The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  “Who is going to get him?” Fetch asked, smiling.

  “Should be Hood,” Polecat offered. “He’ll suspect if it’s me or Mead.”

  Hoodwink’s taut-skinned face peered at Polecat, unblinking.

  “Ooooorrrr,” Polecat amended, “maybe Oats.”

  Oats shrugged. “What am I telling him?”

  The mirth in the room became palpable.

  Polecat’s mischievous smile was nearly cracking his face in half. “Tell him the chief got drunk and has stripped down to dance for all of us.”

  It was Fetch’s turn to give him an unblinking stare.

  “Ooooorrrr you could say it’s me.”

  Shed Snake curled his lip. “No one wants to see that, Cat.”

  Dumb Door banged on the wall to get the room’s attention. Beaming, he stood up, bent over, and made quick gestures away from his rump, flicking his fingers outward.

  The hoof began to howl.

  “You oafs get any louder and all of Winsome will know what you’re cooking,” Fetch warned, trying to keep her own laughter from spilling over.

  Mead was wiping away a tear. “That’s it! We tell him Dumb Door has the galloping trots and has shit-sprayed everywhere….”

  Polecat was grabbing his sides, unable to breathe.

  Shed Snake looked at Oats. “Make sure he brings a bucket.”

  “There is a water ration,” Hoodwink put in. “He can’t use a bucket.”

  Unable to tell if the cadaverous mongrel was adding to the jest or being earnest, the room erupted in fresh, barely stifled hilarity.

  Trying to shake his own face into something straight, Oats went for the door.

  “Wait,” Fetch said. “Still needs a hoof name.”

  The room stilled.

  Shed Snake gave a solemn nod. “I got it.”

  Shortly, Oats returned, holding the door open and gesturing inside with gruff apathy. “The mess is in here.”

  A very determined-looking Abril entered, carrying a bundle of dry rags. He stopped short, seeing the hoof standing around the table, his confused stare taking them in before settling on the objects resting upon the table. A saddle, draped with a brigand.

  Abril threw his arms into the air, sending the rags sailing, and let loose a whoop.

  The True Bastards began laughing again, cheering for their newest rider.

  Fetching picked the brigand up and approached Abril. The room quieted. Abril attempted to relax, but was still trembling when Fetch helped him into the armored vest.

  Stepping back, she looked him in the eyes. “What are you?”

  Abril’s voice nearly broke. “I’m a True Bastard, chief.”

  “Brothers?” Fetching asked the room, still looking at her newest rider. “What do we know he is going to do?”

  “LIVE IN THE SADDLE! DIE ON THE HOG!”

  Abril was nodding fiercely, eyes welling, throat and jaw clenched.

  Fetching stepped back and Shed Snake came around the table. He motioned at Abril with mock disdain.

  “This fuck and I grew up together. Even before the slops, we were foundlings together. I was quiet, too afraid of Beryl to step out of line. Not this one. Anything got broken, any food went missing, any of the girls came crying, Beryl always knew who it was. We all did. But she had a word for it.” Shed Snake stepped forward, held his arm out to Abril, fingers spread. “Welcome to the True Bastards. Culprit.”

  Abril let go of his birth name and seized the offered hand, allowed himself to be pulled into a hard embrace.

  Fetching caught Oats’s eye. He winked at her and she smiled, both remembering their own days in the orphanage and who it was that used to get the pair of them in trouble.

  One by one, the rest of the hoof welcomed their new brother in his own way; a bearlike shake from Oats, a flick in the cods from Polecat, completely ignored by Hoodwink.

  “I’m getting my first hoof tattoo right here!” Culprit announced, slapping the shaved half of his head. “Cat, will you do it tonight?”

  “Somewhere you can’t see what I’m doing? Absolutely! What do you think, brothers? A cock and fruits?”

  Abril pointed a stern finger at Polecat. “It’s got to be a Bastards sign.”

  “My cock and fruits?”

