101 Damnations

by Andrew Harman

Genres: Fantasy; Humor & Satire

Synopsis

So, there's this dragon. Well, it's not a real dragon, more of a, um, virtual dragon. The Thaumaturgical Physicists of Losa Llamas want it as security. Their real mistake was employing Cheiro Mancini, alchemist and Virtual Ecology Technician (VET for short), to install it. I mean, if it wasn't for him the Scroles wouldn't have been disturbed, and the Damnations would have stayed under control, and as for the Prime Evil ...

In 101 Damnations, Andrew Harman introduces a whole new set of characters to the twin kingdoms of Rhyngill and Cranachan - and proves that they are just as incompetent as his previous heroes!

Release date: January 19, 1995

Publisher: Legend

Print pages: 304

Sample

Viewed in the correct light, the iguana was perfect.

It squatted on the workbench, gleaming in its scaly skintight body stocking of head-turning waterproof finery. Smugly it admired
its flawless claws, buffing each in turn against its chest, polishing them to the peak of glinting reptilian perfection. Oozing
with conceit, it cast a self-appreciatory glance over its perfect physique, its gaze lingering on the muscles honed to the
heights of lean, cold-blooded evolution. In short it was a glorious, shining example of unalloyed technical lizardry. But
only for the terminally colourblind.


Snookums the currently custard-yellow Iguana flicked its whip-like tail casually and rolled over onto its side, admiring itself
narcissistically in a polished brass plate. It was only then it realised that its favourite crimson, brushed-velvet lounging
cushion was nowhere to be seen. Suddenly vexed, and feeling in need of a slice of gently poached Ammorettan Death Lizard on
a bed of diced Cranachan lettuce to calm its mounting nerves, it peered around, frowning with a growing sense of anxious pique.
Where had all the servants gone? And what had happened to the embossed pale blue stucco wall decorations?


From beneath a densely furrowed brow and an unkempt mop of wiry grey hair, a pair of eyes the colour of angry mud on a moonlit
night glared at the supercilious reptile with a sense of mounting disgust.


‘Definitely overfed,’ growled the scowling Alchemist scornfully. ‘And I bet it had gout. Some people just shouldn’t be allowed to keep pets!’ And that included Baronesses, he added to himself.


A low rumbling sound seeped into earshot through the thin walls of the hut.

‘It’s going to take a lot of work to get this creature looking mean and hungry! Cost her five groats at least … if I can get
it the right colour.’ With a flashed grin of lucrative delight he snatched a long bamboo screwdriver from an untidy heap of
equipment and advanced, wiping his hand on the front of his cloak. ‘She deserves an extra charge for such extensive body reworking!’
he grumbled as the floor of the hut began to shake and rattle seismically, tipping several large boxes and half a dozen black
bags off the rickety shelves with a sickening splat. Screwdriver at the ready, the Alchemist cursed volubly, coughing as a
blast of dust exploded through the window in the wake of a thundering forty-ton wagon train.


Helplessly, the iguana squinted up at the silhouette lurching through the plumes of red dust, gulped a deep breath to hail
the servants, choked and winced as no sound came out.


In a second the screwdriver arced down through the eddies of swirling motes, plunging towards the carved wooden plinth, slicing
unstoppably through the side of the virtual lizard.


Just outside the hut a small, wiry youth squatted on his haunches, adjusted the bandana over his face and waited for the dust
to settle. As usual Knapp was eagerly scanning the roughly rutted surface of Knavesbridge* for the latest TransTalpino Trade Route casualties.


With an evil chuckle he spotted a black and white armadillo snuffling its way slowly along the far side of the track, his
grin widening as he instantly recognised it as another of Baroness Eglantine’s ill-disciplined menagerie. That would be worth
a few groats on its return! he thought smugly, rummaging in his small sack for a tasty tit-bit. Now, what would attract an
armadillo’s attention? Smoked salmon? Caviar? Probably both if Baroness Eglantine had anything to do with it! Shrugging, Knapp
began flicking through the squirming compartments of his comprehensively stocked pack for something suitable. With a grin he made his choice
and deftly flicked three maggots and a bloodworm in a perfect, tempting line across the rutted track. And settled down to
wait.


