resting on the grasser's broad, smooth spine, while Nick rode the foreshoulder saddle, peering over the top of its head.
These long, rocking rides through the jungle struck Mace with a deep uneasiness. Facing only backward, he could never see what was ahead, only what they had already passed; and even that had meanings he could not penetrate. Much of what he looked at, he could not be wholly sure if it was plant or animal, poisonous, predatory, harmless, beneficial-perhaps even sentient enough to have a moral nature of its own, good or evil.
He had a queasy feeling that these rides were symbolic of the war itself, for him. He was backing into it. Even in the full light of day, he had no clue what was coming, and no real understanding of what had passed. Utterly lost. Darkness would only make it worse.
He hoped he was wrong. Symbols are slippery.
Uncertain.
During the day, he saw the akk dogs in glimpses through the jun gle as they ranged the rugged terrain around. They went before and behind, patrolling to guard the others from jungle predators, of which these jungles hid many that were large enough to kill a grasser. The three akks were bonded to Besh, Lesh, and Chalk. Nick had no akk of his own. 'Hey, growing up on the streets of Pelek Baw, what would I do with an akk? What would I feed it, people? Heh, well, actually, now that I think about it-' 'You could find one now,' Mace said. 'You have the power; I've felt it. You could have a Force-bonded companion like your friends do.' 'Are you kidding? I'm too young for that kind of commitment.' 'Really?' 'Shee. Worse than being married.' Mace said distantly, 'I wouldn't know.' Mace would often get drowsy from the heat and the grasser's smooth gait. What little sleep he got at night was plagued by feverish dreams, indistinctly menacing and violent. The first morning after he'd triggered his wallet tent's autofold and tucked it back into its hand-sized pocket in his kitbag, Nick had heard his sigh and saw him rub his bleary eyes.
'Nobody sleeps well out here,' he'd told Mace with a dry chuckle. 'You'll get used to it.' Day travel was a dreamlike flow from jungle gloom to brilliant sun and back again as they crossed grasser roads: the winding strips of open meadow left behind by grasser herds as they ate their way through the jungle. These were often the only times he'd see Chalk and Besh and Lesh, their grassers, and their akks. Using the akk dogs to keep in contact, they could spread out for safety.
Open air was the only relief they got from the insects: it was the territory of dozens of species of lightning- fast insectivorous birds. The dogflies and pinch beetles and all the varieties of wasp and bee and hornet stuck mostly to the relative safety of shade. Mace's skin was a mass of bites and stings that required considerable exercise of Jedi discipline to avoid scratching.
The Korunnai occasionally used juices from a couple of different kinds of crushed leaves to treat particularly nasty or dangerous stings, but in general they seemed not to really notice them, in the way a person rarely notices the way boots unnaturally constrict toes. They'd had a lifetime to get used to it.
Though they could have moved faster by following the grasser roads, frequent overflights by militia gunships made that too risky: Nick informed him that people riding grassers were shot on sight. Every hour or two, the akks gave warning of approaching gunships; their keen ears could pick up the hum of repulsorlifts from more than a kilometer away, despite the jungle's constant buzz and rustle, whir and screech, and even the distant thunder of the occasional minor volcanic eruption.
Mace got enough glimpses of these gunships to have an idea of their capabilities. They looked to be customized versions of ancient Sienar Turbostorms: blastboats retrofitted for atmospheric close-assault work. Relatively slow but heavily armored, bristling with cannons and missile launchers, large enough to transport a platoon of heavy infantry. They seemed to travel in threes. The militia's ability to maintain air patrols despite the metal-eating fungi and molds was explained by the straw-colored shimmer that haloed them as they flew; each gunship was large enough to carry its own surgical field generator.
From the height of the brush and young trees on the grasser roads, the most recent ones they crossed seemed to be at least two or three standard years old. Mace mentioned this to Nick.
He grunted grimly. 'Yeah. They don't only shoot us, y'know. When Balawai gunners get bored, they start blasting grasser herds. Just for fun. It's been a couple of years since we've been stupid enough to gather more than four or five grassers in any one place. And even then we have to use akks to keep them separated enough that they don't make easy targets.' Mace frowned. Without constant contact and interaction with others of their kind, grassers could become depressed, sick-sometimes even psychotic. 'This is how you care for your herds?' Though he couldn't see Nick's face, he could hear the look on it. 'Got a better idea?' Beyond winning the war, Mace had to admit he did not.
Something else bothered him: Nick had said a couple of years-but the war had begun only a few months before. When he mentioned this, Nick replied with a derisive snort.
'Your war began a few months ago. Ours has been going since before I was born.' So began Mace's lesson in the Summertime War.
Nick wasn't sure how it started; he seemed to think it was an inevitable collision of lifestyles.
The Korunnai followed their herds. The herds destroyed the hostile jungle. The destruction of the jungle made Korun survival possible: keeping down the drillmites, and the buzzworms and the gripleaf and vine cats and the million other ways the jungle had to kill a being.
The Balawai, by contrast, harvested the jungle: they needed it intact, to promote the growth of all the spices and woods and exotic plant extractives that were the foundation of Haruun Kal's entire civilized economy-and grassers were especially partial to thyssel bark and portaak leaf.
Korun guerrillas had been fighting Balawai militia units in these jungles for almost thirty years.
Nick thought it probably started with some bust-outs-jungle prospectors down on their luck-deciding to blame their bad luck on Korunnai and their grassers. He guessed these jups got liquored up and decided to go on a grasser hunt. And he guessed that after they wiped out the herd of some unlucky ghosh, the men of the ghosh discovered that the Balawai authorities weren't interested in investigating the deaths of mere animals. So the ghosh decided they might go on a hunt themselves: a Balawai hunt.
'Why shouldn't they? They had nothing left to lose,' Nick said. 'With their herds slaughtered, their ghosh was finished anyway.' Sporadic raids had gone back and forth for decades. The Korunnai Highland was a big place. The bloodshed might die down for years at a time, but then a series of provocations from one side or the other would inevitably spark a new flare-up. Korun children were raised to hate the Balawai; Balawai children in the Uplands were raised to shoot Korunnai on sight.
It was a very old-fashioned war, on the Korun side. The metal-eating fungi restricted them mostly to simple weapons-usually based on chemical explosives of one kind or another-and living mounts instead of vehicles. They