  Traditionally, there would be wine, and plenty of it, but rationing made drunken revelry impossible. Instead, Fetch gave out the pieces of Zahracene fruit she had Mead set aside for the hoof. There were some dubious squints, but Oats had sampled a piece on the ride back from the Smelteds and cut into his with gusto, encouraging the rest to do the same. Soon the room was filled with surprised sighs of pleasure and the sounds of errant juice being sucked off fingers. Mead made sure to collect all the seeds.

  When it was all done, she motioned for them to gather around the table once more. “We got business.”

  Chairs and stools scraped along the rough flooring as the brethren mustered around the table.

  One brother was still standing, looking lost.

  “Culprit?” Fetch said. “You want to move your fucking saddle and sit down so we can get to this?”

  Blinking hard, Culprit jumped to the task, surrounded by good-natured chuckles.

  Fetching looked at her seven riders. “No more secrets.”

  And she made good on that.

  At last, weary with the sound of her own voice, she had revealed all about her illness and the sludge.

  A pensive silence settled within the cooper’s shop, every mongrel chewing on what was said. Fetch waited for the challenge to her leadership, tried not to consider who would back her and failed. Oats, with Jackal’s vote, was two. Hoodwink would remain loyal, but she wasn’t sure what he’d say for Warbler. Culprit had just reached the table. He wouldn’t be able to conceive going against her. The rest, however, she could not guess.

  Dumb Door was the first to respond, signing a question to Fetch. The simple generosity of it nearly made her step down as chief. She didn’t deserve these mongrels.

  “Yes,” she answered, “I’m hale now. No longer sick.”

  “Glad to hear it, chief,” Polecat said. “Though I will say, you would have made a far better-looking Sludge Man.” He leaned left and nudged Mead. “Remember that fucking frail? Hells, what an inbred!”

  Mead humored him with a grin, but it melted back to a brood. He was wooden, staring at the table. Polecat didn’t notice, his attention turned to the rest of the brethren.

  “Me and the chief were the only ones here that fought him. Oats was out cold and Mead was nursemaiding him. Hood was…where were you? Ah, who cares a shit! The rest of you weren’t sworn yet. Fucking fortunate, too. Me and Hobnail were running to help the chief and that slack-mouthed bog dweller—”

  “Nearly killed you,” Fetch cut him off. “He was a madman and a horror. And, thankfully, all that’s left of him is sitting trapped beneath Strava.”

  Mead’s silence was the only sign of ill feeling in the hoof. There was a calm in the room that took Fetch a moment to grasp. Relief when there should have been anger, obedience where there should have been rebellion. Her brothers accepted what she’d told them, accepted her solution. Yet she knew what they would not accept. An offer to step down. And she understood.

  The True Bastards had their chief back.

  She had been taken from them, and had returned. It was a victory against Hispartha, against the devil-dogs. It was a victory against Ul-wundulas.

  Once again, Fetch was forced to face her predecessor. By taking the chief’s seat she was more akin to him than she ever thought possible to stomach. From all accounts, the Claymaster had been canny, powerful, and feared in the beginning. That’s what made him the warlord who won the Lots. Perhaps the bitter, hateful, mad fuck was always there, eating away at the rest. Certainly that was all that was left at th
e end, but Fetch had to accept she’d known a chief diminished by age, pain, and the harshness of hoof life. Why then had he lasted? Why had Warbler’s challenge failed? Why had there not been a dozen more before Jackal threw his ax in defiance? Now she looked upon the answer.

  A hoof rallies around power, strength, but that’s not what holds them. Their loyalty is bound to a conviction that the one leading them has the grit to stand longest in the storm, the one who will bear the hardest tasks so they don’t have to. Father was wrong about her. And about himself. This had nothing to do with lust or love or fear. This was about backing the mongrel who had the appetite to eat punishment and come back for more. Hard as living in the badlands could be, it was nothing compared to living it in the hoofmaster’s chair. Why would any want to issue challenge and take that on when there was another willing to stand between them and the flying bolts? What wouldn’t they forgive to keep that protection?

