The Grey Bastards_A Novel

by Jonathan French

  Roundth, the three slops in the stables, the sentry Jackal had seen on the rampart and another they found in the morning, lying outside at the base of the wall, broken on the rocks. The orc had probably killed him first, snatching him over the parapet just before completing his climb.

  Hoodwink and Polecat had arrived at the stable moments after Jackal put the intruder down. Hobnail and Grocer were seconds behind. They responded quickly, saddling hogs and riding to secure the Hogback, the Claymaster, and the keep, in that order. Oats, Fetching, and Mead were pulled away from Starling, leaving only Crafty to watch her. The threat of the Tines coming for her was nothing compared to a night raid of orcs.

  Dawn broke with no further sign of the enemy.

  The Grey Bastards rode out squinting against a fresh sun, each member in full kit, to sweep their lot. Winsome had slept soundly, unmolested and unaware of the bloodshed. Jackal breathed with relief when he saw Beryl and the orphans safe. The Claymaster quickly addressed the assembled town from his chariot, telling them of the thick assassin. As the chief spoke, Jackal kept his eyes on Thistle. She stood with a half-orc babe in her arms. Roundth was not mentioned by name when the Claymaster informed the villagers of the dead, but Thistle could see who was missing. The woman kept a strong face, and even withdrew a breast to nurse the foundling infant when it began to squall halfway through the chief’s pronouncement. In that moment, Jackal felt frails to be an unworthy name for humans.

  With final instructions for the villagers to come up to the fortress at sundown and stay the night within the walls, the Claymaster ordered the hoof onward.

  They stayed together at first, patrolling several concentric miles around the Kiln. Then they split in half to expand the patrol, and split again once ten miles were secure. Eventually, they each rode alone, checking the farthest corners of their lands. The day’s end found them all returned to their stronghold with the same report.

  No orcs. No elves.

  Jackal numbly unsaddled Hearth in the stables alongside his hoofmates. The bodies were gone and the bloody straw swept out, but the place was now imbued with a nagging shame. No one spoke. They hung up tack and harness in silence, each member tending their mount in a bubble of weary brooding.

  The aches in Jackal’s body sang, emboldened by his lack of sleep. While hanging his saddle, his stinging eyes fell to his left arm, where the orc had slashed him. He held still, perplexed and staring. There was no wound. He had not wrapped it, nor given it any thought. There had been no time. He had ridden all day with no care of it, and now, as he looked at his flesh, he began to wonder if he ever received the cut at all. No, it had been there. He recalled the pain, the edge of the big knife splitting him open. Yet the grey-green skin of his forearm bore nothing but the pale shadows of old scars peeking through the dust of the ride.

  “That arm still troubling you?”

  Blinking, Jackal looked up to see Oats leaning over the partition separating their stalls.

  “I’d bust Zirko’s head if he gave you a bum healing,” the thrice growled.

  Jackal looked back down. Hells, it was the same arm. It hadn’t even occurred to him. Was the halfling’s hoodoo that potent, that it could continue to heal wounds days after conjuring? Jackal found he was too tired to care.

  “It’s fine,” he told Oats, finishing with the rest of his tack.

  They stood in silence a long time, wading in shared fatigue, shared grief. Their silent, sullen commiseration was suddenly interrupted when a crash resounded across the rafters. It came from Hobnail hurling a bucket into the tack room as he stormed out of the stables.

  Oats shook his head in sympathy. “Would have been better if we had run into a couple of ulyud today. Given us a chance to even the score.”

  “There wouldn’t be a score to settle if the chief hadn’t let those orcs go at Batayat Hill,” Jackal replied. “The thicks smell weakness on us now. It’s made them bold.”

  “We’re all thinking it, brother.”

  “And someone needs to say it.”

  “Maybe,” Oats conceded. “But maybe, for once, it shouldn’t be you.”

  “Who then?” Jackal challenged without much rancor.

  The thrice’s bunched shoulders shrugged atop the partition. “Looks like Hob has some things he’d like to say.”

