ly brought down as Otah's drifting
rear-guard deployed to their assignments. It became evident early that
Otah's tribe was more proficient in the long-shafts!

Alas, mere proficiency would not prevail against force of numbers. Well
within the hour Otah knew it, knew with a raging despair that time was
not with him, he had deployed too late with too little. Now he knew with
consuming clarity, that despite the lulling pretense Kurho's boasts of
strength had not been idle boasts!

This was Otah's last bitter thought, and then he was too occupied for
cerebral indulgence. For the next minutes he wielded truer than any! Men
came and fell, and others leaped and fell, skulls shattered, the
life-stuff spurting, before Otah's shaft went spinning away in shattered
ruin; he leaped to seize another, employed it in great sweeping swaths
against those who still came. Two went down, but two came to fill the
gap. In perfect unison, one parried as the other wielded truly to the
mark....

It cannot be said, with surety, that Otah in that ultimate moment felt
pain. It is fairly certain that both finitely and cosmically the initial
numbing shock did register; and it may be assumed that he jolted rather
horribly at the splintering bite of bone into brain. _But who can say he
did not reach a point-of-prescience, that his neuro-thalamics did not
leap to span the eons, and gape in horror, in that precise and endless
time just before his brains spewed in a gush of gray and gore, to
cerebrate no more?_

* * * * *

A matter of minutes, now. Both Kurho and Mai-ak knew it. The latter had
glimpsed Otah's destruction, and with wild abandon sought to rally his
men into the area.

There was no longer an area. There was clash and groan and rush and
retreat, there was dark endless rock and a darker sky, from which the
very stars seemed to recoil in darkest wonderment at man's senseless
assault. The valley-rim yawned, and there Mai-ak made his stand and made
it well.

He was unaware that Kurho was no more--that the man of boast was at this
very moment a quivering, protoplasmic lump splattered across a dark
crevice. A random weapon in a frantic hand had proved to be no respecter
of person. Nor did it matter! Decimated as they were, enough of the
enemy got through. Once propelled in the insane purpose there could be
no stopping, as they descended upon Otah's people who huddled in the
caves....

For weeks, they had be