  “What’s the move now, chief?”

  Fetch wasn’t certain which of them had asked the question. Wasn’t sure it was even a voice in the room and not one inside her head. No, not her head. It was the sound made by her heart every time it beat.

  “Hispartha will be outside our gates again one day soon,” she said. “Either looking for me, or Jackal, or just because their reclamation of Ul-wundulas puts us in their path. We’ll all die on that day. And that’s if this fucking Ruin thick hasn’t beat them to the slaughter. The only way to survive is not be here when they come.”

  The comfortable calm in the room vanished.

  “What are you saying, chief?” Shed Snake asked.

  “That it’s time to abandon Winsome.”

  “You jesting right now?” Oats asked, his confusion bordering on hostile.

  Fetch knew she’d hurt him with this. That’s why she avoided telling him on the journey back.

  “Home is the hoof, Oats,” she said, wishing now she hadn’t waited.

  “Not for the townsfolk,” Shed Snake said.

  Dumb Door knocked on the table in agreement.

  Fetch nodded. “They will have to leave.”

  “Where?” Culprit asked, spooked.

  “The Tusked Tide?” Snake offered. “They took them in once before.”

  Fetch would only give the truth. “Boar Lip won’t have anything else to do with us.”

  Polecat leaned back in his chair, spread his hands, and gave a mocking, searching look about the cooper’s shop. “Then where?”

  “The Sons.”

  “That shriveled seed sack that leads them thinks we’re a lost cause!” Polecat was close to spitting with anger. “You think I didn’t talk to some of his boys? Hells, half the Lots already believe we’re dead. The other half has simply forgotten us. We go to the Sons or any other mongrel hoof and beg them to take our folk, word will spread across Ul-wundulas that we are done.”

  “But we won’t be.”

  The entire table looked at Mead.

  “Think on it,” he said. “A hoof is riders. Half-orcs on hogs. Our creed doesn’t say anything about fortresses and farms. The Fangs of Our Fathers don’t bother with such things and none are saying they should disband.”

  “Mead”—Polecat could not keep the chastisement from his voice—“listen to yourself. You’re encouraging us to give up on the people we are supposed to protect.”

  “I am. If it saves them and the hoof, then yes, I am. Chief’s right. We are barely feeding them now. They will start abandoning Winsome before long as it is. Maybe one day this hoof will be a power in the Lots again, maybe build a fortress to rival the Kiln. But that’s not where we are now! We are on the edge of starvation and assailed by shit we can’t fight. We are trying to hold on to something that died with the Claymaster. I say we take these people somewhere they can at least feel safe and then we can focus on making this hoof strong again.”

  “And what about our slops?” Oats challenged, clearly not happy with Mead’s reasoning. “We just cast them all aside too?”

  Mead’s answer was calm, cold. Correct. “Half of them will desert wherever we take the townsfolk. We saw that last year when most of our hopefuls decided they had more hope with the Tide. Let them. It’s less mouths. We will figure out which ones just want to wear a brigand and which ones are True Bastards.”

  Oats growled in his throat. “And what about the True Bastards? Where are we going to go?’

  “Dog Fall,” Mead replied.

  Culprit gawked at Fetch as if she’d been the one to answer. “The Tines?”

  Polecat was the next to entreat her. “We’re really going to go hide behind the elves?”

  “They’re the only ones who know how to fight the asily’a kaga arkhu,” Mead said.

  The foreign words only increased Cat’s agitation. “We’re going to abandon our land for that? Let the orcs walk right through because one of their hoodoo cunts is skulking around? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of those dogs since the first night they came.”

  “You haven’t,” Fetch said.

  “It’s a fair point, though,” Oats said, jumping on the chance for the discussion to turn. “Fetch, you said yourself he let you live. Mead got through with the Unyar supplies. Nothing bothered us the entire ride from the Smelteds. Don’t think any of us would pretend to know what that orc was doing, but looks like he’s moved on.”

