The Grey Bastards: A Novel (The Lot Lands)

by Jonathan French

  “You want to take a run at the truth?” Jackal asked, his sour mood turning the question into a threat.

  “I went in to ensure you came out. That is also the reason I went with you to the marsh. Both are the truth.”

  “If you make me ask why at the end of every one of your statements, Crafty, I’m going to knock your fat ass off that hog.”

  The bead dangling from the wizard’s beard braid danced as he chuckled. “I simply want what you want, friend Jackal. You leading the Grey Bastards. And before you strike me, the why of the matter is, I too wish for something. My hope is that you, and the hoof I will help you claim, will help me when the time comes. But today, I am at your service. I hope that will suffice and keep your pricks from my flesh.”

  “Prickles,” Jackal corrected, smiling despite his best efforts.

  He let the matter drop, trusting in his gut. It had told him Crafty was hiding something about the brothel and been right. Now it was telling him the wizard was being truthful, if not entirely forthcoming. Jackal did not know what Crafty wanted from the Bastards, and right now, he didn’t care. He had sworn no oaths, made no bargains, and was not beholden to aid the wizard in whatever ambitions he pursued. For now, Jackal had a powerful sorcerer on his side, one who wanted to help him replace the Claymaster. Best not to check the hog’s tusks too carefully. His most immediate concerns were ahead of him, where a cadre of horsemen was converging on Fetching and Oats.

  “Are those…?” Crafty began.

  “Unyars,” Jackal confirmed. “The descendants of Belico’s army. They are fiercely loyal to the halflings. Come on. We better catch up before Fetch says something that will earn her an arrow in the lungs.”

  No longer concerned with the elf girl’s slumber, Jackal urged Hearth into a quick trot. The jostling woke her. As her head came up off his arm, her weight no longer pressed against his torso, which was both a relief and a disappointment. Jackal could not see her face, but he could sense her taking the situation in quickly, her attention fixing on the eight riders now surrounding Oats and Fetching. As always, the Unyars had their recurve bows in hand, but Jackal was relieved to see no arrows nocked.

  He slowed Hearth’s pace as he drew near, carefully riding between the horses to join his companions. Crafty followed his lead.

  The Unyars’ horses allowed them to sit taller than the half-orcs upon their hogs, and the men stared down with their keen, slanted eyes. They were a stocky breed, shorter than the average Hisparthan, their tanned skin tinged with yellow. Their broad chests were covered with scale armor, and their belts hung heavy with full quivers, stout throwing axes, and curved swords. Jackal found their leader by the presence of the trumpet hanging from his saddle horn.

  “We are members of the Grey Bastards,” Jackal told the man. “We come to you, humbly, to seek the wisdom of Zirko, high priest of Belico.”

  The Unyar swept the group with his unblinking gaze, lingering for a moment on the elf girl. The sight of her caused the man to pull uncertainly at his long, wispy mustachio. Jackal pretended not to notice, and waited with an open expression.

  At last, the leader hissed and pulled his mount’s reins around. His riders turned their own steeds toward Strava, herding Jackal and his companions across the plain. It was always unsettling to be escorted by these horsemen. Their skill at mounted archery was nearly as legendary as their divine warlord. Just these surrounding eight men could fill Jackal and his crew full of arrows, killing hog and rider, in seconds.

  The Unyars were the oldest hoof in the Lots. They had dwelt in Ul-wundulas for centuries before Hispartha claimed the land. The hill and tower of Strava were already ancient when the first armies marched down from the north. Halfling pilgrims of Belico had long wandered the world in search of relics from their god’s time as a man, and Hispartha’s kings had hosted them many times. So they decreed the shrine would benefit from Hispartha’s protection, but was not governed by its laws. During the Orc Incursion, the Unyars made for indispensable allies, acting as skirmishers and harrowing the thicks across the plains. But their loyalty lay with their god and the halflings who served as his priests. They kept their home safe, first and foremost. No orc army ever came close to reaching Strava. At the end of the war, Hispartha exempted the lands surrounding Strava from the lot draw, in order not to anger Belico and his devotees. The halflings and their Unyar protectors were a neutral, if not wholly unbiased, presence in Ul-wundulas. Only the centaurs made war on them, and only during the Betrayer Moon, when all were prey.

