by Heide Goody
“Nuns!” shouted Ben from the backseat.
“On it Ben,” said Rutspud. “Kylie’s got the message about the nuns, I don’t think we’ll get her to go any faster than this.”
“No! Actual nuns!” said Ben, pointing ahead.
“Oh, shit.”
Clovenhoof was well into his performance. He’d made sure that people would gaze adoringly throughout by chucking tenners from the stage at random intervals. He was currently doing a couple of songs. Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? was an obvious choice and he’d also cued up the backing track for Wrecking Ball on the off chance that he decided to ride on the champagne bottle as he launched it (twerking as he went). He was gratified to hear the crowd murmuring with approval. The murmuring quickly grew to a roar, which was surprising, as he hadn’t even got to the part where he took his top off and swung it round his head. Then he realised that the crowd were no longer looking at him, their attention had been captured by a giant brawl with an unmistakeable crowd of nuns at the centre of it.
Clovenhoof knew he could not compete with such a spectacle, so he stopped singing and began chanting “Fight! Fight! Fight!” The crowd immediately joined in, and as fists flew and angry shoves were dealt out, the brawl grew until hundreds of people were fighting.
Joan of Arc emerged from the crowd, chasing a young man who looked genuinely panicked by the commotion. He looked left at Clovenhoof, right at the tables of food and drink and ran straight ahead. Joan reached out to grab him but a band of enraged sisters of mercy leapt upon her and bore her to the ground.
Clovenhoof saw Lennox whisper something into Florence’s ear, and Florence bellowed at the army who had been standing to attention around the stage. “Engage with this rabble, soldiers! Hooflandia will not tolerate violence in its streets. Arrest anyone who is fighting!”
In Clovenhoof’s assessment that was more or less everyone. The single street of Hooflandia was full to bursting and everyone was fighting with someone. A couple seemed to be fighting with themselves.
“Those without valid travel documents should be ejected from Hooflandia,” hollered Florence as she sent them into action.
The soldiers waded into the melee. It wasn’t clear how they were going to stop the fighting, but they did manage to eject a fair number of people by working in pairs, grabbing a person’s arms and legs and tossing them into the moat. The brave Hooflandian army was massively outnumbered by the regiments of placard-wielding nuns and, within minutes, they were swamped by the vengeful holy ladies. But, then, at their moment of crisis, what could only be described a cavalry charge of boys on shopping trolleys swooped forward with cries of joy, drove a wedge into the nuns’ flank and threw them into confusion.
Sadly, Hooflandia did not even come close to the world record for shortest time between a country’s inception and its first war. Nonetheless, the day’s events proved of exceptional interest to a number of journalists and a select band of crackpot historians and became known as the Battle Of The Four Armies, although it perhaps ought to be properly referred to as the Battle Of The Four Armies Plus That Unfortunate Bit With The Self-Driving Car And The Yacht (since these last two proved to be the deciding factor in the conflict).
On one side were the nuns. It was difficult to gauge their true numbers, particularly as all that black and white created a zebra-style camouflage effect that made it difficult to distinguish one nun from the next. Sensible estimates ranged from two to seven thousand. It was also later argued that their numbers were swelled by various students, fetishists and musical fans who had come along in fancy dress to join the revels. The nuns were ostensibly the aggressors in the battle but their protest had been a peaceful one until a teenager in medieval battle armour wrestled an elderly nun to the ground and tried to rip off her clothes.
On the other side was the official Hooflandian army. The ranks of self-appointed captains, battle lords, Eagle Strike Warriors and covert agents, were well-disciplined in the art of standing still and looking both stern and reassuring but were less capable on the field of battle. Nonetheless, what they lacked in training they certainly made up for in enthusiasm and impressive uniforms. Two of them – ingenious souls definitely deserving of immediate promotion – had commandeered one of the pumps used to fill the moat and were using the hose to blast away anyone who came near.
