Yoda (8 page)

Scout edged behind Lena Missa. “Bystanders get hurt sometimes,” she said with a shrug.

“Master Xan!”

Scout rather thought there was something like a smile tugging at the bottom of the Jedi Master's mouth. “This is real, Master Xan.” Scout tapped Lena lightly on the shoulder. “This is the terrain.”

“Perhaps so,” Iron Hand said dryly. “But I think we'll try to keep the mayhem at least a little contained today, Scout. Fighting in the central circle only.” She held up her hand even as Hanna's mouth started to open. “That does not constitute reason for Enwandung-Esterhazy's disqualification. I have made the ruling in flow, and she may recommence inside the boundaries at no penalty. You will both be satisfied.” It wasn't a question.

“Of course,” Scout said immediately, with a low bow.

“Of course,” Hanna grated out.

Hanna stood aside. With all the composure she could muster, Scout walked back into the circle of mats.

“Begin.”

Hanna's sword point dropped and she leapt forward, slashing for Scout's head.

And Scout ran behind Master Xan.

Hanna's lightsaber blade got to within a hand span of the Jedi Master's face, froze, and snapped back like a child's finger from a hot stove.

“Whoa there,” Scout said. “You nearly hurt an innocent bystander.”

Hanna's mouth opened in something like a snarl. She lunged behind Iron Hand.

Scout scurried out in front.

“Stop!” Master Xan said.

“It's not my fault,” Scout said. “You're in the terrain.”

Hanna made furious gurgling noises.

Iron Hand was definitely trying not to smile. “True, Scout.” She walked to the edge of the circle of mats, with Scout and Hanna in orbit around her like two eccentric moons. “But sometimes, the terrain changes.”

“I was afraid you'd say that,” Scout sighed, leaping backward to avoid a slash as Master Xan left the ring.

Hanna stalked after her. “Any more cute ideas?”

“I'm working on it.”

At least she had the Arkanian mad enough that she wasn't bringing the Force to bear with quite as much finesse as she had at the beginning of the bout. On the downside, she was running out of tricks to deal with Hanna.

The other apprentice knew it, too. Once more she attacked, methodically this time, step after step, driving Scout toward the edge of the ring.
Can't let it go like this,
Scout thought. She couldn't let herself get trapped purely on the defensive. She fell back, parried a slash and whipped her wrist around to bind their blades, then leaned as if she was going to charge forward as she had with Pax. This time she reached up with her left hand and made a jabbing two-finger pop to the pressure point under Hanna's left elbow.

It was perfect. As the Arkanian's forearm went temporarily numb, her nerveless fingers opened just as Scout kicked up at her hand as hard as she could, sending Hanna's lightsaber spinning through the air. With a snarl of triumph Scout charged forward with a roundhouse slash…

…and impossibly Hanna jumped
over
her blade. Scout pitched forward through the space where Hanna ought to have been, stumbled, got her balance, and turned just in time to see Hanna, her mouth set in a grim line, use the Force to grab her lightsaber out of midair. It smacked back into the Arkanian's hand with a sharp
thud.

Hanna came forward again, relentless. “That was your last chance.” She fell on Scout like a storm, her limbs flashing like whirlwinds, her long, humming blade falling like green forked lightning.

Slowly, irresistibly, Scout was being overwhelmed. She could see the attacks coming, she knew which ones were real and which were feints, but now Hanna was bending all her will to Scout's sword hand, using the Force to slow it down until it felt as if Scout had to drag it through water, or mud. Feint, slash, feint, cut, cut, and then a hard blow, a dipping slash to the leg that cut through the cloth of Scout's robes and left a red welt across her thigh.

The pain dropped her to the floor. She rolled sideways and came up parrying, stopping Hanna's blade a finger width from her face. The lightsaber hissed like a furious serpent, spitting green light in her eyes. With a grunt Scout spun sideways again and tried to make a cut, but Hanna was inside her blade, slamming it flat to the floor, so hard Scout's fingers loosened for just an instant. Hanna used the Force to grab her lightsaber, that line of blue heart's fire. Then she ripped it from Scout's grasp, and flung it to the far side of the room.

