“Yes,” Hoodwink agreed.
Jackal took a deep breath, steeling himself for the answer to his next question.
“And Fetch? How long has she been heeling to the chief’s commands?”
Hood’s grave-mask did not slip.
“Never saw them speak. Not until after the vote. She volunteered to act as champion. Chief knew you were going to choose Oats. She claimed to be the only one who could beat him. Claymaster wasn’t hearing it, then he talked to the wizard in private. After that, he said she could fight. No one foresaw her axe hitting that table.”
It was true. Stunned as he was, Jackal still recalled the chief’s face, equally slack-jawed.
“She made her choice,” Warbler growled, “now it’s time you made yours.”
“And what is that?”
“Whether or not you want to continue trying to save the Grey Bastards.”
A disgusted noise escaped from Jackal’s lips. “From what? The Claymaster? We are both testaments to where that leads, Warbler. If you had just been patient, if I had just been patient, one of us might have succeeded him. He’s going to be dead in a few years.”
Warbler’s thin smile bordered on mocking. “You believe so?”
“What do you know that I don’t?” Jackal said.
“A hog’s steaming heap,” Warbler barked, “but there’s much you can teach me too, especially concerning this swaddlehead sorcerer. Leaving the Claymaster with a wizard is woe on the wind, Jackal, no matter which is holding the reins. Help me break that oozing old shit’s twisted back and take your revenge on the Tyrkanian.”
It was Jackal’s turn to display a mocking smile. “So you trust me now?”
“Not much,” Warbler said, “but I don’t know you anymore, boy. Seems to me you’ve made some fool-ass choices…so have I, though. Hood’s vouched for you, says you’ve been dead set on booting the Claymaster. That gives us enough common ground to start, far as I can spit.”
Jackal eyeballed Hoodwink and sneered. “Vouched for me. But didn’t vote for me. Why is that, Hood? If you had sent your axe into the stump, the three of us wouldn’t be standing here conspiring in the dust.”
Hoodwink didn’t seem likely to answer, so Warbler did.
“He had no choice. In the hoof’s eyes, Hood has to be dog-loyal to the Claymaster until the very end.”
“Had he thrown in with me, it would have been the end,” Jackal replied bitterly.
Hood only turned away, unconcerned, and walked to the where the hogs were tethered.
“You don’t trust him,” Warbler said, “and that’s good. You weren’t supposed to. But give me eight days and I wager you’ll begin to trust me. If you don’t, well hells, you’re a free-rider now and can go where you wish.”
Hoodwink returned before Jackal could answer, bearing a thrum. Jackal’s thrum.
“They’ll never believe I didn’t catch up to him,” Hoodwink told Warbler as he handed him the weapon along with a single bolt.
Jackal tensed as the old mongrel loaded the stockbow.
“Could do the hog instead,” Warbler offered. The look that Hoodwink gave him would have withered crops. Warbler chuckled darkly. Watching them, Jackal was suddenly reminded of the way he and Oats jested.
Until Warbler stepped back a pace and loosed the bolt into Hoodwink’s thigh. He shot from the hip, yet the aim was unerring, piercing the meat while missing the bone. Hood’s knee buckled slightly, but he remained upright, balancing on his uninjured leg. His breath came out in rapid, noisy pulses from his nostrils, but he did not so much as grunt against the pain.
Fucking hells. Jackal managed not to say it aloud.
“Well aimed, kid,” Warbler proclaimed, tossing Jackal his empty stockbow. “Bring Hood his hog. Least you could do after feathering him like that.”
Jackal did as ordered, slinging his stockbow across his back as he went. He gave Hearth a rub on the flank as he retrieved Hood’s barbarian, a lean beast the color of old ash that had no name Jackal had ever heard. Hoodwink ignored all attempts by Warbler to help him mount and swung his skewered leg over the saddle.
“You know what to tell them?” Warbler asked.
Hoodwink nodded.
“Luck then, brother. Live in the saddle…”
Without responding, Hood clicked his tongue and rode off.