In the middle, forming a loose alliance with the Hooflandian forces, were the masses of local folks who saw the nun advance as an attack on their free family fun day. These were people who wished to protect their families, ensure fun was had by all and, most importantly, stopping anyone else taking stuff that was free until they got their own hands on it. Whether they were combatants or merely looters was entirely a matter of perspective.
The Boldmere Ponies were the fourth major force in the battle. The boys, charging at speed on their shopping trolley steeds, had the advantage of agility and height, and used their poles to knock down nuns, soldiers and passers-by like skittles. Their specific goals in the conflict were uncertain and they rampaged across the battlefield more like a force of nature than any coherent military unit.
The battle raged back and forth for several long minutes with no clear winner and it might have raged on for considerably longer if not for the sudden and eventful appearance of a self-driving car.
Clovenhoof had an almost unparalleled view of the carnage from the stage. He took out his phone to film it, certain that future generations would thank him, and simultaneously sidled over to the music desk to put on some thumping accompaniment. To the sounds of Swords of a Thousand Men (with Two Tribes cued-up to follow), he swung his phone left and right, groaning with frustration that his phone arm was too slow to catch every scene of chaos. There was Nerys and a Hooflandian ninja defending a cake stall from a band of opportunistic locals. Here, a Boldmere Pony wrestled with a rather nubile nun as they sped by together in a shopping trolley. And there – oh, there! – a rather surprising bride of Christ atop a grey sand dune had whipped out what did indeed appear to be a pair of nunchuks and was sending assailant after assailant cartwheeling down into the water.
“How the hell did this happen?” asked Florence, who’d apparently mounted the stage to oversee her troops more effectively.
“Sometimes you just gotta dream big, Florence,” said Clovenhoof. “Sometimes, even that bastard Upstairs lets things go your way. Wahey!”
This last was directed at Joan of Arc. The spirited saint had just executed a leapfrog move from a shopping trolley to a rubbish bin to a bouncy castle and was now rebounding up and already running before her feet hit the ground. She sideswiped a feisty nun with the flat of her blade and pushed on in pursuit of a young mopped-hair figure.
“Is that young Felix Wank Stain?” said Clovenhoof, peering.
“Who?” said Florence.
Clovenhoof was about to explain when from off to the right, a roaring vehicle entered Hooflandia at speed. It was Kylie, his beloved self-driving car.
“She’s come to protect her daddy!” yelled Clovenhoof.
The sunroof was open and – Clovenhoof squinted – there were two Boldmere Ponies, a demon of the sixth circle and Ben Kitchen all crowded round the opening. The first three were waving great big sticks around as though fishing for some sort of land-based game fish. Ben was screaming his head off in a delightfully alarmed fashion. Clovenhoof had to hand it to Ben: he had rarely demonstrated such creative flair.
“What on earth are they trying to do?” said Nerys, staggering onto the stage with her docile boyfriend who, inexplicably, appeared to have half a Victoria sponge cake smushed against the side of his head.
“Lots of things at once,” observed Clovenhoof. “She’s coming this way. She senses my presence.”
“I’m sensing you’re bonkers,” said Nerys. “She’s coming this way a bit fast.”
“Where’s she going?” said Florence.
It was clear to Clovenhoof that no one on board the car had any clue where the car was going to end up.
>
The car slewed in a wide arc across the beach, spraying fine sand in her wake. Her slide cut a path between Felix Winkstein and Joan of Arc who was still in pursuit and clouded the shiny saint in grey dust.
“That’s not sand at all, is it?” said Florence.
“Not sure what else it could be,” said Nerys.
Joan was left coughing in her own personal cloud. Felix ran on. Kylie fishtailed about wildly.
“She’s going to hit the stage!” said Poppy.
“No, the yacht!” said Clovenhoof.
Kylie bounced over a sand dune, nearly decapitating a nunchuk-wielding nun, scraped her wheel arches on the slipway to the moat and then slipped the surly bounds of earth to jump up and clip the rear of the trailer carrying the presidential yacht.
“Was that a nun driving that car?” asked Clovenhoof.
