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The ground shook as the onrushing rancors came near. They passed the two Witches in the rear. One headed for Luke, one for Vestara.

Luke traversed toward the right. The Witches’ lightning stayed with him. Too late, the Witches recognized his tactic. The crackling streams of lightning crossed over Luke’s rancor.

The lightning jittered over the beast’s body, illuminating it. The beast stumbled in its run, falling forward. Its inadvertent dive brought it below the lightning bolts, which returned to harry Luke. But he caught them on his blade again, and the damage had been done: the rancor lay still, smoke rising from its back. Luke grinned at the Witches, a smile not of humor but of warning.

To his left, Luke saw the second rancor tripping over something, falling toward Vestara—

The something was the Witch closest to Vestara. Somehow the girl had redirected the Witch, perhaps with another kick or an exertion through the Force, and had put her beneath the rancor’s feet. Now the Witch was down, trodden upon, and the rancor was in the middle of an awkward collapse.

Vestara showed it no mercy. With grace and speed worthy of a Jedi Knight, she sidestepped and brought up her blade in a blindingly fast slash. The blow intercepted the rancor’s throat. The beast’s shoulder came to ground centimeters from her feet.

One of the two rearmost Witches diverted her lightning to Vestara. The Sith girl caught it on her blade and was forced backward, taking slow steps and skidding slightly as the energy compelled her into unwilling retreat.

But that left only one on Luke. Pushing, summoning his willpower and technique in the Force, he walked toward his Witch at the same rate Vestara retreated before hers.

He felt the new attack in the Force before he detected its direct effects. There was a pulse of energy from all along the tree line. Then wind howled out of the forest and rushed against him, battering him, adding its strength to that of the lightning.

He couldn’t advance against it, so he rooted himself in place. The wind tore at his clothes and his hair, caused him to squint and shield his face with his free hand. But he could not be put down, could not be pushed back.

He saw winds hammer at the two downed Witches. In a moment the currents caught them up. They rose to an altitude of a couple of meters, the skins they wore rippling and tattering in the wind, and then they hurtled toward the forest. The two Witches pouring Force lightning against him and Vestara also retreated, but they kept their feet and backed away until they reached the tree line and disappeared within it.

Still the wind kept up. Luke saw Vestara pressed up against a sheer rock face at the bottom of the slope.

Now the four rancors that had passed him descended, too. All had blood on them, and clearly most of that blood was not their own. As they reached the base of the hill, they broke into a run and were, moments later, lost in the shadows of the trees.

Then, and only then, did the winds subside.

He looked over at Vestara, who could finally move free of the rock face she’d been pinned against. He gave her a little salute of the lightsaber before he deactivated it. “I’m surprised you came to my aid. Considering the determination you showed when you and your mistress fought me in the Maw.”

Vestara, too, deactivated her weapon—or, rather, Ben’s, as Luke now recognized it to be. She shrugged. “We were enemies then. Now we have a common goal.”

“Which is, exactly, what?”

“Defeat of the Nightsisters, of course. Do you wish me to stay with you?”

He shook his head. “I think Ben will need his lightsaber back.”

Vestara began a graceful ascent of the slope. “If I were you, I’d cut off one of the rancor heads and prop it up on a stone. Give the others something to think about. To fear.”

“Not my style.” After a moment, Luke began climbing up after her, returning to his halfway point.

Ben watched the girl climb. Emotions struggled within him. Gratitude that she’d helped Luke. Suspicion as to her motives. When