"Joel Rosenberg - Guardians Of The Flame 08 - Not Exactly the Three Musketiers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenberg Joel C)

Wise Tidings was the only one featuring a production Pirojil had not already seen at all, much less
repeatedly. For another thing, the lighting was well done: save for the stage, the room was dark, and in
the dark, Pirojil was no more ugly than anybody else; his massive, irregular brows, his huge broken nose
and jutting jaw did not offend.

At that thought, his blunt fingers went to the signet ring on his finger, the gem as always turned inwards.
Of his birthright, it was all that he had kept, though he didn't know why he kept it; Pirojil had long since
given up any nostalgia about his short childhood.

The worst thing about the play, though, was the play.

Who was this idiot playwright, and what could be done to stop him before he wrote again?

"Aiee!" Baron Furnael screamed. "I am stabbed."

Enough. That was enough for Pirojil. Some light theater in the dark was one thing; to watch an
incompetent pretty boy - the hair at his temples whitened to simulate middle age because he wasn't
enough of an actor to simply act middle-aged - prance about the stage awkwardly pretend-ing, well, that
was not a way to spend the rest of the evening.

Enough.

Time to go back to the rooms, or maybe stop by the barracks. The small detachment from Barony
Cullinane was billeted in the imperial barracks, and perhaps there would be something interesting to do
there, or in one of the taverns that sprouted up in the neighborhood like mushrooms on a cow flop.

There would be, at least, a fight to get into. The feel of blood on his knuckles or even in his mouth would
distract him, for a while. You did the best you could, after all.

He rose and apologetically worked his way to the aisle - there was no need to interfere with the rapt
enjoyment of the audience - then up the stone steps to the exit passage-way, just barely conscious of the
way he reflexively re-rigged his sword to hang properly at his side, hilt forward, not quite projecting from
his cloak.

As he walked down the sharp-edged stone steps to the mud of the street, three men silently detached
themselves from the shadows outside of the theater and moved quickly across the street toward him,

If Durine and Kethol had been there, he would have braced them without thinking of it, planning on
faking at the one on the right, then taking the center one for himself, leaving left-handed Kethol the one on
the left; Durine could take the one on the right, and then turn to help him out, if needed. Best to get in
close, fast, before he found out whether or not they had pistols. And if there were more waiting in the
shadows, best to get these three out of the way.

But he was alone, and they were three, and he was many things, but he was not a fool; without warning,
Pirojil broke from a walk into a run and made for the alleyway.

There were cries behind him, which suited him just as well. He added his own: "Fire, I smell fire!" and
broke from a trot into a full run, dodging refuse and leaping over a drainpipe, figuring that whoever the
three were, they'd not be foolish enough to follow an armed man into a dark alley.