The Last Hero

And, of course, everyone knew what the first hero stole.

The gods play games with the fate of men. Not complex ones, obviously, because gods lack patience.

Cheating is part of the rules. And gods play hard. To lose all believers is, for a god, the end. But a believer who survives the game gains honour and extra belief. Who wins with the most believers, lives.

Believers can include other gods, of course. Gods believe in belief.

There were always many games going on in Dunmanifestin, the abode of the gods on Cori Celesti. It looked, from outside, like a crowded city.3 Not all gods lived there, many of them being bound to a particular country or, in the case of the smaller ones, even one tree. But it was a Good Address. It was where you hung your metaphysical equivalent of the shiny brass plate, like those small discreet buildings in the smarter areas of major cities which nevertheless appear to house one hundred and fifty lawyers and accountants, presumably on some sort of shelving.

The city's domestic appearance was because, while people are influenced by gods, so gods are influenced by people.

Most gods were people-shaped; people don't have much imagination, on the whole. Even Offler the Crocodile God was only crocodile-headed. Ask people to imagine an animal god and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really bad mask. Men have been much better at inventing demons, which is why there are so many.

Above the wheel of the world, the gods played on. They sometimes forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board.

It took a little longer for the rumour to spread around the city, but in twos and threes the leaders of the great Guilds hurried into the University.

Then the ambassadors picked up the news. Around the city the big semaphore towers faltered in their endless task of exporting market prices to the world, sent the signal to clear the line for high-priority emergency traffic, and then clack'd the little packets of doom to chancelleries and castles across the continent.

They were in code, of course. If you have news about the end of the world, you don't want everyone to know.

Lord Vetinari stared along the table. A lot had been happening in the past few hours.

‘If I may recap, then, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, as the hubbub died away, ‘according to the authorities in Hunghung, the capital of the Agatean Empire, the Emperor Ghengiz Cohen, formerly known to the world as Cohen the Barbarian, is well en route to the home of the gods with a device of considerable destructive power and the intention, apparently, of, in his words, “returning what was stolen”. And, in short, they ask us to stop him.’

‘Why us?’ said Mr Boggis, head of the Thieves' Guild. ‘He's not our Emperor!’

‘I understand the Agatean government believes us to be capable of anything,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘We have zip, zing, vim and a go-getting, can-do attitude.’

‘Can do what?’

Lord Vetinari shrugged. ‘In this case, save the world.’

‘But we'll have to save it for everyone, right?’ said Mr Boggis. ‘Even foreigners?’

‘Well, yes. You cannot just save the bits you like,’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘But the thing about saving the world, gentlemen and ladies, is that it inevitably includes whatever you happen to be standing on. So let us move forward. Can magic help us, Archchancellor?’

‘No. Nothing magical can get within a hundred miles of the mountains,’ said the Archchancellor.

‘Why not?’

‘For the same reason you can't sail a boat into a hurricane. There's just toomuchmagic. It overloads anything magical. A magic carpet would unravel in midair.’

‘Or turn into broccoli,’ said the Dean. ‘Or a small volume of poetry.’

‘Are you saying that we cannot get there in time?’

‘Well… yes. Exactly. Of course. They're already near the base of the mountain.’

‘And they're heroes,’ said Mr Betteridge of the Guild of Historians.

‘And that means, exactly?’ said the Patrician, sighing.

‘They're good at doing what they want to do.’

‘But they are also, as I understand it, very old men.’

‘Very old heroes,’ the historian corrected him. ‘That just means they've had a lot of experience in doing what they want to do.’

Lord Vetinari sighed again. He did not like to live in a world of heroes. You had civilisation, such as it was, and you had heroes.

‘What exactly has Cohen the Barbarian done that is heroic?’ he said. ‘I seek only to understand.’

‘Well… you know… heroic deeds…’

‘And they are…?’

‘Fighting monsters, defeating tyrants, stealing rare treasures, rescuing maidens… that sort of thing,’ said Mr Betteridge vaguely. ‘You know… heroic things.’

‘And who, precisely, defines the monstrousness of the monsters and the tyranny of the tyrants?’ said Lord Vetinari, his voice suddenly like a scalpel – not vicious like a sword, but probing its edge into vulnerable places.

Mr Betteridge shifted uneasily. ‘Well… the hero, I suppose.’