The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  “Point-ears can regrow my stones? Truly, they are a magical people. Think they will make me choose between my nut-basket and my hair? Because that will be a tough choice. I had wonderful hair.” The laughter continued until the expulsions of mirth became the shamed exhalations of sobbing. “Perhaps you should leave me here. Give me a knife. I’ll finish…finish what those thrice savages started.”

  Fetch stood there for a moment, frozen, watching the gritter weep.

  Fuck that.

  She reached over the sideboard, placed a hand on his face. The touch caused him to look up, ashamed. Damning all helplessness, she climbed carefully into the wagon, settled beside Sluggard, and coaxed his head into her arms. This morning she awoke from a horrid nightmare. Sluggard just awoke inside one. She held him as he surrendered to the pain, the loss. Those she could not begin to fathom, but she knew something of the fear he was feeling. Fear of what was to come in a life chosen yet far from designed.

  There was a cost to existence among the hoofs, a price of blood and body, and rarely was there a chance to deny payment. It was wrested from you, snatched by greedy hands, gnashed by ravenous teeth, never sated. Ul-wundulas would demand more of Sluggard, would demand more of her, in the days to come. They would be forced to offer up more sacrifices in order to survive. There was a small, yet potent, power in that knowledge. Fetch was a rider because of it, was chief because of it, was alive because of it. The Lot Lands shaped you, and often its molding hands were cruel. But any form that survived its touch was one better suited to endure its next caress, next crushing fist. It mattered not at all that you might not enjoy what you became. What mattered was that you lived. Sluggard would no longer be comely. Would no longer be a celebrated lover. He came to the Lots and now they had trapped him. But he was not ready for such unkind truths. For now, let him mourn for what was taken.

  Fetch knew the importance of that too.

  * * *

  —

  THE MORNING DAWNED HOT, reflecting the temperament of the villagers. A stubborn group of several dozen lingered around the wainwright’s wagon when the order came to march. Glaucio was among them.

  “Not certain we want to continue this way,” the balding man said, hardening his voice, though the mettle did not quite adhere to his face.

  “I am certain,” Fetch replied, facing the dissenting group. She could feel the rest of the caravan watching, heard Oats’s heavy footfalls approach and halt at her back. “Just a few days more and we will be safe.”

  Glaucio began to falter under the steel mask she wore, but the wainwright spoke up. He was an older, crook-nosed cuss from Anville, had seen a little of the world and much of Ul-wundulas, a rustic to the marrow.

  “Elves don’t suffer trespassers! Those rustskin savages will ride us down, lance us, and leave us for the vultures if we set foot on their land.”

  “We have permission, Guarin,” Fetch lied. “The Tines will shelter you.”

  Glaucio again found his voice. “So would the castile. Be better for us there, among the cavaleros.”

  This drew grunts of support and agreement from the group.

  Fetch looked to Glaucio. “What happened to fearing conscription? Not wanting your wives turned into barracks whores?” The small man could only cast his eyes to the dirt. Fetch pointed to the northwest, lifted her voice to the group. “The castile lies that way. Nearly a fortnight on foot. A long trek. And not a safe one. Now, let’s have no more of this. We are wasting daylight.”

  Guarin spat her words back. “Not safe? Where were we safe? Not Winsome! We aren’t safe now. Never will be so long as we are with you!”

  The folk behind him were emboldened by his daring. Fetch could see heads nodding as the agreements became more than grunts.

  “You’re right,” she said. “There’s nowhere safe. But you, your children, are better off with the hoof than without it.”

  “That ain’t so!”

  Fetch turned at the sound of a woman’s voice. She wasn’t with the wainwright’s group, but stood near the hoof’s wagon. It was the tanner’s widow.

  Polecat was already up on the driver’s bench. He stared down at his lover, a bit bewildered. “Estefania…what are you doing?”

  The woman covered her fear with a frantic ferocity. “It’s the hoof that’s done this to us!”

  “Fania!” Polecat barked. He didn’t look angry so much as panicked.

  Shit. Fetch realized, too late, what Cat must have confided.

