The True Bastards Read online

  Fetch hadn’t seen Cissy in nearly half a year and she wasn’t too keen on looking at her now. Cissy, the flirtatious girl with the ample ass who could make men hard with a look, or so the hoof brothers used to say. She had never wanted anything other than to be a bedwarmer, reside in the Kiln, had dreamed of it even when an orphan living in Beryl’s care. Fetch could still remember all the giggly, whispered confessions, all of Cissy’s breathless wonderings over which of the Bastards would favor her. It had turned Fetch’s stomach even then, though she stayed a loyal confidant for years.

  Marrow tucked into his food with noisy relish. Cissy lingered. Fetch tried to send her off with a glare, but received an insistent motion toward the door. Inwardly cursing, Fetch followed her into the corridor. When the door was closed fast, Cissy affixed her bold eyes.

  “Hilde won’t be coming,” she said. “Not to this room. Not to Winsome.”

  “If that Anvillese hussy thinks she can keep her from me…”

  Fetch turned to set off down the hall, but Cissy seized her arm.

  “It’s not Rhecia.”

  Spinning back around, freeing herself from the grip in the same motion, Fetching seethed. “I won’t play games here. Fucking explain.”

  “It was me,” Cissy declared, refusing to be cowed. “I told Hilde not to go. Told her what awaited her if she took up with the Bastards.”

  “An end to taking unwashed cock for coin?”

  “An end to eating more than once every three days!”

  “She’d have more than that—”

  “How?” Cissy demanded, her voice beginning to quiver. “Thistle didn’t! Is that why you’ve come? Is she dead? Did you finally leech the last of her? Hells, I begged her to come with me and—”

  “Turning whore’s not the answer for all—”

  “Now you’ve fucking killed her. How many more will you lead to death before you—”

  “She’s alive—”

  “Give up this sick jest of being chief?”

  It was all Fetching could do to stop herself from seizing the little slattern by the throat. The impulse sent her darting forward, teeth bared.

  “Be careful, Cissy,” she snarled, nearly nose to nose with the smaller woman, but the aggression only fueled her defiance.

  “Why? You don’t rule here. You can’t command me. This isn’t your lot. Nor your hoof. You’re not master of anything inside these walls, Isabet.”

  Lungs crackling, threatening, Fetching hid her discomfort, and her fury, behind a grin.

  “You should know,” she nearly whispered, “Polecat’s been begging me leave to come here since the day you left. I’ve refused. Not certain if he intends to haul you back to Winsome over his saddle horn…or skin you alive for abandoning him. I didn’t want to have to live with either outcome, being honest. But you disrespect me again, you callow cunt, I’ll allow him to ride this way and we’ll both take our chances.”

  Cissy’s eyes widened. She was now holding her breath.

  Fetch flicked her eyes down the corridor. “You can return to your back.”

  Once the whore had fled, Fetch pushed open the door to find Marrow sopping his bowl with a wedge of bread, Sluggard watching him with a sickened expression. “You already put all that down?”

  “I eat fast.”

  “So fast,” Sluggard said, appalled.

  Fetch cocked her head toward the hall. “We’re riding out.”

  Marrow jammed the bread into his already-stuffed mouth and stood, taking up his thrum. They hadn’t gone three steps when a commotion punched through the brothel’s thin walls. Men’s raised voices. The scrapes and thumps of a struggle. All coming from the direction of the bathhouse.

  Fetch halted.

  Slivers.

  Shit.

  Leave it alone. That’s what she’d said to do. They could go straight for their hogs, should go straight for their hogs. But leaving a corpse on a tree and his killers unchallenged was one course. Allowing those same men to murder another mongrel, no matter how much a worthless craven, was another path entirely.

  Fetch ran for the opposite end of the corridor, Marrow and Sluggard right behind. There was no door to the bathhouse, just an arch opening onto the fenced court that hugged the tubs, and their ramshackle shelter, to the brothel. Rushing through the arch, Fetch found Slivers, knife in hand, keeping two cavaleros at bay. One of the men was naked, sopping, and bleeding from a cut along his ribs. The other was the lonely drinker from the taproom, fully dressed in his scale coat, thrusting at Slivers with his sword across a tub. Four of the great oaken things comprised the baths, each able to hold three people with ease. Slivers danced around the edge of one, keeping it between him and the cavaleros.

