The Grey Bastards_A Novel

by Jonathan French

  “I thought you were Fetch,” he said, too weary to do anything but bluntly state his surprise.

  He could sense the smile in the wizard’s silhouette, hear it in his voice. “Would she truly be so quick to forgive?”

  Shrugging, Jackal turned back to the river. “Why not? I am. She kicked me in the nut-basket, but do you see me holding a grudge?”

  Crafty came and stood beside him. “Ah, yes. But you are both comfortable with violence, with physical pain. Today, friend Jackal, you launched an unfamiliar assault.”

  Jackal wished the wizard’s words had left him confused. Instead, he found them all too clear.

  “Shouldn’t you be watching over our wayward elf?” he asked sharply. “See that Fetch’s comfort with violence doesn’t make an appearance?”

  “And what do you suppose I could do if it did?” Crafty asked, a hint of sad amusement in his strange accent. “Kill Fetching for defying me? That would only make an enemy of you and the thrice-blood. Who gains from this? Not I. Not you.”

  “Then stop her without killing her,” Jackal replied with little feeling.

  Crafty laughed at him. “Because I am so potent a sorcerer that anything is within my power? There is so little you understand, friend Jackal. No, it is with sorrow that I must admit, the elf’s life is a feather when weighed against the trust of your hoof. I must trust to your female friend’s forbearance and her acceptance of the truths you used to wound her.”

  Jackal was feeling annoyed. And naked. It was difficult to find an advantage debating with a man when you sat at his feet without a stitch.

  “Why do we matter to you?” he demanded. “The Grey Bastards. Why did you come to us? Why did you come with me into the marsh?”

  Crafty eased himself down on the rock. His face and hands were completely clean, though Jackal had not seen him bathe. The wizard took a deep, satisfied breath and stared out across the river.

  “Ul-wundulas truly is a marvelous country. And only you can guide me through it.”

  “There are seven other half-orc hoofs in the Lot Lands,” Jackal told him. “Any one of them would have taken you in.”

  “None but the Grey Bastards would do.”

  Crafty said this whimsically, but something in the set of his jaw and the way he watched the water announced he would not discuss the matter further.

  “I might have made you an enemy today,” Jackal said after a long silence. “Fetching, I mean.”

  “The world is her enemy,” Crafty replied, still facing the Alhundra. “It must be or she could not be who she is.”

  “And who do you think she is?” Jackal asked, knowing he sounded absurdly protective.

  A languid smile appeared on Crafty’s face as he turned.

  “Someone capable of terrible greatness.”

  Jackal grunted. Crafty was not wrong.

  “I am curious,” the wizard ventured, “how she came to be counted amongst your brotherhood. It is rare, yes? For a woman to join a hoof?”

  “It is impossible,” Jackal said. “But she did it. Well…the three of us did.”

  “There is a tale there.”

  Jackal twisted his mouth. “Not much of one. It only takes two sworn brothers to propose another for inclusion in the hoof. Serving as a slophead helps, but isn’t required. After that, it’s a matter of votes. Oats and I put Fetching forward a few years back. She got the votes. That’s it. She was worthy and earned her place.”

  “I am thinking that was because you trained her,” Crafty said lightly.

  Hells, this wizard didn’t miss anything. Jackal peered at him sidelong for a moment. Crafty wore a patient, careless grin.

  “Yes,” Jackal admitted. “Though it was her idea, in a way. Oats and I just continued what another started…what Fetch could not let go of.” He did not much feel like storytelling, but found himself talking all the same. Guilt guided his tongue, as if relating Fetch’s accomplishments could somehow pardon him for his harsh words to her.

  “There used to be an old thrice-blood in the Bastards. Warbler. He was a veteran of the Incursion, helped found the hoof, and was the Claymaster’s most trusted rider. Oats’s mother, Beryl, was his bedwarmer, though it is more truthful to say that he was hers. When he wasn’t on patrol or doing something for the chief, Warbler was at the orphanage. Closest thing to a father any of us had. We called him War-boar, because his name was hard for the little ones to say. Of course, he doted on Oats, him being a thrice and Beryl’s son. But you couldn’t separate Oats from me and Fetch, not that Warbler wanted to. He taught us little things, more as we got older, about caring for hogs and weapons, about the hoof and the ways of thicks, their language. We were young, but he was grooming us to be Bastards. Two of us, at least.

