“You took a boy,” Nox growled.
“We took a lot of boys.”
“Last night. From a camp just south of here.”
“Him? He was lucky we took him at all.”
“What, didn't come willingly?” Nox grabbed the slaver's face real tight. “I know the feelin'.
“He's gone,” Oddman Rensley said.
Nox felt his heart sink. He'd felt that before, and hoped to never feel it again. He hoped he could stop others from feeling it too.
“We already sold him,” Oddman Rensley continued.
Nox perked up. That was good. That meant the kid was still alive. For now.
“That was a pretty quick sale,” Nox observed. “Why, I might've patted ya on the back if I wasn't gonna break it.”
Rensley gave a half-sigh, half-scream. “We sold him to a man who runs a grogshop not far from here. Goes by the name Swill Roberts. Needed a barboy to serve up all that rotgut he makes.”
“See, now I know you're lyin',” Nox said. “And I like liars only a little more than I like slavers. Why, I've got a fist for either, and it looks like you might be gettin' both.”
Nox raised his gloved fist, until it blotted out the remainder of the sun. Rensley shielded his face.
“All right, all right!” he cried. “He's probably still being … processed.”
“What's that mean?”
“Evaluated. Y'know, to see how valuable they are.”
Nox scoffed at the thought. In his eyes, this slaver wasn't worth much at all.
“Where d'ya do this processin'?” the Coilhunter asked.
“The Night Ranch.”
“And where's that?”
“They'll kill me if I tell you.”
Nox leant in close. “I'll kill you if you don't.”
7 – SLAVER NOX
The Coilhunter propped Oddman Rensley up in the passenger seat of the slaver's truck, before freeing the two men who were trapped in the back of another.
“Take these trucks,” Nox told them, pointing to the two remaining vehicles. “It's the least the Night Slavers owe you.”
They drove off, and Nox made Rensley direct him towards the Night Ranch. It didn't take much convincing. Men like him broke quicker than their slaves. But Rensley was starting to nod off from the blood loss, forcing Nox to shake him awake. He'd used Plump Podge's shirt as a bandage, but that was quickly turning crimson.
“You better not be lyin' to me,” Nox said through his gritted teeth. The truck groaned as it crawled across the desert. Already he missed the speed of his monowheel.
He slapped Rensley in the face, something the man was getting used to.
“I'm not seeing it,” Nox said.
“It's here … further up.”
“How come I haven't cleaned this place out before?”
“We're good.”
“You're not that good,” Nox crooned. “Why, you're not good at all.”
Another slap. Rensley was starting to slump in his seat.
“Hang in there,” the Coilhunter said. “We ain't finished yet.”
Finally he saw the faint outline of the ranch in the distance. It looked like a sprawling estate, which surprised Nox quite a bit. He'd been back and forth across this area quite a bit. Yet, no matter how much you thought you knew the desert, it kept on surprising you. Nox tended to pick the same path most times—he couldn't call it a road, because there were few of those around—and he picked the fastest he could find. He could only imagine that the Night Slavers watched his routes and made their own outside of them.
He pulled up close to a sentry point, where there were quite a few armed guards. He felt like storming the place, like ramming through the barrier, but he knew the slavers would use the slaves as hostages. He had to play this one quietly.
A guard knocked on the door on his side and peered up. Nox smiled back down at him, but he had to do it with his eyes. He had his neckerchief tied across his face, obscuring the mask. It must've looked odd, but not as odd as what was beneath.
“What's the password?” the guard asked.
Nox whacked Rensley in the arm.
“Silver by … moonlight,” Rensley grunted.
“What happened to him?” the guard asked.
“Same thing that happened to you,” Nox said, dragging the man inside and snapping his neck. He didn't even have time to scream.
“Hell!” Rensley shouted.
“You're right,” Nox said. “I guess it's a little different.”
He forced the guard's body over the back of the truck. There was one big advantage this vehicle had over his monowheel. There was a lot more space for bad guys in the back.
