The Grey Bastards: A Novel (The Lot Lands)

by Jonathan French

  Jackal was now riding directly beside Fetching, the pair of them making headlong for the charging orcs. Her voice filled his right ear, yelling over the rushing air, savagely elated.

  “Fuck this shanking shit! Another tusker, Jack?!”

  “Right down their throats!” he agreed, and pulled the trigger of his stockbow.

  The bolt sped over Hearth’s head and struck an orc in the arm. Fetch’s bow thrummed and a thick fell with a shaft in his neck. Jackal had just enough time to drop his stockbow and tear his tulwar from its sheath before Hearth crashed amongst the orcs, the hog’s tusks rending one thick’s leg as he barreled through. Slashing left and right as he passed, Jackal felt his arm vibrate with the impact of his blade on orc armor. One of the t’huruuks sprang at him, its scimitar held high in both hands. A javelin screamed over Jackal’s shoulder and hit the orc chieftain in the chest, tearing through his mail and striking with such force it knocked the brute backward.

  Oats.

  Jackal issued a silent thanks that his big friend had followed him into the press. He only hoped Hoodwink and the Claymaster had shown equal balls. To Jackal’s right, Fetch laughed as her dripping tulwar took an orc’s hand off.

  Only one thick lay between Jackal and open plain, the injured one with the spear. In a display of unnerving vitality, the orc dragged himself to his feet, ignoring the gaping wound Hearth had left in his thigh. Jackal swung his tulwar in a sideways arc as he passed, shearing through the orc’s spear shaft and slicing into his collarbone. Grunting, the orc collapsed and Hearth emerged from the battle.

  As his hog continued to put distance between him and the orcs, Jackal turned in the saddle. Fetching had won through, Oats and Hoodwink not far behind. Hood looked unsteady in the saddle and as he rode closer, Jackal saw he was clutching a seeping wound on his shoulder. Farther back, Jackal saw the twice-wounded orc with the shattered spear was again regaining his feet, but Big Pox charged right over him, trampling him beneath his hooves and the wheels of the chariot as the Claymaster drove out of the melee.

  Jackal and the others reined up a safe distance from the thicks and waited on the Claymaster to reach them. Four thicks were still on their feet, rallying around the single surviving t’huruuk. All of them appeared injured. Hobnail and the rest of the Grey Bastards had now wheeled back around, and were preparing another charge. To Jackal’s surprise, the Claymaster reached for the war horn affixed to his chariot and blew three short bursts, the call to regroup.

  “Chief,” Jackal said, “we could hit them from two sides and finish this.”

  The Claymaster shook his head. “No. We’re going home.”

  Jackal could not help but throw a gawking look at Oats.

  “What are you looking at him for?” the Claymaster demanded. “Was I fucking unclear?”

  “No, Claymaster,” Jackal replied. “But if those thicks reach the rocks and hole up, we risk all going in after them.”

  “Did your skull get thumped back there, boy? I didn’t say anything about going in after them. I said we are going back to the Kiln.”

  “And leave thicks alive in our lot?” Fetching asked, trying and failing to keep the challenge from her voice.

  The Claymaster turned his large frame slowly to face Fetch. “I’m going to explain something to you. And if I am still explaining it when the rest of the boys get here, I ain’t gonna be pleased.” The Claymaster put a cruel emphasis on the word “boys” as he kept his hard stare on Fetching. “Not a one of those orcs ain’t wounded. They came with two hands, two arms. They’re leaving with an arm and four fingers. Thicks don’t choose their numbers randomly. Whatever they came to do, they won’t try it now. Let them limp back south and take the tale of their defeat with them. Now, do you want me to give them another tale to take back? About how the leader of the Grey Bastards cut the tongues out of the mouths of two of his own hoof for questioning his orders? Because I have had enough of Jackal’s voice today, and honestly, Fetching, if your tongue isn’t licking my cock, I got no damn use for it.”

  Beyond the Claymaster, Jackal watched as the orcs clambered in amongst the rocks of Batayat. He did not say another word and neither did Fetch. When the others rode up, they seemed equally perplexed at the chief’s order, but no further challenges were voiced.

