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
