The Grey Bastards: A Novel (The Lot Lands)

by Jonathan French

  Chapter 17

  A scream woke him.

  Not knowing how long he had been out, Jackal rolled out of the bunk. All around, babies had begun to cry, children were whimpering, awoken suddenly by the same tortured howl. It came from somewhere outside, loud enough to pierce the walls of the barracks.

  “Stay here,” Jackal commanded several of the Winsome men, already alert with wood-axes in hand. “Bar the door behind me.”

  Starling was awake and wide-eyed, holding her hands protectively over Wily’s ears, trying to shield him from the awful sound. It came in waves, bursting out of the silence in a bellow and drifting away, only to come again with renewed furor. Giving Beryl a reassuring look, Jackal rushed out of the barracks.

  He loaded his stockbow just outside the doors and waited to hear the bar sliding into place behind him before breaking into a run. The terrible scream came again, offending the night, echoing from the north of the compound.

  The Hogback.

  Jackal quickened his steps, pushing himself until his legs and lungs burned.

  The great ramp came into view. The Grey Bastards sat upon their hogs in the yard. The Claymaster and Crafty were afoot, standing near the end of the ramp, which was just beginning to rise off the ground. The agonized scream was coming from something writhing upon the ramp. Jackal jogged forward.

  An orc was nailed to the Hogback, crucified to the wooden skeleton of its underbelly. The thick’s head was angled toward the dirt, but slowly became level with the ground as the draft pigs pulled the ramp higher into the air.

  Jackal was standing closest to Hoodwink.

  “You caught another one?”

  “No,” Hood replied. His unblinking eyes were full of hungry glee, never leaving the afflicted orc.

  Confused, Jackal looked again at the howling captive. Like the one he had killed, this orc wore nothing but a leather clout. Two gaping, raggedly circular wounds adorned its gut. Wounds like a hog’s tusk would make.

  “Hells,” Jackal breathed as he saw the thrumbolt protruding from the eye socket. It was the thick he had killed.

  The Hogback continued to rise, taking the orc up and out of sight as the ramp angled to face the sky. Nearby, the Claymaster craned his neck and placed a hand on Crafty’s shoulder. The wizard seemed pleased. His teeth shone with starlight.

  When the Hogback was perfectly vertical, the Claymaster signaled the slopheads to halt the draft hogs. Half the ramp was now a tower, swaying gently at its apex, high above the palisade. From the far side of the tip, the orc, now facing the badlands beyond the wall, screamed.

  The Claymaster turned to face his hoof, his corrupted form radiating triumph. “Half of you, hit your bunks. Slops too. No need for all of us now.”

  “Not gonna get much sleep with that going on,” Hobnail complained, pointing up to the unseen orc.

  “Our friend will cease his baying in a moment,” Crafty announced. “If we hear it again, that will be the signal his comrades are close, though I doubt they will dare come farther.”

  Fetch was the first to leave, giving the wizard a disgusted look before turning her hog and riding away. Grocer, Mead, and Polecat followed. Jackal could hear the rest discussing the remainder of the night’s patrol, but he did not listen. Slack-jawed, he passed by the smirking Claymaster and approached Crafty.

  “Friend Jackal,” the wizard said with an affable little bow. “We can all rest easier now, no?”

  Jackal raised an accusing arm skyward. “That orc was dead.”

  “Oh,” Crafty gave a giggle, “he still is.”

  Jackal could muster neither response nor surprise. From the moment he revealed himself standing in the deadly heat of the walls, Crafty had done nothing to hide his power. The business with the Sludge Man, it seemed, was far from the height of the fat conjuror’s potency. This newest display, the mastery and manipulation of the dead, only served to solidify something Jackal had known since boyhood.

  Wizards were to be feared.

