Part 25 (1/2)
Han looked a bit dismayed, ”Yeah, but?” Thunder rumbled over the clouds, echoed from the mountain wall. Purple lightning spat at the cliff face above, exploding like a blaster bolt, sending splinters of magma flaming down in an arc.
”You don't get it, do you?” Leia said. ”The Nightsisters are coming for the Falcon because they know it's a sure ticket off of this planet. The best thing we can do for these people is to get that s.h.i.+p fixed as fast as possible and fly it out of here so that there's nothing left to squabble over!”
”I know that,” Han said in a hurt tone. ”I can see that! I'm right with you!” But Luke knew that in his heart, Han couldn't stand the thought of deserting a friend who was in need.
Chewbacca and Threepio climbed off the larger female and sat uncomfortably behind Isolder and Teneniel. On the huge rancors, even four riders could fit easily on the bony headplates above the eyes. Luke did not worry so much about overburdening the rancors with riders as he worried about the heavy packs with the generators and coolant. The rancors would have to climb the mountain with those packs.
”Will you be okay?” he asked the rancors, and the two small males grunted rea.s.suringly.
He looked up, saw Leia's face lit in a sudden splash of lightning. He could feel her concern.
”Don't worry,” Luke said. ”I'll take out those Imperial walkers for you.”
”That's not what I'm worried about,” Leia answered. ”Just take care of yourself. No heroics. There are some bad people out here. Even I can feel it.” The silence stretched out between them, and Luke didn't quite know what to answer. If ever there was a day when they'd need heroics, this was it.
”I'll try to be careful,” Luke said.
Luke nudged Tosh back, left the others behind in the forest as they remounted. Tosh ran for a hundred meters up a gently sloping hill, then stopped, stood tall and sniffed the air. The thick brush ahead was a solid black ma.s.s. Tosh grumbled softly, and Luke felt her sense of urgency. She wanted him to get off so she could move quickly in a fight.
She crouched low, and Luke leaped to the ground.
He probed the darkness ahead. He could see nothing, smell nothing?even when probing with the Force, he felt nothing. Yet the rancors quietly crept to their left, circling the brush. Luke followed noiselessly, using the Force to guide his footsteps.
They came to a trail that led into the deeper brush, and the ground was lit with reflected firelight. Luke could see scuff marks. Only the clawed metal toes of Imperial walkers left the ground so gouged and trampled. He peered toward the brush again. It was lighter here, the foliage above somewhat bare, and Luke realized he was on a little promontory, and no brush could be that thick.
A stormtrooper ahead shouted over his helmet mike, ”Look! Up on the cliff!” Luke glanced over his shoulder. The two male rancors were scurrying up the nearly vertical rock, grasping ancient handholds with their huge claws. Luke could barely see the shapes that were Han, Leia, and the others.
Almost immediately, blaster cannons opened ahead of him, and in the blinding flash of the guns, Luke saw that what he'd thought was brush was really an Imperial camouflage net, hiding a gun emplacement. A dozen stormtroopers, four Imperial walkers, and a single Nightsister hunkered there. Luke knew that there must be dozens of outposts like this, hoped that taking out this one would afford Leia and the others enough of a chance to make it up the mountain.
Tosh and her daughter gripped their halberds and ran forward, using the sound of cannonfire to cover their a.s.sault. Luke nervously watched Leia, saw both rancors on the cliff swing magically away from the attack, placing a rock outcrop between them and the gunfire. It took Luke a moment to see that they had swung away by grasping ropes of whuffa hide that hung like creepers.
Luke charged in behind Tosh and her daughter. Tosh met the Imperials first, smas.h.i.+ng into two Imperial walkers at once, knocking them into the gun emplacement. Frightened stormtroopers fired into her with blaster rifles, and Tosh roared in pain as the shots bounced off her thick hide.
Luke pulled off three rapid shots, putting the Imperials down. Tosh's daughter swung her great halberd, cleaving a third walker in half.
The fourth Imperial walker spun malevolently and fired its twin blaster cannons into the young rancor. Ichor spattered across the installation, and the rancor's right arm fell away at the shoulder, splinters of yellow bone protruding through the dark tangle of meat. The rancor stared at her wounds in shock, grabbed her net with her good hand and hurled it at the last Imperial walker, then collapsed and died. The weight of its throwing stones bowled the walker over, and Tosh jumped up, slapped a retreating stormtrooper into oblivion with one paw, then rushed to the Imperial walker and slammed a fist into its cannons.
Flames and blue sparks erupted from the crumpled walker as its power plant melted down, yet Tosh smashed her fist into it again and again, crumpling the hull. No one could be alive in there, yet Tosh screamed and pried at the metal, seeking to rip out the gunner's corpse.
Luke fired into two more stormtroopers, and heard the Nightsister singing. She was huddled near the ground, frightened, retreating from Tosh and the carnage. Luke drew his lightsaber.
”You!” he shouted, and the Nightsister turned to him, her hood falling back. She was young, nothing more than a child really, perhaps sixteen.
Luke could not imagine her being truly evil. He could feel her terror.
She began singing, and Luke raised his free hand with a gesture, used the Force to close her windpipe. The singing stopped, and she stood frozen, horror etched on her face.
”Don't make me kill you!” Luke said. ”Promise me you'll leave Gethzerion and her clan forever!”