  “We were eight, maybe nine years old when he challenged the Claymaster for the chief’s seat. Never really knew why, but he threw his axe. Others joined him, but not enough. The challenge failed. The Bastards who supported his bid retrieved their axes and begged the Claymaster’s forgiveness. But not Warbler. As the instigator of the challenge he had to stand before the stump and allow the chief to throw an axe of his own. That’s our code. The Claymaster showed mercy. I guess for the years he and Warbler had shared during the war, he allowed him to go nomad.

  “Life continued without him, more or less the same for a few years. Until the day Oats and I walked to the Kiln to become slopheads, leaving Fetch behind in Winsome. She ran off that night. Beryl had to beg the Claymaster to send riders to look for her. They found her within a day. Oats and I got to see her. She told us she was going to find Warbler, so he could finish teaching her how to be a rider. Even then she was stiff-necked and we knew she would do as she said. So, Oats and I promised to teach her all we learned, to keep her from leaving. That was the only reason, just to keep her safe. I don’t think either of us really meant it at the time, but what else could we do? Beryl may have suffered another run, but the chief wouldn’t. No one was going to search if Fetch left a second time.

  “It was nearly impossible those first years. Oats and I were all but fettered to the Kiln, but Fetch was patient.” Jackal let out a small laugh. “Hard to imagine that now. Anyway, life wasn’t the same without her. We both felt it, me and Oats, so what started out as an empty oath became a true purpose. We wanted her with us in the hoof. It was easier once we were sworn brothers. Fetch had not been idle during our time as slops and was a better aim with a thrum than either of us. But she couldn’t keep a hog hidden in the thatching the way she did a stockbow, so her riding was poor. We were sneaking her out on patrols with us within a month of becoming Bastards. What took us nearly eight years to learn, she mastered in less than three. When it was time, Oats and I made our case for her. There were a few more members then and we had made friends. We won the vote and earned the chief’s ire, but that didn’t matter. We were whole again.”

  As if summoned, Fetch appeared on the bank, helping the Tine girl out of the water, both dripping. The delicate, rust-brown limbs of the elf girl contrasted sharply next to Fetch’s green frame of curves and muscle. Quickly, they walked to the fig grove, where Fetching began rummaging in her saddlebags for dry clothes.

  “She is beautiful,” Jackal said, watching her. The women were far enough away for him to look without too much shame. Besides, he was nude. Surely that made his scrutiny less an intrusion.

  Crafty followed his gaze and nodded once before looking back to the river.

  With some effort, Jackal followed the wizard’s example.

  “But that is not the reason for her hoof name,” he continued. “When she was voted into the Bastards, the Claymaster said that women were only good for two things. Fucking…”

  “And fetching,” Crafty finished blandly. He reached over and began unwrapping Jackal’s soggy splint. When he spoke again, his tone was sympathetic. “And today you reminded h
er of that.”

  “No,” Jackal replied, his mouth wrinkling with borrowed bitterness. “She’s never forgotten it.”

  Chapter 10

  Jackal was thankful Delia’s room was on the ground floor of the brothel. He did not relish the thought of a climb with a shattered arm. The injury continued to pain him greatly and the chills of a fever had begun to plague him in intervals. Crouching in the shadows below the window, he listened to the sounds of Delia entertaining two of Bermudo’s soldiers, gritting his teeth as the grunts and groans of the frails intensified. Delia’s own feigned moans of pleasure were muffled. Jackal tried not to think about what was occupying her mouth. Somewhere behind him, on the night-shrouded hill of boulders and scrub, Fetch was no doubt smiling wolfishly. Let her mock, long as she covered his damn back!

