Fetch dove, straight from the saddle, doing little more than falling on the culprit.
Hells dammit. Culprit.
She wrapped her arms around him, dragging them both to the ground. They were destined for it anyway, dizzy as they were. Polecat had already collapsed, eyes crossed and clenching. Another rider tumbled to the earth. Hood? Snake? Fetch could not see details, her sight storm-tossed upon a sea of tears. Beneath her, Culprit began to convulse. His limbs tightened, muscles stiffening to entrap the bones. Rigid, he shook violently. Fetch tried to restrain him, but had little strength. Her limbs felt grossly heavy. Nearby, Polecat was also afflicted, frothy spittle blossoming from between his locked jaws.
Fuck all. They were dying. The Tines were killing them. She had been wrong, led them to this. Sought shelter from sorcery and were now to be slain by the same foul, unknowable shit.
Attempting to make sense of sky and earth, she pushed upward, was smote by a twisting hog, flung back down. Barbarians would not readily trample their riders, but they were in pain, confused. Balling up, Fetch weathered their flight, was kicked once in the hip, trod on, but not enough to cause much harm. When the hogs were gone, she unrolled, stood on shaky legs.
One of the others was also on his feet.
Oats, based on the size. He was rocking, a towering tree buffeted by a gale, fighting to remain aloft. He brought something up to his shoulder, aimed at the ridge. He would have one chance, their one chance. But was it a chance to save their lives, or end them?
Fetch stumbled forward, fell before she reached Oats. His leg was in reach. She snatched his ankle. Pulled. The brute should not have been so easy to budge, but the discordant assault had undermined his roots. The thrice fell with that one little tug, succumbing.
The noise reached a murderous pitch. All sense was enslaved. Fetch was cocooned in mayhem. She heard pain, felt sound, tasted light. Her violated perceptions nearly dragged her under. The void was there, the smell of it eager to consume. But Fetch floated along its surface, knowing to recoil would cause it to strike. Adrift, she waited. The noise faded, fled. Taste returned to her mouth, welcomed with the acrid flavor of bile. Moist grit was beneath her cheek, her clenched fingernails. The sound of splashing water asserted itself. Opening her eyes, Fetch saw the surface of the pool, wobbling with the falls and her own distorted vision.
Revolving her skyward eyeball, she spied the elf on the ridge. He stood, finally motionless, watching, for a long while. At last, he stepped to the froth of the falls and hopped over the edge of the crag. The height was enough to injure, even kill, but there was no hesitance in the leap. Water burst upward when the elf landed, knees bending slightly at the impact. He strode across the pool, the water reaching his mid-thigh at its deepest. Fetch watched him approach through an eye narrowed to a slit.
He wore nothing but leggings and a clout, both made from deer leather. His skin was the nut-brown of all Tines, incarnadined by the sun. His shoulders were broad, topping a powerful, hairless torso that cut down sharply to a narrow waist. Upon his head, long black hair was worn in the traditional plumage, shaved along the sides of the scalp, revealing ears gently pointed. Black paint covered half his face, from the nose up. The instruments in his hands proved to be a pair of lacquered clubs, flat along the grip, angling sharply at the wider head, where a smooth sphere of polished rock was affixed. Whispers of pale light mingled in the air around these stones and, as Fetch watched, coalesced into the spheres, shining within the center only to fade away.
Fetch closed her eye fully as the elf stepped out of the pool, drawing near. He stood there, dripping, for a time. She did not hear his footsteps when he moved again, but felt his shadow momentarily block the sun. Carefully peeking, she saw no sign of him, sensed he had walked over her. Fetch cocked her eye at Oats. He was still breathing. The elf would not have failed to notice that, but there were no sounds of his clubs striking helpless skulls.
The Bastards were alive. And the Tine wanted them that way.
Fetch thanked every god she had ever heard of and did not believe in. Her gut had been right, Mead had been right. There was a chance.
Slowly, she turned her addled head.
The elf’s back was turned. He had walked through the fallen group of half-orcs and now simply stood. A moment of stillness before a flick of his left wrist, deftly spinning the club in a single rotation, releasing a trembling, airy note that fled through the defile.
