Fate of the Jedi: Backlash Page 24

  Then someone else was there, a slim figure, pale of skin, replicating Dyon’s kick. This figure connected even more forcefully than Dyon had, and landed better, coming down on both feet in a well-balanced crouch.

  The rancor uttered a moan of fear, then toppled. As Ben reached that crest, he could hear the beast crashing its way down that slope.

  The slight figure was Vestara. She gave Dyon a hand up.

  Dyon glanced at the number readouts on the butts of his weapons, then pocketed them. “Many thanks. That was well timed.”

  She brushed her hands together as if removing dust. “I finished my water duties, did some meditating and reading, then decided to come over here and see if anything interesting was going on.”

  Dyon snorted, amused.

  Ben suppressed a flash of irritation. He looked back toward the southwest slope.

  There were no rancors there. Dathomiri were standing at the edge, shaking spears and other weapons down toward the valley floor, and some were jeering, but there did not seem to be much conviction in their voices.

  And there were bodies among them, injured and dead. Even in the darkness, Ben thought he saw six or seven. He headed that way.

  And now, drifting up from the trees surrounding the hill, came the sound of laughter from many throats—brittle, female laughter.

  At the lip of the southwest slope, the leaders held a hurried conference while the clan members tended to the dead and injured. Down the slope, Ben saw his father’s lightsaber blade raised toward him in a wave of greeting and reassurance; then it disappeared as Luke switched it off to conserve battery life.

  “Rancors.” Tasander nearly spat out the word. “Of course they would choose an attack that would all but ignore our defensive advantage. Stupid of me to overlook rancors.”

  Kaminne shook her head. “We are vulnerable to them, yes, but not as much as if we were in a flatland camp. This was still the right choice.”

  Ben gestured to catch Firen’s eye. “You’re the trainer of rancors for the Raining Leaves, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Can we do anything to interrupt the way the Nightsisters are controlling them?”

  “I think not. The Nightsisters have chosen their tactic well.”

  “Did you look over our situation before night fell?”

  She nodded.

  “So we know they can climb at points on the southwest, east, and northwest. Anywhere else?”

  “Everywhere, really, but it will only be a fast climb for them there, and at one approach on the northeast.” She thought about it. “The north they might not be able to climb at all. It is steepest, and we have been using that cliff as our latrine. Even rancors may be reluctant to brave it.”

  There were snickers from various chiefs and subchiefs.

  Kaminne glanced over the edge. There was no longer any laughter from the forest verge, but there was no question that their enemies were still there. “I wish we knew how many rancors they have. Just the five?”

  “At least twenty. Maybe thirty.” Firen sounded unhappy, but she also sounded sure.

  Tasander gave her a curious look. “How do you know?”

  “Their growls as they approached. Rancors do not speak, but they have a complex set of sounds, many of which I know. The growls they offered meant ‘Watch me fight,’ and it was the tone used to command the attention of the pack. Not a single mate, not littermates, not a hunting party … an entire pack.”

  Ben did some quick mental calculations. He estimated that there were perhaps two hundred able-bodied combatants on the hilltop; perhaps another fifty too feeble, injured, or young to offer much strength. Against thirty rancors, even with Witches, those were bad odds. Witches usually took more time than Jedi or Sith to bring Force powers to bear.

  But clan members and Jedi weren’t their only resources. “I’ll get in touch with Yliri by comlink. Hire her to bring out the Jade Shadow or Mom’s starfighter. We can give the surrounding forest a soaking the Nightsisters will never—” He caught sight of Dyon, who was shaking his head. “No?”

  Dyon looked sour, even in the moonlight. “The Dathomiri are learning more and more from other worlds. I tried to upload my latest update a few minutes ago. It was a failure; comm transmissions are being jammed. Probably they brought some more sophisticated comm equipment with the speeder bikes, maybe an offworld comm expert as well.”

  “Doubtless a woman.” Drola sounded surly.