  The swordsman whirled at Fetch’s arrival. Next to her, Marrow’s thrum came up, but she pushed it down, kept her own lowered.

  “Not here for that,” she told the room just as three more armed cavaleros bulled through the arch. Sluggard had to scurry out of their path, knocking over—and nearly tripping on—a bench in his haste to get away from the reach of their blades. Fetch couldn’t prevent Marrow from spinning and training his stockbow on the newcomers, but looking directly into the prods of the loaded weapon kept the men from pressing further. It was the skittish pair from the taproom along with the man who had fucked Cissy.

  Rhecia appeared in the arch behind them.

  “I will not allow this!” she shouted into the court. “Put away your weapons!”

  The naked cavalero clutched his leaking side and yelled back, keeping an eye cocked at Slivers. “You lied to us, Rhecia!”

  “I spoke true! This mongrel must have come sneaking to reclaim his mount. I did not know he was here!”

  The little nomad didn’t appreciate the mistress’s quick thinking. “Forked-tongued she-devil!”

  “Put a cock in it, Slivers!” Fetch snapped.

  The naked man jabbed a finger at her. “She knows him!”

  “I know him. He’s no—”

  “A scout for the rest!” This accusation came from over her shoulder. One of the three men near the archway. “They’re here for us!”

  “We’re not!” Fetch insisted. “Here on a hoof matter, nothing else!”

  A wildness took over the naked man’s face. His head made rapid twists, birdlike, trying to address his fellows while keeping an eye on Slivers. “We can’t trust that! You lads want half-breed trackers on our ass? Never reach the Smelteds—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, Cino!” the swordsman nearest him growled through clenched teeth, cuffing his nude companion on the shoulder. His glare darted to Fetching, but she kept her expression blank, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard…yet her flesh crawled as the clues congealed. The saddled horses. The jumpy men. Talk of the hills. These weren’t cavaleros. Not anymore. And that was far more dangerous. She’d heard. She knew. If these frails realized she knew…

  Fetch thrust a finger at Slivers. “I’m here for him. Fucking skulker sheltered with us for a time. Repaid the kindness by raping one of our bedwarmers and making off with a sack of beans.”

  Slivers’s face went slack with disbelief. “The fuck I did!”

  Fetch ignored him, kept her gaze on the naked frail. He was injured and vulnerable. If she could convince him, perhaps his cut would be the end of it. “I got every intention of taking him back to Winsome, letting the woman he harmed geld him and then have my slopheads feather him for target practice. But”—Fetch flicked her eyes to the man’s bleeding ribs—“he did slice you, so I’d be satisfied if you wanted to take him back to the castile. I know your captain would see justice done.”

  It was a bald ploy, like throwing a snake into a crowded room, but it had the desired effect. Now faced with the thing they most feared, these men could focus only on getting away from it.

  “No,”
the swordsman said, leaning a bit closer to the dripping Cino. “She can have him, eh? Let these soot-skins handle their own.”

  Cino’s jaw bulged. “He fucking cut me….”

  Slivers threatened with his knife. “Teach you to haul me off a roof in nothing but your skin, fool-ass frail!”

  The swordsman snickered. “Was fucking unwise, Cino.”

  Fetch seized upon the break in the tension. “Takes a brave man to fight with his cod swinging in the wind. The kind of man Rhecia’s girls would be happy to tend, I’d wager.”

  “Most happy,” the whoremonger agreed.

  The other three cavaleros’ determined frowns were softening.

  Fetch again looked to the lone swordsman. “What say we mongrels ride on so you men can get back to better company?”

  He was heeding her words, liked the sound of them. His gaze shifted beyond her as his sword arm lowered.

  “I say we put steel away, boys. This isn’t—”

  Slivers darted around the tub and plunged his knife into the man’s ear. His whole body went stiff for a heartbeat, began to convulse.

  And the bathhouse erupted.

