The Grey Bastards_A Novel

by Jonathan French

Fetching shook her head. “Your brigand, fool-ass.”

  “Shit,” Jackal hissed and reached behind his saddle for the vest.

  “One of these days we’re not going to remind you,” Oats said.

  Riding side by side across the sandy flats, the three hogs surged forward, their snouts full of the smell of home.

  Every hoof in the Lot Lands had a strong place to hole up. The humans had their castile, with its high towers and resident wizard. The elves had the seclusion of Dog Fall, defended with archers and sorcery. The centaurs trusted to their crumbling shrines and the belief in their mad gods.

  The Grey Bastards had the Kiln.

  As the central chimney grew upon the horizon, Jackal felt a pleasant stirring in his chest. He took his greatest pleasure while ranging astride his hog, but if he had to be idle, there was no place he would rather be than here.

  Dominating a flat expanse of plain dotted with stubborn shrubs and boulders, the Kiln was an unsightly, sprawling compound, its buildings surrounded by a roughly oval foundation wall of pale brick. Five times the height of a half-orc, the wall sloped inward, laden with triangular buttresses and dimpled with load-bearing arches, then topped with a palisade of stone and latticed timber covered in render. From the outside, only the great chimney could be seen, rising high and imposing from the middle of the compound.

  Vineyards and olive orchards thrived within thrumshot of the walls, worked by the people living under the protection of the Grey Bastards. As Jackal, Oats, and Fetching rode through the cultivated land, they saw humans and half-orcs ending their day’s labors. None of these folk lived within the Kiln, but made the short walk to Winsome, the town that had sprouted up not a mile from the stronghold.

  “All right,” Oats said as they neared the shadow of the wall. “Who’s going to tell him?”

  “He won’t listen to me,” Fetch said.

  “Fuck you both,” Jackal griped. “You know I’m going to do it. Give me the coins.”

  Oats produced the jingling bag that held the Grey Bastards’ portion of the profits from Sancho’s brothel. He tossed it to Jackal just as they entered the Kiln’s only gate, housed along the south-facing short side of the oval.

  Unlike other fortifications, the gateway of the Kiln did not lead directly to the interior of the compound, but was blocked with stonework halfway beneath the thickness of the wall. A single sally port was set into the left wall of the gatehouse, big enough for two hog riders to enter abreast. This tunnel ran within the entire circuit of the foundation wall, before coming to another port, which debouched into the interior yard. In times of siege, the great oven in the center of the compound that gave the Kiln its name could be kindled, the flow of hellish air directed into the passage. Any attackers not wishing to scale the scorching walls would be forced to traverse the passage and complete the circuit, then break down the gate, all before they roasted alive. In its twenty-six-year history, none had ever attempted assault on the Kiln.

  At the moment, the portcullises of the sally ports were raised and the wall passage cool. There was no need for light; the hogs knew their way blind. Jackal and his companions rode single-file, hugging the left wall of the passage in case other riders were exiting. As soon as they emerged from the darkness and entered the compound, they rode directly for the meeting hall.

  Jackal reined Hearth up outside the low building and dismounted, as did Oats and Fetching. A half dozen slopheads were waiting. They practically tripped over one another hurrying to tend the hogs.

  “Can I take him to the pens for you, Jackal?” one of the young half-orcs managed, fawning and eager like all hoof hopefuls.

  “No,” Jackal replied. “Let him cool down.”

  “Just water, slophead!” Fetching barked at the youth approaching her barbarian.

  Oats leaned down in front of his hog, butting his forehead between the beast’s eyes. “All right, Ug, if one of these little shits so much as passes wind in your presence, eat them.”

  Jackal pushed through the door and led his friends into the dim embrace of the meeting hall, leaving the hopefuls outside. Despite its name, the meeting hall was a low-ceilinged structure that resembled nothing more than a rude tavern. Roundth and Hobnail were already well into their cups, waiting for the rest to arrive.

  “Fill a mug for you three?” a slophead behind the counter asked.

  Oats and Fetching went directly for the offered drink, while Jackal crossed the common room and headed straight for the hoof’s voting chamber. One of the double doors was open, so he entered without bothering to announce his presence.