  Soon, Strava loomed above. Gazing up, Jackal had the dizzying perception that the tower was tumbling over, the moving clouds behind adding to the illusion. It may once have been square, but the winds of centuries had gnawed at the stones, countless rains dissolving the mortar. Up close, the entire thing looked ready to collapse, as did the desiccated hill on which the tower sat.

  A sprawling village lay about the base of Strava, huts and horse corrals radiating from the hill. Human children herded goats and thin, grey steers from pens, while women continued the various chores that had occupied them since dawn. One in every three seemed to be fletching arrows. All the men with two good legs and a straight back were ahorse, riding off to hunt or patrol, or acting as sentry near the tower. Of the halflings, there was no sign. All would be inside Strava, within the tower or beneath the hill.

  The riders escorted the hogs around the western slope and led them to an empty corral. The size and shape of the pen, as well as the small stable at one end, gave it the appearance of a training yard. The troughs outside the stable were full and the hogs went to them eagerly. The Unyars waited while Jackal and the others dismounted, and the leader gestured for them to shelter in the shade of the stable roof. Several women entered the corral, bearing jugs and wooden platters covered with linen. These proved to be full of goat’s milk and meat. Just as soon as they had set the victuals down upon the ground, the women left. The horsemen tarried only a moment longer. The leader nodded once to Jackal, then followed his men.

  “Think we’re in for a bit of a wait,” Oats declared through a mouthful of roast goat.

  Jackal merely nodded as he stretched his legs, keeping an eye on the elf. She went and stood in the back of the shallow stable, in the deepest shadows. Crafty followed her in, offering one of the jugs. She took it without hesitation and drank deeply, but with care, not spilling a drop down her chin. Jackal felt a bump at his good arm and looked to find Fetching nudging him with a platter. Seeing the grease-slick meat, Jackal’s hunger awoke and he took a heavy piece between his fingers.

  “Courteous of them not to put a guard on us,” he said before taking his first bite.

  Fetch snorted. “You know better than that, Jack.”

  He hummed agreement and nodded. He did know better.

  They spent the morning resting in the shade. Oats tended to the hogs, inspecting each one carefully before finding a spot in the stable to lie down upon his bedroll. Within seconds, the brute was snoring, drawing a well-used glare of annoyance from Fetching. Crafty sat with his back to the wall, his thick legs drawn up beneath him and his eyes closed.

  “You got her?” Jackal asked Fetch, cocking his head at the elf, now curled up with her back turned.

  “Sleep,” Fetch insisted.

  Giving her a grateful squeeze on the knee, Jackal lay back against his saddle and was asleep before he could take a second deep breath.

  He awoke gently, slowly, his eyes regaining focus upon a small figure kneeling at his side. The bandages were free from his broken arm, though he had not felt them being removed, and the figure was probing gently at his bones with stubby fingers the color of richly fertile earth.

  “Apologies,” Zirko said without taking his eyes away from his task. “I tried not to wake you.”

  Jackal said nothing, watching the halfling as he worked. His long, twisted black locks were kept away from
his face by a band of heavy, undyed linen. Limpid green eyes danced, accompanying his hands in the inspection.

  “This is a bad break, Jackal of the Grey Bastards,” Zirko said at last, his voice surprisingly deep for one so small. “And you have not been kind to it. Two moons, perhaps more, before it will mend, and even then, perhaps not straight.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Jackal replied. “I need it healed now.”

  Zirko blew a heavy breath from his nostrils. He looked Jackal in the eye for the first time, searching his face. The halfling said nothing for a long while. At last he stood and walked to the edge of the shadows, which had grown long. The sky above the corral was instilled with the colors of dusk.

  Jackal sat up and glanced around. Everyone was awake, and he got the embarrassing notion that he was the only one who had slept through the high priest’s arrival. Oats squatted on his haunches, clearly not wanting to loom over Zirko, whose head wouldn’t even reach the thrice’s crotch.

