The Grey Bastards: A Novel (The Lot Lands)

by Jonathan French

  “Tell me of my father,” Jackal urged. His corpulence aside, Crafty did not have the look of a frailing. If his father had been human, as Abzul was suggesting, that could only mean his mother was a thick, and that was unheard-of. Female orcs were never seen outside of Dhar’gest. It would take a strong man to couple with one. A strong, utterly insane man.

  “You should not heed gossip, my lord,” Abzul said. “Can a prince of the blood truly be accused as a raper and a murderer, when it is of his own servants? I say not. And many, I amongst them, never believed he drowned the marquesa of Sparthis, nor hunted her sons with dogs. His exile was an unjust ploy. Yet he found friends in the east, yes? Friends who provided him entertainments worthy of his proclivities. Friends to all of Hispartha, indeed, for they ensured we had a worthy claimant to the throne. A half-breed! A sorcerer trained by the Black Womb! Who better to help us raze all of Dhar’gest and rid us of the orc threat?”

  Abzul was now genuflecting with each lusty exclamation, ribbons of drool escaping from his toothless mouth.

  “What of the Hisparthan wizards?” Jackal asked quickly, taking advantage of the old man’s lucidity. “Are they a threat to me?”

  “Not I, my lord,” Abzul insisted passionately.

  Jackal could not help but sneer. This man was a threat to nothing but the nose.

  “And the others?”

  “They would be fools to stand against you.”

  The way Abzul’s yellowed eyes looked away when he made this claim revealed he was not only lying but wanted “Crafty” to attempt the contest and fail. So, there were magic wielders in Hispartha with the strength to challenge the Tyrkanian. But Crafty was no fool. He would not go unprepared into the lands of his enemies. No, he came first to Ul-wundulas, the long contested underbelly, and gathered powerful allies. The fucking Claymaster! Was Crafty truly about to help the chief take his revenge? If they unleashed the plague in Hispartha, what then?

  Jackal found it difficult to care.

  Hispartha was nothing to him. Its people were distant, faceless, seen in his mind’s eye as fat and ignorant to all danger. Perhaps it was time that ignorance was shattered. It would inevitably happen. The Imperium had fallen and, one day, so would Hispartha, be it sacked by orcs or seized by a foreign half-breed with a claim to the crown. What did it matter to him? He was a free-rider now, with no loyalties save to the hog that bore him where he wished to tread. There was nothing holding him here. Delia could be his, she would ride with him if he asked, he was certain of that. They could go to Anville or Guabia, or points east. Hispartha was not the world, and Jackal had only ever known the Lots, the shit stuck to the boot heel of the kingdom. Fool-ass that he was, he loved the badlands, but like the northern frails in his imagination, he was ignorant of all else. He had wasted years trying to thwart the Claymaster. Was he truly willing to throw his life away trying to battle him and Crafty, all for a gaggle of lazy frails in the north?

  As his brooding began to wane, Jackal found his eyes resting upon the nearest heap of hoarded parchment. There was a map near the top with only one corner buried. It was a map of the Lots. No, it was older than that, drawn up before the Incursion, when Ul-wundulas was held firm by Hispartha, save for Strava and the centaur woodlands. Both were definitively marked by the mapmaker. Jackal became intrigued by the map, and was mildly surprised to discover that without the lot borders, he found it difficult to orient. The whole seemed larger, no longer a quilt, but a seamless blanket. The Kiln had not existed, and Jackal had to find Batayat Hill and the Alhundra River before he was able to pinpoint the fortress’s future site. The entire chart was dotted with castiles that now only existed as ink upon this map, each named and accompanied by a small illumination of the coats of arms of the noble families that held the stronghold before the orcs reduced them to ruins. One in particular drew Jackal’s attention.

  It was nestled within the grasp of the Old Maiden Marsh, where the concentration of settlements was sparse. There were only four castiles denoted in the entire region. One of them, deepest within the Maiden’s interior, boasted a blazon Jackal had seen before; a yellow goat upon a black shield, surrounded by a purple belt. The colors had been less vibrant, but the overall image had been larger, so Jackal knew he was not mistaken. It was the same device he had seen upon the frayed and filthy banner within the Sludge Man’s shed.