  Fetch heard the three cavaleros curse, followed by the thrum of a loosed stockbow. Snapping her head around, she saw Marrow’s bolt fly clear through the throat of one man and punch into the archway, sending shards of plaster flying and Rhecia fleeing. As the dead cavalero dropped, his flanking comrades sprang. One chopped at Sluggard, but his sword struck the low beams of the bathhouse roof and lodged. Sluggard closed the gap, knife driving for the exposed belly. It was an inexpert blow, directly into the cavalero’s scale coat, yet the strength of the half-orc sent the blade through the armor to pierce guts. The stricken man gurgled, blood blooming behind his clenched teeth.

  The other had more sense in the close confines, using his sword to thrust. Marrow sidestepped, snatched the hatchet from his belt, and buried it in his assailant’s skull.

  Fetch wanted to scream at them to stop, but it was too late. Nothing now but to complete the butchery.

  She’d been right about Cino. It was a brave man that fought naked. He struggled with Slivers, wrestling for control of the knife. A struggle that ended when the nomad smashed a knee into his fruits, bashed his head into the edge of the tub, and slit his throat.

  All went still. The puddles of the bathhouse were inked with blood. Fetch stood, numb to the carnage, her thrum still loaded, eyes sweeping across the five dead men sprawled on the moist boards.

  Two more. There should have been two more. They couldn’t have failed to hear. What manner of men didn’t come when their comrades were in need?

  Fetch’s skull boiled.

  “The stable! The last two! They’re running!”

  Sluggard bolted out the archway and was gone before Marrow could react.

  Fetch had another route in mind. Springing, she caught the edge of the bathhouse roof with one hand and hauled herself up. Two running steps and a jump brought her across the gap to the roof of the brothel. She sprinted over the flat-topped structure and reached the front just as the two cavaleros emerged from the shadows of the stable across the yard, spurring their horses with a fury. She could let them go. They weren’t bound for the castile, the cowards. The killers. The frails!

  Fetch snatched her stockbow to her shoulder and pulled the tickler. Unseen, her chosen man rode full tilt into his death. The bolt took him in the chest, knocking him backward to fall beneath the eaves of the stables.

  The other cavalero kept going. Cursing, Fetch pulled another bolt. She felt the tightness in her chest, knew the coughing fit was coming, tried to hold it at bay for another few moments. Lungs fluttering in complaint, hands shaking with the effort, she fumbled the reload, the wet hacks bursting forth as her thrumbolt clattered to the roof.

  The last cavalero passed beyond the brothel’s low wall, his horse surging into a full gallop. Fetch succumbed to the fit, knowing to fight it was hopeless. Movement drew her eye below. Sluggard, freeing his hog from the hitching post, vaulting into the saddle. Bow in hand, he pursued. He couldn’t hope to catch up. Horses were swifter than barbarians. But he didn’t need to catch the rider. Only close the gap.

  His hog still on the run, Sluggard stood in his stirrups. His arm snapped and returned to the bow three times in rapid succession. His arrows were invisible at this distance, but Fetch saw the rider jerk from the saddle at the gritter’s first pull. The next two brought down the horse.

  Fetch would have exhaled with relief, were she able to breathe.

  By the time Sluggard returned to the yard, the fit had subsided. Fetch went back to the bathhouse, once again over the roof. Dropping down, she found Marrow gone and Slivers pawing at the dead men.

  Seeing Fetch, he straightened, sour-faced. “Not a coin among them.”

  “You expected the purses of deserters to be bulging?”

  The frailing dismissed that with a grunt, produced a grin, and swept the bathhouse with splayed arms. “How’s that for standing with the Bastards, eh?”

  Fetch planted a boot in his gut and pushed him to the ground.

  “You rabid fucking dog!”

  From the damp, Slivers crab-crawled, gaining some distance. One hand made a desperate gesture at the collection of new-made corpses. “I helped! Fought!”

