locked it behind him. Yarna heard him cursing softly in what sounded
like his native tongue. "He saw me," he said finally, reverting to
universal Basic. "Now he'll be looking for me, too. I'm going with
you."
"But--" Yarna hesitated. She couldn't leave anyone to face the death
that had so nearly claimed her. "All right," she said.
Their next stop was the kitchen. "Porcellus is a friend of mine .
. . he kept things here for me," Yarna said, as she ventured into the
pantry. "I hope he managed to get away. safely . . ."
In the distant recesses of the pantry the Askajian had cached several
blankets, some water flasks, and a couple of old, thick jackets she'd
purloined from the guard barracks over the months. Hanging above them
on a hook was a white bundle that could have been a voluminous
apron--but was not. Yarna shook out the gauzy, faintly shining
material, and it was revealed to be a long, loose robe with an attached,
cowllike hood.
"My desert robe," she said, noting Doallyn's glance.
"We'll have to find something for you."
He nodded and held a bag as she briskly selected containers of preserved
food from the shelves. "Now water," she said, as he fastened the
container and slung it over his shoulder. Going over to the sink, she
indicated the desert flasks to Doallyn. "Fill these up, please."
While he obeyed, Yarna herself filled a large container of water and
drank it down without stopping, then filled and emptied a second.
Stripping off her elaborate dancer's headdress, she ran her fingers
through her long hair with a sigh of pleasure. She'd never realized how
heavy the thing was until she knew she wouldn't have to put it on again.
Splashing water onto her face, she removed most of the large, warty
"beauty patches" that jabba had thought attractive.
"I didn't realize those were makeup," Doallyn commented, as she did so.
"Jabba liked them. He told me they reminded him of his mother."
Doallyn's helmeted head moved in a slow shake.
"Jabba had a mother?"
Yarna smiled at him. "My reaction exactly."
Filling the water container again, the dancer slowly poured the cool
liquid over her head and body, letting the fluid trickle over her skin.
When she finished, she found Doallyn watching her intently. His
mechanical tones sounded surprised.
"You're... bigger," he said, his helmeted head moving as he surveyed her
from head to toe. "Your skin . . . it's so tight."
"Askaj is a desert world." Yarna answered his unspoken question
matter-of-factly. "My people's bodies absorb and hoard water most
efficiently."
He nodded. "Can you live on a nondesert world?"
"Certainly," she replied. "But when we don't need to hoard the water,
we don't."
"How would you look on a nondesert world?" He sounded genuinely
curious.
"Thinner," Yarna said briskly, shaking out the folds of her desert robe.
She pulled it over her head, then snatched up the blankets, the old
jackets, and one of the water flasks. Doallyn caught up the food and
the rest of the water.
When they reached the motor pool, they saw that the supply of suitable
landspeeders and shuttles was sadly decimated. Only one vehicle was
left, and it was in the repair section. The mechanics who were supposed
to keep the machinery running in good order were nowhere to be seen.
Another wavering shriek rose in the distance, only to be brutally cut
off in mid-ululation. Yarna and Doal-lyn looked at each other.
"Can you pilot that thing?"
she asked.
He nodded.
Within moments they had loaded up the land-speeder with their
provisions. Doallyn located a length of sun-shield material in a
locker, and they were able to improvise a burnoose for him. They stowed
the rest of the material in the baggage compartment of the vehicle.
At Doallyn's signal, Yarna hoisted her bulk into the passenger's seat of
the speeder. It was a tight squeeze, but she made it. The guard opened
the outer door to the motor pool, then, feeling the cold night air, both
hastily donned the jackets.
"Let's go," the Askajian dancer said impatiently, when her companion
remained standing beside the landspeeder.
"I should have gone back to the barracks," Doallyn
said, regarding the entrance into the palace.
"Why?"
"All I have as a weapon is my blaster, and no extra charges," he said.
"There are wild banthas out there, and krayt dragons. It's a long way
across the Jundland
Wastes to Mos Eisley . . ."
"How far?"
"Twenty-five hundred klicks . . . as the shell-bat flies."
"A what?"
"Flying reptile from my world."
Yarna felt a flicker of curiosity. "Which planet is that?"
"Geran, Mneon System."
Yarna glanced over her shoulder at the entrance to the palace.
"Do you really want to go back in there?"
Doallyn shook his head. "No. I want to get out of here. I feel . . ."
