The Last Continent - Terry Pratchett [78]
Still, he’d have to eat something and the dark brown goo that half filled the tin was the only available food in this vicinity that didn’t have at least six legs. He didn’t even think about eating mutton. You couldn’t, when it was looking at you so pathetically.
He poked the goo with the stick. It gripped the wood like glue.
“Gerroff!”
A blob eventually came loose. Rincewind tasted it, gingerly. It was just possible that if you mixed yeasty beer and vegetables together you’d get—
No, what you got was salty-tasting beery brown gunk.
Odd, though…It was kind of horrible, but nevertheless Rincewind found himself having another taste.
Oh, gods. Now he was really thirsty.
He picked up the tin and staggered off towards some trees. That’s where you found water…you looked at where the trees were and, tired or not, you dug down.
It took him half an hour to squash an empty beer tin and use it to dig a hole waist deep. His toes felt damp.
Another half an hour took him to shoulder depth and a pair of wet ankles.
Say what you like—that brown muck was good stuff. It was the runny equivalent of dwarf bread. You didn’t really believe what your mouth said you’d just tasted, so you had some more. Probably full of nourishing vitamins and minerals. Most things you couldn’t believe the taste of generally were…
By the time he raised his head he was surrounded by sheep, eyeing him cautiously in between longing glances into the damp depths.
“It’s no good you lot looking at me like that,” he said. They paid no attention. They carried on looking at him.
“It’s not my fault,” Rincewind muttered. “I don’t care what any kangaroo says. I just arrived here. I’m not responsible for the weather, for heaven’s sake.”
They went on looking. He cracked. Practically anyone will crack before a sheep cracks. A sheep hasn’t got much that’s crackable.
“Oh, hell, maybe I can rig up some kind of bucket and pulley arrangement,” he said. “It’s not as though I’ve got any appointments today.”
He was digging a bit further, in the hope of getting deep enough before the water ran away completely, when he heard someone whistling.
He looked up, through the legs of the sheep. A man was creeping down across the dried-up water-hole, whistling tunelessly between his teeth. He’d failed to notice Rincewind because his gaze was fixed so intently on the milling sheep. He dropped the pack he’d been carrying, pulled out a sack, sidled towards a sheep all by itself, and leapt. It barely had time to bleat.
As he was stuffing it into the sack a voice said: “That probably belongs to someone, you know.”
The man looked around hurriedly. The voice was coming from a group of sheep.
“I reckon you could get into serious trouble, stealing sheep. You’ll regret it later on, I’m sure. Probably someone really cares about that sheep. Come on, let it go.”
The man stared around wildly.
“I mean, think about it,” the voice went on. “You’ve got this nice country here, parrots and everything, and you’re going to spoil it all by stealing someone’s sheep that they’ve worked so hard to grow. I bet you wouldn’t like to be remembered as a sheep-stealer—Oh.”
The man had dropped the sack and was running away very fast.
“Well, you didn’t have to waltz off like that, I was only trying to appeal to your better nature!” said Rincewind, pulling himself up out of the hole.
He cupped his hands. “And you’ve forgotten your camping stuff!” he shouted, after the disappearing dust.
The sack baa-ed.
Rincewind picked it up, and a noise behind him made him look round. There was another man watching him from the back of a horse. He was glaring.
Behind him were three men wearing identical helmets and jerkins and humorless expressions