Nox got out, yanking the barrier away. He got back in and drove on until he got to the next checkpoint, where there were several more guards. One of them tapped his rifle repeatedly against the side of the truck.
“How many?”
Nox presumed he meant: How many slaves?
“One.”
“Just one?”
“It's a quiet night,” Nox said. “But don't worry. We'll get more.”
All three guards made their way around to the back.
Nox leant close to Rensley. “Whatever you do … stay still.”
He unclipped a little capsule from his belt and lobbed it in the back.
The guards opened the door, their faces dropping when they saw the body inside. Those jaws dropped even more when the capsule cracked open and half a dozen tiny mechanical butterflies flooded out. The little creatures made straight for the guards, who were reaching for their weapons, or running, or calling out for help. They sprayed the moving figures with little puffs of noxious green gas, which knocked all of them out cold.
Rensley stayed as still as could, afraid to even blink.
“Good,” Nox said. “You're learning.”
He got out, tapping a button on the panel on his wrist, which made all the little butterflies stop fluttering and collapse to the ground. He didn't bother scooping them up. He made many more toys up his sleeves.
He hauled the three guards into the back, piling them up on each other. He was making quite a collection. He wondered if he could get a full set.
“You can blink now,” Nox told Rensley when he got back in.
“You're … somethin' else.”
“Yeah.” Nox fired up the vehicle again.
“What … makes someone like you?”
“You do, Rensley. You do.”
8 – THE NIGHT RANCH
The Night Ranch was a sprawling settlement, with reinforced fences around its perimeter, which guarded against the sand storms. The slavers didn't just let the sand pile up there—they added some of their own, until it just looked like yet another dune from far away. With people like the Coilhunter on the loose, you couldn't just be quiet—you had to be invisible.
But Nox saw them now.
He was ushered on to a loading area filled with similar trucks. Some of them were just about to begin their rounds. Others had finished and were unloading the latest catch. The look of fear on those faces gave Nox a little more conviction—not that he needed any more.
“What now?” Oddman Rensley asked. He probably never felt odder, helping destroy the slaver business that'd been so good to him over the years. It wasn't doing him any good now. Nox didn't worry about Rensley tipping off the others. It was too late for all of them.
“This is where we part ways,” Nox said. “I work better alone.”
Rensley's face drooped a little more. “Are you … going to kill me?”
Nox glanced at the wound. “No. I think you already did.” He leant closer. “When you get to the other side, if you see anyone I didn't get a chance to kill … well, tell 'em there's always a second chance to die. Doesn't matter if it's Heaven or Hell. Tell 'em I'm still comin' for 'em.”
Nox hopped outside.
“Help me unload,” he barked at one of the nearby guards.
He led the guard around to the back.
“Quite a catch, huh?” Nox said, before smashing the man's face against the door. If that guard ever ended up on a Wanted poster, Nox would recognise him from the busted nose.
Nox peered around the front again. “Could use a few more bodies back here.”
Two more guards trotted over, helpful as ever. If only they could have hauled themselves inside. By the time Nox had cleared the area of guards, the truck was almost overflowing.
The Coilhunter followed the latest batch of slaves into a sorting shack, where they were counted and given a value. Nox would've almost said you couldn't put a price on a man, but then he'd made a living out of just that. If you asked him, the Bounty Booth was offering too much for some of them.
Nox slunk into the shadows near the door and watched the procession. It was amazing how much the slaves had already resigned themselves to their new fate. Not one of them showed defiance. They wanted to live, even if it wasn't really living. They marched when they were told to march. They halted when they were told to halt. Who knew what they would have done if they were told to die.
