Joel Rosenberg - Murder in Lamut

Somebody might still be able to get into the room, but not without making a lot of noise.

Durine had rigged a similar improvised alarm on the other hidden panel, while Pirojil leaned back against the door, his arms crossed in front of him.

‘You’ve done what’s needed. Now get out,’ the Baron said. ‘I can assure you that there will be some discussion of this in the morning.’

Kethol wasn’t at all sure about that. He hoped the Baron would just let the matter drop, but he followed Pirojil’s lead, and bowed his way out of the room.

Durine just shook his head.

Morning broke with Baron Morray off to the east wing of the keep to visit with the ailing Baron Mondegreen and Pirojil, along with Durine and Kethol, barred from the Mondegreen Keep’s private quarters.

Which was about to be expected. Tom Garnett might have made it clear that Morray wasn’t to take a dump without one of the three of them watching to see if some assassin would leap up out of the garderobe and spear his noble arse, but the Captain wasn’t in charge in Mondegreen, and their warrant signed by the Earl of LaMut wasn’t quite that specific; waving it in front of the face of Mondegreen’s guard captain would do nothing more than cause a breeze.

Besides, most of the time, the law is what the most senior noble present says it is, and commoners were used to that.

So the three of them grabbed a skimpy breakfast of bread, onion and sausage in the barracks, and huddled in their cloaks against the cold as they headed across the outer courtyard to where the lackeys and stablemen were trying to prepare the Baron’s carriage, despite the constant interference from the ragged bunch of castle boys in their endless games of tag and kick-the-ball.

It was far too cold for anybody sensible to be running around outdoors if they didn’t have to. As they ran about, the young boys’ breath puffed visibly in the cold air, and one or another would occasionally slip on an icy spot on the courtyard that hadn’t been properly sanded over.

But perhaps the exercise kept them warm, and besides, it was at least something different from their daily chores.

‘Sixthday,’ one of the stablemen explained, as he beckoned at Pirojil to hold onto the reins while he fastened one of the big white geldings into its place in front of the carriage, then beckoned to his assistant to bring out another.

Pirojil didn’t mind helping, although he couldn’t help the way his eyes wandered to the large window in the east wing, across the courtyard, where he assumed that Baron Morray was explaining to Baron Mondegreen, over their own late breakfast, about how three ill-mannered freebooters had interfered with his sleep.

‘Sixthday?’

‘In the old days, they’d have only Sixthday afternoon to waste their time frolicking about like a bunch of ninnies, but things have got sloppy during the war, and the good Baron’s been … occupied with other matters,’ he said. ‘What was the Sixthday afternoon seems to begin earlier every Sixthday morning.’

Other matters. Like dying of some wasting disease that neither clerics nor wizards could touch, apparently – although that was none of Pirojil’s concern.

The lackey fastened a loop to a fitting, and pulled it into place with a loud grunt. ‘A few more blows with a cudgel,’ he said, ‘would do the stableboys a lot more good than additional time to run about like a bunch of squirrels, if you ask me, but the Horsemaster seems to be far more interested in old Cedric’s opinion of which animals are ready for the knacker than he is in my thoughts about which of the boys would learn better with more than a few clouts and a little less time to do whatever they take it in their heads to do.’

Pirojil wasn’t terribly interested in the problems of the stable-man, or in the beating up of young boys, but it didn’t hurt to listen politely, at least for a while.

It wasn’t as if he had anything better to do at the moment, unfortunately.

They should already have left. If Pirojil had been running things, the return trip to LaMut would have left the castle during what they called the ‘wolf’s tail’ down in the Vale – the grey light well before dawn, which hid all colours if not shapes.

On the other hand, the delay had given their betters a good enough opportunity to get their poles greased, apparently, and got Kethol and the other two a good two-thirds of a night’s sleep. Not bad, all things considered, he thought, yawning against the back of his hand. He wondered if there might be a mug full of hot tea in the battered iron pot simmering on the stove in the barracks, and whether it would be tannic enough actually to fry his tongue; of a certainty, it would be hot enough to warm his belly.

Kethol and Durine had set their weapons down under the care of a claque of the castle girls who were busy chatting among themselves while pretending to ignore their young male counterparts.

The two mercenaries had actually joined in the boys’ game.

There were times when Pirojil was more than vaguely suspicious that the two of them had been dropped on their heads as children.

A pair of young ruffians, no more than half Durine’s size, actually tried to tackle the big man, and he fell to the ground, releasing the leather ragbag with what probably looked to the others like an honestly-come-by slip.

Pirojil took a quick glance beyond the carriage into the stables. He reckoned it would be at least another hour before the Mondegreen detachment was ready to ride, and who knew how long they would be waiting for the nobility to –

‘You are Kethol?’ A soldier in Mondegreen livery had come up behind him without his noticing. Pirojil stopped himself from reaching for his sword. That was Pirojil’s fault, and he tried not to let his irritation at himself show on his face. He was getting old.

‘No. I’m Pirojil. Kethol’s the one under that wriggling pile of boys over there.’

‘The Baron will see him now. Will you pull him out of the pile, or shall I?’

‘Baron Mondegreen?’

‘Yes, Baron Mondegreen.’ The soldier frowned in disgust. ‘And in these walls, who else would the Baron be? Now, are you going to get him?’

‘I’d better do it.’ There were some risks involved in interrupting Kethol when he was distracted. The Mut would probably just grab Kethol by the collar or the foot, and the touch of a hand stronger than a boy’s might set Kethol off.

‘Then be quick about it.’ The soldier spun on the ball of his foot and set off toward the keep.

Pirojil shook his head as he walked toward where Kethol was rolling around on the ground.

Lady Mondegreen was attending her husband as he lay propped up with pillows on the massive, brass-railed bed. She smiled a greeting to Kethol, and beckoned him toward the chair next to the bed.

Kethol stood and waited. He hadn’t been told to sit, after all, and you could never tell when some noble would decide that you were being presumptuous.

The room smelled like old death, or maybe it was just the Baron himself. Mondegreen had, so legend had it, been a big and physically powerful man in his youth, but the wasting disease had turned him into a shrivelled relic of what he had been. Before Kethol lay a barely-living object trying not to pant with the exertion of sitting up.

‘Please – remove your cloak,’ the Baron said, ‘or I fear you’ll find yourself sweating furiously.’ His voice was weak, but he was forcing himself not to pause for breath until he completed each sentence. Death would claim Baron Mondegreen sooner rather than later, and it would come as more of a blessing than a curse, but he would not go down without fighting it.

Kethol removed his cloak, and after looking around, folded it over the back of a chair.