Apparently up to his wrist in iguana, Cheiro Mancini, the Alchemist, wiggled his screwdriver, cursing and tutting miserably
as the chrominence filter changed the lizard from custard yellow to sky-blue, then a tasteful cerise and finally a far more
normal greeny-grey with a subtle hint of brown. He consulted the small, battered watercolour, contented himself that it was
‘near enough for the old bag’, tugged his hands clear and sat back to admire the end product of the last three days’ work.


Baffled, the lizard licked experimentally at its perfectly reformed side, scowled at the Alchemist with a practised expression
of utter distaste and winked out of existence. Again.


It was too much for Mancini. How dare it vanish? What right had it got to deprive him of his five groats’ reassembly fee?
Five whole groats! Venting his frustration in an inhuman squeal of rage, he hurled himself to the floor, pounding the dust-bedevilled
boards with frantic fists and frenzied feet.


‘My Snookums!’ bellowed a vast fur-clad woman, her expression of tense waiting-room worry clouding into black limb-removing
anger. ‘What is he doing to my poor Snookums?’ she demanded, stamping over to the receptionist.


‘Oooh! S’Technical,’ answered the receptionist boredly from behind a growing mound of nail filings as she honed her crimson
talons to ever increasing degrees of sharpness.


‘Is the screaming absolutely necessary?’


‘Vital,’ murmured the receptionist, dripping disinterest.

In the ‘surgery’, tugging at his beard in acute annoyance, Cheiro Mancini glared through red-rimmed eyes at a tiny translucent
pink crystal glowing dimly beneath a pile of tangled wire and chalk pentagrams. How dare the infernal creature vanish like that? Damned iguana. Damned woman!


He could never work properly when the owners were outside, waiting. It was so off-putting. Like someone breathing over your
shoulder or blowing down your ear.


Miserably he picked up the tastefully carved wooden plinth that held the empathic transmission projector and poked a screwdriver
inside. Got to be a dodgy chrominence amplifier, he thought as he carefully replaced the translucent psychoterrin crystal
and reconnected the potato. With a surge of microvolts, the crystal glowed brighter and the lizard flickered, shimmered and
reappeared with a slight ‘phoof’.


Where’s my lounging cushion? What’s happened to my nice comfy vivarium? it thought with practised conceit. Who’s that grinning
at me? Why isn’t my lower intestine lying next to me any more?


With a small crackle, Snookums the Iguana winked out of existence again. This non-event was followed almost immediately by
a frantic bout of waggling the wires poking out of the potato and another hail of oaths cursing the inexactitude of the Science
of Projected Empathic Taxidermy.


A second and a half later a vast expanse of fur-clad female exploded into the room and avalanched towards the Alchemist as
the iguana on the plinth phoofed reluctantly back into life’.


‘Snookums! I’ve brought your favourite lounging cushion,’ gushed Baroness Eglantine, trembling with a highly volatile mixture
of delight and intense suspicion. With her arms wide and her lips actively pursing she reached for the lizard with the overenthusiasm
of a long-lost great auntie. ‘Snookums?’ she squealed in sudden alarm as her fleshy arms passed straight through the deceased
reptile and it vanished again. ‘My Snookums?’ she squealed, turning on Mancini. ‘What have you done to my Snookums?’ she demanded,
fists clenching angrily as they took up battle positions on her hips. Her face began an alarming transition into crimson fury.
Miffed, feisty and rising …


The hut rumbled – Mancini was uncertain whether this was the effect of another forty-ton wagon train breasting the top of
the hill, or Baroness Eglantine’s fulminating anger.


Outside the hut, Knapp grinned secretly behind his bandana as the armadillo sniffed the maggot, changed direction and trundled
onto the track, blissfully unaware of the vast wagon train crawling over the horizon. With a fanfare of whip-cracks, shrieks
and bellows the driver spurred his team of beasts into a gallop, thundering down the half-mile one-in-four in a frantic, uncontrollable,
momentum-building dash.


‘I did all I could …’ whimpered Mancini.

Baroness Eglantine’s face suddenly contorted in a screaming picture of horror as she caught sight of a glistening heap of
familiar-coloured iguana skin. Mancini turned and stared at the black bag where it had fallen off the shelf. ‘No, no! Don’t
look!’ he cried. ‘It’s better if you remember Snookums the way he …’


He was too late.

‘My Snookums!’ screamed the Baroness, staring at the very real and very ex-lizard on the floor. ‘You’ve killed him!’ she squealed
in a voice that could etch glass at three miles. The rumbling increased in intensity.


