The Farris Channel (34 page)

Just before dawn, Rimon finally zlinned Tuzhel up ahead, floundering through the hip deep slush. The rain had abated and the clouds were parting. Five days past the full moon, there was still enough light to see the melting landscape clearly, but this close to dawn the moon was setting, casting long, dense shadows from the nearby peaks. The moon would be gone long before pre-dawn but sunrise was two hours away.

Tuzhel was heading east across Rimon’s course, approaching the trail from Shifron that led south along the east wall of the valley. He was circling the east end of the range of hills that separated Shifron from Fort Rimon.

The renSime hadn’t spotted him yet. Rimon angled east toward the Shifron road. The rain had long since soaked through his clothes, the chill numbing him and his horse, but if he could keep going, he’d intercept Tuzhel a good hour’s ride south of Shifron.

Far behind him, BanSha, and Jhiti’s group were strung out across the flat valley floor. None of the horses had fallen, nobody injured. If that happened, BanSha couldn’t handle a bad injury yet.

I’m too old for this,
thought Rimon not for the first time that night. He rose in the stirrups, stretching and flexing his legs, careful of the horse’s balance. He augmented a little to raise his body’s temperature and increase circulation to his extremities, worried about the numbness in his feet and hands. His tentacles were retracted far up his tentacle sheaths, tensed against the cold.

The youth he chased would be in far better shape despite having made this trek on foot and no doubt in Need by now. His joints and tendons wouldn’t stiffen and his muscles would still flex even after such exertion. Rimon had never appreciated youth when he had it.

An hour before dawn, the moon had gone, the clearing sky barely glowing, when Tuzhel finally spotted Rimon.

Rimon had kept his showfield muted and seeming renSime for the last few hours so Tuzhel probably thought he was one of Jhiti’s guards. Still, he fled with renewed desperation north on the trail into Shifron from Fremir pass.

Rimon hit the trail too, his horse steaming and huffing. This was a horse of Fort Freedom breeding, conditioned by Jhiti for his hard riding scouts. The animal had made it through the night in better shape than Rimon.

On the trail, footing evened out drainage was better, and in spots, the horse’s hooves landed on mud, slippery and more treacherous than the ice.

But Rimon zlinned Tuzhel now, in much more detail. He hadn’t Killed on his way out of the Fort.

It was the one thought Rimon hadn’t dared think through the long, horrible night. Tuzhel sped into a fast jog. Recklessly, Rimon pushed his horse into a canter. The youth was tired. His throat was raw, his feet blistered but numb with cold.

Rimon was so intent on Tuzhel that he almost missed it when a large group of renSimes emerged from the distant haze that represented Shifron. Mounted renSimes, dim with Need, picking their way down the dark trail toward them.

Raiding Party!

He noticed the warm breeze and clearing sky. A break in the weather would send the Raiders out-Territory. This trail connected directly to the trail south from Fremir pass to the easy wagon pass into Gen Territory not the steep pass toward Nivet Territory. They could raid, and bring back Gens in the Gens’ own wagons.

Sure that Tuzhel did not yet zlin the approaching Raiders, or the Raiders him, Rimon hunkered down along his horse’s neck and urged the tired animal faster.

There was enough light now that the horse was willing to go faster while Tuzhel was pushing himself through his last wind. They hit a stretch of trail that was clearer and Rimon burst from a fast walk to a trot and into a canter, closing on Tuzhel. The youth put on a burst of augmentation, desperate to get away.

Rimon knew it was a suicidal chance with the footing of the trail so bad, but he pushed his mount into a gallop. Seeing the running person as the goal of the race, the horse gave the extra effort.

Rimon was not sure how his aging body would perform, but his young self had executed the maneuver he planned so often that brain and nerves remembered.

Then he was beside the running Sime, following him off the trail into the drifts. Hanging off the side of his mount, Rimon scooped the running figure up with one arm, then righted himself as the animal circled to rejoin the trail but going back the way they’d come. He swung the squirming body astride the horse in front of him.

