The True Bastards Read online

  “Thistle is sleeping,” she said in a hush. “One of the babes had her up all night.”

  Fetching accepted this with a nod, looking the woman over. Sweeps was the walking definition of why mongrels referred to humans as frails. Even in more bountiful times, during the Grey Bastards’ days, she was always a willow branch of a girl. Everything about her, from her hair to her limbs, her nose, everything was long and slender.

  “And you?” Fetch asked. “Still ailing?”

  “No,” the woman replied. “Fever broke just before dawn. I’m hale.”

  That was far from obvious. The fatigue was written beneath Sweeps’s eyes in dark smudges.

  “I will come back by when Thistle’s awake, then.”

  As Fetching left, the faces of the orphans under the table gazed openly at her, each face a mask of heartbreaking indifference.

  She strode to the northern edge of town. Most of the buildings along her way were empty. There had been some chatter of each sworn brother claiming his own house, there were so many left unoccupied. Fetching had squashed that notion before it took root, ordering the Bastards to take up common residence in the vintners’ dormitory. She did not need the members of her hoof spread all over town, playing house with their bedwarmers and losing discipline.

  Fetch neared what was once the upper outskirts of Winsome. Here, the stockade bulged to encompass a generous patch of flat, open ground. That allotment had stretched their timber to the very limit, but it was vital that their hogs be protected. The sounds and smells of two score barbarians drifted on the breeze. The Bastards’ trained mounts were jostling one another at the trough outside the stable, a pair of slops dumping buckets of their namesake over the eager snouts of the noisy animals. These lucky swine knew nothing of rationing and ate more in a day than their minders did in three, but it would be a grave mistake to allow them to weaken. The piglets and twisters were almost as well fed, though they slept rough in the paddock. In the adjacent breaking yard, Dumb Door was astride a strong young sow, hard at the task of accustoming her to a controlling hand on her tusks. It was the greatest challenge in training a barbarian. Hogs hated having their sweeping upper tusks manipulated, especially while on the move.

  Leaning against the paddock, Fetch watched Dumb Door lead the animal through a series of turns, slowly increasing the downward pressure on the swine-yankers until the sow was running tight passes along the fence. The former free-rider was a natural at breaking, never losing patience and always knowing just how far to push a hog. Initially, the Bastards took turns training the barbarians, same as they did with the slopheads, but it was soon obvious that none could match Dumb Door’s results with the beasts, so Fetching had given him permanent duty over training new mounts.

  Seeing his chief waiting, Dumb Door slowed the hog and hopped off, nimble for such a big-boned mongrel. The sow trotted to the far side of the yard, free for the moment.

  “That one come from the Tusked Tide?” Fetch inquired, indicating the hog with a lift of her chin.

  Dumb Door came up to the fence and nodded.

  “She’s nearly ready,” Fetching commented with no small amount of satisfaction.

  Dumb Door held up a pair of calloused fingers.

  Fetch hummed in understanding. “Two weeks. Can you make it ten days?” She lowered her voice. “I know you and Mead are itching to put Abril’s name up for brotherhood. Be a shame if our new blood didn’t have a hog of his own to ride.”

  Beneath his heavy brow, Dumb Door’s eyes shifted upward in contemplation. After a quick weighing of the request, he nodded.

  “Good. How are the twisters from the Fangs shaping up? I would love to get more slops on patrol.”

  A deep sigh issued from Dumb Door, expanding his already prodigious torso. His gaze went to a smaller paddock, where a trio of squealing, bristling terrors was penned separate from the other untrained hogs. Looking back, Dumb Door wrinkled his mouth and his hand came up to rock in the air, palm down.

  Fetch let out a frustrated breath of her own. “That’s what I thought. Keep at it. But don’t get yourself killed. I may try to work one when I get back.”

  This drew a frown and a shake of the head.

  “No need to coddle me, Dumb Door. Have you forgotten what I’ve been riding?”

  As if conjured, Abril approached from the stable, leading a slop mount and Fetch’s own saddled hog.

