Skinner grabbed Garrett’s arm and tried to drag the man toward the safety of the pens.  Two more pistol shots rang out and a man screamed.  A horse whinnied in terror.

       “Freeband Raider!” someone shouted.  “They’re Freebanders!  Where’s Hallen!?”

       A mounted rider charged past Skinner, almost knocking him to the ground.  The Sime rider held a struggling, cursing Gen firmly in his tentacles.  A moment later, another horse and rider pounded after them.  The rider was bent low, drumming the horse’s sides with heel and tentacle.  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the rider was Tavis.

       There was a high pitched wail; a shiltpron, Skinner realized.  A chaotic stream of notes followed, and one of the Simes fell off his horse, clutching his head with hands and tentacles.  A shiltpron was a musical instrument that manipulated not only sound, but nagerically as well.  I hadn’t realized that they could be used as weapons.  A weapon that only affects Simes.  Clever bastards, Skinner thought admiringly.

       He shoved Garrett to the ground, rolling him under the pen.  As he was bending to follow, tentacles grabbed him and he was thrown across the saddle on another Sime.  The mnan’s clothing was ragged and smelled foul.  “Yer mine, Gen” the man cackled, kicking his horse into a breakneck run.

       Skinner kicked at the man, but his angle was too awkward.  He couldn’t get any leverage.  The man’s handling tentacles tightened around him to the point of pain.  “Quit yer wigglin’,” the man snarled.

       “Or what?  You’ll kill me?”  Skinner turned his head and bit down on one of the tentacles with all his strength.

       The man cuffed him but didn’t loosen his grip.  Skinner could still hear pistol shots and screams blending with the wail of the shiltpron, but they were receding in the distance.

       If only I had a weapon, Skinner thought in despair.  Even the leg irons would have helped.  One on one, Gen strength was no match for Sime.  He didn’t even see the obstacle that must have loomed in their path, but suddenly the horse was airborn in a mighty leap.  They landed hard; the sudden impact driving the air from Skinner’s lungs.  By the time he had recovered, the horse had slowed to a jarring trot.  Then they stopped.

       “Yer a big ‘um,” the Sime chortled as he struggled to turn Skinner over, to position him for the kill.  “This is gonna last me for…shen..!”

       Out of the corner of his eye, Skinner saw another body hurtling through the air.  Tentacles wrapped around his body, tearing him from his captor’s grip.  For an instant he thought it was Tavis, but his hopes where dashed when the man called out in lightly accented Simelan “Fox!  Catch the shendi-flayed horse this time!”

       His former captor, denied his kill, screamed incoherently and attacked his rival.  The man danced away, moonlight gleaming off the knives gripped in of his two tentacles.  It was hard to make out any features in the dark, but the man had dark hair cropped short and a clean shaven chin.

       “This one’s mine!  Get yer own!” the Freebaser screamed, grabbing for Skinner.

       Skinner rolled out of the way, too slow to evade an augmenting Sime, but his action delayed the attack just long enough for the newcomer to plunge a knife into his attacker’s back.

       The Sime’s reeking body collapsed across Skinner’s body, pinning him to the ground.  He struggled to push the heavy weight off him, only to see it snatched up and tossed aside as if it weighed no more than a bundle of rags.

       “To the victor goes the prize,” the Sime murmured.  “And shuven…what a prize you are.”

       So it wasn’t a rescue, it was just another predator fighting over him.  Tentacles like twisted iron cables wrapped around his arms.  Skinner struggled, uselessly, knowing that it would do him no good.  Though he had witnessed Sime strength before, he had never had it turned against him like this before tonight.

       Mindless panic roared through his limbs like liquid fire.  Idiot! he screamed at himself.  You're just giving the shendi-flayed monster what it wants.

       Ruthlessly, Skinner pushed past his own terror and began to shut himself down.  "Running water", Simeon had taught him.  Or had it been his mother?  Memories were tumbling out of his head like a child’s block toys.  "Gushing over your hands.  Now, close your hands and the flow stops.  Concentrate.  Nothing exists but your hands and the water."  He could feel the fear inside him flowing away.

       "Oh no you don't," the Sime chuckled.  "We need this way too bad.  No way am I going to let a fat, juicy selyn source slip through my fingers with a few gypsy tricks."  His dark eyes narrowed.  "Be a good boy and give it up.  You really don't want to know how far I'm prepared to go to get what I want."

       "Go to hell!" Skinner hissed, and then cursed himself as his control wavered and threatened to break.

       "Been there...done that.  Came back and brought a friend," the man's eyes lost focus for a moment.  "That's the problem.  I'm eating for two, now."

       No fear, Simeon had told him.  Without the fear, they can't control you.  You control.  Not them.  Skinner steadied himself, staring directly into the eyes of his captor.  "You can't hurt me."

       The man's eyes widened.  "You're amazingly strong.  In a fair fight, I do think you could probably take me."  His lips twisted, bitterness turned inward.  "Too bad for you.  I never fight fair."

       With an augmented movement so swift Skinner barely had time to register the knife before a bright, slicing pain scored a line across his chest.

