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horse from attempting a jump off a short run, and already two of the newly dug
pits had claimed victims.
There was one to his left, and Ryan sidetracked himself to check it. Two old
natives were flanking it, so doddery that they could barely notch an arrow to
their bows.
A horse lay in the pit, impaled on some of the sharpened stakes that lined its
bottom. One of the slavers was standing on top of the dying animal, struggling
to reload his blaster. One leg was crooked, with a jagged end of white bone
sticking through the torn material of his cotton pants.
Ryan's face slit in a wolfish grin. It looked as if nobody there was going to
do any killing. As he watched, one of the old men tried to loose an arrow, but
it slipped off the string of the long hunting bow with a dull thunking sound
and fell harmlessly into the staked pit.
"Let me," Ryan said, pausing a moment and shooting the slaver through the top
of the head. The distorted bullet drove through the cranium, pulping the
brain, past the eyes and nose, emerging through the roof of the dying man's
mouth, giving him a final transient burning sensation on his tongue as he went
down into endless night.
The two ancient natives both laid down their weapons and clapped their gnarled
hands, beaming broadly at Ryan, who bowed in return and moved on.
BIVAR SCREAMED IN AGONY, as an arrow pierced his thigh, missing the bone,
drilling clean through, pinning him to the palomino.
Ryan emerged around the side of the farthest hut in the line, with only the
lake behind him. A half-dozen warriors were supposed to be there, covering any
attempt at escape into the water. But the slaughter in the square had lured
them from their posts, and the end of the village was completely deserted.
His informed guess was that more than half of the slavers would have bought
the farm in the first three or four minutes of the assault, which meant that a
part of the plan had worked.
But it didn't mean that the fight was over and won.
As if to confirm that, Ryan spotted three of the slavers, on foot, running
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toward the lake. He stood in the shadow of one of the huts, and they hadn't
yet seen him.
One had a broken stump of an arrow protruding from his upper arm, just above
the elbow, dark blood staining his cream shirt. Another had a gaping wound
across his thigh, looking like a slash from a machete.
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Deathlands 28 - Emerald Fire
All three carried their blasters, darting toward the miraculous possibility of
safety, constantly glancing back over their shoulders.
The men were less than thirty paces away, coming fast, the one with the
bleeding leg limping heavily.
Ryan gripped his right wrist with his left hand, aiming at the leader of the
escapees, bracing himself against the kick of the powerful automatic.
Without saying a word he opened fire, chest shots, the safest option against
moving targets. It didn't matter much whether you were a couple of inches high
or low or to either side. High and you took out the throat. Low and you had a
gut shot, which was likely to be a killing hit with a 9 mm round fired from
the
P-226.
Either side of the breastbone and you were still wiping out some of the ribs
and probably the lungs, and possibly the heart, as well.
You hit when you missed with a chest shot.
Ryan's first shot was dead center, splintering the sternoclavicular joint
apart, shredding the man's lungs with fragments of lead and bone.
The second man, with the wounded arm, was quick, snapping off a shot toward
the muzzle-flash in the shadows.
Being quick didn't mean being good.
He missed by a country mile.
Ryan's second bullet wasn't quite as central, straying a tad high. But it was
close enough, hitting the slaver through the Adam's apple, snapping his neck
as efficiently as a good hangman and blowing out most of the throat.
The third man tried to turn, but his injured leg betrayed him and he went over
in the slippery dirt, falling awkwardly, dropping his blaster.
Ryan was just able to check himself from squeezing the trigger on the
SIG-Sauer a third time, wasting a round over the top of the tumbling man.
"Save me, Jesus!" the slaver screamed, on hands and knees, peering toward
Ryan, who put the third full-
metal-jacket round through his forehead, drilling a neat hole from front to
back. The impact lifted a flap of skull into the air, anchored by the scalp
and the long, greasy hair, so that it flopped back down again, like a crooked
toupee. The man rolled soundlessly onto his side in the trodden mud and didn't
move again.
"Guess Jesus wasn't listening to you, friend," Ryan said.
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Deathlands 28 - Emerald Fire
DESPITE THE WOUND, Bivar was rallying his men for a desperate charge for
safety.
"Time for the thermite, Doc!" J.B. yelled.
"Hope this is the time it works," shouted Mildred, who was kneeling behind a
wall, calmly reloading the target revolver.
Doc thumbed the self-light and applied it to one end of the fuse, while J.B.
did the same to the second length of cord. Both men watched as they fizzled
and spluttered into life, snaking fast through the dust and smoke.
The old man held up crossed fingers.
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Ryan stayed where he was, watching the last stages of the firefight.
Bivar had gathered the survivors around him, ready for a last stand, waving
his blaster in the air, taking potshots at any of the villagers he could see.
Unnoticed by the slavers, but spotted by Ryan, two threads of white smoke
fizzed through the trodden, bloodied dirt, worming their way toward the group
of frightened horsemen and their desperate leader.
The blasting powder triggered the igniter mix of barium and magnesium. There
was a brilliant flash of light from the first bomb, brighter than the noon
sun, followed by another and another, as each mine in the row went off.
Ryan waited.
The dazzling display completed the spooking of the horses. Without exception
they kicked and reared, crying out like gelded men, high and thin. Virtually
all of the riders were unseated, including Bivar, though many struggled to
hang on to the reins of their terrified mounts.
But the bombs were only halfway done.
The igniter mixture finally caught the main charge of aluminum and ironthe
thermite mixture.
It began to burn at more than five hundred degrees centigrade, hot enough to
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