‘We should move it, innit?’ said Links. ‘Turn it up the right way for the Golden Horn Dude.’
He stepped helpfully towards the Baaton, then stopped. Something else peculiar and scary was happening.
‘Ohmygrass . . .’ Jaycey had seen it too. ‘Ohmygrass, a giant creepy-crawly . . .’
They watched in horror as a thing the size of a newborn lamb but with legs like a spider crawled slowly from the humans’ building towards them. It was made of hard, grey metal and instead of eyes it had antennae sticking from the top of its head.
The humans behind the sandbag barrier were watching it as well.
‘It’s a robot,’ said Tony grimly. ‘And it’ll be carrying enough explosives to send all your poor sheep sky high.’
‘No!’ yelled Tod, and he tried to scramble out over the wall of sandbags. But Gran pulled him back again.
‘It’s no good, Tod,’ she sobbed.
‘How do they control it?’ asked Luke, though he had already guessed the answer.
‘With a computer,’ said Tony. ‘It’s in that tent along there.’
Luke peered to his left and saw a small tent tucked safely behind the sandbags. The soldiers who were supposed to be guarding them were now peering in through the flap of the tent. They were too interested in what was happening inside it to notice what was happening outside.
‘Sheep lady,’ Luke whispered. ‘Come with me. You and the boy.’
Tod and Ida looked at him suspiciously, but he’d already turned and was creeping towards the tent. They followed cautiously. When they were close, Luke whispered again.
‘Create a distraction. Get the guards out of the way.’
Tod cottoned on quickly.
‘I can’t take any more!’ he suddenly wailed. ‘I’d rather die with our sheep!’ And he climbed nimbly on to the sandbag wall. Gran clambered creakily up after him.
‘Yes!’ she yelled. ‘Blow us up too! Goodbye, Planet Earth . . .’
The soldiers jerked their heads from inside the tent and raced towards the old lady and the boy now standing on top of the sandbags.
‘Get down!’ they ordered as they ran. But Tod and Ida dodged along the sandbag wall, wailing and yelling, flailing their arms wildly and kicking at the soldiers trying to drag them off.
Luke slipped inside the tent. In front of him was the computer and in front of that, concentrating hard, was a uniformed soldier. Luke stopped. He didn’t know what to do next. He supposed he should creep up and strangle the soldier and take over the keyboard. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. As he dithered, the soldier suddenly sat up straight. He coughed, retched and clasped a hand over his mouth.
‘Ughhh! What’s that stench?’ he gasped. His chair toppled backwards as he stood up and blundered to the tent flap, overwhelmed in the confined space by a toxic mix of manure, wet dog and llama spit coming from the jacket Luke was wearing.
‘I’m gonna throw up . . .’ Hand over his mouth, he shoved Luke aside without seeing who he was and charged out. ‘Take over, mate . . .’ he groaned as he ran.
Luke didn’t need telling twice.
He didn’t bother to pick up the chair. He knelt in front of the keyboard and began dabbing at it furiously. On screen, the robot was now closing in on the sheep. Luke keyed in numbers and letters as quickly as he could. The sheep were backing away from the robot but much too slowly. Luke broke out into a cold sweat and dabbed harder. Outside, he heard the sergeant begin the countdown.
‘Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .’
Luke tried to concentrate. He could do this – he could stop the robot – if he only had time . . . The sheep, led by the skinny lamb, finally turned and ran. But not fast enough. Nor far enough.
‘Seven . . . six . . . five . . .’
Luke took a deep breath and did what a geek never, ever does. He pulled all the plugs. He saw the robot spin around in a confused figure of eight, then the screen went blank.
The explosion was massive.
21
Tod’s Surprise
The Warriors watched, crowded together at the mouth of the cave to which Wills had been trying to lead them. He’d noticed it just before the quad bikes had arrived and wondered if it might come in useful. They’d reached it just in time. They flinched at the bangs and whizzes, but marvelled at the bright flashes amid the billowing smoke. And when the final boom shook the rocks, and the smoke cleared a little, they saw that the Baaton had gone.
