"I'd rather be educated in a late-model landspeeder," Anakin grumbled. But Kyakhta was right. The more he leaned back and trusted the saddle, the sturdier and more stable he felt. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
Could he trust himself to a strange, alien animal? The suu batars were certainly handsome creatures, with their protruding silver-flecked eyes, single wide flaring nostril, and smooth skulls. Their ears were set flush against their skulls and unlike the Ansio-nians, they had no manes. The striped fur was short and dense, evolved to provide maximum insulation with minimum wind resistance. Tails were leg- length but as slender as the rest of the beast. Everything about the creatures spoke to one end.
Speed.
"Everyone ready?" Holding his steed's reins effortlessly in one hand, Kyakhta looked back at his companions. Bulgan sig naled that the last of the supplies had been loaded. "Then let's go and find the Borokii!" Facing forward, he slapped his mount on the smooth back of its neck and shouted sharply, "Elup!"
The suubatar seemed to rise from the ground. In reality, it had simply launched into the requested gallop. The six- legged gait was extraordinarily smooth, Luminara noted delightedly. There was little sensation of jouncing or jolting. Leaning back in the saddle's viann, her fine, strong legs thrust calf-length into the deep leather stirrups, she watched the city fly past. Sluggish pedestrians had to scramble to get out of their way.
Far sooner than she expected, they sped beneath the high- arching Govialty Gate of the old city and found themselves on a dirt road leading westward. Kyakhta came pounding up alongside her. Despite what struck the Jedi as an extreme pace, she noted that his mount was not even breathing hard.
"Are you comfortable, then, Master Luminara?" The guide shouted to make himself heard.
"It's wonderful!" she yelled back. "Like riding on a cloud made of spun Dramassian silk!" Outside the city walls, they were exposed to the near-constant winds that circled the planet endlessly. Cool air rushed past her face, the suubatar's long, narrow, slightly triangular skull parting it like the prow of a ship.
A glance back showed Barriss hanging on for dear life, while Anakin's expression alternated between grim determination and youthful alarm. She would have laughed, had it not been unseemly. As for Obi-Wan Kenobi, he sat serenely in his embroidered saddle, arms crossed over his chest, eyes closed. His reins lay secured to the pommel-like brace in front of him. He might as well, she thought with some astonishment, have been sitting in a first-class seat on a starliner. She had known many Jedi, but never one so composed in the face of the unexpected.
"Kyakhta!" she called out to the rider galloping alongside her. "It's good to leave the city behind so swiftly, but aren't you concerned about overexerting our mounts? Won't this pace tire them quickly?"
"Overexerting? Tire?" From his saddle, he eyed her quizzi cally. Then realization dawned. "Ou, you do not understand. But that is reasonable. None of you have ever seen a suubatar before, much less ridden one." Pulling his slim legs and feet free of his stirrups, he stood up on the back of his pounding steed and looked back the way they had come, holding on to the crest of the viann for balance. "No one pursues us, but of one thing I'm sure: Bossban Soergg is not snoring this business away." Sitting back down and resuming his former riding posture, he smiled at her anew. "You're sure you are comfortable?"
"It feels almost natural. As I told you, I'm enjoying it."
He performed the Ansionian equivalent of a nod. "Then there's no need for us to continue dawdling here." Raising his voice and freeing his feet from the stirrups, he leaned forward once again and shouted, "Elup!" At the same time he kicked his mount sharply with his heels, making contact simultaneously on both front shoulders.
"By the Force!" Anakin exclaimed as he grabbed for something to brace himself with. Barriss started laughing wildly, the acceleration sending her cowl and the folds of her robes streaming backward like flames. Obi-Wan deigned to wake up.
Until then, it seemed, the suubatars had only been trotting. At Kyakhta's command, they broke into a six-legged sprint of such speed that their long-toed legs seemed not to touch the ground. When they did, six long powerful clawed toes dug into the hard-packed dirt and flung it backward. Thirty-six such digits propelled each ground-thundering suubatar forward at a velocity that left a thoroughly exhilarated Luminara momentarily breathless.
Which was not surprising, since they were now outpacing the wind.
Far behind them, a motley coterie of assorted thugs, brutes, and ruffians assembled atop the city wall by the very gate through which the Jedi and their guides had departed. Off in the distance, a very faint cloud of dust could be seen dissipating atop a low, rolling, grass-covered hill. To Ogomoor it might as well have been poison gas.
"That must be them." He turned to the hulking Varwan stand ing at his side. "Get your people together. We're going after them."
"At that speed? You heard what the people in the market said. They're riding suubatars. Purebloods, at that." Behind them, the other members of the hastily assembled troop of cutthroats had begun to mutter among themselves.
"We'll take an airtruck. No suubatar can outpace an airtruck."
"Not outpace, no. But outmaneuver. ." The Varwan's eyes leaned closer to Ogomoor's. "You ever try to corner an Al- wari mounted on a good suubatar? A quick way to die."
"Bastasi!" the impatient Ogomoor exclaimed. "As you will. What besides an airtruck will persuade you to follow my order and go after those six?"
The Varwan considered, rubbing one eye as he studied the wispy remnants of the distant dust cloud. "Heavy weapons," he finally declared.
"Don't be stupid!" Ogomoor barked at the hireling. "Not even Bossban Soergg can engage heavy weapons in Cuipernam! There are some limitations that even he-urk!"
Clutching the squirming majordomo by the collar, the Varv- van had lifted him off the ground and was holding him in that position. "Don't-call-me-stupid."
Aware that he might have let his anger and annoyance get a teensy bit the better of him, Ogomoor hastened to calm the mercenary. "It was just a blurted exclamation-I meant nothing personal by it-now please let me down and-could you perhaps retract your eyeballs? They're oozing."
With a hiss, the Varwan set him down. Straightening his jacket, Ogomoor turned to gaze longingly at the distant rise over which his quarry had disappeared. "Why the worry, anyway? The visitors are being led by a couple of clanless morons!"
Shouldering his compaction rifle, the Varwan hissed again and turned away. His kind were brave, even fearless-but despite Ogomoor's assertion, they were not dumb.
"Say you. But I, and my associates, know only what we see. And what I see are four visitors and two escorts who do not ride like clanless morons." He started down the steps that led back to the city streets. "They ride like Alwari."
Frustrated beyond words, Ogomoor turned his attention away from the useless mercenaries and back to the beginnings of the endless grasslands beyond Cuipernam. Where, he wailed silently, could he find assassins worthy of his orders? Where could he find beings willing to take up weapons against the unmentionable Jedi? Where could he find the kind of quality help that, at every turn, seemed to be denied him?