"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - SimeGen 02 - Channel's Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

And then a blinding flash, deafening thunder, and the Sime attacker lay dead at his mother's feet.
Zeth could not have seen it like that. He was a child; he couldn't zlin fields. He wasn't sure he had seen it at all, or if it was his
father's vivid account engraved on his mind. The raid when he was four was the last Fort Freedom had seen of Freehand Raiders,
because they'd developed a superstitious fear of Gens who could kill.
As they drew near, Zeth saw one of the barns burning. Mr. Whelan and the riders who had picked up Owen and Jana swerved
off toward the hills, where Del Brick's land lay.
"You kids get on up to your father's placeтАФZeth, you stay with them till someone comes for you," Mr. Whelan instructed.
"Head around to the east!" he called to the other riders. "Shen! Who'd have thought they'd attack Farris?"
"I'm going home!" Zeth said to the older children.
"But Mr. Whelan saidтАФ" Owen began.
"Zeth," interrupted Jana, "you come on home with us now."
"I don't have to listen to you! That's my house down there! Your pa's down there," added Zeth. "You know he would've gone to
help."
"That's right!" Jana said. "We'll all go!"
The children scuttled down the hillside, through a stand of evergreens, to the edge of the fields. The attackers were not Freehand
Raiders, but in-Territory Simes, fanners, sheep ranchers, tradespeopleтАФa posse, not militia.
Nor did Zeth see any badge of authority. Vigilantes, thenтАФ but why attack the Farris Homestead? All they'd ever done was
good!
Zeth couldn't see his father or mother. They'd be in the house, according to the attack plan. That plan had come out of the raid
when Zeth was four, when Liz Carson, a Gen Companion, died not in the kill, but from a Raider's dagger. The loss of a companion
was grave indeed, but the precarious balance of their lifestyle could be overturned by the loss of a channel. They had only three:
three precious lives between Fort Freedom and the kill.
A cordon of Simes protected the main house. The channels would be inside, and all Fort Freedom's Gens. NoтАФnot all. Zeth saw
Hank Steers gallop up, steady as any Sime, bursting
through the line of attackers as their horses reared and plunged. Zeth wished he could zlin. Mr. Steers must have hit the attacking
Simes with a nageric shock. Steers, meanwhile, rode straight to the house, stood up on his saddle, and vaulted onto the porch roof.
A window opened, and eager hands pulled him inside.
The torches thrown at the house could not catch in the slate roof or stone walls. People from the Old Fort and the town
outnumbered the attackers, so the gang left their assault on the main house, throwing their torches at outbuildings. The three
children crouched behind a wagonтАФuntil one of the attackers threw his torch onto the wooden bed. When Zeth thought the man
had turned away, he jumped up to snatch the burning brand.
The man must have zlinned him, for he wheeled his horse and lunged at Zeth. Zeth tried to parry with the torch, but a
ten-year-old boy was no match for a Sime. Zeth was caught up and held dangling as his captor shouted, "Shendi! KoraтАФ hey, look
what I caught!"
A woman clutching one whip in her tentacles and another in her fingers came to see. Her face was twisted with fear and hatred as
she said, "Slaughter the brat! He'll grow up into one o' them perverts. Gut him, Trev!"
Zeth squirmed and kicked, but was firmly held as the man pulled his knifeтАФnot a Raider's dagger, but a farmer's sharp utility
blade. Helplessly, he watched his death approachтАФ
"No!" Owen and Jana appeared from under the wagon, Jana grabbing the horse's reins, Owen lunging for the man's knife hand.
Owen's weight dragged the man off his horse and Zeth was flung aside, the breath knocked out of him.
For a moment he blacked out. When his vision cleared he saw the woman holding the squirming, kicking Jana before her on her
horse. On the ground, the man hit Owen, knocking the boy down. Zeth scrabbled to his knees. His midsection hurt violently, every
tiny breath torture.
"Shen!" screamed the Sime woman, and flung Jana away, nursing a hand that bled where Jana had bitten her. Jana jumped at the
man beating her brother, but was thrown back against the wagon. She gave a sharp yelp of pain, and her face went white as she fell,
her arm bent at an impossible angle. She tried to rise, gasped, "My arm!" and wilted, unconscious.
A child's pain might not have the penetrating effect of an
adult's, but Zeth knew pain pervaded the whole atmosphere, impinging from all sides on the two Simes. Like a harpy, the woman
screamed, "Their arms! Cut off their arms, Trev! They'll die in changeover!"
Jana was unconscious, Owen helpless before the man now wielding his knife, licking his lips, eyes flaming with unholy zeal as