The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  By the time Hoodwink arrived to drill the slops in hand-fighting, Fetch’s prediction had proved true. Dacia had been sent away, along with Lopo and Graviel. Both hopefuls had long since proven to be keen aims, but their skills had faded. Lack of food was the cause. The solution was as evasive as the laughing dogs.

  “Prop your stockbows against the wall and circle up!” Fetch said. “Who’s going to test themselves against Hood today?”

  The hopefuls were tired, listless, most keeping their noses pointed at the dust.

  “I will,” came a toneless reply.

  Incus’s arms were crossed in front of her chest, two fingers of her right hand raised.

  The ring of slops came awake.

  Hoodwink was already shedding his sword belt, plucking knives from everywhere and tossing them point first into the ground. Stepping forward, his movements struck Fetch as weirdly reminiscent of Ahlamra’s, silent and smooth. Incus’s approach was akin to a sullen ox. Slowly, she removed the leather thong from atop her head, allowing her hair to once again smother her face. Fetch didn’t know how the thrice could even see through that wiry drape.

  Her first jab was so swift, propelling such a large mass of fist, that the rush of air barreling out of its path was audible. The only thing faster was Hood. Twisting, he slipped the blow and danced back, out of his opponent’s greater reach. There had been an opening there for him to punish her ribs, but he’d chosen to ignore it, Fetch saw. Incus saw too, for her hair billowed slightly from a perturbed breath and she did not press the attack. Instead, she lowered her hands, abandoned her stance, and just stood.

  Waiting.

  Hoodwink paced around her. The slops widened the circle at his approach as if he were made of snake venom. All of them had faced him in training. None had ever landed a blow.

  He darted, a viper with four limbs, quick enough to flank Incus, though she’d been revolving to track him. His fist came for her kidney, but she hunched, caught his knuckles on her elbow. Several slops winced at the sound. Hood had no time for pain. His other fist came for Incus’s face and, to whoops of approval, she leaned into the blow. Another thud resounded as the thrice head-butted Hood’s hand, bending his wrist. It was a small miracle the bones did not snap. Fetch thought she might actually have seen Hoodwink’s lip turn down in a grimace. This time, he didn’t retreat, and threw a knee at Incus’s gut. She slapped it down, answered with a cutting elbow. Hood ducked, refusing to leave the eye of the storm. The two fighters struck and blocked, slipped and countered, neither able to breach the other’s skill. It became entrancing to watch as this large, dark-cliff-face of a woman battled the pale serpent of a smaller man.

  The slopheads’ cheering had grown so loud at the spectacle that half of Winsome drifted over to see the cause. Within moments, another two score voices were lifted by the unexpected entertainment, reaching such a furious pitch that Fetch was having a difficult time concentrating on the fight. It must have rattled Hoodwink, too, for his strikes were growing sloppy, the seamless web of violence he normally spun fraying. Incus, by contrast, remained as unshakable as a castle wall. A wall that could punch.

  “You may want to consider pulling your albino out of there.”

  Looking to her right, Fetch found Sluggard giving her a grin. She’d been so intent on the fight, she hadn’t noticed his arrival. That made twice he had come up on her unawares. Her slops weren’t the only ones whose skills were withering.

  “It’s just training,” she told him.

  The gritter gave a careless shrug. “Even still. You could end up with one less brother if the Anvil’s Bride gets a temper on.”

  “The Anvil’s…? You mean Incus?”

  “Saw her fight one bout in Magerit,” Sluggard said, his eyes returning to the match. “Her head was shaved then, but seeing her fight now, it’s certainly her.”

  Within the growing circle of onlookers, Hood and Incus continued to scrap. Blows were landing now, though most of the meaty slaps came from blocked punches. Both fighters had abandoned dodging altogether.

  Fetch frowned. “So she’s some famed brawler in Hispartha?”

  “Earned her name in Traedria,” Sluggard replied, shouting a bit to be heard. “Bested everyone of note on that narrow peninsula, so she came to our expansive one. Fought at court for the pleasure of the king and queen before her master took her on a circuit of all the great cities. One of the carnavales I rode for hosted her as the principal entertainment. That night I saw the Anvil’s Bride drop eight of Magerit’s most celebrated pugilists.”