A signal.
Fetch was close enough to see a series of delicate holes carved along the length of the weapon. She might have laughed if the act did not threaten a spell of vomiting. One fucking rustskin and a pair of fluted clubs, the downfall of the True Bastards. Beneath the weight of every hell, the Claymaster was laughing. But fuck him eternally, for she had been right. Now it was time to prove it.
Fetch pushed up, every sinew rebelling against the attempt.
The elf turned.
Keen, angled eyes regarded her above prominent cheekbones. He made no move as she reached her knees and held up shaking, splayed hands. She wanted to put one foot forward, have something to spring from in case she had this wrong, but resisted the impulse.
Hoping Mead was smiling on her, she spoke.
“K…kao’lem.”
Friend.
The Tine bared his teeth in a silent snarl.
“Kao’lem,” Fetch repeated. “Mi…mi’hawa thiospa ascút…onáphit.”
My tribe desires safety.
The snarl twisted to a sneer. Either she said something wrong or her very request was worthy of scorn.
The Tine hissed something. Fetch missed most of it, but she heard “blood” and “woman.” The words mattered little. The elf’s tone dripped with disgust.
“Three of my people here now,” Fetch pressed on in elvish. “Old ones and a child. We need help.”
Movement at the mouth of the defile beyond the elf drew Fetch’s attention. A party of riders. Four more Tine warriors astride harrow stags approached the pool, fanning out, war lances lowered. Their mounts moved noiselessly, antlers shimmering with that same eerie pale light Fetch had seen imbued in the stones of the lookout’s clubs.
One of the riders stared down at Fetch, his face a blank mask behind white war paint streaked with vertical black lines, save those that ran from beneath his eyes, which were red. His black hair was shot through with silver. “This one still stands.”
Fetch mined the meaning of every word out of her aching mind. She also understood they were not addressed to her, despite the direction of the speaker’s gaze.
“She is the lya’záta,” the first warrior responded. There was one of those hate-filled words again.
The rider did look at him now. “And do you fear her, N’keesos?”
“No.”
“Show this courage.”
The Tine warrior dropped his clubs, a soft, mournful note issuing from each as they fell. Fetch tensed as the elf took two purposeful strides toward her. She wanted to get off her knees, to show these savages that she did not fear them either, to choke the disdain from this cocksure spy-hawk who defeated her brothers. All of this she wanted to do. All of this, she sensed, they wanted her to do. The Tine halted before her, eyes and lips turned down in revulsion. Quickly, his left hand rose. Fetch thought he was about to strike her, prepared for the blow, but the elf merely placed his palm forcefully across her brow, left it there for a moment before pushing away, causing her to rock back slightly.
The warrior, named N’keesos, shot a defiant stare at the older rider who’d challenged him, receiving a grim nod. Stepping away from Fetch, he went to the edge of the pool. She had to turn her head to watch him, unwilling to allow him to leave her sight. Reaching under his clout, N’keesos loosed his cock, directed it at the hand he had touched her with and pissed across the palm. When his flow ceased, he wrung the hand and squ
atted to rinse it in the water.
Rage filled Fetch’s skull with fire. This is what they thought of her, these haughty tribals? Their indignation turned her stomach, put a torch to her caution.
Fetching stood.
The lead rider glowered. “You will remain here.”
Without waiting for an answer or any sign of comprehension, he turned his stag, leading his fellow riders to the defile. In moments, they were gone. N’keesos retrieved his clubs and approached the wall of the gorge. His legs bunched and he leapt, reaching the top of the cliff in a single, incomprehensible bound. Once more upon his perch, he squatted. And watched.
Fetch cast a squinting, rueful look in his direction before getting to her feet and examining her fallen brothers. They were all unconscious, sprawled where they landed. It was a disturbing display of vulnerability Fetch would never have been able to imagine. She did not think she had ever seen Hoodwink with his eyes closed before. The rare times she had entered the bunkhouse, she had always found him risen, as if he heard her coming and refused to be seen sleeping. Picking her way through the tumble, she did her best to make the mongrels comfortable, arranging limbs, rolling some onto their backs. Oats had half fallen in the pool, and dragging him out of the water proved to be the toughest task. Fetch may not have been rendered senseless, but she could still feel the effects of those damn clubs in her weakened limbs.
