Читать книгу The Farris Channel - Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Страница 9

CHAPTER TWO

FORT TANHARA

Solamar Grant was first to spot the riders coming toward their wagons from the Fort gate. The Fort ahead of them was so close he could zlin its ambient nager. It had to be Fort Rimon, it just had to, and the Fort had sent riders to help them.

Grant was riding beside the lead horses of Fort Tanhara’s lead wagon, filled with their sick and injured. He was alternately zlinning the fraying harness of the right lead mare in the four-up, and dropping back to help herd the two cows and eight sheep that had survived the five months of travel from the remains of Fort Tanhara.

He kept flicking his attention toward the Freeband Raiders who were gaining on them.

The Freebander riders chasing them had come across a low hill that masked something big burning, a town maybe. Now they were gaining steadily, gaining much too fast. Must have stolen the town’s horses. Freeband Raiders’ horses were always in bad condition, except right after they’d been stolen. RenSimes who had turned Raider stole what they wanted, used it and discarded it, never giving a thought to upkeep.

The wagons couldn’t go any faster. They weren’t on a trail or even a beaten path across this mountain valley. Every rock, hole, and hummock twisted and strained the tack, the wagon wheels, the wagon chassis. The drivers were zlinning the ground ahead to pick the best course for the wagons. They couldn’t go one bit faster, and it was too slow.

If we don’t make it, everything I’ve worked for is lost. All these people will die. Maybe Fort Rimon will die too. Mentally, he told the harness to hold, the horses not to founder, the Gens in the wagons not to panic. We have to make it. We have to or the world may be lost.

His father would have scoffed at him for being melodramatic. His father had never grasped the scope of the Farris channel issue the way his grandfather had. He repeated it out loud. “We have to or the world may be lost.”

One of the young Gen women rode up beside him and shouted over the din of rattling wagons and pounding hooves, “Sol, can you zlin them yet? Is that Fort Rimon up ahead? Are those riders coming at us juncts?”

“Can’t tell for sure yet!”

“But you’re our best channel!”

I’m no kind of channel, were the words that leaped to his mind and pushed at his lips but he swallowed them back. He knew she meant he was the most sensitive Sime with the Tanhara refugees, which was true. With luck, they’ll never have to know more than that about me.

He focused and zlinned again now the riders ahead were closer. “Those riders are renSime, nonjunct, so that has to be Fort Rimon.” It just absolutely has to be!

“Get the Gens mounted and ride for the Fort—that’ll lighten the wagons. Get all our Gens behind that line of Fort riders and don’t look back. Don’t do anything to distract those Fort renSimes. They’re here to deal with the Raiders for us.”

He felt her protest ignite her nager. She was no Companion, but when her attention alighted on him, he felt it. With two tentacles, he gestured her to caution.

In response, she put her attention on the horizon beyond the Fort. Then, like the Fort Gen she was, she obediently pulled her horse up and dropped to the rear wagons, calling for their remounts which were already saddled and strung behind the wagons.

Soon everyone was shouting for the Gens in the wagons to mount up. In small groups, they began to ride for their lives, and for the life of the Fort. Both Forts.

Solamar did the one thing that might betray him to the Forters as an outsider. Without consulting anyone, without even telling anyone what he was about to do, he rode out ahead to meet the riders from the Fort—Fort Rimon, it has to be. A real channel would stay behind, well defended and safe. A real channel was a non-combatant. A real channel didn’t take stupid risks.

But to Solamar’s Sime senses, it no longer seemed like a risk. What he zlinned now matched what his even more reliable intuition told him. Fort Rimon’s crack combat team was riding out to defend Tanhara’s refugees from the Freebanders chasing them.

The Fort’s stockade lay at one end of a fertile valley, far from the junct village behind the hill at the other end. It was far enough from the steep sides of the valley that attackers couldn’t shoot down into the Fort, and it was on a slight rise that provided both protection from mountain floods and a tactical advantage in defending their walls.

Surrounded by tilled fields, almost completely harvested now, and by terraces on the hillside—orchards, trin tea plants, and, yes, grape arbors, the Fort appeared secure and prosperous.

It looked exactly as it had been described to him when he’d taken on this mission. It zlinned right, too except there were way too many people in that Fort.

