Chapter 15 - On the Road

The three set off with heavy bags and heavy hearts, but knew deep inside themselves that they must move on. Due to a severe oversight in their planning, they also set off with no map. Consequently, they had not been travelling two hours when they had to pull up short. A faint roaring sounded in the distance, as a flooded river sounds when it pours through a ravine several kilometres away. And indeed, that was exactly what was causing the noise.
A sudden and treacherous ravine was carved through the rocky landscape, and through it a river hurled itself, dark and fierce, tossed into white peaks where jagged rocks stood in its path. Silence fell over our group of intrepid travellers, as they stared down with awe. The river seemed omnipotent. There was no hope of crossing.
“We can’t cross that,” said Barney, sitting down on a convenient rock.
“Maybe if we follow it upstream we can find a place to cross,” suggested Celia, in her annoyingly sensible way.
“We can swim it,” said Sammy, who had forgotten briefly that he was not yet immortal. This was ignored.
Celia pulled Barney up, holding his hand. Barney’s heart fluttered. He decided he would have to sit more often in future. And so they set off upstream, alongside the top of the ravine. Celia marched a little grumpily. If her suspicions were correct, their failure to cross the river here would add at least a week to their journey. Sammy also marched a little grumpily. He was annoyed that his brilliant idea had been ignored so completely. Also, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable walking along the cliff-edge. He wasn’t afraid, though. Sameus Rufus Pegasus wasn’t afraid of heights. Sameus Rufus Pegasus wasn’t afraid of anything. Barney alone walked with a spring in his step. In this harsh landscape, so bare of plant-life, the tree demons had not bothered him for days. And Celia had touched him. Maybe she was growing to love him back. He smiled.
They walked for hours in silence. Their path began to climb. Celia wished she had remembered to ask for a map. Barney was tired and growing discouraged. Celia had not touched him again, or even spoken to him all morning. He was so tired – his wonky limbs were not meant for so much exercise. Sammy was becoming more comfortable with walking along the ravine-edge, until he missed his footing and slid perilously close to the edge. He didn’t say anything, but his legs trembled and his heart thudded in his chest. He moved away from the edge.
When it began to grow dark, they stopped and set up camp. Sammy surreptitiously herded his friends away from the edge. He congratulated himself on persuading them to move without them noticing his fear of heights. Not that he was afraid.
They supped on fish left over from the wedding feasts, and bundled themselves in furs. It was cold at night in this part of the land.
They rose early, after a night of shivering and little sleep. After packing up their bundles, they continued along the precipitous path. It was a clear path now, but narrow and flanked on the right by a steep and shaky slope rising out of sight above them, and on the left by a sheer cliff stretching down to white water. It began to rain. By mid-morning, Barney was too tired to fear falling, and Celia was too cold. Sammy was too scared to notice the cold or how tired he was. He had remembered that he was not immortal. He forced himself to put one foot in front of the other, sticking like glue to the right of the path.
There was nowhere to stop on the path, so they did not eat lunch. The path led them up, until the water was so far below that its roar faded beneath the sound of the rain on the rock faces. The rain poured, stinging faces, soaking skin and slicking stone. Several times, a foot slipped, and breath was caught in throats. But each time, they regained their footing and carried on without a backward glance. It was all Sammy could do to stop himself taking Celia in his arms and holding her still, huddling against the wall and refusing to move. But he didn’t. He was Sameus Rufus Pegasus, and he was not afraid of anything.
And then it happened. Celia’s foot slipped, as it had twice before. But this time, though she waved her arms wildly and grabbed at the rock wall with desperate hands, the weight of her pack was too much. It pulled her across the slippery path. She felt Sammy clutching at her arm. Then there was nothing under her feet.

Chapter 14 - A Wedding and a Farewell

Joseph’s wedding to Annie was a big event in the community. It was not often an outsider was available for marriage, and the promise of non-inbred children in the future was cause for great celebration. New clothes were being sewed for the bride and groom, and a home was being carved in the cliff-face for them. They were to be married by Arnold, beside a waterfall and in front of the whole community. The days leading up to the great event were filled with excitement and many meals of fish.
