The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  On the way back, she took a different path, cutting more through the valley’s center, wanting to get a better idea of the land. She could still hear the echoes of the children’s play, as well as birdsong and the clicking hums of insects.

  A shadowy mass caught her eye through the elms. Approaching, she found the remains of another elf hut. The earthen roof had fallen in, one of the stone walls collapsed, the others crumbling. Despite its decrepit state it was obviously larger than the one occupied by Warbler, Beryl, and Wily. A shape darted from the shadows of the sagging entrance, startling Fetch. Her hand went for her tulwar on instinct, but froze on empty air.

  “Bwah!” the little girl called out, face full of fierce glee. It was the farrier’s daughter.

  “Ollal,” Fetch breathed, aiming for amused but hitting annoyed. “What are you doing?”

  It was a fool-ass question. Fetch knew what the child was doing, even if she did not understand how to fit herself into the pursuit as easily as Oats.

  Quickly realizing this particular quarry was no sport, Ollal scampered off in search of someone without a spear rammed up their ass.

  Leaving the crumbling hut behind, Fetch followed the sound of gurgling water. The ground began to dip, the foliage giving way to scrabble. Emerging from the thickets, she discovered a shaded basin, the stream running in from the northwest, tumbling over a slope of rocks in a series of small falls on the opposite side from where she stood. About halfway down the slope, perched on a stable rock and leaning into the largest falls to scrub some linen, was Beryl.

  A basket of clothes sat on a neighboring stone, waiting to be cleaned. The sodden victims that had already fallen to the matron’s industry were laid out all around. Fetching stopped short, wondering if she could withdraw without being noticed.

  “Toss me another, if you would,” Beryl called out without ever having looked in her direction.

  Fuck. No chance, then.

  Fetch walked around the edge of the basin until she was above the basket, and made her way down the slope. Squatting on the jumble of rocks, she took up a tunic and flicked it over to Beryl. A soaking garment was tossed back.

  “Lay that out anywhere you can.”

  Fetch climbed a bit back up and slapped the breeches across the curve of a boulder. “I best get back to the hoof.”

  “You can’t spare a moment and help me?” Beryl asked, not looking up and continuing to scrub. “This too low a task for a hoof chief? Or are you just trying to get clear of me?”

  “Yes. To both.”

  The back of Beryl’s head shook as she wrung water from the tunic.

  Fetch took another step upward. Beryl’s voice stopped her.

  “You think I’m cross with you.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “You think I am cross,” Beryl repeated, “because you think you know my mind. You didn’t know it when you lived under my care, Isa. And you don’t know it now. Thistle told me all that happened. If I didn’t know that woman the way I do, trust her the way I do, I’d say she was mad. Dogs that don’t die. Mongrel hoofs killing each other. But she is not mad. And I do trust her. After all I’ve seen in this life, do you know the toughest part of her story to believe? That through all that, not one of those children died.”

  Beryl gave the tunic a final twist and craned around to look up.

  “They are all alive. Every last one I left behind and more besides. You must think me a monstrous cunt if you believe I would be cross with you over that.”

  Fetch was shaken by the gratitude in Beryl’s voice, turned it aside as she would a sword stroke. “Didn’t do it alone. It was the boys that got them away from danger. The Bastards and the slops.”

  Beryl returned to her chore. “Well, they will forever blame themselves for those they didn’t save. Salik…Shed Snake, he apologized to me about Sweeps. The look in his face…worse than the news. Almost.”

  Fetch threw a short whistle and, when Beryl looked up, held an open hand up for the tunic. Beryl threw it. Fetch laid it out, returned to the basket and tossed her the last soiled garment. Only now did she realize the small size of all the clothes.

  “These are all the orphans’,” she said aloud, grinning at the thought of a wild herd of naked children running rampant through the brush.

  “There is a pond at the south end of the valley fed by the stream,” Beryl told her. “Thistle and that halfling woman rounded the wee ones up for a swim. They sorely needed to bathe.”

  “I just saw the farrier’s girl,” Fetch said.