Unseen, the iguanoid doppelgänger flashed back into existence and opened its mouth in disbelief. What was all the fuss about?
He felt fine! A bit light-headed, but fine nonetheless. Couple of juicy salmon steaks and he’d be right as rain.


‘Baroness Egla …’ began Mancini, convinced his ears were bleeding.

‘Murderer! I brought him here with a slight bruising and you’ve …’

‘Slight bruising? He was run over by a wagon train on Dea … er, Knavesbridge.’

Now I remember, thought Snookums, recalling the joyous feeling of freedom, the strange rumbling sound, the huge wheels bearing
down in horizon-filling terror … crushing his midriff, and expected to wince. He didn’t. In fact, he didn’t feel a thing.
Healed up nicely.


Outside the hut, a second maggot was about to be devoured by a peckish armadillo. Knapp’s gaze flicked nervously between it
and the thundering wagon train screaming down into the valley. The armadillo had better hurry up …


‘If you’d have been a better VET …’ screamed the Baroness.

‘If you’d have brought all of his lower intestine instead of …’ countered Mancini.


‘What? All that filthy stuff? How dare you suggest I sully my ermine gloves with all that …’


‘Contrary to popular belief,’ shouted Mancini, his face reddening, ‘iguanas need their lower intestines. Nature didn’t just throw it in there for padding!’


The lizard nodded sagely. Necessary for the complete digestion of Tepid Sea Beluga caviar.

‘I know what my Snookums needs and it is patently obvious the dear creature shan’t find it here!’ Baroness Eglantine’s face registered
squally tantrums imminent.


The armadillo trundled into the middle of the TransTalpino Trade Route. And stopped to chew at the maggot. Forty tons of wagon
train and the pounding hooves of the haulage rhinos thundered unstoppably closer.


‘All your darling Snookums was fit for,’ continued Mancini while he could still get a word in, ‘was a handbag.’

The iguana cringed. He really shouldn’t have said that.

‘A handbag?’ squealed the Baroness as rage crowned her face with crimson. ‘A handbag!’ The table shook. ‘How dare you suggest
that my beloved Snookums was only fit to become a fashion item? He was a living, breathing …!’


‘Until it met a forty-ton wagon train,’ added the receptionist, peering round the doorframe as she honed her nails still further.

Crackling anger from every pore, the fur-clad woman turned suddenly on her heels. ‘I have never been so insulted!’ she yelled, storming out at the head of a vapour trail of vitriolic abuse.


‘What about my fee? I’m not a charity, you know!’ shouted Mancini plaintively and received several suggestions, not all of which were entirely helpful or, indeed, expected from the
mouth of a Baroness.


As if it understood, the iguana vanished again. And so did Mancini’s last hopes of ever getting the five groats he could have
charged for such extensive iguana repair.


‘Five groats!’ he whimpered, images of debt collectors lurking in the shadows flashing across his mind. If he didn’t scrape
some cash together soon, there’d be trouble. He hadn’t paid his receptionist for months. It was probably best not to consider
what personal damage she could inflict with those nails of hers.


Suddenly the door was kicked open and a small, wiry youth staggered in, clutching a black bag. With a lurch he dropped it
on the floor and grinned.


‘Can you do armadillos?’ asked Knapp, stifling a chuckle.

Push back the mists of time, if you will, and peer through the clouds of chronology. Squint between the cotton-wool obscurity
of the cumulus tempus and peek at the unseen world of History beyond record …


The sandy bed of a warm shallow sea teems with prehistoric life. A trilobite crawls by. Ancient bivalves sip at the primordial
cordial surrounding them, nurturing, readying them for the next struggling shin up the infinite length of Evolution’s pole.
The trilobite’s antennae leap erect, suddenly somehow aware that ahead lies food. It bulldozers forward, reeled in by the
telepathic hunting skills of the creature buried inches below these ancient sands.


Born countless centuries before the invention of taxonomy, this ancient antecedent of the manta ray lies in nameless cover,
patiently waiting, telepathically baiting, just anticipating. Ramrod piston legs drive our trilobite on, unresisting, unsuspecting.
In a swirling fountain of sand the rectangular hunter strikes. Rearing out of its sea bed like an angry bath mat, it grabs
our trilobite and drags it down.


But today the hunter is the hunted.

