The Quest of the Warrior Sheep (14 page)

Tod understood that something was upsetting her dreadfully but he didn't have time to think about it. He grabbed up the plastic bag and turned back to his gran and Lady Babcott.

Lady Babcott smiled and moved away from the edge, though she didn't release her grip on Ida's bony arm.

‘There!' she said to Neil. ‘
That's
how it's done.'

Tod began stumbling back over the rocks but the panic had subsided and his heart was thumping less loudly. He stopped and took the phone from the bag. Lady Babcott wasn't going to get it until his gran was safe.

Lady Babcott frowned, gripped Ida's arm more tightly and moved towards Tod, her other hand outstretched for the phone.

Tod didn't move. ‘Not until you let Gran free,' he said.

Lady Babcott came a little closer. Then closer still. Tod put the phone behind his back. ‘Let her go!' he demanded.

Lady Babcott snorted, released her grip on Gran's arm and gave her a little shove. Tod held out the phone again but as Lady Babcott's fingers curled to grasp it, she and Tod were both blinded by the beam of a huge searchlight. It swept backwards and forwards across the small plateau and a voice
boomed through a megaphone.

‘Drop that! And move away from the sheep at once! All of you.'

Tod turned and saw heavily armed soldiers in camouflage uniforms running towards them from the fortress. The megaphone boomed again.

‘I said drop it!'

Lady Babcott dropped the phone.

‘Over by the wall. All of you!'

The soldiers quickly surrounded Tod, Ida and Lady Babcott and began driving them towards the fortress. Other soldiers were driving Luke and Neil towards it too.

‘Don't you know this is a top-secret establishment!' shouted an officer as they stumbled across the grass.

‘If they did, sir,' pointed out a sergeant, ‘it wouldn't be top secret.'

‘Quite right, quite right. Move it, move it!'

Just in front of the fortress, there was a great wall of sandbags. The kind of thing soldiers shelter behind when there's going to be an explosion.

‘Through there. Double quick!' The officer ushered them behind the sandbag wall.

To Tod and Ida's astonishment, Tony Catchpole and Nisha were already there.

‘I'm ever so sorry, Ida,' Tony whispered, as the newcomers were herded in.

‘What for?' Ida asked. She noticed that Nisha was wearing her cream suit again, which was asking for trouble on a mountain-top full of sheep.

‘For identifying them from the glider,' said Tony. ‘As the sheep the aliens abducted.'

‘They can't believe in that nonsense, Tony dear,' smiled Ida.

‘But they do.' Tony was almost weeping. ‘They think your sheep are acting as spies for aliens. They think the thing Jaycey's been carrying round her neck is a transmitter sending information back to the spaceship: information about their top-secret headquarters. They're BARMI, you see.'

Ida didn't see. Neither did any of the others.

‘So why have they made us all come behind here?' asked Tod.

Tony swallowed hard. ‘They say the sheep have got to be destroyed before they can pass on any more secret information.'

‘No!' Ida grabbed Tony's arm. ‘Tell them they're wrong. Tell them they're mad.'

‘I have,' said Tony miserably. ‘But they won't listen. They're preparing the explosives now. They're going to blow your sheep up!'

Tod put his arm around Gran's shoulder. Tony put his arm around Nisha's. Luke sniffed and used the sleeve of Neil's jacket to wipe tears from his eyes. He didn't even notice the smell. Only Neil and Lady Babcott were unaffected. In fact, they were delighted.

‘You're a lucky lightweight,' Lady Babcott told Neil. ‘The mobile's going to be blown to smithereens. Bang! End of all your problems.'

Neil risked a reply. ‘All
our
problems, Lady B. All
our
problems.' And he grinned back. ‘Cheers!'

Out in the grassy, sheep-shaped hollow, the Warriors were confused by the searchlight and the megaphone, and all the human comings and goings. Wills had no idea what was happening, but he felt very uneasy, even though Ida seemed to be safe now.

The Baaton lay face down on the grass, a little way off, where Lady Babcott had dropped it. Delight and relief surged through Sal's stomachs: Aries' power
would be restored after all!

‘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.

T
he 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.