Joseph had no choice in the matter. He was a hero of the tribe, and thus must accept the honour of the most beautiful girl in the tribe as his wife, and live out his days protecting the tribe from Enormous Angry Things. To refuse her hand was a death sentence. But in a few days he came to accept the marriage, arriving at the realisation that this was his fate. All his life had been leading up to this marriage, this position of power. He had been destined for power, and it had come to him in a primitive community in the Eastern Reaches. Every decision he had made, every action he had performed, every thought he had thought, were all tiny steps in his path to this place. And so he would accept his fate and become a great leader.
Marriage and a life of power with the hermits was not the fate of his friends, though. Sammy and Celia found themselves turning down large numbers of proposals. They did this gently, and at last the hermits began to realise that it was not their fate to live their lives in faithful matrimony with a beautiful demigod or a curly-haired farmer’s daughter from across the sea. Barney, unsurprisingly, had no offers whatsoever. Not knowing that this was simply the result of his fate being too strong to offer tempting pathways out, his self esteem fell and he became more miserable than ever. He vowed that the moment the wedding was over he would tell Celia he loved her.
The day of the wedding arrived. Joseph stood resignedly beside his bride, who glowed in a brand new rabbit-skin tunic, made to match his new loincloth. Arnold, who was presiding over the proceedings, announced in a very exclamatory tone that they were married. The wedding was much shorter than Joseph was expecting. At no point was he given an opportunity to consent to his marriage, because the ceremony consisted solely of the sentence “You are now married!” which was said loudly and repeatedly. When the time came to kiss his bride, Joseph was taken by surprise and nearly fell over as Annie threw herself at him ferociously. The crowd cheered and the newlyweds were led to their cave, hewn roughly from the cliff-face and lined with furs.
There was much rejoicing and eating of fish.
It was during the third feast that Celia sensibly decided it was time to say good-bye to Joseph and their new friends the hermits. She alone among the company remembered the reason for their trip across the sea, and she knew that if they did not reach their destination before winter began, they could never find a shoe of the type Sammy needed. Being both the only female in the travelling party, and the most practical, she was the only one who realised that in winter the shops would sell only woolly slippers and heavy boots. They must leave in the next few days.
So the following day, the three intrepid travellers packed bags with furs and feast leftovers. They said sad good-byes to Arnold and to Joseph, and waved to an audience of fifty as they set out once more on their travels.

Chapter 13 - Some Friendly Hermits

Not far from the camp, there was a cave. It was large, but well hidden behind a large rocky outcropping and an unusual clump of thorn bushes that camouflaged the entrance. It had been there many years, and the floor was worn smooth by the feet of generations. It was the home of a family of hermits.
This family were not hermits in the traditional style of hermit – they had not chosen a solitary life, but had been thrown into one by the eccentricity of previous generations. They were, as a whole, a very friendly bunch when given the opportunity, but this didn’t happen much, the nearest village being several hundred miles away, across seven wide, deep rivers (four of them racing through ravines), a mountain range, a glacier, and a large desert. They lived an isolated existence in the far eastern reaches because a long time ago, a man whose name nobody could remember had been outcast from society due to his habit of barking in public and wearing a chicken on his head. Anyway, this ancestor had been outcast with a number of others, all of them slightly mad. They had spread through the inhospitable territory, making homes in caves. The barking man had met a woman outcast for her unusual attachment to dogs, and they had produced six children together before they died. Their youngest child was the great-great-great-great grandfather of the man who lived in this cave.
The fact that this cave was inhabited was extremely fortuitous, because our heroes were in significant danger. They were inexperienced campers, and failed entirely to recognise the signs that identified their camping spot as the territory of the Enormous Angry Thing. No-one had ever got close enough to one of these creatures to identify its species – or if they had, they hadn’t lived long enough to tell anyone. From a distance, it appeared to be a cross between a sabre-toothed tiger and a very large rhinoceros. It was bright red and furry, inclined to moult in the summer, and extremely ferocious. As our heroes slumbered peacefully on the hard ground, heads resting pillows of red tufty fur they had found nearby, the Enormous Angry Thing hunted angrily in the dark. Orange light appeared in the east.
