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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.

Something was still strong enough even in Lesh's thyssel-addled mind that he could resist Mace's Force-pushed order. "Don't know anything, you."

His voice went thicker, hitching, as if he wasn't breathing well. "But teach you, will Kar. What you do, he knows. Teach you, will the akks.

Wait, you. Wait and see."

Kar? There'd been a Kar Vaster mentioned in several of Depa's reports.

His name had come up as a particularly capable leader of a commando squad, independent or semi-independent; Mace was unclear on the ULF's command structure. But Lesh breathed the name with a sort of superstitious awe...

And had he said akks? or ax?

"Lesh. You have to go. Now." Questions notwithstanding, Mace was not so foolish as to engage a bark-drunk man in conversation.

"Think you know her. Think she's yours. Teach you better. Maybe. Live long enough to learn, you? Maybe not."

That was enough of a threat for a flick of the Force to bring his lightsaber to his hand. The sizzling flare of its blade cast purple-fringed shadows. But Lesh was not attacking.

He hadn't moved. His rifle was tucked crosswise into his lap.

Tears streamed down his face.

That was the blur in his voice. That was the thick hitch.

He was crying. Silently.

"Lesh," Mace began in astonishment, "what's the ma-" He stopped himself because Lesh was still bark-drunk, and Mace was still not a fool.

Instead, he offered a hand towel from his kitbag. "Here. Wipe