  She gave the slophead a nod of approval for his timeliness, and mounted. The barbarian was one of the first gifted to the Bastards by the Fangs of Our Fathers, and the beast remained as savage as his former masters. Chuffing in complaint, the hog bucked, its hindquarters flailing enough to force Abril a pace or two away. This was an old game, one Fetch always won. Taking hold of both swine-yankers, she wrestled the ornery pig into submission, her legs iron-gripping its belly. There came one final begrudging grunt and the hog settled. Fetching made a point of never naming her mounts, but the Bastards had taken to calling this one Womb Broom: “The only thing keeping the chief’s quim free of dust.” They thought they were clever. They also thought she didn’t know.

  She had lived among the hoof too long not to know, and too long not to find the name really damn amusing. Clever imbeciles, her Bastards.

  Abril was mounted now too, waiting for her to lead them out.

  “Why are you dallying here, slophead?” Fetch demanded. “You have the entire southern run to patrol before dark. That’s a good stretch of lot to ride alone. Best get moving.”

  Abril’s face lit with eagerness. “Alone?”

  “Try not to die.”

  “Yes! Chief!”

  Abril spurred his hog with gusto, leaving Fetch in an almost disrespectful amount of dust.

  Giving Dumb Door a nod and her hog a firm kick, she rode after him.

  The slops posted at the gate hauled the doors open. The thin timbers did not look capable of withstanding the force of a charging goat. Winsome had to be further fortified. Dangerous as it was, the Kiln was a resource the Bastards could not afford to ignore.

  Shed Snake was just returning from patrol and twisted in the saddle as Abril shot by him with a whoop of pure excitement. Fetch kept a more measured pace and reined up next to Snake in the shadow of the gate.

  “Abril’s going solo, chief?” he said, pleased.

  “You got a report for me, mongrel?” Fetch replied, murdering his smile.

  “Clear from here to the Lucia. Of thicks and every other damn thing.”

  “Still no game?”

  Shed Snake scratched idly beneath the half cape he wore over his left arm. The sun irritated the pulpy scars that covered the entirety of that limb, the reminders of a burn he had suffered while working the Kiln’s ovens when still a slop. “Not even tracks. Sorry, chief.”

  The agitation in his voice matched that in Fetch’s head.

  “Maybe I will have some luck,” she told him. “Set up the butts once you’re inside. I want the slops on thrum drills.”

  Snake nodded. “Will do.”

  As the newest Bastard, sworn only half a year, he was not the best choice to be training the hopefuls, but there were few alternatives.

  “And tell Mead he’s in charge until I return.”

  “Chief.”

  Their hogs parted and Fetch rode a circuit around Winsome, surveying the stockade for signs of weakness. Hells, the whole thing looked made of kindling compared to the former intimidating bulk of the Kiln. Utilizing the blasted stone effectively was slow going. Masonry tools, and men with the knowledge to use them, were in short supply. Most of the town’s skilled tradesmen had opted not to return after the downfall of the Claymaster and his fortress. Wood was ever a scarcity in the badlands of Ul-wundulas. Thankfully, free from the need to fuel the ovens of the Kiln, Fetch had managed to secure enough to erect the stockade in her first months as chief.
The hoof had lived behind its tenuous protection, sharing space with the people who used to live under their guardianship. Winsome once owed its very existence to the Bastards, its folk able to survive in this pitiless land thanks to the warding presence of the nearby Kiln and its riders. Now, the Kiln was a ruined pile of slag, the Bastards little more than squatters.

  But Fetch would be damned if they were going to be idle squatters.

  Work on the ditch outside the wall was nearly complete. A rotating crew of slopheads had been slinging dust and unearthing rocks for months. Polecat had agreed to act as overseer. As Fetching rode by, the hatchet-faced brother raised a hand in salute. He was standing above the ditch, filthy from the labor.

  “Back to it, you worthless mongrels!” Polecat yelled at the score of slopheads below him. “The chief’s watching! You ever want the chance to murder the orc that raped your mother, you’d best impress!”

