The milk, foul-tasting as it was, also proved a remedy to the growing guilt of feasting while her folk were wanting. Not remembering the last time there was enough wine to allow for such abandon, she soon found herself swimming in a fuddled, boot-toppling current.
The mare’s milk sloshed.
She wandered around the Unyar village, jug dangling in her hand. Beneath the moon, the tribesfolk sang and danced in clusters, rewarding themselves for another day endured. Children darted across Fetch’s shuffling path, laughing and calling after one another. Every throng she passed beckoned in welcome. The words were lost, but the offers were clear. Offers to dance, to sing, offers of skewered meat and more mare’s milk. Offers to join. The Unyars were an insular people, but their hospitality was bound to their honor. Their broad, tanned faces with their narrow, friendly eyes smiled openly at Fetching, but she kept walking, allowing her drunkenness to provide excuse for her self-seclusion. She pretended not to notice the food, the drink, the well-meaning calls. Pretended not to hear the name Attukhan rise up out of their mostly nonsensical words.
Jackal was beloved here. He was, the Unyars believed, a vessel of one of their cherished ancestors. And it wasn’t simple superstition that drove such a belief, but Jackal’s own actions. He had stood against the centaurs in one of the most hellish Betrayer Moons in memory, saving Strava itself from being overrun. Hells, they fucking loved him. Is that why they smiled at her so? Did they know? That she loved him too, more than they? Did they know she fucked him? Was there some awed title for that?
“The Arm of Attukhan’s Quim. Cunt of Attukhan. Attukhunt.”
She chuckled, hearing the bitter sound. Drunk, perhaps, but she knew what she was saying, aware that she was glaring at every man and woman that spoke to her. Fuck. She was looking for a fight. Her reason was still there, but it was a rider clinging to the back of a berserk hog, able to do little but shout uselessly and watch. Fetch had a sudden urge to punch the next smiling face.
Nearing the limits of the village, she stumbled on. Out here, the festivities were more raucous. Fewer children, the clan structure unraveling to reveal its frayed edges. This was the boasting ground of unwed men, dishonored women, inebriates, and ghan addicts. Here, the faces were less welcoming, more likely to sneer, to give offense. More likely to deserve a thrashing.
A cheering ring had formed around two wrestling men. Whether this was arranged sport or the clashing of tempers, Fetch did not know or care. She pushed her way to the front to watch, courting complaints from those she shoved aside, but none protested. It turned out to be nothing but a bout between two drunks, and she quickly tired of the feeble display of sluggish grapples and sloppy punches. She nearly waded in, added a third drunk to the brawl, one that would actually prove effective, but she was stopped short by a face spied across the ring.
A face that did not regard the fight but looked directly at Fetching, a mask of intense calm within a flood of teeming abandon. It was akin to the Unyars that surrounded it, yet the small differences screamed across the distance.
Almond eyes, though wider, limpid. Tanned skin, but lacking the harsh swarthiness, rather a flawless flush of chestnut.
They were elven features, those of a Tine, and not just any rustskin.
“Starling?”
Fetch mumbled the name, slurred it, knew she sounded a besotted fool. Looked like one, too, when she jostled forward into the ring in her hurry to reach the elf. Something collided into her side. She nearly lost her feet, did lose her jar. It broke upon the ground. Angry now, she broke the nose, and the senses, of the wrestler who’d caused the damage. His opponent, seeing him fall, changed loyalties with the speed and backward thinking only the drunk can conjure. Shouting an Unyar curse, he rushed Fetch. She sidestepped, though it was more of a stumble, snatched the back of his head with an outflung hand, pivoted, and pushed downward. The spinning motion and the pressure demolished what little balance remained to the man and he flopped into the dirt, face-first. She wasn’t sure if the noises coming from the onlookers were cheers or jeers. The spilled drunkard certainly wasn’t pleased. He tried to rise, making furious noises. Fetch kicked him in the face. He ate dirt again, remained silent and unmoving.
Fetch raised an arm, pointed down at her own head with a sloppy wrist. “Va Gara Attukhunt!”
