Joel Rosenberg - Murder in Lamut

It was lousy work, but it was easy.

You just slid a hackamore on the horse, led it to an empty stall, being sure to close the animal in properly, and then forked out the old, shit-and-piss-laden straw, then spread out some of the fresh. The old straw went into the wheelbarrow, and the wheelbarrow went up the ramp and through two sets of heavy swinging doors, to be dumped onto the back of the midden wagon, after which it was no longer Pirojil’s problem. Somebody else would have to haul it out of town, and dump it. It was said that the dung of LaMut horses was why the local potatoes grew as big as horseflops, but growing vegetables was something that Pirojil didn’t know much about.

Or care.

Pirojil knew that he was capable of being as complex a man as there was, which was why at times very simple things appealed to him. As did not thinking about things that didn’t concern him. There was no point in employing his mental capacity without a good reason, after all. He had another swig of wine, gargled with it to clear the accumulated phlegm from his throat, and carefully re-stoppered the bottle before setting it down on the floor next to the ladder. The ladder could be used for getting down to the floor, but there was also the rope. And, just a short step away from the loft, a well-varnished pole stood invitingly.

Pirojil slid down the pole easily, his thick leather gloves warming only a trifle from the friction, and landed lightly. That was the trick of it, he had decided. You wanted to stop just at the floor, by your own friction, not drive your boots into the hard earthen floor.

It was a silly thing to be concentrating on, but there were worse.

Like the way women looked at him. Even the whores.

He shrugged. An ugly man was an ugly man, but an ugly rich man was a rich man, and some day he would be at least a moderately rich man, if he wasn’t a dead man first. You had to keep building up your stake, and waiting for the right moment, and in the meantime –

In the meantime, you could amuse yourself with daydreams about wealth, while you waited for the predestined spear to run you through the belly, the fated sword to find your heart, or the inevitable arrow to seek your eye.

Willem, the last of the stableboys, had gone to war with his father’s shield, and come back upon it. In his memory, the shield had been hung on the wall of the stable with the rest, and polished to a ridiculously high gloss by somebody who should have found something better to do with his time.

Thankfully, though, even as highly polished as the shield was, he couldn’t see his reflection in it. He had no particular need to see the misshapen forehead hung heavy with bushy eyebrows, over sunken, tired eyes, and a nose that had been broken enough times to flatten it against the face, and turn him into a mouth-breather.

Pirojil fingered the scraggly beard that covered his jaw. It never did fill in, and he never would permit it to grow long enough for an enemy to grasp.

You couldn’t always tell about people by looking at them. There were ugly people in this world, but many of them were good and kind. Pirojil had long ago decided that his own face was a mirror to his soul. It took something other than a gentle soul to decide to make most of your living sliding a sword into another man’s guts, and the rest of it waiting to slide a sword into another man’s, or any of the hundred other different ways of killing Pirojil had used to earn his pay.

A skritching sound sent his hand to his belt as he spun about.

He forced himself to relax. Just a rat, off in a corner up against the oat bin.

An ongoing problem, and one you’d think that the magicians would take time out of their busy schedule to handle. Couldn’t they … wiggle their fingers or mutter their spells or whatever they did and keep the rats out of the horses’ oats and carrots and corn? Well, it was none of his business. He wasn’t sleeping in the cold stable, and, besides, nobody was paying him to kill rats.

Something whipped past his ear and thunked into the wood of the oat bin, accompanied by a short squeal.

‘Got it.’ A tall, rangy man stepped out of the shadows, tucking a second knife into a sheath on his right hip. A basket-hilted rapier hung from his belt – the narrow, precise weapon of a duel-list, not the broader, longer sword that a line soldier would carry into battle. Tom Garnett chose his weapons with care.

It didn’t much matter that Pirojil’s own sword was a good six paces away, hung on a hook while he worked. Captain Tom Garnett, the oldest of the captains fealty-bound to his excellency the Earl of LaMut, was, even in his late forties, a far better swordsman than Pirojil could ever hope to be. Whether it was the result of innate talent or more than thirty years of spending half his waking hours with a sword in his hand – or, most likely, both – in a swordfight, Garnett could easily have carved Pirojil into little pieces.

And, apparently, he had a way with throwing knives, too, although Pirojil would have thought better of him, for Pirojil had never heard of a thrown knife actually killing anybody, and it was absolutely silly to spend the gold to acquire a properly balanced throwing knife.

Pointless, really.

So Pirojil kept his hands from straying near where his own throwing knife was concealed under the hem of his tunic. Yet although he had never heard of a thrown knife actually killing anyone, he had seen one distract a man long enough for him to be killed some other way, and besides, there was always a first time; he just refused to pay enough gold for a good one, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have risked it dispatching vermin. Letting his thoughts run, Pirojil stood silently as Tom Garnett walked over and retrieved the knife, displaying the rat that he had neatly skewered.

It was already limp and unmoving in death; Tom Garnett flicked its body off his knife and into the wheelbarrow with the straw and shit, then stooped to pick up a handful of fresh straw to clean his knife with before replacing it in his sheath.

He stood a head taller than Pirojil, who himself was of more than average height, but while Pirojil was built almost as thickly and solidly as Durine, Tom Garnett was even more rangy and gaunt than Kethol. His hair was coal-black, sprinkled with silver highlights, and except for a thin moustache and tiny, pointed goatee, his face was clean-shaven, revealing a wealth of scars about his cheeks and forehead. You would expect such a tall and gangly man to seem awkward in motion, but he moved like a dancer, seemingly always in balance.

‘I seem to have taken you by surprise,’ the Captain said, making a tsk ing sound with his teeth. ‘I would have thought better of you, Pirojil.’

Pirojil ducked his head. ‘The Captain is kind to remember me,’ he said.

‘And unkind to criticize? Ah. That could be.’ Garnett gestured at the rat. ‘You object to me killing a rat?’

Pirojil shook his head. ‘Not at all, Captain,’ he said. ‘I might have done it myself.’ He shrugged.

‘If you’d cared to.’ The Captain’s tone was ever-so-slightly mocking.

‘If I’d cared to.’

‘And why didn’t you care to, Pirojil?’ Garnett asked, perhaps too gently.

Pirojil shrugged again. ‘I didn’t see any point. You kill one rat, there’s another score of them where it came from. It wasn’t bothering me, and I don’t remember being ordered – or paid – to hunt rats.’ He leaned on his pitchfork. ‘Do you want to pay me to hunt rats, Captain?’

Tom Garnett shook his head, slowly. ‘Not me, Pirojil. The Swordmaster, on the other hand, may have some rats for you to hunt, or at least to watch out for. I’ve sent for your companions; they should be at the Aerie by now. Would you very much mind coming with me?’ he asked, politely, as though it was simply a request.