  He leaned down from the wagon bench, tried to pull her away, but the woman shrugged free and stepped out of his reach. Estefania’s face was drawn, nearly skeletal, crazed eyes and flashing teeth looking overlarge as she thrust a finger at Fetching.

  “The devil-dogs only come when she’s near! That’s why she’s gambling our lives on the point-ears! Think they have some kind of sorcery that will save her!”

  Polecat was cursing, rising from the wagon seat, trying to get down, to stop his bedwarmer’s tirade, but was hindered by his wounded leg.

  “Sit still, Cat,” Fetch said, raising a calm hand. The hatchet-faced mongrel stilled, but did not sit.

  Fetch looked away from the widow, swept the dissenters as she spoke.

  “There is not a danger a hoof weathers that is not shared by its folk. That’s the way of the Lots. You know that. Betrayer Moons, orc raids, famine, drought. We can’t survive them without you, you die without us. These dogs are no different. This is a fucking terrible foe we are trying to outrun and Dog Fall is our only chance. I can’t make you believe that. I also can’t let you throw your lives away. The hoof is going north. You are all coming with us and that’s the end of it.”

  But Guarin wasn’t done. “I never swore no oath to the Bastards. Don’t have to hold to some fucking code. I can go where I like.”

  Temper threatening to slip its tether, Fetch took a deep breath. “Go your way, then. I hope you make it.”

  “We have your leave, then?” Estefania asked, a triumphant, timorous smile playing across her face. She walked a few paces to approach a mounted slophead, sitting his hog close by. Purposefully close.

  Petro.

  Fetch cursed herself for a fucking fool. And cursed the widow for being a conniving cunt. Touro had warned her, told her to check. If she had just thrown back the blanket, looked to see who was beneath, she could have prevented this.

  “Petro,” Fetch warned, “don’t.”

  The slophead blanched, lips tight with apprehension, but Estefania swung herself up behind him, hands slipping around to clasp his middle. That possessive touch steeled Petro.

  “He’s not sworn,” the woman gloated over his shoulder. “Nothing in hoof code prevents a hopeful from leaving.”

  “So long as he knows he better never come back,” Oats growled.

  “Why would he?” Estefania spat back. “There are other hoofs, none as cursed. They should all abandon you.”

  “Hells damn you, woman,” Polecat breathed.

  Estefania looked at him, at last, and Fetch was surprised to see true regret. “I’d have asked you to come, Cat, if I thought you would ever leave.” She stretched up in the saddle, looked at the ogling villagers. “You should all join us. There is nothing for you here.”

  Fetch ignored the reactions of the frails. Her eyes were on the other slopheads. Most were looking back at her, a few on Petro, some seemed tempted, all were afraid.

  “Make your choice,” she told them. “There will be no vengeance taken on those that leave. But know, only your lives are yours to take. All else belongs to the hoof. Any that try to ride out on hogback will be shot down.”

  The sounds of locking stockbows clicked at her back as the True Bastards loaded. Keeping her own hands empty, Fetching slowly approached Petro. The now tremulous slop watched her come, sweat shining on his upper lip.

  �
�She wouldn’t,” Estefania hissed in his ear.

  Neglecting to look at her, Fetch stopped beside the hog and delivered her own whispered words to Petro. “Dismount and get gone. Your choice is made.” She saw his hand tighten on the hog’s mane. “I hope you try it. The bolt that kills you will be mine.”

  Looking sick, Petro swung a leg over the hog’s head and hopped down. Unslinging the thrum across his back and unbuckling his sword belt, he let the weapons fall to the dirt.

  Fetch reached up, grabbed the tanner’s widow by the arm and hauled her off the barbarian’s back. The woman cursed and struggled, but Fetch leaned close to her ear.

  “Keep it up and I will give you to Polecat. He’s lost two lots. Two women. Got shit for luck, that mongrel. Reckon he’s ready for a reckoning.”

  Estefania stilled. Fetch thrust her roughly at Petro. The slophead recoiled as if a scorpion had been tossed at him.

  Fetch pointed northwest. “Go.”

  They moved off, backward at first, fearing bolts in the back. After a few steps, they spun and hurried away.

  “Any that are going to go with them, go now,” Fetch called out, keeping her gaze on the retreating pair who started this. She heard the villagers begin to move.

