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“Right. Because it’s not going to happen.” Anakin stopped, knelt, and took off his pack. After an instant of rummaging, he’d found what he was after: five phosphorous flares.

“Are those weapons? Machines?”

“Not usually,” Anakin said. “Don’t look directly at this.” He struck one alight, then, using the Force, hurled it in a long arc downhill.

He struck another and hurled it similarly, along a different vector.

“I don’t understand,” Rapuung said. “How will the light stop the netting beetles?”

“The light won’t. The fire will. The beetles can’t attach to trees and bushes that aren’t there.”

He struck another flare. As he cocked his arm back to throw it, Vua Rapuung backhanded him in the face.

Anakin’s nostrils filled with the iron scent of blood, and he fetched hard against the ground before he could react to cushion himself. Rapuung was all over him, snarling like a beast, fingers curled around his neck. He smelled sour and sick.

Spots dancing before his eyes, Anakin did the only thing he could. He found a stone with the Force and hit the crazed warrior right between the eyes with it. Rapuung’s head snapped back and his hands came away. Anakin hit him in the chin so hard that sparks of pain exploded in his knuckles. The Yuuzhan Vong fell off of him, but by the time Anakin had scrambled to his feet, Rapuung was up, assuming a martial stance.

“Sithspawn!” Anakin snapped. “What are you doing?”

“Combustion!” the Yuuzhan Vong roared. “The first abomination is the use of fire from a machine!”

“What?”

“This is forbidden, you stinking infidel! Don’t you understand what you’ve done?”

“You’re insane!” Anakin shouted back, rubbing knuckles that felt shattered, drawing breath through an aching windpipe. “You were just asking me if I could use my lightsaber! You think that’s not a machine?”

A look of what might have been horror dawned on Rapuung’s face. “I … yes, I prepared myself for that, But fire, the first of all sins—”

“Wait,” Anakin snapped. “You’re not making any sense. The Yuuzhan Vong have used fire breathers against us in the past.”

“Living creatures producing flame is another thing entirely!” Rapuung shrieked. “How can you possibly imagine it is the same as what you’ve just done? As well say that the hand of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior and the metal grip of one of your made-thing abominations are the same because either can hold an amphistaff.”

Anakin took a deep breath. “Look,” he said. “I don’t pretend to understand your religion. I don’t even want to. But you’ve chosen to fight with an infidel against your own people, haven’t you? You were perfectly willing for me to use my abominable lightsaber. Now you deal with this or go your own way. Unless you’ve got another way out.”

“No,” Rapuung admitted. “It’s just the shock …” He dropped his head. “You really don’t understand. The gods don’t hate me. I know they don’t. I can prove it. But if I soil myself like this, they will have reason to hate me! Ah, what have I become?”

The wind shifted, and the charred pepper scent of burning blueleaf set Anakin to coughing. The last flare had gone only about three meters, and now the bushes upwind of them were blazing merrily. It was the dry season, and jungle burned very well in the dry season.

“You’d better get a grip fast, Vua Rapuung, or the first abomination is going to eat you alive.”

The Yuuzhan Vong stood there for a long moment, head cast down, but when he raised his head, his eyes were beacons of rage. Anakin tensed, preparing to fight again.

“She has driven me to this,” the warrior said. “These sins will settle on her. I leave it to the gods to judge.”

“Does that mean we can go?” Anakin asked, watching the fire sweep toward them. Down the hill, smoke poured thickly from where the other flares had lodged.

“Yes. Let us go. We still embrace pain together, Jeedai.”

The fire drove them around the side of the hill and up it; the change in the wind seemed to be a lasting one. Smoke boiled and crept close to the ground.

The jungle burned fast.