“I lost a rider. A brother.”
“And she a lover. Maybe more. It’s not ours to know. Seeking her pardon makes you feel less guilt, nothing else. You were selfish, keeping others from his deathbed. Don’t be more selfish by marching into that girl’s tears and bandying for forgiveness.”
Fetch snorted a small, bitter laugh. “Hells. Is it mad that I just enjoyed being told what to do?”
“How long you been leading this bunch?”
Fetch had to think before answering. “A year and…about half another.”
“Then, no. It’s not mad. It’s relief. And you could use some, especially since you ain’t had a cock in all that time.”
Fetch was taken aback. “How did you…?”
“Please. I’m only half blind. Look at the way you walk.” Xhreka let Fetch’s mouth hang open for a moment before producing a mischievous grin. “I’m flicking your clitty, girl. Idris told me.”
“Fucking big-mouthed thrice.”
Xhreka cocked her eye down at the now-still infant. She held a finger up to Fetch before padding into the corridor, coming back a short time later, arms unburdened. The halfling came and sat down on the bench below the table, leaning back on the edge, her head now beside Fetch’s knee.
She let out a weary breath. “Hard to get those little ones down without a tit ofttimes.”
“I need to bring in a new wet nurse,” Fetch said, feeling the weight of leadership settle back onto her shoulders. “Another thing I’ve failed to do.”
“Well, don’t ask me to help you there,” Xhreka said with a chuckle, talking a little above a whisper now that the infant was tucked away. “Can’t much stand a man to lip-tug my tits, much less a babe. Make a damn meager meal for them besides.” The halfling’s neck craned around and her eye surveyed Fetching with exaggerated objection. “Unlike you, all legs and breasts, muscles and ass. Belico’s Balls, I hate you and you ain’t even kept me away from my dying man. Fetching don’t really do justice, being honest.”
Fetch tried to hold her smile, but it was forced. “Not how I got the name.”
“I know,” Xhreka said more soberly. “Idris told me that too.”
“You really should use his hoof name.”
Xhreka blew a rude noise from between her lips and waved a dismissive hand. “I do what I like.”
“You do, don’t you?” Fetching replied, peering down and giving the halfling an appraising look. “So why do this? When I offered you a place here, I did not expect to find you rocking babies to sleep.”
“Well, if you expected me to suck cock to earn my keep you will be disappointed.” Xhreka’s head tilted with a show of consideration. “Though if that hairless, pale mongrel asked…”
“Hoodwink?” Fetching asked, finding her smile returning.
Xhreka just gave a low whistle.
Finding the thought disturbing, and not because of the halfling, Fetch steered the conversation back to her original interest. “I just meant there is more work in Winsome than this place.”
Xhreka gave her a hard stare. “You think caring for children is weak.”
It was not a question.
Fetch shook her head firmly. “No, but coming from the Pit—”
Xhreka held up both hands, stopping her. She then turned her splayed palms upward and made a weighing motion. “Fighting animals in a hole while degenerates scream with enjoyment. Or. Holding, cleaning, and feeding adorable little creatures whose biggest offense is occasionally pissing on you. If that’s a hard choice for you to fathom, you have strange notions, my girl.”
Fetch gave no reply. The truth had stolen her voice.
Xhreka slapped her shin. “Oh, don’t brood. My teeth, you half-orcs are a grim bunch. There’s nothing wrong with you. Youth, perhaps, but life or death will rid you of that. Give it time. Enough years of fighting and you will find the prospect of wiping tiny asses much less demeaning. You may even wish for it. And not because you’ve a quim! Hells, it’s all Idris wants, though his dense head doesn’t really know it yet.”
That truth gave Fetch her voice back. “You’re right. There is this simple-minded boy—”
“Muro.”
Fetch marveled. “He really did tell you everything.”
“He did. And don’t think I don’t realize that’s why you offered me a place. You wanted to make it easier for him to return, not because I was needed.”
“That reason makes you needed, Xhreka.”
“Well, I’ll earn my keep. Going to help repair a roof tomorrow.”