  Tasander glared at him. “One more word that increases dissent in our ranks, Drola, and you get to go out and do some night scouting. Straight down a rancor’s gullet.”

  Drola fell silent.

  Tasander bent over and, with a rock, scratched a circle into the flat stone at his feet. He divided it into halves, then divided one half into three pieces. It was a crude pie chart. “We leave half our strength at this slope, since multiple rancors can come at us here simultaneously. Then one-sixth each set up at the other three approaches. Subchiefs, I want equal division of strength among the three smaller formations. Let’s go.”

  The men stood. The women of the Raining Leaves did not; they looked at Kaminne.

  She looked between them, surprised, and then her expression turned dark. “Until we say otherwise, Tasander speaks for me and I speak for Tasander. Anyone who doubts me, anyone who questions that, anyone who hesitates to see what the other leader says, gets to set up a forward perimeter. Forward of Luke Skywalker.”

  The women rose in a hurry to join the men.

  Ben caught her eye. “Don’t feel bad. Civilized politics are even worse.”

  “How so?”

  “Incompetents don’t automatically get killed right away. Sometimes they even get reelected.”

  AS THE NEW FORMATIONS WERE MOVING INTO PLACE, BEN FELT ANOTHER twitch against the web of Force energy. Dyon and several of the Witches felt it as well; he saw them turn to look skyward. He pitched his voice to carry, and did not have to add Force impetus to it in order to be heard: “Be ready, they’re coming!”

  They came, and in greater force this time. Five rancors hurtled toward the southwest slope, two each toward the three other climbable slopes. They were immediately illuminated by blasterfire, misses as well as hits, but their sheer strength and bulk, as well as the armoring effects of the hides draped across them, meant that the blaster bolts again failed to slow them. Each of the eleven monsters reached the bottom of the hill and began climbing at a terrifying rate.

  Directly below Ben, Luke’s lightsaber lit up. As the central rancor reached it, the blade swung back and forth, slashes so fast that they blurred together in Ben’s vision. That rancor immediately slipped and, bellowing, began sliding down the slope again.

  But the other four were past now, and reaching the summit.

  Cyclonic winds whipped up around Ben. He could feel the Force power in them. They blasted past him, barely jarring him, and as the four rancor heads topped the crest, the winds flowed into them, howling.

  One rancor lost its balance and plummeted. The other three, steadier and sturdier, made it to their feet and—despite ferocious blows from the spearmen of the two clans—began swinging at humans.

  Ben ignited his lightsaber and bounded in. With a touch of the Force, he leapt clean over the ranks of warriors, passing nimbly between upraised spears, and came down directly in front of the rancor in the center.

  It was in the act of grasping a Raining Leaves spearwoman around the waist. Ben lashed out with his lightsaber and caught the thing across the wrist. Its skin blackened and split, the wound instantly cauterized. It howled and dropped the woman, who immediately rolled to her feet and brought her spear to bear once more.

  The rancor swung at Ben with its other hand. He leapt over the clumsy attack in a forward somersault. When his feet came into contact with the rancor’s chest, he slashed at that surface as he kicked off again. His direction reversed, he continued through a backward somersault and came down on his feet where he’d stood only a moment
ago.

  The rancor clutched its chest, howling, and stumbled backward. Ben didn’t need to add any Force tricks to be rid of this beast; unthinking, it retreated one step too far, its leg coming down past the crest and onto nothingness. Its expression changed from pain and anger to dismay as it fell, flailing its arms. Ben heard it go crashing down the slope. He didn’t worry for his father, who would have no difficulty dodging one plummeting rancor.

  That left three beasts, two to his left and one to his right. He chose the one to the right; if he could force its retreat, the clan members could close up that flank and concentrate their efforts against the two remaining.

  As he prepared for a leap to clear the spear warriors in that direction, he saw the rancor grab one of the Broken Columns men, shake him just long enough for the man’s shriek to cut off, and then fling the body out into the darkness well away from the hill.