  The hoof took its time getting back. There was no need to tax their hogs further. Everyone was silent, each rider keeping his eyes open for additional threat while worrying at his private thoughts. Jackal knew his brothers. It would not sit well that they allowed the orcs to escape. The Claymaster was headed quickly toward a vote to remove him from the head of the table. Hells, it was past time. Jackal just had to make sure none of the others beat him to the axe toss.

  The chief again blew his horn when they were within sight of the Kiln, signaling the slops to lower the Hogback. The ramp was down by the time the hoof reached the walls and the hogs crossed over quickly, each one eager for the pens.

  “Get the damn ovens doused!” the Claymaster bellowed at the slops. “I don’t need all our wood burned up over a dozen thicks.”

  “No, you let it burn up for seven,” Jackal muttered so only Oats heard. His friend gave him a cautionary frown.

  After the Bastards dismounted, they began leading their hogs to the stables. As they passed the entry gate, Jackal flinched away from the heat still pouring out of the wall passage. It would be hours before it cooled enough to use.

  “Forgive me, my friend?”

  Jackal and the others cursed at the sound of the voice, taking a few startled steps away from the tunnel from which it emerged.

  “Who the fuck said that?” Roundth demanded.

  Fetching and Hoodwink already had their stockbows pressed hard into their shoulders and trained on the shadowy opening. Jackal shot a look at Oats and raised his own thrum.

  A figure leaned forward out of the darkness behind the portcullis.

  “A thousand and one apologies, friends. I did not intend alarm.”

  It was a half-orc, one Jackal did not recognize. He was fleshy, going to fat, but his face was youthful, bearing a black beard and mustachio, perfectly trimmed. A turban was wrapped about his head, his body clad in the robes of the east. There were many rings upon his pudgy fingers, which casually gripped the iron bars of the portcullis. Those bars, Jackal knew, were too hot to touch. It was difficult for him to even breathe this close to the infernal mouth of the tunnel, but the intruder standing inside it was not even sweating. He regarded the semicircle of pointed stockbows with serene indifference.

  “If one would be so kind as to allow me entry,” he said pleasantly. “I assure you all, I am merely a humble visitor.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  It was the Claymaster who spoke, shouldering his way between Hobnail and Grocer. He took two stiff steps toward the gate and stood in the hellish waves of heat as he stared at the turbaned half-orc.

  “You’re a wizard,” the chief said. There was a smile on his face, beneath the bandages.

  Chapter 4

  “What did you do this time, Jack?”

  Beryl didn’t even look up as Jackal entered the orphanage, keeping her attention focused on the squalling babe she was cleaning. He was never sure how she did that, though she always claimed to know every child she ever raised by smell. All about the long, low-ceilinged room, young half-orcs ran, toddled, crawled, or simply sat. Every one of them was making more noise than a hog in rut.

  “Grab Wily before he sticks his hand in the pot,” Beryl said calmly, tilting her head slightly over one shoulder.

  Looking toward the familiar fireplace, Jackal saw a stout little drooling thing reaching a pudgy hand toward the bubbling porridge pot hung over the low flames. Springing over and around the other children, Jackal managed to reach the child and snatch him up before he learned a hard lesson. The small mongrel giggled as he was ho
isted into the air.

  “You going soft, Beryl?” Jackal teased, balancing the child on his hip. “Time was you let burning be the reason we didn’t go near the hearth.”

  Lifting the dripping infant out of the washbasin, Beryl shrugged. “This batch is smarter than you were.” She dried and swaddled the babe with practiced hands and handed it off to one of the older girls before finally turning to face Jackal, eyeing him up and down.

  “Well? Claymaster didn’t send you here for nothing. Out with it.”

  Jibes aside, Beryl had not gone soft in the least. Though well past fifty, she retained a strong, comely figure, though fuller in the hips and belly than she had been when Jackal was under her care. Her long chestnut locks, tied up in a practical pile, had lost none of their color and her arms were as sinewy as ever. Half-orc females lose their minds long before their bodies, as was often joked around the hoof when Fetching was out of earshot.

