with stacked cots, filled with the desperately wounded, the smell of wet earth, lamp oil, blood and death.
Aipensha’s nager was nowhere to be zlinned. Lexy was bent over a bloody pulp of a dead body lying half on a cot near the back. He knew the corpse had been Aipensha before he got there.
He grabbed his living daughter away from her sister’s body, held her tight. His only living daughter.
A chasm opened inside him and swallowed him whole.
He clung to Lexy, letting his nager penetrate hers, soaking up her pain, giving her the peace he didn’t have. His gut insisted his life had ended. He couldn’t tell his feelings from Lexy’s, and, for that moment, he didn’t care.
So many. I’ve buried so many. I’ve lived too long.
Gentle hands came, bundled Aipensha’s body in a blanket and cleaned up the puddle of blood. The hands belonged to the new channel whose wondrous skills had saved the Fort. Now he graced the dead with dignity.
Finally, two Gens took Aipensha away. Rimon clung to Lexy with one arm and reached out to stop the blond man. “What’s your name?”
“Solamar. We’re Fort Tanhara. What’s left of it.”
There’s not much left of Fort Rimon either. We’ve lost two Farris channels today. But he couldn’t say that. It wasn’t “two Farris channels” that they’d lost. They’d lost Clire and Aipensha, probably because he’d ignored the oldest of their rules and exposed himself to the battle. His daughters had followed him out, and Clire would not have let herself be left behind despite pregnancy and Need.
No. Right now, it was two channels that were lost. A strategic loss. A scheduling problem.
With that thought the agony of the wounded rushed in at him. They could still be saved.
He stepped clear of his daughter and addressed her as his number two channel. “Lexy, you take this end of the shelter up to number thirty. Solamar, you take the middle up to number sixty. The bunks are numbered on the sides, see? I’ll take the far end. I’ll send a Companion to work with you.” As soon as I find out who’s dead.
Holding himself very stiff and hard inside, Rimon threw himself into organizing the hospital and treating the worst of the wounded.
It was routine work at which he’d had decades of practice. He used his superior sensitivity to pair up channels with Companions and assign them to patients they had the skills to help.
Here, in the press of life and death crises, everyone did what he told them to and looked to him for the next task. There was a rhythm to it that let the work flow through him far beyond the point of deadening exhaustion and into that clear space where nothing existed but the task at hand.
One by one, the wounded were treated and carried off to quieter places to heal. Rimon was relieved when Kahleen arrived.
Kahleen had her masses of auburn hair braided into a crown on the top of her head. She wore a shapeless infirmary smock over thick sweaters that did nothing to hide her comely young figure from any Sime’s senses. Her nager, schooled to the high precision demanded by the Farris channels by years of work with Clire, was tarnished with sorrow but held in steely check. Rimon compared her with Solamar then gestured her toward the blond channel.
“His name’s Solamar. He shouldn’t be working alone.”
Bruce arrived, just as tense as Kahleen and just as disciplined as he slid into his routine Companion’s position by Rimon’s side. Rimon asked, “Dayyel, Iriela, Fengal?”
“They’re all fine. Fengal stayed in the shelter.”
Fengal, Bruce’s son-in-law, was a channel and his renSime daughter, Iriela, was pregnant, due this month. Fort Rimon has a future. We just have to get there.
“That’s a relief. I’m all right, so you should trade places with one of the trainee Companions down there.” He gestured.
“You sure? Hate to leave you with this.”
Rimon nodded, not taking his attention from stopping the bleeding under his hands. “Go. I’ll see you later.”
Bruce went, slicing through the nageric haze as smoothly as when he’d arrived. Bruce had survived uninjured. Bruce would give him transfer when the time came. Rimon brought his attention back to the wound he was healing.
The Gen Companions of the channels needed skill and stamina to assist in managing the selyn fields around their patients, twisting and tilting the field gradients to spur the patient’s own body to heal, supporting the channels as they gave emergency selyn transfers to the most severely injured. One lapse in the Companion Gen’s concentration could spell death for the patient or devastation for the channel’s sensitive nervous system. Bruce was one of the best. His replacement...not yet.
Life on the trail, and even after building Fort Rimon, had given Bruce and the older Fort Rimon channeling staff more than enough practice. Rimon set himself to transmit some of those lessons to this new trainee and keep his mind off Aipensha and Clire.
Through the night, Benart, master scheduler, brought down Companions who had slept, shooed others up to bed. Bruce and Rimon directed the shift changes, improvising pairs creatively to keep the healing work flowing. Aipensha and Clire were not the only casualties on the channeling staff, and though Simes required little sleep, the Gens did.
Sequestered in the underground chamber, Rimon had no direct awareness of the work going on above them in the Fort. He just knew the survivors were collecting the corpses, putting out the fires, salvaging what was left of the wagons, preparing for the cold of the oncoming night, and somehow finding accommodation for the new arrivals in the already far overcrowded buildings.
Just before dawn, it had become very quiet in the underground shelter. Only three patients were left. The others and the staff in charge of them had moved up to the more capacious infirmary building where fire had taken out only part of the roof.
Whenever the hatch into the underground shelter opened, Rimon heard the hammering, the groan of the water wheel, the scrape of logs being dragged as reconstruction began. On one puff of cold air, a hungry Companion accompanied by a crowd of renSimes came down the stair, bodies aching, throats raw with smoke. But the Companion had apparently had some sleep.
“Delri!” she called when she saw him. “Lexy said we’d find you down here. We’re supposed to bring these patients up now because there’s room in the infirmary. Lexy says you have to get ready for the memorial at dawn.”
“Are they going to be ready for a Memorial now?” Suddenly Rimon was acutely aware of his blood crusted clothing and the fact that “room” in the infirmary probably meant as many more deaths as discharged patients. “With the graves that is?” His throat was a little raw too. He was not going to cry for Aipensha now. He swallowed hard.
“Rimon,” said Solamar. “Those two you’ve been working on can go, but this one can’t be moved again. I was just resting a bit before trying to bring him around. I’d appreciate some help if you can spare the time.”
Bruce had rejoined them a few hours previously and now was working with Solamar while Rimon had one of the youngsters from Tanhara by his side. The girl seemed to have been trained by Solamar “What did you say your name is?”
“Uh, well, I don’t think I did say. Rushi.”
That broke her concentration on Rimon’s fields. “Rushi, you go with our two patients here, then get something to eat and take a nap before the Memorial service. We’ll want you fresh and ready to work by noon. We’re going to require someone of your solid skills.”
The renSimes grabbed stretchers while Solamar and Rimon held the selyn fields steady. The two patients were raised out of the shelter and the small crowd departed leaving Bruce and the two channels to consult on the last of the critical patients.
Solamar’s clothing was likewise bloody and well soiled from the hard ride in to the