As he balanced his weight forward, urging his horse on, he let go of his ordinary senses, letting himself drift into hyperconsciousness, the Sime’s hunting mode. Gen nager flamed bright enough to sense from miles away, if you were sensitive enough and knew how to zlin for greatest distance.

Closer now, the Fort ahead leapt into stark relief to his Sime senses, a towering vortex of powerful selyn fields. Even as he approached the line of riders coming toward him, the vortex over the Fort collapsed in on itself, turning quiet, intense, focused.

The source of that invisible brightness more intense than the sun was to the naked eye had to be the Fort’s Companions, trained to work with the channels. The Companions’ brightness dominated the glow of the higher-field Gens, but as he watched, it all diminished. No doubt the Gens had withdrawn underground, leaving the renSime defenders on the walls. Oddly though, it seemed a number of low-field Gens were still outside the shelters.

No, it wasn’t just a few low-field Gens. It was a lot of low-field Gens plus a few channels who where managing the nageric fields. They had used the Gen nageric power to shape a silent, invisible message to the Sime attackers who could read those fields.

It was a message of supreme confidence, and a total absence of a sense of being threatened.

Solamar had expected that when the last Companion was underground, the channels would follow them into the shelters, joining the children and most of the ordinary Gen donors.

But they hadn’t.

It was drilled into every denizen of the Forts that renSimes are expendable. The Gens, the Companions and the channels are the life of the Fort, just like the children.

That drill was the only reason that Fort Tanhara had any refugees alive to flee the collapse of their defenses. Because the channels and Companions had been safe, they had healed the wounded. Freeband Raiders were only renSime, with maybe a few captive Gens.

Solamar had joined Tanhara only four days after that last devastating battle. Lending his talents to the healing effort, he had been accepted as a channel without question, and he had let them believe he was a refugee from Fort Faraway which had been completely wiped out.

As far as he knew, he was indeed the last survivor of the Fort Faraway refugees who had been heading for Fort Rimon. He wasn’t about to watch Tanhara and Rimon go down too, not after leading these people all the way here.

As one of Fort Tanhara’s channels, Solamar knew he had no business riding ahead like this. But none of the renSimes was mounted on a horse that could make it.

Nearing the oncoming riders, he drew up and let his chestnut mare breathe while they approached. He manipulated the ambient nager to identify himself as a channel and turned his horse to face the Tanhara wagons.

When the lead riders came abreast of him, Solamar leaned forward and whispered into the horse’s flickering ears, “All right, Trilli, time to run again.” His weary mount took heart and, still blowing hard, fell into the pace of the Fort Rimon defenders.

Solamar went duoconscious, so he could see the renSimes around him as well as zlin for their leader. He found the one with the most disciplined and confident nager, a woman mounted on a fine black stallion—good thing Trilli isn’t in season!

Moving in close, he shouted an explanation of the pack of Gen riders now approaching from the lumbering wagons of Fort Tanhara. The renSime gestured her understanding with three tentacles of her left arm and signaled her riders to spread out, leaving a gap in the middle of their line to allow the Fort Tanhara Gens through.

Solamar noted how quickly the gap between Tanhara’s rear wagon and the lead Freeband Raiders pursuing them had narrowed.

Freebanders had no allegiance to any junct town or government, no law governing their actions. All they wanted was to capture plenty of Gens. All they ever did with Gens was Kill them, savagely stripping the Gen of selyn until the Gen died of the shock.

Freebanders craved nothing in life but the massive, fear-magnified deathshock of Gens. They didn’t Kill to live like the town juncts; they lived to Kill.

The Fort Rimon formation split in a very crisp, disciplined drill. The leader yelled at Solamar gesturing, “We’ll delay the Raiders. You circle your wagons around our gate. Our people will cover you from the walls. Get your people inside. Sacrifice the wagons. Got that?”

Solamar gestured his understanding with two tentacles, grazing her nager with an affirmative flick of his field.

The renSime tossed him a ferocious grin that sizzled through his nerves igniting something wondrously warm deep in his belly.

She shouted, “I do love ordering a channel around! Go!”

With a hearty laugh, Solamar went, wafted on a nageric zephyr breeze of acceptance, admiration, and delighted interest. Every cell of his body returned that interest. He cast his eyes to the heavens. A renSime? Isn’t my life complicated enough already?