“Die on the hog,” Jackal said, unable to let the creed remain unfinished. “He didn’t say it.”
“He never does,” Warbler muttered, still watching the swiftly dwindling shadow. After a moment, he ambled over to the hogs and began tightening the cinch strap on his barbarian, clearly intending to ride. Jackal joined him and started adjusting Hearth’s tack. He still hadn’t decided what to do, but any choice made would involve his ass grinding leather. After a long silence, he looked over Hearth’s back at Warbler’s hog.
“When did you lose Border Lord?”
“First summer after leaving the Kiln,” Warbler replied, still intent on his task. “Brush foot.”
Jackal nodded sympathetically even though Warbler was not looking at him.
“And this one?” Jackal asked.
“I call him Mean Old Man,” Warbler replied, giving the near pitch-black pig a final look-over.
“This is Hearth,” Jackal said, then realized he had not been asked. Hells, his own voice sounded ten years younger, whining for approval. At that moment, he almost mounted up, put heel to hog and rode off. His old life was through. Why go wading deeper into the past with an old outcast who made him feel a child?
The answer was enthroned within his skull.
This old outcast made Jackal who he was. Made Fetch and Oats too. When they were younger, they all thought they would one day ride under his command, and spent long afternoons entertaining one another with certainties of that glorious, future life. Warbler would be their chief, and they his most trusted riders. They had not been able to fathom his sudden, grievous ousting. To this day there was still much Jackal did not know about Warbler’s failed challenge. And he wanted to. He wanted to finally know this champion of his boyhood.
“What is Hood going to tell the Claymaster?” Jackal asked. “That I’m dead?”
Warbler chuffed. “That you’re alive. That you escaped. The truth is the only choice. Sooner or later, you are going to meet other nomads and word will spread, free-rider to free-rider. Eventually it will get back to the Kiln. Hoodwink gets caught in that deep a lie, the Claymaster will sniff him out. Besides, knowing you’re out here somewhere will make him sweat.”
“Good enough,” Jackal said. “Tell me, what will happen in eight days that you believe will make me want to help you?”
“A ride north,” Warbler replied, climbing into the saddle.
“An eight-day northward ride,” Jackal calculated, “would bring us to…”
He looked up sharply.
Warbler gave a quick, confirming nod. “Hispartha.”
With that, the old thrice turned his hog, glanced at the stars for a bearing, and began riding.
Jackal lingered a moment to face a different direction, one guided only by a set of barely perceptible footprints in the dust. They disappeared into a still landscape rendered nearly featureless by night.
“Farewell, Starling.”
Chapter 22
The bones of Kalbarca sprawled upon the banks of the river. Beneath the sunrise, the crumbling buildings composed a carcass, a decrepit pilgrim dead of thirst within reach of water. The long arches of the Old Imperial Bridge jutted from the ruins and spanned the muddy shallows of the Guadal-kabir, seeming to flee the decay of the once great city. The bridge was an ancient construction, yet stood sound while the surrounding buildings of Hisparthan architects slowly fell to rubble, shaming the genius of their Imperial forebears.
Three hard days in the saddle wer
e needed to reach this place. At first, Jackal had been perplexed by the westward lean of their course, but now he understood.
Kalbarca resided above the heart of Ul-wundulas, backed to the north and west by the mountain range known as the Smelted Mounts, and though it had never recovered from its razing by orcs during the Incursion, the ruined city still remained an embarkation point for the Emperor’s Road. Another invention of the now extinct Imperium, the cobbled marvel was not one road, but several that cut through the Lot Lands, maintaining courses once paramount to trade and the swift movement of legions. Jackal did not know what happened to the emperors, only that there was a first and a last, and much had changed since their days. The Hisparthan kings had risen after them, but they too lost their hold on Ul-wundulas. The sparsely populated badlands that Jackal called home had little use for roads and mile markers. The mongrel hoofs avoided them, preferring to ride cross-country amongst the scrub and the boulders. That is where any encroaching thicks would be, not marching down some neatly paved avenue.
