The grey bastards, p.6
The Grey Bastards, page 6
“Why did you do it, Jackal? Why did you claim to have killed that cavalero?”
“Because we all had a hand in it. You, me and Oats. It was the right move, but if the Claymaster knew it was you who pulled the tickler, he would not have seen it. He’s not even that concerned with the dead noble. It’s Sancho’s bid to get out from under free quim that has the chief raging. But when it comes to you…”
Jackal trailed off, knowing he did not need to explain to Fetch what the Claymaster thought of her.
“No more, Jack. The hoof is never going to treat me as one of them so long as you don’t.”
Jackal wrinkled his face. “I would have done the same for Oats!”
“Would you?” Fetching shot back. “That’s pretty big of you considering he had not one word to say out at Batayat. He could have backed us, Jackal!”
“Oats picks his fights carefully, Fetch. Which is more than either of us can boast.”
Fetching held up a hand, giving him the point. “Then you got to start letting me deal with the shit that comes from the fights I pick. I don’t need your swinging cod getting between me and the Claymaster or any other member of this hoof. Understand?”
Jackal nodded.
“Say it, Jack!”
“I understand.”
Fetching set her jaw and nodded, her eyes softening slightly. Then she slammed a fist up into his balls.
Jackal grunted and bent over double, the sudden dull pain giving way to a foreboding numbness before the real agony shot upwards and lodged in his throat, trailing nausea through his entire body.
“The fuck, Fetch?” he managed between coughs.
“That was a favor,” she said, leaning down to put her face level with his.
“A…favor?”
“So you will be too sore to try and spread Cissy’s cheeks again. That hussy is looking to make the Kiln her permanent home. Soon as you stick that troublemaker in any of her holes she is going to see a clear path to your bunk.”
Jackal tried to glare at her through teary eyes. “We were both just looking for a break in the drudgery.”
“That’s what you were doing, half-wit. But she would throw Polecat over in a heartbeat. Cissy’s not about to stay with that weasel-faced pederast if she can get you. So, unless you’re ready for a bedwarmer, keep out.”
Fetching straightened and began to leave the courtyard, her stockbow bouncing slightly against her lower back.
“And you’re welcome.”
Jackal hobbled in slow circles for a long time after she was gone.
Chapter 5
A slophead came to fetch Jackal back to the Kiln after eight days. The young hopeful was slightly out of breath, as if he had run all the way from the compound.
“What’s the matter, slop?” Jackal dug. “You can’t sprint a mile without getting winded?”
The slophead tried to immediately steady his breathing, causing his lips to twitch and his face to pale.
“Hells, Biro, breathe,” Beryl told him from her chair on the portico. “Don’t let this one tug your ear. Jackal swooned like a virgin the first time he was made to run back to Winsome with a message. Took me forever to bring him around.”
Jackal snorted. Some of his fellow Bastards would not have taken kindly to being teased in front of a slophead, but he found Beryl’s story amusing, all the more so because it wasn’t true. Jackal trimmed a few more artichoke stems with his knife, dropping the heads into the basket between him and Beryl, before standing. Sheathing his knife, he picked up his brigand and stockbow.
Beryl looked up at him with a tiny smile. “Good to have you around, Jackal.”
He leaned down and kissed her once, then stepped off the portico and into the hot sun.
“Let’s go,” he told Biro.
Nodding rapidly, the slophead spun on his heel and began jogging up the dusty trail that ran through Winsome. Jackal continued at a walk, squinting at the retreating slop until the youth realized what was happening and turned around.
“The Claymaster said to bring you back quickly!” Biro called back reluctantly.
“Then he should have sent my damn hog,” Jackal replied, not bothering to raise his voice.
The foundlings, now aware that he was leaving, came scurrying from their play to surround him, following in a laughing, living cloud until Beryl’s commanding voice called them off.
