The Last Continent

had your holidays this year, then?” he said, clipping away.
    “Mnaaarrrhh!”
    “What about this weather, eh?” Rincewind said, desperately.
    “Mnaaarrrhh!”
    The sheep wasn’t even trying to struggle. It was an old one, with fewer teeth than feet, and even in the very limited depths of its extremely shallow mind it knew that this wasn’t how shearing was supposed to go. Shearing was supposed to be a brief struggle followed by glorious cool freedom back in the paddock. It wasn’t supposed to include searching questions about what it thought of this weather or enquiries as to whether it required something for the weekend, especially since the sheep had no concept of the connotations of the term “weekend” or, if it came to that, of the word “something” either. People weren’t supposed to splash lavender water in its ear.
    The shearers watched in silence. There was quite a crowd of them, because they’d gone and fetched everyone else on the station. They knew in their souls that here was something to tell their grandchildren.
    Rincewind stood back, looked critically at his handiwork, and then showed the sheep the back of its head in the mirror, at which point the creature cracked, managed to get its feet under it and made a run for the paddock.
    “Hey, wait till I take the curlers out!” Rincewind shouted after it.
    He became aware of the shearers watching him. Finally one of them said, in a stunned voice, “That’s sheep-shearing where yew come from, is it?”
    “Er…what did you think?” said Rincewind.
    “It’s a bit slow, innit?”
    “How fast was I supposed to go?”
    “Weell, Daggy here once did nearly fifty in an hour. That’s what you’ve got to beat, see? None of that fancy rubbish. Just short back, front, top and sides.”
    “Mind yew,” said one of the shearers, wistfully, “that was a beautiful lookin’ sheep.”
    There was an outbreak of bleating from the sheep corrals.
    “Ready to give it a real go, Rinso?” said Daggy.
    “Ye gawds, what’s that ?” said one of his mates.
    The fence shattered. A ram stood in the gap, shaking its head to dislodge bits of post from its horns. Steam rose from its nostrils.
    Most of the things Rincewind had associated with sheep, apart from the gravy and mint sauce, had to do with…sheepishness. But this was a ram, and the word association was suddenly… rampage . It pawed the ground. It was a lot bigger than the average sheep. In fact, it seemed to fill Rincewind’s entire future.
    “That’s not one of mine !” said the flock’s owner.
    Daggy placed his shears in Rincewind’s other hand and patted him on the back.
    “This one’s yours, mate,” he said, and backed away. “You’re here to show us how it’s done, eh, mate?”
    Rincewind looked down at his feet. They weren’t moving. They remained firmly fixed to the ground.
    The ram advanced, snorting and looking Rincewind in the bloodshot eye.
    “Okay,” it whispered, when it was very close. “You just make with the shears and the sheep’ll do the rest. No worries.”
    “Is that you ?” said Rincewind, glancing at the distant ring of watchers.
    “Hah, good one. Ready? They’ll do what I do. They’re like sheep, okay?”
    The shearers watched as wool fell like rain.
    “That’s somethin’ you don’t often see,” said one of them. “Them standin’ on their heads like that…”
    “The cartwheels is good,” said another shearer, lighting his pipe. “I mean, for sheep.”
    Rincewind just hung on to the shears. They had a life of their own. The sheep flung themselves against the clippers as if in a real hurry to get into something more comfortable. Fleeces curled around his ankles, then around his knees, rose above his waist…and then the shears were slicing the air, and sizzling as they cooled down.
    Several dozen dazed sheep were watching him very suspiciously. So were the sheep-shearers.
    “Er…have we started the competition yet?” he said.
    “You just sheared thirty sheep in two minutes!” roared Daggy.
    “Is that good?”
    “Good? No one takes two minutes for thirty sheep.”
    “Well, I’m sorry , but I can’t go any faster.”
    The shearers went into a huddle. Rincewind looked around for the ram, but it didn’t seem to be there any more.
    Finally, something seemed to have been settled. The shearers approached him in the cautious, oblique way of men trying to hang back and walk forward at the same time.
    Daggy stepped forward, but only