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Leia displayed the serpent to Sha. “Are they found around here?”

Sha shook her head. “It’s too cold here at night.”

“It was directed.” Luke kept his voice low, but everyone at the offworlders’ camp heard him. “That’s what we were feeling. It was directed through the Force—”

There was a cry from elsewhere in the camp, a man’s cry of pain and dismay. It was so visceral that it brought the rest of the offworlders to their feet, and they craned their necks to look in the direction of the noise. It came from a campfire in the Broken Columns camp, and they could see, at this distance, a group of men standing in a circle, some of them bending over, swinging burning brands at something on the ground. Finally, one of them drew a blaster pistol and fired. The others waited for a moment, then backed away and turned their attention to something on the ground a couple of meters away, something Ben could not see.

Luke, Ben, and their companions headed in that direction, as did scores of Dathomiri … and then there was another cry, again a man’s cry, from elsewhere in the Broken Columns camp.

Half an hour later, what had been mystery and puzzlement had been revealed as tragedy.

At the same time the serpent in the offworlders’ camp was coiling to strike at Han, five more kodashi vipers were preparing to strike elsewhere in the camp—all in the Broken Columns area. One had been speared before striking, but the other four had been successful. Four men, all winners of various events at these games, had been poisoned, had suffered agonizing pain from the serpents’ neurotoxins, and had died within minutes. Gone were the winners of the speeder bike race, the wrestling, the long footrace, and the spear-throw, all for those without Arts.

Within minutes a man of the Broken Columns—bearded, burly, dressed in tan leather vest and kilt—moved out to the gap between the two camps, only meters from the offworlders’ campfire, and began to shout. “It was them!” His voice, grating and deep, was loud enough to carry to every corner of the camp. He pointed into the center of the Raining Leaves encampment. “They say they want to unite, but they mean they want us as slaves again. They’ll kill any man who stands out above the rest—”

“Liar!” That was Firen, trainer of rancors. She ran out into the gap between camps, redness and an expression of anger suffusing her face. She charged the shouting man and, despite his effort to twist away, struck him an open-palm blow to the chest. The impact took the man off his feet and sent him to the ground.

Ben headed that way. Women and men from all over the campsite also moved in the direction of the altercation.

The bearded man, despite the raw power of the blow that had taken him down, rolled away from Firen and stood in a single graceful motion. Though somewhat bent over from the obvious pain in his chest, he was fully functional, and his hand fell on the hilt of his sheathed knife.

Ben put on a burst of speed, though his experience slowed down as his sense of time distorted.

In what seemed like exaggerated slow motion, the man drew his knife, which had a double-edged blade that was probably thirty centimeters long. He held his left hand, his empty hand, before him, his knife hand drawn back, as he stepped toward Firen.

And then Ben was upon them. He drew his lightsaber, ignited it, and struck all in a single motion. The glowing blade hit the man’s knife just ahead of the crossguard. The noise of energy blade meeting steel was almost musical as the lightsaber sheared the knife in half. Ben deactivated his weapon and took half a step back before the bearded man and Firen could even react.

The bearded man, stunned, looked down at his ruined weapon. Firen, her angry expression unchanged, now kept an eye on Ben and drew away from him.

Luke was there, too, all of a sudden, in their midst. When he spoke, his voice was nowhere near as loud as the bearded man’s, but it seemed to carry just as far. “Tell me. Who thinks for the Broken Columns?”

Onrushing Dathomiri