  Jackal gave a noncommittal grunt. Hobnail had always been loyal to the chief. Not fawning, like Polecat, or dyed in the wool, like Grocer, but staunchly supportive. Roundth’s death could certainly have swayed Hob’s favor, but that did not mean he would support Jackal’s designs for leadership. Hells, Hobnail may put himself up for the chief’s seat, and that made him a rival.

  But all of that could wait. There was a brother to burn.

  Jackal walked with Oats out into the yard and made their way toward the keep. Beyond the structure, unseen, the Hogback was being lowered to admit the denizens of Winsome. Dusk had just begun to bruise the sky, and the slopheads were under strict orders to have every villager inside before full night.

  The keep possessed only a single door, a tiny navel nestled within the belly of the structure. This lone iron portal made the bastion easier to defend from within. On the unlikely chance the curtain wall was breached, the keep was the Bastards’ last defense. It was built over two wells and contained not only the furnace for the wall tunnel, but also the forge, baking ovens, and kitchens.

  Jackal rarely came in here, preferring to take his meals in the bunkhouse or up on the palisade where he could feel the wind and look out over the lot. He and Oats entered the stuffy darkness and began making their way through a serpentine corridor until it debouched into the cavernous gullet of the furnace chamber. It was a vaulted, domed ring, circling the towering brickwork of the great chimney. Along the walls, stairs and ladders led up to gantries and scaffolds sprouting from the upper reaches of the furnace. Ovens of varying size clung to the base of the beast, some big enough to walk into without the need to duck.

  Walking around the elephantine foot of the works, Jackal and Oats soon came to the one oven used for cremation.

  Roundth lay upon a wheeled, wooden bier standing before the closed doors of the oven. The Claymaster had returned to the Kiln after the day’s first circuit and prepared the body himself, washing away the grime and gore, dressing Roundth in his brigand and riding leathers. The chief stood beside the bier, awaiting his hoof. Hobnail was the last to arrive.

  The Claymaster’s head swung slowly, taking in each member. He was sweating from the flickering heat escaping from behind the oven’s doors. Soot smirched his hands and the bandages across his face. He never allowed the slops to help him stoke a funeral fire.

  Slowly, the chief began to speak. The words were familiar.

  “The half-orc hoofs of Ul-wundulas began as slaves. There are only a few of us left who remember the chains, the lash. Hispartha kept us for pack animals, pit fighters, miners, anything that called for a strong back. They worked us, and many strong backs broke under their noble whims. We were the mongrel offspring of the frails’ enemy and their own ravaged women. Hated, we were used. Those of us not killed at birth were destined for mass graves after a short life of servitude. And then, the Incursion came. Many of us were pulled from the mines and the arenas so that we could serve the war.

  “The first Grey Bastards were potters, named not for our skin, but from the dry clay which covered it. We knew fire and heat and mud, until the day we rode into battle on the backs of hogs that knew only the yoke of the supply wagon. That day we became warriors. We were carving a path to freedom, though we didn’t know it then. Carving it with swords fallen from the hands of our fleeing masters, carving it through the flesh of our orc fathers.

  “And so, we are no longer slaves, no longer potters. We are a hoof and we own this land that is our Lot. We ride free, we fight free, we live and die…free.”

  The Clay
master paused, breaking his sweeping gaze away from the living to look down upon the dead.

  “Roundth was a good rider. A loyal brother. A true Bastard. He lived in the saddle and died on the hog.” Looking up once more the chief smiled beneath his bandages. “For any other that would be our parting salute. But I think we all know what this thick-dicked son of a bitch would have wanted said. He had guts. He had grit. Most of all he had—”

  “ROUNDTH!!!”

  The furnace chamber echoed with the simultaneous yell of the hoof. Jackal smiled as he shouted the word, as did every one of his hoofmates.

  The Claymaster waved them all forward with a swollen hand. “Come say goodbye to your brother.”

  One by one the Grey Bastards filed forward and leaned down to kiss Roundth upon the forehead, some whispering private parting words, others lingering with a hand on his shoulder. Hobnail thumped the body playfully in the crotch with his knuckles.

  “This log will fuel the Kiln for a week,” he said with laughter in his voice and tears in his eyes.