  “This team is mine,” Guarin said, climbing aboard his wagon. “I’m taking it. Shoot me for it and be damned.”

  Fetch let him go. Guarin goaded his mules west, many more following in their dust. Families went entire. Two more slopheads, Uidal and Bastião, had dropped their weapons and joined the crowd.

  Fetch watched the backs, counted. Of the one hundred twenty-two people under the hoof’s protection, only forty-one decided they were safer staying with the hoof. Glaucio found the stones to look her in the eye as he went by.

  “I hope you make it,” Fetch told him.

  And meant it.

  TWENTY-NINE

  THE UMBER MOUNTAINS had ever been a mute warning in the Lot Lands. They were a distant threat, a clenched and readied fist.

  “Always makes me think of that old tale with the snake-hair lady,” Oats said, when the brown peaks emerged from the diffused light of the horizon.

  Fetch, Shed Snake, and Culprit all hummed or nodded in agreement.

  “The fuck you on about?” Polecat asked.

  Hoodwink, too, lifted what should have been an eyebrow, but on the hairless mongrel was nothing but a ridge of linen-colored skin. The cowl that contributed to his namesake was pulled up against the beating sun, protecting his fair flesh.

  From atop Ugfuck, Oats looked from one querying brother to the other. “You two don’t know that story? From ancient Al-Unan, right, Fetch?”

  Her answer was a shrug.

  Undaunted, Oats explained to Hood and Polecat. “She was this demon-goddess on an island, worse-looking than Ugfuck—”

  “See,” Shed Snake put in, “a legend.”

  “Don’t listen,” Oats told his hog with a comforting rub before returning to the story. “She had tusks and a goat’s hide, scales. And snakes instead of hair. If you looked at her too long, you turned to salt. Killed a fucking heap of warriors that way if they came too close. That’s what I always think about, when I see the Umbers. Look at them too long, get too close…”

  “Would you, then?” Polecat needled. “ ’Cause we haven’t eaten properly in months and the mound of salted meat you’d make would be a fucking feast.”

  That drew a round of low laughter, the first heard in a long while.

  The sworn brethren had ridden ahead when what was left of the caravan neared the Tine border, leaving the wagon in the care of the slops. Polecat had insisted on coming, and Fetch allowed him, feeling the need for all the Bastards to ride together. They were taking a risk, coming here. If they were to die for their trespass, better to die as a hoof. The slops had orders to wait until the following morning. If the Bastards were not back by then, they were to risk taking the orphans and remaining families within sight of the castile.

  “What was the name of that she-monster?” Fetch asked, grinning a bit at the memory of those nightly stories in the orphanage.

  “The gargós,” Culprit replied fondly.

  Shed Snake nodded. “That’s right. And it was Al-Unan, the island of Kisthedon. Mead told me that part. Always knew every damn detail. He didn’t even come up with us in the orphanage, but he knew that story, more of it than I’d ever heard. Swear he must have invented some of it just to seem smarter.”

  The mention of their fallen brother brought a ripple of sorrow over the hoof, but there were fond smiles in the silence.

  “Well,” Oats huffed, “should we see how close we can get before we die?”

  In response, Fetch kicked Womb Broom forward.

  The southern border of Tine land was marked by nothing more than a thin tributary of the Guadal-kabir. The waters meandered through Ul-wundulas, often vanishing underground, eventually swelling to the mighty expanse that flowed past Kalbarca, many miles to the west.

  As the Bastard barbarians trotted through the stream, hardly more than a rivulet, Fetch was struck by the weight of defying such an ephemeral barrier. She half expected to be struck down the moment Womb’s hooves touched the opposite side. As one, the Bastards drew their hogs to a stop, waiting. They were trespassers from this moment onward.

  The warm winds played in their hair, the manes of the hogs. Hoodwink’s cowl crushed and filled in turns, and Oats’s beard became a pennant at the end of his chin.

  None of them had ever set foot here.

  “Go slow,” Fetch said. “Thrums slung.”

  With that she led the True Bastards forward across a flat, heat-baked plain so akin to much of Ul-wundulas, yet pregnant with an elusive unfamiliarity. The scattered boulders, the swaths of garrigue, all seen and traversed across countless patrols in identical surrounds, but Fetch felt as if she were a stranger.

