The Last Hero (the discworld series) Read online

  ‘Very well,’ said one of the objectors, haughtily. ‘In that case, I think perhaps we could, in these special circumstances, get around a table just this once.’

  ‘Ah, that is a good—’ Ridcully began.

  ‘But of course we will need to give some very serious consideration as to what shape the table is going to be.’

  Ridcully looked blank for a moment. His expression did not change as he leaned down to one of his sub-deacons and said, ‘Scallop, please have someone ran along and tell my wife to pack my overnight bag, will you? I think this is going to take a little while…’

  The central spire of Cori Celesti seemed to get no closer day by day.

  ‘Are you sure Cohen's all right in the head?’ said Evil Harry, as he helped Boy Willie manoeuvre Hamish's wheelchair over the ice.

  ‘'Ere, are you tryin' to spread discontent among the troops, Harry?’

  ‘Well, I did warn you, Will. I am a Dark Lord. I've got to keep in practice. And we're following a leader who keeps forgetting where he put his false teeth.’

  ‘Whut?’ said Mad Hamish.

  ‘I'm just saying that blowing up the gods could cause trouble,’ said Evil Harry. ‘It's a bit… disrespectful.’

  ‘You must've defiled a few temples in your time, Harry?’

  ‘I ran 'em, Will, I ran 'em. I was a Mad Demon Lord for a while, you know. I had a Temple of Terror.’

  ‘Yes, on your allotment,’ said Boy Willie, grinning.

  ‘That's right, that's right, rub it in,’ said Harry sulkily. ‘Just because I was never in the big league, just because—’

  ‘Now, now, Harry, you know we don't think like that. We respected you. You knew the Code. You kept the faith. Well, Cohen just reckons the gods've got it comin' to them. Now, me, I'm worried because there's some tough ground ahead.’

  Evil Harry peered along the snowy canyon.

  ‘There's some kind of magic path leads up the mountain,’ Willie went on. ‘But there's a mass of caves before you get there.’

  ‘The Impassable Caves of Dread,’ said Evil Harry.

  Willie looked impressed. ‘Heard of them, have you? Accordin' to some old legend they're guarded by a legion of fearsome monsters and some devilishly devious devices and no one has ever passed through. Oh, yeah… perilous crevasses, too. Next, we'll have to swim through underwater caverns guarded by giant man-eating fish that no man has ever yet passed. And then there's some insane monks, and a door you can pass only by solving some ancient riddle… the usual sort of stuff.’

  ‘Sounds like a big job,’ Evil Harry ventured.

  ‘Well, we know the answer to the riddle,’ said Boy Willie. ‘It's “teeth”.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘Didn't have to. It's always teeth in poxy old riddles,’ Boy Willie grunted as they heaved the wheelchair through a particularly deep drift. ‘But the biggest problem, is going to be getting this damn thing through all that without Hamish waking up and making trouble.’

  In the study of his dark house on the edge of Time, Death looked at the wooden box.

  PERHAPS I SHALL TRY ONE MORE TIME, he said.

  He reached down and lifted up a small kitten, patted it on the head, lowered it gently into the box, and closed the lid.

  THE CAT DIES WHEN THE AIR RUNS OUT?

  ‘I suppose it might, sir,’ said Albert, his manservant. ‘But I don't reckon that's the point. If I understand it right, you don't know if the cat's dead or alive until you look at it.’

  THINGS WILL HAVE COME TO A PRETTY PASS, ALBERT, IF I DID NOT KNOW WHETHER A THING WAS DEAD OR ALIVE WITHOUT HAVING TO GO AND LOOK.

  ‘Er… the way the theory goes, sir, it's the act of lookin' that determines if it's alive or not.’

  Death looked hurt. ARE YOU SUGGESTING I WILL KILL THE CAT JUST BY LOOKING AT IT?

  ‘It's not quite like that, sir.’

  I MEAN, IT'S NOT AS IF I MAKE FACES OR ANYTHING.

  ‘To be honest with you, sir, I don't think even the wizards understand the uncertainty business.’ said Albert. ‘We didn't truck with that class of stuff in my day. If you weren't certain, you were dead.’

  Death nodded. It was getting hard to keep up with the times. Take parallel dimensions. Parasite dimensions, now, he understood them. He lived in one. They were simply universes that weren't quite complete in themselves and could only exist by clinging on to a host universe, like remora fish. But parallel dimensions meant that anything you did, you didn't do somewhere else.

