The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  The True Bastards is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Jonathan French

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780525572473

  Ebook ISBN 9780525572497

  Book design by Jen Valero, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Duncan Spilling LBBG

  Cover photograph: © Larry Rostant

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  ONE

  “NYELLOS.”

  “Nellus.”

  “No. Nyellos.”

  “…Neelus.”

  “Hard o at the end. Like ‘open.’ Nyellos.”

  “Neelos.”

  “Better. But not ‘nee.’ Quick ‘nnn.’ N-yellos.”

  “Nn…nnn…n-yell-ose.”

  “Try not to split the word. The l’s roll into the o. Nyellos.”

  “…”

  “Again.”

  “Nyelos.”

  “Almost. You need to…clip the l’s. There is a sound within the sound. Nyellos.”

  “Nyellos.”

  “Roll the l’s.”

  “Nyellos.”

  “But make sure to clip them.”

  “Nyellos.”

  “Roll, then clip.”

  “Nyellos.”

  “You lost the roll.”

  “Nyellos.”

  “You forgot to clip.”

  “FUCK THIS WITH A HOG’S TWISTED, SHIT-SMEARED COCK!”

  Fetching hurled the hunk of rubble with rage-driven arms. The stone smote its fellows resting in the wheelbarrow, upsetting the balance. The load toppled. Mead tried to seize the wheelbarrow handles to prevent it going over, instinctively using both hands. He got hold of the left handle, but the right smashed against his stump as the conveyance tipped. Fetching saw her tutor bite back pain and embarrassment as he floundered away from the small avalanche caused by her anger.

  The sounds of labor ceased as all eyes drifted to the disturbance. Fetch barked at the nearest gawkers.

  “Bekir, Gosse! Over here and help!” The appointed slopheads sprang at her call, swift and obedient as young hounds. “The rest of you back to it! And be fucking cautious!”

  The workers atop the great pile returned their attention to the rubble beneath their feet, shovels tapping gingerly.

  Fetch righted the wheelbarrow. As Gosse and Bekir hustled the fallen stone back into its cradle she approached Mead and took a steadying breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine, chief,” he said without meeting her eyes. His stump was hidden, cradled by his remaining hand. A lie. And she knew it. She also knew it would make the hurt worse if she pressed. He’d told her once that the only thing more painful than losing a hand was forgetting it was gone.

  They stood together, silently sweltering. The morning was pale, the sun’s heat still abed. It was not the sky above, but the rocks beside, that drew their sweat. Furious at its fall, the ruins of the Kiln still smoldered. Well over a year since the great fortress collapsed and yet the toppled stones continued to weep black smoke into the sky.

  The Bastards had tried to harvest usable blocks from the remains of their former home in the first weeks after its demise, but the scorched debris remained hot enough to burn flesh. Months passed before the uppermost layer cooled. Still, gathering the stone remained a dangerous task. The villagers and slops chosen for the day’s work detail picked their way along the broken surface of the mound, shifting the occasional stone, slowly loading the wheelbarrows waiting at the base of the rubble. These in turn were taken and emptied into large rope nets to be dragged back to Winsome behind a team of hogs when full.

  As she surveyed the crews, Fetch’s shoulders and upper back were dripping, itchy beneath her shirt, the linen weighted down by the fall of her braided locks. Cursing, she gathered the plaits in a tighter bundle and retied them higher upon her head. For the hundredth time since becoming chief she considered taking shears to the mass. She wouldn’t, unsure why, unsure why she had let it grow in the first place. Perhaps because it marked the days, a living record of her time as hoofmaster. Perhaps she simply liked there being more of her and did not want to willingly return to less.

  Either way, in this heat, it was a vanity that was fuck-all irritating.

  “Should we continue?” she asked Mead.

  “I think we have reached the limit of your patience today, chief.”

  What Mead really meant was that he had reached his, but Fetch chose not to call him out. Making him give her lessons was abuse enough. In the silence that followed, Mead finally looked up and gave her a pardoning smile.

  “Elvish is tricky. But you’ll get it.”

  Fetching nodded, careful not to look away too quickly, but unable to hold Mead’s eyes for long.

  Shit.

  He was still too damned smitten to be a proper taskmaster. The silence was worse than the heat, pointing fingers at the budding discomfort.