  The Claymaster hunched behind the head of the great table, scrutinizing a pile of maps.

  The chief was ravaged by old wounds and the lingering effects of the plague he had caught during the Incursion. That pox had killed tens of thousands on both sides, human and orc. Half-breeds fared no better. Yet the Claymaster, tough old shit that he was, refused to die. The disease was no longer catching, but it continued to flare up within him nearly thirty years later, taking a torturous toll on his once powerful frame. The outbreaks caused his joints to swell and his skin to become rife with weeping pustules. Linen wrappings, stained with dirty yellow blotches, now covered practically his entire head, with gaps left across his eyes and mouth. The hunch of his twisted back was more pronounced with each passing year and the fingers of his left hand were so engorged they looked ready to burst.

  Jackal swallowed a groan when he saw Polecat hovering over the chief’s shoulder. They both looked up as he came into the room. The Claymaster’s face was impassive beneath his bandages, but Polecat produced a leering grin.

  “He’s back! Sancho got any new lovelies, Jack?”

  “One,” Jackal replied.

  Polecat’s eyebrows jumped with excitement. “Where’s she from?”

  “Anville.”

  “Oh,” Polecat groaned, his beady eyes narrowing. “I bet she’s pale and pliable.”

  “Get your head out of your prick!” the Claymaster said, thumping Polecat with his elbow. “Sit down, Jackal. Stop distracting this hatchet-faced fuck.”

  Jackal did as he was told, taking his usual chair two seats removed from the Claymaster’s left.

  The Grey Bastards’ council table was a coffin-shaped behemoth of darkly stained oak. The Claymaster sat at the wider end with the diagonal shoulders to his left and right always empty. The long, tapering body of the table held a score of chairs on each side, yet only nine throwing axes sat upon its surface, each representing the remaining voting members of the hoof. Jackal had never known the table to be full. The Grey Bastards had numbered sixteen when he had joined their ranks seven years ago, but orc raids, centaur attacks, and internal strife had whittled away at their numbers. Admittance to the brotherhood was strict and the amount of worthy slopheads rising to sworn members was too few to keep up with the losses.

  Grocer was already present, sitting closest to the Claymaster’s right. He nodded as Jackal sat down, but said nothing. The willowy old quartermaster was stingy with everything, including words.

  Oats entered with a frothing flagon in each hand. He sat next to Jackal and slid one of the mugs over.

  “If I’d wanted one, I would’ve gotten it,” Jackal groused halfheartedly, taking the drink just the same. He was in the midst of his first deep pull when Oats responded.

  “Seemed like a waste to pour it out after I washed my cod in it.”

  Jackal sputtered, more from laughter than alarm.

  “You rinse your balls in it too?” he asked, wiping the foam from his mouth.

  Oats grinned. “Not mine.”

  “They were mine, Jack!” Roundth proclaimed as he entered the chamber, Hobnail close behind. “I would have dipped my wick too, but you know it won’t fit. The mouth of those mugs is too narrow to handle all my—”

  “ROUNDTH!” Oat
s, Jackal, Hobnail, and Polecat joined Roundth in the old joke. The stocky mongrel loved to trumpet the origin of his hoof name and it was always worth a laugh.

  The Claymaster did not so much as grin.

  Roundth and Hobnail took their seats and made a few rude, good-natured gestures across the table at Jackal, which he returned. Like him and Oats, the pair was still dust-stained from riding.

  A few minutes later, Hoodwink drifted in, sitting silently at the far end of the table, away from the rest of the hoof. This was something the Claymaster would not allow anyone else to do, but Hood had been a free-rider for a long time and the solitary ways clung to him. The chief would not risk losing a member for the sake of forced camaraderie.

  Nearly every inch of Hoodwink’s blanched skin, including his hairless scalp, was covered in ragged scars, crisscrossing over the tattoos of the hoofs he had ridden with over the years. Pale, puckered lines marred the ink of the Skull Sowers, the Tusked Tide, and the Shards, and those were just the ones that Jackal could make out. Every one of those brotherhoods had once accepted Hoodwink into their ranks, and every one had cast him out. It was a wonder he was still alive. With none willing to take further risk on him, Hood had ridden nomad for years before the Claymaster offered him a place with the Bastards. The vote had barely passed, but the hoof needed the numbers and, whatever his offenses, Hoodwink was a formidable mongrel. After two years, Jackal was still wondering how long he would last.

