There was silence for a long time while Beryl dressed his wounds and pretended not to see his tears.
“Where will you go?” she asked once the last bandage was tightened.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Never thought I would turn nomad. In my mind, this plan was always victory or death. Even if I had pondered life as a free-rider, I never would have imagined a pregnant woman I can’t talk to sharing my saddle.”
“You are going to be hard-pressed to keep you both alive out there, Jackal.”
He could only nod shallowly.
Beryl leaned over and, grabbing his face, kissed him hard on the temple. She stood abruptly and went for the door, taking her lamp, but leaving the bag.
“Change your dressings daily,” she instructed, her voice thickening. “Get the Tine to help you.”
She was fleeing the pain of parting and Jackal did not hinder her.
“Tell your son I’m sorry.”
Beryl made a pained noise of promise and was gone.
He sat there for a long time, knowing he should be preparing his departure, yet unable to move. Familiar sounds in the hall signaled the return of some of his hoofmates. Former hoofmates. Jackal knew who they were from the distinctive footfalls and the doors that closed along the hall. Hobnail. Polecat.
Fetching.
Jackal tensed when he heard her door, directly across from his, open and close. He sat in the dark, shivering with rage and no small amount of fear, a feeling so foreign, so unwelcome, that it only infuriated him further. For what seemed an eternity he wrestled against a thousand impulses, each defying sound judgment. Only when his body had ceased trembling did he stand and, decision made, take up his dagger.
Once in the corridor, he paused, seeing the door opposite was cracked. No light flickered, but Jackal knew Fetch, knew she would still be awake. Numbly, he pushed the door open.
She sat cross-legged on her bed. Boots, brigand, and riding leathers were thrown carelessly on the floor, leaving her clothed in nothing but a shirt and shadows. She looked up, but said nothing.
Jackal came fully into the room and closed the door without taking his eyes off her.
“I figured you’d bring a thrum,” Fetching declared before he could say anything. “It’s quicker. A dagger allows for a struggle…takes time.”
Oddly, she had no weapons of her own close at hand, just a slack wineskin.
“I did not come here to kill you,” Jackal told her.
To prove his words, he stabbed the dagger into the doorjamb and left it lodged there.
“Why, Fetch?”
She shook her head slowly, the motion causing her face to play in and out of the shadows. “That’s a question I asked you often. Why. Why did you claim to kill Garcia? Why do you insist on protecting that Tine? Why did you trust that fucking wizard?”
Fetch’s voice became softer with each question, but the anger grew, making quivering whispers of her last words.
“Why did I trust you?” Jackal growled.
Fetch’s head twitched to look at him. “Did you? Because I recall you only worrying I would ruin your picky little plans. I couldn’t squat to piss without you keeping one eye on me.”
“I’ve been trying to keep you alive. To get the Claymaster out of his seat and stop him from handing you to Bermudo with a fucking apple in your mouth and a smile on his face. With Starling…”
Fetch scoffed. “All you’ve done with that point-ear is brought the Tines to our door. She didn’t help us one damn cunt hair and you know it.”
The desperation in her voice surprised Jackal and angered Fetching. She shot up, standing upon her bed for a moment before hopping down, every motion aggravated. Her hands came up to scrub her locks with frustrated rapidity. The motion caused her shirt to raise, the down of hair between her legs suddenly revealed in moonlight.
“You fucking know it!” she said again.
Jackal felt his blood go hot. “So which was it, Fetch? Who led me astray, Crafty or the girl?”
“Both!” She was in his face now, her breath edged with wine. “We got Tines sniffing around the Kiln because of you. We got a wizard in our ranks who makes puppets of dead orcs because of you. I thought you wanted to lead this hoof, Jackal, not bury it.”
“Because of me?” Jackal repeated through clenched teeth. “Because of me you are a member of this hoof, Fetching. Because of me you are not warming one of our beds. You are a sworn rider of the Grey Bastards, sitting a hog, respected and feared. Because of me.”
He could feel Fetching trembling with barely suppressed rage, the tiny twin fires of moonlight that were her eyes glimmering.