The girl stared at him, lit by the fires of burning Imperial walkers, eyes wild with terror, strangling. She nodded dumbly, and Luke could taste her animal fear. He let her go.
She dropped to the ground, looked up at him with rage. Luke could feel her surprise at her own impotence. With a single swatting gesture she cast a spell, knocking the lightsaber from Luke's hand.
Luke pulled out his blaster, fired. The girl screamed a curse, tried to ward the bolt away with her palm, but she was young and too weak. The blaster bolt tore into her flesh, leaving the hand blackened and burned.
The girl looked at her own hand in horror, shouted.
The lightsaber leaped from the ground, swung at Luke's head. Luke channeled the Force, turned it off just before the blade arced into his face, then grabbed his weapon in midair.
”Please!” Luke shouted, but the girl began singing another spell.
Suddenly Tosh reared up behind her, smashed the Nightsister with one great blow that thundered into the ground with the wet smack of pulping flesh and the crackling of bones.
Luke stood in shock, unable to comprehend his foe's own self-destructive behavior, unwilling to believe that one so young could have turned so completely to the dark side.
Tosh grabbed Luke in one claw, swung him up on her back, and raced through the jungle.
Luke could see black scorch marks in her flesh along the bony ridge behind her head. Some of them were deeply pitted, bleeding. Tosh was roaring in pain, not the pain of battle, but the pain of having watched her own daughter die. The rancor dodged through the trees, took him to the cliff and began climbing up in the darkness toward the clouds of fire-lit smoke.
Fires ringed the mountain, and thunder pealed around him. When Tosh reached the clifftop, Leia and the others were off in the distance, rancors standing hip-deep in a cane field. Leia was watching to make sure he got up all right, then she took the reins to her rancor, ordered it forward. The rancors raced, running through grain fields on their knuckles across the bowl-shaped valley toward the south rim and the fortress carved of stone. Old Tosh roared a battle challenge, and the rancors ahead joined her cry. Han and Isolder took up the cry for the human hosts.
As Luke reached the south side of the valley, he saw fifty rancors standing like shadowed monoliths along the sides of the cliff, wielding great poles and maces. A small army of men and juveniles dressed in their simple leather ap.r.o.ns slaved to carry huge throwing stones to the lip of the bluff, setting them beside the rancors.
When Leia reached the cliff, she urged her rancors upstairs to the great fortress. The rancors could not make it through the doorways, so Han, Leia, Isolder, the droids, and Teneniel stopped, began lugging the generators up the stairs. Yet Luke could still feel the urgency behind Augwynne's call of nearly an hour ago, and he left the others, rushed upstairs three steps at a time, pa.s.sing room after room where huddled children and the village's invalids squatted in fear, until he reached the warriors' hall.
The clan sisters waited inside, dressed in their robes and headgear, standing above the sculpted maps of the terrain, intoning the words, ”Ah re, ah re, ah suun corre. Ah re, ah re, ah suun corre.”
Augwynne greeted Luke soberly, her face a carefully controlled mask, ”Welcome, Luke Skywalker,” she said as the others continued chanting.
”I'd hoped you would hurry. We are doing a reading, trying to learn the locations of the Nightsisters so that we can discover their strategy.”
She used the end of her carved wood staff to nudge a scale model of Gethzerion's hover car closer to the fortress. If Augwynne were right, Gethzerion was only two kilometers from the mountain, moving between two groups of warriors. Luke guessed that Gethzerion must be using the hover car to take orders to each group personally. ”Was your trip successful?”
”As well as can be expected,” Luke said.
”Good,” Augwynne breathed. ”How long will it take for Han to repair his s.h.i.+p?”
”Two hours,” Luke answered. ”He's up there now, trying to mount the generators. Gethzerion knows he has a repairable s.h.i.+p.”
”She was bound to figure that out,” Augwynne said. ”We'll try to fend off the Nightsisters until Han finishes.”
One clan sister bent down, placed seventeen black stones at the western foot of the mountain. Luke studied the map. The Nightsisters' strategy seemed so odd as to be freakish. They had placed guard posts consisting of one sister each at twelve points of the compa.s.s. Since Luke had recently taken out such a post, he knew exactly what each installation contained. But in addition, Gethzerion had placed three a.s.sault squads evenly around the mountain. One was directly in front of the main stairs?the only easily accessible entrance?and two more teams were at 120-degree angles. Gethzerion's a.s.sault plans apparently did not take into account such mundane notions as terrain, fortifications, defensibility of the clan's positions. She seemed instead to expect her troops to swarm over any barrier. But Luke knew the power of the Force, and knew that her plans could work.
”Many of the Nightsisters are unaccounted for,” Augwynne commented, looking at the map. ”We shall have to beware.” She moved the figure representing Gethzerion's hover car nearer the southern base of the mountain, then went out to wait on the balcony.
Luke ambled up beside her, and the other witches filed behind. It was almost sunrise, and the clouds above had begun to lighten. Still, there was so much smoke above them that Luke was not sure if a real sunrise would dawn this morning. They had traveled so much in the last night, with only two brief stops, that Luke felt he hadn't slept in days. Down in the forest, he could see Imperial walkers deploying in the woods, stormtroopers like white rats scurrying about for cover. Augwynne said, ”Do you have any words of wisdom for us, Jedi? Any advice?”