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  She grabbed at the midsection of the gaderffii and used it to pull him toward her. “I’m telling you for the last time, Orrin. If you ever let Jabe go out on one of your posses again, you better wrap your head in bandages and stay with the Tuskens!”

  “Now, Annie—”

  “Don’t you ‘Now, Annie’ me!” she cut in, livid. “I mean it, Orrin. You can get your speeders out of my garages and park ’em under a tarp,” she said, pushing at the gaffi stick. “You want somebody to feed your crew, you go to Bestine. You want guns, you talk to Jabba!”

  “Hey, now,” Orrin said, defensively, aware again of the rapt crowd. Even the drinkers had come out of the Claim to watch. “This isn’t some eastern town,” he said. “This is the Pika Oasis. Nobody here messes with Jabba!”

  “You cross me again, and you’ll feel like a Hutt landed on you!” Green eyes blazed at him. “Understood?”

  “You get the wildest ideas. Now, calm down, or you’ll leave your boy an orphan—” With a heave, Orrin tugged at the weapon. He expected resistance, but she let go suddenly and his arm, overbalanced, swung the gaderffii in a wide arc …

  … right into the windshield of his landspeeder. Shards flew everywhere.

  Orrin eyed the mess. “Great,” he said. “Just great.” He looked back at Annileen. “See what you made me do?”

  “Me? You were holding it.” Annileen barely glanced at the shattered windshield. “I hope you took a lot better care of my son out there!”

  “Jabe takes care of himself just fine,” Orrin said, growing aggravated. “You’re treating him like a droid with a restraining bolt!”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Really!” He and Annileen were in each other’s faces, now. “And maybe you should look at yourself,” Orrin said. “Ask yourself just why he feels the need to get out from under—”

  A husky voice came from the crowd. “Ah, just kiss her already!”

  “Who said that?” Annileen’s eyes darted around the spectators. “Who said that?”

  “We all did,” Leelee said, crossing her arms and shaking her head.

  Annileen snorted at her friend. “I thought you left.”

  “What, and miss the entertainment?”

  The settlers to either side of the Zeltron laughed.

  While Annileen smoldered, Orrin quickly passed the Tusken weapon to his son. Half the oasis had been trying to set Annileen up with Orrin since his last wife left. The other half assumed they were already together. But Orrin knew better than to react in the slightest. There wasn’t a more dangerous subject in the galaxy.

  Annileen pivoted and returned to her son. Kallie was helping Jabe stand: he seemed flustered and a little tipsy to Orrin, but undamaged.

  “Leelee’s right, Mom,” the farmer heard Kallie whisper. “You and Orrin have been doing this dance for years—”

  “You can be replaced,” Annileen told her daughter, ire returning. “Go do something.”

  Kallie looked at her, offended. “Okay.” She turned on her heel and left—abandoning Jabe, who immediately fell back to the ground.

  As Annileen collected her son, Orrin directed Mullen to take his landspeeder back to the garage. “It’s no big deal. Just have Gloamer put the repair on the account,” he said. Remembering some of the debts he had coming due, Orrin lowered his voice and added to Mullen: “The store’s account.”

  The show over, the crowd filtered into the Claim. Annileen brushed herself off; she would have a lot of people to serve. Orrin chanced a conversation with her before he followed the others. “Did you get the Bezzards put up?”

  Annileen expelled a deep breath. “They’re in the guest quarters now. They came in just as I was heading out to meet Jabe.”

  “Blessed reason, I hope you at least put down the bantha prod,” Orrin said. “Those people have been scared enough!”

  Orrin watched as Annileen tried—and failed—to suppress a smile. “No,” she said, “they’re okay. The doc’s in with them.”

  “That’s good.”

  Before he could enter the store, Annileen pulled at his sleeve and looked at him with concern. “They said it was Plug-eye.”

  Orrin spoke softly. “Yeah. They got old Lotho and the Bith farmhand. But we took out a few.” He paused. “Our people didn’t chase far.”

  She stared keenly at him. “And Jabe was never in danger?”