  “Let’s send him on,” the Claymaster said quietly. He stepped over and swung one half of the oven doors open. Oats got the other. The blistering heat poured from the roaring furnace, robbing the lungs of air. Jackal, Hobnail, Polecat, and Grocer took hold of the bier and pushed it into the blazing cavern. As the doors were heaved shut, they all had one last look at Roundth lying upon a bed of ascending fire.

  The hoof left the chamber silently, leaving care of the furnace to the four slops waiting respectfully on the other side of the chimney. The bodies of the five hopefuls were also on wheeled biers. They would be burned by their own. Emerging into the twilight of the yard, the Bastards took a moment to watch the smoke drift into the purple heavens. Then they all began making their way to the meeting hall.

  Jackal slumped down in his chair, adding his own sigh to the chorus of tired breaths let loose around the table.

  “All right,” the Claymaster said as he sat. “We’re down a man. We’re all ragged and we got another night to stay vigilant. Today’s patrol told us there is no significant thick force nearby, but there may be another ash-smeared cutthroat skulking around waiting for us to sleep. So no one does. Except Jackal.”

  The mention of his name roused Jackal from his torpor. He looked up, frowning.

  The Claymaster looked him full in the face. “You did good with that thick. Might have been a bucket more blood if you hadn’t acted fast as you did, thought even faster. Slopheads said you kept them rooted. All good work. Get some rest, Jack. It’s deserved.”

  The prospect of sleep made Jackal nearly euphoric, but the praise made him suspicious.

  “Wouldn’t be able to sleep, chief,” Jackal told him respectfully. “Not when my hoof is standing watch without me.”

  This received a rapid drumming of approval from most of the table. The only fists not pounding were Grocer’s, Hobnail’s, and Fetching’s. This was no surprise. Fetch had learned early on not to draw attention to herself while at table. The Claymaster continued to look at Jackal as the drumming subsided.

  “Then don’t sleep,” he said flatly. “Keep both eyes on that Tine. Still need someone guard-dogging her on the chance her kin come looking.”

  “Crafty can do that,” Jackal said. He wanted to keep an eye on Hoodwink. For all the chaos of the past day and night, he hadn’t lost sight of his goals, one of which was to keep Sancho alive.

  The Claymaster shook his head. “I got him doing something else.”

  That tripped Jackal up and his fatigue prevented him from hiding it.

  Two men. One knife.

  Fumbling for an alternative, Jackal almost suggested that Beryl could watch Starling, but kept his mouth shut. She would have her hands full dealing with the orphans tonight. Some would be excited spending the night in the Kiln, some scared. Either way, Beryl and the other women wouldn’t have an easy time. Mead was a better choice anyway, Jackal realized as his muzzy brain recovered. At least he might be able to talk to her. Jackal leaned forward.

  “I can mind her, chief,” Fetching offered before he could speak.

  “Did I fucking ask you?” the Claymaster snapped. “Jackal does it.”

  Fetch sat back, resuming her usual detached air.

  “Jack? You hear me?”

  “Yes, chief.”

  “Good. The slops have split the Winsome folk between their barracks and the upper floors of the bunkhouse. Just like on the Betrayer. That’s how we are treating this. Do I need to remind you how the patrols work?”

  “No, chief,” Polecat said, giving lone voice to the general shaking of heads.

  “Get to it.”

  Chairs scraped and the Bastards stood, ambling out of the room.

  Jackal spent the first half of the evening in the slophead barracks, where Beryl and her orphans were lodged along with the Winsome families who had children. Starling was also there, sitting quietly by herself, an untouched bowl of stew beside her. Oddly, she sat on Oats’s old bed, just below the one Jackal had once claimed. Hopefuls to the hoof weren’t afforded their own rooms, so the barracks offered plenty of space for the little ones to play. They dodged between the rows of bunks, laughing and chasing one another until their play became boisterous enough to receive a warning hiss from the women, then the cycle would begin anew. Jackal watched the reflections of his childhood scamper about the big room where he had spent his adolescence. He ate Beryl’s fondly familiar cooking and tried not to doze. It would have been a grand way to spend an eve if not for the pall of danger just outside the doors.