  The garrison at the castile had kept one in residence since the end of the Incursion, his mere presence enough to prevent attack on Hispartha’s sole remaining stronghold in Ul-wundulas. The elves were said to shit sorcerers, and though likely an enlarged truth, it was another reason not to intrude on Tine lands. But the half-orc hoofs had never been able to bring a wizard into their midst. The Claymaster had obsessed over attaining one for as long as Jackal could remember. Now that he had, would the chief reveal it to the other mongrel hoofs, or keep Crafty as a blade up his sleeve? A blade that had confided in Jackal that it would cut both ways. Of course, Crafty and the Claymaster had spent many hours behind closed doors. It had not escaped Jackal that the wizard may very well have been whispering promises in the chief’s ear regarding his young rival. Doubtless, his true loyalties lay only with himself, with whatever designs he had come to the Lots to pursue. Jackal had chosen to trust that Crafty, being dangerously clever, saw no benefit in a tired, plague-wracked old cur leading the Bastards.

  With a nod of feigned approval, Jackal left Crafty and walked to the nearest slop, instructing his hog be brought to him. The hopeful sprinted away. Ambling over to where Oats and the others still sat their hogs, Jackal inserted himself into the muttering.

  “I’ll be joining you,” he told them.

  “Good,” Oats said. “We will do this in pairs. Hood, you and Hob—“

  “No,” Hobnail threw in, “I’ll ride with Jackal.”

  Oats barely hesitated, taking the sudden demand in stride. “You good with that, Jack?”

  Jackal nodded.

  Hob’s red beard quivered as he gnawed on a wad of inner anger. He wouldn’t meet any eyes. Likely he blamed Jackal for Roundth’s death. So what was coming? Was Jackal about to spend the patrol in more danger from his partner than an orc knife? Killing a fellow Bastard was strictly against hoof code, but it wasn’t unknown. Ul-wundulas was full of free-riders exiled from their hoof because a personal feud went too far.

  “Let’s ride,” Hoodwink urged Oats.

  The thrice looked uncertain for a moment.

  “He’s right,” Jackal said. “Go on. Hob and I will fold in. We’ll decide our pattern when we first cross.”

  Before he rode off, Oats looked down, his face asking Jackal not to kick up any dust.

  Hobnail remained silent and sullen as they waited for the slop to return with Jackal’s hog. A few dozen strides away, Crafty and the Claymaster continued to stand beneath their unnatural alarum, commiserating in low tones. Soon, they moved off in the direction of the Claymaster’s domicile. Jackal pushed down the worries that began to rise. If Crafty was playing him for a fool, there was little that could be done. Besides, the wizard was a formidable foe all by himself. He wouldn’t need the Claymaster’s help, or that of any other, if he wanted to harm Jackal. No, Crafty’s inscrutable plots were less immediate.

  When the slophead arrived with Hearth, Jackal mounted, purposefully slinging his stockbow. He wanted both hands ready if Hobnail tried anything. Kicking their hogs into a trot, they rode for the eastern bend of the wall, directly opposite where Oats had gone with Hood. Jackal made sure he was the interior rider, not wanting to be pinned between Hob and the wall. They made quick time and the cluster of silhouettes that comprised the stables and breeding pens soon appeared before them. Oats and Hoodwink rounded the bend. As they passed, Jackal held up his right hand, four fingers extended. Hood returned the gesture, acknowledging the Broom pattern. It was a quick-paced circuit for both pairs. Jackal did not want to be away from other eyes for too long.

  “Afraid to be alone with me?” Hobnail asked, laughing in his throat.

  “Just keeping the barbarians awake,” Jackal replied.

  Kicking his hog into the pace, Hob laughed again. They met Oats and Hood again just west of the Hogback. Oats signaled for Guard Dog, but Hob countered wi
th Yoke, the slowest pace in the drills. Oats confirmed instinctively and Jackal issued curses in his head. They began the ponderous pace and Hobnail began checking over his shoulder to see when the other pair was out of sight. Jackal’s hand drifted to his dagger.

  “Relax,” Hobnail groused, still glancing backward. “I ain’t going to knife you, Jack. Need to talk. And I don’t want to yell over wind and pounding hooves to do it.”

  Jackal kept his hand close to the dagger’s grip. “Talk, then.”

  Despite his prompting, Hobnail said nothing for a long while. They were passing the slops’ barracks when his lips finally parted.

  “Roundth should never have died the way he did.”