The waiting primordial mage sees the flick of the sand, his desperate eyes lock onto the ambush. Correcting for parallax, he plunges his hands into the ancient salty sea. He snatches
at the flat, rectangular sea-scrole, catching and pulling, forcing it to drop our startled trilobite, wrenching it into the
alien world of air. He holds the writhing bath mat and begins to talk, to chant secrets at the scrole with his fading twilight
breaths. Implanting detailed facts into the sponge-like mind, he writes in the fossil records, filling the molluscan mind
in a moment. He flips the ancient hunter onto a waiting barbecue and the secret facts are sealed within the dead sea-scrole
for ever.


With a final desperation, this, the last of the primordial mages, raked with battle-scars, riddled with thaumic lance strikes,
seals the lid of a waiting terracotta pot, flicks a label around the neck saying ‘Please look after these jars, thank you’
and draws the knife from his belt. The blade glints faintly in the pale sun as he slices into the pad of his thumb, wincing
for the last time.


‘Go,’ we watch him whisper as the blood cells disperse in the tepid sea, each disc carrying the vital code of life. With a
final gasp the mage collapses, sure in the knowledge that every living organism within a one-mile radius will receive its
copy of the code. Evolution will attempt to weed it out, but when the time is right a Guardian will emerge. It must. For the
sake of the future.


Our trilobite trundles off on another day in the ancient seas.

The sun rose late over the once frequented coach halt of Venasht. It always did. Every day it struggled wearily over the horizon
just in time for lunch, beamed into the valley for a couple of hours, then vanished behind the western wall of the half-mile
deep trough.


Venasht had prospered once, thriving on the passing trade of wagon drivers feeding and watering their horses before the haul
out of the valley. But, since the introduction of sextets of powerful haulage rhinos and the invention of the Snack-on-the-Track
slow-release nosebag, wagon trains could cross the Talpa Mountains without stopping. And did – thundering recklessly down the valley wall in a wild momentum-gathering
dash, screaming unstoppably through Venasht and just clawing their way over the far lip.


But there were times they didn’t make it. Sometimes a wagon train failed to reach escape velocity and half a dozen runaway
carts would come to a thundering halt, embedded in the side of a building. There had been a time a few years ago when this
happened more than once a month, tons of builder’s rubble regularly flattening Baroness Eglantine’s partially rebuilt mansion.
Precisely why anyone would want to transport builder’s rubble over the Talpa Mountains and why it was only the Baroness’ Mansion that was ritually demolished
were two great unanswered questions. Fortunately for the Baroness they were questions the fifty-five different companies with
which she was insured failed to ask. The resulting cash settlement set her up for life and bought the continued silence of
a certain close friend who just happened to specialise in moving builder’s rubble.


At the moment silence was the last thing on a certain Alchemist’s mind. Cheiro Mancini pounded his forehead on the floor of
his hut and cursed a string of his bluest oaths. What customer care! There was so much he could, and should, have said yesterday
about Projected Empathic Taxidermy.


‘Your pet iguana is dead, long live your PET iguana. Yes, Baroness Eglantine, an exact, thaumically enhanced copy of all your
favourite companion’s endearing qualities. Thrill as it catches flies like the real thing. Applaud as it performs the tricks
you know and love. Just as affectionate as the real thing; twice as easy to keep. A quick dusting and a new potato every month
or so will keep your PET for ever in its prime.’


Did that idiot woman have to try and hug the stupid thing? One day they’d have mass.


Outside, a cart careered into the valley, its handbrake smoking as the driver attempted to control its velocity.

‘Who’d be a VET?’ moaned Mancini. Thankless job being a Virtual Ecology Technician, he thought miserably. Why won’t people realise that when an iguana’s guts are spread all over
the King’s Highway then short of opening up a pact with the devil there’s nothing else to do but mount it? People should thank
him! Alright, so a projected image of the beloved animal isn’t as good as having the thankless creature back in full glowing
health, but they do look good on the mantelpiece. Some of Cheiro Mancini’s finest work had been reptilian, once. What a way
to earn a living.


Living? That was a laugh, scowled Mancini. Borderline starvation, more like. His financial stomach rumbled as he mentally
wrote off the five groats he would have charged for extensive iguana repair.


With a screech of steel-rimmed wheels and the smell of burning brake pads, the cart slid to a halt and a stocky figure leapt
off.