Once her boys were seen to, she studied the churned hoofprints of the barbarians, found they fled to the defile the hoof had used to enter the gap. She walked to the mouth, hoping to catch a glimpse of their mounts, but a sawing note from above warned her against searching further.
So, she was to wait.
Skirting the pool, Fetch made her way to the waterfall and drank, catching the cold, pounding cascade in scooped hands. With nothing else to do, she returned to the others and sat down among them, making sure they all continued to take breaths.
The sun did not need to sink far past noon to abandon the gorge. A thin veil of shadow settled upon every rock and scrubby bush. The surface of the pool became darksome and uninviting. And still Fetch waited, watched from above by the Tine spy-hawk.
At last, there was movement in the defile the elves had used. Something heavy approached over the rocks, pushed through the brush.
A massive hog emerged, larger than Ugfuck, one that Fetch knew well.
Big Pox.
The sight of that lumbering swine still conjured feelings of revulsion. He had once served the Claymaster, pulled his chariot, but it wasn’t the loathsome former chief of the Grey Bastards the hog now bore.
It was Beryl.
The half-orc matron had changed little. Like all of them, she was thinner, and she wore deerskins in place of linen and roughspun. Her face was dismayed at the sight of the prone Bastards as she kicked Big Pox forward. Fetch stood to greet her, but was expectedly ignored. Beryl dismounted and went to her knees beside Oats, worry for her son in every motion.
“He’s alive,” Fetch told her.
It was Beryl’s turn to cast a withering look up at the Tine warrior.
“Is your prowess proved?” she yelled upward, her elvish better than Fetch’s.
The elf remained completely still.
“Fucking brave-sworn,” Beryl muttered, returning to the coarseness of Hisparthan. She finally looked at Fetching. “Why are you here, Isabet?”
Rankled at the disappointment in those words, the blatant condescension, Fetch hardened her jaw. “I need to see Warbler. You can hear all when I tell him. Unless he’s dead.”
That last was a gnawing fear, but Fetch cast it as a barb of petty vengeance.
Gently, Beryl lifted Oats’s head and rested it in her lap, stroked his brow. “He’s not dead.”
“Then why have you come and not him?”
“Riding is difficult for him now.”
They traded no more words and even fewer looks. There never was much affection between them. Any that existed vanished on the day Beryl discovered Jackal and her son were secretly helping Fetch train to be a rider. She had actually attempted to forbid Oats to continue, as if he were still a child under her roof instead of a sworn brother with his own hoof name, hog, and Bastard tattoos. Even worse, it worked. Oats had pulled away for nearly a week after his mother’s admonishment. Jackal and Fetch carried on without him, undeterred, and said nothing when the thrice sulked back to help once more. Beryl forgave him that defiance, forgave Jackal, who had always been a second son, but her indulgence never extended to Fetching.
Eventually, the True Bastards began to stir. Hoodwink was the first to fully rouse, Oats the last. The mongrels were so fuddled, none had the strength to make a jest at the sight of Oats pillowed on his mother’s legs. When the big thrice did open his eyes, saw the face above, he reached up with one huge arm and pulled it down until it touched his own.
Fetch had remained standing since Beryl’s arrival. Hoodwink got to his feet and joined her, making an effort to keep his steps steady.
“The hogs?” he asked.
It was Beryl who answered. “The Tines will round them up.”
Polecat groaned, still flat on his ass, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why did the fucking cunts attack if they meant to allow us entry?”
Beryl scoffed. “It’s their way. Show you that you pose no threat here.”
“Give me back my hog and half a chance to load my thrum and we will see about that,” Polecat said.
“Put a cock in that,” Fetch ordered. “They are showing us they are strong. We need them to be, because we aren’t, else we would not have come. Beryl, we have others waiting at the border. One is grievously wounded. All are hungry.”
