cinched above and below their foreshoulders, exactly as Mace remembered. One wore a dual-saddle setup, the secondary saddle slung reversed at the beast's mid-shoulder.
All four grassers were thin, smaller than Mace remembered-the largest of them might not have topped six meters at full stretch-and their gray coats were dull and coarse: a far cry from the sleek, glossy behemoths he'd ridden all those years ago. This was as troubling as anything he'd yet seen. Had these Korunnai abandoned the Fourth Pillar?
Nick reached up to take the knotted mounting rope of the dual-saddled grasser. 'Come on, Master Windu. You're riding with me.' 'Where are your akks?' 'Around. Can't you feel them?' And now Mace could: a ring of predatory wariness outside the green walls: savagery and hunger and devotion tangled into a semi-sentient knot of Let's-Find-Something-to-Kill.
Nick rope-walked up the flank of the grasser and slid into the upper saddle. 'You'll see them if you need to see them. Let's hope you don't.' 'Is it no longer customary to introduce a guest to the akks of the ghosh?' 'You're not a guest, you're a package.' Nick slid a brassvine goad out of its holster beside the saddle. 'Mount up. Let's get out of here.' Without even understanding why he did it, Mace moved away into the middle of the gap.
One breath composed his mind. The next expressed his nature into the Force around him: Jedi serenity balancing buried temper, devotion to peace tipping the scales against a guilty pleasure in fighting. Nothing was hidden, here. Light and dark, pure and corrupt, hope, fear, pride, and humility: he offered up everything that made him who he was, with a friendly smile, lowered eyes, and hands open at his sides. Then he sent rippling through the Force the call he'd been taught thirty-five years before.
And he got an answer.
Slipping through the walls of the gap: measured tread blending seamlessly with wind-rustle and flybuzz: horned reptoid heads questing, lidless oval eyes of gleaming black- 'Windu!' A hiss from Nick. 'Don't move!' Triangular fangs scissored along each other as jaws that could crush durasteel worked and chewed. Steaming drool trailed down mouth folds of scaled hide thick enough to stop a lightsaber. Splay-toed feet with shovel-sized claws churned kilos of dirt with every step.
Muscular armored tails as long as their landspeeder-sized bodies whipped sinuously back and forth.
The akk dogs of Haruun Kal.
Three of them.
Nick hissed again. 'Back up. Just back up. Straight toward me. Very slowly. Don't show them your back. They're good dogs, but if you trigger their hunt-kill instincts.' The beasts circled, switching tails that could break Mace in half. Their eyes, hard-shelled and lidless, glittered without expression. Their breaths all stank of old meat, and their hides gave off a leathery musk, and for an instant Mace was on the sand in the Circus Horrificus in the bowels of Nar Shaddaa, surrounded by thousands of screaming spectators, at the mercy of Gargonn the Hutt- He understood now why he had done this. Why he'd had to.
Because in that instant's vision of a long-ago arena, Depa was at his side.
Was that their last mission together? Could it be?
It seemed so long ago.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I had come to Nar Shaddaa to track down exotic-animal smugglers who had sold attack- trained akk dogs to the Red laro terrorists of Lannik-and Depa had followed me to the Smugglers' Moon because she had suspected I might need her help. How right she was: even together, we barely survived. It was a terrible fight, against mutated giant akks for the amusement of the Circus Horrificus patrons- But remembering it in the jungle, I found that my eyes filled with tears.
On that day in Nar Shaddaa, she showed me blade work that surpassed my own; she had continued to grow and study and progress in Vaapad as well as the Force.
She made me so very proud.
It had been years since she had passed her Trials of Knighthood; she had long been a Jedi Master, and a member of the Council; but for that one day, we had again been Mace and Depa, Master and Padawan, pitting the lethal efficiency of Vaapad against the worst the galaxy could throw at us. We fought as we had so many times: a perfectly integrated unit, augmenting each other's strengths, countering each other's weaknesses, and on that day it seemed we should have never done anything else. As Jedi Knights, we were unbeatable. As Masters, members of the Council- What have we won? Anything?
Or have we lost everything?
How is it that our generation came to be the first in a thousand years to see our Republic shattered by war?
'Windu!' Nick urgently hissed Mace back to the present.
Mace lifted his head. Nick stared down at him from three meters above the jungle floor.
'Don't just stand there!' 'All right.' Mace lifted his hands, and all three akk dogs lay down. A touch of the Force and a turn of both palms, and the three dogs rolled onto their backs, black tongues lolling to the side between razor-sharp teeth. They panted happily, gazing at him with absolute trust.
Nick said something about dipping himself in tusker poop.
Mace moved to one dog's head, sliding the palm of his hand between the triangle that six vestigial horns formed on the akk's brow. His other hand he placed just beside the akk's lower lip, so that the creature's huge tongue could flick Mace's scent into the olfactory pits beside his nostrils. He moved from one to the next, and then to the last; they took his scent, and he took their Force-feel. With the severe formality such solemn occasions demanded they respectfully learned each other.
Magnificent creatures. So different from the mutant giants that Depa and he had fought in the Circus Horrificus. In the fetid depths of Nar Shaddaa, Gargonn had taken noble defenders of the herd and twisted them into vicious slaughterers- And Mace could not help but wonder if something on Haruun Kal might have done the same to Depa. 'All right,' he said, to everyone and no one. 'I'm ready to go.' Every night, they made a cold camp: no fire, and no need for one. The akks would keep predators at bay, and the Korunnai did not mind the darkness. Though militia gunships did not fly at night, a campfire was sufficiently hotter than the surrounding jungle that it could be detected by satellite sensors; Nick explained dryly that you never knew when the Balawai might decide to drop a DOKAW on your head.