Grab me,
Scout prayed. If Hanna would just grapple, there was still a chance. If she would just try a joint lock, an arm bar,
anything…

The Arkanian stood up.

As soon as the weight left her hand Scout rolled over on her back, lashing out with her legs, but Hanna was already out of range, cool and composed, holding her lightsaber so the green tip hummed and buzzed a hand width above Scout's heart. The Arkanian looked down on Scout from what seemed like a vast height, an impossible height. The distance from a farmer's field to the stars. “Yield,” she said.

Scout lay under her blade, gasping for breath. Her leg burned and throbbed.

Hanna looked at her impatiently. “Yield!”

“No.”

The Arkanian blinked. “What?”

“No.” Scout coughed and spat. “I said no. I'm not giving up.”

Hanna looked at her, genuinely baffled. “But…I won. Now you yield.”

Scout shook her head. “Don't think so.” She thought about trying to use the Force to drag her lightsaber back while Hanna wasn't paying attention, but the pain in her head made it hard to concentrate. And she was tired. So tired. “I'm not ready to give up yet.”

“But
why
?”

Scout shrugged. “Doesn't hurt enough yet.”

Hanna shook her head in disbelief. “You're crazy. What am I supposed to do? Just cut you while you lie there?” Her lightsaber buzzed and sputtered in frustration: and right then Scout saw how she was going to win this fight.

She smiled. “We go until one of us surrenders or takes three burns. You got me once. That means I've got two left. Here's one,” she said, and gritting her teeth she grabbed Hanna's lightsaber blade with her naked left hand.

“You can't do that!” Hanna yelped.

“Want to bet?” The blade burned and spat, but Scout held on to it for dear life and jerked down. Unable to believe what she was seeing, Hanna couldn't bring herself to let go of her weapon fast enough, and down she came, falling on top of Scout, who was already rolling, her right hand already sliding up to the neck of the Arkanian girl's tunic.

The two of them rolled over and over across the floor, and then Scout was on top with her left hand still tight around Hanna's blade and her right hand clamped around the Arkanian's throat. Scout was Iron Hand's best pupil; her choke holds were very precise, always centered beautifully on the carotid triangle, and they invariably induced unconsciousness within ten seconds. Scout bore down, counting off the seconds she still had to hold on to Hanna's lightsaber. One, two, three…

A film swam over the Arkanian's milky eyes, like frost creeping over a pond.

Four, five.

“It's not…”

Six.

“Fair,”
Hanna whispered.

Seven.

And she surrendered.

Scout yelled and threw away Hanna's lightsaber. She rolled off Hanna's limp body and forced herself to her feet and swore a long stream of words that were absolutely not to be uttered inside the Jedi Temple, shaking out her poor burning left hand. Her legs were trembling so badly she thought she would fall down again, but she managed to bow to Master Xan.

Iron Hand regarded her. She wasn't smiling anymore. “You know, Esterhazy, if this had been a real fight—”

“With respect, Master…” Scout stopped to catch another breath and wipe the sweat out of her eyes. “With all due respect, that was a real fight. This is real,” she said, waving at the room. “Lightsaber was real, set to a real setting.” Behind her, Hanna began to moan softly. “She's real.” Scout looked toward Hanna. “It was a real fight.”

After a long moment, Master Xan finally nodded. “I guess it was, at that.”

Some heartbeats later the clapping started. The applause was still mounting as Scout walked out of the chamber, shaking off offers of help, and limped toward the infirmary.

4

T
he Jedi Temple rectory was buzzing with commentary on the tournament as apprentices and Masters alike sat down for their midday meal. Even Master Yoda, who usually took his meals alone or in the Jedi Council Chamber, had hobbled up to one of the long trestle tables and clambered, grunting and snuffing, up onto the bench, where he sat benignly surveying the hall. “Master Leem!” he called, waggling his cane as she came into the hall. “Mm. Sit with me awhile, will you not?”

