Dracula of the Apes 3

by G. Wells Taylor

  “I found a great tree at the center of the grove that was dead, and by its side was a shallow grave,” Van Resen said sharply, turning to pick up a battered panel of rusted metal and corroded tiles. The scientist carried it toward the governess, holding it out like a shield.

  “Miss James, can you identify the symbols on this grave marker?” he said, and the governess looked at it with disbelief for to either side of a grated vent set in the weathered surface was a circular dial etched with...

  “The symbol on Gazda’s medallion!” she cried, drawing away. “A serpent...”

  “So,” Mr. Quarrie puffed. “The wild man is a castaway!” The old fellow nodded, cheeks crimson as he peered at the grave marker. “And from a family of some bearing by the look.”

  Van Resen set the marker by the fireplace and returned to the table.

  He lifted something.

  “I found this book wrapped in leather and buried in a box of a design and construction similar to the grave marker. Upon its armored facing was etched a serpent symbol like the others.” The scientist held the book out between the tips of his thumb and index finger. “But it was in this book that I confirmed the true nature of the serpent.”

  “Does the book explain the symbol then?” Holmes asked.

  “It may but I cannot read it.” Van Resen pointed at the faded leather cover. “However, it was this seal that led me to my terrible conclusion.”

  The Quarries and the other castaways leaned in to look.

  “What,” Mrs. Quarrie asked, “another puzzle?”

  A shield-shaped device was pressed into the leather cover. The right side of it was unadorned, and the left was divided by horizontal lines set one over the other at even intervals.

  “It is the emblem of a house of nobles in a land far from here. Basarab their line is called,” Van Resen said, before pointing at the grave marker. “Its members belonged to the holy order whose emblem is there, on the buried box, and upon the medallion hanging from Gazda’s neck. No serpent, it is Signum draconis.”

  The castaways watched Van Resen as he lowered the book. “It signifies the Order of the Dragon. The house of nobles is that of Dracul.”

  “How can you know this?” Miss James asked, her face pale and tense with strain.

  “I have seen it before. Another scientist’s research held many diagrams.” Van Resen opened the book and pried from between the back cover and the pages a folded sheet of sturdy parchment, well-stained and tattered at the edges.

  “What scientist?” Miss James’ eyes gleamed with desperation.

  “This map confirmed the noble name for me,” he held the parchment up. There were lines upon it in ink, smeared iconography and annotations to indicate a legend. “Again, it is marked with runic symbols I do not know, or that have been made piecemeal from other languages or forms—some kind of cipher, I suspect. Regardless a pathway is clear to see wending over a countryside. Here it is crisscrossing roads and passing populated areas. Villages are marked as are streams here and here. And bridges...” Van Resen pursed his lips and pointed at the top of the map. “And this...”

  “I see only a simple square, doctor!” Mr. Quarrie rasped.

  “Yes, at the northern end of the marked trail—a square depicting a village, town—or...” The scientist ran his fingertip across the map, pausing to rub the hand as though it had gone numb with cold. “And at the southernmost end another square, but that one marks a town on the water and could indicate any port settlement had I not previously studied this particular stretch of Black Sea coast.”

  “What do you mean?” Mr. Quarrie asked.

  “ I, and many of my peers were drawn to that geography in relation to a controversial scientific report. Learned men, colleagues poured over it diligently—even obsessively,” Van Resen answered, voice lowering. “At first most of us took part in defense of a great man, and later we all used what he had learned to destroy him.”

  “What is the place in the north, doctor?” Mrs. Quarrie pleaded. Her husband held her with one thick arm about her shoulders. “What has it to do with Lilly?”

  “Far north of that coast is a mountainous region—and I read of a castle there where lived a nosferatu—” the scientist was cut off as a loud thump and vibration shook the floorboards. By the volume all knew it came from the platform just outside the door.

  “Is it Gazda and the others?” Virginia cried, half-rising.

  “Wait, Miss James,” Van Resen said, folding the map and returning it to its place inside the cover. “Let us be certain!”

  Van Resen slid the old book into his coat’s inner breast pocket before drawing his knife.

  He handed the blade to Mr. Quarrie as a sudden repetitive creaking noise came from past the wall. The scientist grimaced to see that Holmes had left the Cossack blade and another kitchen knife by the entrance...

  ...just where an ominous shadow now slid across the lower edge of the door.

  Van Resen did not get two steps before the portal burst open, and savage men charged out of the twilight shadow and into the cabin. They were naked, and their chests were covered with rustic armor of wood and bone, but most startling about them were the masks covering the face of each intruder.

  Ringed about the edge with a ridge of coarse black hair, the warriors had skull faces!

  The castaways had little time to react, but Van Resen shouted boldly and led the men in a valiant charge against the intruders as the women cried out for Lilly’s safety.

  CHAPTER 29 – Prey in Sight

  Harkon and Gazda arrived in the trees that overlooked the curious Bakwaniri village well after nightfall, with the huntress still reeling from her dizzying ride through the jungle canopy. She had experienced the ape-man’s strength and speed in daylight, but nothing could have prepared her for their harrowing charge through the nighttime forest.

  Blind in the suffocating darkness, Harkon had felt like she was falling, and her firm grip on Gazda’s unnaturally powerful body was little comfort and could not dispel her nauseating sense that at any moment she would be crushed against the ground.

  However it was clear to her that night was Gazda’s time of day, and despite the dark he either saw or sensed approaching obstacles and would with a wrenching action alter his route to protect his rider as they hurtled from tree to tree.

  Clambering through the shadows had been terrifying, especially so during the seconds that the gibbous moon slid out of its cloudy cover, for then her eyes had either been dazzled by the sudden light or given a view of the mad risks she was taking upon the ape-man’s back.