The first of the Tanhara Gen riders, some with children mounted in front of them, several carrying infants, and one with a newborn, pounded through the gap in the renSime line. His own Companion, Losa, rode in the middle of the group carrying a baby in the crook of her arm, controlling the horse with her knees. His life might well depend on Losa’s survival.

Solamar cleared the Tanhara Gens and pulled out in front of the Fort’s renSime contingent to race flat out for the wagons.

Shouting and gesturing, he explained the plan with nageric emphasis as the wagons roared past him.

Despite it being beyond his authority to give tactical orders, the Tanhara renSimes driving the wagons set to implementing the Fort Rimon plan.

The cattle and sheep were cut loose. Now that they were inside the valley, the exhausted animals wouldn’t stray far, especially with the dogs herding them. That left the chickens, a few goats, more dogs and some cats, and a dozen geese, in the wagons.

Most of their riding stock had gone ahead with the Gens, leaving all the Tanhara renSimes riding in the wagons, driving them, or mounted on the few horses left. The lead wagons with the wounded also carried most of the channels and Companions to care for them.

The trailing wagons bristled with renSime defenders ready to die for Tanhara if necessary. The last wagon held two hopelessly ill Gens and an elderly channel, ready to sacrifice their lives to give the others a few precious seconds to escape.

Several renSime passengers took positions beside the drivers with arrows at the ready, an unusual weapon brought from out-Territory. Tanhara had been forced to master it during their flight when they met Freebanders who used it to pick off channels and Companions from a distance. One Band had chased Tanhara across two Territories and learned better than to get too close.

As Tanhara readied for the fight, the Fort’s riders passed the wagons at full gallop, speeding to intercept the Freeband Raiders.

They crossed the edge of the tilled fields. Now they rolled over the stubble of harvested wheat fields. The ground was softer, slower, but rock free. Speed picked up. We’re almost there. We’re going to make it.

Zlinning their prey about to escape into the stockade, the Freebanders spurred their horses mercilessly. They wanted those Gens who were fleeing ahead.

Solamar saw one of the Freebanders’ horses founder. The junct Freebander, a scarecrow figure of skin and bones clad in rags, leapt clear of the horse and ran, augmenting his speed by burning extra selyn. Even without a horse, he was still closing on the rear wagon.

Solamar dropped back to the rear wagon just as the Fort Rimon renSimes met the oncoming line of Freebanders.

The Rimon renSimes picked off the leaders with throwing knives, arrows, and bullwhips. The horses and Simes thus downed tripped several more Freebanders. The pile-up slowed the rest of the attackers. Most leapt off their horses and continued on foot.

The Rimon renSimes regrouped and caught up to the last wagon.

The lone runner on foot had now been joined by those unhorsed. Burning extra selyn, they were more desperate than ever to get at the Tanhara Gens.

With a quick scan toward the Fort, Solamar realized that most of the Tanhara Gens were going to make it to safety. But the last wagon was in trouble.

Solamar rode for the Freebanders, gathering his concentration. He grabbed hold of the junct’s personal fields with his own, and yanked hard.

The handful of juncts closing on the rear wagon went down. Oh, shen. They’re dead!

He hadn’t meant to Kill, but juncts could be so fragile, especially the malnourished and dissipated Freebanders.

The leader of the Fort’s renSime troop turned to him and saluted with four tentacles. Even at such a distance and through the surging ambient, he felt her astonishment and approval. But she was also irked at him for not riding on to the Fort gate. She ordered him away with a gesture.

Solamar turned his horse and galloped for the head of the wagon train, feeling his mare laboring with fatigue. He leaned over her neck and told her, “Just a little farther now, Trilli, and you’ll get a good meal and a warm barn to sleep in.” He shifted his weight encouragingly.

As the wagons climbed up to the Fort’s gate, Solamar swung onto the lead wagon’s left rear horse near the failing tackle he’d spotted earlier.

They reached the top of the rise where the area in front of the gate was broad and flat. The gates still stood slightly open.

Solamar gestured the renSime driver to circle right, easing the strain on the failing harness juncture.