She was the only one amused. The now scowling faces made it difficult to find Starling again. But there she was, still watching. Fetch moved toward her, made it almost to the edge of the ring when the elf turned. She wore Unyar garments, but the baggy breeches, voluminous shirt, and sheepskin vest could not hide her bulging middle. She was greatly pregnant, though it did not prevent her from disappearing nimbly into the crowd.
Frowning with confusion, Fetch made a clumsy pursuit. The sullen crowd parted to let her pass, but the elf was gone.
Had she remained in Strava all this time? They’d brought her; Fetch and Jackal and Oats and Crafty, brought her here from the Old Maiden. No, she hadn’t remained—Fetch’s memory was beginning to work—she’d come to the Kiln. Hells, she’d slept in Fetch’s room!
Last time she saw her, was, was…on Hearth’s back, the day Jackal was ousted from the Grey Bastards. Fetch had watched them leave from the wall, careful not to be seen.
The rest she knew only from accounts, Jackal’s and Warbler’s. Starling had been orc-raped while the Sludge Man’s captive, was carrying a half-breed. She set the Sludge Man after Fetch, telling him of her elf blood. Telling everyone, really. It was all to save the child in her belly from the bog trotter’s insane need to sacrifice an elf-orc mongrel to the marsh. Jackal had rushed to the Kiln with a warning and had not seen Starling again. Warbler traveled with her to the border of Tine land, where he claimed she convinced the point-ears to come to the Bastards’ aid against the invading thicks. After that, none knew what became of her. Fetch certainly never cared a fuck.
So, why was she careening around a bunch of Unyar tents looking for her?
Fetch shook her head, belched, and shook her head further in protest of the stink. She needed to sit. And did. Sank right down where she was. Through the ragged wall of hides next to her came the unmistakable sounds of fucking. The exclamations were foreign, but lustful moans sound the same in any tongue. They were mostly male. That usually meant a whore at work. Or a wife.
Now that she had stopped moving, the tide of spirits in Fetch’s skull rose, flooding the beach of her resolve. Unable to stand back up, unable even to sit up any longer, she lay back with a groan of defeat. Her head lolled to the side and she found she could see beneath the edge of the tent. An Unyar man was thrusting into a woman on all fours. Her head was hanging down, so was her hair, her breasts, her pregnant belly.
Starling. Fetch blinked hard and the woman focused into a wearied Unyar.
Fetch stopped watching, navigated her storm-tossed head to look up at the stars.
Shit. Fucking mare’s milk. Fucking medicine-poison.
Starling could not have been pregnant. Been enough time for her to have delivered twice over. A thought drifted into Fetch’s muzzy brain. What had the elf done with her child? Dumped it with a hoof? Fucking half-wit notion. Starling would never want another thing to do with the half-orcs. Killed it? Few other fates awaited mongrel babes. Had she done that?
The thought was sobering, intruding even upon the most desperate of escapes. Fetch blew a spattering breath through her lips. Damn.
She rolled to her front, pushed up.
And fell right back down.
FIFTEEN
SHE AWOKE TO PICKAXES fucking her skull. A hand shaking her.
Mead’s face rested at the center of a throbbing world.
“It’s time, chief. The Fangs just rode in. Zirko’s called us to meet at the Hill.”
Fetch was lying on sheepskins in the old couple’s hut with no notion how she got there.
“Right,” she croaked.
Seeing that she was now roused, Mead withdrew. Fetch nearly went back to sleep, but then the wizened faces of her hosts came into focus, both smiling with encouragement, he holding tea, she a steaming bowl.
Her head managed to leave the blankets. “That dumplings?”
Outside, the sun was an assault of hells’ cocks in her eye sockets. Mead was already astride Nyhapsáni. Sluggard stood nearby, holding his barbarian by a yanker.
“Up you get,” he said.
“Where’s my hog?”
“Being tended by the Unyar,” Mead told her. “He’s not making it easy.”
Sluggard gave his easy grin. “That pig’s ill-tempered enough when he’s not injured. So you’ll take mine to this meeting of the hoofmasters. Unless you want to be the only bootmaster?”
The bad jest made Fetch wince; the gritter knowing it was bad and saying it anyway made her smile.
