Star Wars - Kenobi Read Free Page B

something, beside the baby, in her free hand.
    A’Yark barked a command to the warriors, but it was too late. With the horrific sound in the air, none would stand. The two looters from earlier nearly trampled the fallen youth as they darted away, trying to remember where they’d set their stolen goods. The others clutched their gaderffii to their chests and fled behind the main hut.
    Wrong. Wrong! This wasn’t what A’Yark had taught them. Not at all! But they scattered before they even knew where the dragon was, leaving their leader alone with the threat they knew. The young farmer kept his blaster pointed at A’Yark, but did not fire. Perhaps he’d calculated the risk, deciding the unfired weapon was more of a deterrent than a shot by a shaky hand.
    It didn’t matter. The settlers’ ploy had worked. A’Yark snorted and stepped backward, tan robes swirling.
    The warriors were running this way and that. A’Yark yelled, but no one could be heard over the din. There was something unnatural about the sound. But what? No one would pretend to be a krayt dragon! If any could, it would never sound so—
    —mechanical?
    “AYOOOO-EEEEEEEEEE!”
    No mistaking that, A’Yark thought. The moan of the dragon had resolved itself into a head-splitting shrill, far beyond the capacity of any lungs. It was coming loudest from a new source, immediately apparent: a horn attached to one of the silver spires in the middle of the farm. And there were similar sounds, emanating from over the hills to the north and east.
    A’Yark stood in the middle of the yard, gaderffii raised aloft. “Prodorra! Prodorra! Prodorra!”
    Fake!
    The young looters appeared again, running over a crest back toward the farm. A’Yark exhaled through rotten teeth. At least someone had heard, over the racket. Now, at least, maybe they could—
    Blasterfire! An orange blaze enveloped one of the runners from behind. The other turned in panic, only to be incinerated as well. A’Yark crouched instinctively, seeking cover behind the accursed vaporator.
    “Wa-hooo!” A metallic wave, copper and green, swept over the dune. A’Yark recognized it right away. It was the landspeeder that had haunted them before at the Tall Rock. And now, as then, several settler youths clustered in its open interior, hooting and firing wildly.
    A’Yark darted behind a second vaporator, suddenly more confident. There was no dragon, only settlers. The Tuskens could be rallied against them, if they stood true.
    But they weren’t standing. One fled toward the nothingness of the east, and A’Yark could see two more landspeeders racing after him. The clumsy young warrior—who had barely survived the rites of adulthood days before—hid behind the hut, clutching at the sands in cowardice. Only the suns knew where the others had gone.
    No good.
    The first speeder circled the settlement, its riders showering fire on nothing in particular. And now another hovercraft arrived. Fancier, with sloping curves, the silver vehicle carried two humans in an open compartment protected by a windshield. A grim, hairy-faced human steered the vessel as his older passenger stood brazenly up in his seat.
    A’Yark had seen the passenger before, at a greater distance. Clean-shaven, older than most Tuskens ever got—and always wearing the same senseless expression.
    The Smiling One.
    “More to the south, folks!” the standing human said, macrobinoculars in hand. “Keep after ’em!”
    A’Yark didn’t need to know all of the words. The meaning was clear. The missing warriors weren’t nearby, ready to strike. The band, routed, had taken flight.
    Seeing the tall human’s landspeeder, the cowering young Tusken from earlier squealed and stood. Leaving his gaderffii on the ground, he bolted.
    “Urrak!” A’Yark yelled. Wait!
    Too late. Another landspeeder banked—and the hollering riders aboard chopped the fleeing Sand Person down with blast after blast. Not six days a warrior, and dead in