The Farris Channel. Jacqueline Lichtenberg
vote was announced, not trusting Benart.
To Rimon’s surprise two of the newcomers abstained. Benart announced the result. The resentment against Rimon had produced a death sentence for Clire and her child. He knew that the newly elected Fort Council, composed mostly of refugees from Forts with no Farrises, would not overrule the channeling staff vote against the Farrises.
How will they feel when we bury Clire and her child? I won’t let this happen. When it became obvious Clire was indeed pregnant, they’d say she became pregnant after the Fort Council’s decree in order to duck the penalty, knowing the other Farrises would protect her.
He gathered himself up to accept the regrets of his people before they went back to work side by side with the guests who had taken over Fort Rimon and made it their home. “Clire, I will not let this happen. Know that. Believe it. Kahleen and I will not allow this.”
“I need transfer now, Rimon. Don’t do this to me. I’ve already waited too long.”
“You have a few hours yet. I’m calling an emergency meeting of the....”
Raid alarm drums thundered and outside cries of “Wagons approaching!” rose as the ambient stirred into a practiced defense drill.
Wagons? Freeband Raiders don’t attack with wagons!
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,