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"The minstrel boy to the war has gone, with his wild-harp slung behind him", sayeth the bard. In this case it's a lute (sounds like `loot' to a barbarian), and he has been snatched from the Morporkian Embassy in Hunghung and carried to the Last Battle.

Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde are feeling old and want to go out in one last epic endeavour. This obviously requires an epic poem, or saga, in commemoration, so Cohen finds a bard to write it. Cohen, unfortunately, is almost uniquely unqualified to adjudicate any poet, bard or musician, and what he gets is a minstrel (not even, as he admits, a very good minstrel).

The Minstrel is working under the enhanced carrot-and-stick system; the carrot being replaced by a fortune in rubies, and the stick by the possibility of Cohen becoming very upset. This is a lot of enhancement. As a barely-qualified minstrel he has no idea how to write a saga and has to be instructed by Cohen in Teutonic reversal of sentence order and the use of words like `rede', `doom' and `spake'.

After enduring horrors known only to barbarian heroes and explorers named Jones, he has plenty of material for a saga burnt uncomfortably into his mind. He also realises simultaneously that nothing worse could happen to him and that the gods will really want everyone to know what happened when they were attacked by the very old man in the fish costume, so he stays with the group for their assault on Dunmanifestin.

When the Silver Horde finally ends with an enormous bang and no whimpering at all, the minstrel throws a fortune in rubies in the snow and realises that he can't write a fitting saga. He has, however become a better minstrel and writes a ballad for the ages. The Minstrel has no name, unless it is Anon.

"No one remembers the singer. The song remains." T.D.J. Pratchett, et al