Miserably Mancini looked at the name tag on a recently flattened armadillo. ‘Come on then, tiddles,’ he said to the heap of
armoured limbs. ‘Time for a new lease of life as a mantelpiece decoration.’


He rolled up the capacious sleeves of his cloak, flicked back his wiry hair, snatched his scalpel from the doorframe and stopped.
Raised voices echoed through the door in heated argument.


‘Look, I don’t make the rules! He doesn’t do house calls, alright?’ shouted the receptionist, sounding angry and bored at the same
time.


Mancini shuddered. The Baroness was back. It had to be her. After all, she was his only customer, the only person in the whole
of Venasht who was rich enough to keep pets. And the only one stupid enough to have a catflap as big as a barn door.


‘I’ve travelled a long way to see Mr Mancini,’ said a deep, rich-sounding voice. A man’s voice. It was accompanied by a strange
tinkling sound. Mancini’s interest rose a notch, his ear twitching at the door.


‘I have heard a lot about Mr Mancini’s skills,’ continued the voice. ‘I really would like to have a word with him.’

That didn’t sound good. That was the type of thing tax inspectors said. He looked at the armadillo on the bench and saw it
as a small stack of gleaming groats.


‘I’m sorry, he’s in surgery’ said the receptionist with a swift accompanying rasp of a nail-file.

‘I wish to talk about the future,’ said the man.

That’s it! thought Mancini. Talk doesn’t pay. Especially about the future and all that nonsensical alchemical rubbish. If
he’s heard so much about me he must know I don’t do that any more. Not since ‘gloomy Tuesday’, anyway.


Mancini yelled from within the ‘Surgery’, ‘Tell him to go away! I’m too busy for a palm-reading. Come back next century!’

‘Mr Mancini? Is that you?’ called the voice with a gentle tinkling.

‘Yes, and I’m busy. My crystal ball’s at the pawnbroker’s! Leave your patient’s details and I’ll get around to it when I have
a chance.’


‘I don’t have a patient. I don’t want a palm-reading or a seance or anything,’ answered the stranger and made the chinking
sound again. Sort of metallic. A soft yellow metallic … Mancini suddenly found that his interest in the dead armadillo had
inexplicably vanished … Lots of small, round, soft yellow metallic discs … ‘I merely wish to talk with the finest Virtual
Ecology Technician in the shadow of the Talpa Mountains!’ he continued in the tone of voice of a man whose dictionary of acceptable
responses to demands issued by him contained nothing in the negative. A man who meant business. And a man who knew what he
was talking about.


Almost before he realised what was happening, Cheiro Mancini was on his feet and heading for the door, the sound of dangling
carats tugging him greedily forward. His vision clouded yellow as if the sun had suddenly risen behind his eyes.


In a second, the ‘surgery’ door was tugged open, hands clamoured out, snatched frantically and almost as rapidly slammed the
portal shut. A flake of ancient paint fluttered down into the waiting room now suddenly empty of the gold, the ferruled cane
and the large man.


‘Cheiro Mancini, Alchemist and VET?’ asked the stranger and shook the bag for effect.

Mancini’s eyes winked up and down as the sack moved, his attention held tighter than a starving pointer slavering after a
well-hung brace of pheasant. ‘That’s me. But less of the alchemist if you wouldn’t mind,’ he said absently as he furiously
estimated the volume of the sack, divided it by the density of gold, multiplied that figure by the conversion into carats,
exchanged that into groats and came to a figure that had a reassuringly large number of noughts behind it.


Nervously he coughed and sprinted through the door.

‘That will be all, dear,’ he said, staring through greedy eyes at the receptionist.

‘But he ain’t got an appointment …’

‘That will be all.’


‘… or a patient …’

‘Go home.’

‘But it’s not time …’

‘Home!’ barked Mancini, waving the scalpel and pointing to the door.

Once the short-skirted receptionist had vanished, after clearing the nail-files and sundry cosmetics which inhabited her desk
into a bag made from one of the Baroness’ smaller lurchers, Mancini barred and bolted the door and returned to the mysteriously
chinking stranger.


‘Such a way with minions,’ said the man, clutching an expensively ferruled staff in one hand and a small velvet pouch in the
other. ‘I like that in a man,’ he added and handed over a business card.


Mancini rubbed his hands together, bowed and thought about tugging his forelock as he surveyed the visitor. He decided against
it. Instead, he fell on the floor and grovelled. ‘The words that I spoke, sir, were aimed at another.’ His eyes totalled the
estimated cost of the clothes and began to cloud over with added monetary admiration. ‘Forgive my haste, my Lord. What task
may I be humbly allowed to carry out for you?’


