Murder in LaMut Read Free

comradely, and they wouldn’t even notice that they barely noticed him.
    It had worked when he was fist-boxing in that small village outside of Rodez–before Pirojil had killed that annoying little sergeant, and the three of them had to take to their heels, again–and it worked when he was learning how to roll dice in Northwarden.
    Just learn the game, learn how to blend in, and be sober while seeming less than sober, and they would only notice that he had beaten them after it was accomplished and he was gone.
    Somebody had to win, after all.
    Why not Kethol?
    Three beefy Muts, one with a fresh set of corporal’s stripes on his sleeve, leaned over the rough-hewn table, examining the placards in front of them, while four others looked on. All wore the greyish livery of regular Mut soldiers, and all talked amongst themselves in the thick LaMut accent that Kethol could imitate without thinking about it.
    ‘Nice play, Osic,’ one said, as another scooped the pile of coppers toward him. ‘I was sure I had you beat.’
    ‘It can happen,’ Osic said. He turned to Kethol. ‘Kehol,’ he said, mispronouncing the name in a way a prouder man would have taken offence at, ‘you want to get in on the next hand? Only a couple of coppers to see some placards, but it can get expensive after that, truth to tell.’
    Kethol had watched long enough, he thought, to have some idea about the ranking of combinations. More to the point, the Muts had been drinking long enough that a sober man wouldn’t have any difficulty working out who thought, albeit in a drunken stupor, that he had a good combination, and that should be good enough.
    In the country of the drunk, a sober man was at least a landed baron, and on a good day, an earl.
    ‘I may as well,’ Kethol said, emptying a judiciously small heap of patinaed copper coins out of his pouch and onto the table. He had considerably more on him, of course, but it was best not to seem rich.
    ‘Your money’s as green as the next fellow’s,’ one of the Muts said, and the others chuckled along with the jest that had been ancient when the Kingdom was new.
    It was probably a risky idea to get into a game with regulars, but there were times for taking a risk.
    Over in a far corner, near where the smell of roasting mutton oozed out of the kitchen, a game of two-thumb was going on between two Keshian mercenaries: the mad dwarf, Mackin, and a skinny, balding, puffy-faced fellow who called himself Milo, but who Kethol was certain had a price on his head under another name, and probably a local price, at that–why else would he make himself so scarce whenever the constable appeared?–and that’s where Kethol should have been playing.
    If one of them took offence at Kethol’s winning, the odds were small that another would want to interfere. You could win a lot in a night when most of the time you appeared to be taking a deep draught of your beer you barely swallowed.
    Here there was more risk, but there was also more profit to be had. It was just another field of battle, as far as Kethol was concerned. All he had to do was obey the same set of rules: protect himself and his friends; be sure not to draw too much attention to himself; and be sure to be one of the men standing when it was all over. And just as the best time to attack was before dawn, when the enemy would all be sleeping, the best time to gamble was late at night, when the others’ minds would be clouded with too much drink and too little sleep.
    And if that seemed ungentle and unsporting, well then, that was just fine with Kethol. He was, after all, a mercenary, serving his betters for pay, and like the whores upstairs he tried to be as well paid for as little service as he could manage.
    So he nodded, sat down, and threw a couple of coppers in the middle of the table, and received his placards from the dealer’s heavy hands.
    He was just about to make his first play when the fight broke out at the table behind him.

    You would