The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  Orphan Girl made to pursue, but Fetch jumped onto the top rail of the fence, using it to vault onto the hog’s back once more. Grabbing the swine-yankers, she wrestled the sow away from the mongrels’ heels.

  “Fetch!” Oats cried, riding out of the paddock on Ugfuck, a rope whirling over his head. “Get clear!”

  She jumped just as Oats tossed, snagged the pig around the neck. Lassos from Hoodwink, Culprit, and Shed Snake followed close behind. Culprit’s failed to catch, but the other two looped around Orphan Girl’s head. The eerily silent hog attempted to charge Oats, but Hood rode a quick wheel around behind, holding her back with the rope looped around his saddle horn. When she turned on Hood, Snake stalled her. This dance continued while Culprit attempted to snare her back legs, but he again missed the toss.

  “She’s not tiring!” Oats declared. “We can stop her, but can’t move her!”

  Ugfuck was the strongest barbarian in the Bastards’ stable, and he was going to fatigue long before the foul craft that had its claws sunk in Orphan Girl.

  “Get your mounts saddled!” Fetch yelled to her hoof. “It will take all of us!”

  She ran to Culprit’s side, took the lasso from him, tossed, and trapped Orphan Girl’s back hooves. Culprit took the rope back and quickly wound it around his saddle horn, urging his hog to back up. The rope went taut, pulling the sow’s legs back. She resisted, but with Oats, Snake, and Hood now pulling at her head in the opposite direction, she was forced onto her belly.

  Fetching ran for the stables, passing the fallen Sluggard. There was no time to check him. If they didn’t get more ropes on that devil-beast, the entire hoof would end up facedown and bleeding in the mud. Marrow and Polecat ran along the palisade until they were above the pens, jumping directly onto the roof of the stable to clamber down.

  A bellow of alarm from Oats and a yelled curse from Snake caused Fetch to whirl.

  Little Orphan Girl had begun to roll, winding the ropes around her neck. Oats, Snake, and Hoodwink tried to restrain her, but their hogs were being drawn in, planted hooves skidding.

  Marrow and Polecat were struggling to get their spooked hogs rounded up and saddled. They weren’t going to be quick enough to help.

  “Cut the ropes!” Fetch shouted.

  “We won’t get another chance!” Oats replied.

  “Cut them!”

  The riders drew their tulwars.

  A sonorous boom impregnated the air. Reeling against the sound, Fetch saw the rain explode, forced outward by a spherical void centered on Orphan Girl. The resonant cry had no end, a never-ending blast from a thousand war horns. Head swimming, legs liquid, Fetching lost her balance, ate mud. The low-pitched, thunderous assault roared in her ears, clenched her eyes. She may have screamed in a feeble reply devoured by the greater fury. The ropes holding Orphan Girl frayed, soundlessly snapped. The hog stood, protruding thrumbolts and spear-shafts shattering an instant before the beast’s tusks. Fetching put up an arm, warding herself against fragments of wood and ivory. The hide reverberated and split. A rush of blood, unshed from the hog’s many wounds, dumped to the ground as its entire body ruptured.

  The rain returned, reclaiming the air. It was a moment before Fetching realized she could again hear the drops falling. All around, hogs and half-orcs were picking themselves from the mud, movements dazed, faces slack, shaken but unharmed.

  Nothing remained of Little Orphan Girl but a sodden heap of burst skin lying atop scattered guts and fractured bones.

  TWENTY-THREE

  FETCHING SAT BESIDE DUMB DOOR until he died.

  She could not have said how long it took. When the last shuddering inhale rattled in his broken body, the mud upon Fetch’s skin was caked, her boots dry, the cuts on her shoulders clotted. The candle in the apothecary’s back room had been replaced several times, once by Bekir, another time by Sweeps. There might have been a third.

  When Dumb Door was first brought inside, they had washed him as best they could, the blood and filth making it impossible to see his wounds. Each mopping cloth revealed another gash, another exposed bone. Whatever had happened, it happened swiftly, brutally. The sentries on the wall had seen him lead a hog into the breaking yard. By the time they came back around, mere minutes later, he was down.

