Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [152]
Eyvind. I knelt next to her. She was holding Eyvind with blood all over him, and there was shooting all around us, and then Sand People. I stood up and held on to Ariela so maybe they would recognize me and not kill me and Ariela, and some of them did step back when they saw me—
But something hit me in the back and sent me sprawling—a backhanded slap from the broad, flat face of a gaffi stick—and I couldn’t breathe for a minute, though I never blacked out. I heard screams, and I heard Ariela scream, and I couldn’t move, I could only see, for a minute, the feet of Sand People rushing around me, and then human feet, and a human pulled me up and leered into my face.
“This is your fault!” he shouted. “This comes from giving them water.”
He shoved me back down onto the sand, but I could breathe now and get up on my own, and they were carrying Eyvind away.
“He’s dead,” someone shouted at me, and the words hit me almost as hard as the gaffi stick had hit me. I couldn’t breathe again.
“They’ve taken Ariela,” someone else shouted. “They dragged her away from Eyvind and took her.”
Ariela’s mother grabbed hold of my arm. “You’ve got to save her,” she said. “The others are going after the Sand People to shoot them, and the Sand People will surely kill my daughter before she can be rescued. You’ve got to save her.”
“I’ll take Wimateeka,” I said. “He can translate for me.”
And that eventually became our plan: I had twelve hours to find the Sand People and convince them to turn Ariela over to me. In the meantime, everyone else would organize a well-equipped posse. If I wasn’t back in twelve hours, they would come looking.
And they would come out to kill the Sand People.
I found Wimateeka and the other Jawas huddled in their crawler. I explained what I had to do, and I asked Wimateeka to come with me. He started shaking, but he got up and walked with me to my speeder. He was still shaking when I lifted him in.
After I’d started off, I wondered why I wasn’t shaking.
Day 50, Early Afternoon: I Wait by the
Vaporator with a Last Gift of Water
I waited by the vaporator because I thought the Sand People would take Ariela to their main camp, somewhere northwest of here. I could travel faster than the adolescents in my landspeeder, so I was ahead of them and they would pass by me. They would probably stop to see if I had left some water.
And I had worked out what I would tell them. These were adolescents who needed to prove themselves worthy to be adults. I could offer them a way to be remembered forever in tales and gain an adulthood always honored: negotiate with the Jawas and me to secure the boundaries of their land and thus their nomadic way of life. I knew their adults would have to be consulted, but the adolescents could start the process and convince them of the necessity of it.
I hoped they would agree with me. I hoped they wouldn’t behead me first. I hoped they would agree that Ariela was a trifling matter compared to this and that the water and cloth Wimateeka and I had brought from my house to trade for her would buy her back.
So we waited on the sand, with our water and cloth, and the holo-display unit and my map.
And they came to us, suddenly. All at once we were surrounded by young Sand People, each armed with a gaffi stick, glistening sharp-edged in the harsh sunlight. The dunes were covered with Sand People. I looked for Ariela, but could not see her at first.
I stood and raised my arm and clenched my fist and greeted them: “Koroghh gahgt takt.”
They were all quiet. None of them spoke or raised their arms. That’s when I saw Ariela: bound and gagged and guarded on top of a dune south of me. “Tell the Sand People what I say,” I asked Wimateeka, and I knew I had to speak quickly and well to save her life, and