  Mead leaned forward, pressed a finger into the table. “That orc will keep coming at us. Wager on it. Even if he leaves us alone, Hispartha won’t. Kalbarca won’t be the end of it. Are none of you hearing the chief?”

  “I’m hearing the chief say we’re fleeing our lot and just handing it to the orcs,” Polecat said. “You’re riding that crazed hog with her because you think it’s galloping for Tine land.”

  Mead threw up his hand. “Not hearing me either, then.”

  “I heard you when you came back from Strava and told me there are now some dune-humping frails on the Rutters’ lot, and now the chief’s telling me they’re going to have this one!”

  Dumb Door cut off the growing argument between the two by snapping his fingers. He pointed at Hoodwink before splaying a hand in the semblance of antlers on his head.

  “There’s an idea,” Shed Snake said. “Chief, why can’t Hood go to the Tines? He knows Warbler best. Then we can stay and—”

  Fetch smacked the table. “Enough! None of us can stay. None. We do, we die. Now this is happening. I don’t know where just yet, but we are going. Winsome can’t sustain us, can’t protect us. We will never be better provisioned to leave than we are now. But it’s still going to require time. The people will be resistant to leave, so we—”

  “No.”

  Polecat’s hand jerked up, came down, and slammed a knife into the table.

  The quivering steel was all that moved for an eternity.

  Fetch took a breath. “Cat, listen—”

  “I am! I did. Pardons, chief, but no. Bastards are going to die, I say we die here, on our land. Nowhere else. We proved we were willing to do it once. How is this different from that?” His hatchet face swept the table. “Brothers, it’s not. So, I say no. We stay. If you all disagree then the chief can put this dagger through my fucking eye. That’s the code. But I’ll die before I take leave of another lot. Today, if I must.”

  Fetch rested her hands on the table, the slight movement commanding the attention of all. “He’s right. True Bastards, the decision to leave Winsome has been challenged. Stick a knife if you think we should remain.”

  Dumb Door stood, drew his knife and pushed it into the table without rancor.

  “I am with the chief,” Hoodwink said. Yet even as his thin voice declared his support, he slid a knife between the slats of the table, smooth and silent. “This is for Warbler.”

  The pale mongrel did not fear to look at Fetching after he’d done it, and there w
as no remorse in the unblinking eyes. She gave him a nod. Warbler had been ousted from the hoof, spent nearly two decades away before being able to return only to leave again, willingly, to help a plague-stricken child. But his heart was ever in Winsome. Hood was right, the old thrice would never agree that the hoof should leave.

  Shed Snake’s knife was now in his hand, but he peered at the blade for a long time, almost puzzled at its presence. At last, as if the feel of it were burning him worse than the Al-Unan fire, he buried it in the wood.

  Four votes against. Fetch only had herself and Hood.

  Mead looked ready to flip the entire table as he chewed on growing consternation. “I’m with the chief.”

  Three with her.

  None could believe when Culprit’s knife struck. Fetch struggled not to glare. Not that the youngblood had the stones to look at her. So much for her faith in the loyalty of fresh-sworns.

  Oats remained seated at the foot, trunk-arms crossed. Slowly, he pulled the kerchief off his head and scratched at his pate.

  “Jackal told me when he left to stay right with you, so I know what he’d do.”

  Four. Fetch held Oats’s gaze.

  “But he doesn’t control my vote.”

  Oats smote the table with his knife without standing, splitting one of the boards and hammering home the decision for the hoof to stay.

  Fetch did not allow anything to control the next instant, not silence, not hesitance, not remorse. Only her steady voice followed that final vote.

  “We’re staying, then. That means duties as normal. Mead, I want an inventory of our supplies and a rationing plan. Door, keep on those hogs. We need them all broken to the saddle. Polecat, get that ditch finished. Culprit, Snake, Hood, I want you riding patrols. The rest of us will join you when able, but the slack is on you. Oats, slop training. Get them used to seeing you again. Fucking work them. I’ll be leading a crew to the Kiln ruin. Still need stone, especially since we’re making a stand. You have your tasks. Get to them.”