The eldest occupant of the nearby cave, a jovial chap of indeterminate age named Arnold, was out fishing for breakfast. He sat on his usual rock, which had been used by the family for years, and had worn into a comfortable seat shape. He baited his hook and cast off, determined to catch breakfast before the Enormous Angry Thing returned from its night of hunting. He glanced down the stream to its nest. Smoke was curling from the hollow. He grunted in a puzzled way and returned to his fishing. Suddenly, he made a loud, exclamatory remark. There was smoke rising from the nest of the Enormous Angry Thing. That meant there were people there. And they were in trouble, because when an Enormous Angry Thing becomes infuriated, it is very nearly omnipotent, and certainly inescapable. Arnold would have to warn them. He jumped up, forgetting his rod in his hurry. He grinned in excitement – there was nothing Arnold liked better than a good old heroic rescue.
As Arnold rushed to warn them, Sammy rolled over and awoke with a strange feeling that something was wrong. Then he realised he was just hungry. He took up Joseph’s sharp stick and waded into the stream. Something large and silver zipped around his legs. He stabbed it and tossed it on the bank. Fishing was a lot easier than it looked. Spearing another, he turned to toss it onto the pile. But the first fish was gone. Sammy looked over to his sleeping friends. Barney snored and clutched his pet rock. Joseph rolled over and mumbled something. Celia lay breathing slowly, her curls falling over her face. He gazed at her for a moment, then moved his eyes up. Standing beside her sleeping form was an enormous beast. It was as big as the mammoths Sammy had seen at the trading docks. Its red fur was thick and its teeth were as long as Sammy’s forearm but much sharper. Black beady eyes glared balefully at Sammy as it chewed a fish. A fin fell from its mouth and slapped Celia’s cheek. She stirred, sighing. The beast dropped the rest of its fish. It released a deep, menacing growl, and lowered its head to her.
Three things happened. Sammy leapt from the stream, brandishing his spear and bellowing. Joseph woke up and hid behind a rock. Arnold arrived.
As it turned out, Joseph’s cowardly act was by far the most effective of the three events. It confused the beast no end, for while Enormous Angry Things are very large, very hairy, and possess a great number of sharp, pointy teeth, as a species they are not well endowed with brains. This particular beast was well below average in the intelligence department. He took Joseph’s sudden disappearance to mean that his breakfast had turned into a large rock. Suddenly, where there had been four people (three sleeping and one standing in the stream waving a pole), there were four people (one sleeping, one cowering, one bellowing and waving a pole, and one standing behind him wearing an animal-skin loin cloth and holding a knife), and a large rock. It worried him. He snuffled at the rock. It squeaked. He opened his mouth to eat it, because things that squeaked were usually delicious. Something bit him. Right on the rump. It hurt.
Roaring, the beast turned on Arnold. Arnold was suddenly very aware that his knife was less than half the size of one of his foe’s teeth. He waved it nervously. The beast growled. Sammy dragged Celia and the peacefully slumbering Barney to safety and returned, bellowing heroically, to the fight. Joseph began to cry.
To an Enormous Angry Thing, nothing is tastier than something that whimpers. He stopped. He sniffed the air. He spun on his haunches and lunged at the rock that hid Joseph. Joseph scrambled backwards. The Enormous Angry Thing’s sword-like teeth closed on his hiding place. A loud crack split the air as the EAT’s teeth embedded themselves in the rock. The beast thrashed and struggled and roared in vain – it could not free itself. The party snuck away behind it, to the safety of the hermit caves.
And so it was that Joseph the cowardly navigator became a hero among the hermits of the Eastern Reaches. In a ceremony before the entire community of more than fifty, he was awarded both the title of ‘Joseph the brave, defeater of Enormous Angry Things’, and the hand of Arnold’s eldest daughter, a very pretty (if somewhat unwashed) lass by the name of Annie.

Chapter 12 - A Surprising Development

When Sammy opened his eyes, they were soaring over craggy hilltops. This was a most unexpected development, because although he had a rather limited intellect, he had managed to acquire the basic rules of logic. The first and most important of these was this: Boats do not fly. Secondly, it was impossible to travel faster than a tidal wave. He thought for a moment that they had died and gone to be with the Gods, but he dismissed that immediately because a) if they were with the Gods, why would they be in a flying boat, and b) his father was a God and he had seen the land of the Gods. It was all palaces and grapes, not empty hills with scraggy grass growing on rocks.