“What will you ride?”
“I think it’s best if only sworn riders accompany you, chief,” Mead said.
Giving Sluggard a grateful squeeze on the shoulder, Fetch mounted. Her good mood lasted until they got moving and her head became a drum for the pounding hoofbeats.
The ride to the hill passed in an aching mirage of morning sun.
All of the other chiefs were waiting. They had brought retinues of various sizes. Some had more in an escort than the True Bastards could boast in the entire hoof. It was the most half-orc riders Fetch had seen gathered at one time. Still fighting not to see double, she did not bother with a count.
But the assembled Unyar warriors certainly outnumbered them.
A horn blared, causing Fetch to flinch.
“Fucking mare’s milk,” she muttered.
The tribesmen began to move off, surrounding the hogs on the move and sweeping them forward.
“You catch sight of Zirko?” Fetch asked Mead.
“No.”
Without another choice, the half-orcs rode among the Unyars and struck out to the northeast, moving slowly within the bounds of the village.
Fetch felt a pair of eyes on her.
Looking to her left she found a hairless mongrel riding alongside, staring with wolfish eyes and wearing little but bone fetishes and a feral grin.
“Ul’shuum tashruuk, t’huruuk.”
“Kul’huun?” Fetch realized. Hells, that milk had slowed her wits. She had not even noticed the familiar Fang in the group, a mongrel she had fought beside against an orc ul’usuun. This savage had been responsible for the gift of new barbarians after nearly all the Bastards’ mounts had been killed during the battle.
“The drink of these frails is strong,” Kul’huun told her in orcish, her discomfort clearly the cause of his smirk.
Fetch responded in the same language, respecting the Fangs of Our Fathers’ belief that human tongues weakened them. “Drink the horse’s milk and feel like it kicked you…after you gave birth to it.”
Kul’huun reached into a hide sack hanging from his saddle and produced a black, twisted hunk of something dried. He offered it over.
“Looks like a turd,” Fetch observed blandly, taking the stuff.
Kul’huun pulled his lower lip away from his teeth and gestured at the space between.
Following along, Fetch put the plug in her mouth. The juices her spit coaxed from the thing were worse than the milk. She wrinkled her mouth.
“Great…doesn’t just look like a turd.” Yet, she felt the throbbing in her skull ease, and her guts lost their sour fluttering. “Well, damn.”
Kul’huun looked pleased. “Our fathers are strong. So is their medicine.”
The thicks had no words for gratitude, so Fetch made do with a nod.
“How fare the Fangs?”
“We continue to match our strength against the full-bloods,” Kul’huun answered. “They die. We die. More of them die.”
Fetch had never been to the Fangs of Our Fathers’ lot. From what she’d heard, there was little to see. Of all the hoofs, their lands were the farthest south, placing them very near the Gut, the narrow strait separating Ul-wundulas from Dhar’gest. So close to the orcs’ only means of crossing the Deluged Sea, the Fangs found it prudent not to raise a fortress or permanent settlement. Instead, they traveled in constant patrol, sleeping rough, eating only what could be hunted. You had to be half-mad to enter such a life, one with more hardship than that endured by most free-riders. Yet, half-mad wasn’t enough, in truth. For the Fangs also held to staunch beliefs inconceivable to most mongrels. They revered the orcs, emulating them in manner and appearance, shaving all hair, using only their guttural speech. It was widely whispered they also knew something of the thicks’ blood-magic. Chewing on Kul’huun’s evil-tasting but effective cure, Fetch was becoming certain there was truth in that.
Now was not the time to ask. They had reached the flats, the Unyars increasing their pace.
Encircled by horses, it was difficult to judge the distance they rode. Several leagues, at the least, keeping to the dusty plains beyond Strava for the meat of the journey before riding up a ridge, skirting the edge until the plains below were hemmed into a canyon. The column reined up and the horsemen parted, allowing the half-orcs vantage of a wide valley. Awaiting them at the edge, framed by the lurid sky, was Zirko.
The halfling’s linen robes billowed above his sandaled feet, his hand resting on the pommel of the stout sword at his side.