  Mercifully, Mead shifted first, running his hand through the plumed strip of hair he wore down the center of his otherwise shaved skull. That elvish affectation had once been the source of endless barbs and jibes from the other Bastards, but he had weathered the abuse, wearing the coif of the Tines with the same ease with which he spoke their tongue. Fetchin
g knew how fortunate she was to have him as a sworn brother. He remained as invaluable to his new chief as he had been to the old.

  Of course, the Claymaster never had to worry about his men risking a passionate kiss, the poxy cunt.

  “Well,” Fetch said with a sigh, “I’d best get back to it.”

  Mead nodded.

  Fetch ambled toward the slag, plucking a shovel from the ground on the way.

  “Chief?”

  She paused, turned back.

  “You are improving.”

  She huffed a laugh. “Why? Because I can almost say ‘Thank you’ to a Tine?”

  Mead’s face grew hesitant. “Nyellos means ‘kill.’ And only in reference to a male subject.”

  Fetching scrubbed a dusty hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. “How, exactly, am I improving?”

  “This time you managed not to break the wheelbarrow.”

  The smile he produced was catching.

  “Fucking wonderful,” Fetching told him, laughing at herself as she approached the hill of debris.

  For a long moment, she evaluated the best ascent. All who worked the Kiln’s remains had learned to tread the pile as if it were a teeming mass of serpents. Considering the sporadic hisses of steam that issued from between the rocks, it was an easy thing to remember. Not liking any of the immediate approaches, Fetch moved around the edge of the rubble, eventually finding a solid-looking series of larger chunks resting in the sprawl. These she climbed, springing from one to the next until she reached the rough summit of what had once been the outer wall. A stone’s throw to her left, a chain of Winsome folk passed pieces of the blasted fortress from hand to hand down the slope. Fetch gave the humans this less-strenuous—and less-perilous—task, leaving her mongrels the duty of searching the ruin, excavating promising pieces, and carrying them to the line.

  Deeper into the shattered field, she spotted Abril struggling to shift a large slab with a pry bar. The distance wasn’t great, but Fetch took an age to reach him, stepping lightly, using only the toes of her boots.

  “You shouldn’t be doing that alone, hopeful.”

  Touro or Petro, or any other senior slop nearing a vote for brotherhood, would have continued to wrestle manfully with the long iron bar, refusing to look weak or incompetent in front of their chief. Not Abril.

  “I know,” he said, exhaling with relief and ceasing all efforts immediately. “I was working with Sence. We almost had it raised, but then he slipped and…” Turning around, he sat on the slab, the shiny arcs of hair hanging in front of his crestfallen face dripping beads of sweat. He rubbed the stone next to his leg reverently. “I guess we can always come here and visit him.”

  Fetch crossed her arms. “Sence went to get more hands, didn’t he?”

  Abril continued to fondly stroke the slab. “He did. Left me time to look for the treasure alone.”

  “There’s no treasure, Abril.”

  He gave her a hopeful look. “My apple rolled under?”

  Fetch snorted. That was the least likely tale of all. Setting her shovel down, she gestured for him to stand and hand over the pry bar. For all his buffoonery, Abril was no weakling, possessing the inherent strength and impressive musculature of a half-orc at the threshold of adulthood. Working together, they levered the slab up and slid it to the side, revealing a cache of broken stone of manageable size. Squatting, Fetch splayed a hand and lowered it in stages toward the newly exposed rubble.

  “No heat,” she said, pleased.

  “No apple either,” came the disappointed reply from behind.

  Rising, she clapped Abril on the shoulder. “Good find, slophead. Let’s start moving it to the line.”

  “Right, chief.”

  Abril went to set the pry bar aside and a stone slid beneath his heel. He jammed the iron shaft down to keep from falling onto his backside. A reflex.

  A rush of escaping air shrieked from where the bar struck.

  Fetch was already moving. Diving, she tackled the young mongrel. They both grunted at the impact, and again when they hit the jagged stones. Keeping Abril wrapped tightly in her arms, Fetch rolled as a geyser of jade fire shot upward. They cleared the flames, tumbling apart and scrambling to their knees. Hellish heat forced Fetch’s eyes shut and the breath from her lungs. The Al-Unan fire leapt to freedom in a column three times her height. The radiant, emerald blaze had a liquidlike quality, splashing upon the stones and continuing to burn as the column collapsed.

