The True Bastards

by Jonathan French

  “Where will we go?”

  It was Ollal’s father, the former farrier, who spoke.

  “Mongrel’s Cradle,” Fetch answered. “The Sons of Perdition will take you in.”

  She walked away before more voices could be found. There was no time for empty consoling. Moving across the canyon toward the other hut, Fetch squared her shoulders.

  The worst was to come.

  Beryl and Warbler were speaking heatedly when Fetch entered, her presence halting their raised voices. Wily was sitting on the hearth between them, his bandaged hands fiddling with an eagle feather.

  “You have to make them reconsider!” Beryl declared, changing targets.

  Fetch said nothing. It was a battle she had already fought with the Sitting Young.

  Beryl charged around the table. “Then I will go up. Make these elves see reason!”

  “Beryl,” Warbler attempted, but she went headlong for the door.

  Fetch blocked the way, keeping all aggression from her stance.

  “Move, Isabet.”

  She didn’t, stared at the place where the nearest table leg met the floor. If she looked up, Beryl would see the fear.

  “The Tines will not be swayed,” Fetch pronounced. “Not by you, not by me. Their choice is made.”

  “But the orphans,” Beryl’s anger was tinged with a plea. “They should stay! Why are they blamed for your failure?”

  Again, Fetch kept silent. She needed to just say it, couldn’t.

  Frustrated, Beryl spun, paced a moment, launched her assault anew.

  “All your lives, you and Jackal made each other worse! Why is it that the pair of you delight in such havoc? He wasn’t here a heartbeat! And now this?” Beryl gestured at Warbler and Wily, to herself. “We are here because of you two. Had grown used to it. The solitude. Then you come and Wily had others to play with and now those children are being cast out into the badlands! They should be allowed to stay with him, with me. Dammit, go back and talk to the Tines. Thistle and the foundlings are not a danger to them. Make them understand!”

  “If I go back up there…it won’t help.”

  “Then why are you here, Isa?” Beryl demanded. “Just go. You kept them all alive once. Maybe you will have the fortune to manage that miracle again.” She blew out a disgusted breath, shook her head dismissively, and turned away.

  “Beryl,” Fetch said, unable to avoid the moment any longer. “The Tines will not allow any but the bearers of the plague to remain.”

  Beryl froze.

  Nearby, Warbler blanched.

  Slowly, Beryl turned. “What?”

  “Wily and Warbler are the only ones the elves will allow to stay.”

  “With me.” Beryl pointed hard at the floor of the hut. “They will allow them to stay with me.”

  Fetch’s answer was a whisper. “No.”

  “I was here already,” Beryl’s voice was edged with panic. “That was the first agreement. Me and them! I’ve been here, I’ll be here. You will go, everyone will go, but we will stay. Me and Wily and Avram, as it was!”

  Fetch could only shake her head.

  Beryl let out a cry of pure anguish, face contorted, hands twitching, clutching at nothing. Wily looked up from his feather, the first notice he had taken of the others in the room. His face held surprise, incomprehension, the sight of Beryl’s grief frightful and paralyzing. Fetch, too, found her body chained. She had never seen Beryl cry, not in a lifetime.

  Warbler went to her, tried to contain her grief in his scarred hands. His touch only agitated her more and she tore away. She could not master the sobs, kept beating them back to cast condemning looks at Fetching only to have them return and conquer her face.

  “They can’t do this! You can’t do this!” The protestations fell from warped lips, borne to the ground upon spittle thickly weighted with sorrow.

  Warbler stepped for her again. “Beryl, we will go. We will all go. They can’t keep us here. We will stay together.” He managed to wrangle her into his arms. “All will be well. I swear it. All will be well. We’ll go together.”

  She made a strangled noise and calmed, but it was not relief that brought the sudden, terrible stillness. She looked down at Wily. When her eyes returned to Warbler, her jaw quivered once more.

  “No.”

  Warbler grimaced, took a breath to reply, but was silenced by Beryl’s hand gently stroking his thick white hair, down his cheek. Her thumb rested at the sun-creased corner of his eye.