Maks's long jaw made tiny chewing motions. She had really wanted to find her Padawan, Whie, and give him a couple of tips before the afternoon bouts resumed. But in truth, that was more to calm her own nerves than to help him; the boy had gone through his first two matches effortlessly, disarming his first opponent, who then tapped out, and putting the neatest little wrist lock on the second, so they were both barely inconvenienced by being beaten. The boy had always been smooth that way, like a diver who hit the water so cleanly he barely left a splash. He didn't need her help.

Besides, when the Grand Master of the Jedi Order invited one to dine, one could hardly turn him down. Even if she wanted to.

Frankly, even beings who would follow Yoda to the gates of Death preferred not to share his meals. Perhaps traveling the length and breadth of the galaxy had given the Master a more wide-ranging palate than mere mortals, or perhaps he was so evolved a being that he didn't care what he put into his body; or perhaps when one lived eight-hundred-odd years all one's taste buds died. Whatever the reason, the old gnome's preferred foods were notoriously disgusting. He was fond of hot, swampy stews that smelled like boiled mud; small dirt-colored appetizers that jiggled uneasily on the plate; and viscous drinks, both hot and cold, that ran the gamut from burned syrup to grainy sludge. As Master Leem settled on the bench beside him, the oldest and greatest of the Jedi was peering happily into a bowl of dark brown-and-gray stew, studded with little floating chunks of what looked like raw animal fat and spackled with the scales of some small reptile. The whole concoction smelled like dead womprat that had been left out in the sun.

“Fought well this morning, your Padawan did,” Yoda mumbled around a mouthful of stew.

A moment earlier, Master Leem had been looking forward to a platter of dry grain with a side of dried candleberries and a mug of fragrant naris-bud tea, but as the smell of Yoda's lunch reached her, she abruptly lost her appetite. “Yes, Whie did very well,” she said, eyes suddenly gone glassy.

“Had a nightmare last night, did he?”

“He said it wasn't one of the…
special
dreams.”

Yoda gave her a sharp glance from under his ridged eyebrows. “Believe him, did you?”

“I'm not sure,” she admitted. “It's not like him to lie about something like that. It's not like him to lie at all. But he was badly scared. And there was…”

“A stirring in the Force.”

Master Leem nodded unhappily. “Yes, I felt it, too.” It had woken her in the middle of the night, like a distant scream, so faint that at first she couldn't think what had jolted her upright in her bed, with the hair prickling around her neck.

Yoda bent back to his bowl, slurping and gobbling. “Told you of how he came to us, have I?”

“No, actually. I was on a long mission when he came to the Temple. I think he had been here three years before I ever saw him.” She could still remember the occasion. She had agreed to take a class of five-years-olds into the garden for a botany lesson, learning the names of plants and their uses. Even then the Force had been strong in Whie. He had fallen behind the others, and when she went to look for him, she found him stroking the buds of a Rigelian iris, which opened and flowered at his touch, as if he were softly pulling the very springtime through them.

Still smiling at the memory, she turned to look for him in the crowded room, partly out of fondness, and partly to get her nose away from the appalling stench of Yoda's gumbo. Whie was three tables over, sitting with his age-mates and yet a little apart, not fully joining in the raucous conversation around the table. There was always a little reserve to him, as if he saw something others couldn't see and didn't know how to share it. Then again, he was one of the eight apprentices still standing in the tournament, so perhaps it wasn't surprising that he kept to himself, to gather his thoughts and keep his concentration focused. As if feeling her gaze on the back of his neck, he turned and met her eyes with a half smile and a respectful nod.

A good Padawan. The best she'd had, though of course one wasn't supposed to have favorites.

Yoda followed her gaze. “Born on Vjun was he.” His ancient tongue crept out to wipe brown and gray stew-slime from around his wrinkled mouth. “Insane, the father went. And his mother…very strong she was. Very strong.”

Maks felt her three eyebrows furrow. “I had no idea.”

“Mm. Begged us to take him, she did. ‘Take him from the slaughterhouse.' Her words those were. Drunk she was, and half out of her mind with grief, for there was murder in the house that day.”

“Good heavens.”