  Every mongrel kept watch for rustskin scouts, but found nothing. It was said that if you ever saw a Tine warrior, it was the work of heat-sickness. Hard to imagine anything sneaking unnoticed in the nearly flat expanse, save perhaps a dun-hued serpent. That impression changed when they reached the foothills.

  As the scrub grew thicker, proper trees began to encroach. Oaks of cork and holm gated the rising land. Slowly, warily, the hoof moved deeper into the embrace of the wooded hills. Shadow and slope took turns dismissing the sun.

  Now in the shade, Hoodwink pulled his cowl away, dead eyes coming alive with a hunter’s vigilance. The tilt of his head showed he heard something.

  Crashing movement to the left jerked the hoof’s attention to the hemming brush. A trio of roe deer burst forth and away. More than one hand went to the stirrup of a thrum, but Fetch hissed, held out her arms, stopping her brothers from unslinging their weapons. Tempting as the meat was, she could not risk the ire of the Tines by poaching their game.

  “Breathe easy,” Fetch reminded her brothers. She caught Oats’s eye and saw a mote of doubt forming. Flicking her chin, she directed him to keep an eye on Culprit, distracting the thrice from his own misgivings. The younger rider was moon-eyed and twitchy, clearly spooked. Oats reached over and touched Culprit’s wrist, stopping the hand that was drifting to his tulwar. With a sheepish sigh, Culprit returned the hand to his hog’s mane and gave a nod of assurance.

  Ahead, they could see the hills were conquered by high crags, poplar groves yielding to rock faces. They were about to leave the wooded confines of the foothills and enter a canyon. Fetch held up three fingers, quickly reduced them to two, and pointed forward. The hoof went from riding abreast to a triple column, two riders deep. Fetch, Oats, and Polecat were in the lead, with Culprit, Hood, and Shed Snake following.

  “I don’t love this,” Polecat muttered low in his throat, glancing up at the natural walls creeping higher, eating away more and more of the sky.

 
; They rode into the defile.

  A low trilling groaned through the canyon. It was not the sound of bird or beast, but a hollow undulation, swelling and receding in haunting rhythms.

  “The fuck is that?” Shed Snake complained.

  “Talking,” Hoodwink answered.

  Polecat threw a look back. “Talking?”

  “It’s the Tines,” Fetch agreed. She had never heard the queer sound before, but Hood was right, the elves were creating it somehow, using it to speak to one another. The canyon was a natural channel, carrying the quavering hum in a living current.

  Answering roars followed, the rock walls imbued with the vibrations.

  Just when it seemed the sounds would die, they revitalized, clawing up from a dying echo to again fill the canyon with a grinding din. The hogs were shying at the noise, their squeals of aggravation drowned out. Fetch had to kick Womb hard to get the pig moving, and her hoof was having equal difficulty.

  Oats leaned in, nearly yelling in her ear in order to be heard. “Think they are warning us off?”

  Fetch could only shake her head. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. They had come this far. Forward was the only choice. If the Tines wanted them gone, they were going to have to tell her in plain speech or bald threat.

  Committed, she led the Bastards on.

  The canyon widened some, accommodating a sizable pool fed from a waterfall rolling over the western crag. To the right of the falls, the defile narrowed once more. Movement drew the hoof’s attention up to the ridge.

  There, between the falls and the canyon mouth, a lone elf stood, arms whirling in furiously graceful patterns, spinning an object in each hand, too fast to see, producing the sawing groans.

  Fetch signaled the hoof to halt near the edge of the pool. Slowly, she held her hands up at the ends of wide-flung arms. Her brothers did the same. The elf’s feverish gesticulations went on, unabated. The noise from the implements in his hands was growing. Fetch could feel it burrowing into her chest, making her heart flutter. The hogs were bucking now, almost berserk. The canyon began to spin, the damn sound ass-fucking Fetch’s balance. Reeling, she saw one of her riders fumbling to load his thrum, couldn’t tell who. Didn’t matter. She yelled a command to stop, but her voice was useless in the rattling canyon.