Aren't you,
Dard?"
"Yes, Varnis; I will take you all to Tareesh, to all the wonderful
things," Dard, son of Dard, promised, for such was the rule about
Varnis.
Then he looked down from the pass into the country beyond. There were
lower mountains, below, and foothills, and a wide blue valley, and,
beyond that, distant peaks reared jaggedly against the sky. He pointed
with his father's axe.
"We go down that way," he said.
* * * * *
So they went, down, and on, and on, and on. The last cartridge was
fired; the last sliver of Doorshan metal wore out or rusted away. By
then, however, they had learned to make chipped stone, and bone, and
reindeer-horn, serve their needs. Century after century, millennium
after millennium, they followed the game-herds from birth to death, and
birth replenished their numbers faster than death depleted. Bands grew
in numbers and split; young men rebelled against the rule of the old and
took their women and children elsewhere.
They hunted down the hairy Neanderthalers, and exterminated them
ruthlessly, the origin of their implacable hatred lost in legend. All
that they remembered, in the misty, confused, way that one remembers a
dream, was that there had once been a time of happiness and plenty, and
that there was a goal to which they would some day attain.
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