He glanced nervously behind him into the shadows. "I feel as though I'm
being watched."
"So do I," Yarna said. "Let's just go."
Doallyn nodded, then clambered into the pilot's seat. "I only hope that
this thing was repaired before they abandoned the motor pool," he said,
and manipulated the controls. "It's not really one of the fast,
long-range models."
The speeder eased forward, and the darkness closed in around them.
Within seconds they had lefrJabba's palace behind. The vehicle picked
up speed, until they were skimming the ground faster than any bird could
fly.
The cold wind of their passage struck Yarna like a blow, but she was so
exhilarated she scarcely felt it.
Free at last! After a miSerable year of insults and servitude, she was
free and on her way! Soon . . . soon she would see her cublings . . .
would hold their little bodies close, smell their warm, baby flesh. They
would probably be starting to walk by now . . . Her eyes filled with
moisture, but she sternly held back her tears. She must hoard her
body's fluid... she'd need it for the journey.
Tilting her head back, she saw the stars streaming · by so rapidly it
was almost like a jump into hyperspace.
At this rate, even in the short-range speeder, they'd reach Mos Eisley
within a couple of days, even assuming they had to take shelter during
the worst of the day heat.
Yarna hugged her jacket around her and thought of her children,
remembering the day they had been born, and Nautag's pride in such a
handsome brood.
The babies had been barely a cold season old when the slavers had come .
. . and thus they had not been given names. On Askaj, cublings were not
named until after their first birthday.
Yarna mentally calculated the time since their capture, comparing the
Askajian year to the year on Tatooine. Her children were late in
receiving their names . . . but she'd rectify that lack as soon as they
were reunited. The wind of their passage rushed through her short hair
&
nbsp; as Yarna, for the first time, considered what to name her cublings.
Nautag, of course, for the boy . . . the dancer felt a moment's pang
for her other male infant, who'd been snatched out of her arms by one of
the slavers and carelessly dropped. His skull had been crushed by the
fall. Yarna forced herself to look ahead. What should she name her two
daughters?
The names came to her in a flash of inspiration: Leia and Luka.
Leia . . . she hadn't known the Alderaanian girl well, but if she had
indeed killed Jabba, then Yarna owed her a debt she could never repay.
And the name of the young Jedi who'd killed the rancor had been Luke
Skywalker. Between the two of them, the dancing girl and the young Jedi
had avenged Nautag. It was fitting that his children be named for them.
She turned her head to watch Doallyn as he piloted the speeder.
The guard was a mystery to her . . .
what did he look like under that mask? Was he human-seeming?
His hands, in their black gloves, had the same number of digits as her
own . . .
"Is the speeder running well?" she asked, having to raise her voice to
be heard over the wind.
His mechanically enhanced voice reached her ears without difficulty.
"The steering balance is out of adjustment.
It keeps pulling to the right. I have to keep it on manual."
"Then this one wasn't repaired, was it?"
"I doubt it."
"Will it get us to Mos Eisley?"
"If the problem doesn't worsen, it will."
Yarna said a silent invocation to the Moon Lady as they sped along.
They had been traveling for hours when they swooped over the crest of a
high dune and Yarna, squinting, saw a faint glow in the east. As she
watched, it brightened, outlining distant hills. The desert beneath
them was still in shadow, but there was no mistaking those faraway
hills. Yarna tapped Doallyn's arm to gain his attention, and pointed.
"The Jundland Wastes?"
He nodded. "The edge of them. We're only three hundred kilometers from
the Stone Needle now."
Within minutes, Tatooine's twin suns rose into view, and the rolling
sand dunes of the desert around them glowed pink and gold.
Yarna had never seen the Dune Sea from a vehicle before--when she'd been
brought to Jabba's palace, she'd been inside a shuttle, and there had
been no portholes.
The rays of the suns struck her, and the chill of the night quickly
vanished. She was wedged too tightly into the seat to take off her
jacket, so she simply waited, sweating, wondering if Doallyn was
determined to reach the Jundland Wastes before halting.
But after another hour, as the suns grew hotter and hotter, the pilot
throttled back the speeder's headlong rush. The little vehicle slowed,
then came to a halt and hovered above a fairly level stretch of white
sand.
"I think we ought to take shelter until late afternoon," the guard said,
unsealing the fastenings of the jacket and tugging it off.
"Traveling in midday is dangerous."