  “Thought you only saw her fight one bout?”

  Sluggard cocked an eye at Fetching and winked. “I did. She fought all eight at once.”

  A bursting cheer drew both their attentions back to the ring. Hood had gotten hold of Incus’s left arm, likely taking advantage of an overextended punch. Keeping the arm pinned between his own, he spun, hammered an elbow into Incus’s back, and stomped a foot behind her knee, collapsing the leg. A sweep of the planted foot brought her down.

  The crowd erupted.

  Hoodwink did not bask in the victory, but immediately stalked over to Fetching. He leaned close and whispered in her ear.

  “She’s holding back.” There was a tone to his voice Fetch had never heard before. He sounded…intrigued.

  “Oh, she is, is she?”

  Fetching removed her sword belt, slapped it into Sluggard’s unprepared hands, and walked into the ring.

  Incus was already on her feet, unmindful of the dust now whitening her hair. Fetch strode up until the toes of their boots were nearly touching and stretched up toward the thrice’s concealed face. The crowd had gone silent, so she merely mouthed the words: You fight me now. Hold back, and you’re done here. Understand?

  The hair nodded.

  The next instant, Fetch had to dive backward to keep from losing her head. Off-balance, she gave herself to the fall, kicking back when her rump struck the ground and rolling over herself into a crouch. Incus was still coming. Fetch launched forward. The thrice’s arm tensed to strike. Fetch jumped, placing her foot on Incus’s surging leg and using it to vault upward. She caught the arm, used her momentum to arrest the punch, and swung atop the thrice’s shoulders. One leg was hooked beside her neck, the other beneath the arm. Fetch grasped Incus under the jaw and hauled backward. It should have sent them both toppling, but the thrice thrust a leg out behind, rooted, and spun, seizing Fetch’s wrist and throwing her bodily. She struck the crowd, cries of alarm going up from the slops who broke her fall. Disentangling herself, she rushed back into the now-broken circle. She didn’t give Incus a chance to strike, hopping forward and launching a kick as soon as she had the distance. The thrice batted her foot away with little effort and unleashed a hailstorm of punches, crisscrossing the space between them, the space Fetch had to struggle to stay out of.

  Hells damn, she was fast!

  Faster than Oats to be sure and just as powerful. One mistake and Fetch would be spitting teeth. Or fragments of skull.

  So focused on those deadly fists, Fetch never saw the foot coming. It was an inelegant thing, more a stamping push than a kick, but it rammed Fetch’s midsection all the same. The air left her faster even than she flew backward. By the time she struck the ground, she was already choking. Having the wind knocked out was never pleasant, but the presence of the sludge made it terrifying. Writhing, struggling to breathe, wanting to vomit, Fetch realized she was about to die because of a sparring match. She might have laughed if anything were possible besides wheezing. Fingers clutching the dirt in spasms, she waited for the next failed breath to be her last.

  A large hand seized the back of her neck, lifted her until she was sitting, and forced her head down until it almost kissed the dirt between her legs. A few more agonizing moments passed. Her torso was moving, heaving, the hand at her neck giving to the motion. Her vision
cleared before her lungs, but all she saw was dust and her own crotch. The crowd was dead silent. Fetch heard nothing but labored inhalations. The hand left her neck and a sizable presence settled in front of her. Fetch looked up to find Incus kneeling there. One of her large hands parted the hair to reveal a face both contrite and resolved. The question came without inflection.

  “Can I stay?”

  Fetch reached up and placed a hand on the thrice’s cheek. Her voice had not yet returned, but what matter?

  Are you ever going to hold back again?

  She felt the head shake. “No, chief.”

  Good. You can stay.

  Incus helped Fetching to her feet and the spectators issued a collective sigh. Whether it was relief or disappointment, Fetch could not discern. She tried to keep her boots from dragging as she walked back to where Hoodwink stood.