“Come on, Tuzhel, we’re going home. You made me a promise and you’re going to keep it. You are not going to Kill again.”

He held onto the wet, cold body until Tuzhel finally capitulated. “Why did you come after me?”

“Because you don’t want to be a Raider and Kill and Kill until you die young and in misery.”

Carrying the extra weight, the tired animal wheezed and dropped to a walk, sides heaving, sweat foaming. Rimon guided the horse off the trail, into the snow but diagonally across the valley, directly toward BanSha and Jhiti’s party.

With the sun rising behind them to the left, Rimon told the renSime what was coming down the trail behind them. “They’ll zlin us soon, but all they’ll zlin is an old tired renSime on an old tired horse. By then they may zlin or even see BanSha and Jhiti’s party up ahead, but there they’ll zlin only Simes. They’re after Gens for an immediate Kill. We aren’t interesting.”

Tuzhel sat up straight, “BanSha came after me?”

“I suspect he just leapt onto a horse and took off. Jhiti’s guards were saddling up to fetch you back. Jhiti chased BanSha for hours before he caught up. You had everyone in the Fort awake and running around.”

“Rimon, I murdered Fengal.”

“He was alive when I left. Solamar and Kahleen were working on him. Listen, I would have come to get you even if Fengal had died. Disjunction makes people strike out at what they hold dear.” Rimon hugged the slender body to him, trying to infuse the youth’s spirit with confidence.

“I don’t think I want to go back. I don’t want to talk to BanSha or anyone. I can’t. I don’t belong there.”

“You’re past Turnover. The world is seeming dark, dreary and hopeless. No one blames you for despair.”

Rimon was so intent on arguing Tuzhel out of his determination to fling himself into death, and so focused getting to Jhiti’s group that he missed the moment when the Freebanders zlinned him. He realized the advance riders in the group must have been aware of him since they came around the ridge of hills. When five Raiders split off and arrowed directly toward them, he knew.

Clire!

She was riding with the five Raiders, still pregnant, and his casually erected showfield had not fooled her as hers had fooled him. Now he knew she was giving the orders.

He spurred his horse to a trot, urging the exhausted animal on. The fresh mounts of the Raiders gained too fast.

Ahead of Rimon, Jhiti finally spotted the Freebanders and sent his guards faster toward Rimon. Jhiti wisely dropped back, protecting BanSha.

Rimon recognized Filo, Jokim, Lhazron and Kreg coming toward them. As they closed, Jokim held out his arms for Tuzhel. “Let me take him. I’m much smaller than you, so my horse isn’t as tired.”

Tuzhel held back, undecided.

BanSha broke away from Jhiti, shrieking, “He’s all right! Tuzhel! Tuzhel!”

The young channel had still not remembered to use his showfield, and Tuzhel zlinned something from BanSha’s primary field that changed his mind. He slid over to Jokim’s horse while Rimon zlinned with true horror that Rushi and Bruce were behind Jhiti’s party and closing fast.

BanSha studied Rimon’s tight showfield, and suddenly remembered his skills. He wrapped a field around Tuzhel and Jokim, displaying a renSime showfield, a credible imitation of what Rimon had been doing, but nothing that would fool Clire.

As they all circled to head back toward the Fort, Rimon yelled to Jhiti, “Clire is leading that band and she’s still pregnant! They’ll zlin Rushi and Bruce!” Kaires was with the group of renSimes approaching from the Fort with remounts. “Go, go! Get everyone back to the Fort!”

Rimon whacked the rumps of the horses, shooing them into fleeing the approaching Raiders who already had their whips out. The animals began to move, a race in slow motion as the freshly mounted Raiders bore down on them.

Kreg and Lhazron dropped back behind Rimon prepared to defend him. That positioned them so he couldn’t deploy his only weapon, his nager.

Three of us to five of them, good odds,
thought Rimon zlinning to assess the Raiders as Lhazron unlimbered her whip and Kreg got between Rimon and the Raiders.

Then Rimon’s horse foundered.

