The Last Hero - Terry Pratchett [51]
Most large organisations, to their regret and expense, have to have someone like that.
Evil Harry surfaced from the snowdrift, and gasped for breath. Then he was plunged back down again by a firm hand.
"So it's a deal, then, is it?" said the minstrel, who was kneeling on his back and holding on to his hair.
Evil Harry rose again. "Deal!" he roared, spitting snow.
"And if you tell me later that I shouldn't have listened to you because everyone knows Dark Lords can't be trusted, I'll garotte you with a lyre string!"
"You got no respect!"
"Well? You are an evil treacherous Dark Lord, right?" said the minstrel, pushing the spluttering head back into the snow.
"Well, yeah, of course... obviously. But respect costs nothi nnnn n n nn'."
"You help me get down and I'll write you into the saga as the most wicked, iniquitous and depraved evil warlord there has even been, understand?"
The head came up again, wheezing.
"All right, all right. But you gotta promise..."
"And if you betray me, remember that I don't know the Code! I don't have to let Dark Lords get away!"
They descended in silence and, in Harry's case, mostly with his eyes shut.
Off to one side and a long way down, a foothill that was now a valley still fumed and bubbled.
"We'd never even find the bodies," said the minstrel, as they sought for a path.
"Ah, and that'd be 'cos they didn't die, see?" said Harry. "They'd have come up with some plan at the last minute, you can bet on it."
"Harry —"
"You can call me Evil, lad."
"Evil, they spent the last minute falling down a mountain!"
"Ah, but maybe they kind of glided through the air, see? And there's all those lakes down there. Or maybe they spotted where the snow was really deep."
The minstrel stared. "You really think they could have survived?" he said.
There was a slight touch of desperation in Harry's raddled face.
"Sure. O' course. All that talk from Cohen... that was just talk. He's not the sort to go around dyin" all the time. No old Cohen! I mean... not him. 'E's one of a kind."
The minstrel surveyed the Hublands ahead of him. There were lakes and there was deep snow. But the Horde was not in favour of cunning. If they needed cunning, they hired it. Otherwise, they simply attacked. And you couldn't attack the ground.
It's all mixed up, he thought. Just like that captain said. Gods and heroes and wild adventure... but when the last hero goes, it all goes.
He'd never been keen on heroes. But he realised that he needed them to be there, like forests and mountains... he might never see them, but they filled some sort of hole in his mind. Some sort of hole in everyone's mind.
"Bound to be fine," said Evil Harry, behind him. "They'll probably be waitin' for us when we get down there."
"What's that, hanging on that rock?" said the minstrel.
It turned out, when they'd scrambled up to it over slippery rocks, to be part of a shattered wheel from Mad Hamish's wheelchair.
"Doesn't mean nothing," said Evil Harry, tossing it aside. "Come on, let's get a move on. This is not a mountain you want to be on at night."
"No. You're right. It doesn't," said the minstrel. He unslung his lyre and began to tune it. "It doesn't mean anything."
Before he turned to leave, he reached into a ragged pocket and pulled out a small leather bag. It was full of rubies.
He tipped them out on to the snow, where they glowed. And then he walked on.
There was a field of deep snow. Here and there a hollow suggested that the snow had been thrust aside with great force by a falling body, but the edges had been softened by the wind drift.
The seven horsewomen landed gently, and the thing about the snow was this: there were hoofprints in it, but they did not appear exactly where the horses trod or exactly when they did. They seemed superimposed on the world, as if they had been drawn first and the artist did not have much time to paint the reality