“What happened to caring for cute little creatures?”
The halfling gave a careless shrug. “I get bored.”
Fetching took a breath, started to speak, but Xhreka stopped her with a hand.
“Don’t. I know what’s coming. You want to ask why I’m not out walking the broad back of the world, digging for Belico’s relics like the rest of my kind.”
“I was.”
“Don’t,” Xhreka repeated. “Not now. Or ever. Idris did and got the same answer. I don’t speak about that.”
“Good enough,” Fetch said, and stood up. “When you see Sweeps, tell her the True Bastards got permission from their chief for her to clean and dress Dumb Door. Can you do that?”
“I can.”
“Thank you.”
She went for the door.
“And, Fetching,” Xhreka called her attention back. “I know why you keep the name. It’s about spitting in the eye of the man that gave it to you.”
Again, the halfling spoke the truth.
TWENTY-FOUR
“WHAT IF WE DO NOT wish to leave?”
Glaucio had once been nothing but a chandler’s apprentice. Now he stood, hands resting on the table before him, speaking for the people of Winsome. He was a small, unimposing man, even for a frail, his cheeks hollow, his curly hair thinning, but he had no trouble meeting Fetching’s eyes, and there was steel in his question.
Fetching remained seated. “You don’t have a choice. None of us do.”
“I would still like an answer.”
“As would I,” Thistle said from her chair across the table to Glaucio’s right. She was the only other villager Fetch had invited to the cooper’s shop. Both her voice and gaze were frigid.
“What if you do not wish to leave,” Fetch echoed dully. “Then the two of you will have Winsome all to yourselves.”
“That’s a foolish answer,” Thistle said.
“It was a fool-ass question,” Fetch returned, looking at both humans. “The True Bastards will be escorting all those who want to live away from here. The entire hoof, slops and riders. None will remain to secure this place. Why would you want to stay, knowing that?”
Glaucio answered her question with another. “And once we are…delivered? What will you do?”
“That’s a hoof concern.”
“They will return here,” Thistle told Glaucio. “Quick as they can.”
“One day, perhaps. It’s our lot, Thistle. We have to return. It’s our home.”
The woman’s eyes flashed. “And it’s not ours?”
“Not one you need die for, no.”
“That should be our decision,” Glaucio declared.
“But it’s not,” Fetch said, letting the man hear she could put steel in words too. “The Lots belong to the mongrel hoofs. Mongrel. All frails that live here do so because we allow it.”
“To the mutual benefit of both.” Glaucio met her metal with heat.
“In the past. Not now. The Bastards cannot endure as a hoof on this land. We can no longer protect you. You must make a fresh start, somewhere safer, with less want. You get to live.”
Glaucio made a scoffing sound and paced away from the table. “If we survive the journey to wherever you intend to take us.”
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“The where is why you are in this room,” Fetch said, swallowing her agitation. “As for the journey, the hoof will protect you. In absence of walls, we will put ourselves between you and whatever may happen along the way. I want to ensure no one dies.”
“You can’t be certain none will,” Thistle said.
“I can be certain all will if you stay.”
“It’s not right, Fetching.”
“It’s as right as I can make it.”
Thistle’s eyes, permanently darkened with weariness, were unblinking. “I have children to worry about. Infants! And you are ousting them into the badlands.”
“I don’t want them to starve, Thistle.”
“Then! Fucking! Feed them!”
Thistle shot to her feet, nostrils flared, fair hair disturbed by the speed of motion. Glaucio’s head snapped around at the outburst, concern crinkling his own careworn features.
Fetch’s teeth were clenched so tight they ached.
Glaucio came over to Thistle and placed a gentle hand upon her arm. She startled, anger causing her to forget his presence. For an instant, the baleful glare shifted to him.
“Let’s sit,” Glaucio suggested.
Slowly, Thistle sat back down, her expression filled with pain. Glaucio settled on the stool next to her and regarded Fetching.
“You said we would have some say in where we are to go.”
“Some,” Fetching said, clearing her throat. “You should know that returning to the Tusked Tide is not a choice, though the Sons of Perdition might be.”
