. But this was a ram, and the word association was suddenly … rampage. It pawed the ground. It was a lot bigger than the average sheep. In fact, it seemed to fill Rincewind’s entire future.
‘That’s not one of mine!’ said the flock’s owner.
Daggy placed his shears in Rincewind’s other hand and patted him on the back.
‘This one’s yours, mate,’ he said, and backed away. ‘You’re here to show us how it’s done, eh, mate?’
Rincewind looked down at his feet. They weren’t moving. They remained firmly fixed to the ground.
The ram advanced, snorting and looking Rincewind in the bloodshot eye.
‘Okay,’ it whispered, when it was very close. ‘You just make with the shears and the sheep’ll do the rest. No worries.’
‘Is that you?’ said Rincewind, glancing at the distant ring of watchers.
‘Hah, good one. Ready? They’ll do what I do. They’re like sheep, okay?’
The shearers watched as wool fell like rain.
‘That’s somethin’ you don’t often see,’ said one of them. ‘Them standin’ on their heads like that …’
‘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?’{47} 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?’