  “He could not cry out for help,” Fetch had muttered to one of the candle deliverers.

  At some point during her helpless vigil, Mead had come in, told her Sluggard was alive and awake. His injuries would heal.

  “Good” was all she had managed in reply.

  The Guabic woman that served as Winsome’s apothecary had returned to the town after the downfall of the Kiln, but the famine had not been easy on her aging body. She died last winter, taking all hope of mending Dumb Door with her. The shelves in her rooms were mostly bare anyway. What good were a few herbs and liniments for a bashed-in skull? That was the moment they knew it was hopeless. Sweeps’s laving rag had revealed the horror, mud and blood cleared away to expose the poor mongrel’s brains. On the other side of the table, the tanner’s widow had continued to stitch up the ragged rend beneath Dumb Door’s ribs, but all alacrity fled her hands.

  Fetch had Xhreka sent for. The halfling woman had merely narrowed her one eye.

  “I know how to pull teeth, set bones. Things learned from necessity in the Pit. This…I ain’t a healer. Don’t think it would matter if I were.”

  She hadn’t remained long after her words were spoken.

  Dumb Door flew into fits a few times before the end. The first startled Fetching from her slumped torpor on the stool beside his cot. For a moment she thought perhaps he had come to. That was the worst, fearing he might have awoken to terrible agony, not knowing what could be done, wondering if she should end his suffering only to realize she had no weapon. No doubt some of the herbs hanging from the rafters were poison, but she had no idea which ones. She would have to smother him, hold his nose and mouth closed. All this went through her mind in a single, damnable instant. Alongside those black notions came the hope that he might wake long enough to tell her something about what happened.

  It was a laughable hope. This mute mongrel, who uttered no sound even as he convulsed with seizures, telling her through gesture a tale she already knew.

  The first fit ended. Others followed, weaker, further apart each time. Fetch did not bother to count. Why were none of the other Bastards in here with her to be with their brother at the last?

  Right. She had commanded them to leave her alone. Commanded with a shout and a flung stool. This stool? No, the other had broken against the wall. Sweeps had brought the one she now sat on, along with the new candle. The one that was now a guttering nub. Dumb Door’s flesh and the wax were akin in color and texture. She could see that in the dwindling light.

  And then came that final indrawn breath, the air that went in and never came out, trapped in the moment of death. Dumb Door did not look peaceful. His face was still pained, drawn. Fetching continued to sit there, staring at that tortured mask until the candle went out.

  Standing on stiff legs, feet full of stinging ants, she reached out in the darkness and touched her fallen rider’s arm. She nearly said the words, but they were somehow too vulgar, so she let them wilt in her throat.

  Saying nothing was better. It’s what Dumb Door would have done.

  Out in the main room, Fetching found Sweeps waiting with a hunk of cheese and half a cup of wine on a tray. Taking the wine, Fetch downed it in one swallow, set the cup down, and pointed wearily at the cheese.

  “You have that.”

  “Mead told me you would say that,” Sweeps replied, eyes and voice lowered. “He said I was to insist.”

  “You’re just now recovered from illness, Sweeps. Eat.”

  There was a pause. Slowly, Sweeps set the tray down on a counter once used to grind herbs. She picked up the cheese and to
re it in two.

  “I’ll eat half,” she said, holding out one of the pieces.

  “Hells.” Fetch breathed, taking it.

  They chewed together in silence, both making their morsels last.

  “He’s gone?” Sweeps asked at last.

  Fetching sighed. “He is.”

  “I’ll…clean him up better. Before you have to…before.”

  “No need. The hoof will do it.”

  Sweeps made a small sound of assent before picking up the tray. She stood there a moment, just holding it, looking down at it, before walking out the door.

  Fetch lingered, wishing for all the world she did not have to face whatever awaited outside the confines of the apothecary’s low rooms. But she had hid here long enough, her reason for staying growing cold.