  The halfling appeared to be pondering, his back turned. His robes were simple and unadorned, as were the sandals upon his feet. At his side hung a wide, straight-bladed thrusting sword, fashioned in the style of the old Imperium. Knowing the halflings, it was probably from the old Imperium. Waiting at the far side of the corral were two other halflings, their skin and hair as dark as the high priest’s, their garb equally austere. Eventually, Zirko turned around again, his hand stroking at the ring of close-cropped beard surrounding his protuberant lips.

  “I am trying to recall the last time a half-orc placed himself in the hands of Great Belico.”

  Oats answered. “It was that member of the Cauldron Brotherhood, wasn’t it? The one who took an orc spear in the gut. Can’t remember his name.”

  “Rinds,” Fetching said.

  “That was him,” Oats agreed.

  Zirko held up a finger in a show of remembrance. “Ah, yes. And he has stood with us here every Betrayer since, in addition to the traditional rider provided by the Cauldron Brotherhood. I wonder, will your Claymaster be as incensed over this as the Brotherhood’s chieftain? The mongrel hoofs have often chafed at giving up one rider. Two is often unthinkable.”

  Jackal tried not to grimace.

  It was all part of an arrangement made at the end of the Incursion, long before he wore a brigand. Every half-orc hoof sent a rider to stand with the Unyars against the centaurs during their unfathomable rampages. In exchange, Zirko gave them warning of the arrival of the next Betrayer Moon. The diminutive priest had done what Hispartha’s keenest star charters could not, and discovered the secret to predicting the moon’s chaotic shift.

  Since the horse-cocks first came to Ul-wundulas from the broken islands of the Deluged Sea, they had celebrated the Betrayer in an orgy of bloodshed. As a boy, Jackal had wondered if the moon’s suddenly changing face had occurred prior to the centaurs’ migration, but none had ever been able to tell him. The Betrayer, and the centaurs, had been residents of the badlands centuries before he began asking questions, and were long-accepted evils. And evil they were.

  There was no strategy in the centaur attacks, no goal other than slaughter and rapine to please their heartless gods. The raids were brutal, unpredictable, yet more often than not, the Kiln was left completely unmolested, the ill-omened moon giving way to dawn without one sighting of even a single ’taur. But for every settlement ignored, another was set upon without mercy. A hoof going without Zirko’s warning trusted to luck. And luck had been fickle in the past.

  Just six years ago, the Rutters had refused to send a rider to Strava to fight during an impending Betrayer. The following summer, Zirko sent them no message of the next coming Moon. The Rutters were caught unawares and, though their stronghold held, their neighboring village was reduced to ash and corpse flies. The hoof tried to recover, but Ul-wundulas was a harsh land. With no crops, no bedwarmers, no children, the Rutters had been forced to disband, its members absorbed by the remaining hoofs. Polecat had been a Rutter before he rode with the Bastards.

  “I need this, Zirko,” Jackal said. “If I must stand with you every Betrayer, if that is your price, then say it.”

  This seemed to sadden the halfling. He dipped his head and smiled morosely.

  “How small and covetous we must seem to you,” Zirko said softly. When he looked up again, there was a softness in his face Jackal had never seen before. The expression was almost self-pitying. “I know you think us niggardly. But the burdens of my people, and the demands of my god, are unknown to you. And they exist above your inner, shallow judgments. You do not know what it is we sacrifice each time we petition our god to heal an unbeliever.”

  “Sacrifice is served with every meal in the Lots,” Jackal replied. “We all bleed here. That I do believe.”

  “And why should we entreat our god further for you, half-orc?” There was no malice in Zirko’s response, just a grim curiosity.

  “Only you can answer that,” Jackal told him. “As you say, I am ignorant of your burdens. But that does not mean I cannot help alleviate them, given the chance.”

  The high priest stood calmly, taking in the occupants of the stable. At last, he motioned for his attendants. The pair of halflings crossed the corral, taking up position on their master’s flanks. Both were female, their coarse black hair shaved short, almost to the scalp.

  “I wonder, Jackal,” Zirko mused, “are you willing to receive my god’s help without first knowing the full cost? I tell you now, standing with us against the centaurs shall not be all the Master Slave demands.”