  Fetch could hear Abril’s strained voice, urging a retreat, but she was unmindful. The fire held her enthralled, this sorcerous substance that had been the downfall of the Kiln and the mad mongrel from whose mind the fortress had sprung. Even as Fetching knelt there, jagged rock digging into her knees, she became aware of sitting upon the Claymaster’s tomb, the gout of flame his headstone.

  Burn in all the hells, you hateful old fuck.

  “Chief! We have to move!”

  Rebuking the fire’s allure, Fetch began to crab-crawl away, forcing herself to go slowly. It was folly to hurry. Hidden pockets of the dread substance were everywhere, waiting for a rockslide or careless laborer to send it belching forth, eager to consume. The ignition of one made the others restless. The stamp of fleeing feet was likely to rouse them, a lesson that was hard learned.

  As Fetch and Abril scuttled away, peals from the warning horns went up. All the workers would be abandoning the pile. Fetch could only hope they remembered not to rush. She could feel her own instinct to run rising, knowing the entire field of rubble could ignite at any moment. At last, they reached the embankment of the fallen wall and made their way down the slope. As soon as their boots touched the dust, Fetch and Abril broke into a sprint, joining the small crowd of anxious faces gathered a thrumshot away from the ruin.

  “Anyone hurt?” she enquired, winding her way swiftly through the dozen or so slops and villagers. She was answered with head shakes and muttered assurances. All were pale and drawn from the stress of the ponderous flight, but none were burned.

  Mead rode up on his hog, visibly relieved when his eyes fell upon Fetching.

  “Any losses?” she demanded.

  He shook his head. “Ridden a full circuit. Everyone made it down. No further eruptions, either, far as I can tell.”

  All good news, but the work for the day, and for weeks to come, was over. The pocket needed to burn itself out. Even if that happened quickly, Fetch would be a fool to order her folk back to this slumbering beast too soon. They needed time, lack of casualties aside. News of the ignition would be carried back to Winsome, where the man who had lost a foot to the fire would be waiting, where the widow of the tanner who had no body left to bury still dwelled with their three children.

  “We’re done here,” Fetch announced. “Mead, tell the others. Let’s take what we have.”

  Mead turned Nyhapsáni’s head and spurred the sow away to carry the command.

  The mile to Winsome was a long one. They had left for the pile before the sun was up and it was now but midmorning. Of the three teams of hogs brought to haul stone, only one dragged a full net. Fetch walked along with the majority of the work crew, choosing not to ride. The slops needed the time in the saddle.

  The village came into view.

  Fetch was always struck by how alien Winsome looked enclosed by a stockade. She had grown up here; the vistas of olive groves and vineyards adorning the scrubland on the village borders were the backdrop of all her childhood memories. Now those same vineyards were withered, the groves consumed by locusts, and cut off from the village by a patchwork wall of scavenged timber and salvaged rubble.

  The slops serving as sentries saw them coming. The pitiful gate opened. As she entered the confines of the stockade, Fetching rolled her head around atop a stiff neck, soliciting a pop. Hells, she was already tired and the day had just begun.
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  A scrawny slop came sprinting up the main thoroughfare, bearing a mattock across his shoulders as if it were a yoke. Seeing her, the youth increased his pace.

  “Late for digging, Tel?” Fetching called out.

  “No, chief,” came the response. The little slophead’s feet never slowed. “Polecat’s pick broke. Sent me for another.”

  “Faster, then,” Fetch encouraged.

  The young half-orc obeyed and rushed out the gate.

  Fetching turned to her crew. “Slops, go ahead and report to Cat at the ditch. Abril! Don’t forget you have patrol.”

  The older hopefuls, all save Abril, turned and followed after Little Tel. The Winsome men continued on into town. Fetch let them go and sent Mead to oversee the delivery of what stone they gathered to the mason’s.

  “Get our hogs ready,” she ordered Abril.

  As the grinning mongrel ran for the stables, she made for the orphanage.

  It was quiet inside, but not the exquisite, fragile quiet of sleeping children; this was a silence born from want, from little ones gone too many days without enough to eat. A handful of the younger foundlings were awake, playing numbly together beneath a table. Whatever the game, it had the disturbing look of something done out of habit. There was no laughter, no squeals of delight or even cries of disagreement; it was five morose children, none older than four, simply passing the time. In the surrounding cots, their older companions slept on, keeping the hunger pains at bay with slumber. In Fetch’s day, it never would have been this calm. Half-orc children were known for their rowdiness.

  Sweeps looked up from some sewing as Fetch entered, putting it aside to rise and meet her at the door.