They led the first ten wagons into a semi-circle around the gate, and headed the lead wagon straight into the wall of the Fort. Zlinning to judge the right moment as he gentled the skittish horses, Solamar climbed onto the wagon tree and pulled the pin.

With the horses separating from the wagon, he rode the tree, steering the horses along the wall toward the gate, letting the wagon tongue drop as the driver stood on the brake.

The wagon stopped with the tongue only a stride short of the wall.

RenSime drivers and passengers scrambled off the slowing wagons, and freed the horses. Tanhara channels and Companions pulled the stretchers out of the lead wagons, and helped the walking wounded. The moment everyone was clear, each wagon was tipped over barricading the still open gate and the smaller door beside it.

The older children and everyone else wrestled the panicked animals, people, stretchers, and crates of screeching birds toward the open gateway.

Beyond the barricade, on the far edge of the harvested fields, the Freebanders had regrouped and were now pounding toward the Fort behind a large contingent on foot.

Solamar was certain these Raiders were just a contingent split off from the larger horde that had destroyed whatever town was burning behind the distant hill.

Have I found Fort Rimon only to lose it?

Through the gate opening, Solamar zlinned the Tanhara Gens with his own Companion, Losa, a white-hot glow among them. The Rimon Gens didn’t all go down to the shelters so they’d be there to help our Gens.

Behind Solamar, at the barricade, both Rimon and Tanhara marksmen took positions on the overturned wagons and laid down a barrage of arrows that stopped even the Raiders who were in the grip of Killust. Solamar didn’t have time to be shocked at the Rimon use of the bow.

Meanwhile, the Fort’s mounted renSimes attacked and harried the Raiders, buying time as the next fifteen wagons pulled into a circle around the first ten. That left three wagons outside the makeshift barricade.

Tanhara refugees struggled to salvage their possessions at risk of their lives.

Rimon defenders swarmed out of the Fort shouting orders to cut the draft horses loose and scatter them down the path into the confusion of attacking Raiders.

Against the flow of defenders coming out to help, Tanhara animals, people, older children, all burdened with whatever they could carry, all shouting advice, yelling orders, and trying to keep track of their loved ones, clambered over the toppled wagons, boiled across the narrow space and poured through the Fort gates struggling toward safety.

The smaller gate door was barely wide and tall enough to get one horse through at a time. The last of the four-ups that could squeeze through the Fort gates cleared, and the huge gates began slowly closing.

Over five dozen prime draft animals were driven down the hill into the swarm of Raiders.

As the gates closed, some stretchers had to be abandoned, the wounded carried over someone’s shoulders. The channels struggled to control the ambient, dampen the panic, and scrambled to get into position where he could help. Solamar dismounted and pulled Trilli into the stream of frantic people entering the Fort.

More than two hundred adults, kicking at the chickens and geese, dragging the goats, calling their dogs, towing and carrying children, crammed through two narrow openings to join the mob of Gens and other children they had sent ahead. Many tarried outside the shelters in mounting anxiety for their loved ones while Rimon’s Gens urged them to go below where it would be safe.

The channels managed to keep the local ambient muted, unattractive to the attackers. Solamar finally in position, joined his efforts to theirs. He boosted one of his patients onto Trilli’s sweaty back, a renSime with a broken leg. “Just a few steps,” he assured the man, “and you’ll be in a solid bed, no more jostling, no more wagons.”

He split his attention between his fainting patient and the battle forming at the barricade. The Fort’s riders arrived at the barricade and leaped from their horses to the overturned wagons. The Freebanders arrived right behind them, pounding at the defense line, and dying.

Death filled the air, the small deathshocks of selyn-depleted renSimes forming a wave of background noise under the potent ambient.

Then the Freebander’s fire-arrows began to rain onto the wagons. Sheets of fire leaped for the heavens. Screaming panic shattered the ambient lanced with burn-pain and pulsing horror. The world turned black, red and white.

Solamar plunged himself hypoconscious, struggling to cut off his awareness of the ambient, once again wishing he were Gen. Gens didn’t have to feel everyone’s pain as if it were their own.

Again, Gen pain split the ambient, this time a Companion’s burn pain sizzling like lightning.

An instant before his awareness shut down, Solamar zlinned several Raiders off in the distance lanced by the incredible shock of that Companion’s pain, fall from their horses and lay twitching.

