Murder in LaMut by Raymond E. Feist, Joel Rosenberg Page A

Sometimes Durine was just too slow. Not that Pirojil would complain; Kethol was worse.
    ‘It’s good and bad,’ Pirojil said slowly, patiently. ‘Most things are. The bad has two parts: someone might try to cut our throats for just being in the way.’
    ‘Nothing new in that.’
    ‘And we’re expendable.’
    ‘Nothing new in that, either.’
    ‘More so than usual.’
    ‘Ah!’ Durine nodded, finally understanding. ‘Politics.’ He said it as if it was a curse.
    ‘Politics.’ Pirojil nodded. ‘Look at it from the political angle. If Baron Morray, say, falls down a flight of stairs and breaks his neck, the Earl can either treat it as an accident, or as our fault. If it’s an accident, well then, there’s no political problem, and Luke Verheyen isn’t to blame–nobody is.’
    ‘And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?’
    ‘Sure. But if it’s not an accident–if, say, the Baron was murdered–then whose fault is it?’
    ‘The murderer’s?’
    Pirojil wasn’t sure whether to groan or laugh. ‘Sure: the murderer. And who is the murderer? Verheyen, the hereditary enemy, who is eyeing the earldom every bit as much as Morray is? Or the three freebooters who, upon a careful search, will of a certainty seem to have too much money on them?’
    ‘So what do we do?’
    ‘The obvious: we try to keep Baron Morray from falling off his horse and breaking his neck while we’re on patrol, or falling down the stairs and breaking his neck when we’re at Morray and Mondegreen. We get him back to LaMut intact and breathing, and hope to be relieved of this duty there. If somebody tries to kill him, we stop them; if we can’t, we be sure to capture at least one assassin alive, and make sure he is able to tell who paid him, which won’t have been us.’
    ‘And if we can’t?’
    Pirojil just frowned at him. That was obvious. ‘We kill everybody within reach, grab their horses and anything of value they have on them, and then we see if we can outrace the price on our heads.’
    ‘And what do you think are our chances of that?’
    ‘Sixty-sixty–’
    ‘Optimist.’
    ‘–on a good day.’ Pirojil arched an eyebrow. ‘If you have a better alternative, don’t sit on it–trot it out and let’s talk about it.’
    Durine shook his head. ‘No. I’ve no better idea, and that’s a fact.’
    ‘Then we go with–’
    ‘ Mount up ,’ sounded from below. Tom Garnett’s voice carried well. ‘ We’re wasting daylight. ’
    ‘We’d better get down before they leave without us,’ Pirojil said.
    ‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Durine nodded, and his massive brow wrinkled. ‘But I see what you mean. Very clever of the Swordmaster, eh?’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘I mean, if somebody does manage to kill Baron Morray out here, or if he does have a fatal accident, wouldn’t the Swordmaster know that we’d be blamed and would have to run for it?’
    ‘Well, yes.’
    ‘So he wins either way.’
    Pirojil had to nod. The Swordmaster would win, either way, at that. A dead baron wasn’t an insuperable problem–the war had been almost as lethal for the nobility as it had been for the common soldier–but feuding barons getting the idea that assassination was acceptable was another thing altogether. Much better to blame the three freebooters, who had had no connection with any nobility faction. Someone would make it obvious they had just decided to kill and rob the Baron themselves–and whether Pirojil, Kethol and Durine were killed, captured, or escaped was immaterial; that’s what the official story would be.
    Maybe Durine wasn’t really so stupid after all.
    The Swordmaster surely wasn’t.
    Shit.

    They were only an hour south of Mondegreen when the Tsurani attacked.
    There was no warning, at least none that Durine noticed, not even in retrospect. Neither Kethol nor Pirojil had any, or they would have given a signal.
    One moment the company was riding, in two ragged columns, down a farming road, a frozen, fallow field of hay on each