The stranger ignored the grovelling Alchemist and stared at a wire and string apparatus wobbling precariously on the table. ‘Is this what you use?’


‘Is sir interested in a PET? Stick insects are very popular at present. Only twelve …’ began Mancini, rubbing his hands eagerly.

‘I was hoping for something a little larger,’ came the reply. ‘Preferably with teeth.’ The stranger strode towards the shelves.

‘A rat, sir?’ offered Mancini, crawling after him.

‘Ooh, no. Meaner!’

‘Weasel? I can offer very good terms on weasels, sir.’

‘A little more avant-garde, perhaps?’

‘Ah! I should have spotted that. A discerning gentleman like yourself would certainly require something a little more … A
griffin, perhaps?’ Mancini fawned, rubbed his hands and leapt to his feet.


The stranger shook his head.

‘Phoenix? With optional flame programme?’

‘Can you do dragons?’

Mancini’s face dropped. Not even Baroness Eglantine could afford to keep a dragon as a pet. ‘d … d … Basilisks, no problem,’
he hedged.


‘Dragon.’

He swallowed and watched the stranger place the chinking velvet bag on the table, just out of reach. ‘D … dragons, now, let
me see … Hah! Don’t get much call for them round here. Wagon trains tend to come off worse. See?’


‘Can you do dragons?’ snapped the stranger.

Mancini swallowed guiltily, nudged the stubbornly non-functional PET iguana, stared at the sack and launched into a bare-faced
lie. ‘Oh. Dragons! Of course. Silly me, what was I thinking of …’


‘I want it installed in a week. As well as this little lot,’ said the stranger and handed over a parchment list with a flourish
of expensive sleeve.


‘A week?’ shrieked Mancini. ‘I’ll need a Malpin Emp-Power Driver for a dragon … series six at least. And a matched pair of
psychoterrins if you want it in 3-D.’


‘Well, if you don’t want this …’ said the stranger, poking the sack.


‘Ah! No! I mean, yes. Yes, I do!’ pleaded the impoverished VET.

‘One week?’

‘Ten days! I’ll need to go to Fort Knumm.’

The stranger reached for the bag and turned to leave.

‘Okay. Okay. One week!’ screamed Mancini as the gold was in danger of slipping away.

“Well done!’ said the Thaumaturgical Physicist and flicked the large bag of chinking yellow coins into the air with a flourish
of his staff.


As Cheiro Mancini snatched it from its arcing parabola, unfastened the neck and stared transfixed at the gold, the stranger
unbarred and unbolted the door and vanished.


‘See you in Losa Llamas in a week,’ shouted the stranger over his shoulder as he skipped down the stairs. ‘There’s a wagon
outside – use it. Oh, and a map on the back of the card, memorise it. It will self-destruct in fifteen seconds!’


Mancini looked up in a guilty gold-ridden daze, picked up the card and turned it over. As he looked, the lines on the surface
glistened then ignited in a sudden magnesium flash, burning the map onto his retina, setting it into his short-term memory
and turning the card to a small heap of ash.


A dragon? he cringed, blinking. Nobody in the short history of Virtual Ecology had ever mounted a PET dragon before! The iguana
flashed on and off. A whole dragon!


He swallowed nervously. It would be just like a lizard … only much, much bigger.

Wouldn’t it?

Ah! Who cares? he thought as he emptied the sack on the floor and began feverishly to count.

On one of the toes of the foothills of the Kholan Heights, fifteen hundred feet below the summit of Mount Hofollives, a curse
floated in the warm afternoon sun of a spring day. It hummed, resonated and spat briefly above the bleating of a small herd
of grey and white goats before disappearing into the higher valleys to join the others.


‘The bells,’ yelled a solitary figure, twitching. ‘The bells! They make me m … mmad!’ A small boy, dressed in what looked
like several sacks huddling together around him, glared accusingly at the herd of goats and hurled a rock at the one with
the cracked bell that scraped endlessly at his nerves. A beetle diving repetitively into an ancient tin can would hold more
melodic appeal.


‘Stand still!’ he yelled. ‘How am I supposed to count you if you insist on bouncing around the rocks? Move again and it’ll
end in kebabs!’ For the f