for
himself!

It was scary being responsible for someone else's safety, Dave was
realizing. Especially when you were a commoner, the someone else was
royalty, and a powerful noble--a crazy, traitorous noble--would stop at
nothing to recapture him. Dave glanced across the cave to the small
ledge where he'd put the disruptor--out of the way, but easy to get
to--and shivered. The only alternative he could see to playing decoy was
using the cave as a fort if the rebels found them, and that didn't
sound much better now than it had the first time he'd thought of it.
One disruptor without even a single spare powerpack wasn't much to
build hopes on. He'd do what he could, of course, but he still
couldn't help wishing he hadn't ventured into Lord Robert's camp and
gotten himself into all this!

He sighed. He had gotten himself into it; now, if he could, he'd get
both of them out. The first step was to get the Ranger to as much
safety as the cave held--which meant the spring. Good thing it wasn't
far!

Half an hour later he'd filled his emergency containers with a day's
worth of drinking water and settled Tarlac as comfortably as possible
into the runoff stream. It wasn't ideal, but at least it would keep
the fever down and the injuries mostly clean while he did what he could
to make the cave defensible.

He discovered quickly that he could do very little. Wood from fallen
limbs and whatever brush he could cut with the stolen hunting knife
would provide little protection from stunner fire, and none at all from
the blasters or disruptors he thought the rebels were likelier to use.
And there wasn't enough loose rock--in sizes he could move, anyway--to
block the cave entrance. He supposed he could use his disruptor to
enlarge that crack in the wall just inside the cave mouth, but that
would be asking for trouble; the rebels couldn't possibly miss that
kind of energy release. And he didn't dare waste his firepower on
that; he didn't have much to begin with. He'd just have to hope the
rebels didn't find them, and retreat to one of the side passages for
shelter if they did.

He spent the next few anxious hours alternating between Tarlac and the
cave entrance. The Ranger was doing as well as Dave had dared let
himself hope, but rebel cars were moving by more often, and seemed to
be centered closer to the cave. Once, he could have sworn he glimpsed
an Imperial Marine troop lander, but decided that had to be wishful