  “Everyone lives with danger here. You know that. But if you try to turn that boy into a clerk like his daddy, you’re gonna lose him altogether. You need to trust me.” Orrin tapped her on the shoulder. “Now, if both your children are accounted for, I think we’ve got about thirty heroes waiting for their drinks in there.”

  “On the Fund’s tab,” she said, with what he took for mock sternness. Then she nearly smiled.

  Yes, we’ll be all right. Orrin grinned as he held the door open for her. This would turn out to be a good day after—

  A loud crack resonated from the other side of the building, followed by a feral yelp. A young woman’s indecipherable yell came a second later.

  Now what? Puzzled, Orrin rounded the building. There, in the side yard, he saw smashed corral fencing—and a cloud of dust heading toward the dunes to the southwest. He could just make out the blond figure amid the whirlwind, hanging on for dear life.

  Annileen appeared beside him. “Tell me it isn’t!”

  “Can’t lie to you,” Orrin said, peering into the distance. “That would be your Kallie running off on a crazy dewback.”

  “Snit!”

  Orrin sighed and shrugged. “Well, you did tell her to go do something …”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A’YARK JABBED THE KNIFE again into the warrior’s arm. Black streamed from the cut, fouling the young Tusken’s wrappings. The shrapnel was buried deep, too deep for A’Yark to reach.

  The survivors of the raiding party had been glad to reach The Pillars, a jagged cleave into the Jundland where the settlers and their vehicles could not follow. But the wastes had taken offense at being used for cowardice—and the young Tusken had paid. The injured warrior had evaded the settlers’ gunfire, but not the accursed grenade they had thrown before leaving, and what it had done to the rock wall. The arm would grow diseased, the hand unusable. If something happened beyond that, the Tuskens never knew. It wasn’t a thing worth knowing.

  A’Yark gave the blade to the warrior and spoke the words. They were the words known to all of them, the words that separated a Tusken from the other creatures that lived in the dust.

  Whoever has two hands can hold a gaderffii.

  The warrior stared at the weapon but did not question his duty. Another would take his bantha; the band could no longer afford to lose warrior and beast both.

  A’Yark gave the warrior his solitude and made a mental note to send someone over for the body. The important work was with the others, now. The morning’s raid had been a risk—perhaps too great a risk when their numbers were so small. And yet A’Yark had been certain that it was necessary. The settlers had grown too bold. The Tuskens needed to be bolder.

  What remained of the clan now hid, like the coward sun, among The Pillars. Legend held that a giant had repeatedly struck the mountains with a dagger here; some said it was the younger sun himself, flailing against his brother. Whatever the explanation, the landscape was unreal. Natural stone columns and crumbling obelisks climbed to the sky, some topped by precariously perched boulders. A maze of narrow passageways crisscrossed among the towers. Some led to caverns, some led nowhere. A clearing amid the tall rocks provided enough room for a cramped campground around a sacred well; banthas and Sand People alike clumped in the craggy stomach of the Jundland.

  No one said anything as A’Yark passed through the camp. The dozens who had remained here during the raid knew that many weaklings had fallen. There was no time to mourn the unworthiness of kin. Those names, those voices, belonged to the past. The Sand People had to survive today.

  The Tuskens had a word for �
�tomorrow,” but it was seldom used. What good would it be? Death rode behind the Tusken, as the shadows to the bantha. The settlers seemed not to know that. Erecting shelters to protect their precious futures, the settlers became things fat and fleshy—no better than Hutts. Perhaps that was how the Hutts had come to be? A’Yark had never really wondered about it, or much else.

  No, only today mattered. Each day’s survival was a trophy that could be carried into the tales of the past—a stroke against the damnation cast upon them by the suns. It was a thing to be proud of. But who would tell the stories if all fell?

  At the well, the thirsty war leader dismissed the idle thoughts and pulled the rope. The noons were coming. Younglings needed feeding, gaderffii points sharpening—and a new target would need to be chosen. A’Yark would select it, as always.

