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