  “Get a sword in her hand,” she managed with a raw voice. “Don’t pair her with other slops. Just you.”

  Hood nodded as Fetch took her trappings back from Sluggard.

  “My arm makes a fine support, if you require,” the gritter offered.

  “I don’t,” Fetch rasped, and walked away alone.

  That night, she gave the hoof a much-needed respite and retired early to her solar. Sleep beckoned. And withdrew. She coughed into the cushions, sweated into the linens. The night, the bed, became a prison, keeping her trapped on the verge of sleep. Shivering with fever, hammers at work within her skull, she could find neither the peace of slumber nor the strength to rise. A burning weight crept from her chest into her throat, undeterred by her painful hacking. These torments became a living thing, insidious and insistent, cunning enough to come only when she was alone, making her weakness an intimate, isolated turmoil.

  This night, another intruded.

  Fetch’s lethargy lifted, the brutal ache in her head dulled, the cough abated. All the familiar pains fled as if offended she would allow a witness to their workings. She wrestled herself upright and there he was, his bulk lounging on the stool, back to the wall.

  “Crafty.”

  His smile glimmered in the poor light, gold teeth tarnishing the pure moonbeams.

  “I knew you were here to fuck us,” she snarled.

  The wizard scratched idly at his great belly. “Truly, it was not my first intent. I would have rather made allies of you all.”

  “Save your lies. I’ll not listen.”

  “Pity. For I fear if you do not heed me, your hoof is doomed.”

  A breeze from the balcony cooled the sweat on Fetch’s skin and chilled her more than was warranted. Crafty had hardly stirred. He was a nearly featureless lump of shadow filling the corner of the room, topped by the outline of a turban. It was his stillness that was frightening, as if he were holding himself back. Fetch tried to recall where she had laid her tulwar, but the location of the sword slipped her mind as easily as a wriggling eel through the fingers. Her hands, then. Get a grip around his fat neck and squeeze. Now was the time to strike. Now! But she could not make her body move. A fresh fit of coughing seized her.

  “I’ll kill you,” she croaked.

  The wizard actually laughed. “It is a path you may attempt. Though I think your steps will falter. I do not yearn for any to die, but neither will I dally in the murder of all your brothers should you force it. That choice will be yours.”

  “Choice? I’m not playing your games!”

  “You must cast your vote against Jackal.”

  “My vote? What are you…against Jackal? You’re mad.”

  “No.” Rings glinted as Crafty’s fingers moved to rub at the side of his nose. “Indeed, it is the only sane solution. You will cast against him and give him no warning of your betrayal. That should see the end of his ambitions.”

  The realization did not strike Fetch so much as caress her, a hand that was on hers all along, unnoticed until the gentlest stroking of the thumb.

  This infuriating palaver had already taken place.

  “It hurts me to do this,” Crafty went on, his words now remembered and predictable. “I am fond of him. Truly. But now is not the time for Jackal to become master, I am thinking.”

  Fetch’s jaw worked and she heard her words from that day echo in the dark bedchamber. “He is going to sit the chief’s chair, Tyrkanian. I’m going to help put him there and together we are going to cast you out on your blubbery ass.”

  Crafty produced a weary sigh. “There is no time for such fencing. Jackal has made his challenge. Soon you must all gather and fling your little axes. Yours will be cast for the Claymaster. Do otherwise and I will destroy the Grey Bastards. The riders, the youths in training, the hogs. I will bring this fortress down atop your heads.” The wizard swirled a finger languidly at the ceiling. Unlike now, they had been inside the Kiln. Like now, Crafty had appeared in her chamber uninvited. “And I shall not stop there. Your quaint Winsome town will also burn. Your hoof, your lot, everything laid waste. Why? For loyalty. For love? I wonder, dread Fetching, what you love more? The mongrel? Or the Bastards?”

  She had hesitated then. Should have opened his guts.

  Crafty leaned forward and his voice oozed sympathy. “Jackal will not be harmed. The Claymaster knows his death will…sour things within the brotherhood. You have my word, as I have your chief’s. Jackal will be allowed to become a free-rider. Betray him and you save him. You save all of them. It is your choice. But I must ask that you make it now.”