However, the road was the swiftest route into Hispartha.
“We will rest the hogs here,” Warbler declared, gazing down at Kalbarca from their vantage upon a ridge. “Once the sun is high we will take the Emperor’s, chew some distance before nightfall.”
They proceeded down into the valley and reached the river while the morning was still young. The ruins rested in Crown lands, though Jackal saw no evidence of soldiery as they crossed the bridge and approached what was left of the walls. He knew from talks with Ignacio’s men that patrols here were few. The Grey Bastards rarely had cause to intrude this far, and Jackal had only ridden within sight of Kalbarca once before.
Warbler clearly knew his way around. He guided them through the rubble-strewn alleys, past the shadowed sockets of doorways and windows long bereft of habitation. The orcs had occupied the city for years after breaking the defenses, and smears of their savage calligraphy stained the whitewash, boasts written in blood to their esurient gods. Thicks had no talent for building. Haphazard heaps of stone and timber were thrown into the breaches they made in the walls, all that was done to shore up their prize against a counterattack. Not that it mattered. Hispartha never attempted to retake the city. It was abandoned by the enemy only when the great plague swept through Ul-wundulas, killing orcs and men in reaping strokes, ending the war.
“The frails never have come back,” Jackal commented, craning his neck around to look at the puzzle of broken dwellings. “Must have been too ashamed.”
Ahead of him, Warbler huffed. “They’ll be back. Soon as some king orders the reclamation of the Lots, this warren will be crawling with more soldiers than rats.”
Jackal was dubious, but he kept his mouth closed.
“For now,” Warbler went on, “it’s a good place for free-riders. Plenty of places to hole up, rest, hide if you need to. Just keep away from the old mausoleum and any tunnels leading beneath ground. The halflings have a permanent colony here, digging around for every shit Belico ever took. They think you’ve despoiled their work, you won’t make it out of Kalbarca alive.”
Jackal did not care for Warbler’s instructional tone. This wasn’t his first ride.
“I can handle halflings. Me and their high priest have an understanding.”
Warbler twisted in the saddle and squinted at Jackal for a moment. He said nothing and soon turned back around.
They rode into what was left of a plaza and dismounted, quickly unsaddling their barbarians and stowing the tack within a nearby building.
“We’ll walk the hogs down to a spot I know where they can drink, then come back and get some rest.”
They slept the morning away in the cool shadows of the ruins. Jackal gave himself to slumber readily, but fell into fitful dreams of Starling. He awoke sore and sickened, with hours to spare before noon. Needing to feel the sun on his skin, he went out to the plaza and sat upon a cracked plinth. He busied himself with the care of his weapons, first cleaning his blades, before moving on to the longer task of his stockbow.
As he was refitting the bowstring to the prods, Warbler emerged.
“Best begin practice with a bow,” the old thrice proclaimed. “That thrum won’t last a year in this life.”
“That why you use that piece of Unyar driftwood?” Jackal asked. “Couldn’t maintain your stockbow?”
Warbler just laughed and shook his head, ducking back into the building to retrieve his saddle.
Jackal knew the old thrice wasn’t wrong, but the constant advice was tickling at his temper. Every word out of Warbler’s mouth, hells, his very presence, was a reminder that this life was permanent. Try as he might, Jackal could not shake the feeling that he was simply on another patrol, an extended ranging into unfamiliar territory, and when it was done he would ride back to the Kiln. But that fantasy only lived upon the surface of his mind. Pursuing it only dredged up pain as the truth of the past days poisoned the intimacy of years.
They left Kalbarca before noon, taking the ancient road. The straight, flat line of pale stones speared hypnotically toward the Smelteds, the foothills limned in shimmers of heat. Warbler set an even, tedious pace. Mean Old Man seemed well accustomed, but Hearth had difficulties. He wanted to run and, when held back, kept slowing to a plod. Jackal focused on getting control and was soon riding alongside his fellow nomad. They stopped rarely and spoke not at all.