  “Wear them out, Cat!” Fetch replied, playing her part. “I want to see which of them still has strength enough to load a thrum at training. I’ll wager not a one!”

  Polecat grinned. “My wine ration says you’re wrong, chief.”

  “We’ll see,” Fetch said, riding on. “I look forward to being drunk tonight!”

  As she left the digging behind, Polecat’s traditional encouragements could still be heard.

  “I have plans for that wine, now! I lose it because you whelps were too weak to dig some long hole in the earth, then I promise tomorrow will be an ass-fucking nightmare! And by that I mean I will bugger each of you with my ungreased c—”

  The sound of shovels slicing dirt with renewed vigor drowned out the rest.

  Fetching completed her round, noting the spots along the wall that needed Mead’s assessment before striking off to the east.

  As the badlands of Ul-wundulas spread out before her and the confines of the village receded, Fetch found her breaths coming easier. Some days it was difficult not to shout with relief.

  The True Bastards were too few in number to allow any rider exemption from patrolling, but even if they were a hundred strong, Fetch would take her turn. She would go mad, otherwise. Riding the hoof’s lot was the only task that had not changed from rider to chief. Out here, her responsibilities could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare, and a mistake would only cost the lives of her hog and herself. She knew how to spot orc tracks, differentiate the hoofprints of centaurs from those of the cavaleros’ horses, how to watch for intruding riders on the horizon, how to remain vigilant for any one of a thousand dangers that Ul-wundulas delighted in summoning. What she did not know was how she was going to keep her hoof safe, fed. She did not know when the Tusked Tide was going to arrive with yet another charitable wagon of supplies, or how she was going to find enough materials to build a proper fortress. Managing Winsome was like trying to hold an egg yolk in one hand. No matter how agile Fetch was, it all just seemed to slide out from between her fingers.

  She allowed the patrol to push all other concerns away, Womb’s hoofbeats drumming them far from Winsome. Out here the fretting of a hoofmaster was more than useless, it was a detriment. Out here, she needed to be nothing but a rider with two simple pledges.

  Live in the saddle. Die on th—

  Burning pain lanced through Fetch’s gut. Grunting, gnashing her teeth against the sudden agony, she reeled, jerking in the saddle, trying to flee the flaring knife-edge slicing at her insides. She almost kept her seat, but nausea leapt up to dance in her skull. She ate dust, the impact from the hard fall nulled by the whips of fire snapping through her muscles. Throaty moans pushing wetly through her teeth, Fetch curled into a ball atop the spinning earth. But the pain sliced down her spine, settled at the base, and began to chew. Fetch stiffened, convulsed. She needed to cry out, voice a challenge to the pain, but instead of a scream, her lungs filled with a wet weight. Racking coughs joined the uncontrollable jerk of her limbs. Gagging, heaving, tortured chest full of stones, she choked until a warm mass was forced from her throat to land upon her tongue. It was foul-tasting.

  And moving.

  Fetch lurched to her knees and spit, expelling the wriggling mass.

  Through dappled eyes she saw it lying in the dirt, twisting and flopping, surrounded by bright jewels of blood. The size of her thumb and black as jet, the disgorged sludge reflected the bright sun off its oily surface.

  Fetch sucked air into her ravaged lungs and croaked out her despair.

  “Not again…”

  TWO

  IT WAS A MERCY Roundth was dead. He always liked his women with some meat. “Some fun bits I can hold on to and swat with a saddle strap” was the way he used to describe his preference.

  Had an orc cutthroat not killed him, seeing Thistle now would have.

  The deprivations of the last eight months had been hard on all, but half-orcs weathered hardship with the bestial vitality granted by their thick fathers. Humans were less hardy. Thistle’s pleasing plumpness had melted away, stolen by slow hunger, and freely given to the mongrel orphans she allowed to feed at her breast. The woman had served as wet nurse to the foundlings under the Grey Bastards’ care for years. If Fetching didn’t find a steady supply of food soon, Thistle would not live to serve another season.

  Yet even now, poorly as she felt, ghastly as she looked, she gave of herself. There was a mongrel babe on Thistle’s depleted tit when Fetch entered her small room.