Raiders didn’t use fire as a weapon because it could do more harm to them than to their targets. What is going on here?

Drenched in sweat, shaking, he coughed in the smoke and dust, suddenly hyperaware of the smell of singed flesh, the screams of the horses, the stench of fear. He let himself drift duoconscious again, still leaning all his weight into holding his horse’s nose down, keeping the animal from bolting into the mass of humanity ahead of him. He rejoined the other channels trying to control the ambient. The burned Companion was being carried into the Fort. Raiders would soon learn not to use fire as a weapon against Forts.

Above them, from the top of the stockade wall, arrows arced into the massing Freebanders, peppering the ambient with the pain of each hit. Despite his effort to avoid it, Solamar zlinned each plume of selyn rushing out of a junct renSime already near Attrition.

Some of the Fort’s renSime defenders packed in around him as an escort. “Quickly! Channels to the underground shelter!”

The people and animals ahead of Solamar jammed together, trying to make room for those still coming through the big gate. Solamar turned to watch it close behind him.

Freebanders leaped through a sheet of fire from one of the wagons, over the heads of the defending archers, landed in the midst of the churning mass of refugees and headed for the gate. Just inside Gens were still crammed into the mob pushing through. More Freebanders were coming over the burning wagons.

Solamar’s escort turned toward this new menace, and a moment later the wave of Freebanders came at them in a flying wedge, slashing their way through with long, heavy bladed knives.

True to form, the lead Freebanders in the attack were all close to Attrition, the point at which their bodies would run out of selyn. They were dead if they didn’t get a Gen to Kill within the next few minutes, draining the Gen’s life force to replenish their own.

Bleeding renSimes fell all around while Tanhara defenders grappled with the Raiders.

Then the flying wedge of Raiders was past Solamar, into the seething mass of humanity inside the Fort. The miasma of deathshock spread like a poisonous fog within the walls of safety.

Screaming, howling and slashing, another wave of Raiders leaped through the flames of their own making, some of them with their clothing on fire.

Solamar zlinned a knife flying through the air. He lunged toward the target, one of his own escort, planning to push him aside.

The knife thunked solidly into flesh. The tip sliced into heart muscle. The man died standing up. Solamar landed on top of the renSime corpse and sprawled in a tangle amidst trampling feet.

Trilli bolted into the mass ahead. Someone caught the reins, and that was the last Solamar knew about the horse and his patient.

Hands and tentacles pulled him to his feet, his green shirt and tan riding leathers drenched in the guard’s hot blood.

He was only a few steps inside the gate when it thudded shut. Five renSimes levered the huge crossbar into place. Tanhara refugees were still pushing through the smaller door fleeing the mass of Raiders behind them.

The ambient was a strident, paralyzing, sense-deadening pressure against his whole body. And then suddenly—it wasn’t.

A towering nageric presence penetrated the ambient, dominating everything nearby with a fine but massive precision.

That has to be a Farris Channel.

In the bubble of controlled silence, his head cleared and he searched for the channel. There! Right inside the door. He shouldn’t be out here! It’s too dangerous.

Too stunned to protect his own senses, Solamar zlinned right through the wooden Fort walls. Another larger group of Raiders came boiling over the wagons in a howling mass of raging Need and unbridled Killust. The defenders retreated before them. They’ll surely take the Fort. We’ve destroyed Fort Rimon!

Solamar stood, transfixed by failure.

A strong, bony hand suffused with that massive Farris nager grabbed Solamar’s hand and shoved it against the rung of a ladder. “Up!”

Solamar climbed, pushed by the Farris, and in moments was standing on top of the Fort wall beside an older man who pulsed with that peculiarly overwhelming nager. The Farris channel. In the midst of battle.

The Farris was tall, hawk nosed, with the typical black hair, brows, and eyes, dimpled chin, high cheekbones that Solamar had seen only in drawings. Definitely Farris.

“Zlin there!” A nageric prod directed his attention to the view over the wall and down into the boiling mass of hand-to-hand combat around the overturned wagons. The defenders were being cut off and systematically destroyed by the Freebanders. Six wagons were on fire.

