Asayaga hesitated, then softly said, ‘Valinar.’
Dennis stopped and said, ‘I’ll be damned.’ Then he threw back his head and laughed. ‘That’s rich.’
Asayaga shook his head. ‘The title should have been yours. I’m sorry I brought trouble upon you.’
‘Don’t be. We did what was right. If we had not, both of us would be dead now, and the kingdom would be minus a good Tsurani squire.’
‘And a good captain of the northern marches. At least you’re answering to Baron Highcastle, and not Moyet.’
‘There is that,’ agreed Dennis. ‘Besides, I like it here. The land is rich; it’s a fine location to build a new home, to live, even to have an occasional adventure. I’ll start a new Hartraft tradition here, Asayaga. I rather like the quiet now. And besides, there’s something special about this place that Wolfgar found. I guess a bit of his soul lingers, for I have inherited a distinct disdain for dealings in the courts of kings.’
Asayaga nodded. ‘I find that unsurprising.’
With a smile Dennis asked, ‘Alyssa? She’s waiting inside to greet you. Two sons now, a third on the way.’
Dennis clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You’re going to wear that girl out, my friend. Wolfgar would be proud.’
‘Yes he would,’ and Asayaga smiled, a sly sort of grin.
Just then two women appeared at the door of the keep. Alyssa hurried forward and half-flew into Asayaga’s arms. ‘I’ve missed you!’ she exclaimed.
He laughed. ‘And I have missed you. How has your visit been?’
‘Wonderful. Better now that you’re here. How long can we stay?’
Asayaga slipped his arm around her and kissed her. ‘Another week, then we must both be back to court. Lord Kasumi’s wife says she misses her favourite lady-in-waiting, and I must return to my duties.’
Dennis turned to Sergeant Jenkins and said, ‘Inspect the men, change the watches, and then dismiss them.’
The sergeant saluted and turned to do as ordered.
Roxanne appeared at the door of the keep. She came down and kissed Asayaga on the cheek. ‘It is good to see you again,’ she said.
‘And it is good to see you, as well.’
A shout from inside the building, followed by a wail of protest, caused both sisters to look at one another. Roxanne said, ‘That’s my Jurgen.’ Hurrying away, she said, ‘What’s he up to now? He’s too much like you, Dennis!’
Alyssa said to her husband, ‘I’ll go see if it’s one of our boys, too.’
The two men stood at the entrance to Dennis’s new home, surveying the valley where they had fought side by side years before, as the sun lowered in the west.
Asayaga said, ‘This is a wonderful place to start a new heritage.’
‘I couldn’t be happier.’ Dennis said. ‘Roxanne is a miracle and our sons are … impossible.’ He laughed. ‘She is right. I’m sure my father is looking down from Lims-Kragma’s Hall, amused at nature’s revenge on his son. But, yes, life is good. Come and rest. I’ll ready the bath-house if you’d care to get clean.’
Asayaga laughed. ‘Yes. It’s good to see some civilization has rubbed off on you, barbarian.’
Dennis frowned, ‘Barbarian?’
Asayaga gave him a playful cuff on the arm. ‘Let us soak and relax, and you can tell me in which part of the brook at Valinar those improbably large trout you once told me of lurk.’
‘Improbably large?’ said Dennis as they walked in. ‘I swear on my son’s head that fish was at least three feet long.’
Asayaga looked dubious, but kept his laughter in check as the two friends went into the keep to join their wives and children for supper.
Acknowledgements
As always, I am indebted to many people. They include:
The original mothers and fathers of Midkemia, and those who contributed after to the world’s development. Without them, the landscape would be far less colourful.
I would also like to thank Rich, Andy, Jim, Rick, and the other regular diners at Flemming’s every Friday who made many weeks more tolerable during the last year through their humour, sensitivity, and grace. And to Mira, for being such good company and keeping my mind off my troubles from time to time.
Jonathan Matson, as always.
And my children, Jessica and James, for just being the most marvellous things in my existence.
Raymond E Feist
Many thanks of course to my mentor, Dr Gunther Rothenberg, yet another example of honour and courage, Dr Dennis Showalter, a grand advisor on so many fronts, and Brian Thomsen, Bill Fawcett, and Eleanor Wood.
Finally, a special thanks to Bruce, Gus, John, and my friends from Nomads and the University of UlanBaator. We trekked together across the steppes of Mongolia discovering a fascinating world of adventure, beauty, lost history waiting to be rediscovered, and the culinary delights of fermented horse milk and roasted marmots.