‘Ohmygrass . . .’ said Jaycey. ‘Was that Aries taking the Baaton back?’
‘Taking it back, regaining his strength and challenging Lambad all at once . . .’ breathed Sal.
‘Butting his butt big time,’ said Oxo.
‘The Golden Horn Dude’s back in charge, innit?’ said Links.
‘Ohmygrass . . . Look . . .’ gasped Jaycey.
The Warriors gazed upwards. Above the mountain, the smoke had formed itself into a great cloud, a cloud that nobody could deny was shaped like a sheep. It floated, majestic and free, then gradually dissolved in the pale evening sky to reveal the brightest star the Rare Breeds had ever seen.
‘Aries . . .’
It was not only Sal who felt the presence of the Sheep of Sheep. Every Warrior experienced the same deep glow.
‘Job done, man,’ said Links. ‘Job done . . .’
There had never been a better time for high hooves all round.
‘Any ideas what went wrong?’ asked the officer.
‘No, sir,’ said the soldiers, who had succeeded in getting Tod and Ida off the wall just before the explosion. They didn’t want to admit that they hadn’t been guarding the tent properly.
‘No, sir,’ said the soldier who’d left his computer to be sick. He didn’t want to admit that he’d allowed a maniac in a stinking jacket to pull all the plugs.
‘Well . . . No harm done,’ said the officer. ‘Didn’t go off exactly as planned but the objective has been achieved. No sign of the modified sheep or their equipment. Totally vaporised.’ He smiled and dismissed the soldiers. ‘Showed those aliens a thing or two, eh, chaps!’
A little later, the sergeant drove the civilians back down to the quad bike barn.
‘Don’t tell anyone we’re BARMI up here,’ he barked as he drove off into the darkness again.
Ida, who had kept her tears in check until now, could contain them no longer.
‘Our poor sheep,’ she sobbed. ‘Blown to bits . . . They didn’t deserve that, did they, Tod?’
Tod did his best to comfort his gran. And Nisha did the same for Tony, who tried not to enjoy her being nice to him, because he was upset, as it was all his fault in the first place.
Luke kept quiet. He didn’t understand what had happened. He was sure he’d seen the robot zoom away from the sheep at the last moment.
Neil and Lady Babcott looked at them all and laughed loudly.
‘Losers!’ sneered Neil.
Up on Bony Peak, all was now peaceful, but Wills was anxious to get away from the strange humans in their scary fortress.
‘Shall we go home?’ he suggested, leading the way out of the cave.
A brilliant moon had risen to join the bright star. The night air was still and very cold. The path they had climbed up so laboriously was now a smooth slope of ice, disappearing down the mountainside.
The Warriors blinked at it for a few moments, all sharing the same thought.
‘Who’s going first?’ asked Oxo. Then he answered his own question by jumping on and slithering away downhill with a great exultant shout.
‘Five for one and all for five!’
One by one, the others followed.
‘Ohmygrassohmygrassohmygrass . . .!’
‘Cool runnins, dudes . . .!’
‘Aries for ever . . .!’
‘Eppingham here we come!’
They landed on top of each other in a woolly heap at the bottom of the ice slide. They were aware of the barn, and humans, then of squeals of disbelief and delight.
And then a thousand-year-old granny hurled herself on top of them, followed by Tod, the boy who brought them cauliflowers some nights. Tony and Nisha were holding hands and cheering.
Luke used the stinking jacket sleeve to wipe away his own tears of relief.
‘You can keep the jacket, if you like, Supergeek.’
Luke turned. Neil was grinning at him.
‘You can have your parka back too. I won’t be needing it. We’re off.’
‘Off?’
‘Me and Lady B. Back to London in the chopper. Then it’s first class to somewhere exotic where the only ice is in the drinks.’
‘What about me?’
‘What about you? Those nice guys with the bombs have blown your mobile with the you-know-what into tiny little bits. You’ve got nothing more to worry about, mate.’
‘No . . .’ said Luke. It slowly dawned on him that he was free of Neil at last. He still had plenty to worry about, in fact, like how to get home, but the biggest worry of all was about to disappear from his life.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘See you, then.’
