Deadman

I peered through my scope at the approaching caravan. I counted a dozen men, and more than two dozen slaves. The majority of the slaves were Deadmen, but there were five or six humans, and at least one person that was either a human with the worst sunburn I’d ever seen, or a Deadman with a surprisingly smooth complexion. The men and women guarding them were all fairly well equipped, and were actively watching the road for hazards, they were a more competent group than the last ones.

They couldn’t see me, wouldn’t even if they looked directly at where I was set up. I had placed a tarp over myself early in the morning that nearly matched the color of the sandy hill I was on, and over the course of the day enough sand had blown over it to make it a perfect piece of camouflage.

I was just outside of Horde territory, to the East. It was an area I wasn’t familiar with, but working in the region was necessary to do what I’d been doing. The Horde didn’t allow slavery within its territory, but it did allow the transport of slaves through it. As long as tribute was paid, the Horde would let them pass. Like most things, this was a matter of practicality. If you allowed slavery in your own territory, than the chances of your people enslaving one another was much higher, unless you heavily policed and monitored the circumstances in which it was allowed. Both options would cut into tribute profits and expansion, so slavery was illegal. Demanding tribute from transported slaves, that was another story.

I turned my head away from the scope and had a sip of water. I’d tracked these particular slavers from Medina. They’d paid tribute, but were secretly rounding up deadmen and criminals that settlements would rather sell than deal with themselves, or hand over to the undertakers. It was illegal, but not uncommon. I needed to leave at least one of them alive so I could determine which people had sold their deadmen out. Then, I would pay them a little visit, with some rope in hand and a winning smile.

It was possible of course, that the settlements weren’t even aware of what had happened, and the slavers had simply snuck in to take people, or even just dealt with a settlement's particular group of unsavories to get what they wanted. Whatever the case, they were doing something I wanted to stop, and so they were going to die. I had moved ahead of them outside of Horde territory specifically to kill them. They’d paid tribute to the Khan and so were safe in his domain. One or two miles outside of it though? Well, in my eyes they were as good as dead.

I waited until they were just a little bit closer, and then looked at them again through my scope. I’d just recently bought it off Bill, for my .308, and he’d given it some modifications as well, for increased stopping power and range. I generally preferred to do things up close, it’s what I’m best at, but I’ve been making a point to take greater care lately, and improving my long range shooting by killing slavers was a good way to multitask.

I started activating my arrest ability and highlighting the slavers one by one. Once I was done, I activated freeze on what I thought would be the easiest shot, lined up my scope with his now frozen form at center mass, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit him in the chest and he spun, gushing blood, and falling into the dirt. I moved on to the second, then the third. It wasn’t until I was lining up my fourth shot that they started taking cover. Even with my shooting improving, I wasted a couple shots, and needed to take the time to reload. I switched magazines and looked back down my sights. I could tell, even from a distance, that the slavers were panicking. One of them peeked out from behind a wagon they were having the slaves pull, and I froze him, lined up a shot on his head, and fired. That shot wasn’t wasted, and I watched his head burst with a sense of satisfaction.

I went to line up another, more than half of the slavers were dead, and the remainder were not in a great position. Still pinned down with no idea where I was. I took a moment to have another sip of water, then looked back through the scope. What I saw surprised me. The slaves, seeing the opportunity I’d created for them, started to attack the slavers. The slavers had taken cover close to where the slaves were chained together, and while their focus had been on me, the slaves were able to approach them and make their move. I was impressed, but then I remembered I needed one of the slavers alive.

“Shit.” I muttered, throwing the tarp off myself and running down the hill toward their position. I heard a few gunshots and the slaves and slavers struggled, and I saw a few of the slaves go down, but soon there was only silence as all but one highlighted form in my vision lost its glow. The slaves picked up the slaver's guns and aimed them at me as I approached. Smart, I thought, as I pointed my rifle downward and removed the bandana from my face.

I saw the deadmen in the group visibly relax as the humans among them tensed. “I’m here to free you. If I wanted you dead I'd’ve never left cover.”

That seemed to make sense to them and one of them, a deadman with a pencil mustache holding a pistol, moved forward and looked me over. His eyes eventually came to rest on my badge. “Are you Donovan? The deadman Marshall?” he asked.

“You’ve heard of me?” I asked.

He nodded. “Well yeah. Everyone’s heard of you from the Cut to the Wilds.”

I grimaced, there was value in being known of course, I’d realized that the moment the Khan recognized me as able to operate in his territory, but at the same time I could hear the lecture from Solomon, and Nico about how unnecessary it all was. I looked at the last of the slavers that was alive and saw a younger deadwoman about to brain him with a rock.

“Wait,” I said, pointing at her.

“There a problem?” asked the mustachioed deadman. Who, I realized, was still tensed up and gripping his gun tightly, likely unsure of what I was planning on doing.

I shook my head. “I just wanted to question one of them. I need information.”

The man loosened up a bit and nodded. “Oh. Makes sense.”

I walked over to the man, moving around the woman still gripping a rock ready to brain him, and crouched down. He’d taken a bullet to the leg and when he looked up at me, in spite of his fear, he spat. I gave him a firm open-handed smack to the face in response. It knocked him flat on the ground. Then I knelt down and lifted him into a seated position by the hair. “I need names and locations. Any settlement you took from, any people you cooperated with. You give me the information and I leave you here on your own with a knife.”

The man shook his head. “I’ll die anyway then.”

I nodded. “Probably. But if you don’t give me the information I want. Then I give you to them.” I gestured at the slaves which were looting the corpses of the former slavers and unlocking the manacles which held them together.

The man swallowed. “Okay. I’ll tell you what you want.”

The mustachioed deadman, now unchained, approached us. “If you need names and locations, well, each of us knows who sold us out and who was involved. We can tell you ourselves.”

I nodded. “Oh. That’s a good point.” I drew my knife and quickly slit the last slaver's throat. That seemed like a fair compromise. Worse than if he’d been the one to give me the information as he intended, but better than giving him over to the people he’d enslaved. I wiped my knife clean on the man’s shirt and turned back to the other deadman, holding out a hand. “Name?”

He took my hand and shook it. “Saul.” He looked at the slaver's corpse. “You planning on doing that to the people that sold us out.”

I shook my head. “No. Probably worse than that.”

He gave me a sharp-toothed grin. “Good.”

After that, I spent some time talking with each of the people that had been enslaved, even the humans, and finding out who sold them out, and where. A fair amount of them were taken in STAR territory, and a couple from frontier settlements that weren’t controlled, but about a quarter were taken in Horde lands, and I took particular care in noting them. I was going to head for a meeting with the Khan soon, and I figured I'd better take the time to get some tribute ready.