  “No,” she repeated. “You must stay. For him. Get the Claymaster’s evil out of him. All of it.”

  “We can find another way,” Warbler objected.

  Beryl shook her head. “This is the way.” Stretching up, she kissed him. When their lips parted, Warbler allowed her to slip from his embrace, his chin falling. Beryl knelt, pulled the still puzzled child to her, kisses and tears showering his scalp, cheeks, neck.

  “Love my little boy,” she whispered.

  Watching their goodbye was an intrusion. Fetch wanted to look away. But it was also a punishment, so she accepted it, kept her gaze firm.

  “Going to do wash, Mama?” Wily asked, his little voice slightly muffled in her arms.

  “Yes,” Beryl told him.

  “Can I help?”

  She nearly broke again. “You’re going to stay here, play with Wubba.”

  Heeding the hidden instruction, Warbler sat down on the hearth, his swollen leg forgotten.

  Shattering, Beryl let Wily go and fled the hut. Fetch moved aside to let her pass. Warbler was bravely focused on Wily, robbing him of his feather and swooping it around the boy’s face, darting in to tickle him and coaxing giggles.

  Fetch turned to go and was stopped by Warbler’s gritty voice, roughened further by emotion. “Have her take Big Pox. No need for a hog here now.”

  Fetch nodded even though he was not looking at her. “I’m sorry, War-boar.”

  Warbler did not pause the game, deftly balancing his own sadness against the joy of the child that was now his alone to care for. “Just go, Isa.”

  Outside, Fetch rejoined the Bastards. Starling was among them. She would depart with the hoof, stay with them until they left Tine land, then go her own way. Fetch had argued against her leaving, encouraged her to stay within the safety of the gorges for as long as she was able. The she-elf had given her a firm denial.

  Mounted now upon her hog, Fetch led her people out of the humid valley. Their Tine escort awaited them at the trailhead, no fewer than thirty stag riders, replete with war lances and full quivers. The Tines took them up and through the canyons. The day receded along with the mountains. Before dusk they emerged from the Umbers and found their wagon waiting beyond the foothills, loaded with supplies and watched over by a half dozen Tine scouts.

  “Tell the Sitting Young they have our thanks for this,” Fetch told the lead stag rider, but her courtesy went unacknowledged.

  They rested a moment while Big Pox and Palla were hitched to the wagon, Beryl and Sluggard climbing onto the seat to drive the team, Xhreka between them. The goods prevented any from riding in the bed, but the presence of food was a welcome sight to walkers and riders. The Tines took them across the last long stretch of plain to the edge of their lands. It was full dark before they crossed the stream at the border. The elves waited for every last foot to be properly expelled before turning their stags back toward the mountains, visible in the distance as star-eclipsing swaths reaching into the night sky.

  The lead rider lingered a moment.

  “Do not return,” he said in Hisparthan, his words meant for all. Then he, too, was gone.

  Fetch gave the order to make camp. The villagers were weary, but there was water, and the border offered some protection by its very presence. Few ventured this close to Tine land. Yet the hoof and its peop
le proved not to be the only loiterers in the dark.

  Fetch was taking an inventory of the wagon with the aid of a torch when Hoodwink drifted into the light.

  “What is it?” she asked, squinting into a sack of dried meat.

  “Jackal.”

  “What about him?”

  “He is here.”

  She dropped the sack. “Making another attempt on Xhreka?”

  Hood gave a hint of a headshake. “No. This time he wanted me to see him.”

  Fetch jumped down from the wagon. “Show me.”

  They went beyond the western edge of the slowly forming camp, walked out into the barren plain, dirt shining silver with the moon. And there he was, sitting a hog less than a thrumshot away.

  “Stay here,” Fetch told Hoodwink.

  Jackal dismounted as she drew near, still dressed in the garb of a desert frail. Mean Old Man, the black hog Warbler had gifted him when he left, snuffled when Jackal left his side.

  They stopped an arm’s length apart. There was a long silence.

  “I thought she had destroyed Winsome, Fetch,” Jackal said, at last.