‘Unlikely,’ laughed Neil, and he sauntered round the side of the barn and out of sight.
Tod and Ida had forgotten about the helicopter, and neither Tony nor Nisha had realised it was there. The sudden noise as its engine roared into life cut short their joyful reunion with the flock. They all stared as it rose from behind the barn, hovered for a moment, then banked rapidly away to the south. Lady Babcott, they could see, was skilfully at the controls. Neil was waving and laughing down at them.
‘Bye, suckers!’ he mouthed.
When the noise had died away and the helicopter was only a speck disappearing into the moonlight, they all suddenly felt very flat and down again. And very cold.
‘Well,’ said Ida, leading the way into the barn. ‘That Neil’s right, I suppose. It’s the last we’ll see of them. Or our money.’
The others followed, glad to get out of the night air. Luke took the stinking jacket off and dropped it outside. He didn’t want to upset any more stomachs. Tony found a switch, and a neon strip hanging from the rafters flickered, then filled the barn with harsh white light.
‘It’s all my fault,’ he said miserably to Ida. ‘If I hadn’t thought I’d seen a UFO abducting your sheep, those BARMI blokes wouldn’t have tried to blow them up. Then we’d still have the evidence.’
‘It’s not your fault, it’s mine,’ said Luke, even more miserably. ‘I should have guessed Neil was up to something when he bet I couldn’t download bank data on to my phone.’
Ida patted him on the shoulder.
‘Well, so long as you didn’t mean to steal from us, dear, we won’t hold it against you.’
Luke felt even worse. ‘They’re crooks, cheats, swindlers!’ he said angrily. ‘And they’re going to get away with it!’
‘I don’t think so.’
Everyone turned to stare at Tod.
‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I’m sure they’re not.’ And from his pocket he took a small square of plastic.
‘The SIM card!’ yelled Luke. ‘You’ve got the SIM card from my phone!’
‘I took it out before I gave the phone to Lady B,’ Tod said. ‘Once I knew she wasn’t going to shove you over the edge of the mountain, of course, Gran.’
‘All the bank details are on that tiny card?’ asked Tony.
Luke nodded. ‘It’ll also prove that Neil transferred them to his computer. And that will prove how he transferred the money on to Lady B.’
Ida stood back, beaming at her grandson for a moment, then threw her arms around him in a rib-crushing hug.
‘What a boy!’ she yelled. ‘What a boy!’
Tod blushed scarlet. Tony punched the air and jumped up and down, laughing. Nisha laughed too and tucked the thistle Tony had picked for her more firmly into her hair.
The sheep watched with interest. Humans could be very peculiar sometimes. Then they remembered that they hadn’t eaten since . . . they couldn’t remember since when. Oxo headed for the hay bales in the corner, then stopped suddenly. He sniffed. There was a smell in the barn he didn’t like. Then he heard a noise he didn’t like. Dog! Saffron slunk out from behind the hay bales, tail still between her legs, whimpering softly.
‘Saffron! I thought I’d lost you! Here, girl . . . It’s all right . . .’ Luke held out his arms and the dog instantly perked up. Her tail started wagging, the whimpers changed to short, excited little barks, and she hurled herself at the human she had come to regard as her own. The Warriors huddled together anxiously for a moment, but it was clear that this sheepdog was no longer interested in sheep.
Tod cut the string around some of the hay bales and the Warriors got stuck in. Oxo even ate the string.
When Tod went back and sat with the other humans, he suddenly looked worried.
‘I’m sorry, Luke,’ he said. ‘I think when we give the SIM card to the police, they’ll arrest you too. You’ll probably go to prison.’
Luke shrugged. ‘I deserve it,’ he said, ‘for being so stupid.’
‘No you don’t,’ said Ida. ‘We’ll speak up for you. And you’re not stupid. Just a bit gullible, that’s all. And there’s plenty of that about,’ she added, with a little smile that Tony didn’t notice.
Luke smiled too. He hoped she was right. About prison. And about not being stupid.