  Jackal opened his mouth to answer, but before the words came out, the boy he was holding stuck an entire fist in. Careful to keep his teeth from hurting the child, Jackal went on with his explanation, allowing the child’s hand to make an incomprehensible mumble out of his speech, not stopping until the little mongrel was belly-laughing and Beryl cracked a smile.

  “So, you’re not in trouble,” she said. “You’re just here to be amongst those your own age.”

  Lip-chewing on the boy’s hand until he laughed harder, Jackal gave Beryl a wink. He turned and looked at the child’s chubby face, eyes clenched tight with glee, then expelled the hand from his mouth with an overexaggerated spitting sound.

  “Hells,” he said, cocking his eyes to look past the boy’s lips. “This little slobberer’s already got his lower fangs.”

  Beryl gave a slow, tired nod. “Makes me glad my wet-nursing days are over. Wily there is not yet two and already bigger than most twice his age. Not much hair, but strong, hungry, and, as you said, lower fangs cutting already. I don’t envy Thistle. That little beast is at her tit night and day. Reminds me of Oats at that age. Bald, fanged, and breast-crazed.”

  Jackal smiled. “Not much has changed there.”

  He lowered Wily down and set him on his unsteady feet. The boy squealed and went toddling off after one of the older children.

  “How long you exiled here to Winsome?” Beryl asked, sweeping her gaze across the room in a silent warning to the children that she was still watching them.

  “Until the Claymaster says I can ride again.”

  “Are you really going to let me hear what you did from the bedwarmers, Jackal?”

  “No,” he said. “No, I killed a cavalero at Sancho’s, giving him the opening to ask the hoof to start paying for his girls. That only earned me slophead tending, but then I questioned the Claymaster’s decision in the field, so…here I am.”

  Beryl cocked her head disapprovingly to one side. “Jackal!”

  “He allowed five thicks to escape, Beryl! He wasn’t thinking clear. None of us could believe the order, but only Fetch and I had the guts to say something.”

  Beryl threw her arms up at the mention of Fetching’s name. “Still risking yourself for that one. I might have known.”

  Jackal swallowed a snarl of frustration and kept his voice from rising. “There was no risk. I spoke up first. We—”

  “Challenged the Claymaster,” Beryl cut in, her mouth forming a hard line.

  “No,” Jackal protested. “We just wanted to know why he was letting a bunch of orcs run free in our lot.”

  Beryl shook her head in that disappointed way Jackal knew as a child. “He was fighting full-bloods long before you were born, Jack.”

  “So it’s my fault he’s lost his taste for it?”

  Beryl’s eyes flashed and she looked around before taking a step toward him.

  “Enough!” she said, her tone hushed. “Cissy and Sweeps are right outside hanging linens. What happens when they hike up to the Kiln tonight and whisper what you said to Polecat while they’re all squirming beneath his blankets? Or one of these little ones repeats what they heard to Thistle? She’s still walking home bowlegged most nights from Roundth’s bunk. Some of the village girls aren’t even bedwarmers, but they’re not above letting a slophead have his way every now and again in hopes he’ll be a rider soon. You think they don’t gossip? What are you going to do when half the hopefuls are whispering that you are making a bid for the hoof?”

  Jackal held up a hand to try and stall her tirade, to no effect.

  “You won’t be ready for the Claymaster’s response. And there will be one more empty seat at that voting table.”

  Beryl’s voice broke a little at the last, causing Jackal to look away and pretend not to have noticed. After more than twenty years, Warbler’s absence still pained her.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, watching the children play. “The chief’s more interested in filling a seat right now.”

  “One of the slops showing promise?” Beryl asked.

  “No. We had a stranger show up at the Kiln last night, dressed and spoke like he was from Tyrkania or somewhere.”

  “So?” Beryl shrugged. “What makes some dune lover so special?”

  “Claymaster thinks he’s a wizard.”

  Beryl almost succeeded in hiding her surprise. “Is he?”

  Jackal wrinkled his mouth. “The ovens were lit and there he was, standing in the wall. He should have been cooked, Beryl, and long before he made it all the way to the yard gate.”