The land they were flying over was in fact the Eastern Reaches of Lamburg, the land they had set out for on their journey across the sea. Lamburg was an enormous land, and they were as far away from their destination as they had been to start with, but this time they had a flying boat and didn’t have to cross the sea. The Eastern Reaches were wild and lonely and dangerous. No-one lived there except hermits and bandits. There were terrible stories of men who had wandered unsuspectingly into the Eastern Reaches and never been heard of again. The landscape was treacherous, full of sudden cliffs and rushing rivers. In the winter, snow fell six feet deep. But when it comes down to it, cliffs and rivers and hermits are an enormous improvement on slave traders and active volcanoes.
The boat drifted down slowly to land with a slight bump on a rocky outcrop with a large and scary cliff falling away on one side and a steep descent to a river on the other. Barney, Joseph and Celia opened their eyes. They spent a moment staring in horror at the ground at the base of the cliff. It was so far down that it had become hazy, and only a few of the sharper and pointier rocks could be seen. They looked a little like teeth to Joseph. Barney would have rather liked to have a closer look, as long as it didn’t involve falling from the top of the cliff. Celia’s sensible nature took over immediately. “I suggest we find another way down,” she announced.
It did not occur to any of them to wonder how they had got there. Joseph thanked the Gods, while Barney assumed they had been propelled there by the water (Celia would have immediately denounced this idea as being illogical – there was no water to be seen except the river, and that was far below them). Celia knew in her heart that Sammy had got them there – he was the most brave, heroic, handsome boy, and half God too. Gods must be able to fly, surely.
You, as the reader, may have realised that by this point, our intrepid adventurers had not eaten for several days. They had been given water in the slave pen, because the operators could not have their slaves dying. They had at one time run the auctions like this, but it had been very bad for business. Food, however, was another story. Celia’s suggestion of finding a way down was leapt at, and improved upon with the suggestion that once they were down, they should find some food.
After several minutes of searching, a rather difficult and dangerous way down was discovered. The descent to the raging river was almost vertical, and covered in rocky overhangs and loose stones. A few hardy thorn bushes clung to the hill. The path was narrow and almost invisible, but it was definitely a path. Someone had climbed down here before. Celia stepped onto the path. It zig-zagged, so that following the path meant walking ten times as far as going directly down the hill. It also took a lot longer than going directly down the hill, because going directly down meant slipping and tumbling at great speed into the river, and almost certain death. This is not to say the path was easy, though. Barney lost his footing twice, the result of being not so very coordinated, and nearly took all his companions down into the river.
Many hours, and lots of sweating later, they reached the river. It was full of jagged rocks and white water. They decided against attempting to cross it, and had a loud and violent argument about which direction to walk. In the end, mostly because Celia was very persistent and would not take no for an answer, they began to walk upstream. The logic behind this was that rivers run to the ocean, and they wanted to be as far away from the ocean as possible.
When they came to a less lively part of the river, they stopped to make camp. There wasn’t much camp to make. All they had with them were the clothes on their backs (and on their arms, legs etc), and a few remnants of chain. They had been forced to leave the boat where it had landed, because carrying it down the hill had been impossible. So, they sat by the river, and Joseph, who had been a boy scout, collected some stones and arranged them in a circle. Barney was puzzled by this, because stone circles, in his experience, went around people. Joseph collected a few sticks and put them in a pile in the circle. He then sat by the circle and rubbed two sticks together for half an hour. Approximately half an hour, anyway. All of their watches had been soaked by the wave and no longer worked. When no spark appeared, Celia attempted to make a fire by reflecting light from her watch. Making fire with a watch was a neat trick she had read about in her favourite book, Doris Saves The World, And Is Made Head Girl. But that didn’t work either, and she gave up in despair. Sammy, at last catching on to what they were trying to do, pointed at the circle of stones and closed his eyes. A large fireball shot from his hand, narrowly missing Joseph. The sticks finally caught fire.
Joseph, a little embarrassed about his lack of success at making a fire after bragging about his expertise, set about making a spear to catch fish with. He sharpened a long stick with his pocket knife (the guards at the slave yards, who were very complacent and not very bright, had neglected to check his pockets), heated the end in the fire, and waded into the river. Astonishingly, after a lot of misses, one instance of falling over, and one stabbed foot, he managed to catch a fish.
Celia cooked it, and they settled down to a very small dinner as darkness fell.

