The first touch of genuine combat Dooku could remember was playing a game called push-feather with the Master. The point of the game was to become aware of even the faintest, tiniest changes in pressure and balance, and to learn to counter one’s opponent’s force not by blocking with greater force of one’s own, but by turning the opponent’s energy back on him or her.

As one got better at the game—and Dooku was much the quickest learner in his year—it became more and more like sparring, with victory going to whichever fighter could make his or her foe lose balance first. As they got older, they more often started in a fighting stance, fingers lightly on one another’s forearms. Dooku’s first push would come light and fast, or slow and heavy; the energy would come up from below or drop from above, or come in a sudden thrust right to the chest. He won the Twelve-and-Under Tournament when he was nine, using the trick of starting with very gentle probes, as if feeling his enemy out in the kid’s version of the game, and then suddenly popping the pressure point inside his enemy’s elbow and attacking in the instant of shock and pain.