  The moon was high by the time the heavy breathing subsided, replaced by the tense stillness of a room filled with slumbering occupants. Delia always waited for her humps to fall asleep before quietly removing herself to wash. She had done that with Jackal, in the early days, when he was still nothing but a mongrel paying for quim. But he had not felt her rise after coupling for nearly five years. He was more now than a sticky stink that needed to be scrubbed away at the first opportunity. That was the reason he had come to her window first, instead of creeping directly to Sancho’s chambers and demanding answers with a knife under the slovenly whoremaster’s chins.

  Easing himself up, Jackal peered through the broken window slats and waited for the familiar shadow to detach itself from the crowded bed. As soon as Delia’s silhouette appeared, he hissed sharply. There was little danger of waking the soldiers. Sancho’s girls knew how to drain a man.

  Jackal watched as Delia paused. She had heard. She left the room noiselessly, and Jackal crouched back down before hurrying along the brothel wall, making for the fence that enclosed the exterior bathhouse. There was no door from the outside, so Jackal waited until two soft knocks sounded on the far side of the wood before jumping up and grabbing the top of the fence with his good hand. Pulling upward, he hooked a knee over the posts and leveraged himself over. His splinted arm made the drop awkward and Delia was at his side before he could straighten.

  “You’re hurt,” she whispered.

  “Not much,” Jackal lied, sweeping the wet gloom of the small courtyard for signs of others.

  “None are about,” Delia assured him. “This way.”

  She led him toward the low, rough-hewn timber building that Sancho had built for the girls and his patrons. Jackal found the bathhouse revolting, preferring the purity of a moving river over the stagnant soup contained in the half dozen tubs.

  “Be like soaking in ball sweat,” Jackal muttered, half to himself, as Delia directed him toward a bench.

  “We fetch fresh water from the well, you oaf.”

  Jackal sat and stared at the nearest tub, making a face. “Still…”

  Delia slipped out of her thin robe and poured water from a pitcher into a nearby basin. Taking up a rag, she ducked behind a wicker screen. Her voice drifted quietly from beyond the partition.

  “So, why the skulking visit?”

  Jackal did not respond immediately. He kept his eyes fixed on the entryway to the baths, his ears open for sounds of approach. Delia’s ablutions were swift and she stepped from behind the screen, her red hair black with water. Jackal’s mind conjured an unbidden image of Fetching and the Tine girl coming from the river, comparing Delia’s beauty to theirs. He hated to admit it, but the human whore came up woefully short.

  Though still in her twenties, a hard life of professional debauchery had taken its toll. The flesh of Delia’s face showed subtle wrinkles at the mouth and brow, her breasts and belly just beginning to fall. Somehow she appeared both soft and underfed. Yet for all the imperfections dredged to the surface by unfair measure against Fetch and the she-elf, Jackal still felt his blood quicken at the sight of her familiar body.

  He dipped his head so that she would not see the flare of lust, but was not quick enough.

  “Is that all?” Delia teased. “A quick thrust to ease the pain of your injury that is ‘not much’?”

  She approached and swung a leg over the bench, placing her weight on his lap before bringing the other leg around. Straddling him, her wet hair tickling coldly against his nose, Delia lifted his chin with a finger.

  “I wondered how long the cavalry would keep you out,” she whispered. She must have chewed a sprig of mint, for her breath cooled the inch of air between them.

  “And how long does Captain Bermudo plan on billeting his troops here?” Jackal managed to ask through his growing desire.

  She flicked her tongue at the tip of his nose.

  “Until the purse on their belts, or the one between their legs, has run dry.”

  Jackal wrapped his bandaged arm around the small of Delia’s back and pressed her close, ignoring the painful pressure in his bones. With his good hand he pushed the wet locks away from her face then seized her lower jaw roughly, causing her to grin.

  “Dammit, strumpet,” he said without rancor, “I need no games. How long?”

  “I do not know,” she replied, taking delight in his touch. “Bermudo has them coming in shifts. Never less than eight men. A pair leaves every day or so, but not until they are relieved from the castile.”

  “Hells,” Jackal swore. “Does he mean to make this a permanent barracks?”

