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More joined in, women as well as men, and the laughter rose. Ben imagined it flowing down the hillside and into the surrounding trees.

He hopped down from his boulder and found Dyon beside him.

“Good thinking, Jedi.”

Ben shrugged. “My cousin became a master at psychological warfare.”

“Your cous—oh.”

Ben felt a twitch from overhead, as if a giant spider made of Force energy had stepped onto its web. Then, from the southwest, he heard a thum-thum-thum of footsteps—huge, heavy footsteps.

Down below, in the starlight and moonlight, three humanoid shapes broke free of the tree line and moved toward the hill at a run, a pace whose speed no human short of a Jedi could match.

Rancors.

“Bows, blasters, fire at will!” That was Tasander. “Spears, brace yourselves!” Kaminne was shouting similar orders to her warriors and Witches.

Far below, halfway between ground level and hilltop, a short line of green light gleamed into life—Luke’s lightsaber.

Ben got his own lightsaber into hand, but held off from joining the spear line. Much as he wanted to be there to help resist the initial shock of the rancors’ impact, he also knew that he’d be far more valuable plugging up the line if and where it began to fail.

From pockets in his vest, Dyon drew matching blaster pistols, small ones. He stood ready for the first rancor to top the crest of the hill ahead.

The imaginary Force spider took another step. Threads of Force energy were being depressed. Ben swore to himself, not wanting to be distracted from the events playing out below.

The rancors reached the bottom of the slope and hurtled upward, half running and half climbing, their pace barely slowed by the change in angle. As the rancors reached the halfway point, Ben saw his father’s lightsaber swing with shooting-star speed. Then it disappeared as the central rancor’s body interposed between Ben and Luke—but suddenly that central rancor was howling in rage and pain, climbing more slowly or not at all, being left behind by the other two.

Blasterfire and unseen bowfire rained down on the rancors. It illuminated them in brief glints of light but did not seem to slow them at all.

And suddenly they were at the crest, two of them, roaring. At first only their hands and heads were visible, then they heaved up, their waists at the hilltop.

The Broken Columns spearmen in the center and the Raining Leaves spearwomen to the sides surged forward, driving steel-headed weapons and improvised stakes into the bodies of the rancors. But the beasts continued forward and a second later both stood towering over the warriors.

And Ben could feel where those other Force threads were being tugged. He tore his attention away from the rancors and glanced at the opposite side.

Dyon aimed a blaster at the rightmost rancor. Ben caught his wrist and pushed it down again. He turned toward the fight. “Attack from the rear!”

No one heard. He put some Force energy into it. “Attack from the rear, reinforcements to the rear!”

Some heads turned, but in the tumult and confusion, no one responded.

Well, at least he had Dyon’s attention. He gestured toward the northwest slope. “That way!” Then he himself bounced from rocktop to rocktop toward the east slope.

Before he reached it, a rancor heaved itself over the crest, moving as though precisely launched from some ancient artillery piece, and landed before him. It immediately reached for Ben, roaring.

He caromed off his last landing-rock and veered rightward, hitting and rolling across the uneven stone surface, and rose with his lightsaber glowing in his hand.

Now that he was close to a rancor, he could see, even in the dim moonlight, that the beast was swatched in patches of crude hide armor. Such armor provided almost no defense against a lightsaber’s energy, but the rancors already had bones and muscles thick enough to make them hard to hurt. Ben slashed out at the beast’s knee, splitting thick hide and skin, doubtless cutting into the kneecap, but the rancor merely