“And because of me,” she countered, “you’re not.”
Snarling, Jackal seized Fetching by the throat. She jerked away, but he held fast and they stumbled across the small room. Fetching landed a blow across Jackal’s face and pain bloomed in his teeth. He tangled her next strike with his free arm and kicked her feet out from under her. She grabbed a fistful of his hair as she fell, dragging him down with her. He would have gone anyway, not wanting to release his grip upon her neck. His clenching fingers burrowed deeper into the iron resistance of Fetching’s muscles and felt the pulse of her quickening heartbeat. Jackal fixated on it, yearning to feel it slow beneath his touch, then cease completely.
They crashed to the floor.
Weathering blows from her fists, Jackal put both hands to the task of throttling her. The blows ceased and Fetching wrapped her legs about Jackal’s waist, throwing him off with a powerful torsion. They rolled and she was now atop him, sending a punch down into his cheekbone. Through the dull flash of pain, Jackal felt her scramble off. He snatched for her while she was still on her hands and knees, catching her hair in his fingers. Wrapping his other arm about her waist he hauled back and pulled her back down. They both faced the ceiling now and Jackal removed his hand from her hair to seize her neck in the crook of his arm. Her head squirmed against his collarbone, but soon ceased as he increased the pressure.
A sound began to push through Fetching’s short, choked breaths, a deeper constricted flutter.
She was laughing.
Jackal felt her hips revolving, grinding her buttocks down into him, drawing his attention to the object of her sudden mirth. Beneath his breeches, beneath the pressure of Fetching’s body, Jackal was hard.
He must have relaxed his hold, for Fetch’s laughter now escaped in a raw rush. Jackal removed his arm from her throat and clapped his hand over her mouth, wanting to end the sound. Amused blasts of breath besieged his hand and he became aware of his other hand upon the spasmodically flexing muscles of her stomach, the flesh smooth and near feverish. Fetching cocked one hip, rising slightly away from his crotch. Jackal tried to seize that escaping hip in a bid to pull it back down, but she knocked his hand away with her own before sliding it within the agonizing gap she had created between them, fumbling to loosen the ties of his breeches and failing.
Frustrated, she tore his hand away from her mouth and sat up. Straddling his stomach, she quickly set to unlacing him, but Jackal upset her attempts when the shadowed dimples above her ass forced him to scoot down and pull her down upon his face. He heard her breath catch as his tongue touched her. She tasted of sweet salt and saddle leather. Fetch must have given up on his breeches, for Jackal could feel his cock hardening further, half-free, the laces painfully tight against his flesh. He did not care, lost in the act of devouring her.
A voice called through the door, one Jackal could barely hear. Someone must have heard the scuffle and was now asking after Fetch.
“Fuck off!” she replied, an airy giggle escaping through her feigned anger.
Jackal reveled as her weight settled until he could barely breathe. Fetching allowed him to explore with abandon, then took control of her pleasure and rubbed against his tongue until her t
highs quivered.
The warm, intoxicating weight left him. The bed was close and Fetching rose just long enough to fall back upon the blankets. Jackal got quickly to his feet, turning as he tore at his laces. Fetch was reclined on the bed, propped up on her elbows, one knee in the air. Jackal’s breeches were around his thighs when she hooked her calf around his lower back and drug him toward her open legs. She reached and grabbed his fruits, tugging them down until his cod leveled, straining away from his body and toward hers. Falling forward, Jackal caught his weight on extended arms, his forehead pressing into Fetch’s as she drug him inside. A groan escaped from low in his throat and Fetching hissed, her clenched teeth quickly separating into an openmouthed expression of feral delight. Their eyes met, and mated more than their bodies, the small span between suffused with a lifetime of shattered restraint. As Jackal thrust, Fetching met his gaze boldly, challenging him as she had always done, tempting him even now. He surged in that roiling, unconquerable gaze, trapped in the naked, unblinking pleasure reflected there. They seemed to sustain on a single, vicious breath, passing it between their open lips, a finger’s breadth apart.
