Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [148]
A quick glance told him that the beasts were still avoiding the unfamiliar bulk of the Millennium Falcon, but if the backup from the pass reached that far, their reticence could change. The Wookiee hoped that Spray would have the sense to use the disabled starship’s weaponry to keep the animals from damaging her further. By that time, of course, the grazers would be all over the ridge; they would start forging up the steeper slopes as soon as the pressure of the bottled herd grew great enough.
He held his bowcaster and took stock of his situation as objectively as he could, observing the animals below and the terrain around him. At length he decided that to try to work his way through the herd or even run with them would be suicide; they were aroused and in panic now and would be quick to attack any outsider among them. On the other hand—
He broke off in midthought as a shadow passed over him and a wailing cry warned him. He hit the ground rolling, clutching his weapon to him. Broad wings hissed through the air over him and sharp claws closed on nothing. The soarer swept onward, leaving a carrion reek in the air, screaming its frustration. A second, behind it, tried a swoop of its own.
The Wookiee came up onto one knee and threw his bowcaster up to his shoulder, lacking time to focus through the weapon’s scope. There was the high twang of the bow, a simultaneous detonation as the explosive quarrel crumpled the soarer’s wingtip. The flier veered, crippled.
Chewbacca fell backward, jacking the foregrip of his bowcaster to recock it and strip another round off its magazine. He got two more shots into the predatory flier as it half-fell, half-flew past him, putting yawning wounds in its rib cage.
The creature tumbled, dead on the wing. It came down among the stampeding grazers and in a moment was gone from view, trampled into a shapeless mass by hundreds of hooves. Another soarer had glided in, sheered off when it heard the explosive quarrels and come around for another pass.
Chewbacca realized now why the soarers had come together in such numbers for the migration of grazers. The stampede through the wild mountain country would inevitably produce casualties, leave behind the weak or injured and, too, strand refugees like himself, ripe pickings for the airborne pack. The soarers’ primitive brains had recognized the chance for a feast.
The Wookiee brought up his bowcaster again and carefully sighted on the oncoming soarer. It stooped for him, claws open, long, narrow beak wide with its cry. He centered it precisely in his scope and fired directly into the gaping maw. The top of its boney skull disappeared and it nosed down at once, plowing into the ground. He had to jump back out of the way as the soarer’s corpse, seeming to collapse in on itself, slid to a stop where he had stood.
With two of their number down, the soarers were more cautious about approaching the ridge. They tilted membranous wings and put distance between themselves and whatever mysterious thing had killed their companions, searching all the while for more approachable prey. Chewbacca stole a look back down at the valley.
The press of grazers at the pass was backing up toward him quickly. Even now a few of the beasts were pausing to mill around the lower part of the ridge. The Wookiee fired several rounds into the ground there, blowing showers of soil and rock into the air and sending off the terrified, bellowing grazers. But the swirl of the backlogged stampede moved more animals in toward the ridge again; they were too scared and too stupid to notice the cause of the explosions of a moment before. He would never hold them back, even if he had unlimited ammunition.
A tremendous racket, rising over the cannonading