  Reaching down for the cowering Abzul, Jackal lifted him up.

  “What is this?” he demanded, jabbing a finger below the crest.

  Abzul squinted hard at the map. “That…those are the arms of the House of Corigari. An ancient family with roots in the Imperium.”

  Jackal scowled at the map. “Any of them left?”

  “Ha!” Abzul’s bark of laughter told what he thought of that notion. “Everything in those marshlands was laid to waste by magic during the early Incursion. The elves met the thicks in battle there, both sides bolstered by sorcery. The hatred in the spells loosed that day will live for eternity.”

  “You mean the sludges.”

  Abzul leered down at the map. “Oh, yes.”

  “Was that your evil too, wizard?”

  The old man shot him a withering look. “No. That was all point-ear shamanism and orc blood magic. Hispartha had no presence there, save the stubborn nobles who refused to abandon their holdings, and they all paid for their mulish pride with their lives.” As Abzul spoke his face became suspicious and his nostrils drew thin again with that same queer sniffing he had done when Jackal first entered the garret.

  “I would think you to have known this, my lord,” the wizard declared.

  Jackal nodded slowly, but not at the old man’s words. The one Abzul mistook him for had known! Crafty had wanted to go to the Old Maiden, and he did have knowledge of the sludges, calling them children of conflicting spells. He had even shown some fear of them, yet he had been prepared, knowing how to stupefy them with whatever came from that queer pipe. He called the Sludge Man a demon and even awaited his arrival. Fuck, he had gone there to confront him! And why would he do that unless the Sludge Man was a threat? Crafty set out for the marsh in order to eliminate his greatest rival.

  The sound of rustling parchment drew Jackal away from his revelation. All about him, the piles in the garret were shifting, sending small avalanches falling from the bigger heaps as they were upset from within. Abzul must have slunk off while Jackal was lost in thought, for the wizard was nowhere to be seen. His voice, however, carried over the increasing chittering coming from the refuse.

  “Filthy mongrel! To dare deceive me! I will not be so abased by a soot-skin savage!”

  Jackal tried to detect where the wizard was hiding, but his furious cries filled the room, coming from everywhere, yet nowhere. Drawing the spar hook, Jackal went for the door. He had not made it two strides before a pile of scrolls disgorged a mass of squealing rats. They spilled out in a stream of shiny fur and pallid tails. Jackal recoiled as the mass darted for him, but more sprang up from the debris, fleeing their hives to charge. The garret came alive as the moldering contents of the room heaved with vermin.

  Surrounded by the oncoming tide, Jackal lashed out. He stomped upon those scurrying on the ground, and sent swaths flying off the furnishings with great sweeps of his arms.

  And won nothing more than a heartbeat before the swarm was upon him.

  Crawling up his legs, leaping upon his shoulders, the rats engulfed him in a wriggling cloud of biting teeth. Jackal cried out in horror and pain, whirling desperately, trying to sling the devouring mass off. He kept his eyes clenched shut against those on his face. He heard them hissing in his ears before their teeth sunk into the hard cartilage with a horrible popping. The spar hook fell from his grasp and he began yanking the rodents off his head, throwing them down after crushing their spines in his fist. Yet more always took their place.

  Blind and stumbling, Jackal careened
into a hard, flat surface. It must have been the door, for the garret’s walls were moated by the nests. Slamming his body against the wood, again and again, rolling and grinding, Jackal crushed the rats, sending dozens falling limply away. It wasn’t enough. He could feel himself getting weaker, his strength seeping red and hot from his body through hundreds of small punctures. Already he was shivering, his limbs beginning to convulse as an unnatural fever flared beneath his ravaged flesh. His joints throbbed as they swelled, filling with fluid, as were his lungs. He coughed, gagged and began to drown, horribly, from the inside.

  Unable to breathe, Jackal fell to his knees. His entire body burned. He could no longer feel the agony of the rat bites, nor the terrifying constriction in his lungs. There was only the heat, seeming to rise from somewhere deep, searing his flesh from beneath. He screamed against the excruciation and in that scream, realized he could again breathe. The rats began falling away from him, twitching and dying in droves.