  “She’ll find them,” Beryl replied, unconcerned. “And her parents can wash her damn clothes. I got enough here.”

  “There was another hut too. Fallen in. Didn’t look that old.”

  “Used to be for the elf girls. The ones Jackal and Warbler freed from the Sludge Man. They were already living down here when we arrived. None of them were of the Tine tribe, so they were kept separate until…”

  Fetch frowned, not liking the turn in Beryl’s voice. “Until what?”

  “Until they tired of torturing Ignacio and finally killed him.”

  The pockmarked cavalero captain was not a man that often entered Fetch’s mind. He had once commanded the commoner cavalry at the castile and was considered an ally of the Grey Bastards. In the end, he had been little more than the Claymaster’s dog. A dog that was also running his own scheme bringing captive elf women to the Sludge Man. His last delivery had indeed been liberated, but not before enduring hells-knew-what-all while at the mercy of the bog trotter. It was also Ignacio who held Beryl and Wily captive during Crafty’s ploy to transfer the plague from the Claymaster to Oats, threatening their safety to coerce the thrice to cooperate. The wizard’s plan had been upset, but as always, Crafty had a fallback position in little Wily. Ignacio had fled, spooked when the plague came to claim the boy, but Jackal had set the Tines on his trail.

  “None of us believed he would get far,” Fetch said.

  Beryl cleared her throat. “And he didn’t. The Tines gave him over to the girls as some kind of ritual retribution. A man of his low cunning, I was sure he would murder them all and attempt escape. But he was already cowed, broken. I don’t know what the Tines did to him before bringing him down here, but the women he once captured had more to fear from a horsefly. They treated him like a slave at first, then like a maligned pet. By the end, he was nothing but a cringing, mewling shell, simple-minded and beaten more than fed. We never allowed Wily to go close to that hut for fear of what he might see.

  “And then, one day, they were gone. Warbler reckons they joined the tribe, but I have never seen any of them in the gorges above. Wherever they went, they left Ignacio’s body behind, wasted and filthy just outside the door. I had Warbler put a thrumbolt in him before throwing his ass in a shallow hole. I hope one day you do the same to those that did for Cissy.”

  Fetch could see the spite in the face of fresh pain. Thistle, Sweeps, and Cissy had been Beryl’s trusted hands for years, more like daughters than Fetch had ever been. Now, two were dead. It was a bitter draft to swallow.

  Leaving the clothes to dry, they went together to the pond and found the children were not alone at their play in the water. Oats, Culprit, and Touro were all waist-deep in the pond, each with a foundling perched on their shoulders. The flailing children were trying to unseat one another, their conniving mounts waging their own war to upset the balance of their adversaries. An alliance quickly formed against Oats, but the thrice may as well have been a castle tower for all the chance the others had at toppling him. Cheering spectators had gathered at the edges of the pond. Most of the slopheads and Winsome villagers were encouraging their favorites, and Fetch could hear bets being placed, though there was nothing to wager. The other children swam around the borders of the melee, some in their own games, others trying to affect the outcome of the combat with ince
ssant splashes.

  Thistle and Xhreka sat at the water’s edge, each holding a foundling babe. One of the Winsome men held the third. Sitting close beside his former nurse, Wily watched the contest with rapt attention.

  “He can’t get his bandages wet,” Beryl said, though it was more a voiced regret than an explanation.

  Fetch nodded in sympathy. The plague was not catching unless unleashed by its bearer, but that knowledge was difficult to impart to children, often not enough to curtail the fear in the fully grown. Wily had begun to be shunned by the other orphans before he ever left Winsome as the pustules became difficult to hide. That exclusion may have taken root again. Fetch hoped the recent horrors endured by the foundlings had toughened them against baseless fears conjured by unsightly buboes on a playmate. For this game, at least, his sequester was imposed by his caregivers.

  There was only one other child not swimming.

  Ollal had indeed found her way to the pond, but her mother was having a difficult time getting her to bathe. The beleaguered woman had managed to get the little girl’s smock off, but appeared to have met resistance shortly after.

  Fetch kicked her boots off while removing her brigand.

