Shed Snake remained dubious. “So who is guarding their fortress?”
“Slaves.”
All heads turned to Hood, his spare voice making the hoof more uncomfortable than normal.
“That’s just nomad tongue-waggle,” Polecat declared, but even he did not look convinced.
The half-orc hoofs were raised from bondage. Since male mongrels were sterile, it was not an inherited legacy, so much as adopted. The founders were slaves, chained and scourged by Hispartha. Therefore, though the Lot Lands contained hardship and cruelty in every mote of wind-flung dust, the keeping of slaves was forbidden. Hood was right, the Orc Stains were said to flout the restriction. But Polecat was not wrong, such knowledge was only ever borne on the lips of free-riders, whom the Stains never welcomed and openly scorned.
“If it’s true,” Fetch told her hoof, “then Thricehold will just be easier to take. With their masters dead, any slaves should be grateful. Why spill blood when you can have freedom? But we have to go. Our people need safe walls and full stores. Thricehold will have both.”
The gathering began to break up, the sworn brothers rising, but a trembling hand rose from the ground.
“No,” Mead rasped. Fetch was sitting near his head and barely heard, but the denial was there.
Polecat squatted back down, took the hand in both of his. “What did you say, brother?”
“I…vote no.”
Tradition took hold. Without needing a command, the slopheads walked away while the Bastards came back together.
“What’s your objection, Mead?” Fetch asked, hand still caressing his forehead.
“Thricehold. Not safe. The orc…the pack, they will follow. Need to go where they can’t.”
“Where?” Shed Snake asked, kneeling opposite Polecat and placing a hand on Mead’s arm.
“Dog…Fall.”
Looks were exchanged by the brethren, some questioning if their wounded comrade was in his right mind.
Fetch knew he was lucid. This was not the first time he put forth the idea. “The Tines may not welcome us, Mead. They might just as easily kill us.”
“Warbler is already among them,” Polecat said.
“At their invitation,” Fetch reminded him.
Mead’s throat was rattling with every breath. “They will accept you. If not…you die. No different than anywhere else. No fortress can protect the hoof from the Ruin Made Flesh. The Tines can, if they choose.”
“Rustskins do have some potent ways, chief,” Polecat urged. “Can get our boy back on his feet.”
Mead pulled weakly at Cat’s hands. “Won’t help.”
“Hogshit,” Polecat declared. “They fixed you up once, they will again.”
“I’ve got…moments, not miles.”
Polecat grimaced and Snake let out a pained grunt.
Fetch leaned in, whispered. “You stay the fuck with us. Hear me? We need you.”
Mead’s lips moved, tongue clicking, each word a fight. “Mi’hawa. Thiospa. Aschúte. Onáphit.”
“You know my elvish is shit. Why you have to stay.” He was drifting, eyes fluttering, trying to roll back. “Dammit, Mead!”
“You’ll…learn,” he hissed. Swallowing, he drew in a breath, managed to raise his voice. “Now…put m-me on…my hog.”
Polecat shot a look at Fetch, shook his head rapidly, face contorting.
Shed Snake slapped furiously at his burned arm. “No, brother! You got me through this. Remember? Time to get you through. Open your damn eyes!”
But he was swiftly fading.
Hoodwink was the first to move.
Stooping behind Mead’s shoulders, he slowly lifted. Gritting her teeth against the grief, accepting the task, Fetch helped, steadying her fallen rider’s head. Oats took his feet, while Polecat and Snake shouldered their brother’s back. Culprit ran to where the barbarians were hobbled, cut out Mead’s mount and brought it over, holding it steady.
Jaws bulging against the falling tears, the True Bastards lifted Mead onto the animal’s back, surrounded him, and held him up while he fulfilled his oath.
TWENTY-EIGHT
A PAIR OF SLOPHEADS LED Isabet to the door, made her knock, though it was the entrance to her own solar. There was no answer. She tried the latch, found it open, and pushed. A fire was lit in the lower room. Zirko stood before it, stoking the flames. Turning, he smiled, lifted the poker. It glowed, searing white. Marrow held Sluggard firmly down upon the Grey Bastards’ voting table, coffin-shaped and bristling with embedded axes. Sluggard screamed, his cock erect, as Zirko approached with the poker.