Coilcountin' Lawson was there, notepad in hand. He was a small man, dwarfed by many of the captives, and smaller still for what he did. His bald head was badly sunburnt, and his face wasn't much better. He had a horrid habit of licking his dirty fingers every time he turned a page, and boy did he turn a lot of pages. There were dozens of new slaves to process. He marked down their height, estimated their weight (to see how long you could go without feeding them), and listed one or two recommended “trades” for them—unpaid, of course. He seemed to delight in reading the poor men their fate, smiling sickly as he did. Miner. Lumberjack. Millsman. There wasn't a single woman in the crowd. Any of those that weren't taken to the slavers' personal dens were carted off immediately to the Black Silk Collective, a highly-secretive and decentralised organisation that kept the brothels of the Wild North well-stocked.
Nox continued to watch Lawson, imagining what he'd do to the man when he got his hands on him. For that kind of man, it wouldn't take much. It was almost a shame. But this wasn't about just making Nox feel better—though it did plenty of that—it was about doing some good.
“A poor catch tonight,” Lawson said. What a name. He was the son of no law.
“Should still fetch plenty,” Oil-hands Olly replied. Like most criminals in the Wild North, you could learn a lot about them by their names. He was a slick-fingered fellow, Lawson's best gunslinger, and probably the only reason that son of a gun wasn't already dead. It was also one reason why Nox felt he couldn't make a move yet. Oil-hands Olly would have those slaves gunned down in seconds.
“We still don't have enough for the Dew Distributors,” Lawson complained. “That's two weeks in a row we've failed to fill their orders.”
“Not many survive the waterworks,” Olly said.
“That doesn't matter. We should have a constant influx.”
“We're trying to be careful.”
That was when Nox struck. “Not careful enough,” he said, firing a bullet at the solitary light bulb casting a faint glow in the room. Everything went black. These slaves might have operated when the sun went down, but Nox was going to make them fear the night.
9 – DRAWING IN DARKNESS
The Coilhunter and Oil-hands Olly fired in almost perfect unison, but Nox didn't fire a normal gun. He fired one of the grappling hooks from the spring-loaded device on his right arm, which hooked around one of the wooden pillars on the far end of the room. It acted like a tripwire to the fleeing slaves, who toppled to the ground, where they were safely out of the line of Olly's gunfire.
But Nox almost wasn't.
That quick-drawing conman almost didn't need daylight. His first bullet clipped the edge of the Coilhunter's oxygen tank as he dived. The next struck the wall just behind where he was last standing. He'd barely hit the floor before another one puckered the floorboards a little too close. It was almost as if Olly could see him, but Nox knew it wasn't that. It was the second sight you got with experience, with managing to fire a lot of guns, and avoid many more fired back at you. It was the kind of second sight the Coilhunter had as well.
Nox yanked a whole strip of butterfly capsules from his belt as he rolled, casting them into the centre of the room, where the slaves were still groaning. Anyone who was wise enough to stay down was fine. Anyone who wasn't, well, the butterfly gas knocked them back to the floor just as quick. It was better than death. Death didn't wear off.
Nox snapped the grappling wire off with a flick of his dagger, then just as quickly exchanged it for a pistol. He fanned the hammer, unloading the barrel in an arc of fire at where Lawson and Olly had last been seen. He knew they probably both would've ducked for cover, but he just needed to suppress them long enough to find some better cover of his own.
The darkness helped and hindered in equal measure, which was more than could be said for the sun. In this case, the sightlessness just made their hearing more acute. That fast-fingered Olly could've heard Nox's boots a mile off. It was just as well, then, that Nox activated a noise-maker in the tip of the grappling hook across the room. The little device made a series of sounds just like Nox's fabled stompers.
He used the distraction to duck behind a stairway, allowing himself an inch of a smile as he heard Olly's bullets ping off the wall across the way. Some criminals said fighting Nox was like fighting ghosts. He seemed to come from everywhere. Most criminals who fought Nox never said anything at all.