William R Forstchen
Copyright
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First published in Great Britain by Voyager 2001
Copyright © Raymond E. Feist & William R. Forstchen 2001
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Source ISBN: 9780006483885
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2012 ISBN: 9780007381401
Version: 2013–09–24
RAYMOND E. FEIST & JOEL ROSENBERG
Murder in LaMut
Book Two of Legends of the Riftwar
For
Fritz Lieber
&
Donald E. Westlake
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One: Night
Chapter Two: Concerns
Chapter Three: Mondegreen
Chapter Four: Cold
Chapter Five: Storm
Chapter Six: Aftermath
Chapter Seven: Promotions
Chapter Eight: Confrontation
Chapter Nine: Plotting
Chapter Ten: Rumours
Chapter Eleven: Suspicion
Chapter Twelve: Morning
Chapter Thirteen: Investigation
Chapter Fourteen: Plans
Chapter Fifteen: Answers
Chapter Sixteen: Truth
Acknowledgments
Copyright
• Chapter One •
Night
IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT.
That was fine with Durine.
Not that the goddess Killian, whose province was the weather, was asking his opinion. Nor were any of the other gods – or any mortals – for that matter.
In more than twenty years of a soldier’s life, both fealty-bound and mercenary – as well as during the dimly-remembered time before he took blade and bow in hand – few of those in charge of anything had asked Durine’s opinions before making their decisions.
And that was fine with him, too. The goo
d thing about a soldier’s life was that you could concentrate on the small but important decisions, like where to put the point of your sword next, and leave the big decisions to others.
Anyway, there was no point in objecting: complaining didn’t make it any warmer, griping didn’t stop the sleet from pelting down, bitching didn’t stop the ice from clinging to his increasingly heavy sailcloth overcoat as he made his way, half-blinded, down the muddy street.
Mud.
Mud seemed to go with LaMut the way salt seemed to go with fish.
But that was just fine with Durine, too. Wading through this half-frozen mud was just part of the trade, and at least here and now it was just this vile slush, not the hideous sort of mud made from soil mixing with dying men’s blood and shit. Now, the sight and particularly the smell of that kind of mud could make even Durine gag, and he had seen more than enough of it in his time.
What wasn’t fine with him was the cold. It was still too damn cold. His toes had ceased to feel the cold and the pain, which wasn’t good.
Locals were talking about the ‘thaw’, something they apparently expected any day now that Midwinter was behind them. Durine glanced up at the sleet smacking him in the face, and decided that this was an odd sort of thaw. To his way of thinking, there was far too damn much of this half-frozen stuff falling from the sky for a reasonable thaw, or even an unreasonable one. Yes, before the current storm they had had three days of clear skies, but there was no change in the air; it was still too damn wet, and too damn cold.
Too cold to fight, perhaps?
Well, yes, maybe, in the view of the Bugs and the Tsurani, and that was a good thing. They had fought Tsurani and goblins and Bugs in the north, and now, it seemed, they had run out of Tsurani and goblins and Bugs to kill – at least around here – and as soon as things thawed out enough, it was time for him and the other two to be paid and to be going.
A few months of garrison duty until then was just fine. Actually, as long as they were stuck here, Durine preferred the idea of garrison duty to being paid off today and having to spend his own coin to eat and lodge. Durine’s perfect situation would have been to have the Earl pay for everything except drink and women until this hypothetical thaw – and he included that limitation only because he didn’t think that even Pirojil could conceive of a way to cadge ale and whores from the paymaster – then pay them their wages the day they rode south for Ylith and a ship heading somewhere warmer.
Which made this, despite the mud and the cold, pretty close to perfect.
The heavy action was supposedly at Crydee these days, which meant that the one place they could be sure the three of them were not going was Crydee. Come spring, the privateer Melanie was due in Ylith. Captain Thorn could be counted on for a swift conveyance and be relied upon not to try to murder them in their sleep. That would be bad for one’s health, as Thorn’s predecessor had barely realized in the instant before Pirojil had stuck a knife in his right kidney while the late captain was standing, sword in hand, over what he had thought was Durine’s sleeping form. Given that Thorn owed his captaincy to Durine and his companions’ suspicious natures, he should be willing to transport them for free, Durine thought.
Away where, though?
Still, that wasn’t Durine’s worry. Let Kethol and Pirojil worry about that. Kethol would be able to find them somebody who needed three men who knew which part of the sword you used to cut with and which part you used to butter your bread; and Pirojil would be able to negotiate a price that was at least half again what the employer thought he was ready to pay. All Durine would have to do was to kill people.
Which was fine with him.
But until the ice broke the only way they would be leaving Yabon would be by foot, horse, or cart, overland to Krondor. Their only other choice would be heading back up north for more fighting, and right now they had earned enough – when they actually got paid, of course – that their cloaks would be so heavily laden with gold coin and their purses with silver coin that more fighting wouldn’t appeal to any of them.
Enough.
This stint had left him with a new set to add to his already burgeoning collection of scars; a missing digit on his left hand from the time when he hadn’t pulled back quite quickly enough while dispatching a Bug with his pikestaff. He now judged he would never play the lute. Not that he had ever tried, but he always had it in mind that he might like to learn, some day. That wound, and a long red weal on the inside of his thigh, reminded him with every step that he wasn’t as young and nimble as he used to be.
