"Why, there you are, Dard!" she exclaimed. "I was
wondering where you'd gone. What did you do, after we left?"
"What do you mean?" The boy was puzzled, not knowing how much he looked
like his father, when his father had been an officer of the Frontier
Guards, twenty years before.
His puzzlement worried Varnis vaguely. "You.... You are Dard, aren't
you?" she asked. "But that's silly; of course you're Dard! Who else
could you be?"
"Yes. I am Dard," the boy said, remembering that it was the rule for
everybody to be kind to Varnis and to pretend to agree with her. Then
another thought struck him. His shoulders straightened. "Yes. I am Dard,
son of Dard," he told them all. "I lead, now. Does anybody say no?"
He shifted his axe and spear to his left hand and laid his right hand on
the butt of his pistol, looking sternly at Dorita. If any of them tried
to dispute his claim, it would be she. But instead, she gave him the
nearest thing to a real smile that had crossed her face in years.
"You are Dard," she told him; "you lead us, now."
"But of course Dard leads! Hasn't he always led us?" Varnis wanted to
know. "Then what's all the argument about? And tomorrow he's going to
take us to Tareesh, and we'll have houses and ground-cars and aircraft
and gardens and lights, and all the lovely things we want.
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