The Farris Channel (42 page)

Solamar just knew Tuzhel was not in the Fort. Lexy told Cody to find Jhiti or Oberin and deliver the message she scribbled on Cody’s slate. The boy ran off.

In an hour, they found how Tuzhel had gotten out using a rope tied to the top of the wall. “He’s after Rimon.”

At dawn Lexy trudged up the stairs to the top of the wall. Bruce, Garen and Kahleen had been abandoned in the shelter, garnering vast sympathy from the other Companions trapped down there.

Freed of high-field Gens, Solamar and Lexy circled the walls, zlinning for Tuzhel. It didn’t take long. Lexy spotted the renSime nager heading northeast around the hill to approach Shifron from the west, where there were no trails. “It’s him,” she asserted. “How many disjuncts are out there?”

She also spotted Jhiti’s emissary to the Patrol approaching the juncts openly by riding due east from the Fort to join the north-south road into Shifron, incidentally providing a diversion for Tuzhel’s insane rescue attempt.

Lexy stared into the distance where Solamar could zlin Tuzhel once the renSime was pointed out to him. He couldn’t see the youth though. “Solamar, if I’d come up here directly after Bruce woke us, I might have found Tuzhel when it wasn’t too late to stop him leaving.”

For no reason he could figure, Solamar found his whole body and soul awash in love for this woman. She went hypoconscious and just looked at him, loving back.

Tuzhel slipped behind the hill and was gone.

Lexy sighed, turned her back to the wall, leaned against it facing south and zlinned down into the Fort. New buildings were everywhere. There was no sign of the new underground shelter, not even a plume of smoke from the hearth fires Solamar knew were burning.

The kitchen chimneys were smoking though. There was activity by the stables, and a few renSimes accompanied by guards were out tending the animals housed outside the Fort. The next guard shift was forming in the yard.

“Solamar, do you zlin that?”

“Where?” Most of his attention was on the wisp of Kahleen’s nager he thought he zlinned from the underground shelter. Desperate Need returned, vaporizing that moment of pure love.

She pointed and he followed the gesture. Then he stood tall, extending his whole Need sharpened sensitivity. “The Gens are leaving! Rimon succeeded!”

* * * * * * *

At noon Jhiti’s emissaries returned. Pearl had found three Shifron merchants she knew who introduced them to the Patrol Captain. “They say,” reported Pearl, “we can block the Raiders from the trail south into Gen Territory, but we have to stay away from Shifron. Also if we chase the Raiders back into Shifron and make this fight harder for the Patrol, we’ll be cleaned out of this valley as soon as they can get around to it. The Captain advised us to stay in the Fort and let the Patrol deal with the Raiders and the Gens.”

Consensus was that the Patrol didn’t want to oust the Raiders only to find the town occupied by the local perverts who’d try to save Gen lives. The Patrol was here to return the town to its rightful owners with the least expense, which meant taking possession of any Wild Gens left in the Pen.

“What about my father?” asked Lexy, showfield null.

“The Patrol has no interest in him. So I talked to my contacts, and they said if Delri survives they’ll return him to us, but getting their homes back is their goal.”

Solamar repeated Tuzhel’s assessment of what the Raiders would do when the Patrol moved on Shifron.

Jhiti looked at Sian and Lexy flanked by Garen and Solamar with Kahleen staying close. Lexy decided, “Ride out in force and block the road. Build a trap. Get my father back, Clire too if possible, but get my father back alive. And Tuzhel. Don’t lose Tuzhel.”

Solamar felt her desire to ride with the Guard, but this Fort had learned its lesson. No channels or Companions would get near combat. Individually and collectively, they were all determined never to make the same mistake twice. He’d even heard some of the adults humming the children’s tune to
Zeor
as they worked. This time they’d do better.

Jhiti turned to issuing orders. Oberin took a small force composed of people known to Shifron’s merchants into position to enter the town with the Patrol. Jhiti took his main fighting force to block the road south to the pass, and left a contingent of his best to defend the Fort.

His reserve unit took remounts, wagons and medical supplies out across the fields, positioned where either returning force could reach them without their horses foundering. There wasn’t a channel or Companion in the Fort who wasn’t contemplating ignoring the rules and just going with them anyway. Many of them, Bruce included, had well reasoned arguments to back up their desires.

Solamar didn’t dare say, “You stay here and I’ll take a quick transfer and go with the remounts to do the work.” Lexy would follow, and that wasn’t going to happen.

He found Bruce fidgeting by the stable doors as they were leading the horses out for Jhiti’s foray. Oberin and her group had already mounted and filed out the main gate.

Bruce’s nager focused briefly on Solamar then politely away from the channel in Need. “I’ve got to go with them,” he muttered. “Rimon could die by the time they can get him here. You said he thinks he’s already dead. He could die just from giving up.” The Companion had been working with every low field channel he could get close to, bringing his field up because Rimon’s Need would be peaking sooner than usual due to the head injury.

“I don’t think so,” said Solamar. “He’s lost his way back to his body, but that’s typical of the coma state. If we can get him back, we should be able to bring him around.”

“Can you get him back into his body now?”

“No. And I doubt it would be a good idea. He’ll be in pain. Disoriented, or worse. It’d be better if he wakes up here, in his own bed with you right beside him.”

“You really believe that?” asked Lexy coming up behind them as handlers brought more horses. Kahleen and Garen flanked Lexy and listened for Solamar’s answer.