  “There was nothing I—”

  “Shut your quim and let me fucking finish!”

  Jackal bristled, yet something in Hobnail’s voice stopped him from his own outburst. There was anger in that voice, but it was adrift in a sea of shame.

  “Roundth is dead,” Hob droned, “because the Claymaster showed those thicks mercy at Batayat. He showed the orcs weakness and now they’re testing us in our own fortress.”

  Jackal remained carefully still, keeping an eye cocked on the brother riding beside him, the brother echoing the very words he had spoken to Oats. Hob seemed relieved now that he had given breath to his dissension. The anger began to boil away the shame.

  “The chief should have known better!” he barked. “He did know better…once. But no more.”

  “What are you saying, Hob?” Jackal asked slowly.

  Hobnail reined his hog to a halt, forcing Jackal to do the same. Above his beard, the muscles of Hob’s face twitched, fighting against a dangerous mixture of fury, pain, and self-loathing.

  “I’m saying his time is over.”

  “Not everyone at our table would agree with that,” Jackal replied evenly.

  “Yeah, but you do! Your eye has been on that chair for years, we all know it. Hells, mine was too. But without Roundth I got no camp to start that war. The boys liked him, might have backed his axe. I’ll never get the votes on my own.”

  Taking a deep breath, Hobnail met Jackal’s eyes squarely.

  “You killed the thick fuck that killed Roundth. That matters to me. You were the only one that raised complaint at Batayat. More of us should have spoken up.”

  Fetch had challenged the chief’s decision too, but Jackal kept silent, waiting to see where the winds blew Hob’s tongue.

  “We need new blood at the head of our table, Jackal,” Hob went on, “and we need it soon. So…you challenge the Claymaster and I’ll cast my axe in favor.”

  Without waiting for a response, Hob kicked his hog onward, eager to put the declaration behind him. He said nothing else for the rest of the patrol, and Jackal did not press him. The words had been said, it would not serve to peck at them for further meat.

  Hobnail’s support changed everything. With it, Jackal had the majority of the hoof on his side. Oats and Fetch would back him. Mead too, long as his yearning for Fetching tugged him to follow her lead. That left the Claymaster only Polecat, Hoodwink, and Grocer. Cat and Hood were foundlings, one a former Rutter and the other an aloof free-rider, ostracized by every other hoof in the Lots. The chief had offered them both a place when they had none, accepted them into the Grey Bastards, though in Hood’s case the vote had been close. Regardless, Jackal could not conjure that either would throw against the old man. As for Grocer, he had helped found the Bastards, and would never support any other claimant for leadership.

  Still, Jackal had the vote, five to four.

  There would be no more biting his tongue against foolish orders, no more weighing his next move against the petty jealousies of an aging, sick dog. No more schemes. There were a couple of slops that showed tremendous promise. Once in the chief’s chair, Jackal could put their names forward for brotherhood, bolstering the hoof and ensuring he retained a loyal majority. He could decide what to do with Starling without interference and stop the struggle for Crafty’s loyalty. At Strava, the wizard had claimed he wished to see Jackal in control of the Grey Bastards. The only way to find out for certain if the foreigner was in earnest was to make a grab for the chair.

  But was it time?

  Hobnail was right, the Claymaster needed to be removed soon. Hells, he needed to have been removed years ago. But a one-vote advantage was a fragile bridge. If Hob changed his mind or Mead sided with the old guard, then Jackal was dead. The Claymaster would never spare him as he had done with Warbler. Those two had toiled together as slaves, struggled side by side against Hisparthan cruelty and, later, against the thicks during the Incursion. They were brothers for long years before they forged the Grey Bastards. Warbler had been the chief’s trusted right hand for decades before their unknown disagreements led to the final, nearly bloody, break. Jackal had never been anything to the Claymaster but a contentious upstart. There was no love between them, nothing to stop the chief from burying an axe in his skull at the first opportunity.

  To challenge and win was to lead. To challenge and lose was to die.

  Dawn broke before Jackal reached a decision.