His resonant voice ignored the fierce wind.
“I thank you for coming, hoofmasters.”
It was the Orc Stains’ chief who blurted the question they all wanted answered. “Why did you send for us, priest?”
Zirko was unfazed by the thrice-blood’s rudeness.
“I thought it prudent that your eyes, not my words, deliver this news, since you will trust one and not the other. Approach, chiefs, and you will know.”
Fetch, Boar Lip, Knob, and five other mongrels dismounted to get closer to the edge. Fetch again found Kul’huun on her left.
“Hells overburdened,” she said in a low tone as the nearly naked mongrel strode beside her. “You never said you led the Fangs of Our Fathers.”
Kul’huun merely gave her a bright look and scratched idly at his chest.
“What you see below is the former lot of your brother hoof, the Rutters,” Zirko proclaimed.
Curses and oaths peppered the wind as the chiefs beheld the valley.
Fetch could only stare.
Years ago, the Rutters had been all but wiped out by centaurs during a particularly vicious Betrayer Moon. They tried to recover, but Ul-wundulas had other designs. In the end, they disbanded, their few remaining brothers scattering. Some, like Polecat, found places within new hoofs. Fetch had never cared to ride through the vacant valley that had once housed the Rutters’ stronghold, but it was not the ruins of the fortress or the nearby town that caused her amazement.
Below, countless tents formed a sprawling camp. Cook fires sent up enough columns of smoke to support an army. And it was an army. Men moved through the makeshift settlement, many ahorse, retrieving their mounts from no fewer than thirty sizable paddocks. Fetch could no longer keep her teeth from grinding when her eyes at last reconciled the elephants. She had seen one years ago in a caravan of entertainers. Now she beheld ten of the great beasts below, lumbering and laboring, dragging sleds of timber and cut stone. Already, there were signs of construction, the half-orc fortress being pillaged to raise a new.
An angry noise rumbled past Boar Lip’s massive teeth. “Hispartha has taken back the hells-damned lot.”
Fetch’s jaw bulged. Damn Bermudo. He had known. It was all in that self-satisfied smile. A snarl ground up her throat and through her teeth. Her ire was not lonely. All along the ridge there was an audible rustle of agitation.
“I s
uggest we ride back to Strava,” Zirko said. “There we may hold council and decide how best to proceed.”
The little priest had a way of making his suggestions sound like commands.
“No!” Knob burst out. “I will not languish any longer at your insistence, you stunted negroid. Not while Hisparthan eunuchs raise a damn banner in the Lots!”
“Settle, Knob,” Boar Lip growled.
The thrice-blood chief turned on him. “Why? Do I offend you, Tusker? Worried I offend him?” Knob cast a huge, contemptuous arm in Zirko’s direction. “So long as I send a rider to risk himself every Betrayer, he can do nothing to me. That is the pact. The Stains have honored it. Nothing says I must stoop to lick his asshole. And if I have affronted him? What then? You fail to send a little bird to me, little priest? No warning of the Betrayer because I insult your child-high pride? Very well. The centaurs may catch us unawares, wipe us out. That’s what happened to the Rutters. Left you short one mongrel rider every time that cursed moon shows its face. And left a hole in the Lots. One which Hispartha is now claiming. This is your fault, dwarf! So fuck your pride and your birds and your god.”
“It’s not Hispartha,” another of the chiefs said evenly.
“Fuck it’s not!” Knob exclaimed.
The Shards chief shrugged with an absence of concern. He was picking beneath a fingernail with a small piece of bent iron. The kerchief tied about his head was a faded crimson, as was the embroidered sash about his waist, more color than was boasted by anyone else on the ridge. His scraper flicked at the valley. “Hispartha doesn’t arrange their camps that way.”
“And you know how?” Knob demanded.
“Because Notch used to be a scout in the king’s army,” a sour-faced, swaybacked mongrel answered, curling his lip. This could only be Pulp Ear of the Cauldron Brotherhood, though in truth it was both ears that looked to have been smashed so many times they resembled the curds served by Fetch’s Unyar hosts. His hair was greying, worn long, though it was thinning along the top.
The True Bastards Page 19
