Day.
Mace stood in a universe of rain.
As though the jungle's trees and ferns and flowers had grown at the foot of a towering waterfall, rain pounded through leaf and branch with a roar that made conversation possible only in shouts. No waterproof gear could handle this; in less than a minute, Mace's clothes had soaked through. He dealt with it Korun-style: he ignored it. His clothes would dry, and so would he. He was more concerned with his eyes; he had to shelter them with both hands in order to look up against the rush. Visibility was only a handful of meters.
It was just barely good enough that he could see the corpses.
They hung upside down, elbows bent at a strange angle because their hands were still tied behind them. Living gripleaves twined around their ankles held them six meters above the jungle floor, low enough to bring their heads within an easy jump for a vine cat like the one an akk had chased off as Mace and Nick approached.
Mace counted seven bodies.
Birds and insects had been at them as well as the vine cats. They'd been hanging for a while.
In damp gloom that alternated with thunderous downpours. And metals weren't the only thing that the local molds and fungi fed on. Through the colorless tatters that were all that remained of their clothing, it was impossible to tell even if they had been men or women. Mace was only moderately certain they had been human.
He stood beneath them, looking up into the empty eye sockets of the two that still had heads.
'Is this what you felt?' Nick shouted down from the saddle. His grasser reached for the gripleaves that held the bodies, and Nick jabbed its forelimb with his brassvine goad. The grasser decided to rip up some nearby glass-ferns instead. It never stopped chewing.
Mace nodded. Echoes of these murders howled in the Force around him. He'd been able to feel it from hundreds of meters away.
This place stank of the dark side.
'Well, now you've seen it. Nothing for us to do here. Come on, mount up!' The corpses stared down at Mace without eyes.
Asking him: What will you do about us?
'Are they-' Mace's voice was thick; he had to cough it clear, and enough water ran into his mouth that he passed a few seconds coughing for real. 'Are these Balawai?' 'How should I know?' Mace stepped out from below the bodies and squinted up at Nick. A blaze of lightning above the canopy haloed the young Korun's black hair with gold. 'You mean they could have been Korunnai?' 'Sure! What's your point?' He seemed puzzled that Mace would care one way or the other.
Mace wasn't sure why he cared, either. Or even if he cared. People are people. Dead is dead.
Even if these had happened to be the enemy, nothing could make this right.
'We should bury them.' 'We should get out of here!' 'What?' 'Mount up! We're leaving.' 'If we can't bury them, at least we can cut them down. Burn them. Something.' Mace caught at the mounting rope as though his merely human strength might hold back the two-ton grasser.
'Sure. Burn 'em.' Nick sputtered a mouthful of the drenching rain down the grasser's flank.
'There's that Jedi sense of humor again.' 'We can't just leave them for the scavengers!' 'Sure we can. And we will.' Nick leaned down toward him, and on his face was something that might have even been pity. For Mace, that is. For the dead, he seemed to feel nothing at all.
'If those are Korunnai,' Nick shouted, not unkindly, 'to give them any kind of decent burial will only light a giant We-Were-Here ad-vertiscreen for the next band of irregulars or militia patrol. And give them a pretty good idea of when. If those are Balawai-' He glanced up at them. Everything human left his face.
He lowered his voice, but Mace could read his lips. 'If they're Balawai,' he muttered, 'this is already better than they deserve.' Night.
Mace woke from evil dreams without opening his eyes.
He wasn't alone.
He didn't need the Force to tell him this. He could smell him. Rank sweat. Drool and raw thyssel.
Lesh.
Barely a murmur: 'Why here, Windu? You come here why?' The wallet tent was pitch black. Lesh shouldn't even have known Mace was awake.
'What want here, you? Come to take her away from us, you? Said you would, she.' His voice was blurry with the drug and with a childlike weepy puzzlement, as though he suspected Mace might break his favorite toy.
'Lesh.' Mace pitched his voice deep. Calm. Assured as a father. 'You have to leave my tent, Lesh. We can talk about this in the morning.' 'Think you can? Huh? Think you can?' His voice thinned: a shout strangled to a whisper.
Now Mace smelled machine oil and portaak amber.
He was armed.
'Don't understand yet, you. But find out, you will-' Mace reached into the Force. He could feel him: crouched by Mace's ankle. Mace's bedroll was pinned beneath his boots.
A less-than-ideal combat position.
'Lesh.' Mace added the Force to his voice. 'You want to leave, now. We'll talk in the morning.' 'What morning? Morning for you? Morning for me?' Mace couldn't tell if he was saying morning, or mourning.