Chapter 11 - Out of the Fire

It was late afternoon, and darkness was falling over Alvin. A guard had grabbed Celia to toss her to the auctioneer, but Sammy (on Barney’s advice) had worked quietly all day to free himself from his chains, and at last burst free. He jumped on the guard holding Celia. The guard made a very exclamatory statement of surprise, and dropped her. She writhed on the ground, having been freed of most of her chains for the auction, and tripped another guard up. He lost his whip and it was immediately grabbed by an enterprising young man who had been biding his time. From there is escalated into an all out riot, with even some of the ones who thought they had given up joining in. Sammy threw off three guards and rushed to break his friends’ shackles. It was easier than breaking his own, and only took a few moments. They ran wildly to the town-end door.
The door burst inwards to reveal an army, equipped with guns and maces. All movement stopped.
The volcano chose that moment to erupt.
And when the volcano on the island of Alvin erupts, it seriously erupts. No piddling puffs of ash and streams of molten rock for this mountain. No, this was a real eruption, with red sky seen on the other side of the world, and rain of fire, and shaking earth, and black ash falling two feet thick over the whole island and far out into the sea.
The result of the eruption was either extremely good or extremely bad, depending on where you stood. For instance, it was extremely good for our heroes, because it brought about their escape, but it was very bad for the new army of guards, because they were standing directly in the path of an enormous flying boulder, and were flattened in a burst of swearing and frantic pushing and shoving. It was also extremely good for the slaves that had been sold, because businessmen are not known for their bravery, and tended to release their captives at the first sign of danger, but very bad for Mervin the disagreeable, because his hut caught fire.
So our newly unchained heroes made a run for it through a large hole in the fence where a boulder had crashed into it. The hole was perfectly round and ringed with fire. It reminded Joseph, who was somewhat hysterical (a result of being cowardly) of a circus he had been to when he was younger, when the ringmaster had made the horses jump through hoops of fire. He laughed, but stopped laughing when his pants caught fire.
After dousing the flames, they ran across the burning docks to the water. Sparing no thought for the other slaves, because sometimes you have to look out for yourself, they leapt into the nearest boat and shoved off hard. The boat zoomed away from the dock at high speed. Then it sprung back with a crash because they had forgotten to untie it. The dock wobbled unsteadily. Flames flickered around its supports. Barney wrestled with the mooring rope. Someone had tied an excellent knot. A rock crashed into the sea inches from their boat. The water around it began to boil. The silhouetted form of the largest ship at the docks began to sweep slowly out into the harbour. On board, a figure put his thumbs in his ears and wiggled his fingers. Sammy bellowed something exclamatory at him and pulled the mooring rope so hard that the section of dock it was tied to broke off. He wielded the oars with a strength that surprised even him, and they began to manoeuvre through the debris. On the docks, a thousand voices cried for help, but the further away the boat got, the quieter the cries became. And so they made their escape from the Slave Traders of Alvin.
But they were not yet out of danger. For we all know what happens when a volcanic island erupts. The earth shakes beneath the sea, and rocks melt, and the sea rises. Up, up it rises, forming a wall of water, a mountain. If, that is, walls and mountains moved at the speed of sound and crashed down upon anything in their way, causing mass death and destruction.
The tiny boat weaved through ash and rocks at and unnatural speed. It sat low in the water, not designed to hold four. Its paint was peeling in the hot water, and blisters were forming on skin where bodies touched wood. Barney, Celia and Joseph sat hunched in the boat and tried to not to touch the sides, while Sammy pulled furiously on the oars. We, as objective observers, may think that this is not fair, and that they should have taken turns with the oars. But the truth is that it is much better not to disturb a demi-god when he has a rhythm going, and when you are escaping an erupting volcano, the best idea is to leave as fast as possible without considering fairness. So, Joseph sat with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears. He sang a little song to himself, and pretended he was at home in bed. Barney watched the eruption through half open eyes and tried to pretend he didn’t think it was pretty. He liked rocks. Celia distracted herself by watching Sammy row. She sighed a little and thought that Sammy really was very handsome and heroic. Sammy didn’t think, just deftly avoided any obstacles and rowed as hard as he could. The mountain prepared for its finale.