  “I had it solved.”

  Her words had been hissed through clenched teeth, barely heard by her own ears.

  Jackal leaned in. “What?”

  “I had it solved,” she said, louder. “They were safe. They were all going to be safe. I had it solved!”

  She drew a katara, snatched her arm back, eager and willing to punch the blade into Jackal’s chest.

  He did not move.

  Neither did she. “Hells, if only I could hurt you, Jack. If only I knew you wouldn’t mend.”

  “I know your looks, Fetch. You want to kill me. You think that doesn’t hurt?”

  “That your idea of asking pardon?” She felt her voice wanting to rise, got it under control. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “I didn’t know you were alive until I saw you.”

  It was a lie and she smelled it. “Hogshit.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Well, it’s a fucking half-truth, then! Taking down Hood, hiding your face, fighting your own fucking hoof? You knew damn well what you were doing. You did not want us to know you were back, that much is plain. What I want to know is why.”

  Jackal looked at her. “There is no easy answer for that.”

  “Why?!”

  “Because I haven’t killed him yet!”

  Fetch did not need to ask who he meant. She lowered the katara.

  Jackal took a breath. “I was just going to have to leave again, soon as Zirko got what he wanted.”

  “I was right.” Fetch scoffed from her throat. “He summoned you all the way back here just to be his hunting dog.”

  “I thought it was the Betrayer Moon,” Jackal said. “But when I reached Strava—”

  “Stop. Right now I need to know if your loyalty is to the waddlers or this hoof.”

  “I’m a Bastard. You know that.”

  “I don’t know shit right now!” She pointed hard at his face with her weapon. “You’ve been gone a long time, Jackal. There’s a heap of questions and ignorance between us that needs to get sorted. One of which we are going to solve right damn now. If I allow you into camp so you can speak with the hoof you claim loyalty to, are you going to keep peace with Xhreka? Because I can promise you the True Bastards will protect her. And that’s to say nothing of Oats.”

  “Fetch…Oats will always protect what he thinks to be small and vulnerable. Same as when we were children. Remember the rats? He hasn’t changed. Grocer had to make sure Oats was away from the Kiln every time a sow had a new litter because he always took to the runt. This halfling is no different in his mind. Another harmless pet he needs to keep safe. But she’s not harmless. Is she?”

  “No,” Fetch admitted. “But so far she’s only harmed our enemies and we need all the allies we can get. We got something after us, Jackal, that you know nothing about. Makes the Sludge Man look like a garden slug.”

  “An uq’huul.”

  “Zirko told you. Then you know something of it. But not nearly all.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Later. For now I need to trust that you will not do anything without my command, Zirko be fucked.”

  “You can trust me.”

  Fetching squinted at him, wanting to take his word. “Let’s go talk to the boys.”

  She started to turn, but he didn’t move. There was a small, distracted twist to his mouth.

  “What?”

  “Your hair. It’s Tine-cut.”

  “Wasn’t to honor them. For Mead. He’s dead. Dumb Door too.”

  Jackal’s face fell. He nodded in grim acceptance. “I tracked you from Winsome. Found the grave at Batayat. Moved enough stones to see who it was. Didn’t know about Door. Good mongrels, both of them.”

  Fetch ignored his sympathy. “We should get back.”

  “Fetch. One thing more. I didn’t do this because Zirko wanted it done. I agreed because he said my hoof was in danger. This Xhreka may not have destroyed Winsome, but that does not mean he isn’t right about her.”

  Fetch set her jaw. “Jack, at the moment, you and I have put this hoof in more danger than anyone. Think about that. I’ll vouch for the halfling.”

  “Like I did for Crafty? We’ve been deceived by powerful allies before.”

  “That was your mistake,” Fetch said, turning toward camp. “Never mine.”

  Hoodwink was still waiting where she left him, a pale statue in the moonlight. With the sun down, he did not need his cowl and his white skin seemed to glow. His eyes were fixed on Jackal leading his hog a few strides behind.

  “Sorry about before, Hood,” Jackal offered when he got close.