“Riders have already gone out,” Beryl replied, reluctantly allowing Oats to sit up. “They knew you were coming since before you crossed into their lot.”
“The slops and little ones going to get the same welcome?” Oats asked, rubbing the back of his skull.
Beryl looked at Fetch. “Depends on how stupid your slops are.”
Fetch ignored that and addressed the hoof. “Find your balance, boys. Time to move.”
Oats helped Beryl remount Big Pox and they all followed the hog away from the pool.
The gorge narrowed once more, but soon forked, another winding spur branching off the first, which appeared to climb uphill as it continued. To the relief of every shaky leg, Beryl took the more level path. Sparsely wooded dells and sunbathed saddle gaps pocketed the run of the canyon, but the cliff walls never retreated for long. Movement drew the eye of every half-orc as they proceeded through one particularly wide stretch of canyon.
Within the rock on both sides, elves moved inside what would have been cave mouths, except the openings were perfectly triangular and arranged in tiered rows. The highest of these neared the top of the crags, a dizzying height. The lowest were still two heights of a man from the ground, with no ropes or ladders to be found. Fetch might have wondered how the elves reached these grottos if she had not witnessed the Tine warrior’s preternatural leaps. Yet, even as she made this conclusion, she spied squat huts with timber frames and earthen roofs among the wooded verges of the canyon. Many of these domiciles were flanked by gardens or nestled beside small yet flourishing groves. Dark-haired Tines, mostly women and children, but some menfolk, labored among the cultivation, bearing baskets of harvested fruit or cutting fresh rows in the soil. Fetch knew fuck-all about farming, but she knew Ul-wundulas, and the rich, dark earth the elves tended should not have existed here, especially this high in the Umbers.
None of the elves so much as looked up when the half-orcs passed through.
They traveled on, passing through a second inhabited canyon, almost identical to the first, before Beryl led them down another spur. This defile swiftly became a punishing downgrade, and was so narrow that Big Pox could not turn around if the
need arose. The path was an ankle-busting trench of treacherous stones. As they made their way down, the trench grew damp, growing into a weak trickle as a mountain spring emerged from beneath the rock. Soon, the footing upon the loose stones was further challenged by their slick surfaces. The descending trail widened near the bottom, opening up into another gap enclosed by heavy shelves of grey rock face. The spring sought the low ground, pooling in the gap, making the air humid, and feeding a dense cluster of elms and poplar, blackthorns and myrtles.
Beryl took them into the shade of the trees, guiding Pox through the scrub, though the path was well worn and discernible. The depth of the ravine and the closeness of the trees permitted little of the sun, lending the gap a gloomy appearance. A lone hut stood near the northern end, away from the boggy ground of the mountain pool and backed by the striated cliffs.
A half-orc child loitered in front of the hut, rushing over on compact, pumping legs when he caught sight of the hog and its rider, but trundled to an unsteady halt once he noticed the hoof coming up behind. Beryl dismounted and went to him, drawing him close to her side with one hand.
Wily had grown since last Fetch saw him. Mongrel children tended to be large, especially thrice-bloods. Not yet four and he already reached Beryl’s waist. From half behind her leg, he peered at the Bastards, chin slightly lowered. His entire left arm was wrapped in some kind of dark, glistening bandage. At the boy’s neck, beneath the flaps of a deer-skin tunic, a few pale pustules stood out against his ash-grey skin.
Oats took a step forward and knelt. “There’s my little bear. Remember me?”
It took a moment, but recognition dawned on Wily’s face, just ahead of a smile. Oats clapped his huge hands together and held them out, the gesture calling the child out from hiding. Wily rushed into Oats’s arms, his unwrapped hand instantly seizing the laughing brute’s beard. Oats noisily pretended to chew on the boy before launching into a series of mock hog grunts. Wily, tickled by the burrowing whiskers and vibrating animal sounds, surrendered to a rolling belly laugh that brought smiles to every witness.
The True Bastards Page 40