The road to the Kiln was mostly uphill in this direction. Jackal took his time, donning his brigand as he walked. Biro stayed a few paces ahead. The youth was no more than thirteen, still within his first year as a slophead, and still responding to the sworn members of the hoof with a mix of awe and dread. Fortunately, that also kept him from talking during the walk.
As they neared the Kiln, Jackal spotted a small encampment squatting near the gate.
“When did they arrive?” Jackal asked, peering at the half dozen horses and tents.
“Two days ago,” Biro replied. “They are cavaleros from the castile.”
Jackal almost mocked the slop for the obvious observation, but bit back on the abuse, choosing to educate the boy instead.
“They are cavaleros,” he agreed, “but can you tell me if they are commoners or nobles?”
Biro stared blankly.
Jackal took him by the shoulder as they drew nearer the camp and pointed at the horses, hobbled and grazing on the sparse plain.
“Look at the quality of their mounts…not one is pure-bred.”
There were two men standing sentry, while the other four threw dice near their small cook fire.
“Noble-born frails rarely gamble with dice,” Jackal continued, “and they wear a crimson sash to denote their privilege. These clods don’t have that and their armor is poorer quality. But, they are usually the better fighters. Remember that.”
Biro gave his rapid nod and swallowed hard.
Walking beneath the gate, Jackal entered the wall passage and began making the long circuit through the darkness. He could hear Biro’s hand sliding along the wall behind him, the youth not yet used to traversing the black tunnel without that blind guidance. Jackal remembered when he had done the same, years ago.
“Why—?”
Jackal whirled on Biro before he could utter another word, shushing him harshly.
“Never talk while inside the wall!” he told the unseen youth, keeping his own voice at a whisper. “You need to have your ears open for riders in both directions. I don’t want to get trampled because some slophead couldn’t keep his tongue from flapping.”
To the youth’s credit, he said nothing more, not even to answer.
Jackal continued to lead them through, quickening his pace. When he was Biro’s age, he feared being inside the wall, constantly worried the Kiln would come under attack and the gates would be closed before he could run the circuit, the ovens heating the passage until he cooked in his own skin. All slopheads needed that fear, it kept them alert and alive.
But that was not the reason Jackal began to hurry. Commoner cavaleros at the Kiln meant that Ignacio was paying the Grey Bastards a visit, and that, no doubt, was why Jackal had been summoned.
“Get my hog saddled,” he told Biro as soon as they emerged into the light of the compound. The youth readily obeyed, running for the stables. One way or another, Jackal figured his punishment was over and he meant to ride as soon as possible.
He entered the meeting hall and made straight for the Claymaster’s solar. As expected, he found Captain Ignacio within, the man slumped in a chair opposite the chief’s desk. Balding and homely, with pockmarked skin and rheumy eyes, Ignacio was every bit the common soldier. He was probably of an age with Bermudo, but could pass for his noble counterpart’s father, the hard life of a peasant etched into every wrinkle of his swarthy face.
“Jackal,” Ignacio said with a nod.
“Captain.”
The Claymaster looked up and his mouth curled. Behind him, a pair of dusty ceramic jars rested upon a laden shelf. They were old sapper pots, an alchemical device used in the Incursion to blow holes in orc defenses. As a slave, the Claymaster had crafted them, shaping the pottery and filling the jars with the volatile substances that made them so damn dangerous. The two relics on the shelf were empty, inert, but Jackal always glanced at them when in the Claymaster’s solar as a reminder of the chief’s sudden turns in temper.
“I am starting to wish you were drowned at birth, Jack.”
Jackal said nothing, waiting on the bad news.
The Claymaster waved a linen-wrapped hand at Ignacio. “Tell him.”
The captain looked at Jackal, his tired expression rimmed with frustration. “Cavalero Garcia’s horse returned to the castile.”
Jackal struggled to keep his face placid.
“I found that interesting, Jackal,” the Claymaster said, his tone dangerously light. “I found that very interesting, considering you told me that horse was going to be given to the Sludge Man to pay for him disposing of the cavalero’s body.”