Yoda nodded. “Not clear to me, our path that day was. Knew even then the mother could change her mind. But the Force was strong in him…” The old Master shrugged and snuffed. “We guessed. We dared. Wrong or right, who knows? Sometimes wrong and right only have meaning in small time. In big time, in decades, in centuries…then we see that things are as they are. Each choice, the branch of a tree is: what looked like a decision, is after only a pattern of growth. Each act, you see, is like a fossil, preserved in the Force, as—
aiee
!” Yoda broke into a sudden squawk as a rectory droid came to the end of the table and took his bowl, still half full of stew. “Stop! Stop! Eating this, I am!”

“This bowl contains a substance my sensors cannot identify as food,” the little round droid said. “Please wait here, and I will bring you one of today's specials.”

Yoda grabbed on to the edge of his bowl. “Ignorant machine! Not on menu, my food ever is. Made special for me, was this!”

The droid's servos whined as it fought to pull the bowl from the table. “Preliminary readings cannot confirm the edibility of the contents of this bowl. Please wait here, and I will bring you one of today's specials.”

“Back!” Yoda cried, whapping the droid on the arm with his cane. “Mine! Go away!”

“You are bound to enjoy today's special,” the droid said. “Baked dru'un slices in fish sauce. Wait here, and I will bring you some.”

Yoda fetched the droid another thump with his cane, yanking on the bowl. The droid yanked back. The bowl shattered, sending flying stew everywhere, most particularly on the robes of Jedi Master Maks Leem.

“Oh, dear, a spill,” the little droid said with satisfaction. “Let me clean that up for you.”

Yoda's round eyes grew wide, and he stared at the droid with great intensity. “Bah!” he said, with an explosive grunt. “Droids!” The Master of the Jedi Order, quivering with frustration, stuck out his tongue at the droid, which was now happily picking gobbets of what looked like stewed tendon off Master Leem's robes.

Ten minutes later Master Leem had returned with fresh clothes, and Master Yoda was staring glumly at a plate of baked dru'un slices in fish sauce. He brightened as Jai Maruk entered the refectory, and summoned the lean Jedi to their table with a waggle of his stick. “Come to watch, have you?”

Master Maruk joined them with a grave bow to Yoda and a courteous nod to Master Leem. “Master Xan gave me a tip.”

“Tip? Tip about what?” Maks Leem said.

Jai Maruk plucked a mug of steaming stimcaf from the tray of a passing droid, which Yoda eyed with disfavor. “You have a Padawan still alive in the tournament, yes?”

“That wasn't really an answer,” Master Leem observed.

Master Maruk permitted himself a rare, small smile.

“Eight alone remain,” Yoda remarked, glowering at the back of the beverage droid as it rolled away across the room.

“Seven, surely,” Maruk said. “The weaker girl, Esterhazy—I heard she went to the infirmary with burns on her leg and hand.”

At that moment, a murmur rippled through the benches nearest the eastern doors of the big hall as Scout limped in. Yoda glanced at the tall Jedi with a sly smile. “Went, yes.”

“Did you know she was coming back?”

“Guessed it only, did I.”

“She doesn't have any business fighting,” Maruk said, shaking his head. “Left hand badly burned and bandaged, limping on her right side—another lightsaber burn, probably. What did you think of the way she competed this morning?” he asked Yoda. “Not quite in keeping with the Jedi ideals, I would say.”

Yoda shrugged. “Which ideals mean you?”

“Too much trickery.”

“Resilience, though,” Master Leem said. “Lots of that. And courage.”

“Mm. One more, too,” Yoda murmured. The younger Jedi looked at him. “She never gives up,” he said. Yoda's old eyes went narrow and crinkly. “Think you still to the Agricultural Corps she should be sent?”

“It's not for me to question you as to the development of our apprentices.”

Yoda tapped him on the shins with his stick.

“All right,” Jai said testily, “Yes, I do. I think she is smart and determined, and in the Agricultural Corps she could do a lot of good for many years. A Jedi Knight has a different kind of mission, and in the work we do, I think she would be dead in six months. How glad will we be that we let her dream live, when the dreamer is dead?”

