The Eye of Zoltar

The Mountain Silurians

‘All hail Glorious Geraint the Great,’ said Addie, bowing low, ‘the gutsy, gallant and gracious gatekeeper of the great green grassy northern grounds.’

It seemed, from Addie’s flowery and clearly overblown greetings, that the Silurian chief himself had graced us with his presence.

We all bowed as Geraint the Great looked on imperiously, while the Buzonjis stamped their feet impatiently. After a pause that felt like ten minutes but was probably less then twenty seconds, Geraint the Great looked at one of his advisers, a giant of a woman dressed in the skin of a Welsh leopard, who nodded.

‘Your alliteration is acceptable albeit mildly simplistic,’ said Geraint. ‘What do you seek, Addie the Tour Guide, champion of the blade, younger daughter of Owen the Dead, holder of the Tourist Good Conduct medal?’

‘Our lives are in your hands,’ continued Addie, bowing again and continuing the long-winded formal greeting. ‘We wish only peace and goodwill, and are merely travellers seeking to pass through your sacred grounds.’

‘To where?’ asked Geraint.

‘To seek the legendary Leviathans’ Graveyard on Cadair Idris, Your Greatness, to venture there and return, safely and without hindrance.’

‘The Rock Goddess shall not be defiled,’ he intoned angrily, while the rest of the warriors muttered darkly to themselves. ‘You shall be sacrificed to the mountain, your blood splashed about the rocks and your rotting carcasses picked apart by the condor. The mountain shall be appeased. You will die. I, Geraint the Great, have spoken.’

‘We have brought gifts,’ said Addie.

There was a pause.

‘The mountain may be appeased … in other ways,’ said Geraint the Great. ‘We accept your gifts … so long as they’re not more of those bloody goats. All we ever get given is goats, and let me tell you, we’re sick of them. Sick of the sight of them, sick of the smell of them, and sick of the taste of them. Isn’t that right, lads?’

The warriors gave out a hearty ‘Uuh!’ sort of noise and waved their spears in the air.

‘We have so many goats,’ continued Geraint the Great in an exasperated tone, ‘that we even have to sell them at below market value to those milksops in Llangurig. If anyone were ever to try and offload those same goats back to us, our anger would be great, our violence most savage.’

‘O-kay,’ said Addie. ‘Please wait, Your Greatness, while I consult with my fellow travellers.’

She turned to us.

‘Looks like I was misinformed over the whole goat thing,’ she said in a whisper.

‘It explains why cheap goats are flooding the Llangurig Commodities Market,’ said the Princess thoughtfully. ‘How fascinating.’

‘Not really important right now, ma’am,’ said Addie. ‘Has anyone got anything else we can barter?’

‘I have two thousand plotniks,’ said Wilson, opening his wallet. ‘It’s all I have in the world but you are welcome to it.’

‘Any good?’ I said to Addie.

‘They’re not fond of cash,’ she replied, ‘but I’ll try.’

‘Gorgeous Geraint the Great,’ said Addie, turning back to the warriors, ‘as weary travellers of limited means, we can offer only two thousand plotniks.’

The warriors all laughed uproariously.

‘We despise your abstract monetary concepts. Value should lie in the commodity, and not be assigned arbitrarily to a device of no intrinsic value in itself.’

‘I like this bunch,’ whispered the Princess, ‘they totally talk my language.’

‘So we only barter,’ continued Geraint the Great, ‘but no more goats. We want washing machines, food mixers, toasters and other consumer durables. That nice man in the half-track gave us his iPod.’

That explained how Curtis got past, at least. We told him we had none of these things, nor any reasonable chance of finding any at short notice.

‘Very well,’ replied Geraint, ‘you will return the way you came and we will take the novelty rubber Dragon in exchange for your lives.’

As he said it he pointed at Rubber Colin, who was still sitting, very much made of rubber, in the back of the jeep.

‘The … novelty rubber Dragon is not for trade,’ I said.

The chief rolled off his horse in a less-than-expert fashion and drew his sword.

‘Then you will die,’ said the warrior chief, ‘and painfully – except for Addie, who will do our washing and cleaning for the rest of her natural life.’

Addie drew out her dagger and glared at the warriors.

‘I will die protecting my friends.’

They were fine words and I knew she was good in a fight, but a dozen Mountain Silurians armed to the teeth against a twelve-year-old wasn’t a fight I’d be betting on any time soon.

‘Wait!’ said the Princess. ‘I can help you.’

‘You can iron?’ said the chief. ‘That would indeed be a game-changer.’

‘No,’ said the Princess. ‘I’ll help you change your financially crippling goat surplus into a valuable trading commodity.’

Geraint looked at the Princess and narrowed his eyes.

‘It’s an attractive idea,’ he said. ‘We have thousands of the blasted things. How?’

‘Well,’ said the Princess, taking a deep breath, ‘we would first form a Goat Trading Corporation and use this to bring together all the other goat-producing tribes in order to control the number of goats moving on to the market. Instead of buyers dictating goat prices based on free supply, the goat-producing tribes can limit production and peg their value to an agreed minimum goat price so that all producers get a fair deal. We can couple this with an advertising strategy to increase goat use awareness among the public, and even develop a breeding programme to generate expensive limited-edition goats for collectors. I think we can increase the value of goats tenfold in as little as six months, so long as all the other goat-producing tribes agree to join us.’

‘What’s she talking about?’ whispered Addie.

‘I have absolutely no idea,’ I whispered back.

Geraint the Great stared at the Princess for a long time, then replaced his sword in its scabbard.

‘It shall be so,’ he said. ‘You will consult with our accountant, Pugh the Numbers.’

One of the neater warriors climbed off his Buzonji as Geraint remounted his, and after Geraint had told us we were ‘the guests of the Siluri’, they were all gone, leaving the Princess to explain her complex marketing plans in detail to Pugh the Numbers.

It was almost an hour before we were back on the road again.