“Might?” Thistle turned the single word into an accusation.
Fetch ignored her. “If you would rather not live under another hoof’s protection, Kalbarca is being rebuilt, refortified.”
Glaucio made a disgusted noise. “So we men can be conscripted into the army? Our women made into barracks whores?”
“You would not have to remain there,” Fetch offered. “Surely, the cavaleros would escort you up the Old Imperial Road into Hispartha.”
The man across from her produced a small, morose smile. He gazed down at the table, picked idly at an imaginary splinter. “Forgive me, chief,” he said, not looking up and not sounding at all contrite, despite his words, “but do you believe that all humans are given land and coin, justice and protection, simply by returning north? Because I must tell you, half-orcs are not the only beings that scrape out a life in Ul-wundulas for the love of freedom. Hispartha is a kingdom of plenty for only a few, and that plenty is reaped from the masses. Men like my father. I was not born here in the Lots. I remember enough of Hispartha to tell you, Winsome is far from the only place a child faces death from an empty, distended belly.”
“And what of orcs?” Fetch asked, refusing to be sold her own ignorance. “What of centaurs and demon dogs that laugh when they kill? Does Hispartha have such things?”
“No,” Thistle answered. “Worse. It has pimps and child-rapers, as many among the nobles as in the gutter. It has slave markets and arenas. And the men that profit from them laugh very loudly over the misery they cause. Hispartha delights in its cruelty to the poor and the weak. Its pleasure only swells if you fight back, because there is no hope you will succeed. The Lots are cruel. But at least here the fight is welcomed. Possible.”
Thistle never spoke of her life before coming to live at Winsome. She had arrived shortly after Fetch was sworn to the Bastards, a comely, curvy woman with breasts full of milk, yet no babe on her hip. Beryl had immediately taken her on as wet nurse. She’d been serving for months before coming up to the Kiln, finally convinced by Roundth to visit his chamber. Fetch wondered if the wide-dicked mongrel had ever gotten his bedwarmer to tell her tale. If so, he kept the secret until the night an orc put a blade in his neck. Thistle was no longer plump, her lover and her milk turned to dust. But that hard-earned resolve from a life before Winsome, which had ever kept her back straight, was still firmly in place.
Fetch had come to respect her. That was the reason she had invited her to these talks, the reason she was now weathering the passionate, fierce stare of defiance and disappointment.
“Then not Kalbarca,” Fetch conceded. “If Ul-wundulas is where you want to stay, your only choice is another hoof.”
It was doubtful the Skull Sowers would welcome new arrivals. Tomb, their chief, had expressed strong notions at Strava about the scarcity of resources in the Lots. The Orc Stains’ lands were nearest, but Fetch would not willingly offer her people up to Knob’s control. He would likely abuse them for his own amusement, if he did not flat refuse them out of spite. That left only three choices.
“The Shards, Sons, or the Cauldron Brotherhood,” Fetch informed the humans. “I would encourage the Sons. Their fortress sits near the coast. So long as there are fish in the Deluged, they won’t go hungry.”
Such an endorsement would not come without a price. Father would likely use the acceptance of Winsome’s people to make another attempt at absorbing the Bastards. On his own lot, in his own stronghold, he would be bolder. Fetch would have to get her hoof away quickly if she did not want to lose every slop to the Sons. Possibly a few sworn brothers. Still, it remained the best choice, and she would take the risk. The people here deserved nothing less.
Glaucio rose. “I must speak with some of the others. When do you need an answer?”
“Yesterday,” Fetch told him, hating the necessity of such callousness. “If you do not decide on a different destination by tonight, then we leave for Mongrel’s Cradle. Either way, all should make preparations now. They have today to gather what they own.”
There was no point in expressing a need to travel light. This was the second time Winsome’s folk had been forced to flee, and the span between had not been kind. They owned little.
Glaucio took his leave, but Thistle lingered a moment longer.
“You should have left us with the Tusked Tide,” she said, head shaking with resignation. Standing, the woman left the room.