       Something overwhelming and primitive responded to the pain.  His fear leaped out of control, freezing his muscles with a paralyzing dread.  The Sime's tentacles still gripped him, but he couldn't have moved, could barely breath.  His arms tingled with the contact.  The feel of it was alien, terrifying all on its own, but somehow...

       "I've never zlinned anyone like you before, Gen.  I know you aren't in any position to appreciate it, but later on you'll be glad for it.  Glad it was me.  I wish I could take my time with you, big man."

       A keen escaped his lips.  One of the tentacles shifted, caressing his jaw, his throat.  Everywhere it touched, an electric tingle ran through Skinner’s nerves.  His body felt weak, like he was melting from the inside.  His skin felt like a raw, exposed nerve.

       So this is what it feels like to die, stripped of selyn.  It wasn't anything like he had expected.  Why aren't I screaming?  They always scream...  It was getting hard to think, as if his ability to think was being stripped away with his selyn.

       "Delicious."  The man's eyes half closed with pleasure.  "Wish I had the leisure to enjoy this as much as it deserves, but I don't have that kind of control.  Let’s finish this." He leaned forward and pressed warm, hard lips to Skinner's.  Skinner tensed, expecting the agony that he knew was coming, but the man only teased at his lips with teeth and tongue.  His breath smelled of mint.

       "C'mon big man.  Let's get this caravan on the road.  This isn't even the best part."  Skinner felt the drawstring of his trousers being opened.  At this, he began to struggle again, terror rising like vomit in his throat. No, not that.  He'd heard stories about how the Freebase Raiders toyed with their prey, mutilating them sexually to increase the agony of being taken.

       The rough-spun cotton trousers were dragged down, exposing his legs to the cold air.  He shivered as the flexible tentacles explored his skin, slipping beneath the thin cotton of his undergarments.

       The sensation of that smooth skin sliding over his most intimate flesh made him fight to keep from screaming, torn between terror and unwilling arousal.  The man's eyes were on him, drinking in his reactions.

       "You're a pervert," Skinner whispered.  "Abomination."

       "You don't know the half of it yet," the Sime told him, his voice turned low and velvet, scorching Skinner's nerves.  "But you will in a moment."

       Another tentacle slid beneath his clothing.  This one was slippery; a Sime’s laterals self lubricated, the better to conduct selyn.

       "Being a pervert's not half bad.  Oh, yeah, there are a lot of people on both side of the border who'd shoot me on sight if they knew what I liked to do to my prey."  The Sime chuckled.  "But who cares?  I do as I please.  Lucky for both of us."

       A tentacle wrapped itself around his cock, another slithered between his balls.  The skin of it was much softer, much slicker than a man's hand would have been.  He clenched his ass cheeks together as he felt it probing at the entrance.  He gasped as the first tentacle squeezed his cock, and at that moment of surprise the Sime's tentacle breached him.

       "No.  Don't," he moaned, feeling his ass being forced open.   The tentacle paused for a moment, as if letting him adjust, then another one slid in beside the first.  He struggled, trying to escape the burn as his sphincter was forcibly widened by the second tentacle.

       The tentacles touched something inside him; an unbearable pleasure made him cry out.

       "Like that, did you?  Good.  There’s more where that came from.”  The tentacles twisted inside him, making sparks shoot through his brain again and again, until his legs gave way and he fell to his knees, and then to all fours, involuntarily opening himself up to the invasion.

       "Just one more now..." another tentacle forced its way in, adding more pain and pleasure as his anus was stretched widely. "...and we're ready to do this."  He felt one of the tentacles slide in more deeply, up past the bend of his bowel.  It made him feel sick and violated, feeling those alien organs moving about inside him.

       "Not many people know where these points are," the Sime remarked.  "It's all tentacle to arms and mouth to mouth with them, proper position only, never deviate because...they never quite manage to explain the why not.  Sheep.  All of them.  But not me."  His breath blew across the hairs of Skinner’s back teasingly.  "I've found something much better.  I'm going to take your selyn from the inside.  And you’re going to let me do it.  That’s the secret, you know.  I have to make you want it as badly as I do."  The man licked his throat, his lips taking the contact point over Skinner’s jugular.

       Skinner screamed.  The pleasure was unbearable.  He struggled for control, reaching blindly for anything to protect him from the desire to ram himself down on the Sime's tentacles.  With horror he realized that he wanted more.

       "You're a fighter.  "That's good.  Need that..."

       Skinner's cock was throbbing, wrapped in a lightly squeezing coil of tentacle.  He could feel the electric flow of selyn flow increasing the sensitivity of all his parts.  Even the ones inside.

       The tentacles writhed inside him; he began thrashing as the draw began in earnest.  It built up, forcing scream after scream from him, selyn flowing inside him like a full body orgasm that went on and on until the flow finally died down.

       He collapsed to the dirt, no longer having the strength to hold his head up.  So this is what it feels like to die.  He was cold...so cold...

       As his consciousness slipped away he felt the Sime's tentacles trailing across his buttocks, caressing them, and then darkness rolled over him.