Entwining her fingers behind his neck, Fetching rolled Jackal onto his back. He slipped out of her and gnashed his teeth in aggravation, but Fetch quickly took him in hand, holding him upright as she lowered herself down. He bucked up into her, but she grasped his jaw firmly, shaking her head, until he lay still. Balancing on the balls of her feet, Fetching eased herself up and back down. Her hands were on his chest, but she soon moved them to her own knees, bracing herself as she rode him with greater fervor. Fetching bounced on him with increasing vigor, never allowing him to escape, her body in perfect control. Soon, Jackal was gritting his teeth, his eyes squinting shut against his will at the blissful pressure in his loins. No other part of her touched him but that furiously sliding heat. His ears roaring with blood, Jackal’s entire body tensed as the end came. Fetching stood at the last moment, causing Jackal’s jumping cock to thump heavily onto his body, his expulsions landing hotly on his chest, the lesser flows spattering his stomach. He groaned through teeth clenched with release and vexation.
After a moment he sat up, looking irritably down on the mess Fetch had forced him to make of himself. She stood on the floor, near the foot of the bed, grinning as she cocked her head.
“Serves you right for all the times you did that to a whore,” she said huskily, removing her rumpled shirt and flinging it down on him. “Clean up. You have to get riding.”
After wiping himself off, Jackal rose, feeling all the pains that wrath and lust had kept at bay. The cuts crisscrossing his body stung, some of them reopened and bleeding anew. The bones in his face ached from Fetch’s pummeling and there was pain in his fruits as well, the dull kind that always settled after sex. Fetching’s own injuries were suddenly apparent, as well. Even in the low light, Jackal could now see the bruise stains across her ribs, the gash above her eye, the swollen hump of her broken and reset nose. None of that was his work. They were all tokens from Oats.
“Just tell me why, Fetching.”
They both heard the pleading in his voice. He expected her to mock him for it, but shockingly, she took a step toward him, and it looked as if she would reach up to touch his face, the barest intention of movement, so slight Jackal might have imagined it. Instead, she pulled his dagger from the doorjamb and offered it to him.
“You think I did this to you,” she said firmly. “I didn’t. I did this to save the hoof. If you think me a liar, then use this slicer and cut my damned heart out.”
Jackal opened the door. His eyes flicked to the weapon in her outstretched hand.
“Keep it. Offer the same choice to Oats…if he wakes.”
Turning his back, he left the room.
Chapter 20
There was only one figure waiting at the mouth of the tunnel gate to see Jackal and Starling off; a wide, turbaned silhouette standing at ease in the night.
“And so where we first met becomes where we part,” Crafty said, his smile evident even in shadow.
Jackal pulled Hearth to a halt and sat for a moment in silence. “Whatever it is you came here for, Uhad, you must not have wanted it badly enough.”
“Because you are not a successful usurper? Is this your meaning?”
Jackal snorted bitterly. Crafty’s command of the Hisparthan tongue waxed and waned to suit his purpose. “You didn’t help me get the chief’s seat, so now I can’t help you.”
The wizard’s pudgy, ring-laden fingers splayed out in a futile gesture.
“Had you come to me with your intentions, friend Jackal, I would have warned against untimely action.”
“It doesn’t take a wizard to see a shit future that is already yesterday.”
“This is so,” Crafty placated.
“What will you do now?”
“Truly, though it is far from ideal—”
“Enough,” Jackal cut him off wearily. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not my place to care anymore.”
He kicked his hog forward into the pure black of the tunnel, leaving Crafty to stand in the starlight.
In front of him, Starling went a bit taut as they rode blind. She did not know to trust the hog’s instincts within the gullet of the wall.
“We’re soon through,” he told her, and tightened his hold about her waist.
Thankfully, she had not balked when he came to collect her from the supply hall. The slopheads tasked with guarding her would not meet his eye and offered him no aid. They went about their duties amongst the inventory, silently transferring care of the she-elf to Jackal as they would a bag of beans. That was what she had become, a commodity, to be stored amongst sacks of grain and barrels of olive oil, adopting their mute dullness. A mote of vitality appeared when she beheld the cuts on Jackal’s arms and chest, but there was no trepidation on her face, only a grim curiosity. He took her from amongst the shelves with the rest of his allotted kit.
