Still, it was coming along nicely. Once he’d decided to build his new fortified sty out of sticks (why sticks? Dunno. Seemed like a good idea…), he’d taken the time to sit down with a pointed twig and a flat patch of mud and sketch it all out in detail. A nearby blackcurrant bush had provided the makings of an ersatz abacus, and he’d calculated the various factors — co-efficients of stress against tensile strengths of various woods (elm 68 Newtons per square millimetre, ash 116, oak 97, Scots pine 89, making ash the obvious choice) — before drawing up a final 1/100th scale blueprint with material specs, quantities and a first draft of a schedule of works. Then it had been a long, hard slog in the woods cutting the sticks and bundling them up into sheaves, all to a standard size and weight to allow completely modular construction; and now he was on the longest and hardest stage of the job, actually fitting it all together.

He’d started off with the south-west African kraal house as his basic design concept, with heavy influence from clinker-built ships, the Eskimo igloo and the classical Roman arch. A high-stacked D-section dome constructed out of overlapping bundles of sticks tied and pinned in an upwards spiral keyed off with a single massive osier knot at the top would, he calculated, give the optimum level of structural integrity (by virtue of the counterbalancing of forces under external compression) without sacrificing the unique insulating properties of thatch. All in all, it was a very impressive piece of work; and although he still couldn’t quite see what had possessed him to build a house out of sticks when he could have strolled down to the nearest builders’ merchants and ordered a big load of breezeblocks, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that as stick-built realty went, this was the state of the art.

Nevertheless…

He put the bundle down again and turned to face the forest; what there was left of it now that he’d cut and slashed a substantial hole. Was he imagining things, or had something flitted stealthily past just inside the curtain of leaves and brushwood? Eugene and Desmond? He hoped not. It wasn’t likely, either. His brothers had the same aptitude for stealthy flitting as a dinosaur has for brain surgery. If Gene and Des were headed this way, he’d have heard the crashing sounds hours ago.

There it was again; a flicker of movement, the flash of sunlight on some dark metal, the faintest snap! as a foot landed on a wisp of twig. Definitely someone there; and Julian, who had come to regard paranoia as his only true friend in all the world, abandoned his bundle of sticks and ran for home.

It’s not perfect, he told himself as he rolled the door-stone into place behind him (note the cunningly contrived system of balances and counterweights that makes it possible for a three-ton boulder to be effortlessly manipulated from within the house). But it’ll probably do. He peeked out through the tiny loophole in the front elevation and saw a shadowy figure looming in a gap in the trees. Right now he wanted nothing at all to do with shadowy figures, not even if they came surrounded by beautiful young sows bearing golden platters of swill to tell him he’d just won the lottery. He growled and turned up the propane burner under the big cauldron of molten lead that was simmering cheerfully away on the ledge of his lookout post.

He’d just finished adjusting the regulator of the propane bottle and was testing the tension in the ropes of the giant siege catapult when the shadowy figure stepped out of the forest into the clearing. Not an encouraging sight for a nervous pig; whoever he was, he felt the need to dress from head to toe in shiny black armour, wear a helmet with a mask visor and a huge neckpiece and carry a whacking great two-handed sword. Either the Jehovah’s Witnesses in this neighbourhood had abandoned the Mr-Nice-Guy tactic, or here came trouble.

Six more followed him, which made Julian feel a whole lot worse. They didn’t seem to be in any great hurry, and they weren’t being particularly furtive about their movements; maybe what he’d taken for stealthy flitting was just the natural demeanour of heavily armed men trying to move through dense undergrowth without tripping over and being unable to get up again. Quite possibly; and maybe the swords were just for clearing a path through the briars. But that still didn’t explain what they wanted.

‘You in the tinfoil,’ he shouted. ‘This is private property. Clear off, or I’ll set the dragon on you.’

The nearest intruder looked up and pushed back his visor. ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Oh, there you are, I didn’t see you in all that firewood. What are you, a charcoal-burner or something?’

So that was it, Julian muttered to himself; they’re planning on burning me out. Little do they know that every single twig in this lot has been treated with the latest in asbestos-free fire-retardant. ‘You deaf or something?’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll count to ten and then I’ll turn Sparky loose. One. Two.’

They didn’t seem particularly worried, which was a pity, since the nearest thing he had to a dragon was a small beetle that had crawled down the back of his neck a couple of hours ago and was apparently building a house of its own somewhere between his shoulder-blades. He got as far as nine, then stopped.

‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do this.’

‘Oh,’ the intruder replied. He sounded disappointed. ‘Pity. I’ve always wanted to see a dragon.’

Julian winced. ‘You reckon?’ he replied; and the sneer he’d intended to accompany the words somehow got turned into a sad little simper.

‘Oh yes,’ the intruder replied, planting his sword in the ground and leaning on it. ‘Dragons are a traditional symbol of hope and spiritual rebirth. Have you really got one we can look at?’

Some pigs, Julian reflected bitterly, have it easy. Nice quiet life, regular meals, no predators, nothing to worry about except the prospect of ending up between two slices of bread. Try to make something of yourself, and the world’s suddenly your enemy. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I was just trying to get rid of you without having to resort to overwhelming force. Now bugger off before I lose my temper.’

‘You sound a bit hostile,’ said the intruder, ‘if you’ll pardon me for saying so. My guess is that this comes from not being at peace with the Elements. Have you ever considered a properly structured course of meditation?’

Oink, thought Julian. ‘Go away. This is your last warning. After that, on your own heads be it.’

Maybe the phrase wasn’t familiar to the intruders; they made a big performance out of looking up, taking off their helmets and inspecting them, patting the tops of their heads and so on. Julian could only take so much of that; in a sudden spurt of rage he grabbed a handy billhook and slashed through the rope that restrained the arm of the catapult.

It was a big catapult; frame made out of the trunks of four mature oak trees, with wrought-iron fittings and the finest horsehair ropes to provide the torsion. In theory it could have shot a six-hundredweight rock over two hundred yards. Since there was no way Julian could pighandle a rock that size up on to the lookout point all on his own, however, he’d decided to use a little initiative and an alternative projectile. To be precise, three hundred kilos of well-rotted horse manure, all neatly packed in 25-kilo sacks and piled up in the throwing arm of the catapult.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite thought it through.

Later, he worked it out as a simple matter of relative sectional density, surface area and wind resistance; a set of equations so simple that any six-week-old piglet could have done them in its head. In the rush and bother of building the house, however, Julian simply hadn’t had the time or the patience. Accordingly, as soon as he cut the rope, the catapult’s payload rose straight up in the air until, after a stern word and a shake of the finger from gravity, it came down again, giving it plenty of that old thirty-two-feet-per-second-per-second and landing directly — On their own heads be it, he’d said. If only.