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By Root 1295 0

“My opinion of you as a strategist improves,” Rapuung said. “The fire drives us directly into the other side of the net. We have our choice of being burned to death by the first abomination, or being captured and then burned.”

“The wind shifted. My plan was to follow along the fire’s exhaust, walk on the ashes. The net will collapse where the fire burns through, and then we’re clear.”

“Then perhaps the gods have spoken after all,” Rapuung said. He coughed violently on the smoke, which was becoming so thick that Anakin was seeing spots in front of his eyes. He remembered most people who died in a fire were dead before the flames ever reached them.

“Keep low,” he said. “The smoke rises.”

“Low. Crawling like a tso’asu.”

“If you want to live, yes.”

“I do not fear death,” Rapuung choked out. “But my revenge will not be thwarted. I …” He convulsed in another series of racking coughs, fell, climbed back to all fours, and collapsed again.

“Get up!” Anakin exhorted him.

Rapuung quivered but did not move.

Through the smoke, the yellow teeth of the fire appeared, chewing toward them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Everything went pale gold as Anakin dropped to his knees next to Vua Rapuung. His breath felt like broken shards in his lungs, and his head rang like an alarm.

He lay flat, trying to find sweeter, cooler air, but if it was there, it was traveling in disguise. If he was going to find something he could breathe, it would be somewhere above him. Sure, it would be smoky up there, too, but it was worth a shot.

Anakin reached up and pulled, creating a tube that sucked higher air straight down on him and the Yuuzhan Vong. His breathing eased immediately.

The fire liked it, too. The underbrush exploded like a bomb. Anakin felt the heat briefly, heat he knew would blacken and crack his flesh in seconds. He had not tried to alter energy before, but Corran Horn could do it. Their lives depended on his success. Anakin opened himself again to the Force, focused his efforts, and leached the fire’s heat from a radius around them both.

How long he kept this up, Anakin did not know. He slipped into a sort of fugue state, each breath pulling life from the sky, each exhalation bleeding heat into the crust of Yavin 4. But eventually he blinked and realized it was over, that the fire had burned past him and he knelt in ashes.

Vua Rapuung still lay motionless. Anakin shook him. Where did one check for vital signs on a Yuuzhan Vong? Did they have hearts like humans, linear pumps, something stranger?

He slapped Rapuung, hard, and the warrior’s eyes flickered open.

“Are you okay?” Anakin asked.

“Pray me you are not one of the gods,” Rapuung muttered. “If you are, death will be tedious.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Anakin replied. “Can you walk? We need to go before the fliers think to look here.”

“Smoke and heat will confuse them,” Rapuung said. He sat up and looked around. “The fire—it passed over us.”

“It did.”

“And we live.”

“We do,” Anakin assured him.

“This was your doing? Another Jeedai sorcery?”

“Something like that,” Anakin admitted.

“Then you saved my life. How disgusting. How unfortunate.”

“No, don’t gush on so,” Anakin said. “It was nothing, really.” He offered his hand to help Rapuung up. After a long moment of staring at it as if it were nerf dung, the warrior took it.

“Come on,” Anakin said. “Now all we have to do is follow the fire.”

Under cover of the smoke, they slipped through the ruins of the netting beetle web. The strands themselves had not burned, but lay silvery and glistening in the ashes, draped like shrouds on the smoking trunks of trees. When Anakin’s foot tangled in some, he found that it had cut into his boot a little. None of the web had broken, and he didn’t try to tear it with his fingers, but instead gently untangled it. After that he was more careful where he stepped.

The fire had burned on past the end of the web. Anakin could see fliers nosing around in front of it. One made a pass back, far to their left.

They pushed right, eventually cutting out of the path of the fire into unburned, unnetted