  “Hells damn, Isa,” Beryl griped. “Are you unable to resist a challenge?”

  “Reckon not,” Fetch responded, dropping her breeches. “Besides, I need a damn bath too.” Hurrying over to the struggle between mother and daughter, stooping on the move, she plucked the little girl up. Ollal was installed on Fetch’s shoulders before she could react, her mother issuing a surprised, amused sound.

  “All right, you,” Fetch told her rider, wading into the pond, “this game is called Bucking Centaurs, and I was really good at your age. All you need to do is knock those boys down.”

  The game was actually called Fucking Horse-cocks and Fetch used to play on dry, hard ground, but Ollal did not need to know either fact.

  “What if they knock me down?” came the uncertain reply.

  “Then you get soaked. So, if you don’t want to bathe, you will have to fight to stay dirty.”

  Culprit was the first to see them coming, his eyes going slightly wide with disbelief.

  “Uh…chief is joining the fight.”

  Before the others could quite wrap their minds around that, Fetch was upon them. The mongrel boys atop the Bastards were not trammeled by hesitance, and urged their mounts at the fresh opponents. Fetch could feel Ollal recoiling from their eagerness to fight.

  “Push back!” she encouraged, and sent a foot questing forward beneath the water in search of Touro’s. Finding it, she hooked his ankle and jerked with her leg. The slophead yelped as he fell, spilling his rider backward with a heaving splash.

  “Chief fights dirty!” Culprit exclaimed with appreciation.

  Oats began to back away. “You don’t have half a notion.”

  Ollal was giggling now, hands and arms darting forward at Culprit’s boy.

  “I ain’t going to roll over just ’cause you’re my chief,” Culprit said with a cocky grin.

  “Good,” Fetch replied. “I’ll know my vote wasn’t an error.”

  Culprit was sure on his feet, his rider more aggressive. Ollal’s inexpert shoves were easily fended off. Knowing his boy had the advantage, Culprit pressed in, even had enough gall to reach for Fetch’s thigh beneath the water to try to pull her leg out. She slipped his grasp, retreated a step before immediately wading forward again.

  “Culprit.” She pulled her shirt down by the hem, forcing the soaked linen to press tight. “Still think it’d be like your mother?”

  His eyes dropped, mesmerized by the flesh showing through. One step and a hard shove brought the distracted mongrel down. He and his rider came up spluttering, both laughing.

  Fetch turned on Oats. “Just you and me now.”

  “Tits won’t work on me, little sister.”

  “I was beating you at this game before I had them.”

  The half-orc boy drummed on Oats’s head. “Let’s at them!”

  The thrice grinned and surged forward, sending a tidal splash ahead of his advance with one great, sweeping arm.

  Fetch danced back, shook the water from her face with a jerk of her head. She crab-crawled to the right, forcing Oats to pivot, breaking his momentum. Slapping at the water she threw her own splashes, the sound masking her voice. Quickly, she spoke to Ollal. And told her the plan.

  Together they waded toward their foes. The boy upon Oats’s shoulders was bigger than Ollal, made more so by his perch atop the looming thrice. The girl would be hard-pressed to reach him, much less knock him down. What she could reach was Oats’s beard.

  Ollal seized the dripping mop as soon as they all came to grips, just as Fetch had instructed. Oats grunted in surprise and tried to pull away, but the girl’s bunched fists held firm. Ignorant of his horse’s plight, the mongrel boy was pushing feverishly at Ollal and would have unseated her a dozen times over were it not for her tether of whiskers. Fetch could hear the guffaws from the shore even over the churning water and Oats’s bellows of discomfort. He tried to barrel Fetch over, but she retreated. He tried to knock her off her feet, but she sidestepped his blows, deflected his hands.

  “Damn clinging fruit monkey!” Oats complained.

  Fetch gave a full smile. “Buck your rider, Big Bastard, and she turns loose.”

  Oats endured for another moment before uttering an “Aw, hells,” and tossing his shoulders back, dumping his rider. The boy let loose a squeak of shock and fell with a satisfying splash.

