Mace sat cross-legged before his wallet tent, stitching a tear in his pants left by a brush with a brassvine. He had his fake datapad propped against his thigh; its screen provided enough light that he could do the needlework without drawing blood. Its durasteel casing showed black mildew and the beginning of fungal scarring, but it had been adapted for the Haruun Kal jungles, and it still worked well enough.

They'd finished their cheese and smoked meat. The Korunnai field-stripped their weapons by touch, reapplying portaak amber to vulnerable surfaces. They spoke together in low voices: mostly sharing opinions on the weather and the next day's ride, and whether they might reach Depa's ULF band before they were intercepted by an air patrol.

When Mace finished patching his pants, he put away the stitcher, and silently watched the Korunnai, listening to their conversation. After a time, he picked up the datapad's recording rod and flicked it on, fiddling with it for a moment to adjust its encryption protocol.

When he had it set to his satisfaction, he brought the recording rod near his mouth and spoke very softly.

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I've read war tales in the Temple archives, from the early years of the Republic and before.

According to these tales, soldiers in bivouac are supposed to speak endlessly of their parents or their sweethearts, of the food they would like to eat or wine they wish they were drinking. And of their plans for after the war. The Korunnai mention none of these things.

For the Korunnai, there is no "after the war." The war is all there is. Not one of them is old enough to remember anything else.

They don't allow themselves even a fantasy of peace.

Like that death hollow we passed today- Deep in the jungle, Nick turned our grasser aside from our line of march to skirt a deep fold in the ground that was choked with a riot of impossibly lush foliage. I didn't have to ask why. A death hollow is a low point where the heavier-than-air toxic gases that roll downslope from the volcanoes can pool.

The corpse of a hundred-kilo tusker lay just within its rim, its snout only a meter below the clear air that could have saved it. Other corpses littered the ground around it: rot crows and jacunas and other small scavengers I didn't recognize, lured to their deaths by the jungle's false promise of an easy meal.

I said something along these lines to Nick. He laughed and called me a Balawai fool.

"There's no false promise," he'd said. "There's no promise at all. The jungle doesn't promise.

It exists. That's all. What killed those little ruskakks wasn't a trap. It was just the way things are." Nick says that to talk of the jungle as a person-to give it the metaphoric aspect of a creature, any creature-that's a Balawai thing. That's part of what gets them killed out here.

It's a metaphor that shades the way you think: talk of the jungle as a creature, and you start treating it like a creature. You start thinking you can outsmart the jungle, or trust it, overpower it or befriend it, deceive it or bargain with it.

And then you die.

"Not because the jungle kills you. You get it? Just because it is what it is." These are Nick's words. "The jungle doesn't do anything. It's just a place. It's a place where many, many things live. and all of them die. Fantasizing about it-pretending it's something it's not-is fatal.

That's your free life lesson for the day," he told me. "Keep it in mind." I will.

I have a feeling that his lesson applies equally well to this war. But how can I avoid pretending this war is something it's not? I don't yet know what real war really is.

So far, I have only impressions.

Vast. Unknown, and unknowable. Living darkness. Deadly as this jungle.

And my guide cannot be trusted.

Day.

Mace stood in a universe of rain.

As though the jungle's trees and ferns and flowers had grown at the foot of a towering waterfall, rain pounded through leaf and branch with a roar that made conversation possible only in shouts. No waterproof gear could handle this; in less than a minute, Mace's clothes had soaked through. He dealt with it Korun-style: he ignored it. His clothes would dry, and so would he. He was more concerned with his eyes; he had to shelter them with both hands in order to look up against the rush. Visibility was only a handful of meters.

It was just barely good enough that he could see the corpses.

They hung upside down, elbows bent at a strange angle because their hands were still tied behind them. Living gripleaves twined around their ankles held them six meters above the jungle floor, low enough to bring their heads within an easy jump for a vine cat like the one an akk had chased off as Mace and Nick approached.

Mace counted seven bodies.

Birds and insects had been at them as well as the vine cats. They'd been hanging for a while.

In damp gloom that alternated with thunderous downpours. And metals weren't the only thing that the local molds and fungi fed on. Through the colorless tatters that were all that remained of their clothing, it was impossible to tell even if they had been men or women. Mace was only moderately certain they had been human.

He stood beneath them, looking up into the empty eye sockets of the two that still had heads.

"Is this what you felt?" Nick shouted down from the saddle. His grasser reached for the gripleaves that held the bodies, and Nick jabbed its forelimb with his brassvine goad. The grasser decided to rip up some nearby glass-ferns instead. It never stopped chewing.

Mace nodded. Echoes of these murders howled in the Force around him. He'd been able to feel it from hundreds of meters away.

This place stank of the dark side.

"Well, now you've seen it. Nothing for us to do here. Come on, mount up!" The corpses stared down at Mace without eyes.

Asking him: What will you do about us?

"Are they-" Mace's voice was thick; he had to cough it clear, and enough water ran into his mouth that he passed a few seconds coughing for real. "Are these Balawai?" "How should I know?" Mace stepped out from below the bodies and squinted up at Nick. A blaze of lightning above the canopy haloed the young Korun's black hair with gold. "You mean they could have been Korunnai?" "Sure! What's your point?" He seemed puzzled that Mace would care one way or the other.

Mace wasn't sure why he cared, either. Or even if he cared. People are people. Dead is dead.

Even if these had happened to be the enemy, nothing could make this right.