Nox paid close attention to Olly's firing pattern. He seemed to fire in threes, and he'd draw a triangle with his shots if he didn't think you were running. Most people'd dodge out of one shot to be hit by the next. But it wasn't just the timing that Nox was paying attention to. The thing about gunfire is that it made little flashes of light, and those flashes were like dynamite in the dark.
Nox aimed his gun and waited.
Bang.
They fired again in almost perfect unison. This time, Olly barely started his rounds at the decoy when he gave a grunt and fell flat on his face. Nox didn't bother firing in threes. One did the trick just fine.
He heard Lawson's petty little yelp, followed by the scurry of his feet. All Nox had to do was wait. The red-faced criminal ran straight into the swarm of butterflies, who were just looking for more movement to track. He didn't just yelp this time. He screamed as they latched onto his face, then slumped to the ground with a thud. There was no doubt he'd have bad dreams that night—if Nox'd let him have any at all.
Nox came out of his cover, just in time as a group of guards raced in from the back. They shone faint oil lanterns around the room, highlighting the dozens of bodies, which they thought were dead. Then they saw the Coilhunter's silhouette across the way, and they couldn't aim their weapons quick enough before he gunned them down.
Nox strolled over to where Coilcountin'—or make that Sheepcountin'—Lawson lay. The butterflies crowded around the Coilhunter, spraying their somniferous gas into his face. He could make useful toys, but he hadn't quite learned how to make loyalty yet. Not that it mattered. His mask filtered out the fumes.
He swatted the creatures away, then leant down and yanked the little notepad out of Lawson's hand. He lit a match and flicked through the pages until he found what he was looking for: Boy. Eight to ten years. Four foot, two inches. Estimated sixty pounds. Wild, dusty hair, pale complexion. Round face. Pouty demeanour. Curious eyes. Refused to give name, but carries a journal that says Property of Luke Mayfield. Ideal for the mines. Should fetch ten to fifteen coils easily. Some pay more for youth. It listed two potential buyers, with a meeting arranged for the following morning. Nox was just in time.
He took Lawson's set of keys and headed through the rear door, down a long corridor of cells, where many more slaves were huddled. He couldn't let any of them out just yet. They'd draw even more attention than he did, and probably wouldn't get far before the rest of the slavers mowed them down in their trucks.
At the end of
the corridor, he spotted a kid matching Lawson's meticulous description. The boy sat on his own in the corner, hugging his knees, with the sleeves of his plaid shirt rolled up past his elbows, and a small leather journal stuffed into his shirt pocket. His jeans were dusty, but they looked pretty new, new enough to know that his parents must’ve had money. You had to be careful how you dressed in the desert, because it wasn’t just the Coilhunter who spotted those little details. The kid didn't even look up when Nox approached. He probably assumed that he was just like the rest of them, another gunman there to sell a child.
Nox tapped one of the keys off the bars. Everyone inside perked up. Maybe they thought it was feeding time. Maybe they thought they'd be seeing who their buyer was, and if they looked cold and cruel. The Coilhunter did.
“You,” he croaked, pointing to the kid.
The boy looked up and trembled. He didn’t brush away the sandy hair from his eyes. Maybe he didn’t want to see.
“You got a sister?” Nox asked.
The kid seemed like he didn't know how to answer. Maybe he thought this masked menace meant something nefarious by it. Maybe he wondered if he should’ve lied. He didn't though.
“Y-y-yes, sir.”
“Well, thank the high heavens you do … because she sent me to rescue ya.”
The boy's face was like granite. He seemed too lost in his own thoughts to register what was happening. Nox sorted through the bunch of keys until he found the right one. He turned the lock, and the boy's face changed. It wasn't happiness though. It was surprise.
Nox didn't realise why until it was too late.
He heard the faint sound of a padded sole behind him, then the whoosh of air as something came down hard and heavy on his head. Then the sound of static. Then nothing at all.
10 – SHADOW AND LIGHT
Rustkiller - A Science Fiction Western Adventure (The Coilhunter Chronicles Book 2) Page 3