Fetch remained still. It had not been her decision alone back then, she had not yet been chief. The Grey Bastards voted in common that day. Oats wanted Beryl to come home, Polecat wanted Cissy and Sweeps. They were all in a rush to return to the way things were, blind to the fact that those days would never return. All in a rush, save Jackal and Warbler, both reluctant for their own reasons. And that was the reason Fetch herself had pressed the issue, been the first to vote in favor of the people coming back. She had thought Jackal was to become chief, with her and Oats and Warbler in his ear, at his side. A driving need to give him something to lead had raised her voice and her hand. Would she still have done so if she knew the truth? That Jackal had no intention of leading? That he and Warbler both were planning on leaving, handing her mastery of a broken hoof, newly saddled with bedraggled villagers? There were none among Winsome’s folk she needed. No mother. No lover. What she cared about was the hoof, her brothers, and the mongrel she betrayed to save. The one who abandoned them, abandoned her, to chase down the mistakes he made in his bid for leadership. The leadership that was now hers!
Crying out with a fury, Fetching stood and flipped the table over.
She did not bother to right it before leaving the workshop.
The Bastards were already deep in their own preparations for the journey. This time, none had voted against the decision. She checked in with each of her riders, making sure all efforts would guarantee their readiness to depart. Every hog was to have a rider, the older slops being given mounts to aid with the scouting. There were four wagons in town, but only draft oxen to pull one. The rest would need to be hitched to mules. One of the wagons was reserved for the orphans, the rest for what food remained in town. All else would have to be borne by the walking.
Closeted away in her solar, Fetch obsessed over the one crude map the Bastards possessed of Ul-wundulas. Glaucio had come to her chambers hour
s ago, confirming the Sons’ lot as the villagers’ preference. If they were fortunate, the trek there could be completed inside a fortnight.
The food would hold. The frequent rains would have swollen the rivers and ephemeral streams, but they would be crossing the Skull Sowers’ lot, which was the driest in all the badlands. Hogs, riders, children, villagers, all told it was nearly two hundred tongues that would need to be wetted daily. Thankfully, they had one of the most talented water sniffers in the Lots sworn to the hoof, though it also meant Hoodwink would be away from the main body most of the time. In her planning, Fetch kept relying on Dumb Door to act as return runner, gnashing her teeth when her weary brain remembered he was gone. None knew the Lots like seasoned nomads, and Door, like Hood, had spent years as a free-rider before joining the Bastards. Fuck Marrow for showing his hog’s tail just when he would have been most useful.
The biggest hardship would come near journey’s end. Most of the southern coast of Ul-wundulas was bulwarked with mountains, and Mongrel’s Cradle lay behind the Hoar Tops, a confined, yet towering range that was named for the visible caps of snow ever upon the peaks. Of course, half-orc crudity demanded they were referred to as simply the Whores. Even Hoodwink wasn’t familiar with the safest passes. The most forgiving would be impossible for the wagons and grueling for the frails. Fetch had sent a bird to Father, but if the coot was holding a grudge and didn’t have riders on the lookout for their arrival, the Whores could prove a lethal obstacle.
Fetch found she could barely see the map.
Standing, she went out on her balcony. Night had claimed the village while she obsessed over the scrawls of mountains and rivers. Winsome was already a graveyard, its people spending their last night in their homes. They would not be sleeping indoors again for some time. It was a damnably pleasant night, with a breeze that chased the heat without bringing chill to the air. The moon was little more than a sliver, leaving the stars dominion over the sky. Hells, it was just enough calm and beauty to make Fetch want to annul the order to leave.
She stood for a long while, watching the slops walk the palisade. Mead came and oversaw the watch change on his way to the gate. Culprit emerged from the dormitory and headed for the stables, likely to check his tack for the fourth time. Polecat crept down the street, but the tanner’s widow must have denied him, for he returned much too soon wearing a scowl. It was only when Oats’s bulk appeared on the palisade to manage another watch rotation that Fetch realized she had been standing there half the night. The prospect of sleep was made into a gnawing dread by the task looming in the coming morning.
The True Bastards Page 32