‘But the bank won’t want you back,’ continued Ida. ‘So you’ll have to find another job’ She thought for a moment. ‘You’re good with technology. My hens would probably like some video footage to go with their egg-laying music. D’you think you could manage that?’
Luke blinked.
‘And then there’s Wills. He’s an exceptionally bright lamb. I’m sure he’d like to become computer literate.’
Luke looked across at the small brown sheep, chomping hay, then wiped a tear of gratitude away with the corner of his T-shirt.
‘That should keep you going for a couple of months,’ said Ida. ‘Till you get yourself straight again.’ She paused. ‘And you can bring your non-sheepdog, if you like.’
Luke needed all his T-shirt for tears after that.
Nisha was busy dabbing at her mobile phone. She called the police. And then Organic TV, but only about Neil and Lady B. She didn’t mention the sheep. ‘They’ve been exposed to enough media attention,’ she said. ‘They deserve some peace. You all do.’
Tony decided he loved her even more. He found another thistle amongst the hay. It was brown and prickly but Nisha put it in her hair with the other one just the same.
‘Oh,’ she added with a mischievous smile, ‘and I’ve arranged some transport home.’
22
Up and Away
The dramatic arrest of Neil and Lady Babcott, when they stepped from the helicopter on to the roof of her house back in London, was the main news on television that night.
At Loch Glooming, Tony’s Cousin Angus nodded wisely as he slurped his evening porridge and watched the news.
‘I knew wee Tony was up tae something,’ he told his cat. ‘He’s nae as daft as he looks.’ Next morning, he and his cat had something else to talk about: a huge golden hot-air balloon was being inflated in the station car park.
Tony just stood and stared when he saw it. On the long walk back down from the mountains, he’d been wondering what sort of transport Nisha had arranged but never guessed it would be a balloon.
‘No aliens,’ she said, teasing. ‘I promise.’
The pilot had thoughtfully provided a ramp for the sheep to climb up. Oxo was dubious.
‘Will there be in-flight snacks?’ he asked Wills.
Then he glimpsed a large picnic hamper in one corner and trotted eagerly on board. The other sheep followed him, then Saffron and all the humans. It was a bit of a squash but nobody minded. Luke blushed and hid his face when the pilot explained, very clearly, that nothing, but nothing, must be dropped over the side. Not ever.
The gas burner roared and the great ball
oon rose into the sky.
‘Bye, Angus,’ yelled Tony. ‘Sorry about the manure!’
The Rare Breed Warriors peered down at the balloon’s shadow, drifting harmlessly across the ground below. They raised their heads to the now distant mountain. The sheep-shaped cloud had long since vanished. The star had faded too now, in the bright sunshine. All was well.
‘We’s the Eppingham Posse
And our mission is complete,
Cos the Golden Horn Dude
Is back on his feet.
Our shinin’ star’s back
And the darkness all gone.
Aries got the Baaton,
And now we’s goin’ home.
We finally done the business
An’ our satisfaction’s deep.
We chew a lot of cud, man,
Cos we’s the Warrior Sheep.’
Join the Rare Breed sheep on their next baaarmy quest!
Turn the page to read the first chapter . . .
1
Red Tongue
They only went into the barn to get out of the rain. But that just goes to show that big adventures can start when you least expect them.
Sheep, even Rare Breed sheep, don’t normally mind getting wet but it had been pouring for days and the paddock was hoof deep in mud. Jaycey, the pretty little Jacob, had had enough.
‘Ohmygrass . . .’ she said, trotting into the cosy barn. ‘All this rain. I’m having such a bad hair day.’
‘Don’t be silly, dear.’ said Sal, the fat and motherly Southdown ewe as she followed. ‘Only humans have hair. And there’s no such thing as a bad fleece day.’
‘That’s right, man,’ agreed Links, the large Lincoln Longwool ram, even though his own woolly locks were dangling damply in front of his eyes and he couldn’t see where he was going. ‘Fleece is cool, innit.’ He bumped into the doorpost on his way in.
Wills, the skinny Welsh Balwin lamb, skipped in after Links. He liked the barn. Usually, there was a laptop in there.
The Quest of the Warrior Sheep Page 11