"Eric Flint - The Philosophical Strangler" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

"Greyboar, let's be off!" There's nothing worse than a usurer's lawyers.
"Not quite yet," growled the strangler, reaching for the doomee's neck. But luck was with us. At
that very moment the porkers arrived, a whole squad of them.
"What's the disturbance here?" demanded the sergeant in charge, flattening the nearest patron with
his bullystick. "You're all under arrest!"
If we'd been in our usual haunts, quaffing our ale at The Sign of the Trough in the Flankn, the
porkers wouldn't have dared come inтАФnot with less than a battalion, at any rate. Of course, if we'd
been in the Flankn, where Greyboar's well known, no bullyboy would have picked a fight with him in
the first place. But I'll give the patrons in that grimy little alehouse this much, they didn't hesitate but a
second before the benches were flying and the fracas was afoot.
I seized the propitious moment. "Out!" I hissed, grabbing the strangler's elbow. "There's no money
to be made here."
"Money, money, that's all you think about," grumbled Greyboar. "What then of ethics, and the
meaning of life?"
"Save it for later." I pulled him toward the rear exit. Fortunately, the strangler was willing to leave.
He's not the sort one drags from a tavern against his will, don't you know. On our way out, a beefy
porker blocked the route, leering and twirling his club, but Greyboar removed his face and that was
that. Fingerwork, he calls it.
Once in the back alley, Greyboar returned to the matter, like a dog chewing a bone.
"Yet there must be a logic to it all," he complained. "Surely there's more to life than this aimless
collision of bodies in space." His thick brows knotted over his eyes.
"Wine, women and song!" I retorted. "There's sufficient purpose for a strangler and his agent. And
it all takes money, my man, which you can't get rousting bravos in alehouses."
That last was a bit unfair. It had been my idea to go into the alehouse, to celebrate the completion of
a nice little job with a pot or two. Bad idea, of course. The job had taken us to a grimy little suburb of
the city, where we'd never been before. And there's something about GreyboarтАФhis size, maybe, or just
an aura of implacable certaintyтАФthat inevitably seems to arouse the local strong man to belligerence.
As the wise man says: "Big frogs in little ponds are prone to suicide."
But it was just so exasperating!
"Still and all," continued Greyboar, like a glacier on its course, "I'm convinced there's more to it.
'Wine, women and song,' you say, and that's fine for you. You're a sybarite of the epicurean persuasion.
But I, it is clear to me, incline rather to the stoic, perhaps even the ascetic."
"You're driving me mad with this philosophical foolishness!" I exclaimed. "And will you please
curl up your hands?"
"Sorry." He has long arms, Greyboar, it's an asset in his line of work. But the sound of fingernails
clittery-clattering along the cobblestones gets on my nerves.
By now we had reached the end of the alley and were onto a main street. I looked around and
spotted a hansom not far away. I whistled, and it was but a minute later that we clambered aboard. It
was an extravagance, to be sure, but we were flush with cash and I'd no desire to walk all the way back
into the city.
"Take us to The Sign of the Trough," I told the driver. "It's in the Flankn, right offтАФ"
"I know where it is," grumbled the cabbie. "It'll cost you extra, you know?"
I sighed, but didn't argue the point. Cabbies always charged extra for going into the Thieves'
Quarter. Can't say as I blamed them. It was one of the disadvantages of living in the Flankn. But the
advantages made it worth the whileтАФhardly any porkers to bother you, hidey-holes galore, a friendly
neighborhood (certainly no pestersome bullyboys!), a vast network of information, customers always
knew where to find you, etc.
As the hansom made its way back into New Sfinctr, Greyboar continued to drone on about
philosophy's central place in human existence. I struggled manfully to control my temper, but at one
point I couldn't resist taking a dig.