A group of Freebanders pushed one of those burning wagons up against the Fort’s wall. On top of the wall, a squad of renSimes hurriedly deployed a trough from the cistern at the corner to a point above the burning wagon and sluiced the fire with water, wetting down the wall too.

As Solamar stared, two more Fort renSimes were overwhelmed by Raiders. We’re going to lose this Fort too.

A male voice off to his left called, “Rimon, we’ve got to get that door closed!”

“Not yet, Jhiti!” answered the older Farris channel. “We still have people out there.” Even as he spoke, more renSime defenders beat off Raiders and retreated through the narrow opening of the door. Two more Raiders followed them in. There were more defenders still out there fighting.

So this is Rimon Farris! No wonder he has such a nager.

Then Losa’s searingly penetrating nager shattered the ambient. The Farris whipped around to gaze down into the stockade’s yard. Unconsciously, Solamar spun in sync with him.

Losa had been cut off from the hatchway leading down into the shelter. Raiders surrounded her. She had given Solamar transfer only five days ago. As brightly attractive as her nager seemed, she didn’t have enough selyn to withstand being attacked by so many renSimes.

Two of the Raiders slashed at her with their long knives, toying with her fear. Blood spurted as she backed up, selyn energy pluming forth from the wound making the Raiders grin. Solamar’s whole body went into healing mode, reaching toward his Companion to staunch the loss of selyn with his own body’s fields, even though he was too far away.

It was what channels did—heal wounds, fight disease, bring Gens and renSimes to peak of health. More than instinct, it had become for Solamar a total way of life as he pushed and pulled the Tanhara refugees toward the legendary Fort Rimon, where they were all going to die.

“Snap out of it!” commanded the Farris.

“They know what she is!” protested Solamar transfixed. “They’ll murder her and try to strip her dead body of selyn.” Below in the yard, the two Raiders stalked Losa, attracted by the pluming selyn they could zlin. It was just one small skirmish in a yard full of fighting, running, chaos and dying.

The Farris glanced from Solamar to Losa. “She’s your Companion.”

“Yes.”

“Help me get the Raiders’ attention!” the older channel commanded grimly and turned to the yard below.

Suddenly the ambient around the Farris was pure Gen—bright, hot, incredibly enticing. Solamar joined the effort to create the illusion of two great Gens hidden visually from below by the guardrail and part of the water tank but nagerically obvious.

“Good, now a little fear for spice, like doing a disjunction lure. Follow me.”

It was remarkably easy, just like dancing with an expert. In counterpoint, they swirled and pulsed with fear, using the channel’s unique control of the body’s nageric projection to seem to be Gen to the senses of the Simes below.

Solamar, tired, aching, terrified and desperate, let himself float on the Farris nager, let that ineffable power sweep through him, using his body as an extension.

One by one all the Freebanders in the yard, and even those still fighting the defenders outside by the wagons turned toward the spot above where two replete and terrified Gens waited to be Killed, to be savagely stripped of all their selyn energy.

The Raiders would see only two heads, one black haired, one blond, and maybe a bit of shoulder, not enough to tell Sime from Gen visually. But every renSime, Raider or not, zlinned those two deliciously terrified Gens and so they knew they were seeing two delicious Gens no matter what their eyes might report.

Now, even the Fort renSimes were responding to that projected Gen fear, only they did have an idea of what was actually going on. Freeband Raiders fed on Gen fear as well as selyn. The Fort Simes never Killed, never craved fear, but got all their selyn through their channels. The Raiders had no clue what a channel could do with selyn fields.

Losa’s attackers ignored her, but she just stood panting, swaying on her feet, dazed from loss of blood, unable to take the moment to run. There were so many people, so many bodies, so much blood, there was no way to run.

Two other channels caught near the entry to the underground shelter also paused, halting their guards from hustling them into safety below, and joined Rimon’s effort. One of them was a Farris, but Solamar couldn’t zlin which one. He just felt another massive, dominating nager emerge into the chaotic ambient.

Suddenly, the courtyard was pulsing with four huge, golden Gen presences. Rimon joined them all as he had joined seamlessly with Solamar, and created a junct’s greatest fantasy.

The renSime defenders looked upward, waiting for a command.

“Now what?” Solamar asked the older channel. “If your renSimes attack, we’ll lose the Raiders’ attention.”