  When his vision returned, he discovered he now knelt encircled in their still, loathsome forms. He continued to bleed from his teeth-torn flesh, but the ravages of the plague had fled. Rising out of the dead vermin, Jackal found Abzul standing across the garret.

  “There is power in you, mongrel,” the wizard declared, “but you are no magus of the Black Womb.”

  “No, old man, I am not. I am Jackal of the Grey Bastards. And I am about to start making a habit of slaying wizards.”

  He took a step forward, his strength returning with the promise of wrath.

  Abzul began to laugh, his toothless mouth stretched into a rictus of crazed mirth.

  “Oh, but there is sweet poetry to be found here!” he cried out with glee, his eyes flashing with more clarity and life than Jackal had yet seen. Holding up his hands, the wizard showed himself to be clutching a pair of ceramic jars. They were bulbous at the bottom, narrower at the neck and fluted at the top. They were nearly identical to the relics stored in the Claymaster’s solar, except where those were empty, these were stoppered with wax.

  Sapper pots.

  Seeing them brought Jackal’s advance to a halt.

  Abzul was delighted by his sudden hesitance. “Ah! I see you recognize these. And well you should, they are your legacy after all, Grey Bastard. Fate has brought you here to die, it seems! That you should be slain by the implements made by the founders of your hoof in the days when half-breeds were properly chained is a delight I shall savor.”

  Jackal lunged as the wizard threw from both hands.

  The casts were feebly aimed and Jackal ducked, hearing the pots break on the wall behind. There was a brief booming, quickly swallowed by a concussive pressure on the eardrums, before all sound was replaced by a piercing ring. Jackal saw the flash of flames and felt intense heat lick at his back as he was propelled furiously forward. He was catapulted directly at Abzul and wrapped his arms about the wizard’s frail form as he smashed into him. Together they were hurled out the window, Jackal using Abzul as a ram to break the glass.

  Wind and the wizard’s buffeting robe slapped Jackal’s face as they fell. Abzul’s mouth was gaped in an unheard scream. Behind his skeletal head, the moonlit slope of the jagged hill rose quickly to meet them.

  Chapter 27

  Pain escorted Jackal back to consciousness. His ears were still ringing as he opened his eyes, finding the stars diluted by his swimming vision. Rocks dug into his back, cradling him ungently upon the slope. Sprawled with his boots higher than his head, he attempted to roll over, but his ribs screamed in complaint. Jackal heard the cry forced from his throat as a muffled grunt. Something bumped his leg. Lifting his throbbing skull, he saw Abzul a little farther uphill, writhing feebly. The wizard’s robe must have come off after they landed, torn from his white body as they rolled. His limbs were bent at sickening angles, his jaw working in desperate gasps.

  Gritting his teeth in preparation for the hurt, Jackal used his heels to drag his legs around until they faced downhill, and sat up. Dazed, he simply slumped there until his hearing began to return. Behind him came sounds of sliding stones and labored breathing as Abzul attempted to crawl away. Jackal did not bother to look. The worm would not get far.

  An angry flicker on the rocks grew stronger as Jackal sat there, sending his shadow dancing down the slope. Craning his neck around, he saw the tower roof aflame, so distant it made him queasy. He thought he heard cries coming from along the battlements, but didn’t trust his blasted ears enough to be sure. Either way, the alarms wouldn’t be raised for him. The garrison would be too busy fighting the fire to look beyond the walls. Who could conceive that any would fall from that height and survive?

  Turning back, Jackal saw movement amongst the scrub farther down the hill. He recognized the silhouettes. Two hogs, and one rider now dismounting to scramble up the boulders. Jackal tried to whistle, but found his mouth had no spit to wet his lips.

  Warbler found him anyway.

  “Fucking hells,” the old thrice gasped, seeing him. The fire from the tower lit his craggy, worried face, which stared for a moment before rising to take in the blaze above the walls.

  “I swore I heard a sapper pot,” Warbler said.

  Jackal cleared his raw throat. “At least two. Though he may have had more lost under all the rat shit.”

  “Who?”