"I agree," Yarna said. "Especially for you; you aren't used to the
heat. And if you get sunsick, where would we be? I can't pilot the
speeder."
His helmeted head nodded. "Help me rig a shelter, then."
Doallyn and Yarna used the rest of the sun-shield material to make a
lean-to, employing the hovering landspeeder to anchor the material.
They crawled into the resulting shadow, and half reclined there; both
were too tall to be able to sit up straight. Yarna handed Doallyn the
water flask. Gallantly, he handed it back to her.
"You first, Mistress."
The Askajian shook her head. "No. I drank before we left. I need far
less liquid than you to survive. Drink your fill, Sergeant .
. . do not ration yourself, or you will become ill."
He hesitated, then his helmeted head nodded.
Slowly, carefully, he released the catches on his helmet and breathing
mask, and took them off. Yarna didn't want to stare openly, but she
discovered she was intensely curious about her companion.
Busying herself with opening food packets, she cast a sidelong glance at
his profile.
At first glance, he appeared as human as any Corel-lian, but his skin
bore a faint bluish tinge, beneath a close-cropped shock of jet-black
hair. It was too shadowy beneath the landspeeder to be sure of the
color of his eyes, but Yarna thought they were light, rather than dark.
His features were regular, and rather attractive.
He was not as handsome as that Corellian smuggler, Solo, but he was
pleasant to look upon, Yarna decided, as she held out a packet of food
to him.
Slowly, almost deliberately, he turned his head toward her as he reached
out to take it, until she was looking at him full-on.
Yarna stifled a gasp and forced herself not to recoil.
Noting her reaction, half of Doallyn's mouth stretched in a grin that
told her he'd expected as much. The smile seemed more like a rictus of
agony than any expression of good humor.
By the Moon Lady mercy, what happened to him ? One side of Doallyn's
face was horribly scarred. A broad band of roughened flesh pulled his
mouth upward, and twisted and pitted the skin over his cheek.
The slash narrowly missed his left eye, then ended at his hairline.
Yarna forced herself to look away, unwilling to stare.
As though he could read her thoughts, Doallyn said suddenly, "It's a
claw mark. From a Corellian sand panther. Their claws are poisoned,
and the wound festered."
"It attacked you?" She struggled to keep her voice matter-of-fact.
Instinctively, she knew that any expression of sympathy would be
scornfully rejected.
"I was hunting it, and I wounded it. It turned on me."
Methodically, Doallyn took a bite of the food and chewed determinedly.
"You're fortunate you weren't. killed," she said after a moment.
"I was careless," he said bluntly. "For an instant, I was careless. It
does not Pay to do that when you're a hunter."
"I thought you were a soldier."
He shook his head. It was odd to see him without his helm, even though
his features were nearly as expressionless exposed as they had been
masked. "I was a hunter. That's why I came to Tatooine. Jabba
advertised for a hunter to get him a krayt dragon."
"A krayt dragon?" Yarna stared at him incredulously.
She'd heard the beasts described before--the young ones were as large as
a rancor, and they reportedly grew even bigger as they aged.
"What did he want with one?"
"He wanted to match one against his rancor, and charge admission.
Jabba thought it would be the sporting event of the century. He offered
a huge bounty for a live krayt dragon."
"And you actually thought you could capture one?"
"I have been a hunter for many years. There are not many beasts I
cannot outwit," he said, with a quiet confidence that was far more
convincing than any amount of boasting. "I studied everything that is
in the databanks about krayt dragons. I came well prepared to hunt
one."
Yarna took a b
ite of dried fruit and chewed thoughtfUlly. "If you came
to Tatooine to hunt a dragon, then how did you end up guarding Jabba's
palace?"
For the first time an expression flickered across his face in the
dimness of the tiny makeshift shelter. He appeared chagrined and
embarrassed, as he looked down at his food packet. "When I first
arrived, I decided to sample the . . . sights . . . of Mos Eisley.
Chalmun's liquor proved more . . . potent...
than I was accustomed to drinking. I was never good at games of chance,
and . . . I don't remember clearly how I got into that high-stakes game
of wild-star, but I woke up the next morning with a terrible headache,
owing Jabba a year's service."
"So you never got to hunt a dragon?"
"That was one of the thingsJabba wanted me to do.
I have been out on many expeditions, hunting one ever since I came to
Tales From Jabba's Palace Page 43