  The Claymaster glanced around the table and grimaced.

  “Am I going to have to throw a stick out there?” he asked, pointing through the doors toward the common room. His question and his gaze were directed at Jackal and Oats.

  Fortunately, Fetching entered the chamber before they had to answer. She was talking with Mead, but Jackal suspected she had heard the chief’s remark. Likely, she had been waiting for it, controlling the derision since she could not stop it. Quickly breaking off their conversation, Fetch and Mead went and sat at opposite sides of the table. Likely the youngblood would have sat next to her if he thought it would not make his attraction any more obvious.

  Despite several standing bets between Jackal and Oats, Fetching had not yet broken any of Mead’s bones. Surprisingly, she seemed to enjoy his consistent attempts to be friendly. Other than Hood, who forever felt like an outsider, Mead was the only member of the hoof newer than Fetching, rising from the ranks of the slops last winter. He was young and confident and wore his hair in the fashion of the Tines, shaving it along the sides to leave only a broad strip down the center of his head, worked into plumes. The older Bastards frowned on that, but Mead spoke the elf tongue, a rare skill amongst half-orcs, and a welcome one for the hoof.

  As the room quieted, the Claymaster leaned back in his chair.

  Looming behind him, a massive tree stump stood upon its side, anchored to the ceiling with heavy chains. Its old face held uncountable rings, the wood grey with age and pitted with dozens of sharp grooves. These wounds were a permanent tally of the votes cast against the Claymaster’s will, the marks left behind from axe blades hurled deeply into the stump. One axe was lodged there still, stuck into the wood just over the Claymaster’s left shoulder as it had been the past twenty years.

  Warbler’s axe.

  “I know you’re all tired,” the Claymaster began, “so let’s make this palaver quick. Grocer, how are our stores?”

  The quartermaster’s scowl deepened as he calculated. “We’re well provisioned. Though, that next load of timber can’t get here quick enough.”

  “How long could we keep the Kiln burning if we were attacked?”

  “Two days,” Grocer answered. “Might stretch to three.”

  The Claymaster grunted, not liking the answer, but accepting the truth. “I’ll send a bird to Ignacio. Find out if he’s heard when we can expect those wagons from Hispartha. Mead? Any luck with that shit from Al-Unan?”

  “Only a little, chief,” Mead replied. “Getting it to burn is simple, but it’s damn hard to control. It doesn’t need fuel, but it will consume anything it touches. Salik almost lost a hand to the stuff.”

  “Who?” the Claymaster asked, giving Mead a chance to correct his mistake.

  “One of the slops, chief,” Mead said without flinching. “Anyway, I’m still worried about what the green fire will do to the ovens.”

  “Keep on it,” the Claymaster told him and pointed a finger, “but don’t burn down my damn fortress.” He turned his chin up, peering down to the end of the table. “Hood? You have any trouble with that errand?”

  “No, I did not,” Hoodwink answered, his unblinking eyes leaving the surface of the table long enough to address the chief.

  Jackal shot Oats a questioning look, but he didn’t seem to know what Hood had been sent to do either. That was nothing new, and the mysteries were getting tiresome. One of these days, Jackal was going to lead a vote and find out, but now was not the time. He doubted he would have the support needed and, besides, he was moments away from stirring up enough trouble for himself. He figured the chief would go to his favorites next, ask Roundth and Hobnail for their report on the Shards, but the Claymaster’s next question was directed at Oats.

  “How did we do?”

  Oats motioned to Jackal, who tossed the bag of coins onto the table. The Claymaster’s face remained impassive beneath his bandages as Grocer reached over and hefted the bag, weighing it in his palm.

  “Feels light.”

  Jackal nodded, inwardly cursing the old miser. “Two of Sancho’s girls took sick most of last month, and one ran off with some Guabic merchant. He’s brought in a new girl, though, from Anville. She will help make up for the loss.”