And now the Kiln was behind them both, forever.
Hearth wanted to run as soon as he cleared the tunnel. Jackal allowed him, checking the beast’s stride just enough for Starling’s ease. The whim of the hog was their only guide, for Jackal had no inclination of where they should head. Ul-wundulas was open to him, daring him to tread where he will. He was a free-rider, a nomad, with no oaths or pledges binding him, no sworn brothers to watch his flank. He and Starling would live or die on the choices he made, and that was if the Lots chose to be kind. If the sun rose to find them in Bastard lands, then die they would, bristling with thrumbolts if his former brethren could not stomach to get close for the killing.
The shortest distance out of the lot was north, toward the Umber Mountains, but that would bring them to the edge of Tine lands. Was that the best course? Simply turn Starling loose at familiar borders and be done? That was supposing he could get close enough without the elves feathering him quicker than the Grey Bastards. Even if he could, would they let Starling live? Would she allow herself to live once she learned the truth of her condition?
There were always the other hoofs.
The Skull Sowers’ lot was the nearest, but the thought of living in the Furrow made Jackal’s skin crawl. He had often found the Kiln too confining, to say nothing of that underground stronghold. The Orc Stains were just beyond Batayat Hill, but they accepted only thrice-bloods. The Fangs of Our Fathers were too obsessed with thick gods for Jackal’s tastes, and there was already bad blood between him and the Shards. That only left three choices; the Cauldron Brotherhood, the Tusked Tide, and the Sons of Perdition. But none of them would consider taking him with Starling as baggage. If they did, they would want her as a whore. “The only thing rarer than seeing a she-elf is fucking one,” the saying went. No, Jackal would have to forgo the other hoofs at least until he knew what to do with his companion.
That left only one place.
It was the obvious choice, but Jackal was reluctant to return after agreeing to Zirko’s mad bargain. He had not expected to go back until the Betrayer Moon, if then. Still, it made the most likely sanctuary for him and Starling. They had already been there together, received aid. Surely, they would be welcome again. Zirko believed Jackal was carrying one of the halflings’ precious relics inside his arm, why would the little priest turn him away after asking he swear allegiance to the god Belico and some loon-brained crusade against the orcs? Plus, Zirko knew of the half-breed Starling carried, so there would be no need for lies, and it was unthinkable that the halflings or the Unyar would demand the she-elf as a plaything. It would be safe, as safe as anywhere in the Lots.
Jackal pulled the reins west.
It was at least a four-day journey, but they would be out of the Grey Bastards’ lot once they crossed the Alhundra. There was enough time to make it before dawn, but only just.
Jackal pushed Hearth hard, though the hog needed little urging. A night ride across the badlands was nothing new for the barbarian and he took joy in the freedom, the chance to roam, to run, unburdened with the knowledge that home was forever closed. Jackal concentrated on the ride, watched the terrain for hazards and the darkness for foes. He tried to settle into familiar rhythms, but it was difficult with the smell of Starling’s hair in his nostrils. His mind kept skulking back to Fetching, to the engulfing pain of her betrayal, the feel of her skin, the taste of her.
Briefly, he wondered if that was why she had lain with him, to eclipse the treachery, but he knew it was not the reason, had known even as he entered her. It was the last chance, for both of them. All kinship had been shattered by her actions, but so too had all impediments. No longer friends, no longer hoofmates, no longer living under Jackal’s impending leadership, they were free to be lovers. Fetching had convinced the hoof that she lusted for women, and Jackal allowed himself to believe it over the years, despite the memories from their youth to the contrary. First kisses, first fondles, all awkward and shivering. But it had stopped when Fetch set her mind to the hoof. Jackal had not minded, he even understood. He wanted her to be one of them and knew that to do so she would need to become one of them. Besides, there had been plenty of other girls who were willing and generous, and that was all Jackal’s youthful baseness required. After a few years and a handful of shared visits to Sancho’s brothel, it was easy to support the falseness of Fetch’s affections until they became truth.
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