Clovenhoof heard the sounds of disaster before he saw it. The yacht gave a terrible groan and began to move free from the ropes and tethers that held it in place.
“She’s launching!” cried Clovenhoof.
“Possibly the least of our worries right now,” said Nerys.
“But I haven’t christened her yet!”
“What?”
“The bottle! The bottle!”
As the monstrous yacht slowly slid into the moat, Clovenhoof ran for the swing cradle that held the Melchizedek of champagne. The yacht was picking up speed, slowly but surely, like an elephant lumbering into a charge. Clovenhoof grabbed at the release cord which was simply a slipknot tying the bottle in place.
“I bless this ship and all who sail in her!” he cried.
The bottle in its cradle swung out in a long arc.
“It’s going to miss,” whimpered Clovenhoof but he was wrong.
As the stern of the yacht slipped by, the weighty bottle clipped it heavily but did not break. The Melchizedek spun away past the departing stern and, at the zenith of its swing, snapped free from its cradle and flew out. The yacht’s groans increased as the vessel, bottle-struck, wobbled and listed sideways in its final descent. The yacht fell away, hitting the lake with a slap like a sumo-wrestler belly-flopping into a stagnant pond.
A bow wave surged, bounced off the far side of the moat and, as it flowed back, the yacht righted itself and leaned all its weight and momentum behind it.
“Tsunami,” whispered Nerys.
“No thanks, I’ve already eaten,” said Clovenhoof.
The tidal wave struck back at the beach. Grey dunes gave way and tumbled in. Soldiers, nuns and the general unfortunate were dragged in with it.
“The sand underneath is yellow,” said Nerys. “Why’s the sand underneath the top layer yellow?”
Ben staggered onto the stage, his front covered in what appeared to be his own vomit.
“Where did you tell the builders to put the cement?” he said.
“What cement?” said Nerys.
“The cement I originally told them to put on the scrubby land round behind the Boldmere Oak.”
“I didn’t tell them to put any cement anywhere,” she began. “I told them to put everything… ah.”
As the waves washed to and fro, churning the grey mire that was now the moat, a multitude of miserably soggy and grey individuals scrambled on the banks where only the vestiges of a beach remained. The heavy dress uniforms of the Hooflandian troops and the many layers of nun habits were clearly equally absorbent and the opposing forces in Hooflandia’s brief inaugural war were now indistinguishable mounds of dribbling muck.
“Oh, this is all terrible,” said Florence. “My soldiers didn’t stand a chance.”
“And their uniforms will be ruined,” said Nerys.
“Whose fault is that?” said Ben.
“Don’t try to pin this on me,” she retorted. “You’ve all seen this beach and not said a word.”
“Oh, I think people are finding the words now, Nerys,” said Clovenhoof airily. “They might also have questions about whether this is quick-drying cement.”
“Still, the boat’s in the water,” said Ben. “Along with a lot of other stuff, but hey.”
The lake was a bizarre tableau. Soldiers climbed stiffly out of the water, which had started to take on a much more solid aspect. At the centre of it all, listing slightly, was Clovenhoof’s yacht.
“Well, I’ve got to say I was worried about my sea sickness on your yacht,” said Ben, walking to the front of the stage to inspect the scene. “But I think it’s going to be fine. Oh, and another thing…” He beckoned Clovenhoof over.
Clovenhoof came forward. Ben pointed down at the sand to the side of the stage. The Melchizedek of champagne laid, still unbroken, on the ground and, pinned beneath it, was a curly-haired and inert computer whizz of Clovenhoof’s acquaintance.
“Unlucky,” said Clovenhoof.
Ben stroked his chin thoughtfully. “‘There is no evidence at all that large quantities of alcohol do anyone serious harm.’ Isn’t that what you said to me?”
On the ground, Joan and Rutspud closed in on the trapped Felix Winkstein.