  “Those desert-dwellers are accustomed to heat,” Beryl said, but even she didn’t sound convinced.

  Jackal decided not to mention the stranger touching bare flesh to blazing metal. “Whatever he is, the chief was giddy as a slophead with his first whore. Never seen him like that, even Grocer looked disturbed.”

  Beryl folded her arms in front of her. “The Claymaster’s wanted a wizard in the hoof for as long as I’ve known him, Jackal. The castile has one, it’s said the Tines practically shit them, but none of the half-breed hoofs have ever been able to bring sorcery to their tables. If this stranger really is a wizard, it could help the Bastards.” She fixed him with a long, studying look. “But you don’t think so.”

  “I don’t know what to think. The Claymaster was holed up with this creep all night. Only came out long enough this morning to order me down here.”

  “Well, don’t look too crestfallen over it,” Beryl said, snatching up one of the damp rags on the table and throwing it at him. “Neither you nor that son of mine visit anymore.”

  Before Jackal could say anything, one of the orphans, a thin little girl, maybe three, ran up and grabbed his fingers, trying to tow him over to where she was playing.

  “Go on,” Beryl waved him away. “Let them get used to you being here and then I’ll put you to work.”

  Jackal spent the morning tussling with the boys and chasing the girls. It was strange to be back in the province of his earliest memories. The orphanage had changed little, the smell of the place an instant reminder of his years under its roof. Winsome was within sight of the Kiln’s walls, yet Jackal avoided setting foot in the settlement if at all possible.

  He had left at twelve, walking the mile to the Kiln to join the ranks of slopheads and begin his path to the hoof. Now, fifteen years later, he had his own hog and a back covered in Grey Bastard tattoos. Every last one of the dozen or so boys currently living under Beryl’s care would try for the same, but few would succeed. Jackal knew he was a living image of who they were in their dreams. As for the little girls, they were already in love with him, their abandoned hearts knowing nothing of what a father was, but yearning for one all the same. For many, that yearning would mature as they did, turning into a desire to become a bedwarmer, a Bastard’s favorite toss. But today, they were all young and blessed with ignorance, girls and boys both, not yet knowing the hard truths
to come.

  As the day drew on and Jackal played with the children outside, garnering approving looks from Cissy while she hung the wash, he began to understand why he avoided this place. It was not to escape haunted memories; most of his days at the orphanage had been happy. It was because he did not enjoy facing the unattainable.

  Jackal would never have children.

  All male half-orcs were sterile. His father, and the fathers of every child in this room, was a thick. The seed of the orc was strong, able to take root in humans with ease, and once a woman was impregnated, no amount of herbs or teas could flush it out of her. Some frails killed themselves rather than carry a half-breed. Some endured the seven-month pregnancy and, if they survived the birth, dispatched the babe in whatever way they could stomach. Fortunately for Jackal, and every half-orc breathing, some allowed their mongrels to live.

  The nobility of Hispartha still prized half-breed servants, and handsome children fetched a high price up north. Within the Lot Lands, the half-orc hoofs made it known that all human women willing to rear their own half-breed children were welcome to live under the protection of the hoof. The village of Winsome had sprouted up near the Kiln because of this arrangement. And yet, many babes still turned up simply abandoned, their mothers refusing to kill them or sell them or raise them, simply wanting to be rid of them. That was how Jackal, and scores of orphans since, had come to Beryl.

  She had come to Winsome from her own pillaged town, a thick’s get already growing inside her, for half-orc females could sometimes conceive. Rarely, human seed would quicken in a half-orc’s womb, but most often it was a thick that put a babe in their bellies. A child born from such a pairing was called a thrice-blood, or simply a thrice. Bigger, stronger, and more orcish in appearance than a common half-breed, a thrice was a rare occurrence and it was even more rare that they were abandoned, for few half-orc women succumbed to that weakness. Beryl certainly had not. She accepted the Grey Bastards’ protection, vowing her thrice-blood babe, if it were a boy, would become a formidable member of the hoof. Half a year later, Oats was born. Beryl raised him alongside the town’s foundlings, including an infant who would become her son’s closest friend.