The Emperor’s Road led them northeast for most of the day, skirting the mountains. Finally, in the late afternoon, it split, the main body striking directly northward, while the smaller offshoot turned toward the descending sun. Warbler pulled his hog east, showing his ass to the Smelted Mounts. Dusk came, holding court over the sky with beautiful brevity before yielding gracefully to night. Still they rode on, and Jackal enjoyed the swiftly cooling air until Warbler called a halt. He led them off the road to a stand of stone pine and declared they would camp.
The rations in Jackal’s kit would not last the ride unless stretched, so he took only pulls from his waterskin as he lay upon his bedroll, reclined against his saddle. He was drifting off to sleep when a rattling weight struck him in the chest. Plucking the flung sack from his chest, he unknotted the string.
“Almonds,” he said, glancing up to look at the sack’s thrower sitting beneath the opposite tree, but Warbler’s scarred arms were crossed over his chest and his eyes were already closed.
They were in the saddle by dawn and rode hard before the heat was high. Warbler called a halt early, veering off the road to a grove of lemon trees. They stayed only long enough to pick some choice pieces and continued on, eating the fruit as they rode and saving the rinds for their hogs. The countryside grew noticeably lusher as they again turned north, though the dusty sun-bleached rocks still far outnumbered the greenery. Jackal was not certain exactly when it happened, but by midday he was unmistakably aware they were now in lands he had never before traveled. He wanted to ask why they were bound for Hispartha, but kept his questions locked behind his teeth.
The road was far from abandoned and they began to cross paths with other travelers, overtaking a lone halfling pilgrim on foot and, later, meeting a trio of mongrel free-riders coming south. Warbler stopped and spoke to them all. The discussions were brief, almost ritual.
Where have you come from?
Where are you bound?
What have you seen upon the road?
Answers to these questions were exchanged with no pleasantries, nor any guile. Warbler always responded truthfully and Jackal detected no dissembling from those they encountered. The information was sparse, yet valuable. Even no news was prized; an uneventful journey was often a safe one. With the halfling, names were not exchanged, but Warbler made a point of introducing Jackal to the half-orc nomads. Each of the three accepted his name with a terse nod, their dust-caked faces displaying a restrained mix of grief and scorn, as if they mourned and detest
ed his choice to join their ranks.
Jackal found this same conflicted soup boiling in his own gut as he returned their stares. These were free-riders, outcasts, thrown out of their hoofs for all manner of unspoken reasons. Jackal was all too aware that the causes for exile were not always dishonorable, yet he could not help but think that he was now amongst a company of liars, cowards, and kin slayers. No doubt the same unproven condemnations were silently leveled at him.
Over the passing days they spoke with other free-riders, most riding alone, but some in pairs or small groups. All of them were filthy, careworn, and terse. Their hogs were lean and shabby, their weapons tarnished. Jackal noticed, with silent ill humor, there was not a single stockbow amongst them. He committed all of their names to memory, but wondered if he could ever tell one from another on a second meeting. Warbler was well known by all, yet commanded no unique respect. He was as they all were, just another masterless rider, drifting through the Lots.
Perhaps it was Jackal’s well-fed hog or his supple saddle, perhaps his stockbow, but something about him seemed to sour the countenances of the other free-riders. At first he thought it was some customary derision given to all newcomers, but it was too unwavering and lacked any sense of the callous mirth directed at slopheads.
“It’s as if they don’t believe you,” he finally said to Warbler at their sixth overnight camp. “As if they don’t believe I’ve turned nomad.”
“Difficult to believe a man has lost his hoof when he’s bearing unmarked Bastard tattoos,” Warbler replied, giving Jackal’s arms a pointed look.
Glancing down, Jackal saw he was right. The cuts were gone. His flesh, and the ink beneath, was unmarred. He hadn’t noticed, so used to them being a part of him.
Jackal ran a mystified hand from his shoulder to his wrist.
“I’ve been…I’ve been healing quickly,” he offered in feeble explanation.
Warbler grunted. “You really make a deal with Zirko?”
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