Got it.
Snefru awoke with a start, just like he always did. He must have been asleep for years, but the same tranquillity remained, that same feeling of pure, undiluted bliss.
“Oh, isn’t it fantastic!” he explained, shaking his dog awake. “Come, look, see!”
“Master,” relied the hound, already up and alert, scanning the horizon.
And then he saw it. All around him, his sheep, his flock, his raison d’être, were being trapped by some sort of… fence.
“What the
hell is going on!?” cried the shepherd in total panic arms flailing wildly in utter bemusement.
“It is the doing of the townsfolk below, I suspect, Master. They are using your flock for their own needs.”
“Right!” exclaimed the shepherd, reaching for his staff, “let’s see about that!”
****************************************************
The big construction in the middle of the town must have been the place where the order to decimate the flock had come from. Snefru approached the entrance, which was flanked by two guards, his sheepdog by his side.
“I demand to see your leader!” he commanded, his vocabulary failing him.
“Oh yeah? An’ you are?” asked the first guard, ticking the “provocative idiotic guard” cliché box.
“I am Snefru, the Divine Shepherd, and I demand to see your leader!”
At this point, both guards fell about with laughter.
“I’m telling you, I am! And this is my sheepdog, Geoff!”
Snefru smacked his forehead – he’d used that name again. Any chance of getting the guards back now was lost. He would have to use force.
“I blight thee with
divine light!” he cried, pointing his staff at the guards.
Nothing happened.
“All right you two, let’s be going,” began one of the guards, laughter subsiding. The shepherd found himself picked up, and motioned out of the town. His quest had failed. The sheep were still trapped.
*********************************************************
His name was Lygot, and he was a rat catcher. Just like his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, but unlike his great-great-grandfather, who had been a prostitute. They never spoke about him.
Lygot was not just any rat catcher, however. He was a humane rat catcher. Put simply, he didn’t kill the rats, but kept them in a secure area under his house. He fed them, cleaned them, slept with them sometimes.
Lygot didn’t have a wife.
That morning, that fateful morning (it wasn’t really, it just sounds good), he awoke, and went down to visit his “little fur balls of fun.” His words, not mine, I’m just writing it down.
They had gone. Not a single one was left, no more squeaking, biting, er, defecating, just a slightly eerie silence.
“Rats!” Lygot swore, but it was to no use, he searched wildly around, but they had gone. And when he saw the convenient dog-sized hole in the side, going up to the street, he was devastated. He has set a plague of rats upon Karakorum – the populace had no chance.
**********************************************************
“That was a complete waste of time, er, Geoff.”
“I keep telling you, Master, you mustn’t try and do divine acts, you’re not really a god. Let me do all the miracles.”
“I know, I know, I just get so wound up in it all… It was fun though, wasn’t it?”
“Er, yes Master.”
“Well I enjoyed it. Ah. Come on, let's go back to the hill. That was a nice view, wasn't it?"