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

broken through into Mondegreen Town on their way to the castle–and how much had been cannibalized before the Tsurani invasion by locals seeking building materials. After a generation or so of peace, the wall around the town was more of an inconvenience than a benefit, and it took a wise ruler to remember that walls were important.
    The wall around the keep itself, though, was intact, although as battle-scarred as the rest of the landscape. Ashes were all that remained of the siege towers the Tsurani had built against the western wall, and while the southern wall still stood firm, it was scarred by a patched breach in the stonework, above where Tsurani sappers had failed in their attempt to undermine its integrity. The slump in the ground at the foundation told Pirojil all he needed to know about the failed attempt. Nasty way to die, he thought, with tons of rock and earth suddenly falling upon you, crushing you in the darkness like a bug. The trick was to make the tunnel as large as you safely could, with just enough timber to hold everything above you in place until you were ready to fire the supports, collapse the tunnel–hopefully while you were a respectable distance away–and thereby collapse the wall above, forming a lovely breach through which your comrades could attack.
    Pirojil had been in a mining party, down in the Vale, and the whole damn thing had failed to hold. He remembered the earthy smell as dust had been forced up his nose when the ceiling of the tunnel had come crashing down–on the heads of a few of his companions–leaving him and the rest of the sappers trapped with no way out but up out of the ground, emerging through the fire and rubble of a collapsed wall. They were half-blind, sneezing and coughing from dust and smoke, knowing full well that they had to kill all the defenders, who would fight–and die–like cornered rats.
    As they had.
    Once in a while, some captain or duke or prince got the wonderful notion that you should tunnel further so that you emerged inside the walls. Nice theory, if you weren’t the idiots picked to be the first ones popping up out of the ground…
    ‘I said,’ Baron Morray reiterated, ‘that you may take my horse to the stables, when I alight.’
    Pirojil nodded, coming out of his momentary reverie. ‘Of course, Baron.’
    ‘I’ll speak to the housecarl about your billets. Perhaps they can find room for you three in the barracks, rather than the stables.’
    Well, they might as well have that out now as later.
    ‘No, my lord,’ Pirojil said, ‘we’re not staying in the stables. We’ll all be staying in the Residence while one of us stands watch before your door.’
    Baron Morray wasn’t used to being contradicted. The reins twitched in his fingers. ‘I hardly see the need. The barracks or perhaps the stables will be perfectly adequate for the likes of–for the three of you. If I find I need you in the middle of the night, I’ll send a servant.’
    Pirojil shrugged. ‘Very well, my lord. If you’d be kind enough to put that in writing, I’ll have a messenger send it to the Earl. If there’s a fast enough horse available, it might reach Yabon before–’
    ‘What?’
    Well, at least the Baron was smart enough not to raise his voice.
    ‘We’ve been assigned to protect you, night and day, by the Earl, my lord. If some accident or misdeed were to happen to you while we were neglecting our duty, it would be our heads into the noose. If I’m not to follow Earl Vandros’s orders, I think he’ll want to know why.’
    The Baron started to say something, but Pirojil took the chance of speaking first. ‘Please. We’re assigned to protect you, my lord,’ he said, quietly. ‘Not just your body. We have been known to tell stories around the fire late at night, just like everybody else, but we don’t gossip about what our betters are doing.’
    If you’re fool enough to have your dalliances with Lady Mondegreen under the very nose of her husband, then