The Grey Bastards: A Novel (The Lot Lands)

by Jonathan French

  The Sludge Man.

  “Go!” Jackal ordered, slinging Hobnail and Polecat off of him. “He’s here for Fetch! Help her!”

  Without waiting to see if they listened, Jackal bolted forward and dove into the cloud.

  Chapter 35

  The plague began ripping him apart from the inside. He felt it fill his lungs, the vapor turning into liquid. Drowning in acid, Jackal tried to scream and choked on the geyser of his guts. He was blind within the tempest, but could still feel his flesh bubbling, lit from beneath with the boiling humors of his body. All was pain.

  Groping, his hands met resistance. He pulled against the entwined forms of Oats and the Claymaster, but his swollen, fluid-flooded knuckles had no strength. The thrice’s iron thews were locked with seizures of agony. There was no breaking his hold. Yet Jackal sensed that his own assault had drawn the plague away from Oats. He just needed to endure, to keep the wrathful magic focused on trying to kill him until his friend was forgotten.

  Adrift in a feverish sea, buffeted by tidal waves of nausea, Jackal drank the pain. He welcomed the plague, cursed it, laughed at it, and devoured it with the lethal appetite of the starved. But this was not the sickness of Abzul’s rats, it was the beast which fed on them. Savaging his insides, lapping at his flesh with a corrosive tongue, the monster toyed with its food, waiting for the prey to grow weak and frightful before swallowing it whole. Jackal knew he was going to die, but he continued to bite back, a poisoned weasel still trying to kill the snake.

  Spitting and hissing at the face of oblivion, he felt the end coming. The maw of the plague opened, its patience spent, and descended. But the final strike never fell. The serpent suddenly retreated. Jackal felt most of the pain flee as well, the absence of it a relief that sent him reeling to the ground. His stinging eyesight began to clear, focusing on the Claymaster and Oats sprawled unconscious nearby. There was no sign of the cloud, nor had it left any mark upon Oats. He lay pale and limp, half-supported by Mead. The younger half-orc stared with wide, horror-filled eyes.

  Sitting up, Jackal looked down at his chest and stomach, finding them riddled with weeping sores and straining pustules. His right hand was black, swollen to the point of bursting. Yet his left was whole. Even as he watched, the healthy flush of skin began to creep over his forearm, the sores closing, the plague-blisters receding. The healing spread from his left arm into his torso, and Jackal took an exquisite, clear breath as his throat was rid of acrid bile. He got to his feet, and by the time he stood straight, the evil disease had completely fled, chased away by the might of Attukhan.

  “Fuck. Me,” Mead whispered.

  Looking up, Jackal found the source of his salvation.

  Fetch had reached Crafty. Her tulwar flashed as she set upon him, forcing the wizard to break his trance and defend himself. For all his bulk, Crafty danced nimbly away, backing down the gantry. His hand darted into his satchel and came out again in an arc, scattering an azure powder that hung in the air. Fetch kept coming, heedless to all but her quarry. Jackal tensed, dreading the effects of whatever foul magic she had just ignored. Crafty paused in anticipation, but whatever he expected to befall Fetch did not manifest. The powder swirled harmlessly as she rushed through and slashed at the stunned wizard. Crafty dove backward and barely avoided having his sizable gut opened. He reached the edge of the gantry. There was no more room to run.

  Less than three javelin lengths separated Fetching from her vengeance. Balanced perfectly, ready to pounce, she savored the wizard’s plight. Flummoxed with her immunity to his arts, Crafty merely stood. So intent were they upon the other, both failed to notice the large, black mass detach from the chimney above and plummet.

  The sludge slammed down upon the gantry, directly between the half-orcs. The planks splintered as the entire scaffolding shook. Crafty lost his balance and spilled onto his back, his weight causing his end of the gantry to creak and bend, threatening to snap. A sinuous black tentacle shot forth from the sludge and wrapped around the wizard’s legs. With monstrous speed, Crafty was whipped into the air and dashed headfirst against the chimney. The first blow would have been enough to kill, but the sludge swung its captive again and again, battering his skull until the bricks loosened and fell in, leaving a ragged, green-glowing hole. Dangling Crafty’s limp, prodigious body, the featureless sludge dropped it disdainfully to the gantry.

