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
