They looked to be thoroughly cowed and resigned to their fate, heads lowered, occasionally crying out at a particularly vicious cut from one of the whips.
Ryan peeked through the fringe of dark green leaves, looking back down the trail. At the tail end of the column, to his disquiet, he spotted a pair of the slavers walking together, with four dogs on leashes. The animals were slavering brutes with underslung jaws and the red eyes of killers.
They were tugging ahead, snarling at the heels of the last of the line of slaves.
Ryan tried to ease himself back into the undergrowth, praying that the overwhelming scent of the colorful flowers covered his own smell and hid it from the hounds. In his right hand, the SIG-Sauer was already cocked, his index finger resting lightly inside the trigger guard.
Now most of the sorry column had trudged by. Not one of the natives had lifted his or her head to look at the surrounding brush, and none of the guards seemed to be bothering with checking against a possible ambush.
Slavery was endemic in some parts of Deathlands, generally where there was some sort of crude manufacturing or processing plant set up, or where old mines were being reopened and reworked. In all those cases, the work involved was bitter and arduous, and it simply wasn’t possible to attract paid workers.
So the barons and owners used slaves.
Over the years Ryan had encountered slavery on several occasions. Trader’s rule in life was not to interfere unless there was some good reasongenerally commercialto justify it. For the miserable victims, condemned to dwell at the very bottom of the poverty heap, slavery was a way of life. If you tried to combat it and free a few poor wretches, then others would be taken and the circle would remain unbroken.
The only way of stopping it was to totally wipe out the slavers themselves, and there wasn’t often much profit in trying to do that.
One of the young girls stumbled and fell, dragging down the next two in line.
For a moment there was chaos, with screaming and yelling and dogs barking. Whips raised and fell, cracking into defenseless flesh. The fattest of the slavers grabbed the girl and heaved her to her feet, slapping her hard across the face to teach her a lesson to be more careful.
“Don’t spoil the merchandise,” called the man on the burro’s back.
“Stupe bitch went down on purpose,” the angry man replied. “I’ll show her to be trouble, tonight.”
“No, you won’t, Manuel. Not unless I say so.”
There was a clear note of warning in the voice, and Manuel let the girl go, snatching a chance to brush the flat of his hand over her budding breasts, making her wince more than the slap had. “Sure, boss,” he called out.
Ryan frowned, wondering about the accent. They spoke reasonable American, but there was a heavy guttural accent to it that he couldn’t place.
Now the prisoners were almost past him.
Ryan felt movement and looked down, seeing that a tiny lizard, vermilion in color, was industriously climbing over the toe of one of his combat boots.
He noticed that it had a triple row of needle-sharp teeth, and it was trying to gnaw its way through the toughened leather. Moving with infinite slowness, Ryan hefted the two pounds of cold metal that was the SIG-Sauer P-226 and brought it down firmly on the back of the reptile’s skull, cracking its head open in a puddle of gray-pink brains, sending it toppling lifelessly into the leaf mold that lay all around.
The dogs were level with him when he risked a glance through the fringe of leaves, and one of them, a brindled brute with scarred flanks, was heaving on the leash, as though it had managed to scent him.
But the guard took no notice, cursing at it and tugging savagely at the spiked choke collar.
“Come on, Diablo, you piece of shit! Walk on, will you.”
He kicked at the dog, which turned and snarled at him, showing its teeth.
Ryan crouched lower, part of his attention fixed on the death throes of the little lizard, which was on its back, legs jerking convulsively, a thin trickle of green blood seeping from between the pointed teeth.