  It was full night outside. The rain had ceased, leaving the air chill. Uidal stood by the door. Fetch sent him to find Mead and Oats, with orders to meet up on the walls. The seclusion of her solar beckoned, but Winsome was under siege. The duties were never-ending, for everyone. And now they were down a man, a good one. May as well stand a post while hearing reports.

  Climbing the stairs, Fetch reached the top of the palisade and walked until coming to the south-facing wall. There she stopped, for no real reason other than it was farthest from the hog pens.

  Oats was the first to arrive, bearing Fetch’s weapons. Without a word, he handed them over.

  Fetching’s eyebrows went up when she saw the kataras. “Surprised these survived. They were still in Orphan Girl when…”

  “Fished them out of the mess,” Oats said. “Thought you were loon-fucking-crazy, cutting yourself and all, but hells if it didn’t work.”

  “I don’t think that was me, Oats. That sound, that…scream. No. Not anything I did.”

  The thrice grimaced. “Then what?”

  “No one saw anything?”

  “Not me, not the others. Whatever popped that pig left no sign. If it wasn’t you, maybe whatever had it bewitched…time ran out.”

  “Maybe,” Fetch said, but she wasn’t convinced.

  Mead joined them.

  “You tell her?” he asked, speaking past Fetch to Oats, who only shook his head.

  “Tell me?”

  “Marrow’s gone,” Mead said. “Said this hoof was cursed. He said—”

  Fetch held up a hand. She didn’t need to hear any more.

  “He won’t be the last,” she declared, staring into the shadow-veiled badlands.

  “None of us are going anywhere,” Oats rumbled. “Unless you order it.”

  “You’re damn right I’m ordering it. We’re fucking leaving. Nothing anyone can do about it now.” It was a cold truth and she felt a cunt for saying it, but with Door dead, Polecat no longer had the votes. Fetch lifted her chin beyond the stockade. “We’re better off out there. In here, Marrow’s right, we’re cursed.”

  They stood for a while, the three of them.

  Mead broke the silence. “How did Sweeps take it?”

  Fetch looked over and squinted at him.

  “Dumb Door,” Mead prompted with a little hesitance.

  And then Fetch saw it. She made a disgusted noise, aimed at herself. “Fuck…I’m a cunt.”

  “You didn’t know,” Oats said, trying to sound comforting and failing.

  Leaning her elbows between the palisade stakes, Fetch let her forehead rest on the rough wood and shook her head.

  She hadn’t known. Because she ignored it.

  Back in the Kiln, riders had their own quarters, private rooms off a common hall. For years she had seen women come up from the town to keep company with the hoof, often awoken by the ruckus of vigorous fucking, especially from behind Roundth’s and Polecat’s doors, when they bothered to close them. But all the Bastards, with the exception of Hoodwink, had noisily entertained a town girl or two in their bed. Just like in the orphanage, where you learned who was getting up in the night from the sound of their footfalls alone, Fetch became an expert on which groans belonged to which Bastard.

  Of course, she had no such comfort. None of the village men would dare come up to the Kiln, even if she had invited them, which she never did. The Claymaster had made sure she understood her limitations. Prior to her being chief, most of the slopheads would gleefully have come to her room, but that was also forbidden, not to mention unthinkable to Fetch. Slops were supposed to fear sworn riders, respect them, not lust after them. The Lots were filled with nomads ousted from the hoofs for using slopheads for base needs, if the rumors could be believed, and she was not about to hand the Claymaster a reason to vote her from the ranks.

  To survive, she learned to blend in. She became like her hoofmates in all things, including their appetites. It was a ploy, one which the Bastards eventually fell for. But she never did. The first girl at Sancho’s that she took to bed was almost less interested than Fetch was herself. The next was more vigorous, more generous, but it hardly made a difference. Soon, all the whores were eager for Fetching’s coin and company. What other poke paid to sit on the bed and clean their weapons while the girl took a nap?

  She confined her ruse to the whorehouse and never brought anyone to her room at the Kiln.