  This presented exquisite problems to a being who was, by nature, definite. It was like playing poker against an infinite number of opponents.

  He opened the box and took out the kitten. It stared at him with the normal mad amazement of kittens everywhere.

  I DON'T HOLD WITH CRUELTY TO CATS, said Death, putting it gently on the floor.

  ‘I think the whole cat in the box idea is one of them metaphors,’ said Albert.

  AH. A LIE.

  Death snapped his fingers.

  Death's study did not occupy space in the normal sense of the word. The walls and ceiling were there for decoration rather than as any kind of dimensional limit. Now they faded away and a giant hourglass filled the air.

  Its dimensions would be difficult to calculate, but they could be measured in miles.

  Inside, lightnings crackled among the falling sands. Outside, a giant turtle was engraved upon the glass.

  I THINK WE SHALL HAVE TO CLEAR THE DECKS FOR THIS ONE, said Death.

  Evil Harry knelt in front of a hastily constructed altar. It consisted mostly of skulls, which were not hard to find in this cruel landscape. And now he prayed. In a long lifetime of being a Dark Lord, even in a small way, he'd picked up a few contacts on the other planes. They were… sort of gods, he supposed. They had names like Olk-Kalath the Soul Sucker, but, frankly, the overlap between demons and gods was a bit uncertain at the best of times.

  ‘Oh, Mighty One,’ he began, always a safe beginning and the religious equivalent of ‘To Whom It May Concern’, ‘I have to warn you that a bunch of heroes are climbing the mountain to destroy you with returned fire. May you strike them down with wrathful lightning and then look favourably upon thy servant, i.e. Evil Harry Dread. Mail may be left with Mrs Gibbons, 12 Dolmen View, Pant-y-Girdl, Llamedos. Also if possible I should like a location with real lava pits, every other evil lord manages to get a dread lava pit even when they are on one hundred feet of bloody alluvial soil, excuse my Klatchian, this is further discrimination against the small trader, no offence meant.’

  He waited a moment, just in case there was any reply, sighed, and got rather shakily to his feet.

  ‘I'm an evil, distrustful Dark Lord,’ he said. ‘What do they expect? I told 'em. I warned 'em. I mean, if it was up to me… but where'd I stand as a Dark Lord if I—’

  His eye caught something pink, a little way off. He climbed a snow-covered rock for a better look.

  Two minutes later the rest of the Horde had joined him and were looking at the scene reflectively, although the minstrel was being sick.

  ‘Well, that's something you don't often see,’ said Cohen.

  ‘What, a man throttled with pink knitting wool?’ said Caleb.

  ‘No, I was looking at the other two…’

  ‘Yes, it's amazing what you can do with a knitting needle,’ said Cohen. He glanced back at the makeshift altar and grinned. ‘Did you do this, Harry? You said you wanted to be alone.’

  ‘Pink knitting wool?’ said Evil Harry nervously. ‘Me and pink knitting wool?’

  ‘Sorry for suggestin' it,’ said Cohen. ‘Well, we ain't got time for this. Let's go and sort out the Caves of Dread. Where's our bard? Right. Stop throwin' up and get yer notebook out. First man to be cut in half by a concealed blade is a rotten egg, okay? And, everyone… try not to wake up Hamish, all right?’

  The sea was full of cool green light.

  Captain Carrot sat near the prow. To the astonishment of Rincewind, who'd go
t out for a gloomy evening walk, he was sewing.

  ‘It's a badge for the mission,’ said Carrot. ‘See? This is yours.’ He held it up.

  ‘But what is it for?’

  ‘Morale.’

  ‘Ah, that stuff,’ said Rincewind. ‘Well, you've got lots, Leonard doesn't need it and I've never had any.’

  ‘I know you are being good-humoured about it, but I think it's vital that there is something that holds the crew together,’ said Carrot, still calmly sewing.

  ‘Yes, it's called skin. It's important to keep all of you on the inside of it.’

  Rincewind stared at the badge. He'd never had one before. Well, that was technically a lie… he'd had one that said ‘Hello, I Am 5 Today!’, which was just about the worst possible present to get when you are six. That birthday had been the rottenest day of his life.

  ‘It needs an uplifting motto,’ said Carrot. ‘Wizards know about this sort of thing, don't they?’

  ‘How about MorituriNolumusMori, that's got the right ring,’ said Rincewind gloomily.