  The Claymaster leaned forward. “Did you remind that fat frail that if he doesn’t make good on his end, the Grey Bastards might find they can no longer patrol around his brothel?”

  Again, Jackal nodded. He had given Sancho no such reminder. There was no need. The whoremaster had lived in the Lot Lands a long time, long enough to know the dwindling cavalero patrols from the castile could no longer ensure his safety.

  “There’s something else,” the Claymaster said, not a hint of a question in his gravelly voice. The chief’s eyes flicked to Jackal, then to Oats and Fetching, then back again. “What is it?”

  Jackal took a deep breath. He had wanted to volunteer the information before the chief suspected, but the Claymaster missed nothing. Despite his increasingly crippled form, his mind remained as keen as the head of a thrumbolt. He waited on Jackal to respond, his bloodshot eyes staring fixedly from between the foul wrappings.

  “Bermudo came to the brothel this morning,” Jackal said, feeling every eye at the table settle on him. “He had seven new cavaleros with him. I don’t think he expected us to be there. Tried to act the hard man.”

  Polecat sniggered. “That snobby frail fuck.”

  “He goad a fight?” the Claymaster asked.

  “Not him,” Jackal replied. “But one of his new fops tried to make Oats his damn valet. We gave him the old Grey Bastard charm and he hit me. I gifted it to him, and gave Bermudo a chance to rein his peacock in, but he didn’t take it, so we did it for him.”

  “You killed the peacock,” the Claymaster observed without feeling.

  Jackal nodded. Polecat, Hobnail, and Roundth thumped the table with approval. That was good. Jackal felt his nerves begin to calm.

  “And,” he went on, using the growing favor, “we knocked Bermudo senseless. Made sure the other cavaleros understood the way of things in the Lots.”

  Jackal looked around the table, thankful to see Mead smiling and even Hoodwink nodding slowly down at the end.

  “What about the body?”

  Jackal turned back at the Claymaster’s question.

  “Figured on the Sludge Man.”

  The Claymaster was silent for a long while, h
is only motion the blink of his eyelids.

  “Ignacio will back us,” he said at last. “But if that prick Bermudo decides he wants some comeuppance—”

  “He won’t,” Jackal put in. “We made ourselves plain.”

  The Claymaster did not look convinced.

  “And Sancho?” Grocer asked. “What does that coin clipper want for going your way on this?”

  Jackal met the quartermaster’s stare. “Just that the Bastards start paying for quim. No more free thrusts as part of our protection bargain.”

  The bandages along the Claymaster’s jaw bulged as he grit his teeth. Polecat and Roundth issued wordless sounds of disgust. Grocer’s expression could have soured wine.

  Jackal raised a placating hand. “That arrangement had to end anyway. Some of the girls were starting to resent it.”

  The Claymaster slammed his good hand down on the desk. “The girls?! What kind of cockless maggot is Sancho that he’s worried about what a bunch of whores think? Or is that your own sympathies coming through, Jackal? I know you’re all but wed to that red-haired hussy, got her gagging for your mongrel meat. You looking to her needs instead of the interests of this hoof?”

  Jackal shook his head, opening his mouth to answer.

  “Don’t you say a fucking word!” the Claymaster warned, thrusting a distended finger outward. “You throw me a half-empty bag of coin before ensuring me it’s going to go back to proper weight, then you say some of that weight is gonna be our own shine coming back to us because we have to start paying for cunny? And we might have to start watching out for reprisals from the castile all because you three”—the finger jabbed at Jackal, Oats, and Fetching—“couldn’t keep from killing some arrogant frail so fresh from the north that he still smelled like incense from his father’s fucking manor? Which one of you actually ended him?”

  Jackal felt his teeth grinding. He heard Fetch take a breath.

  “That cavalero struck a Grey Bastard!” he said, before she could speak. “And he did it in front of a half dozen other noble brats new to the Lots. Do you want tongues to wag that a rider from this hoof can be chastised by some blue blood? Do you want the Tines hearing that? What about our brother hoofs? We cannot be cowed by Hisparthan gentry, chief.”