One instant he was struggling through the raw, mushy drifts and the next the animal went to its knees, pitching forward with momentum, neck to one side, hindquarters to the other in a twisting roll. Rimon’s body flew into the air, and he knew the animal’s heart had burst. His body flipped in mid-air, twisting. He felt his brain instructing his body on how to rotate for the landing.

Pitching off a horse was a familiar maneuver. His brain knew exactly how to come out of this into a neat roll and nail the landing.

His ancient sinews, frozen and strained muscles, and arthritic joints simply could not do it.

He saw the ground coming at his face.

BanSha croaked, “He’s not dead! He’s not!”

Tuzhel scrambled down off Jokim’s horse as the renSime guard slid down and staggered. Tuzhel was frostbitten, his clothing torn and filthy, his skin scratched and bleeding, and he was soaking wet standing in the icy wind. Still, with the resilience of youth, Tuzhel ran to BanSha and seized him. “It would be better if he were dead. They’ll torture him! Why,
why
did he come after me!”

He’s not dead.
In the next breath, Solamar thought aloud, “Lexy!”

Tuzhel heard him and said, “What’s wrong with her? She’s not dead is she?”

“No. She’s pregnant, and this will be a bad shock. BanSha take care of Tuzhel,” ordered Solamar knowing the two would take care of each other.

Solamar made for the infirmary where Lexy was preparing to receive the returning party, certain her father would bring Tuzhel back. Her father had never failed her.

He found Lexy in the middle of the receiving hall directing traffic, the most badly frostbitten and exposed to one side and the lesser problems to the other, high fields here, low fields there, this channel to this problem, that to the other with Val to one side taking notes.

In all, five parties had gone out in the rain after Tuzhel and Rimon, and Jhiti’s had been the last to return.

Lexy spotted Solamar. “End of the hall. Hypothermia and possible lung infection that started before they went out. Nobody checked these people before they rode!”

His feet started to obey the call of duty, but he stiffened against the impulse. “Lexy, I have to talk to you.”

She zlinned him then, and her eyes widened. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Three minutes later another channel had taken over directing traffic and they were alone in Rimon’s office. He gathered her into his arms and whispered what he knew she already suspected.

“Your father didn’t return with them. Kreg and Lhazron died protecting your father. BanSha was close enough to zlin and said Rimon survived when his horse foundered. Then Raiders got to him. Jhiti is saying Rimon is dead, but Jhiti wasn’t close enough to zlin. BanSha says there was no deathshock that could have been Rimon, but BanSha hasn’t zlinned much of such things yet. Still I think he’d have known the difference between Rimon’s deathshock and Kreg and Lhazron.”

She stood still, not breathing, selyn consumption shocked into nearly nothing, showfield collapsed, primary field paralyzed. He zlinned her four month old fetus clearly, and that had never happened before. It lasted more than a minute. He’d never zlinned anything like it.

If she had been affected as Rimon and maybe Clire had been by what he and Rimon had done during the battle with the Freebanders, then in this moment she’d have flown so far out of her body he’d have lost her forever.

She drew a long, shaky breath and began talking in a husky but efficient tone, her fields swirling back to normal.

“BanSha and Tuzhel. Solamar, I have to talk to them, plan a rescue with Jhiti and Oberin, mobilize the guards. The Council won’t do it, so we have to.”

She started for the door still talking. “I’m glad you got me away from everyone to tell me this. Now I have to handle it. Aipensha isn’t here to do it. I have to do it. There’s no one else. It has to be me. I owe it to Aipensha. I owe it to my father, to Grandfather, to Fort Rimon.”

“You’ve got to think of the baby, Lexy. Let me....”

“Yes, I am,” she said striding down the hall. “Solamar, help me. Find Garen. He was here just before people started arriving. Kahleen and Bruce. Rushi. Aislinn. Get everyone. I have to talk to BanSha and Tuzhel before memory gets muddled. Tuzhel doesn’t know Shifron because we caught him before the Freebanders moved into town, but he knows the band. We’ll figure something out.”