Mount Alvin exploded with a force that caused the ground to shake in every country of the world. There was a deafening blast and fire leapt into the sky. Molten rock rained. Four thousand mammoths trumpeted as they died (this is the true story of the extinction of the mammoth. Water rose in a wall five times as high as a house. The tiny boat rose with it. Our heroes grasped their seats tightly. Sammy forgot about the oars and pulled Celia close with arm, holding desperately to the boat with the other. He closed his eyes.

Chapter 10 - Into the Fire

As our heroes were coughing up their weight in seawater on a perfect white-sand beach, they were blissfully unaware of the danger that awaited them. For, as is always the case, they had escaped from danger into greater danger. They closed their eyes and slept peacefully on the soft land.
When Joseph awoke, his hazy eyes took some time to focus. There was a big white thing with some black bits on it. His vision cleared a little, and he read: ALVIN. This didn’t mean much to him, because for a navigator, his geography was surprisingly poor. He woke the others to tell them excitedly that they had reached a city.
Alvin was not a nice place. It was not a nice place at all. It looked nice, at first glance. It was a smallish island, a tall green cone, with white sand trimming its base like lace. It had picturesque palm trees, and attractive little wooden huts with roofs made from coconut fronds. Beautiful young women in very short skirts seemed to be everywhere, much to Sammy’s approval. He was of the opinion that all towns would be improved by a few more young women in short skirts. But when you realised that the tall green cone with the cloud at the top was a ferociously active volcano, and all the beautiful young women in the short skirts were slaves, the land lost its appeal a little.
However, our heroes had not yet realised what an unpleasant place they had landed in. To them, it was land, glorious land, and a lucky escape from an evil pirate plot. The name on the sign seemed vaguely familiar to Barney, but his head was fogged with thirst and exhaustion, and he had on seen the name very briefly. So they crawled along the beach to the nearest hut to beg for a drink.
Unfortunately for them, the nearest hut belonged to Mervin the Disagreeable. Mervin the Disagreeable was, as his name suggests, extremely disagreeable. This was due in part to being named Mervin, but it was mostly because he was old and just naturally not very nice (it ran in the family – his father had been Mervin the Dishonourable and his father’s father had been Mervin the Disgusting). His greatest joy in life was visiting the slave auctions at the nearby docks, and watching the guards break the spirits of the slaves. Mervin felt that if he was unhappy, everyone else should be too.
Sammy, Celia, Barney and Joseph stumbled up to the door of the hut, and knocked. Sammy knocked rather harder than necessary, and the door crashed to the ground. Mervin the Disagreeable jumped up from his chair in the dark corner of the hut. He waved his walking stick disagreeably. “What’s all this?” He demanded in an exclamatory fashion, “Who broke my door? What do you want?” But then his eyes lit up. There were four exhausted, thirsty youngsters in his hut. He shouldn’t have too much trouble with them. Finally, he would have something to sell.
Because Mervin the Disagreeable was so disagreeable, he had spent a large proportion of his life imagining this scenario and creating a cunning and devious plan to use in the event of slaves presenting themselves to him. He ungraciously offered them water. Having seen Sammy accidently bash down the door, he had decided force was not the answer, and he would have to outsmart them. This was astonishingly easy (you must remember that our heroes were very tired and not expecting another plot against them so soon after the last one). All he had to do was drop a little of the stuff the doctor had given him to make him sleep (he hadn’t taken it because he found the doctor very condescending and argumentative) into the water before he gave it to them. All four took large, unsuspecting swallows, and dropped off to sleep. Mervin the Disagreeable quickly fastened the shackles he had been saving for situations like these onto their legs. He dragged them out of his hut one by one and tied them to a coconut tree with chains. His hut was very small and he couldn’t be falling over them all the time. He checked his handiwork, and then went for a lie-down. It was very hard work capturing slaves.
Mervin the Disagreeable was rudely awakened in the middle of the night. A mammoth was trumpeting outside his hut. There were large herds of mammoths all over the island, a strange and unexplained phenomenon, because it seemed the climate would be too hot for them. Mammoth wool was the islands second largest export, after slaves. It was crashing around and making a terrible noise. And because Mervin the Disagreeable was only disagreeable to humans (he was actually very fond of mammoths), he rose to help it.
