The Last Hero
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ISBN 0-575-06885-X | | |
Preceded by | Thief of Time | |
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Followed by | The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents |
The Last Hero is a short
Plot summary
A message, carried by pointless albatross, arrives for
The heroes are disillusioned with the way their lives have turned out—having conquered the Empire, they have nothing left to do but die in comfort—and are angry for having been allowed to grow old, rather than dying in battle as most of their friends did. They decided to go out on the quest after one of the Horde members choked to death on a cucumber. Evil Harry is just as angry; despite his efforts to give his opponents the sporting chance that an
The Wizards of Unseen University explain to
The vessel, named "
Meanwhile, the Horde have already reached Cori Celesti. The gods allow them to sneak in disguised as gods themselves, despite (or perhaps because of) their having been betrayed to the gods by Evil Harry. The Horde suspect that the gods have been manipulating their entire quest. Fate challenges Cohen to roll a 7 on a standard 6-sided die. Cohen cheats Fate by slicing the die in-half in mid-air with his sword; the two halves land with the 6 and 1 both facing up. Cohen also notes that even if he does not succeed in killing the gods, someone will have tried, so someone will eventually try harder.
Captain Carrot attempts to arrest the Horde, at which point the Horde arms the explosives. While initially intending to attack him, the Horde realise that as a single brave man outnumbered by his foes and trying to save the world, Carrot is a Hero (and probably a king in disguise), and so their defeat is certain. After Rincewind explains that the detonation will destroy the entire Discworld, the Horde grab the explosives and throw them—and themselves—off the mountain.
As punishment for creating The Kite (which allowed humans to travel higher than the gods) and for not expressing belief in the gods, Leonard is ordered by the gods to paint the entire ceiling of the Temple of Small Gods with a spectacular mural of the whole world (despite Blind Io saying he would be satisfied with "a nice duck-egg blue with a few stars"). They impose a time limit of 10 years on the task—unassisted, "even with the scaffolding". (Leonard finishes the task in a few weeks.) Carrot asks for a boon to allow for the repairs of The Kite so that they can return to Ankh-Morpork. Rincewind asks for a blue balloon and the Librarian asks for some library supplies (and a red balloon) and manages to refrain from bouncing Blind Io's head on the ground after Io calls him 'a monkey'.
The Horde's end is ambiguous.
After the Horde leave with the Valkyries' horses, their first stop is to visit Mazda where he is being punished, cut off his chains, give him something to drink, and leave him a sword so that he may deal with his punisher. The bard, changed by his experience, composes a new style of saga, one with musical accompaniment, about it.
Characters
- Cohen the Barbarian
- Carrot Ironfoundersson
- The Librarian
- The Minstrel
- Rincewind
- Leonard of Quirm