“I’ll ride out now,” Jackal said quickly. “I’ll talk to Sancho. Find out what happened.”
“I already did,” Ignacio sighed. “The whoremaster did what you asked. He sent a bird to the Sludge Man and he came the next day, took Garcia and the horse. But the next morning, that horse was outside our gate.”
“Jack? Care to voice a thought as to why that is?” the Claymaster asked.
Jackal shrugged defiantly. “Ask the Sludge Man.”
The Claymaster’s eyes darkened beneath his bandages. “We tried. I sent a bird as soon as Ignacio arrived and told me about this increasing pile of hog shit. No response. And that’s not like our bog-dwelling frail.”
The Claymaster was right. The Sludge Man always replied quickly when summoned. Too quickly. He seemed to be able to appear anywhere in the Lots within a day and that was one of his less off-putting qualities.
“You think something happened to him,” Jackal stated.
“I think you need to damn well find out before that peacock’s body shows up with a Bastard quarrel in his chest!”
Fetch had actually shot the man in the eye, but Jackal kept his mouth shut.
From his chair, Ignacio issued another weary breath. “The story you fed Bermudo and his boys, about Garcia riding off into centaur territory, it’s holding for now. The horse disproves nothing on its own, but you mark me Jackal, if that body is discovered and Bermudo can use it against the Grey Bastards, he will.”
As much as it galled Jackal, there was a lot of truth being spoken in the little room.
“I’ll get Oats and Fetching,” he said. “We will head back to Sancho’s and track the Sludge Man down.”
“No,” the Claymaster said brusquely. “I already sent them back to Sancho’s to do just that. You are going straight into the marsh, see if the Sludge Man made it back.”
Jackal frowned. “If Garcia’s horse went into the marsh, it never would have made it out again, much less back to the castile. Whatever happened to the Sludge Man, it happened before the Old Maiden.”
“And if that’s true, Oats and that bitch you two voted into this hoof will find out. In the meantime, you are going straight to the source.”
“That is a lot of wetland to cover, chief. And no one knows exactly where the Sludge Man lives. I could get this done faster with help.”
The Claymaster shrugged a humped shoulder. “I am already giving up a quarter of this hoof’s strength just to fix your mistake. You want help, take one of the slopheads.”
That was a hindrance, and the chief knew it.
“I’ll go alone,” Jackal said and nodded to Captain Ignacio before leaving the room.
He could hear the discussion continuing as he went down the corridor, Ignacio no doubt describing what the Claymaster could do to repay him for the news. In the Lot Lands, no one did anything that would not benefit their own ends.
Once in the yard, Jackal made directly for the supply hall. He found Grocer there, as expected, the old coin-clipper muttering orders at a pair of slops and watching their every move distrustfully. Since Warbler went nomad, Grocer was the last founding member of the hoof left other than the chief. It was widely known, but never said aloud, that the quartermaster was actually a frailing, the product of a half-orc mother and a human father. Thin, stingy, and cunning, he managed his hoard of supplies with ill-tempered efficiency. He was such a covetous fuck that he never cut his hair and it fell past his bony ass in a white-streaked mass of twisted, dark locks. Still, Jackal had seen the aging cuss in a knife fight and would not cross him without damn good reason.
“I have no liniment to spare, Jackal,” Grocer told him as he approached the supply counter.
“Liniment? I’m not here for that.”
Grocer sneered. “Aren’t you? Figured your nipples would be raw from teat-feeding all those whelps at Beryl’s.”
The old coot had a good laugh at his own jest, all the while directing his minions where to move various sacks and barrels.
“I need one of the Sludge Man’s messenger birds,” Jackal told him. “And a cage to put it in. Something light, but strong.”
Grocer eyed him for a moment, before begrudgingly stalking back into his stores. He returned a moment later with a wicker cage containing a docile squab.
“Claymaster know about this?” Grocer asked.