  Holding to a railing, Fetching had kept her feet, transfixed by the rapid, brutal attack, and now stared as the thing re-formed and began to rise up before her. Jackal too had been rooted in place, but his wits began to return. Scanning the scaffold, he saw Polecat and Hobnail were still two levels below, moving with all the speed the ladders allowed. Jackal hurried to follow them, yelling as he broke into a sprint.

  “Fetch! Run!”

  He ran beneath the scaffold and all was hidden from view. Clambering up the first ladder, he heard forceful impacts resound above, shaking the timber. Reaching the second level, he pounded down to the far side of the gantry, where the next ladder waited to slow him. Cries and curses from familiar voices reached his ears. The third landing. The fight was now directly above. Steps away from the final ladder, a shape crashed through the opening, snapping rungs as it tumbled. Jackal skidded to a halt and found Polecat lying at his feet. Kneeling quickly, he found the mongrel unconscious but alive. The ladder was in ruins. Vaulting to plant a boot on the side rail, Jackal jumped for the opening, caught the edge, and pulled himself up.

  The sludge dominated the center of the quaking gantry. Half a dozen of the whiplike tentacles launched from its mass, swatting at Hobnail, who stood before the onslaught, desperately trying to reach Fetch. She was down on her back, one hand grasping a support beam while the other wielded her tulwar, slashing at the inky limb hauling on her leg. Keeping his own blade sheathed, Jackal dashed forward.

  Fresh tentacles sprouted violently from the mass as soon as he started moving, spearing and swatting. One caught him brutally across the shoulder, sending him careening hard into the side rail, which split. He felt the grip of a long fall almost claim him, but then Hob was there, snatching his arm at the last moment and pulling him back onto the gantry. There was no time for gratitude. The sludge sought relentlessly to crush them, every blow they ducked rocking the gantry.

  Fetch had managed to sever the tentacle holding her, but no sooner was she free than another spat forth to wrap around her legs. Jackal could see her grip was slipping. He dove, belly-down, and seized Fetch’s hand just as it slid, fingernails gouging, from the beam. Hobnail scrambled up, reaching for Jackal’s other hand, but was blindsided by a punching tentacle and knocked backward. Thrusting his fingers between the boards of the gantry, Jackal tried to hold firm, but the sludge pulled inexhaustibly. Groaning, the board began to peel up. The nails gave a final, surrendering squeak and pulled free.

  Fetching was yanked toward the belly of the beast. Jackal went with her, unwilling to let go. She continued to hack at the creature as she sank up to her waist in the living tar, but the cuts of her blade immediately closed. Her grip on Jackal’s hand began to slacken and he saw her strength fading as the soporific effects of the sludge’s touch took hold. In a moment she would be lost in torpor, like all the she-elves, and taken by the Sludge Man. Issuing a desperate groan through clenched teeth, Jackal tried to find purchase and pulled with everything left within him. It wasn’t enough. Fetch sank to her neck and her eyes closed. A hand emerged from the sludge, a man’s hand, and slowly, tenderly, awfully, began to stroke Fetch’s cheek. Jackal could only cry out in repulsed rage and watch as she vanished.

  A gout of green fire tore through the middle of the sludge. Jackal felt the heat upon his face as it streaked past. The monster convulsed violently, its slick surface rippling as it tried to seal the puckered wound. Another font of flame erupted through its body with a wet, tearing sound. Jackal felt the resistance upon Fetch weaken. Redoubling his eff
orts, he pulled. Immediately, she began to emerge as Jackal yanked and the sludge retreated. Bolts of flame continued to pierce through as the gelatinous mass leapt for the side of the chimney and fled, slithering swiftly away into the upper shadows.

  Jackal pulled Fetch close and she came around swiftly, shaking off the unnatural lethargy with a deep, curse-infused breath. Across from them, standing stoutly on the far end of the sagging gantry was Crafty. The turban had come undone from his head and he smiled through swollen lips leaking blood, but was otherwise disconcertingly unharmed. Casting sidelong looks at the reaches of the chimney, the wizard approached. Jackal and Fetching disentangled from each other and jumped to their feet. Hobnail hurried to stand beside them, a loaded stockbow aimed.

  “You should be fucking dead,” Fetch announced angrily.

  Jackal drew his Unyar sword. “Wizards are damn tough to kill.”

