"Raymond E. Feist - Riftwar Legends - Murder In LaMut" - читать интересную книгу автора (Feist Raymond E)

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