Those smiles faded when Warbler limped from the hut.
The grizzled old thrice-blood’s back was still straight, only Oats overtopped him in height. His permanently sun-squinted eyes remained sharp, his mane of hair still thick and white. But his left leg was swollen to nearly three times the size of his right, the deerskin breeks cut off on that side to accommodate the hideous limb wrapped in the same shiny compress as Wily’s arm.
Fetch could not speak for the others, but it wasn’t Warbler’s appearance that caused the momentary joy to wilt upon her face. It was the tidings she bore, the words she would have to speak to this mongrel who had helped win the Lots, found the hoofs, this mongrel who had been a fleeting mentor and a lifelong hero.
“Chief,” Warbler said in his deep, resonant growl, dipping his chin in respect.
Fetch’s resolve nearly crumbled hearing that title given her by the one who might have held it, in another time, had the Claymaster’s madness not deprived him the chance. She couldn’t help but wonder if the news she must now deliver might have been avoided with the old thrice leading the hoof.
“Winsome has fallen, War-boar.”
THIRTY
THE SLOPHEADS AND VILLAGERS were brought down just before dusk, escorted by a single Tine scout. The wagons, of course, were not with them. Neither was Sluggard.
“Tines took him,” Xhreka explained. “Figured it best to let them.”
Fetch nodded in acknowledgment, allowing the weary halfling to seek what comfort she could. The marshy little valley contained only the one hut, leaving all but the orphans to sleep rough. Beryl would not hear of the foundlings spending the night outdoors and squeezed her recovered charges into the tight confines of the rectangular domicile. The Winsome children were not so fortunate, but they had their parents, water, food, and the surrounding safety of the gorge walls. After the past days, it was a welcome paradise for all.
The Bastards were busy rigging a pen for the hogs, building fires, and helping the frails find spots to bed down.
Fetching stood a stone’s throw from the hut and the same distance farther removed from where Warbler spoke to the Tine. It wasn’t the same elf who’d disabled the Bastards. This one bore more weapons; a bow in his hand, a quiver and knife at his side, and a pair of hatchets, crossed at his lower back. The conversation was brief and the elf soon turned to make his way to the trail and the long climb out of the depression.
Warbler hobbled back to Fetch.
“They are seeing to the nomad,” he reported, “and will do what they can for him.”
Fetch could not help but be dubious. “Will they?”
“They will,” Warbler grunted. “Come, let’s sit. Got to get off this fucking leg.”
Fetch called for Oats.
Warbler led them around the back of the hut, where a stump stood for chopping firewood, and eased himself down, sighing in aggravation and keeping his bad leg straight. Fetch got a closer look at the dark bandages. They were made from fish skins. Likely that would not be the most curious thing she would see while in Dog Fall.
“You in much pain?” she asked.
Warbler waved the concern away. “Pfh! That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Sit down, chief. You look near collapse.”
He wasn’t wrong. Fetch found a sizable log in the pile, turned it on its end, and rested her ass, though she had to keep her legs engaged to hold the balance. Oats remained standing at her side.
Warbler chuckled darkly. “I’d offer you some wine, but the elves don’t make any. At least, none they’ve shared. If you had told me a year ago that I could go this long without a drop, I would not have believed it. Of course…there is much you have told me that is damn hard to believe.”
There was sympathy in the old thrice’s voice, but the judgment was there too.
“Hardest to imagine the Orc Stains turning on us like that,” he went on, anger beginning to replace all other tones. “Fuck them eternal for that.”
“They paid for it,” Oats said.
“So did we,” Fetch added softly.
Warbler frowned. “Still not certain I understand exactly why they did it.”
“Knob tried to poach Oats. Refused to acknowledge me as a master of a hoof. I strongly reminded him that neither was his to take from me. He held a grudge.”
Warbler glared at phantoms near the dirt for a long time before looking up and breathing hard. “What now?”
“That’s what I need you to tell me, War-boar. I took a gamble coming here. Now that we’re here and alive, what can we expect?”
Warbler raised his eyebrows in thought. “I told the hoof before I left that we understood less about Tine ways than we thought. This long living with them, I can tell you for certain I was right. I can also tell you I understand less now than the day we first arrived. I figured it would take time, but the longer we stay, the more we are left alone.”
“They’re neglecting you?”
“Yes and no. If there is a task to be done, they do it.” Warbler hooked a thumb at the hut. “They built this. Helped us start a garden. Brought clothes, baskets, pots. Few months in, Beryl took ill. They came with a tea, poultices. That’s how I know they will tend your injured nomad. Wouldn’t be surprised if they showed up in the morning and started building huts for the rest of you. If there is something to be done, they will do it. Beyond that, the lot of them might as well be ghosts.
“We hear them up there sometimes, laughter and singing echoing through the passes. Never actually seen them in merriment, mind. And never invited to join. We are down here, they are up there. Clear to me, that’s how they want it.”
Fetch huffed with a resignation long past bitter. Half-orcs. Ever the outcasts.
