back, the female was likely to bite his face off. If he pushed at her and freed his hand and lightsaber, the male would have time to shred his back with its claws, or lock its jaws on his neck. Even as he formulated the thought, he knew he was spending too much time thinking.
The male shanh emitted a rising hiss, a tormented sound un like anything it had given voice to so far. At the same time, the weight on the Padawan's back was removed. The shanh had stepped off him, for what reason Anakin could not imagine. Thus reduced to a single adversary, he shoved hard with the Force. Grunting in surprise, the female was knocked sideways several body-lengths. Arm freed, he activated his lightsaber.
Before he could bring it into play, the stunned but still reactive female leapt. She was met in midbound by a downward sweeping arc of light that caught her just behind the head. There was a single, sharp hiss of surprise and pain, a sudden smell of burned flesh, and she landed on him belly- first. Using his muscles he rose on hands and knees and shook the heavy weight off his back.
The big male shanh was lying nearby, motionless, smoke rising from its seared skull. Standing next to it was a single familiar shape. Though not inherently tall, in Anakin's sweat-stung eyes the looming figure assumed the proportions of a giant. The outsized image vanished in the smile the slowly turning figure bestowed on him.
'Small sounds often mask large sources.' Clad only in her sleeping attire, Luminara Unduli deactivated her lightsaber and let it fall to her side. 'A good lookout needs to listen with more than his or her ears, Anakin Skywalker. Reality is rife with disguises.'
Breathing hard, he rose shakily to his feet and bowed his head once, hastily. 'Thank you for my life, Master Luminara.'
She accepted his thanks with a nearly imperceptible dip of her own head. 'Your life is your own, Anakin, and not mine to give or take.' He thought he detected a twinkle in her eye. 'I merely helped preserve it.' Approaching, she startled him by casually slipping an arm around his back. The feel of it was astonishingly comforting. It reminded him of something nearly forgotten. 'Come with me. I'll stand the rest of your shift.'
'But you're not due to come on for another hour yet,' he protested.
Once more, she flashed that warming, knowing smile at him. 'For some strange reason, I'm suddenly wide awake. It's all right, Padawan. Consider this just another learning experience. One you will learn from-won't you?'
It was a rhetorical question, one he knew he did not have to acknowledge. But he did anyway.
'When one hears the sound of a lightsaber springing to life in the middle of the night in a strange place on a strange world, one knows it is not being triggered for purposes of amusement. I believe I reached you just in time.'
Feeling better with every step, he nodded agreement. 'If any one wants to ask me, I think I can tell them all they want to know about the collaborative attack tactics of the stalking shanh.'
' Probably more than they would want to know.' They were al ready back at the camp. Her arm slid off his back. 'Get some sleep, Anakin. Don't worry about me. I'm used to this sort of thing.'
It would have been churlish of him to protest further. Finding his bed, he fell rather than lay back onto it, not even bothering to slip into the sack. Not far away, Kyakhta and Bulgan slept on. Another shape moved slightly, awake but not rising from its bed. Bending down close to him, Luminara murmured something to Obi-Wan, who listened closely, nodded once, and lay back down. Anakin waited for the disapproval that was to come. Thankfully, his teacher was wise enough, or empathetic enough, to say nothing. In truth, no additional commentary was necessary.
That didn't stop Barriss from looking up from her own place of rest. She didn't say anything-just stared at him. He stood it for as long as he could, which was about a minute.
'All right, all right,' he muttered. 'Go ahead and say it.'
'Say what?' she asked innocently. There was as much mischief in her expression as in her voice.
'You know.' He fumbled irritably with his bedding. 'That I was derelict in my duty. That I was daydreaming in the middle of the night. That I didn't pay attention to what I was doing. Whatever.'
'I was just wondering if you were okay.'
He remembered his shoulder. His anger at himself had tem porarily masked the pain. Now it returned, full force. He was glad of the burning sensation, opening himself to it, welcoming it. He deserved it. Just as he deserved whatever condemnation Barriss might now choose to bestow.
That, however, was not her intent. 'I wonder if Master Yoda, who only knows lightsaber technique, would have been caught off guard like that.' Leaving him with a last smile, she rolled over to resume her own interrupted sleep.
An angry retort sprang immediately to mind, but he did not give voice to it. She was right, of course. More than right. She had given him something else to think about, something more to ponder. Turning onto his back, wincing at the fiery pain in his shoulder, he considered the stars from a different perspective than he had earlier that night.
There was more to mastering the Force than moving objects from point to point. One had to be conscious of it at all times, not just in moments of danger. It was not armor, always present to protect those who knew something of its ways. It responded only to conscious effort, to awareness. That was his problem, he realized. He was aware only part of the time.
It wouldn't happen again, he swore. From now on, he would be with the Force at all times, rather than waiting for it to be with him. Yet again, it had been brought home to him how much he did not yet know.
Fortunately, he was a fast learner.
Chapter 15
They had gathered not in the formal surroundings of the city's municipal hall, but in the garden of the abode of Kandah, one of the Unity delegates who would vote on whether or not to pull Ansion out of the Republic. Enclosed on four sides by the two stories of the residence itself, the courtyard was alive with flowers and fountains. Like the house, everything had been paid for from the profits Kandah's family had acquired through years of trade. Those profits would have been much higher, she reflected as she watched her fellow