  Cissy, Thistle, Sweeps, and all the other women who came down the hall and were ushered into the adjacent chambers became something she ignored. They were an annoyance, a source of sleepless nights. After a time, however, if Fetch was honest, they became something she hated. Perhaps because they were something she refused to be, perhaps because they had something denied her, perhaps both.

  Whatever the reasons, they were carried over when she became chief.

  Relations between riders and townsfolk had changed since the Kiln. There were no more private rooms for the riders, they were all bunked together in the vintners’ dormitory. For most, that necessitated a change in how they conducted time with women. Before Cissy left, she and Polecat continued on as normal, heedless of the lack of walls, a source of much complaining from the others. Fetching had told them to handle it among themselves, refusing to get involved. She had her solar, and need no longer be party to where her brethren stuck their cods.

  And so, she had not known about Sweeps and Dumb Door. Along with Cissy, Sweeps had been a frequent visitor to Polecat’s room in the Kiln, most times as a pair. Fetch had just assumed that continued, if she thought about it at all.

  That assumption, that willful ignorance, had just caused her to be very, unknowingly, heartless.

  “How long?” she asked.

  “Since before I left,” Oats replied.

  Fetch lifted her head away from the stake. “Mead. Go find Sweeps. Tell her the hoof would like her to prepare Door’s body. Tell her…forget it. I will tell her. You two tell the boys to pack up. We’re leaving soon as we’re able.”

  She made her way to the orphanage. Late as it was, Fetch slipped in quietly, something long practiced from her girlhood. Each of the caretakers had their own rooms in the back, near the bunk room for the older children, nearer still the room for the babes. Thistle never closed her door, keeping to Beryl’s old practice, but her ears were not as keen. Fetching could still remember the first time she had managed to sneak back to bed without being noticed. Jackal and Oats were already living as slopheads at the Kiln and had made the near-impossible task part of her training. She still wasn’t certain she had actually accomplished it. Beryl may very well have simply given up chastising her for staying out.

  Tonight, no amount of successful prowling was going to go unnoticed, for the common room held a waking occupant.

  Xhreka was pacing the floor in front of the fireplace, gently humming to an infant in her arms. Half-orc babes weren’t small and halfling women weren’t large, but Xhreka’s hold was firm and sure. She looked past the baby’s swaddled head at Fetching, her brow creasing with
a silent question.

  Stepping lightly across the room, Fetch approached.

  “Sweeps in her room?” she whispered.

  “That the willowy girl or the blond woman with the saggy teats?” Xhreka asked in the same low tone.

  “The willowy one.”

  Xhreka nodded.

  Fetch thanked her with the same gesture and began to move toward the rear corridor, but the halfling touched her wrist.

  “She was quite upset.”

  Fetching had learned to ride a barbarian, joined a mongrel hoof, fought rokhs, demons, a wizard, and an orc horde. But that one light touch, those four words, drained her courage. She sat down on one of the tables by the hearth, one of the little ones where the orphans ate, slowly so her weapons did not clatter.

  Xhreka stood between her and the unlit fireplace, bouncing a bit to keep the baby calm.

  Fetching was not sure the halfling woman cared a shit, but she found herself talking anyway.

  “I denied her the chance to be with her dying man at the end. Denied everyone.”

  Xhreka shrugged, more with a downturn of her mouth than with a rise of her shoulders. “I’ve seen a lot of men die. Not always the best memory to have. From what I saw of that mongrel, you did the girl a kindness.”

  “She won’t see it the same way.”

  “No. Why would she? Her man just died. The world contains no kindness right now. But the bad of the past is quickly forgotten. There is no time for it, the bad of the present sees to that. Good memories remain. That girl will remember the things she liked most, whatever those were. The smell of him, fucking him, sound of his voice.”

  “He was mute.”

  Xhreka rolled her eye. “Well, not that then. My point, she won’t have his final breath haunting her head during this first, worst bit.”

  “But she’s hating me.”

  “You were friends before today?”

  “No,” Fetching admitted.

  “So, you’ve lost nothing.”