She glanced at Warbler’s leg. “Seems they have at least held up their promise to move the plague from Wily to you.”
“That’s another thing entirely, my girl.”
“Tell us.”
It was clear he did not want to, but he gathered his thoughts with another deep breath and obeyed, the words coming carefully.
“Figured it would suck hogshit, whatever they had to do. Didn’t figure it would take so damn long. Fucking thing is alive. It…resists. Feared it might never leave the boy. When it did…the pain was…” Warbler shook his hoary head. “It’s no wonder he went mad.”
Fetch and Oats shared a look. They did not have to ask who he meant.
“When I woke up, days later, I thought, ‘At least the lad is free of it.’ Of course, he wasn’t. Not entirely. And that’s the way it’s been. They keep trying, the Tines. Come get us every once in a while and take us up to a lodge they have built. The look on Wily’s face when he sees them now…”
Warbler’s voice choked.
“It’s torture for all of us, even the elves. The chants they perform, the violent movements that I reckon you would call dancing until you saw it, it’s all causing them pain. But for that little boy it has to be…hells he has my respect! Toughest mongrel I have ever known and he’s not fucking four.”
The tears were falling down the old thrice’s craggy face, unashamed now that they were free.
“I took my time killing that twisted frail sorcerer that made this evil shit in the mines. I cut his cods off, fucked his ass with a knife, every savage cruelty I could invent in the moment. Wasn’t near enough. If I had him living, right here in front of us now, I could not conjure agonies fitting to make him pay for what he birthed and Wily has now inherited.”
Oats turned away, paced farther from the hut. Perhaps he was trying to spare Warbler the indignity of witnessing his grief. Or he did not want to expose his own.
“There’s another wizard that needs killing before that score is settled,” Fetch remarked.
Warbler wiped at his face. “Any word from Jackal?”
Fetch shook her head.
Warbler grew very still.
“What is it?” Fetch prodded.
The old mongrel’s answer was grave. “We may wish him alive before the end. Crafty, I mean.”
This brought Oats back around. “The fuck you on about?”
“This,” Warbler replied, gesturing at his corrupted leg. “The elves can’t get a proper grip on it. Like trying to ride a wild barbarian that’s been shaved and greased. This plague refuses to stay put. I was blind a few months back. Leg was hale, but my eyes were closed by the pustules. Throat, too. I could tell from Beryl’s voice I was a horror to look upon.” Warbler gave a rough laugh. “Figures I’d get my woman back after long years only to be so hideous and sick she can barely stand the sight of me.”
“Self-pity doesn’t wear well on you, Warbler,” Fetch said.
Oats huffed. “And Mother’s got more grit than that.”
“You’re right. Both of you. So I will stick to unshakable truths. The plague likes to fuck around. Who knows what is going to happen the next time they come for us. What it will choose to do. I am not young. That ain’t self-pity, but cold fact. And Wily? He is too damn young. Neither of us can do this much more. The point-ears give us the intervals to keep us sane, probably to keep themselves sane. But it’s a wearisome war that the plague is winning.”
“The Tines will succeed,” Fetch assured, nearly grimacing at the empty words.
Warbler responded with a weary exhale. “I once knew a nomad that could tie a knot only he could loose, damn thing was that intricate. This Crafty? He did the same fucking trick. Vengeance is one thing, my girl. But if we want this weapon out of that boy, we better start wishing upon our plucked pubic hairs that Jaco brings the swaddlehead back alive.”
Fetch stood, allowing the makeshift stool to topple. She went to the same spot Oats had, boots scattering the carpet of wood chips. Her back to the hut, she paused, stared into the trees at the cliffs a bowshot through the trunks, nothing but a black wall in the fading light.
“It’s been over a year, War-boar. It’s past time we faced the idea that he is not coming back.”
It was Oats who responded. “You’re giving up on him?”
Fetch turned. “I’m giving up on plans that require waiting for him. There are so many things that could have happened since he left…it’s fucking useless to think on them.”
Warbler’s face hardened even as his eyes filled with affection. “I’m going to say something. May sound cruel.”
“Go on.”
“What choice do you have? The Bastards don’t have much left. Our home is destroyed, our lot abandoned, our folk mostly fled. What remains of the hoof has just joined the oldest fart in their ranks in exile. We don’t know how long the Tines will allow us to remain here. The reason they took us was the fucking plague. They know it’s the only thing the thicks fear. But if they keep failing to get it under control, I sorely doubt our welcome will outlive their loss of patience.”
“They are using us, we are using them,” Fetch agreed.
“And we ain’t all that useful,” Warbler pointed out.
“So you are putting forth that we have no choice but to wait, but that we are running out of time to wait? That’s some deeply shit counsel, War-boar.”
“It’s some deeply shit circumstances, chief.”
The savory smells of Beryl’s cooking drifted behind the hunt on the wings of woodsmoke, dispelling the bleak discourse.
“She’ll pull up every crop we got to feed them little ones.” Warbler chuckled.
“And throw every curse in her head at me for putting them in danger.”
Warbler did not bother trying to refute that. Oats put a hand on her shoulder.