  Delia seemed puzzled by the question. “You knocked him senseless, Jack. Killed his man. What else would you expect he’d do?” She began to grind her hips into Jackal’s lap, biting her lower lip.

  Jackal’s desire fled. He barely felt the inviting revolutions, the breathy kisses upon his neck. “Expect? Didn’t expect him here that morning. Or that he would order us killed. Reckon I got no notion what to expect from Captain Bermudo. Or anyone.”

  Delia’s motions ceased, a worried frown frozen on her face.

  “Jack?”

  “I think my chief used the brothel to deliver a Tine girl to the Sludge Man.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Why…why would I know something about your hoof that you didn’t?”

  “You didn’t see Sancho bring in an elf girl?”

  Delia looked at him as if he had gone mad. “Elves don’t whore, Jack.”

  “No. She was a captive. We found her in the Old Maiden.”

  “We?”

  “Me and Oats and Fetch, and this…new recruit. We managed to get the girl out.”

  Delia’s eyes widened. “You took her from the Sludge Man?”

  Jackal nodded. “When I told him he couldn’t keep her, he went mad. Madder than usual. He almost killed us all. The girl’s safe, but…”

  “Now you’re stuck with a daughter of the Tines,” Delia said, her head giving the barest of shakes. “Jack…”

  “I know,” he cut her off before the hopelessness in her voice infected him. “Worse than that, it may all be because the Claymaster arranged it. Has Hoodwink been here recently?”

  Delia’s brow knit. “That the ghost-looking one with all the scars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Once or twice to collect from Sancho. But not in months. He never stays long, never takes a woman. Good thing too. He scares us.”

  Whores didn’t frighten easily, especially in the badlands. It would take something like Hoodwink to do it. Jackal stared at the floor beyond Delia’s waist. Was he wrong about all of this? Delia wouldn’t have seen Hood if he didn’t want to be seen. But gut feelings and suspicion weren’t enough.

  The dark thoughts must have shown on his face, for Delia hooked a finger under his chin and lifted his attention back to her face. “What are you going to do?”

  “The only thing I can. Get to Sancho and carve the truth out of him.”

&
nbsp; “Fuck, Jackal!” Delia cursed, her voice rising a bit much for comfort.

  Shushing her with a sharp look, Jackal slung her off his lap and crept to the door of the bathhouse. He waited until he was certain none had heard, then turned back to face Delia. She was standing now too, wrapped back in her shift and staring at him with something between alarm and anger.

  “Have you lost your mind?” Her voice was again low, but she managed to punch with her words. She thrust a finger toward the brothel. “There are ten cavaleros sleeping within a piss stream of where you stand.”

  “Exactly,” Jackal said. “Sleeping. Half are drunk and all are fuck-tired. I can get in and out before any of them roll over.”

  “For what?” Delia hissed. “To make Sancho admit he smuggled flesh for your chief? Safer to trust your gut and leave him be.”

  “I don’t need him to admit to the elf. I need him to tell me why he chose to betray the deal, turn on the Claymaster.”

  “Turn on him?”

  “Sancho let Garcia’s horse loose. I figure he got spooked, but didn’t have the stones to completely turn cloak. So he used the horse to get Bermudo’s attention, gets the cavaleros back here without admitting he knows anything. Something made him decide it was better to throw in with the castile than with the Claymaster. I need to know what that was.”

  A ripple of confusion played across Delia’s face, but settled quickly. “Jack…it wasn’t Sancho.”

  Jackal stilled.

  “It was Olivar,” Delia told him.

  “The stableboy?”

  Delia nodded, a look of sympathy on her face, as if she were telling Jackal someone had died. “He wasn’t used to handling a warhorse. It was too spirited for him. It took three of us to pull Sancho off when he found out. We thought he was going to kill Olivar, the beating he was giving.”

  Jackal’s jaw clenched. So, not a betrayal, an accident. A fucking accident. Six men butchered and burned, all because Garcia’s mount was as unruly as its master and bullied past a brothel’s underfed stableboy. Jackal rubbed at his face, felt his mouth turn upward. He started laughing, had to make an effort to keep it contained to his throat.