“Some people can’t handle the hard stuff,” said Clovenhoof.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Joan was a tolerant and charitable individual and believed that there was a place in the Almighty’s kingdom for all sorts of people. And though she might have thought the practices of the Mission Society of the Thrown Voice were unorthodox and even, perhaps, preposterous she saw that they were good and Christian folk. However, their behaviour over the days following the fun day fiasco tested her tolerance.
Many of the sisters had returned to the Mission Society house in cement-laden clothes and with cement-laden puppets and with more than a few cuts and bruises. The clothes were put into the washing (which promptly broke under the weight of all that cement), the puppets were washed by hand and the sisters tended to their injuries. Joan, who had suffered no more than a light winding and a thorough dusting with cement powder, helped dress their wounds.
And that should have been that. But then the Mission Society members proceeded to tend to the injuries of their puppet accessories. This did not mean sewing up any nicks or tears they had acquired in the fight (although there were a couple of those). No, the Mission Society sisters created little bandages and plasters for their hand puppets so that they replicated those worn by their human counterparts. So, Sister Valerie’s puppet, Gambol the Lamb, was given a little sling for its front paw, Sister Tracey’s pink dinosaur, Yazoo, had a splint and bandages on its tiny fingers and Tommy Chuckles was given a head bandage to match the one that now covered Sister Anne’s bruised and bloodied eye. Saddest and most bizarre of all was Sister Margaritte, who had broken her right arm in the tousle and now sat silently weeping, staring at the giraffe puppet that she could no longer operate. Occasionally, she would give a little sotto voce cry of “Help me! Help me!” as though the dead puppet was calling to her from beyond the grave.
Joan found herself torn between offering poor Sister Margaritte comforting support and giving her a slap round the chops and pointing out that it was only a bloody puppet. Instead, wisely, she opted to stay out of the way and kept herself to the rooms set aside for herself and Rutspud. Both rooms were fairly large and therefore, the addition of Felix Winkstein to Rutspud’s room was not a great inconvenience.
Sister Anne was initially perturbed to hear that her two guests were keeping a prisoner in their rooms. However, when she heard that the prisoner in question was the creator of the loathsome PrayPal, she swiftly turned a blind eye (the one that wasn’t already blinded) and told them that, as long as they kept the noise down, it was none of her business.
After a day and a night on confinement to Rutspud’s room, most of which Felix spent prodding the bits of himself variously bruised and concussed by a flying bottle of champagne to check they still hurt, he was still in an uncooperative mood. He sat, sulking on Rutspud’s bed (which Rutspud had never slept in because he neither slept nor approved of lying on anything so soft and squ
ishy unless it was a damned soul’s internal organs).
“You can’t keep me here,” he said, not for the first time and long after a certain small but wirily powerful demon had proved him wrong on that point. “I haven’t done nothing wrong.”
“You ran when we tried to talk to you,” said Rutspud, from his seated position on the edge of the hand basin.
“I thought you were spooks.”
“Ghosts?” said Joan.
“Spies,” said Rutspud.
“Thought you might be GCHQ or MI5. But you’re not. You’re those ‘agents of a higher power’ who’ve been bothering me. Who are you? Anonymous?”
“No, I’m Joan and this is Rutspud,” explained the saint.
Felix looked at Rutspud.
“Yeah, she’s for real,” sighed the demon, absent-mindedly picking up a toothbrush from the edge of the basin and twirling it between his fingers. “She was raised in an insular and technologically retarded corner of the world. S’called France. You might have heard of it.”
Joan didn’t know which to be more offended by, Rutspud’s words or the nod Felix gave as though that explained everything.
“We just want to talk to you about the PrayPal app,” said Rutspud.
“You want the source code?” asked Felix. “You want to buy me out?” He clicked his fingers in sudden realisation. “You’re from bloody Apple, aren’t you?”
“What? No.”
“Google? Facebook? Amazon?”
“No.”
“You know there are other ‘pray as you go’ and appsolution packages out there. Go pester them.”
“Yes,” said Joan, “but yours works.”
Felix fell silent and did a very good impression of a confused goldfish, a goldfish that had just realised how tiny a bowl it was currently swimming in.