“All of this can keep until morning,” Warbler said, at last. “Making any choices right now, after the last days’ strife, would be beyond foolish. The two of you get some rest.”
Fetch flinched at his mawkishness. “And it will all be better in the sunlight?”
“Or it will be far fucking worse,” the old thrice growled, “but at least you will have slept.”
Leaving Warbler on his stump, they walked back around to the front of the hut. Fetch considered checking on the orphans, but Beryl would have them well in hand. Plus, the matron’s withering looks were more than she could swallow at the moment.
Sending Oats on, she made a quick circuit of the camps her boys fashioned. Dry, flat ground was in short supply, so the traditional separations had taken hold. The Winsome refugees clustered around their fires, the slops another, and the sworn brothers their own, closest to the trailhead. The rope corral for the hogs was close by, the barbarians snuffling through what remained of the figs they were given.
The Bastards were supping on the same fruit with only slightly less gusto than the beasts. Hoodwink was standing, the rest sitting on their saddles or lounging with their backs against trees. As she entered their midst, Shed Snake wordlessly offered up a whole fig. She took it, slumping down beside him, drawing her knife. There was some barley bread, as well, and dried fish.
The True Bastards chewed and none said a word.
Fetch had not realized how exhausted she was, but sitting shattered that ignorance, left her endurance in pieces. She lay back.
No solar. She was walled only by her surrounding brethren.
No bed. The hard ground was her mattress, and a saddle pillowed her head.
No feverish visions from foul potions. Only the natural, inexplicable cast of the dice that brought dreams or nightmares or nothing.
Fetch sighed and allowed the night song of the canyon to lull her.
Sleep.
A reward.
* * *
—
SHE AWOKE TO LAUGHTER in the sunlight.
The children were playing, dodging around trees as they chased one another, the rules seeming to change with every delighted giggle. It looked like all the orphans, plus most of the Winsome kids. The game had spilled right into the sleeping Bastards.
Fetch had not commanded a watch. The elves would either protect them, or not. For one night, at least, the hoof abandoned caution and left their fate in the wind. The result was sound sleep on hard ground, the oblivion of prolonged exhaustion. It took a pack of whooping children skipping over their snoring heads and outstretched legs to rouse them.
Oats shook off the torpor almost immediately, gave an exaggerated bellow, and jumped up, giving chase to the blissfully surprised children, instantly transforming the game into a flight from the hunched monster with outstretched arms.
“Fool-ass,” Fetch breathed with a grin, propping herself up on her elbows to watch Oats lumber after his squealing prey.
Across from her, Polecat sat up wearing a bleary but amused squint. “Must be nice.”
“What?” Shed Snake asked, still on his back.
“To have already forgotten,” Cat replied.
“In their waking hours, perhaps,” Hoodwink said, standing fluidly. “But many wept in the night.”
Polecat wrinkled his hatchet face. “Thanks, Hood. That adds cheer to my morning.”
Culprit laughed, leaned, farted into his hand, and made a tossing gesture at Cat. “Add that to your cheer.”
Polecat only gave a slow, resigned shake of the head, while Shed Snake rolled away from the offending odor with a disgusted noise of complaint.
Oats returned, wearing a huge smile. “That’ll teach them.”
“To do that every morning now?” Fetch said. “Yes. Well done.”
Oats was unapologetic. “I can think of worse ways to be woke.”
“I can think of better,” Polecat said, moving a splayed hand up and down above his crotch.
Fetch got to her feet, stretched, and retrieved her weapons from her tack.
Movement in the brush drew all attention. Wily was
half-hidden among the bracken, timid and curious.
“Looking for the others?” Culprit asked, his voice going all high and foolish and endearing. “They went that way.”
Wily looked set to flee the opposite way, but Oats snatched him up before he got the chance.
“Let’s go find them others,” the thrice said, and charged off with his now-beaming passenger.
Fetch went in the direction of the hut.
Hoodwink settled into step beside her.
“Something on your mind?” she asked.
“Our boundaries here,” Hood replied. “Are we prisoners?”
Fetch stopped, turned to look at the sallow killer. “There are two things I want to have this morning, Hood. Patience and a piss. Please don’t thwart either one.”
Hoodwink dipped his chin and did not follow when she walked on.
Warbler was sitting out front of the hut, mending a small pile of the orphans’ shoes.
“Soil pit?” Fetch inquired.
The old thrice pointed to his left. “Near the eastern edge. Going to need a bigger one with this many new folk.”
Fetch nodded. “I’ll put the slops on it.”
She walked in the indicated direction, picking her way through the trees and around the worst of the blackthorn thickets. The mountain stream was nothing but puddles connected by the odd runnel this far into the bowl. She should have figured the soil pit would be farthest from the fresh water flow, but even as small as the valley was, she could have wandered for a good while in the dense growth of the interior before finding the place. Soon, however, the smell served as a guide. A lashed framework had been erected to help folk take their ease.
Fetch was laughably grateful for the rough luxury that would spare her from squatting.
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