  “You want a reward?” Fetching snarled, ripping her tulwar free. At the sight of the drawn sword, Slivers shot to his feet in a backward stumble, kicking up gory water and panic. The bathhouse wall thumped him in the back, unexpected. He made a move to the left and Fetching threw, windmilling the curved blade into the timber next to Slivers’s head. The steel smote wood, sending chunks flying as it buried deep. The frailing cried out in alarm and careened away in the opposite direction. Fetch intercepted, grabbing him by the front of his rotting brigand. Pressing her other hand into Slivers’s cheek, she shoved his head toward the tulwar, still quivering in the wall. She forced his face up against the flat of the blade.

  “You think me mad?” Fetching hissed. “You think me foolish?”

  “Th-thought you wanted them…ah! Wanted them dead!”

  She kept the pressure on Slivers’s head with one hand, the other now seizing the grip of her tulwar. Slowly, she levered the blade downward, toward the pinned nomad’s collarbone.

  “You have no notion what I want. You’re nothing but a louse trying to cling to a hog’s back.”

  The edge of the tulwar slid down. Slivers struggled, but Fetch held him fast. The frailing’s hands were free, no doubt there was a dagger within reach at his belt. Fetch ignored the danger. Hells, she courted it. Let this coward try to put steel in her gut, give her a reason to end him. In an attempt to escape the oncoming blade, Slivers let his knees go slack, but Fetch hooked a thumb under his jaw and lifted, arresting his collapse. Wood crunched as the sword hinged, approaching flesh and bone.

  “Why us, Slivers? You want to be a sworn brother again, why not go to one of the other hoofs? I’ll tell you. You’re afraid of them. But not of the True Bastards. Not of me! You think I got some motherly instinct that will warm at the pitiful sight of you. It’s not there, Slivers. What should I do to make you understand that? What should I do to make you afraid of me?”

  Decayed leather parted as the tulwar bit down, tasting flesh beneath. Slivers grunted with the pain, a higher note rising in his throat as fear took hold.

  Fetching ceased pulling on the sword. “I’ve told you there’s no place in my hoof. I’ve yelled, threatened, kicked. And still you try to cozen me with your whining, begging. Your backstabbing! Don’t force me to put a thrumbolt in you, Slivers. I see you again, that’s what I’ll do.”

  Releasing the now-quaking frailing, Fetch let him fall, tearing her sword from the wall as she stepped away. She found Marrow and Sluggard standing in the enclosure. The older nomad wore a grimace.
r />   “You see something disagreeable?” Fetch asked.

  “Try and treat me like that,” he said, pointing his nose at Slivers, “you will find out I am the disagreeable sort.”

  “Why would I treat you like that? You done something to make me angry?”

  “Seems killing cavaleros is enough.”

  “Don’t let nomad pride make you stupid, Marrow.” Fetch pointed down at Slivers with her sword. “This useless fuck put us all in needless danger.”

  Marrow shrugged. “He’s a frailing. Got more human blood than orc. Can’t expect too much.”

  Fetch took a step toward the nomad. “I can’t? I got a human woman tending our foundlings worth ten of the best riders in the Lots. Not a drop of orc blood in her. Every day, she shows me what I can expect, and it’s a great deal. She’s the reason I came to this damned place. You want to preach some shit about the strength of orc blood, go sniff around the Orc Stains. You don’t look like a thrice, so they wouldn’t have you. Maybe the Fangs of Our Fathers. How’s your orcish?”

  Stepping around the free-riders, she left the bathhouse.

  Rhecia was in the taproom, her fair face flecked with small scrapes. Several of the whores, including Cissy, were gathered nearby, tending their mistress. Their whispered voices hushed as Fetching came in. Reaching into the gaggle she grabbed Rhecia’s arm.

  “The rest of you stay put,” she said, and pulled the woman out into the yard, half-dragging her to the well to be far from earshot. Rhecia was sullen as Fetch faced her. “They were penniless. Deserters heading for the Smelted Mounts. Don’t know what they intended to do once you discovered they couldn’t pay.”

  “Slap us. Laugh. Leave. You think this has not happened before?”

  Fetch had no need to answer that. “Send your stable hand to the castile with word. If Bermudo needs me to vouch for what happened, he can send a rider to Winsome. Understand?”

  “Yes.”