  Ben grimaced and leapt. His feet came down on the shoulders of a warrior—Drola, he thought—and he balanced there for a second, for the rancor’s hand was coming down at the warrior. Ben slashed, catching the rancor in the webbing of skin between thumb and index finger, splitting it down to the beast’s wrist. The rancor screamed, the noise as shrill and loud as a steam whistle, and took a step back.

  Ben continued his forward motion, somersaulting to his feet in front of Drola. “Spears, together now!”

  The warriors surged forward, men and women, hitting the rancor simultaneously all across its body from head to knee. Not all the blows penetrated its hide wrappings or skin, but all imparted kinetic energy. The rancor staggered back, fell on its rear end—and found that its center of balance was just a meter too far past the crest of the hill. It, too, toppled into darkness, and Ben and the warriors heard it crash its way down the slope.

  Ben turned. The other two rancors on the southwest crest were being harried and forced backward by a combination of mass spear charges and winds from the Witches. Elsewhere on the hilltop, Dathomiri men and women were collecting themselves, improvising bandages, kneeling over the dead and badly injured. The rancors that had attacked the steeper slopes were already gone.

  Dead and badly injured—Ben counted at least twenty Dathomiri who lay still or moved so feebly that they clearly would not be able to return to the fight.

  That was 8 to 10 percent of the active fighters. Not good. He sought out Firen, who stood with the Raining Leaves Witches at the southwest crest. “How many of the rancors have been put out of commission?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe one.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The first time, five came against us and five returned to the forest. The second time, eleven—all fresh, I think—came against us, and eleven returned to the forest. One was crawling and had to be hauled by two others, so it may not return to the fray. But even now the Nightsisters, if they follow the same habits we do, will be using their skills and their spells to bandage and heal their rancors, to raise their spirits and fire up their instincts for destruction.”

  “Where are our rancors?” That was Drola, anger and even suspicion in his voice.

  “By our you mean those of the Raining Leaves.” Firen shot the Broken Columns warrior an ugly look. “You men have none of your own. We released ours to graze before we came up the hill. Because they would take up too much room, consume too much food and water. Ours … are probably far from here, or may be among theirs, but I have recognized none so far.”

  Drola nodded. “How convenient that we are deprived of our greatest weapon against the rancors.”

  “We could not have known that they would send rancors against us!” Firen’s hand curled into a fist. Little flickers of what looked like lightning crackled around it, making popping and snapping noises.

  “Stop it.” Kaminne forced herself between Firen and Drola. “If you have nothing to suggest that will improve our situation, then you have nothing to say.” She looked between them, stared each down in turn.

  “Nightsister!” That was not one cry but many from those at the southwest crest. Pushing through the crowd in that direction, Ben saw several Dathomiri raising blasters.

  When he got to the edge, he could see their target. A single human-sized silhouette had emerged from the forest verge and was walking toward the hill. She held a gleaming pole taller than she was.

  “Hold your fire.” That was Tasander, so calm as to seem almost disinterested. “She carries the white spear.”

  Ben shot him a curious look. “Some sort of truce thing?”

  Tasander nodded. “Not even Nightsisters attack a bearer of the white spear—that anyone knows of, anyway—because they would never again be safe when they carried one.”

  The Nightsister marched to the bottom of the hill slope, stopping where soil mostly gave way to stone. She plunged the point of the spear into the ground, then turned and, at a rate so slow as to seem insulting, walked back into the forest.

  Ben saw movement on the slope—the white garments of his father made him dimly visible. Luke descended toward the spear.

  Ben started down the slope, carefully picking his way among boulders and rock faces in the dark. By the time he reached the midway point, Luke had climbed to that altitude again, the spear in his hands. “How are you doing, Dad?”

  “Just another ordinary day at the Temple.” Luke seemed neither hurt nor winded. In fact, he wasn’t even dirty. He held the butt end of the spear toward Ben. “There’s a note attached.”