“When I signal, quickly shift your showfield to renSime.”

Solamar zlinned the Fort Rimon renSimes outside, creeping toward the Fort wall, trying hard not to disturb the Freebanders’ fascination with the “Gens” above. In the yard, the defenders shifted to clear a path between the Raiders and the still open door beside the main gate. Then Solamar understood what the older channel planned and real fear spiked into his showfield.

That galvanized the Raiders, and suddenly five of those outside armed with long, ugly bullwhips, hurled themselves at the palisade wall. One whipmaster, standing on another Raider’s shoulders, lashed his whip around a spike at the top of the wall, and suddenly two Raiders swarmed over the whipmaster and started over the wall at the “Gens.”

All along the catwalk, Fort renSimes closed in from both sides to protect the channels.

“Now!” shouted Rimon Farris.

Rimon’s order seized the four of them in a nageric pulse and wrenched their showfields from Gen to renSime.

To all the Simes within zlinning range the “Gens” had disappeared.

The two Raiders climbing the wall paused, shocked to find no Gens awaiting them atop the wall, shocked to find two Simes standing where two Gens had been, shocked to be attacked from both sides by renSimes they hadn’t been able to zlin through the massive “Gen” fields.

Jhiti tackled one of the Raiders, and at that second, the other leapt for Rimon, a dagger in one hand, screaming, “Wer-Gen!” sure he had zlinned a Sime turn into a Gen then turn back into a Sime.

Solamar stepped into the hurtling body, grabbed, turned and flipped the renSime, aiming to fold him over the top of the wall and leave him hanging there. But the Raider was hardly more than an animated skeleton. The body arced high over the top of the wall, and the Raider tumbled screaming, “Wer-Gen!” and was abruptly silent.

The ambient was so roiled with deathshock, Solamar wasn’t sure that he’d even felt the man die.

In the yard below, a shout went up, “Wer-Gen!” And suddenly all the Raiders inside and outside the Fort were screaming, “Wer-Gen!”

The circle of attackers around Losa closed on her once more as they broke and ran for the gate followed by all the other Raiders in the yard.

Jhiti bellowed, “Don’t let any of them escape!”

Defenders leapt to obey, spreading the order as they ran, blocking all avenues of escape for the animated scarecrow figures.

The Raiders, driven into a small clump, retreated into the center of the yard, toward the entry to the underground refuge. Losa stumbled toward that beckoning safety, caught up with the crowd of Gens, children and Fort Rimon non-combatants dodging rearing, screaming fire-crazed horses and knots of Raiders on the hunt, formations of disciplined renSime defenders of the Fort and piles of dead bodies.

One of the Raiders, at the point of death by selyn Attrition and desperate for selyn hurled herself at Losa’s back. A Sime woman, a Farris, broke out of the knot of those cramming through the hatch to the underground refuge and peeled the Raider off Losa offering the Raider a selyn transfer.

Even at that distance, across the choppy sea of warring nageric fields, Solamar zlinned that Farris channel working to drive selyn into the Raider’s wasted system. Raiders could not accept selyn in the peaceful, collimated flow a channel offered. Raiders needed to burn a Gen to death by taking their selyn.

The Raider died trying to Kill that Farris channel woman. The other Raiders converged on the Farris and she went down under the heap of scrawny bodies. The other defenders were unaccountably slow coming to her aid, and when they’d yanked and tossed the skeletal bodies off of her, she rose, staggering. Her nager was so pale Solamar could barely zlin her presence.

Losa, still bleeding blood and selyn, yanked herself free of the renSimes who were trying to help her into the shelter and plunged toward the Farris woman, stepping on the piles of bodies, staggering as dead flesh shifted under her boots. Off balance, she gave one last lunge toward the Farris, offering all her selyn in a Companion’s instinctive response to a channel’s Need.

The Farris turned. Solamar saw it all in slow motion, flash-burned into his eyes, his memory forever. His own Companion whose selyn was meant only for him, his source of life on earth, offered it all to a Farris channel, with no frisson of fear or even caution. No Farris would Kill. Everyone knew that.

The Farris handling tentacles, four on each arm, twined themselves around Losa’s Gen forearms. The Gen arms were so inviting without tentacles but rich with swirling selyn fields.

