Other Tales of En

T&A: Delivered

When I come to, my body doesn't answer for a while. I can dully feel pain from the worst of it: my leg, hand, and wing. I can also tell I'm moving, the bumpy shaking indicating probably a cart of some sort. I manage to peek an eye open. It's a flat cart and as it goes over a hole, I hear the familiar clink of chains. The sound has a conditioned effect on me, my fire draining and the dark cloud of despair looming.

I'm captured which means two options: death or the auction block. Considering my history and condition, the former is the more likely.

Once the hunters get to a record house and check the history on my number, they'll know this is my fifth escape. An unheard of number as it is. The only reason I wasn't put down after the third was because of how rare Avin slaves are becoming. Using a small population as slave messengers in a war means it's not long before most are shot down. The Soli didn't quite think that one through all the way and now has to do it's best to 'conserve the remaining population".

But if the "remaining population" keeps running away, it's no good to the empire and can only be used as an example.

So has the time finally come for me to end it? To choose my own death, robbing the Soli of my humiliation. Or do I hold out—try to escape one last time? I consider, but a sharp pain from my left wing brings reality back to my desperate calculating. I'm grounded and possibly fatally injured anyway. All I can do now is end it.

As feeling (and pain) come back to my hands, I try to move. The hunters are more clever than I hoped, the chains are attached to two iron pins and are short enough that I can't make it to the edge of the cart to throw myself off. I'll have to wait until they unload me. Surely some soldier will have a sword out I can run onto.

What a sad way to go, what a futile life. I can feel the wary eye of the hunter on me and I tuck my head down, my shaggy hair covering my face as a few last tears burn the gash on my jaw. By the time the sound of people surround us—with the familiar gasping and pointing as the cart comes to a stop—my body is so tired and sore I'm like a board. The hunters were smart and trimmed the branches stuck in me, but I'm sure I look like a corpse to most of the spectators.

I try to focus, but I'm going in and out of consciousness. Faces blur by and I hear words but can't understand them. The only thought I manage is that it's a lot of people and that we might be in a larger city. Soon, the voices quiet and my focus sharpens as someone grasps my chin and forces my head up to look me over. I try to glare, but I'm too tired. It's a man with spectacles and the cold calculating eyes of a slaver. He cranks my head to the side reading the number tattooed on my neck out loud to someone.

"2A44D. An older number."

I'm too tired to snort at that. Yeah, twenty years old. Old enough to see the empire spread like a disease across En, old enough to be passed through a dozen different masters.

Veteran, experienced, well-trained. Other words that have been used to describe me. That and defiant, broken, defective. So yeah, it's an older number, it took me ten years to get pushed too far, to make my first escape attempt, no doubt that's what it says on my record.

"Looks like this one's a repeat offender. Says here it's been recaptured twice already." Another voice.

Maybe it's the creeping delirium, but I give a dry, cracking laugh, "Your records are outdated. This is my fifth escape."

"Was. It was a fifth escape," says the man coldly, not phased at all. He looks above me where the hunters must be standing. "We'll update the record and send an inquiry to Astrix, make sure there's no warrant out that would prevent us from putting this one down."

"And if there's a reward above the standard bounty?" It's the younger hunter's voice.

"Then that will be the fee of my office," answers the slaver sharply.