Mists of Dawn (90 page)
Authors: Chad Oliver
Mark
hated
to
leave
him
without
a
word
of
good-by or
an
attempt
at
explanation.
Mark
toyed
with
the
idea
of
taking
Tlaxcan
back with
him
in
the
space-time
machine,
but
he
could
see that
it
would
never
work
out.
Tlaxcan
would
be
far more
out
of
place
in
Mark’s
time
than
Mark
was
in his;
he
would
be
regarded
as
a
freak,
a
Cro-Magnon in
modern
times,
a
newspaper
sensation.
And
Tlaxcan was
no
freak;
he
was
a
human
being,
and
entitled to
a
life
of
his
own.
Mark
looked
around
him
at
the
Danequa,
with
the odd
feeling
of
one
who
sees
his
own
infinitely
remote ancestors
walking
before
him.
Time
travel
played
some funny
tricks
occasionally,
and
this
was
one
of
them. He
knew
the
Danequa
were
in
every
respect
his
own ancestors.
They
were
the
people
who
had
developed into
the
modern
populations
of
Europe
and
England, and
thus
those
who
had
largely
colonized
America. There
probably
were
not
very
many
of
them
at
this relatively
early
time,
and
it
was
entirely
possible
that Mark
was
very
distantly
related
to
all
of
them,
as
their extremely
distant
descendant.
His
mind
stuck
on
the
subject
for
a
moment;
it
was difficult
to
figure
it
out
to
his
own
satisfaction.
Even when
you
yourself
had
become
the
first
real
time traveler,
time
travel
posed
some
unanswerable
questions.
For
example,
what
would
have
happened
if
he had
gone
back
in
time
only
two
years?
He
then
could have
looked
up
himself
at
the
age
of
fifteen,
and talked
to
himself.
But
if
he
had
done
that,
wouldn’t he
have
remembered
it
at
seventeen
before
he
had started
back?
Or
.
.
.
But
this
was
no
time
for
idle
speculation.
Mark threw
himself
into
the
work
that
was
to
determine the
future
course
of
his
life
with
energy
and
enthusiasm,
all
the
time
conscious
of
the
booming
waterfall and
the
lovely
valley
of
the
Danequa
that
he
would soon
be
leaving
forever.
The
days
rushed
by,
and
at
last
the
war
party
of the
Danequa
moved
out
across
the
whispering
plains in
search
of
the
lurking
half-men
who
stood
between Mark
Nye
and
his
destiny.
Battle in the Dawn
Westward
marched
the
Danequa,
across
the
flowered plains
that
skirted
the
blue
hills
beyond,
around the
emerald
green
lakes
carved
out
of
solid
rock by
the
retreating
glacial
ice,
toward
the
dark
and shadowed
valley
where
the
half-men
waited.
Westward
and
ever
westward
they
marched—westward
into the
setting
sun
.
.
.
The
Neanderthals,
Mark
thought,
were
truly
a
people
of
the
setting
sun.
They
had
been
spawned
in
fitful darkness,
and
they
had
lived
in
the
dawning
gray
twilight
of
man.
And
now
their
pale
sun
was
setting,
setting
in
the
eyes
of
the
Danequa
who
were
inexorably taking
their
world
away
from
them
forever.
It
was
possible
even
to
pity
the
doomed
Neanderthals,
horrible
as
they
were
to
modern
eyes.
And, certainly,
it
was
possible
to
respect
them
too.
The
half-men
had
roamed
the
fields
and
ice
sheets
of
Europe for
perhaps
one
hundred
thousand
years.
Modern
man, counting
the
Danequa
now
marching
at
his
side,
had barely
existed
for
half
that
time.
All
of
man’s
recorded history,
all
of
his
empires
and
literature
and
famous names,
had
taken
place
in
a
tiny
fraction
of
the
time
the
Neanderthals
had
owned
the
earth.
All
the
long years
since
the
birth
of
Christ
represented
less
than one-fiftieth
as
long
a
period
as
the
one
hundred
thousand
years
the
half-men
had
flourished.
Pity
the
Neanderthal,
Mark
thought,
pity
him
but remember
that
you
yourself
have
not
equaled
his
record.
How
long
would
“modern”
man
last?
Would
he destroy
himself
with
his
unleashed
technology?
Was it
just
egotism
that
he
fancied
himself
to
be
the
end product
of
the
evolution
of
intelligence?
What
future species
might
one
day
coldly
replace
humanity,
even as
humanity
now
was
replacing
the
half-men?
But
the
Neanderthals
were
not
gone
yet,
Mark
reminded
himself
grimly.
They
were
there,
they
were deadly,
and
they
barred
his
way
back
to
the
space-time
machine.
Mark
could
predict,
with
some
certainty, the
outcome
of
the
coming
battle.
The
Dane
qua, surely,
would
win.
They
were
more
intelligent,
they had
better
weapons,
and
they
had
the
advantage
of surprise.
The
Neanderthals
had
no
chance
in
the
long run,
even
as
the
American
Indian
had
had
no
chance against
repeating
rifles
and
disciplined
armies.
But
predicting
the
general
outlines
of
future
events
was
not the
same
thing
as
predicting
what
would
happen
to the
individuals
involved
in
them.
The
Indians
had
lost, but
they
had
taken
many
a
white
man
into
the
shadows with
them.
The
half-men
would
lose,
but
how
many Danequa
would
die
by
their
side?
During
the
night,
the
Danequa
deployed
their
men. They
had
decided
against
a
headlong
charge
into
the valley
of
the
half-men,
preferring
a
plan
that
would enable
them
to
take
full
advantage
of
the
superior range
of
their
bows
and
arrows.
They
could
see
that the
ideal
situation
would
be
to
deploy
the
Danequa archers
just
within
arrow
range,
but
too
far
away
for the
Mroxor
spears
to
be
effective.
Theoretically,
they could
thus
destroy
the
half-men
without
losing
a
man of
their
own.
Theories,
however,
have
an
unpleasant
way
of
not working
out
under
actual
conditions.
The
Danequa leaders
knew
that
a
plan
had
to
be
flexible
in
order to
function
under
battle
conditions,
and
they
knew too
that
the
Neanderthals
were
not
so
stupid
that
they would
permit
themselves
to
stay
in
an
impossible
position.
They
would
either
charge
the
archers
or
they would
retreat
into
their
caves,
where
they
would
be safe
as
long
as
their
food
supply
held
out.
Therefore, with
quite
remarkable
skill,
the
Danequa
had
planned their
movements
to
take
the
best
possible
advantage of
the
situation
and
the
terrain.
One
small
party
of
Danequa
archers
filtered
down to
the
head
of
the
mountain
pass
and
hid
themselves among
the
rocks
and
pines.
The
other
warriors
stationed
themselves
along
the
high
sides
of
the
valley, where
their
bows
could
command
the
entrances
to
the Mroxor
caves.
Mark
and
Tlaxcan
were
high
on
the mountainside
behind
a
boulder,
the
silent
Fang
lying quietly
between
them.