  Carrot's lips moved as he parsed the sentence. ‘Wewhoareabouttodie…’ he said, ‘but I don't recognise the rest.’

  ‘It's very uplifting,’ said Rincewind. ‘It's straight from the heart.’

  ‘Very well. Many thanks. I'll get to work on it right away,’ said Carrot.

  Rincewind sighed. ‘You're finding this exciting, aren't you?’ he said. ‘You actually are.’

  ‘It will certainly be a challenge to go where no one has gone before,’ said Carrot.

  ‘Wrong! We're going where no one has comebackfrom before.’ Rincewind hesitated. ‘Well, except me. But I didn't go that far, and I… sort of dropped on to the Disc again.’

  ‘Yes, they told me about it. What did you see?’

  ‘My whole life, passing in front of my eyes.’

  ‘Perhaps we shall see something more interesting.’

  Rincewind glared at Carrot, bent once again over his sewing. Everything about the man was neat, in a workmanlike sort of way: he looked like someone who washed thoroughly. He also seemed to Rincewind to be a complete idiot with gristle between the ears. But complete idiots didn't make comments like that.

  ‘I'm taking an iconograph and lots of paint for the imp. You know the wizards want us to make all kinds of observations?’ Carrot went on. ‘They say it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’

  ‘You're not making any friends here, you know,’ said Rincewind.

  ‘Have you any idea what it is that the Silver Horde wants?’

  ‘Drink, treasure, and women,’ said Rincewind. ‘But I think they may have eased back on the last one.’

  ‘But didn't they have more or less all of that anyway?’

  Rincewind nodded. That was the puzzler. The Horde had it all. They had everything that money could buy, and since there was a lot of money on the Counterweight Continent, that was everything.

  It occurred to him that when you'd had everything, all that was left was nothing.

  The valley was full of cool green light, reflected off the towering ice of the central mountain. It shifted and flowed like water. Into it, grumbling and asking one another to speak up, walked the Silver Horde.

  Behind them, walking almost bent double with horror and dread, white-faced, like a man who has gazed upon direful things, came the minstrel. His clothes were torn. One leg of his tights had been ripped off. He was soaking wet, although parts of his clothing were singed. The twanging remains of the lute in his trembling hand had been half bitten away. Here was a man who had truly seen life, mostly on the point of departure.

  ‘Not very insane, as monks go,’ said Caleb. ‘More sad than mad. I've known monks that frothed.’

  ‘And some of those monsters were long past their date with the knackerman, and that's the truth,’ said Truckle. ‘Honestly, I felt embarrassed about killing them. They was older than us.’

  ‘The fish were good,’ said Cohen. ‘Real big buggers.’

  ‘Just as well, really, since we've run out of walrus,’ said Evil Harry.

  ‘Wonderful display by your henchmen, Harry,’ said Cohen. ‘Stupidity wasn't the word for it. Never seen so many people hit themselves over the head with their own swords.’

  ‘They were good lads,’ said Harry. ‘Morons to the end.’

  Cohen grinned at Boy Willie, who was sucking a cut finger.

  ‘Teeth,’ he said. ‘Huh… the answer is always “teeth”, is it?’

  ‘All right, all right, sometimes it's “tongue”,’ said Boy Willie. He turned to the minstrel.

  ‘Did you get that bit where I cut up that big taranchula?’ he said.

  The minstrel raised his head slowly. A lute string broke.

  ‘Mwwa,’ he bleated.

  The rest of the Horde gathered round quickly. There was no sense in letting just one of them get the best verses.

  ‘Remember to sing about that bit where that fish swallowed me and I cut my way out from inside, okay?’

  ‘Mwwa…’

  ‘And did you get that bit when I killed that big six-armed dancin' statue?’

  ‘Mwwa…’

  ‘What're you talkin' about? It was me what killed that statue!’

  ‘Yeah? Well, I clove him clean in twain, mate. No one could have survived that!’

  ‘Why didn't you just cut 'is 'ead orf?’

  ‘Couldn't. Someone'd already done that.’

  ‘'Ere, 'e's not writin' this down! Why isn't 'e writin' this down? Cohen, you tell 'im 'e's got to write this down!’

  ‘Let him be for a while,’ said Cohen. ‘I reckon the fish disagreed with him.’