  The woman looked up, half-asleep, but grew alert swiftly, eyes squinting with scrutiny and concern.

  “Fetching? You well?”

  Damning the keen perceptions of child-raisers, Fetch waved the question away, forcing a smile. “That Cassia?” she whispered, deflecting to the baby.

  “Obecco,” Thistle corrected with a weak smile.

  Fetch’s mouth wrinkled. Of course. Not only had she been wrong about the name, she guessed the wrong damn gender. When it came to infants, she was a fool-ass. At least she had managed to divert Thistle’s attention.

  “This little fellow is easy,” the nurse went on. “He can eat and sleep at the same time.”

  At that moment, Obecco let out a break of wind that would shame a grown hog.

  Fetch slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from barking out an earnest laugh.

  Unfazed, Thistle gave another languid smile. “He can do that too.”

  “How are you feeling?” Fetching asked, easing down into a chair beside the bed, mindful that the tulwar hanging from her belt did not clatter.

  “I’m well,” Thistle answered, lying. As Sweeps had. And Mead.

  “The provisions from the Tusked Tide should be here in a day or two,” Fetching said, hoping she had not just lied in return.

  Thistle only nodded, her head lolling back to rest against the wall. For a moment, Fetching thought she had fallen asleep. She tensed to rise, but Thistle’s voice stopped her.

  “When they get here, you need to ask them for something. For the next delivery.”

  “What?”

  “Another wet nurse.”

  Fetch gave an admonishing hiss. “Don’t say that. You are—”

  “Not going anywhere,” Thistle cut in, “but my milk is. I’m drying up, Fetch. Barely have enough for the three sucklings left. We get another babe dropped with us…”

  “That’s not likely,” Fetch said. “Winsome is walled off now.”

  Thistle opened her eyes and managed a dubious squint. “Did that stop this little bag of gas from getting in? Or the other two?”

  Fetching gave a conciliatory shrug. Thistle was right. Of the three babes they had now, two of them had been left outside the gate. The other had been foisted onto Polecat while he was on patrol. It was hoof code to take in all half-orc children, but Fetch could only hope Cat had not demanded something selfish from the desperate woman before accepting her unwanted get.

 
Last spring, the orcs had attempted another Incursion. It had been crushed before it really began, in no small part thanks to the Bastards, but the thicks had made it just north of the Hisparthan border before being repelled. Reports claimed they were all slain, but the crop of half-breeds now appearing contradicted the bravado. There were always orcs in the Lots, which meant there were always women who survived their brutality.

  “And what about the ones that the wall does stop?” Thistle continued, her question pained. “The women discouraged because there is no longer a clear path to the orphanage door? What do you think happens to those babes?”

  Fetch hardened her jaw. “Nothing that hasn’t happened to cast-off mongrel babes since the first orc raped a frail, Thistle.”

  “It didn’t happen to you,” the woman said firmly. “Or Mead. Or Cat, or Hood, or any other half-orc that ever survived to be a slop. Foundlings are the future of a hoof. You know that. The babes, the lucky ones, they are going to keep coming. You shouldn’t want that to ever stop. I don’t want that to ever stop.” Thistle’s eyes were bright now. “But I’m not going to be able to feed them, Fetching. I will be here to hold them, and change them, and wash them, but not…feed them.”

  The tears never came, the voice did not break, but the sorrow of that admission filled the room.

  Fetch took a deep breath. “We have a few goats. I can see if the Tide will—”

  “No.”

  Thistle had said it quietly, yet the force of that denial, the anger in it, disturbed the suckling infant. Obecco whimpered, seemed to wake, but a single touch on the head from his nurse eased him back to sleep.

  “No,” Thistle repeated, shifting the iron from her voice to the stare she leveled. “Goats can serve in need, if it comes to that. But these children need a wet nurse. Beryl left the orphanage in my care. She would come back in a fury to know I’d stooped to using a nanny. Do you think she ever fed you from a goat?”

  Fetching almost missed it, the one small revelation in that challenging question.