  Ben unwrapped it from the spear butt. It was a piece not of flimsi, but of tanned animal hide, the words painted onto it—recently, to judge by the tacky wetness of the paint—in crude block letters in Aurebesh.

  It read,

  To the Sisters of the Raining Leaves

  Kill, enslave, or drive forth the men with you and we will have no further quarrel with you. Do not, and you will die with them.

  So swear we all, the Sisters of the Night.

  Ben showed it to his father. “Not too bad. No misspellings. I think they used a ruler to keep the lines straight, like a first-timer in school.”

  Luke cast an eye up the hill. “How are they doing?”

  “Lots of injuries, lots of deaths. I think we’re losing the morale war.”

  “Do what you can to keep that from happening. As much as your fighting skills, that’s what they need you for.”

  “I guess.” Ben rolled the hide around the spear butt, tied it fast with the leather thong that had held it originally, and gave his father a quick hug before ascending the slope again.

  At its summit, he offered the note to Kaminne and Tasander. They and some of the subchiefs gathered around could read, and news of the note’s contents spread throughout the camp.

  Kaminne pondered. “What’s an elegant way to say No, and we hope you die in misery?”

  Tasander shrugged. “My father used to say, May the stinging insects of a thousand worlds seek out your moist places.”

  Kaminne laughed. So did several of the subchiefs, both Raining Leaves and Broken Columns. “Yes, say that.”

  Tasander lay the note facedown on the rock and, with Dyon’s paints, wrote that response in a beautiful, flowing calligraphic hand. Once the paint had dried to the point it would not smear, he tied the note to the spear and handed it to Drola.

  The others opened up a lane for the warrior. He started well back along the hilltop, ran forward, and hurled the spear with an athlete’s skill. The gleaming shaft sailed out far past the hill, burying its head in the soft soil partway back to the tree line. A few moments later a silhouette emerged from the trees, retrieved the spear, and returned to the shadows.

  A little while later, Ben felt the familiar twinge in the Force net above him. He didn’t have to warn the others. Olianne was the first to raise a voice. “They’re coming!”

  Ben was surprised to see the same number of rancors as before emerge from the tree line and race for the hill. All eleven seemed fresh, unhurt.

  “Fire at will.” Tha
t was Tasander, and blasterfire joined arrows to hurtle against the rancors.

  The beasts reached the hill’s base and, as before, clambered up with terrifying swiftness. This time, though, the central rancor of the five on the southwest slope stopped when it reached Luke, not ignoring him as the others had, and began grabbing at him as the other four swept up around him on both sides.

  The spearmen braced themselves. But as the four rancors came almost close enough to receive their thrusts, they halted. Instead of surging up to the crest, they began digging and prying at the boulders toward the top of the slope.

  Ben didn’t understand their tactic until it was too late. Tons of boulders, ranging from the size of a human head to the size of an air-speeder, dislodged by their efforts, clattered and rolled as a broad, deadly curtain toward Luke Skywalker.

  “Dad!”

  Luke, caught up in combat with a curiously defensive rancor, did not hear. Perhaps he felt a touch of Ben’s alarm, but he did not recognize it as applying to himself. He did not look up, and Ben saw the curtain of stone sweep across him and the rancor, carrying both down the hillside with it.

  Then, and only then, did the four other rancors clamber up to the top of the hill.

  Below, Ben could see Luke’s lightsaber, gleaming but now still, at the base of the hill. And four figures, women glowing with blue energy, raced out from the tree line toward his father.

  Ben crouched to jump—not at any of the four rancors now clambering to their feet to his right, but down the slope, toward his father.

  A hand fell on his shoulder, restraining him. He looked up to see Dyon shaking his head.

  It played out like a conversation but with no words being spoken, the entire exchange one of understanding, transpiring in a fraction of a second—

  My father is in danger.

  If you abandon the hilltop, the Dathomiri may lose heart.

  My father—

  Your attachment, or your duty?

  Dyon was right, and that truth wrenched a groan from Ben. He stood up and pivoted, the better to leap into the midst of the rancors.