  The container reached the top of the well. For the third time in as many days, it held only damp sand. Others had called it an ill omen. A’Yark simply wanted to kill something.

  A cloth-bound youngling ran up and bleated a message from the watch. A’Yark listened with rising anger. There was someone riding an animal through the dunes. Again.

  There had been other encroachments near the wastes, recently. A’Yark had even heard of a single hooded human, riding a heavily laden eopie across the desert from east to west, untouched by the Tusken scouts who espied him. A’Yark had flown into a rage over that one. A settler might take a machine across the dunes, or attempt to. But this was the act of one whose wits were lost—or of a being so powerful he felt none could harm him. A’Yark didn’t care what the answer was. Such impudence should have been dealt with, no matter what their current state.

  The others hearing the youngling took up their weapons right away. Good, A’Yark thought. Even after this morning, some spirit remained. But much needed doing here. They would stay, while A’Yark went to investigate and punish the intruder. And if they argued the point, someone else would lose an arm.

  This kill would belong to A’Yark.

  “Yaah!”

  Annileen yanked again at the reins. Vilas heard and rumbled forward, nimbly crawling over the rocky outcrop. He was over it in a few seconds. Another call from Annileen and he was off again, barreling across the floor of the dusty bowl valley.

  Kicks from a rider meant nothing to the dewback, whose brownish red scales could protect it against any spur. But Vilas seemed to understand where he was going, and what he had to do.

  It was why Annileen had headed directly for him when she’d seen the busted fence. Her landspeeder would have been faster, but Kallie and Snit had lit off in the direction of The Rumbles, a lightly rocky stretch known mostly for the turbulent ride it gave hovercraft. That was no problem, but it also made for more difficult tracking at speed. Vilas, on the other hand, knew right where to go—she hoped.

  “That’s the one,” she said, picking out the right cloud from several dust devils in the distance. Vilas knew it, too. She clung to him. Annileen hadn’t ridden in three years, but it wasn’t something she was likely to forget. Half the dewbacks in Bestine today had descended from Caelum Thaney’s herd. She’d be working on her father’s ranch still, if the animals hadn’t gotten the Parch, a wasting disease that prevented their cells from utilizing water.

  By the end, there had been little left of the herd—or of Caelum, who’d watched as all his farmhands left. After Annileen was forced to take a job working for Dannar, her father became unreachable. Four years later, after she and her mother relocated to a hut nearer the oasis, he finally took a blaster to his sorrows. Annileen had found him at home just three days after her announced engagement. He’d relocated the dozen remaining dewback eggs to what had once been her nursery, years before.

  The livery stables and corral at the Claim had been Dannar’s surprise wedding present to Annileen; the Thaney legacy lived on outside her store window, providing her distraction and solace. And when Dannar had died, Kallie—then nine—had found that same peace in tending the creatures. Annileen had ceded all care of the animals to her then. Kallie needed it, and there was something else: the girl wouldn’t have to spend her teen years debating the price of blankets with people who couldn’t remember her name.

  It felt good to be on a dewback again, though—even given the danger. Snit had been a temptation, a challenge sitting there for Kallie for far too long. Annileen suspected now that Snit had mountain dewback blood in him; one of Orrin’s crews had brought a batch of eggs after digging them up in a field. Mountain dewbacks were just shy of the cannibal breed for craziness. Annileen cursed herself for not doing a proper genetic workup before. She knew how, and the stable had simple diagnostic tools. But she’d been too busy. And neither of her kids was proving much good against temptation.

  Kallie was in sight now, half a kilometer ahead. Snit didn’t show any signs of stopping. Annileen and her mount cut directly across the flats toward them. Kallie was still out of earshot, but Annileen could see the girl was no longer in control of the beast, if she ever had been.

  The Calwell livery beat all others for safety: three mighty girth straps went around each dewback’s midsection, securing saddles. But those only worked well if the dewback sat still for the fitting, and she couldn’t imagine Snit had. The resultant loose straps, she now saw, had caused the saddle to start sliding off Snit’s back to the right. Kallie, her foot tangled in a stirrup, was hanging over the animal’s side, desperately clinging to the reins. With every futile attempt to climb back atop Snit, the girl was driving him crazier. He wouldn’t stop until he’d shaken her.