  Ollal’s hands immediately left his beard and thrust into the air, renewing the cheers from the crowd.

  When the laughter and whistles abated, Oats grinned at Fetching.

  “I’m still standing, so I want another bout,” he said.

  “What do you think, Ollal?” Fetch asked.

  “Yes!”

  “Looks like you get your chance.”

  “Just let me get a fresh rider.”

  Smile widening, Oats turned and charged to the shore. Seeing him coming, Xhreka stood in alarm.

  “Oh no! Don’t you even think it!”

  But Oats did not grab the halfling. He picked up Wily, set him on the saddle of his corded shoulders, and headed back out to the center of the pond.

  “Idris, dammit!” Beryl yelled. “He has to keep those wrappings dry!”

  “Don’t worry,” Oats replied with slow confidence. “He ain’t gonna get wet.”

  As he approached, the thrice removed the soaked kerchief from his head and tied it around his lower face, hiding his beard. Fetch did not need to see the wink he gave to know his plan. Wily could not get wet. And Ollal still needed a bath. Raising her eyebrows, Fetch agreed to be a conspirator. They closed the distance, making a show of battling for their riders. They could not allow it to go too long or the splashing alone would do for Wily’s bandages and then Beryl would skin them alive. Ollal was older by a few years, but no human girl had much of a chance against even a toddling thrice-blood. Without the assistance of her horse, she was quickly pushed backward, though Fetch made sure she did not fall too hard.

  Ollal came up smiling.

  “Well fought!” Fetch told her, offering a hand to help her float.

  Wily was beaming atop Oats, basking in the praise from the shore and from the surrounding paddling children.

  “We will get him next time,” Fetch said.

  “Right now!” Ollal exclaimed.

  Oats was already taking Wily back to where Beryl and Thistle waited, both giving the thrice intense stares. His mother wanted to thrash him. Thistle wanted to fuck him.

  Fetch gave the girl an accepting shrug. “Looks like that will have to wait.”

  Ollal’s disappointment lasted all of a heartbeat. One of the foundling girls swam up and splashed her in t
he face, and the two of them were off in a furor of screeches and disturbed water.

  Smiling, Fetch used the moment of peace to scrub her face.

  “Chief?”

  It was Culprit’s voice, sounding very uncertain. Looking up, she found him wading a few strides away, closer to the shore, and pointing.

  A Tine stood at the edge of the lake, a large fallow deer slung across his shoulders, the bow he had likely used to kill it in his hand. All were beginning to notice him, and the raucousness dwindled. Those on the shore closest to the elf drew back a bit, but he took no notice. He remained still, waiting, looking directly at Fetching.

  With nothing else for it, she waded to the shore and climbed from the water to approach the elf. He looked to be the same scout who’d led her people down into the valley. He regarded her placidly, eyes never leaving her face.

  Fetch wasn’t certain what the Tine views were on nudity, still she did not feel much like a chief standing before this imperious point-ear wearing nothing but a dripping shirt. That is, until Oats and Culprit came up to flank her in nothing but tattoos. Well…Oats had his kerchief back on his head.

  The elf was unaffected by the swinging cods and peeking minge.

  “For you,” he said in his tongue.

  Fetch assumed he meant the deer, though he made no indication.

  “We thank you,” she replied in halting elvish.

  There was a long silence. None moved.

  Fetch risked stepping forward, reaching for the deer. The Tine leaned to accommodate the handoff. Oats sprang to help and Fetch allowed him to shoulder the kill.

  That done, the elf again gave that stone gaze.

  “The gelded one will live. A few days more, we will bring him to you.”

  Fetch allowed the relief to show on her face, hoping that bespoke further gratitude.

  The Tine pointed at her. “Tomorrow we will come for you. Alone.” He turned on his heel and began to walk away.

  Fetch made to follow. “Wait—”

  As soon as she moved, the elf whirled, arm extended. His bow was drawn, a steady arrow aimed at Fetch’s eye. She heard Oats curse, the sound of the deer dropping to the ground. Fetch held her hands up, both to stop her brothers from action and to show the elf no intention of threat.