“That she is not so strong in the Force as some surely requires an extra effort from her,” Master Leem said thoughtfully. “But perhaps it also places a greater responsibility on us.” She was a kindhearted Gran, and she hated the idea of sending Scout to the Agricultural Corps. “Perhaps we should exert ourselves even more in her training. Nobody can say Scout hasn't brought her all to being a Padawan; can we say we have worked as hard to make her a Jedi Knight?”

Yoda cackled. “A kind heart and a cunning have you, Master Leem. Jai Maruk, take a little wager with me, will you?”

Jai looked pained in the extreme. “Of course, Master, if you wish it.”

“Watch the tournament, how it finishes. Of the eight remaining, should the young one finish in the bottom four, then to the corps will I send her.”

“After beating out three-quarters of the other students to get this far?” Master Leem exclaimed.

Yoda shrugged. “Worse tests must any Jedi face, against far more terrible odds. And as Master Maruk says, not strong is the Force in this one.”

“And if she finishes in the top four?” Master Maruk said suspiciously.

“Second, third, fourth: then an apprentice she remains. But if she
wins,
” Yoda said, poking Jai Maruk in the chest with his stick, “
your
Padawan she will be.”

“Mine!” Maruk blurted. “Why me?”

Yoda snickered. “Why, then would you have lost, Jai Maruk. And need to learn about winning from one who knows how.”

Master Maruk, looking singularly as if he had just had one of the spiny-collared toads of Tatooine shoved forcibly down his throat, was spared having to answer as Master Xan clapped her hands for attention. The tables of Jedi apprentices, well trained to pay immediate attention—not for nothing did they nickname her Iron Hand—fell silent at once.

“Apprentices, Padawans, Jedi Knights, and Masters: the first half of today's tournament has been extremely enlightening. The participants have fought with skill and courage—sometimes with great beauty…” Her eyes rested for a moment on Whie. “And sometimes with remarkable, ah, ingenuity.” This remark accompanied by a dry sideways glance at Scout, who colored but kept her chin fiercely upright.

“I said earlier that the apprentices who were to spar in this contest made it clear to me that they wanted the tests to be more lifelike; more closely resembling situations they might find if they were dispatched outside these walls into that larger world where even now a war is raging.” Heads nodded around the refectory tables.
How serious they are,
Master Leem thought, and once again her heart went out to this generation of children raised not as keepers of a Republic's peace, but soldiers in a galactic war.

“I commonly hear our apprentices talk about Coruscant, and the stars beyond, as ‘real life.' I wonder, sometimes, if they think what we teach them is merely pretend,” Master Xan continued. “I assure you, it is not. The living Force you come to see here, under Master Yoda's guidance, is the truest reality; beyond these walls it is the truth, masked by hope and fear and treachery, that is hardest to see.”

Yoda's old head nodded agreement with these words.

“But it is true that in real life we rarely face our enemies one by one, in a closed room, with comfortable mats on the floor,” Iron Hand said. “Out there, situations are more chaotic. Instead of fighting in a sparring room, you might find yourself drawing your lightsaber in a docking bay, or a library, a city street, or even…” She paused, lifting her eyebrows. “Even in a dining room, for example. Under the impression that you had hours before your next exertion, you might have just eaten a large meal,” she said, looking at Sisseri Deo, a tall golden-skinned Firrerreo who was one of the eight remaining combatants. He looked down at his plate, and the nictitating membranes of his eyes flickered rapidly with dismay.

“Out there, you might not have remembered to pay attention closely enough earlier in time, leaving you confused as to who, exactly, your opponents were,” she continued, glancing at Lena Missa. The Chagrian girl wet her blue lips with her forked tongue and looked quickly around the room, trying to remember who all the morning's victors had been.

“Out there, it's rarely so easy as single combat at a defined time and place. More likely it is a barroom brawl, a fistfight in a back alley.” Iron Hand lifted up the red handkerchief. At the sight of it, nervous apprentices scrambled up from their benches. “Or even a dining room free-for-all. Eight contestants remain. May the Force be with you,” Master Xan said, and she let the red cloth slip from her fingers.