Time had stopped for Solamar as his thighs bunched as if to propel him off the wall in a mad flying leap toward his Companion.

The Farris woman’s lateral tentacles emerged at the sides of her arms, two slender pink-gray organs with no real strength, rich in nerves that could draw selyn from the Gen body, drawing a month’s life into the void of a Sime’s Need.

Solamar felt strong Farris hands clamp rigidly onto his shoulders, pulling him back from the suicidal leap.

The Farris woman’s lips sought the necessary fifth contact point as her four laterals seated themselves against Gen flesh. Losa turned her face toward the woman in Need, offering her lips, the best, most nerve-rich contact point that gave the channel the best possible control of the speed of selyn draw.

And it was over.

Losa dropped dead at the Farris woman’s feet.

Solamar was only dimly aware of his body drawn back hard against the trembling Farris channel behind him. Shock held him rigid. The noise of battle receded. The boiling chaos of the ambient nager, riven by his Companion’s deathshock slammed into his nerves, his mind, his emotions, his innermost self.

Outside, the retreating Raiders, scrabbled over the wagons to flee the only thing they feared more than death by selyn Attrition, the supernatural wer-Gen and forced transfer from a channel.

Behind them, Jhiti pinned a Raider to the planking and broke his neck. Solamar remembered he had intended to take that Raider down himself, had planned the move in fact, and forgotten all about it in an instant. That death was near enough for Solamar to feel it against the general background of death and dying, but it barely registered under Losa’s searing, shattering deathshock.

Jhiti looked up to find Rimon still alive, holding Solamar back from the edge of the wall. Jhiti straddled the corpse and yelled, “Rimon, what are you thinking? You two shouldn’t have done that! You shouldn’t be up here at all.”

Guilt suffused the ambient, quickly damped under the channel’s control. “Yes, Jhiti, I know. We’ll discuss it later. See what can be salvaged from the wagons and round up the rest of the stock these people brought before the Raiders get them. We’ve got a winter to face soon.” To Solamar, he said, “This way. We have work to do.”

“Work....” repeated Solamar in a whisper.

“She’s dead. I’m sorry. I’ve lost a Companion to Raiders too. We’ve lost a top channel in this. Maybe you and I can still save some lives.”

“Save lives....” Solamar heard himself repeat those words, but his mind couldn’t understand them.

In the yard below, the hatch to the underground shelter opened, and people swarmed over the refugees, separating the animals from the people, sending riders out into the gathering dusk to collect the animals that had been cut loose, and other squads out to chase the retreating Raiders and to hunt for survivors.

As he followed Rimon down the ladder into the yard, the fire brigade dragged two donkeys into the yard and hitched them to the well’s wheel. Before long water was flowing. Solamar heard some renSimes and Gens banging pot bottoms and calling all cooks to the cookhouse. If nothing else, the Gens and children had to be fed.

The Fort Rimon channeling staff swung into practiced motion, separating the injuries into type and severity, and rushing them off to treatment. The Tanhara channeling staff was swept into the organization as if they’d lived in Rimon all their lives.

As Rimon Farris ploughed through the courtyard, one arm around Solamar’s shoulders, order was left in his wake. The Fort Rimon organization made this major disaster look like a routine drill until Rimon got to the hatchway to the underground shelter where the channels had set up their main hospital.

The Farris channel cast about among the bodies, the seated wounded, the milling and the dazed. Finally he snagged a Gen man who was clearing bodies. “Where’s Clire?”

The man stopped, emitting grief laced with fear. “She’s gone.”

“She didn’t die. I’d have....”

“No. The Raiders got her. A squad followed them to rescue her, but they haven’t come back. I’ve been here the whole time. I’d know if she’d been brought in. She’s not down there.” He gestured to the hospital. “Lexy is though. She’s working on Aipensha...she was alive last I heard.”

It was Solamar’s turn to support Rimon’s weight as shock took all the strength out of his knees.

Solamar sought his internal time sense, so reliable in any Sime. It had ticked off the seconds while his mind had stopped and now it told him nearly an hour had passed while they worked across the yard from emergency to emergency.

The Gen explained to Solamar, “Lexy and Aipensha are his daughters. Aipensha was trampled by a horse trying to catch Clire....”

Rimon bolted for the hatch.