  At last, the children were put to bed, two and three to a bunk. Cissy, Sweeps, and Beryl crept around, comforting or scolding where necessary. The barracks settled into a tenuous quiet. Jackal sat in a chair that afforded a good view of the room and the perfect shooting angle toward the doors. His stockbow was on his lap, unloaded. Beryl came and sat on the empty bunk next to him.

  “How’s my son?” she whispered.

  Jackal grimaced with good humor. “Wish it was him that fought the orc and not me. He would have fared better.”

  “I didn’t mean Oats.”

  Jackal tuned to look at her. Decades of raising children had inured Beryl to fatigue. She fed off of it, an aged tree grown strong from a lifetime of storms. As their eyes met, one half of Jackal wanted to rest his head on her and succumb to sleep, the other half found a third wind in her presence. She stirred the boy to seek solace and encouraged the man to steel himself. They both wanted the boy to win.

  Jackal sat up straighter in his chair, set his jaw, and checked the pull on his thrum.

  “I’m fine. No hurts.”

  Beryl scrutinized his face. “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Jackal nodded toward the bunk where Thistle slept. The little thrice, Wily, was at her tit, nursing languidly in slumber.

  “How is she?” he asked quietly.

  “She’s taking it well,” Beryl answered after a moment’s consideration. “She wanted to sleep in Roundth’s room, but I talked her out of it. No good would come of it.”

  Jackal accepted this silently. No doubt Beryl spoke from experience, as she did with most everything, though he could not recall her ever bedding down in Warbler’s room after he was gone. Maybe she only considered it, her wisdom winning out over cold comfort.

  As they watched, Wily awoke. He calmly unlatched from Thistle’s breast and, without disturbing her, lowered himself down from the bunk, his chubby legs stiff in anticipation of the floor. Beryl opened her hands and gestured for him when the little mongrel’s big eyes settled on her, but he turned his head sleepily and looked at Starling.

  The elf girl was still awake, sitting at the head of the bunk with her back to the wall, lost in whatever private hell continued to cage her even after being freed. Wily had toddled halfway toward her before Starling realized h
e was coming. Oblivious to her confused tension, the little half-orc clambered up on the mattress and crawled drowsily forward.

  “I’ll get him,” Jackal said, starting to stand, but Beryl gripped his arm, stopping him. Her eyes never left the distant bunk.

  Had Starling glanced around, she would have seen she was being watched, but she seemed mesmerized by the child. She studied him with an unsure expression for a moment and he paused in his advance, waiting, his hands on her legs. Starling reached out slowly and gently grabbed the little one up under his arms. Wily surrendered trustingly to the half-lift, half-drag and settled comfortably when Starling cradled him in her lap. Within moments, he was asleep again.

  “Well, that’s fortunate,” Beryl said quietly. “More likely to keep her own now.”

  Jackal snapped a look at her, his mouth beginning to hang. “How did you…?”

  Beryl rolled her eyes and expelled a half-offended breath. “Please, Jackal.”

  Zirko claiming it was one thing. Beryl agreeing was another.

  “No one else knows,” Jackal told her.

  “That’s what you thought a moment ago. Might not want to keep making that mistake.”

  “The Tines will kill her when they find out. Or she’ll do it herself.”

  Beryl stole a glance back to Oats’s old bunk. Starling’s eyes were now closed, Wily resting comfortably in the nest of her arms and legs.

  “She’ll be less and less likely to do that as time goes by,” Beryl said. “As for the Tines, Claymaster won’t let them touch her once he finds out.”

  Jackal wrinkled his brow in disbelief. “He wouldn’t risk a war over one mongrel baby.”

  “A mongrel baby that’s half-elf?” Beryl chided. “Jackal, there’s not much anyone in the Lot Lands wouldn’t risk for that. Rare is valuable and what she’s got in her belly is worth enough to die for.” Beryl patted the bed she sat on and rose. “Now, get some rest.”

  Finding he could not argue with the look she gave him, Jackal complied. He tried to work out what the Claymaster could possibly want with such a baby, beyond a future recruit, but his exhausted brain dragged him into darkness before an answer appeared.