“Brother Nhumrod was very down on them. But I think perhaps we should know our enemies, yes?”
Brutha's voice faded to a croak.
“I could have done with the vision of the drink,” he said, wearily.
The shadows were long. He looked around in amazement.
“How long were they trying?”
“All day. Persistent devils, too. Thick as flies.”
Brutha learned why at sunset.
He met St. Ungulant the anchorite, friend of all small gods. Everywhere.
“Well, well, well,” said St. Ungulant. “We don't get very many visitors up here. Isn't that so, Angus?”
He addressed the air beside him.
Brutha was trying to keep his balance, because the cartwheel rocked dangerously every time he moved. They'd left Vorbis seated on the desert twenty feet below, hugging his knees and staring at nothing.
The wheel had been nailed flat on top of a slim pole. It was just wide enough for one person to lie uncomfortably. But St. Ungulant looked designed to lie uncomfortably. He was so thin that even skeletons would say, “Isn't he thin?” He was wearing some sort of minimalist loin-cloth, insofar as it was possible to tell under the beard and hair.
It had been quite hard to ignore St. Ungulant, who had been capering up and down at the top of his pole shouting “Coo-ee!” and “Over here!” There was a slightly smaller pole a few feet away, with an old-fashioned half-moon-cut?out-on-the-door privy on it. Just because you were an anchorite, St. Ungulant said, didn't mean you had to give up everything.
Brutha had heard of anchorites, who were a kind of one?way prophet. They went out into the desert but did not come back, preferring a hermit's life of dirt and hardship and dirt and holy contemplation and dirt. Many of them liked to make life even more uncomfortable for themselves by being walled up in cells or living, quite appropriately, at the top of a pole. The Omnian Church encouraged them, on the basis that it was best to get madmen as far away as possible where they couldn't cause any trouble and could be cared for by the community, insofar as the community consisted of lions and buzzards and dirt.
“I was thinking of adding another wheel,” said St. Ungulant, “just over there. To catch the morning sun, you know.”
Brutha looked around him. Nothing but flat rock and sand stretched away on every side.
“Don't you get the sun everywhere all the time?” he said.
“But it's much more important in the morning,” said St. Ungulant. “Besides, Angus says we ought to have a patio.”
“He could barbecue on it,” said Om, inside Brutha's head.
“Um,” said Brutha. “What . . . religion . . . are you a saint of, exactly?”
An expression of embarrassment crossed the very small amount of face between St. Ungulant's eyebrows and his mustache.
“Uh. None, really. That was all rather a mistake,” he said. “My parents named me Sevrian Thaddeus Ungulant, and then one day, of course, most amusing, someone drew attention to the initials. After that, it all seemed rather inevitable.”
The wheel rocked slightly. St. Ungulant's skin was almost blackened by the desert sun.
“I've had to pick up herming as I went along, of course,” he said. “I taught myself. I'm entirely selftaught. You can't find a hermit to teach you herming, because of course that rather spoils the whole thing.”
“Er . . . but there's . . . Angus?” said Brutha, stating at the spot where he believed Angus to be, or at least where he believed St. Ungulant believed Angus to be.
“He's over here now,” said the saint sharply, pointing to a different part of the wheel. “But he doesn't do any of the herming. He's not, you know, trained. He's just company. My word, I'd have gone quite mad if it wasn't for Angus cheering me up all the time!”
“Yes . . . I expect you would,” said Brutha. He smiled at the empty air, in order to show willing.
“Actually, it's a pretty good life. The hours are rather long but the food and drink are extremely worthwhile.”
Brutha had a distinct feeling that he knew what was going to come next.
“Beer cold enough?” he said.