“Wouldn’t be here if he didn’t,” Jackal replied, taking the cage out of Grocer’s resisting fingers.
As he left the supply hall, the old mongrel’s voice called after him.
“I better get those back!”
Not bothering to respond, Jackal began making his way across the yard. He was just entering the shadow of the Kiln’s great chimney when he spotted the wizard. He was sitting in the shade, his chubby form resting upon a small carpet. As he drew closer, Jackal saw his eyes were closed.
“An errand of great import, friend?” the wizard asked just as Jackal was about to pass.
Jackal stopped and looked down to find the fat fuck looking at him with a lazy grin.
“No,” Jackal told him.
“Wonderful!”
The wizard stood quickly, agile in spite of his bulk. He was a good bit shorter than Jackal, but his turban made them appear of an even height.
“I beg to accompany you.”
Jackal snorted, slightly taken aback. “Beg all you want. No.”
“Brave,” the wizard said, smiling. The movement of his mouth caused the gold beads dangling from his chin-braid to swing. “But I have heard it is dangerous to go alone into the Old Maiden Marsh.”
“How do you know where I ride?” Jackal snarled, leaning down threateningly.
The wizard’s smile only broadened. He placed the heels of his hands together and gestured at the caged bird in Jackal’s hand.
“This small, feathered soul would return there this instant were you to release him. Simple creatures follow familiar instincts, my friend.”
“You know the marsh?”
“I know the bird. Alas, like much of Ul-wundulas, I have not seen the Old Maiden. But I wish to, so I shall come.”
“The fuck you will,” Jackal said, turning away.
“I think you know I walk where I wish.”
Jackal stopped. The wizard’s voice retained a courteous, nearly fawning quality, yet there was a threat buried in the thick folds of politeness. Turning back around quickly, Jackal met the shorter half-orc’s dancing eyes.
“Yes, you do,” he said, putting menace in his own tone. “That was a crafty trick, showing up in the passage.”
“Truly, I did not intend to cause a stir.”
“I just bet you didn’t. You got a name?”
“Uhad Ul-badir Taruk Ultani,” the wizard said with a small dip of his chin.
Jackal blinked. “That name is a fucking nightmare. I’m going to call you Crafty.”
The wizard smiled. “This is what you would call a ‘hoof-name’?”
“This is what I call a name I can fucking say. And as far as I know, you aren’t in this hoof yet, because I don’t recall a vote.”
“Indeed, this is so,” the wizard said.
Jackal had a sudden inspiration and he smiled. “That makes you a hopeful! A slophead. So come along, Crafty, and see the Old Maiden Marsh.”
The wizard’s plump face beamed. “Much gratitude! Do you think your Claymaster will approve?”
Jackal shook his head as he turned to go. “I don’t much care. Besides, you walk where you wish, remember? Let’s see if you can ride there, too.”
After rolling up his little carpet and tying it to a shapeless bundle of bags, Crafty slung the whole affair across his body and hurried to catch up.
“Might I know your name, friend?”
“Jackal.”
“Ah!” Crafty held up a finger. “So named because you can eat anything, have an odious laugh and mate even with ugly women!”
Jackal ground to a halt, his fist clenching, but as he spun on the wizard he saw the mischievous grin on his face. So, a sense of humor. And a good one.
Jackal chuckled and relaxed. “You got two out of three.”
As they made their way to the stables, Jackal found himself warming to the idea of taking the stranger along. He was depriving the Claymaster of his favored guest by using his own words against him. That was good. He was also giving himself time to take the measure of this stranger. That was better. After over a week in Winsome, Jackal felt blind to the doings at the Kiln. He needed to know more about this chubby newcomer and intended to get every answer he sought.
They found Biro waiting at the stables. The youth had done well getting Hearth ready to ride. Jackal gave the slop a small nod of approval after giving the hog a quick inspection.
“Saddle one of the scouts’ hogs,” he told Biro as he mounted. “Our new friend is coming along with me.”