  The patrol met for the last time at the Hogback and all four riders reined up, giving one another the tired nods of a job completed. Hoodwink left without a word, dismounting to walk his hog in the direction of the Claymaster’s domicile. Jackal watched him go with niggling trepidation. There was no chance he could have overheard Hob’s declaration, yet it appeared for all the hells like he was reporting to the chief. Which, of course, he was, but about the patrol. Shaking off his unavailing suspicions, Jackal found Oats waiting at his side. Hobnail had already departed for the stables.

  “Find some food?” the thrice suggested.

  “No,” Jackal replied. “Find Fetch. I need a word.”

  Oats’s brow furrowed. “Something happen?”

  “Can’t tell you in the middle of the yard. What say you find food for three, I’ll find Fetch, and we will all meet up on the rampart, just west of the gatehouse?”

  “All right,” Oats said with a touch of chagrin, “but I hope you don’t expect me to talk. I want bread and beer in my mouth, not words.”

  “Didn’t Beryl teach you to listen and chew last year?” Jackal jabbed.

  Without a word, Oats turned his hog, but just as he was riding away Ugfuck released a thunderous fart. Urging Hearth away from the malodorous assault, Jackal shook his head. He swore Oats had trained Ug to do that on command.

  After seeing his hog installed in the stables, Jackal ducked into Fetch’s room in the bunkhouse. She was not within. Mead was coming down the corridor, still sluggish from sleep.

  “You seen her?” Jackal asked.

  Mead regarded Fetch’s door blearily. “No.”

  “If you do, tell her I need her up on the wall above the gatehouse.”

  Mead gave an agreeable shrug and continued on his way. Jackal had to stop himself from calling the youngblood back, get a feel for where he stood on the Claymaster. It would ease his mind to know for sure if he had Mead’s support, but it was too risky. If word got to the chief that Jackal was considering a direct move against him, then the challenge could be crushed before it was even issued.

  He remembered seeing Fetching’s hog in its stall, meaning she was somewhere within the fortress, but Jackal did not want to go scurrying around looking for her. He told every slophead he passed to keep an eye out and repeated his instructions for her to meet him. Naturally, she was already waiting on him when he arrived. Only Fetch could make Jackal late to a meeting he had called.

  She leaned against the parapet, her stockbow propped up beside her feet. The morning hosted a lively breeze and Jackal took a moment to tie his kerchief across his head to keep the hair from his face. Fetch’s heavy twistlocks refused to be swayed.

  “If you had been a deer I would have
gone hungry,” Jackal commented.

  “Then you would make a shit hunter,” Fetching returned, smirking. “Though I make it a rule to be difficult to track when I am summoned.” She put a barbed emphasis on the last word that caused Jackal’s mouth to twitch. “Must have had half a dozen slopheads chirping at me to come up here.”

  “How many did you punch?”

  Fetch tried to hold a straight face and failed. “None! I kicked two. Well…one, the other managed to scamper out of the way.”

  Jackal grunted out a laugh and leaned next to her.

  “So why am I up here, Jack?”

  “Let’s wait for the porridge bowl.”

  The slophead walking sentry on this section of the wall came by while they were waiting, his steps made uncertain by the presence of two Bastards along his route. Fetch and Jackal let him go by unmolested, eschewing their duty of giving all the hopefuls grief at every opportunity. Besides, the poor whelp met Oats coming the other way and was soon doing press-ups while the thrice threatened to pee on him. The verbal abuse was impressively clear, considering Oats held an apple clutched in his teeth. The afflicted slop failed to notice that the impending piss bath would be damn near impossible, considering Oats’s arms were so laden with food he would never have been able to free his cod from his breeches. After the sixtieth quivering press-up, the slop was granted his reprieve and allowed to move on.

  Oats was still chuckling from behind the apple when he approached.

  “Hog’s ass,” Jackal accused lightly, rescuing a jug of beer and half a cheese wheel from Oats’s hoard.

  “You brought fucking onions?” Fetch groused, inspecting the contents of the sack she had taken.

  Oats looked puzzled. “Whud?”

  Freeing themselves of sword belts and quivers, they all sat down on the edge of the walk, their legs dangling down over the yard, and arranged the food between them.