  “I’m all for a challenge,” Fetch said. “Hob?”

  “With you,” Hobnail growled.

  “I am not your present worry,” Crafty chided, looking only at Jackal. “That demon will not stop coming for her. A half-elf, friend Jackal? I am most impressed you managed to hide that from me.”

  “I’m disappointed you didn’t already know,” Jackal returned. “And he won’t stop coming for you either, Uhad. Sludge Man wants you dead nearly as much as he wants Fetch alive.”

  Fetch looked put out. “The fuck does he want me for?”

  “To sacrifice you in the Old Maiden, far as I can figure,” Jackal told her. “Half your blood is elven. He thinks that will restore the marsh.”

  Fetch accepted this with a rueful shrug. “All right…”

  Hobnail squinted at her critically. “You just found out you’re half point-ear and that’s what you say?”

  “A crazy, inbred, sludge-covered, bog man wants to cut my throat in a marsh. Who gives a heap of hogshit who my mother was?”

  Hob conceded the point with a raise of his eyebrows.

  Crafty gave Jackal an earnest look. “You will never defeat him without me.”

  “Fuck that,” Hobnail declared, pointing at the wizard with his thrum. “And fuck you.”

  He was within a heartbeat of pulling the tickler. Reaching out, Fetch touched him on the shoulder.

  “We got brothers down,” she said. “Sludge Man is loose in the Kiln. Now is not the time.”

  Jackal had to agree. He wasn’t so quick to believe Crafty’s insistence on his necessity, but he couldn’t outright deny it either. Besides, fighting the wizard was an unwelcome prospect even without the Sludge Man to contend with. Crafty would have to wait. But he would wait on Jackal’s terms.

  Thrusting his left hand out, he seized the Tyrkanian’s thick neck with his left hand. Squeezing down, he pulled the wizard toward him.

  “Feel that?” Jackal asked. “It’s power. One I don’t understand. And I don’t think you do either. I have a sneaking suspicion, Uhad, the reason you got rid of me was because of whatever Zirko did to me at Strava. I think you fear it.”

  “You may be wrong,” Crafty croaked out, his eyes dancing with amusement.

  “Try anything,” Jackal promised, “and we will find out.”

  He pushed the wizard away and released his grasp. Crafty did not so much as shoot him a nasty look, but simply folded his hands below his sizable waist and waited expectantly.

  Keeping a lookout for the Sludge Man, Jackal led them down off the scaffolding, picking up Polecat on the way. Thankfully, he was already coming to and descended the ladders mostly under his own power. Mead was still tending Oats, but there was no change in the thrice. Nearby, the Claymaster also lay motionless.

  “They’re breathing,” Mead told Jackal as soon as he approached, “but it’s shallow.”

  Jackal whirled on Crafty. “Will Oats recover?”

  The wizard regarded the prone thrice for a moment before shifting his gaze to the Claymaster. “Perhaps. The plague remains in its familiar host, but allowing it to remain there is foolish. If the—”

  “That’s enough!” Jackal snapped.

  “We need to get him out of here,” Fetch said, staring grimly at Oats.

  Jackal nodded. He retrieved a coal cart, and loaded Oats into it with Hob and Fetch’s help. Polecat stood bleary-eyed, supported by Mead.

  “You all get out of here,” Jackal told the hoof. “Crafty and I will deal with the Sludge Man.”

  “Have you lost your mind?” Fetching gawked at him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Crafty and I will deal with the Sludge Man, Fetch,” Jackal repeated insistently.

  “He wants me, fool-ass,” Fetch replied. “Unless you want to chase him all over the Kiln, I suggest I stay here. Fuck suggest, I am staying here! I don’t care if you do have a magic bone inside you!”

  Hobnail snorted.

  Knowing there was no argument, Jackal turned on him.

  “Get gone. The three of us will cover your back.”

  “What about the Claymaster?” Mead asked.

  “Leave him,” Jackal said. “We can’t risk Ignacio seeing him. Far as he can know, everything went as planned. Soon as you’re out, get Oats and Cat to the meeting hall, then go find out where Beryl is. Free her if you can. And lower the Hogback. We need those other five mongrels in here. Anyone asks, it’s the Claymaster’s orders.”

  “Right,” Hob said, and began pushing the cart out. Mead and Polecat followed.