  “It won’t happen twice.”

  The three of them walked into the heart of camp. The villagers hardly took notice of Jackal’s presence, too preoccupied with building fires and stamping out sparks of worry. The slops gawked some at the returned Bastard until Fetch told Lopo to tend Mean Old Man and sent the rest to stand their watches. As the hog was led away, Polecat came up grinning, gave a clap on Jackal’s shoulder, and offered him back his scimitar.

  “Hope there are no hard feelings about urging the boys to shaft you. But you were acting fucking loon-brained, brother.”

  “None,” Jackal assured him, taking the sword.

  Shed Snake and Culprit gave only nods in greeting. To them, Jackal was little more than a name and a reputation. As slops they knew his previous hog, Hearth, better than they knew the rider.

  Oats stood beside Xhreka, near where the orphans were gathered around a small cook fire being seen to by Beryl and Thistle. The thrice stared at Jackal for a long moment before striding over.

  “You sorcelled me,” he accused.

  “You punched my face,” Jackal returned.

  Oats scrutinized him. “Yeah, you’re still pretty.”

  Jackal mirrored the look. “Did you always have a beard?”

  The laughter came. Next the rough, back-slapping grapple that settled into a genuine embrace.

  Fetch’s chest tightened with envy. She wished it were so simple for her to return to the old affections, the newer passions. Perhaps it would have been possible if she wasn’t chief. But…

  Sluggard stepped up to stand beside her, cocked his chin at the reunited friends.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Jackal,” Fetching answered, glancing over. “One of our own. Been gone awhile.”

  “He and Oats backy?”

  That forced a laugh from Fetch. “Maybe you can finally convince them.”

  Seeing Beryl, Jackal took a step, intent on another reunion, but Oats put a big hand around his arm, stopping him.

  “Now ain’t the time, brother,”
he rumbled. “Need to give some space there.”

  Jackal did not push the matter.

  The way he and Oats now stood together, to Fetch’s heart it was as if no one had ever been gone. Though now she saw Jackal in better light, and began to notice the changes in him. Not simply his foreign garb and sword, but the differences writ in his face, the way he moved. They were small, as if the world had etched him a bit with each day away from the Lots, honing him into something that could fit into any land. The perfect wanderer. She’d no idea where he had gone, but in his form was inscribed the story of myriad distant soils, leagues uncountable, and many dangers survived. He claimed to remain a Bastard, but she feared he’d ridden too far to return.

  Time to find out.

  Fetch took a half step forward. “True Bastards, gather up! We got some snakes to kill.” She motioned to a cluster of rocks a short distance away from the camp. The boys began ambling over.

  “Did you mean what you said?” Sluggard asked as she turned to follow. “About having a place in the hoof?”

  “I did,” Fetch replied, uncertain if she was lying. “Let’s get you back in the saddle. Then we can talk about putting you up for a vote.”

  Sluggard gave a satisfied grin and a small wave that was both a show of gratitude and an acknowledgment that he could not follow.

  The boys had thrust torches into the surrounding dirt to light their talk by the time she joined them.

  Fetch began by having Jackal explain his foray into Dog Fall. Oats wasn’t pleased at the idea of Xhreka’s presence putting the hoof in peril, but he merely scowled and kept his mouth shut while Jackal finished. The thrice’s displeasure spread to the rest of the hoof when they heard Jackal had yet to kill Crafty. Shed Snake and Culprit may not have been sworn members during the wizard’s treachery, but they had fled the fiery destruction of the Kiln and survived the fall of the Claymaster.

  Polecat rubbed at his sharp nose. “So…if Crafty’s still alive, what the fuck you been doing?”

  “Chasing him,” Jackal replied. “Across half the world it seemed at times. His trail was nearly cold when I left, but I reckoned he would want to flee the Lots entirely. That meant either Hispartha or the eastern coast. I took a chance that he wouldn’t go north, figuring he didn’t have many allies left in Hispartha after his plans failed. I got lucky in Urci. The harbormaster remembered seeing him, said he took a ship bound for the Stripped Islands.”