Isabet went past, fled the sizzle as she went up the stairs.
The door to her bedchamber would not budge, forcing her to knock once again. The door swung open, revealing Grocer. The sinewy old frailing waved her inside, sour-faced. He turned, began walking through the musty stacks of the storehouse, his tangle of ropy locks falling beyond his bony backside. Isabet had a difficult time keeping up. Grocer turned a corner, vanished. She hurried past the barrels and crates, the coils of rope, hooks of tacking leather. She made the corner, but the old quartermaster was gone.
Knowing what she had to do, Isabet retrieved a saddle from the shelves. The girth strap and left stirrup leather needed to be replaced, and Grocer would not be satisfied until she cleaned and polished the entire saddle. Throwing her first chore of the day up on her shoulder, Isabet made her way to the back of the storehouse, where the light was best. She heard exuberant grunts and happy little moans as she neared the workbench, finding Thistle bent over it, heavy breasts dangling. Isabet was glad to see she was no longer so gaunt. As the woman moaned, rocking forward on the workbench, Knob thrust into her from behind. He was sweating greatly, droplets forming on his bald scalp, running to his nose and falling to splash upon Thistle’s back.
Isabet tried to tell them to go elsewhere, so she could complete her work, but the words refused to come.
Milk was leaking from Thistle’s breasts, sliding down the bench and darkening the floorboards. Noticing, she rose and reached back, slapping at Knob’s stomach with annoyance until he halted his vigorous exertions. Thistle stood and strode away, full hips and thighs quivering a bit as she passed Isabet.
Knob gestured for her to approach.
Shaking her head, Isabet turned to go, but the thrice darted and caught her arm. She dropped the saddle. Knob pushed her against the sturdy shelving laden with rot-eaten brigands. His left hand was on one side of her face, forcing her to look at him.
“You sure you want this?” he asked with a voice not his own. It was dull-sounding, languid and cruel.
Isabet nodded defiantly.
Knob fondled her breasts, hooked a hand down behind the crotch of her breeches and tore them open.
“Join my hoof, girl, and this will be your life.”
That voice, that dry, deep, creak.
“I’ll have you ride patrols. Fight the thicks. Everything you want. But my word is law. And you will never change that. Whatever errand, whatever service I command, you will perform.”
The voice was growing desperate, panting. It lusted to threaten, to punish, but the flesh would not conspire. Knob gnashed his teeth, growled, spit flying from between his grinding fangs. He cast a look down between his legs and Fetch followed his gaze.
The cock was tumid yet flaccid, hanging in a misshapen, discolored wad. Knob’s hand came down to clasp the horrible thing, tried to work some life into it with fingers wrapped in linen.
Nothing.
The hand came away, slapped onto Isabet’s jaw, forced her to look directly into eyes alive with rage, feverish with disease. The head that ensconced that glare was wrapped in the same stained linen as the hands, wispy, colorless hair escaping from the gaps. The sour, gagging odor of old sweat and fresh pus filled Isabet’s nostrils.
The Claymaster gripped her jaw painfully, shook his hand to rattle her head against the wooden beams.
“This changes nothing,” he said in that damn voice. “Cunnys like you have no place among the Bastards. Cunnys like you will only ever be good for two things. Fucking. And—”
“Fetching!”
Oats’s voice snatched her from fitful slumber, his hand upon her shoulder.
Fetch sat up from the saddle pillowing her head and shoulders, ass and legs on bare earth.
“Time to move,” Oats said.
“Right,” Fetch replied, shaking off the sinister, stroking fingers of the dream.
The waking world provided little solace. Mead was still dead, buried under a hasty pile of stones atop Batayat. Fetch’s people remained fearful and hungry on a forced march to forbidden territory, and she still had not recovered all the hearing in her right ear. Probably why Oats had a hard time rousing her from the damnably brief respite. That, and she was fuck-all tired, drained by defeat and dolor.