As you may have guessed, it was not a mammoth. Sammy had woken up to find himself chained to a tree, and was furious about it. Seeing the nasty little man who had chained him there, he bellowed louder than he ever had before. “I AM SAMEUS RUFUS PEGASUS!” He bellowed, “MERE CHAINS CANNOT HOLD ME! MY FATHER IS SAMEUS ALFREDUS PEGASUS, GOD OMNIPOTENT! VENGEANCE SHALL FALL UPON YOU!” Seeing the chains shudder and strain, Mervin the Disagreeable was beginning to feel a little nervous. He picked up a large, heavy piece of wood and brought it down on Sammy’s head. Sammy fell silent. Mervin turned to the others threateningly. Joseph snarled. Celia quivered. Barney snored.
At first light, Mervin the Disagreeable returned to his captives, this time with back-up. There was an armed guard for each of them, and three extras for Sammy. They were large, burly and unpleasant. The first grabbed Celia roughly and leered at her. She did what all traditional heroines do in such a situation, and cried out: “Oh you beast! Oh, you unspeakable cad!” The guard slapped a dirty palm over her mouth. She bit him.
All their struggling was in vain, however (they all struggled; even Barney landed a vicious kick on his captor’s shin). They were dragged in chains around the corner to the slave yards.
The slave yards were at the docks. From the outside, they appeared to be a large, solid wooden fence that formed a square as large as Farmer Johnson’s bull field (but not as large as Celia’s father’s bull field). There were two enormous bolted gates, one at the village end and one at the dock end. The one at the dock end opened into an arena with a stage at one end. An enormous crowd of fat businessmen was gathered in the arena. They were all clamouring to make themselves heard, waving handkerchiefs and little cards with numbers on them. There was a lot of shoving, and several people had bleeding noses and impressive bruises forming on their faces. One of the men lost his footing on the dusty ground, and fell. No-one tried to help him up and he was nearly trampled by the time be managed to crawl to the edge. The object of their attention was a man on the stage. He was wearing a black suit and wide-brimmed hat (showing him to be dishonest). He was sweating profusely and keeping up a running commentary of prices in a loud and whiny voice. The hammer in his right hand waved at random. Next to him, firmly shackled, stood a girl. She was unbelievably beautiful, with pale skin and long, dark hair, and tear tracks on her cheeks. Barney struggle desperately. The hammer came down.
The four were thrown into the gate at the town end, still in their chains. The yard was packed with slaves, some shackled, some free to walk. Enormous guards with grey uniforms and mammoth whips patrolled the edges. It was very quiet. Everyone had either given up hope, or were biding their time before attempting an escape. The sales in the arena could be heard clearly. It shocked Barney to think that people enjoyed doing this to others. As far as he could tell, the world beyond his rock hut was cruel. Every few minutes, another slave was dragged out the dock-end door to be sold. Barney sat down to think of a plan.
Clouds gathered above the mountain.

Chapter 9 - Out of the Frying Pan

Although the slave trading plan had been one of Scar’s better, less complicated plans, it was all going badly wrong. Due to insufficient funds, Scar had had to employ a young and inexperienced navigator, who was nearly as bad at navigating as Scar was at being a pirate. The young navigator, whose name was Joseph, had no idea where they were, only that they weren’t where they were meant to be. He didn’t tell the captain this, of course, because it is never a good idea, to tell a greedy, bitter, desperate pirate captain that you have ruined the only good plan he has made in his whole career. So he just pretended it was taking a little longer than expected to get there, and planned to jump ship and run away next time they reached land.
They had been at sea for six weeks, and were running out of food. Captain Scar was now greedy, bitter, desperate, and very, very hungry. This is not a good combination, because it leads to uncharacteristic behaviour, and rash, foolish actions. To make matters worse, The Frying Pan, which he had been assured was in mint condition, one previous owner, beautifully made and so on, by the used ship salesman he had bought it from, had sprung a leak. Captain Scar was surprisingly trustful of salesmen for such a nefarious beast.
One day, as Barney, Celia, and Sammy sat grumpily in the cage, planning their escape when they reached land, another ship appeared on the horizon. It was small, with white sails and no large bombs visible on it. Scar gave the order to attack without thinking. He didn’t even make a plan.