  Snit topped a rise and vanished. Annileen reached it long seconds later. What she saw on the other side took her breath away. She’d known the eastern reaches were prone to sinkholes, but this place was a geologic minefield. Worse, it was the kind of pockmarked landform favored by—and often caused by—creatures so horrific they nearly defied description.

  Sarlaccs. Big underground appetites that preyed on anything foolish enough to wander along. Monsters that could swallow a landspeeder whole, but were often impossible to see until they had you.

  And Snit was running straight into the place.

  Annileen doubled up on the reins and pushed ahead. Vilas snorted, straining against her. He didn’t like the look of the area, she could tell—and she couldn’t blame him. But she had to play the odds. Sarlaccs were rare. There was a particularly large one at Carkoon; another near some of Tatooine’s many ancient ruins, she’d heard tell. Even a tiny one of their spawn could be a fatal discovery—but there was no other choice now. She prodded the animal into a bounding run, keeping as far away from the mini craters as possible.

  “Help!” Annileen’s eyes left the pitted ground and darted a hundred meters ahead. Snit was going places fast, and Kallie was still stuck. “Mom, help!”

  Annileen’s heart caught in her throat—but she realized it meant that Kallie had seen her. She gritted her teeth and pushed forward, her senses overloading. There was sand flying everywhere in Snit’s wake; Annileen’s hair, now unbound, blew openly and violently behind her. The desert floor rose and fell below, present here, absent there. And there was the constant thrum-thrum-thrum of Vilas’s feet slamming against the surface, reverberating through her body. Yet she was still gaining.

  Vilas got his legs tangled up for a moment, but recovered quickly. Facing away from the chase for that second, Annileen thought she saw a Tusken Raider, peering at her from over a far distant dune. A moment later she was back on track, and sure she was hallucinating. Too much adrenaline. Snit, up ahead, didn’t seem to care about anything.

  Annileen’s voice cracked as she yelled into the wind. “Stop! Stop!”

  Snit was only a dozen meters ahead of her—and Annileen could see clearly how Kallie was tangled in the stirrup. The terrified girl was half sliding off Snit’s right side now, and in imminent danger of shaking free and landing beneath the beast’s massive rear legs. Annileen had to move.

  “Sorry, boy,” she called to Vilas.
“Gotta do this!” She pushed the dewback harder, bringing him within nipping distance of Snit’s left hind shank. There was no question of riding up on the right; Kallie would be doubly in danger then, if she fell. Annileen would have to bring the monster under control herself.

  Vilas moderated his pace; fearful, Annileen figured, of Snit turning on him. But she was close enough. She released the reins, threw her weight forward, and scrambled up onto Vilas’s massive neck, the dewback’s scales skinning her gloveless hands.

  She looked down at the narrowing space between the two dewbacks. Grit exploded from the ground, each pounding step of Snit’s a sandy geyser. If Snit knew Vilas was alongside, he hadn’t reacted—yet. But he surely would. What would he do then?

  Annileen had mounted a trotting dewback before, but never an angry one running at full speed, from atop another animal. Snit could do anything. It was too dangerous to try.

  But she could hear Kallie, too, crying out with every bump.

  Now!

  Annileen reached into space, clutching for Snit’s rearmost girth strap. It was the only part of the rigging that looked at all secure—and it was. The second she had a firm grasp on it, she heaved herself from Vilas to Snit.

  This Snit did notice—and he wasn’t the least bit happy about it. He snapped his mighty tail forward, trying to swat away the woman hugging his back. Annileen hung on, pulling herself ahead, handhold by tenuous handhold. Vilas was gone now, having angled off to the north; Annileen was committed. Still clinging, she grabbed Kallie’s arm and tried to pull her up.

  No good. The load was too much, her hold too awkward. Annileen feared toppling them both off. But better they go on or go off the creature together. Annileen reached over to grab a handful of shirt …