She rubbed at her head, startled for a moment by the strange smoothness at the sides before remembering. She’d had Xhreka shave her hair like Mead’s, into the fashion of the Tines. The halfling was a deft hand and said nothing to make her feel foolish about the request. She’d undone every one of Fetch’s mass of long braids, cut a forearm’s length off, and properly shaved the scalp above her ears. At the time it had seemed a fitting tribute to her fallen rider, her friend, but now it only served as a physical, painful reminder of what had been lost.
It was two days since they left Batayat Hill, coming down out of the rocks, retrieving both wagons and striking north. Nyhapsáni and Palla—Mead’s and Sluggard’s hogs—served as draft animals for the hoof’s wagon, with Polecat driving the team though he argued he was hale enough to ride. Fetch did not want to strain his injuries. His brigand had taken the brunt of the bolt that struck him in the shoulder blade, but the one that pierced his thigh had gone deep. It was closed and bandaged now, but time in the saddle would only serve to open it up. In the end, a stern command settled the matter. The wagon bed was reserved for Sluggard and the orphans. The rest of Winsome was on foot, strung out in a line behind the wainwright’s wagon, drawn by mules and bearing the youngest of the town’s children. The Bastards were all mounted, riding a screen around the sluggish procession with the help of Touro and Petro. Fetch had reclaimed Womb Broom, sparing her the need to ride a dead brother’s hog.
Their progress was tortuously slow. The badlands were not kind, to the wagons or the walking. The heat was high, the ground pitted, rumpled with dry gulches, and festooned with rocky scrabbles.
Fetch had ordered a halt after they forded the River Lucia, and allowed the people to collapse along the northern bank. Those with the skill attempted to fish, catching enough to feed the children and a few more besides. Water from here to Dog Fall would be scarce if they continued on a direct course. They could strike west, stay with the Lucia until it met the Alhundra, then proceed north. Water would no longer be a concern, but such a route would add more than a week to their journey, and these people were not likely to increase the pace. Every day spent exposed in the Lots was a day that could bring the orc and his pack running up their heels.
And that was just the most likely threat.
A thick raiding party, centaur marauders, a band of deserters from the Hisparthan cavalry—hells, even loyal cavaleros—any one could spell the end of every life in the ragged caravan.
So, stay with the rivers and avoid dying of thirst, but increase the odds of being set upon, or move faster toward the Umber Mountains and risk the unforgiving badlands? The choice, like all in Ul-wundulas, was a hard one.
The hard truth was the last two years had culled the villagers of most of the weak and old. What remained were the hardy, the swift, the young, those who had endured the months of hunger better than their neighbors. Such a breed might survive a few dozen miles of dry, sun-scorched march. None would survive an attack by pitiless killers.
Still, when Oats woke her, Fetch had not settled on a course.
“Hood back?” she asked, receiving a head shake in reply.
“Not yet.”
Fetch had sent him scouting to the north while the group rested through the night, the Bastards keeping watch in long shifts.
Dawn had come, but not their scout. Hood could easily track the caravan no matter which way it went, but Fetch chose to shorten his return.
“Let’s get the people moving north,” she told Oats. “Slow as they are, if Hood says we should stick to the banks, then we can strike westward without losing much ground, meet up with the river once it’s bent. But we are on water rationing from here. Make sure everyone understands.”
They had little in the way of containers, limiting what could be carried away from the river.
The people of Winsome stood in loose knots about the rough camp, most rooted by fear and indecision rather than confidence or loyalty. Among them, a man holding close to his wife and hip-high daughter imprisoned Fetch’s attention.
She was not even certain of their names. It was their lives that concerned her.
“Let’s move.”
Without the wagons and the plodding people, the hoof could reach the mountains in less than three days, but they were shackled by their folk, forced to hold their hogs back and keep to the ponderous pace. It wore at the patience of barbarian and rider. Fetch had to keep yelling at Culprit when he strayed too far ahead. Once, she had to kick Womb forward and catch up, berating the young rider for leaving a hole in the screen.