“Yes, actually I do. Let’s go make a secure place for Rimon and prepare to receive the injured.”

Instead, the true horror of their circumstance penetrated all the way. He had come here to help Rimon Farris bring a new day for humanity. Now Rimon was lost far away from his body, and there was nothing he could do.

He emerged from the brief seclusion, one arm around Kahleen’s shoulders in apology, and found that Garen had barely managed to get Lexy to sleep when the first report came down. “Battle with the Raiders on the trail. Lots of riders headed this way.”

Everything had been prepared three times over. There was no possible reaction but white-knuckled fear. Every channel strove to keep the Companion’s reaction from ballooning into the ambient, but couldn’t contain their own.

There ensued nearly twelve hours of tension. Then injured Fort Guards trickled into the shelter, brimming with fragmentary reports Solamar pieced together as he worked.

Raiders pursued the Fort Guard retreating from Shifron toward the Fort. The Fort’s advance riders returned across the muddy valley at a mad gallop. They picked up their remounts before crossing the river at the only possible ford. The tired horses had been cut loose to be rounded up later. Half Jhiti’s rear guard hung back to fend off the pursuing Raiders and the other half protected the Fort riders returning from Shifron at a more sedate canter.

Rimon wasn’t in Shifron,
concluded Solamar.
Tuzhel was right.
He’s alive.
He’s got to be.

Then came a shouted report, “Twenty horses carrying bodies!” The runner disappeared back up the stair. If Lexy or Solamar had been up on the wall, they’d know if the bodies were dead. Nothing would make Lexy sit down. She paced and paced, her showfield controlled into a ludicrously unconvincing calm. None of her inner turmoil reached Solamar, but he had plenty of his own to contain. So he paced with her, one arm around her waist, one hand holding hers. He could barely feel the Postsyndrome sizzling through his nerves.

They all went over and over the plan for receiving the wounded, for bringing Rimon, and maybe Clire in. Every contingency had been planned for.

Another report: the Fort’s own Guard had opened the small door beside the main wagon gate. The first returning riders were squeezing in. The Guard reserve deployed out.

Solamar heard the advance riders pounding across the yard, halting by the entry to the underground shelter. Then wounded poured down the stairs and all the rehearsals paid off. Channels with the right skills picked up the injuries they were most familiar with and went to work.

Lexy, Solamar, Kahleen, Garen and Bruce gathered at the bottom of the stair, the Gens placed so their presence wouldn’t zlin as a plume of nageric brightness. The staff spread out down the corridor waiting for assignments.

One of the renSime guards with a broken leg clutched his stretcher as bearers passed it down the stairs and gasped out a report. “Raiders in the worst shape I’ve ever seen. Weak. Sick. Skin and bones, but there’s a lot of them and they’re terrified of the Patrol. Followed us in. Attacking.”

Solamar and Lexy waited by the stair directing traffic and searching for Rimon. Another renSime was carried down the stair, reporting to someone who followed with a slate ignoring the blood pumping through the bandage wrapping the guard’s torso. “Tuzhel’s dead!”

Solamar felt BanSha’s reaction, shock, guilt, horror quickly throttled with the beginnings of a channel’s discipline. “What happened?” BanSha demanded.

The renSime guard, raising his head whispered to BanSha, “I think Tuzhel went junct to make Clire trust him with Rimon. He was riding with the Raiders, leading the horse Rimon was tied over. Then he cut out of the Raider’s line and rode toward us, bringing Rimon.

“Clire rode out after him. Tuzhel whipped Rimon’s horse toward us then turned and blocked her way screaming at her, ‘Out of death was I born, unto Zeor, forever!’ She blasted the ambient to knock Tuzhel off his horse. I felt it when Tuzhel’s neck broke. She almost got Rimon. Jhiti’s whip lashed around her neck, yanked her off her horse. Raider’s knife got me. It’s not so bad...,” and he fainted.

Xanon picked up that renSime, then three renSime women went by, two on stretchers and one hobbling. Lexy consigned them to channels. Finally they zlinned the shift in the ambient they’d been hoping for.

“It’s Rimon!” said Solamar.

“He’s alive!” Barely two seconds later, she said, “And Clire, too!”

Clire is six months pregnant.

“BanSha, Rushi, Marliss, with me,” barked Solamar while Lexy was still holding her breath against a flood of tears. “Lexy, you, Garen and Bruce go with your father and I’ll be with you as soon as possible, just as we discussed.”

From above howling erupted, screaming horses, snapping whips. The Raider attack.

Rimon’s stretcher came down the stairs. Bruce followed it along, ran his hands over Rimon, poking, prodding, working fields, shouting for medications. They had to work before Solamar could do anything for Rimon. Lexy shouldn’t be exposed to Clire if she miscarried, so she was Solamar’s problem. Why was he so apprehensive?

Others replaced them by the stair. As Solamar raced beside Clire’s stretcher, he zlinned, almost penetrating her opaque Farris veil. He assessed the damage a choking and a bad fall had done now overlaid with massive disorientation.

Kahleen’s attention focused on their patient, not on himself. Her field was weak from having just given him transfer. “Kahleen, this isn’t the Clire you knew, not the channel you served so ably. Let Marliss handle her.”

Kahleen drew herself in, doing a fair imitation of Bruce’s fade into the furniture. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes. “I will. She’s skin and bones. Her baby’s bound to be underweight, premature. Clire died during that first battle. I don’t know this woman.”