  Jackal didn’t answer immediately, but held his hand up in a mute appeal for help standing. Grasping his forearm, Warbler pulled him to his feet. Moving gingerly, Jackal led him across the slope. Abzul had made it farther than he anticipated.

  “Him,” Jackal said, motioning down. Abzul must have heard, for he managed to roll his mangled body over. “He is—”

  “I fucking know who he is,” Warbler growled, his face turning grim. “Not even the age of thirty years could hide that face from me.”

  Abzul gawked at them, his pain-wracked visage convulsing.

  “Amazing he’s still alive,” Jackal remarked with dark amusement.

  “Wizards are damn hard to kill,” Warbler said.

  Abzul’s mad eyes rolled about. “To…the cages. Both! You are for the cages.” A crazed, choking laugh oozed past the wizard’s tongue. “Any…any alive?”

  Warbler took a step toward him. “Yes. I’m alive.”

  “Take your time,” Jackal said, and moved away, finding a rock to sit upon.

  What Warbler did was neither quick nor quiet. Even through the ringing, Jackal clearly heard Abzul’s final shrieks.

  “We should go,” he said when Warbler returned. “The frails might have heard that. At the very least, they’ll soon know I’ve escaped. The cavaleros will start beating the bushes for me.”

  “I couldn’t get in,” Warbler confessed. “They wouldn’t even hear me out. Threatened to feather me from the gate if I didn’t ride on.”

  Jackal gave a bitter snort. “Not your fault. It was a shit plan. Thankfully, the garrison likes to stick whores full of something other than arrows. Delia freed me.”

  “I know. I saw her. Almost snuck in the way she came out, but she said it was too chancy. Said you were coming soon. Reckon you got deterred. You learn anything?”

  “Yes,” Jackal said, standing. “Let’s get to the hogs. Tell you once we are away.”

  They worked their way down the hill, going slower than Jackal liked, but his body rebelled against haste. When at last they reached the bottom, he stroked Hearth’s face with both hands, briefly resting his forehead between the hog’s eyes.

  “Good to see you, you beautiful golden beast.”

  Hearth loosed a series of low, rhythmic grunts.

  Once mounted, Warbler returned Jackal’s thrum. “Where are we headed?”

  “The Old Maiden,” Jackal told him, slinging the weapon across his back.

  The old thrice looked dubious. “For what?”

  Jackal’s response almost st
uck in his throat. “To make an ally of the Sludge Man.”

  They rode for the remainder of the night, putting distance between themselves and the castile. Only once were they threatened with discovery, when a troop of cavaleros thundered up their back-trail, fast but noisy. Jackal and Warbler had plenty of time to get up into some rocks. They watched as the riders, unaware they had lost their quarry, sped by. Ignacio led them, his balding head and pockmarked face unmistakable. The commoner captain looked harried.

  “That was blind luck,” Warbler said when they were gone.

  “For them,” Jackal agreed. “They’re just covering ground. Didn’t even see our tracks. Only twenty riders.”

  Warbler huffed. “Spreading themselves thin. They must want to find you, Jackal-boy.”

  “Luck to them,” Jackal said, grinning in the dark.

  Dawn arrived with no more sign of soldiers. Hearth and Mean Old Man had pounded out some miles, their snouts pointed south and west. Confident that the cavaleros were well behind, Jackal and Warbler halted to rest beneath a rocky outcropping overlooking the River Lucia.

  After draining his waterskin, Jackal slept.

  When Warbler roused him, the sun was at its zenith.

  “You smell like a sow’s quim,” the old thrice said. “Best go down and scrub, unless Lucia bends her current to avoid you.”

  Jackal took the suggestion readily. After a long dip in the blissfully cool river, he walked naked back up to the outcropping.

  “Trade you,” Warbler said, tossing him a pear and pointing to the filthy breeches in his hand. Jackal handed them over and bid a silent farewell as Warbler tossed them onto the fire he had kindled. Pear clutched in his teeth, Jackal dug fresh breeches from his saddlebags.

  “Those already look better,” Warbler said, squinting critically at the rat bites covering Jackal’s body.

  Jackal nodded, inspecting himself while eating. The wounds were fading. Those on his left forearm were almost invisible.

  “You don’t feel ill?” Warbler asked.