Then again, Durine had been born old. But at least he was strong. He would just wait. Let the days drift past doing little chores, and it wouldn’t be long before the thaw started and the ship was in port, and he and the others would be out of here. Somewhere warm – Salador maybe, where the women and breezes were warm and soft, and the cool beer was good and cheap and flowed freely as a running sore. About the time they ran out of gold, they could ship to the Eastern Kingdoms. Nice, friendly little wars. The locals there always appreciated good craftsmen who knew how to efficiently dispatch the neighbours, and they paid well, if not quite as well as the Earl of LaMut. And, from Durine’s point of view, the best thing about fighting in the Eastern Kingdoms was there were no Bugs, which was even better than the absence of this horrible cold.
Or if they really wanted warmth, the three of them could head back down to the Vale of Dreams and make some good coin fighting Keshian Dog Soldiers and renegades for Lord Sutherland.
No, Durine decided after a moment, the Vale of Dreams wasn’t really any better than frozen, muddy LaMut, no matter how it seemed on this cold and miserable night; last time they were down there he was almost as miserable with the heat as he was today with the cold.
Why couldn’t someone start a war on a nice balmy beach somewhere?
Ahead, bars of light coming through the outer door to the Broken Tooth Tavern were his marker and guide, promising something approaching warmth, something resembling hot food, and something as close to friends as a mercenary soldier could possibly have.
That was good enough for Durine.
For now.
He staggered up from the muddy street to the wooden porch outside the entrance to the inn.
There were two men huddled in their cloaks under the overhang just outside the door.
‘The Swordmaster wants to see you.’
One pulled his cloak back, as though in the dark Durine would be able to see the wolf’s head emblazoned on his tabard, that Durine knew must be there.
They had been found out.
Looting the dead was, like most crimes, punishable by death (either outright hanging if the Earl was in a bad mood, or from exhaustion and bad food as you tried to get through your twenty years of hard labour in the mountain quarries) although Durine had never seen any harm in looting, himself. It wasn’t as though the dead soldiers had had any use for the few pitiful coins in their purses, any more than they had for their cloaks. Durine and his two friends had more than a few coins of their own secreted about their persons – sewn into hidden pockets in the lining of their tunics, or the hems of their cloaks, in purses worn under their clothes, bound in shrunken rawhide, so that they wouldn’t clink. A nobleman could put his wealth into a vault or strongroom, and hire armed men to watch it; a merchant could put his wealth into trade items that couldn’t be easily walked off with; a wizard could leave his wealth in plain sight and trust that where sanity and self-interest wouldn’t protect it from thieves, the spells on it could and would – Durine had seen a man who had tried, once, to burgle a sleeping magician’s retreat.
Or, at least, what had been a man …
But a mercenary soldier could either carry his wealth with him or spend it, and Durine didn’t have a good explanation for what a detailed search would reveal in his possession right now.
A nobleman would have just brushed past the two men – for they wouldn’t have dared to stand in his way – but Durine was no nobl
eman. Besides, the number of people Durine would willingly allow within easy stabbing range of his broad back were very few, and two grey shapes in the dark were hardly likely candidates.
One on two? That wasn’t the way he had planned to die, but so be it, if that was necessary, although he had taken on two men at a time many times before, without getting killed.
Yet.
It was getting to be too cold and wet and miserable a day to live, anyway.
He pretended to stagger on the rough wood while his right hand reached inside his cloak to his nearest knife. They would hardly give him time to draw his sword, after all.
At the movement, each man took a step back.
‘Wait–’ one started.
‘Easy, man,’ the other said, his hands outstretched, palms out in an unmistakable sign of peace. ‘The Swordmaster says he just wants to talk to you,’ he said. ‘It’s too cold and mean a night to die, and that goes as much for me as it does for you.’
‘And big as he is, it would probably take both of us to put him down, if we had to,’ the first man muttered.
Durine grunted, but kept his thoughts to himself, as usual. It would probably take more than the two of them. It would also, at the very least, take the two others who had come out of the darkness behind Durine, the ones he wasn’t supposed to have noticed.
But bragging was something he left to others.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘It isn’t getting any warmer out here.’
He straightened. But he kept a hand near a knife. Just in case.
It was a dark and stormy night, but that was, thankfully, outside.
Here, inside, it was warm and smoky beneath the overhead lanterns, so that it was both too hot and too cold at the same time.
A mercenary soldier’s life, Kethol often thought, was always either too lively or too dull. Either he was bored out of his skin, trying to stay awake while waiting on watch for something to happen, or he was wading through rivers of Tsurani troops, hoping that he was cutting down the bastards quickly enough that none of them would get past him to Pirojil or Durine. Either he was parched with thirst, or he was drowning in a driving rain. He was either crowded too close to other unbathed men, smelling their stink, or he was all by himself, holding down some watchpost in the middle of the night, hoping that the quiet rustle he heard out in the forest was just another deer, and not some Tsurani sneaking up on him, and wishing for a dozen friendly swords clustered around him.