  Fetching breathed in sharply, preparing to cast a barb, but Jackal turned and silenced her with a look. He looked Zirko dead in the eyes.

  “If it means my arm whole again,” he declared, “then, yes.”

  “Aw, hells,” Oats groaned.

  “Very well,” Zirko said. He turned and retrieved several objects from his attendants. They were three ceramic jars, the largest barely the size of a proper cup. The halfling priest set them upon the ground in front of Jackal, in descending order of size.

  “Fill this with your urine,” Zirko instructed, pointing to the largest vessel. “The next with blood. And the last with your seed.”

  Jackal frowned, but it was Oats who voiced the question.

  “Is that the payment?”

  “No,” Zirko replied simply, still watching Jackal.

  “But it’s required?” Jackal asked.

  The little man flashed a white smile. “Oh, yes. The hardest of these to give says a great deal about a man, yes?”

  Without further comment, Zirko left the stable and headed across the corral. His attendants stayed behind, waiting expectantly.

  “Shit,” Jackal swore under his breath as he stood. Turning around, he found Fetching standing very close. She wore a small smile beneath hungry eyes.

  “I figure,” she said throatily, “you can manage the first jar on your own. But I would be willing to help with the other.”

  She took his good hand in her own and began guiding it to one of the full breasts beneath her linen shirt. Not caring that the others were watching, Jackal opened his fingers eagerly. He grunted as pain sliced down his palm, and snatched his hand back. Fetching had moved so fast, he had not even seen her draw the knife.

  “There you are,” she said, laughing freely. “No need to thank me.”

  Oats was chuckling too. Clenching his fist and his teeth, Jackal glared at both of them.

  “Better not waste it, brother,” Oats advised, eyeballing the jars.

  Squatting down, Jackal squeezed blood from the wound into the middle vessel. He could feel his pulse throbbing in his hand as the crimson flow quickly filled the jar. Crafty offered him a bandage and Jackal began wrapping his lacerated palm.

  “Two bad hands is going to make pissing a challenge,” Oats offered sympathetically, “and that last jar
a damn nightmare.”

  Jackal gave Fetch a withering look. “You really are a cunt sometimes.”

  “Shit, Jack,” she replied, looking genuinely guilty. “I didn’t think about that.” When no pardon was forthcoming, and all she continued to receive were condemning stares, Fetching shrugged deeply and raised her voice. “Sorry! What the fuck do I know about milking a cock? I don’t think about it all the time like you two.”

  “Perhaps we should give friend Jackal some peace,” Crafty suggested, motioning toward the quickly darkening corral.

  The wizard coaxed the group out of the stable, giving the Tine girl a kindly smile as she passed. Jackal tried not to look at her, out of some boyish fear that she might have understood why he was being left alone. Zirko’s attendants removed themselves farther as well, but he noticed they continued to face the stable.

  Despite a youth spent throttling his cod, Jackal struggled. His injuries hindered him, of course, but the greatest difficulty resided in his mind. He conjured the feel of Delia on his lap in the bathhouse, but the initial swell quickly receded. Jackal found himself wishing he had joined Oats in spying on the she-elf bathing. He imagined what he had missed, but that brought up thoughts of Fetching and his newly sliced hand, which made him recall her kicking his nuts. This withered him almost completely. Fortunately, the memory also dredged up his interrupted encounter with Cissy, her buttocks bared atop a barrel and her desire for roughness. In his mind’s eye, he did everything Fetch had prevented, his fantasy going further than even Cissy might have allowed.

  When the third jar was out of the way, pissing in the biggest became only a matter of time.

  The halflings took the vessels away, to what purpose Jackal did not know, and tried not to dwell upon. Oats and Fetching were still amused by the whole ordeal, but their grins and jibes masked a deeper concern for what unknown bargain Jackal had just struck. Crafty, however, remained worryingly blank.

  As night fell fully and the moon rose higher, there was no sign of Zirko or any of his servants. A trio of Unyar women brought food and water, but otherwise, the corral became an unguarded cage.