The new god

"There's a new god in town," said Mikey, who'd come to buy a sack of wool.

"A new god?" I didn't understand. "Can gods just be changed overnight?" 

Apparently they can.

"It's the new lord, and the new priest he brought with him, they're both horse mad. They say that we should pray to Equus now, the horse god, that he is swift and mighty and will bring change and good trade to the town."

"A horse god? But we have no horses, they're for gentry, warriors, and the postal service. We till the land and worship a god who tends the land."

"Not any more. There's a new shrine full of horse pictures, and an altar with a horses head carved on it."

"But what of Ramifications?"

"He's gone. They've taken him away. His shrine AND his alter statue. Some say the shrine's yesterday's firewood already. And there's more."

"More?" What more could there be, god gone, his altar removed.

"They've changed the name of the pub. It's the Horses Head now."

"They can't just abandon Ramifications. He's our god. There'll be ..." I tried to think of the word .. "Consequences."

In my heart I didn't believe Mikey. He was an honest man, but he liked to tease, especially folk like me out in the sticks who didn't get to town too often. 

But I walked in to church the next day, it being a Sunday, and sure enough there were horses everywhere. Horses on the altar, horses on the shrine. Ever the new hymn books had pictures of horses on them and inside the books there were new hymns, all about horses. 

I took out my wool cushion to sit on and realised I was alone, everyone else in the church was sitting on saddles. New-looking, lavishly garnished saddles, and not a single one of them owned a horse to put the saddle on. Damned fools.

It was the worse sermon I've ever heard, and I go to church every Sunday, so I've heard a lot of bad sermons in my time, 52 a year on average. It was all 'riding to glory' and 'cantering through life's difficulties'. I've never heard so many words used to say so little, and I got to church every Sunday.

The next day I was busy working in the field when Useless Eric arrived, in a new suit. 

"Eric," I said, he's not worth a 'hello'. "What brings you all the way out here?"

"Taxes," he said. "I've been made tax collector."

"Well, rookie error on your first day," I said. "I've paid up my taxes for the year."

Eric consulted a clipboard. "Says here you've got 86 sheep," he said.

"Says there as well," I said pointing to a field of 86 sheep. "But sheep is tax-free. They're made in god's image."

"It's horses is exempt," Eric said. "They're just grotty old sheep, that's a penny a head tax you owe." He took out a piece of paper signed by the new lord of the manor and the new priest, confirming the tax on sheep.

I had the money. I'm careful to save for unexpected emergencies, the gods have a way of punishing those that don't. But it was an ill omen.

I kept away from town as much as I could. I still went to church, except in emergencies, like one of my sheep taking ill, or the time I had a sheep go missing, or the time I had a hole in my shoe I had to fix. In fact, when I count it up, I didn't go to church much at all after Equus arrived. 

I still prayed to Ramifications. I have a shrine at home and worshipped every day. A good shepherd tends to his gods just as he tends to his sheep. For the rest of the town though - it was all horses. Of course, only a few could actually afford a horse, but the rest had their saddles for church and had begun to buy useless horse trinkets - broaches, cufflinks, tiepins. I saw the new lord from time to time, galloping everywhere and anywhere on one of his many horses, he never said hello. 

The omens were bad and I was careful to prepare for a winter I knew would be harsh. A god of swift horses would do nothing to feed and warm you over the punishing months. 

Alas my fears proved all too prescient. In the  run up to harvest time it rained constantly, I've seen nothing like it and I'm over sixty summers seen. Everything was ruined, the farmers tried to gather the wheat in the few breaks in the showers but there was nothing to gather, just wet rot. The fields were flooded, the town was flooded. My sheep fared better than most, due to the drainage system I've build over the last few years. 

The winter proved as harsh as the harvest rains. The chill set in early. Food was scarce. Worst, nobody had money to buy stores from elsewhere, they were saddled with debt from their worthless trinketry. Not to mention the saddles. It wasn't long before the first deaths occurred, two of the McGinty's children. Yet the new lord carried on trotting around on his horse without a care in the world. 

I fared better than most. I had wool to sell and plenty of warm clothes and rugs. I had a store of food and if desperate could roast a sheep, which would last me several weeks. There was little to see from the town side, just the new lord cantering around the neighbourhood in all weathers. It would prove his comeuppance, as one day his best horse slipped on a patch of black ice hidden beneath the snow. The horse had to be put down, with broken legs which sent it a screaming and a hollering. The lord flew through the air and knocked his head on the ground. He survived, but his senses were gone. He could no longer talk, he just babbled. 

Sensing the town's anger, and suddenly deprived of his champion, the priest fled overnight, taking his horse statues and shrine with him. I saw none of this of course, though tale of it reached me sooner than you would think. 

I was woken one night by an urgent knocking on my door. I never have visitors at that hour, let alone in a bleak winter such as this. I dressed, took a torch and made my way downstairs. I was surprised to see a dozen villages there, the miller, Brackett, the post lady, Mikey of course, Sam and Sam from the alehouse, and some people from the west side of town I knew not so well.

"Well?" I said. I'm not a man to waste words. I read a book once, over two hundred pages long it was. I retold the story to Mikey the next day and used a hundred and fifty words if that. I could do that with most books I reckon. 

I was quickly brought up to speed with the fall of the lord, the departure of the priest and his taking his god with him. 

"There's a thing," I said. "No god at a time of famine. No priest. Who's to pray for god's mercy? Who's to bury the dead?"

"That's why we're here," said Mikey. "We were sort of thinking you might take over. Until a new priest is appointed."

"I know nothing of priestly ways," I said.

"That may be so, but you're the only one round here who's been true to Ramifications. I've seen ya at it, praying and sacrificing to your private shrine. And look around, your sheep are doing fine. Ramifications will listen to you."

I hurried to town and the first thing I did there was organise a search of the church. We found Ramifications' shrine, it hadn't been burnt, merely thrown in a basement. It was quickly restored, along with the statues and the proper hymn books, there'd be no songs about gods galloping to save us in my church, rather we would sing of hard toil of the soil and the rewards such toil brings. 

There was also some food left in the priest's store, which was distributed evenly across the townsfolk. It gave me an idea, if the priest had a store of food, what of the lord. I ordered a search and we found a whole barn full of grain, enough to last him twenty winters. I don't understand how anyone could live with themselves with a barn full of grain and children dying hungry. 

I ordered that the grain be seized and distributed evenly amongst the town. The lord got his share of the food, of course, I'm not a cruel man, though there were many wanted revenge on his greed. But there was enough food for everyone, starving children foolish lords and all. 

And so the town survived the winter. Spring brought its nurturing foods and that year the town had the greatest harvest ever.  

The sheep tax was abolished, for without a lord to waste the money the tax wasn't needed. The lord's acres were made common land for grazing and the like, and there wasn't a man or woman in the village who didn't invest in a cow or a sheep. The town soon became famed through the land for it's wool, and the riches it brought. 

The lord never recovered his faculties, but deprived of the pretensions his title had given him, he became one of the town, and the children used to laugh and play with him, and he too began to laugh and smile, a thing I'm sure he'd never have done if he hadn't taken that blow to the head.

When famine comes to your town, or plague, or pestilence, and if your lord is a bad man, don't sit and watch your children die, rise up, open up his barns and share his filthy hoard with everyone. For hunger is not the fault of gods, or the will of the weather, it is caused by greed. Sheer godless greed.