  ‘Don't see why,’ said Truckle. ‘I pulled him out before it'd hardly chewed him. And he must've dried out nicely in that corridor. You know, the one where the flames shot up out of the floor unexpectedly.’

  ‘I reckon our bard wasn't expecting flames to shoot out of the floor unexpectedly,’ said Cohen.

  Truckle shrugged theatrically. ‘Well, if you're not going to expect unexpected flames, what's the point of going anywhere?’

  ‘And we'd have been in some strife with those gate demons from the netherworlds if Mad Hamish hadn't woken up,’ Cohen went on.

  Hamish stirred in his wheelchair, under a pile of large fish fillets inexpertly wrapped in saffron robes.

  ‘Whut?’

  ‘I SAID YOU WERE GROUCHY WHAT WITH MISSING YER NAP!’ Cohen shouted.

  ‘Ach, right!’

  Boy Willie rubbed his thigh. ‘I got to admit it, one of those monsters nearly got me,’ he said. ‘I'm going to have to give this up.’

  Cohen turned around quickly. ‘And die like old Old Vincent?’ he said.

  ‘Well, not—’

  ‘Where would he have been if we weren't there to give him a proper funeral, eh? A great big bonfire, that's the funeral of a hero. And everyone else said it was a waste of a good boat! So stop talking like that and followme!’

  ‘Mw… mw… mw,’ the minstrel sang, and finally the words came out. ‘Mad! Mad! Mad! You're all stark staring mad!’

  Caleb patted him gently on the shoulder as they turned to follow their leader.

  ‘We prefer the word berserk, lad,’ he said.

  Some things needed testing…

  ‘I have watched the swamp dragons at night,’ Leonard said conversationally as Ponder Stibbons adjusted the static-firing mechanism. ‘And it is clear to me that the flame is quite useful to them as a means of propulsion. In a sense, a swamp dragon is a living rocket. A strange creature to have come into being on a world like ours, I have always thought. I suspect they come from elsewhere.’

  ‘They tend to explode a lot,’ said Ponder, standing back. The dragon in the steel cage watched him carefully.

  ‘Bad diet,’ said Leonard firmly. ‘Possibly not what they were used to. But I am sure the mixture I have devised is both nourishing and safe and will have… usable effect…’

  ‘But we will go and get behind the sandbags now, sir,�
� said Ponder.

  ‘Oh, do you really think—?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  With his back firmly against the sandbags, Ponder shut his eyes and pulled the string.

  In front of the dragon's cage, a mirror swung down, just for a moment. And the first reaction of a male swamp dragon on seeing another male is to flame…

  There was a roar. The two men peered over the barrier and saw a yellow-green lance of fire thundering out across the evening sea.

  ‘Thirty-three seconds!’ said Ponder, when it finally winked out. He leapt up.

  The small dragon belched.

  The flame was more or less gone, so it was the dampest explosion Ponder had ever experienced.

  ‘Ah,’ said Leonard, arising from behind the sandbags and peeling a piece of scaly skin off his head. ‘Nearly there, I think. Just a pinch more charcoal and seaweed extract to prevent blowback.’

  Ponder removed his hat. What he needed right now, he felt, was a bath. And then another bath.

  ‘I'm not exactly a rocket wizard, am I?’ he said, wiping bits of dragon off his face.

  But an hour later another flame lanced over the waves, thin and white with a blue core… and this time, this time, the dragon merely smiled.

  ‘I'd rather die than sign my name,’ said Boy Willie.

  ‘I'd rather face a dragon,’ said Caleb. ‘One of the proper old ones, too, not the little fireworky ones you get today.’

  ‘Once they get you signin' your name, they've got you where they want you,’ said Cohen.

  ‘Too many letters,’ said Truckle. ‘All different shapes, too. I always put an X.’

  The Horde had stopped for a breather and a smoke on an outcrop at the end of the green valley. Snow was thick on the ground, but the air was almost mild. Already there was the prickly sensation of a high magical field.

  ‘Readin', now,’ said Cohen, ‘that's another matter. I don't mind a man who does a bit of readin'. Now, you come across a map, as it might be, and it's got a big cross on it, well, a readin' man can tell something from that.’

  ‘What? That it's Truckle's map?’ said Boy Willie.

  ‘Exactly. Could very well be.’

  ‘I can read and write,’ said Evil Harry. ‘Sorry. Part of the job. Etiquette, too. You've got to be polite to people when you march them out on the plank over the shark tank… it makes it more evil.’