  When they were gone, Jackal turned to look at his remaining companions.

  “Ready to hunt?” he asked.

  Fetch met his eyes and calmly loaded her stockbow.

  Crafty ambled over to the large furnace doors and pulled them open. The Al-Unan fire danced within, fueled by nothing but itself. Without hesitance, Crafty stuck his fists into the blaze, drawing them out encased in green flame. Turning, he smiled, and walked back, his hands trailing smoke.

  The three of them waited in the cavernous chamber, listening to the hollow roar from the ovens. Standing slightly apart, they each faced a different direction, keeping vigilance on the dark, towering recesses. They did not speak, they did not plan. There was no need. The Sludge Man would come to them. He had to. All he desired was within this keep, all those he wished dead, imminently or in time. Jackal could feel his lust for a reckoning filling the great chamber, as potent as the musk of an animal.

  Fetch was the first to spot the sludge, drawing Jackal and Crafty’s attention to it with a small hiss. The pitch-dark mass oozed from around the lengthy curve of the chimney, nearly at ground level, barely visible in the enshrouding shadows beneath the scaffolds. It stopped moving as their eyes rested upon it, the barest reflection on its slick surface the only evidence it was there at all. Motionless, it waited, holding their gazes. Holding their…

  “It’s a distraction!” Jackal exclaimed, spinning around.

  But the monster sludge was already upon them, nearly silent even as it barreled across the ground. A tentacle scythed out, knocking Jackal’s feet from under him. He had hardly struck the ground when his foot was seized and his vision blurred as he was flung upward. His shoulders and neck were smote upon the ground, his spine wrenching as he was again hauled skyward. A green flash intruded upon the duller lights already dancing in his skull and he felt himself tumbling through the air. Again, the ground struck, but only with the force of his fall. His addled sight cleared and he saw an arm’s length of smoldering tentacle detach from his leg to crawl away, wormlike, making quickly back toward the larger mass, which was embattled with Crafty. The wizard stood firm amidst the writhing multitude of tendrils, bringing his burning hands up to his mouth and blowing great gusts of flame that sheared through the appendages. Fetching must have danced away from the initial charge, for she knelt out of the sludge’s reach, her stockbow aimed, clearly waiting for a shot at the man hidden within
the loathsome vessel. Jackal knew firsthand the folly of trying to slay the Sludge Man with a thrumbolt, but what choice did they have? Likely, they would never get the chance, for Crafty could not seem to burn through the muck to reveal the bog trotter, his efforts focused entirely on the flailing coils.

  Jackal made to rise, but a clinging, cold weight bore down on his back, forcing him to his knees. Craning his neck, he saw the smaller sludge had hold of him, crept from beneath the scaffold. He reached over his shoulder, grabbed the writhing muck, and tried to fling it away, but the sludge sucked at his hand, holding it fast. The ichor was quickly flooding around to his chest, crawling up his neck, flowing over his head. An undeniable drowsiness began to claim him, his eyelids drooping even as the sludge began to descend over his face.

  Pain awakened him. Burning pain.

  His eyes snapped open and he felt the sludge dribbling down his back, forming a scorched pool around his knees. He found Fetch behind him, holding a coal shovel, the metal spade alight with Al-Unan fire and quickly being consumed. A tentacle lanced at her and she severed it with the shovel, then tossed it down lest the flames reach her hand. Crafty stood directly in front of them, fending off the living bulwark of thrashing sludge that threatened to encompass them all. Fetch must have rushed to Jackal’s aid, drawing the creature, its fury forcing Crafty to give ground. The flames wreathing the wizard’s hands were guttering with each warding breath.

  “Prepare to run!” the wizard called. “I can give but a moment!”

  Aided by Fetch, Jackal struggled to his feet. His sword was gone, lost when he was thrown. Fetching hacked at the ever-encroaching tentacles with her tulwar, but every length she severed crawled back to be reabsorbed by the mass.

  Crafty suddenly flung his arms wide, swinging them back together with tremendous speed. His flaming hands clapped with a thunderous resonance, producing a dense wave of green fire and hellish wind that collided with the sludge. The creature was thrown backward, the black membrane blistering as it was carried on the sorcerous tide. The smoking mass was borne into the air for a moment before striking the ground to tumble over itself, coming to a rest across the chamber, near the mouth of the passage out.