  She had, her ax blade striking for the Claymaster. Yet, the vote was a draw, demanding a bout between chosen champions. Again, Crafty had the answer. And again, she complied. Oats fought for Jack, she for the chief, and toppled the two mongrels she cared about above all else.

  All else, it seemed, save the hoof.

  “You didn’t know…” Fetching said, shattering the words of memory. “What I was. You didn’t know. I didn’t know. Had I, I would have feasted on your organs!”

  She lunged from the bed, barked her knee on the foot board, and crashed into the wall, tripping on the empty stool.

  “Show yourself.”

  It would have been a challenge screamed into the night, but the fury was throttled by a retching cough.

  Dreading the delirious hell of the bed, she refused to return, and passed the night slumped on the floor, brooding on dead days, waiting for them to be conjured from the shadows.

  NINE

  “AL-UNAN FIRE!”

  Fetch strode triumphantly into the mason’s hall. In yet another of Winsome’s abandoned buildings, Mead had taken over the place for use in planning the town’s fortifications. She was not expecting to see Sluggard look up as soon as she came through the doorway, but didn’t let the surprise slow her steps.

  “To kill the dogs,” Fetch continued. “We’ll use Al-Unan fire.”

  The words seemed to freeze Mead as he leaned over the chart on the table before him, though his concentration was clearly broken. His words and eye contact were both slow to come.

  “Chief. That is not—”

  “Whore, out.” Fetch jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the door.

  Sluggard cleared his throat, stood, and left.

  “It will kill them,” Fetch told Mead when they were alone. “No more of this vanishing shit.”

  “They have to reappear first.”

  “They will. And then we’ll be ready with something they can’t recover from.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “It killed the Sludge Man, it can kill anything.”

  “Yes. It also destroyed a fortress of stone. We are living behind wooden walls, Fetch.”

  It was not often that her brothers used her name these days. The familiarity was both comforting and infuriating. She pushed both reactions down.

  “You have another way? I’m listening.”

 
She waited. Mead’s stare drifted back to his table.

  “Neither do I,” Fetch said. “No one does. That awful demon’s spend is our only chance.”

  “It’s not. We don’t have any.”

  “It’s still burning at the Kiln. We get it from there.”

  Mead laughed. It was a bitter sound. “No. It can only be handled when inert. Once it’s burning…Fetch—”

  She slapped the table. “Chief!”

  That brought him up short. He took a breath. “Chief. It can’t be contained once loose. That’s why it’s so dangerous.”

  “Don’t explain things to me like I’m a damn slop, Mead. I understand! But if anyone can find a way it’s you.”

  The bench flew back and fell noisily to the floor as the young mongrel jumped to his feet. He held his stump in front of Fetch’s face, his own quivering with rage.

  “And how many other parts do I need to lose for that miracle?! I’m not a wizard, Fetching! Crafty was the one that finally got that shit under control, not me!”

  Fetch allowed him his anger, waited as its expulsion snuffed it as quick as a candle flame. Mead lowered his arm, stood straight, and ran his good hand through his Tine plume. He shook his head at the ceiling, spoke to it, the words crawling from a cranny of bitter recollection.

  “The Claymaster had me on that insanity almost from the instant I put a brigand on. I don’t know where he got it, I didn’t know how I was going to make it work without bringing the entire Kiln down. And what happened?”

  Fetch watched Mead’s haunted stillness, saying nothing. At last, he paced back a step, met her eyes. “The old mongrel wanted a way to secure the Kiln without using wood. Even then, we were in short supply. Did you know he even worked on it himself? I found him, several times, late at night…just staring into the ovens, a small amount of that green hell burning within. I kept hoping he would figure it out. Or realize it was impossible and give up. But he kept at it. Kept me at it. Had me recruit slops to help. I convinced Salik…I convinced Shed Snake to help. I thought it would get him a vote faster if we solved the puzzle. He was damn lucky that day. We all were.”