As the ship drew nearer, Scar realised, too late, that the reason the ship had appeared small was that it was a very, very long way away. The ship they had raised their pirate flag to was enormous and flying the flag of Montak, the country that was home to the three largest weapons manufacturers in the world. This ship didn’t need bombs. It had all sorts of other fancy, technical weaponry like flame throwers and trained sharks. At this stage, though, they probably wouldn’t need them. The ship didn’t seem to have noticed them, and was now bearing down on them ominously. Joseph, from his hiding place, crouched behind the mast, caught sight of a life boat on the big ship. It was three times the size of Scar’s ship.
Below deck, in the cage, Barney was beginning to get edgy. Muffled yelling and frantic footsteps floated down from on deck. In the walls, the woodmen were struggling to get out. Barney could see the walls shake and bend where they fought their bindings, their faces grim and determined. He shook the bars of the cage.
The ship had come into range of the ship from Montak. Captain Scar had decided to fight, because they could not outrun it, and if he was going to die he figured he might as well have some fun, and take a few down with him. He waited until the two ships were side by side, and gave the order – starboard canons open fire. The Montakians gave them one shot’s head start before they swivelled their flame throwers. Scar dashed for the trapdoor to get below deck. As well as being greedy and bitter and desperate, he was also not very brave. Although, even the most omnipotent of gods is likely to quaver slightly in the face of twenty-nine flame throwers aimed at his ship.
To their credit, the crew put up a good showing before they burned to death. They all shouted exclamatory insults and waved their cutlasses. They fired the canons and their pistols. One brave man threw a hook on a rope at the other ship. It dropped into the sea. But then the flamethrowers were turned on, and a huge burst of fire descended on the ship like a thousand dragons. It swept across the heaving deck, leaving nothing but charred bones and melted swords. And then the ship exploded.
The explosion took the Montakians by surprise, because the idea of the flamethrowers was to kill everybody but leave the hull of the ship intact for plundering purposes. They didn’t know what to do, so they turned their ship and took off in the opposite direction, so as not to be associated with it. This was very unfortunate for the five survivors.
The ship had not, in fact, exploded. With a herculean effort, the frightened, angry woodmen had finally freed themselves from the hull and deck. As they burst out, bits of wood flew everywhere, and with nothing to hold it together, the ship collapsed into the sea. Trapped in their cage, our three heroes sank slowly to the bottom of the sea.
Unfortunately for the woodmen, their species cannot survive without wood to live on, and the ocean is decidedly lacking in large trees, bushes, or shrubbery of any sort. Several clung desperately to Barney, and pulled him deeper into the sea, but alas, there were no survivors.
Sammy, being half-god and very strong, managed to break the bars of the cage open enough to pull his friends from the cage. Celia was a poor swimmer, and wearing a dress, while Barney could not swim at all, so Sammy had to be extremely heroic and try to hold both their heads above water while he swam for shore. The two were a dead weight and he felt himself pushed under again and again. The woodmen’s escape had reduced the ship to toothpick sized fragments. There was nothing left even to hold onto and float on. But it would have taken omnipotence to save them both, and Sammy was not yet omnipotent.
Luckily, Joseph the navigator had also survived. Being somewhat cowardly, he had hidden below deck when he saw the flame throwers. He was an excellent swimmer, but unsure of which direction to swim in. Now that he thought about it, navigator had probably been a poor choice of occupation for him. You didn’t see optometrists floating in the middle of the sea after their ship has been attacked with flamethrowers then exploded. He treaded water and floated on the wake of the explosion. A million tiny slivers of wood stabbed him. He bellowed in pain.
Joseph was nearly as good at bellowing as Sammy. Sammy heard him and dragged Barney and Celia to the source of the noise. Of course, once he had an extra person to help with the lifting the rest was easy. He swam to shore with Celia, often having to wait for Joseph and Barney to catch up. Joseph was not as strong as Sammy, not being a demi-god, and Barney flailed about like an elderly woman who has become entangled in her knitting while attempting complex gymnastic moves.
At long last, Sammy sighted land, a line of green bobbing on the horizon, moving in and out of sight as the water tossed him about. He struck out with renewed energy, but the shore seemed to move further away with each stroke. He stopped swimming and simply floated, exhausted. Slowly but surely, the land drifted toward him.
As a side note, the fifth survivor was of course Captain Scar, who had escaped unpleasant death so many times he was beginning to believe he was immortal. He was rescued several days later by a passenger liner, and finally packed in his unsuccessful pirating career for an even less successful one as a children’s entertainer dressed as a pirate on the ship.