Hoodwink returned by midmorning. His report was grave. No water for miles, certainly none the caravan would reach in the next day, possibly two.
It wasn’t a surprise, but Fetch had hoped for a change in luck.
“We will push on,” she decided. “If tomorrow yields the same, we will turn course and go the long way.”
Night rides were common for the hoof, the eyesight of hogs and half-orcs keen in the dark. Frails, however, had no such benefit. Sundown brought an end to the march and the beginning of another long night, this one upon a tract of dusty plain devoid of shelter and the comforting reassurance of the river. The people began to doubt. Fetch could hear them, muttering in small groups, hushed voices ceasing when a Bastard drew near. She ignored it, trusting such fear was born in the dark and banished by morning.
During her watch, Fetch rode steadily around the tightly hunkered shadows, far enough out that the hoofbeats would not disturb. Shed Snake and Touro shared the watch, riding in staggered circuits. All was quiet, but Touro seemed distracted, nervous, his glances turning inward to the sleeping forms in the camp.
“What is it?” Fetch asked, stopping to press the slophead on their fourth pass.
“Nothing, chief,” he replied, looking guilty and spooked. “Probably…it’s nothing, I mean. Can’t…uh, not sure I should say.”
“You should.”
Touro swallowed. “You may want to ride close to where Petro’s bedded down. See if…it’s something.”
Not liking the slophead’s manner, Fetch took the suggestion. Petro had placed his bedroll at the outer edge of the camp. When Fetch rode close, she discovered he was not alone. The movements beneath the blanket stopped as she approached, but there was no hiding the deed. Pausing briefly, Fetch turned her hog and left Petro to it. Who was she to deny her boys what few comforts remained? Whoever the slophead was bedding likely needed some too. They might regret the lack of sleep come the morning, but hells, there was little food, little water, little hope. Let them have this, at least.
Circling back to Touro, Fetch gave him a reassuring smile. “No need to worry.”
The slop looked relieved. “Good. Just wanted to…I don’t know. So long as you knew.”
Fetch cocked a chin out toward the darkness. “You stay as vigilant that d
irection and all will be fine.”
“Yes, chief.”
When Oats relieved her, Fetch hobbled Womb Broom among the other hogs and trudged toward her patch of ground. But that hard piece of rest was not to be, for Xhreka stood waiting.
“The poor castrate’s awake,” the halfling stated. “Gave him some water. He asked for you.”
Wearily, Fetch walked to the hoof’s wagon, but fatigue was not all that slowed her steps.
Sluggard was propped up in the bed, his moonlit skin standing out starkly from the swallowing shadows. Only his eyes moved when she came to stand at the sideboard, rolling to look at her, watery with pain. Days of feverish stupor had left him looking wasted, cheeks and eye sockets sunken. His cracked lips were still bright with the water Xhreka had allowed.
“You…escaped?” he asked, voice brittle.
Fetch fought the flinch, searched for the right words, knowing none existed. “There was no choice. Had I remained, tried to reach you—”
“No.” Sluggard’s bandaged head shook, rocking against the edge of the wagon bench. “No, did you escape…harm?”
His meaning struck her in the guts with knuckles of iron. Hells, that was his worry? She nearly lied, nearly told him every one of Knob’s boys had their way. It would have been an absolution, a false leveling of their measures of misery. But that would only ease her guilt, and do nothing for this poor mongrel.
“I am unhurt,” she said.
Relief settled over Sluggard’s face, momentarily replacing the agony, a balm born from needless gallantry. Civilized lands fostered strange ideals. Such would never survive in the Lots, but Fetch hoped this single bearer of such queer notions did not perish with them.
“Tomorrow will be difficult, Sluggard. Now that you are awake, the jostle of the wagon will not be easy to abide. But know that we are making for elf lands. They have skilled healers—”
A strange series of pumping breaths issued from the suffering gritter. It took a moment for Fetch to realize he was laughing, trying to control it in little gasps so as not to increase his pain.
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