  It had been a terrifying lesson in his true powers that she was very happy to have survived.

  Her tutelage had begun with Gazda’s waking.

  Near sunset he had climbed out of the hole in the iroko tree, and excused himself with words and body language, explaining that he had to eat before they continued their journey.

  While this had promised another delay, Harkon understood her strange friend’s need. She could not imagine the amount of food required to fuel his muscular form after the explosive power she had seen him unleash.

  With the sun all but lost, she well knew the difficulties of hunting in the dark, though she doubted Gazda would share her handicap.

  Harkon had seen him move in the forest at night, and with his senses tuned to the shadows, it was likely that this talent would transfer to his hunting prowess.

  In the end, there had been no need for concern because the ape-man returned before she finished packing her gear.

  The sun was down, and the sky had been turning from blue to dark purple when Gazda scurried up the side of the tree—no more than a blur to the huntress’ eye—with a beard of blood to mark his chin and lips and frame his glistening fangs.

  As he wiped the stains away, he said, “Gazda...” and pantomimed climbing through the trees, before pointing at her and saying, “takes Harkon,” after which he half-turned and reached over his shoulder for her hands.

&
nbsp; Harkon had reluctantly climbed onto his back.

  So began their arboreal transit, passing like a nightmare in jarring spurts and frozen moments of terror. Harkon’s sense of falling had been immediate, marked by surging and swinging action that caused her senses to reel, and her guts to churn.

  She had hoped she would grow used to the sensations and the dark, but such a thing was impossible for Gazda had no fear of death—and so he raced with a recklessness that would have been suicidal had Harkon attempted it herself.

  This abandon had been characterized by one feat where after a long jump, Gazda caught the tip of a splintered branch that quickly gave away but deposited him within reach of a hanging vine that he used to angle their descent to a slanted branch that slowed him enough so they could carry forward through the trees again—after a terrifying drop.

  That stunt had the huntress wanting off the ape-man’s back, preferring to run on her injured leg than go another foot with her companion.

  But thoughts of vengeance had overridden her fear.

  Gazda had only shown one moment’s hesitation on their journey, and that was when they reached the winding river. It was shallow for much of its length, though it hid random dark pools of murky depth. The river could be 50 feet at its widest while narrowing to little more than a spear’s length in other places.

  Sight of the water from their perch in a tree above it had added a powerful thump to the ape-man’s heartbeat that throbbed against Harkon’s supple breasts, and she wondered if it was the river that had set this unusual fear in Gazda or whether it described some other reluctance to cross it.

  Harkon had already been considering the great distance that opened in the jungle where the river passed, and she had hoped to convince her friend that they should wade across.

  But Gazda’s hesitation had only been a brief respite, for his pulse slowed as he searched about the tree, and steadied when he found a long branch arching out toward the river.

  He gripped Harkon’s wrists beneath his chin and sprinted along the branch toward the empty space until the tapering limb began to bend beneath them. With a sudden coil of the ape-man’s powerful frame, there was a release of springing energy and they were off...

  ...to soar through the air, some 60 feet across the gap and 100 from the forest floor. The river was a simple strip of silver that passed below them in the dark.

  Awe had kept Harkon’s eyes wide, even as their forward momentum began to fail.

  But the ape-man’s sinewy hand had lashed out to catch the thin end of a long branch that he used to slow and direct them hurtling downward, steering closer to the thicker limbs, where his mighty chest and shoulders turned to stone, and angled them onto a long broad bough where he came to a shuddering halt that snatched the breath from the huntress’ lungs.

  Harkon had gasped for air where she laid across Gazda’s back while he crouched beneath her and peered at the jungle floor.

  “Bone-faces!” He had pointed, making an urgent coughing bark, but Harkon did not see the Bakwaniri trail that he had been clearly indicating. Nonetheless, she had caught his gleaming eye and nodded and they were off again.

  Tracking northeast they had soon found the tributary on which the Bakwaniri village was founded, and they followed its northeastern way until they stopped to watch the village below from a perch high in a nearby tree.

  Gazda was still overwhelmed by what he saw. He had been to the east river before, but had never traveled along this tributary nor seen the bone-face nest. The last time he had crossed out of his territory it had been to follow the cliffs in search of Omag’s cave.

  Now, apprehension shuddered in his breast at the sight of the tree-nests, and the great wall of sticks that circled them. The night ape had never imagined such an elaborate construction, and this great lair reminded him of what he had glimpsed in his dreams.

  Truly these bone-faces were of Fur-nose’s tribe, there could be no doubt, for had not that long dead relative used similar methods to construct his own nest, much smaller though it be?

  The Bakwaniri village was built a short distance from the narrow stream in a jungle clearing. Many small shelters were hidden behind a towering wall of pointed trees that had been stripped of bark and branches and sharpened at the upper end. These formed a banana-shaped loop around the little tree-nests that were linked together side by side along its center line.

  Three towering poles rose up amidst these nests with the tallest coming almost to the highest branches of the trees that grew in to form a living wall around the village.

  A platform was built atop the centermost pole, and the night ape had glimpsed a curious bird-faced creature upon it.

  But that was only the first wonder.

  “Magnuh!” Gazda barked when he recognized the skull set upon the narrow end of that high wall. Its long tusks pointed skyward, and he wondered if this explained his old enemy’s disappearance from the jungle.

  Had the Bakwaniri hunters that much skill and strength? The sharp sticks they threw would only annoy the jungle giant, so how had they brought him down?

  Again, he pondered Fur-nose, and the inexplicable power of his thunder-hand. So many bone-faces moved inside the wall—perhaps their numbers were enough to kill the bull elephant.

  There were so many of them.

  Glimpsed against the flames within the high wall, the shadows of the bone-faces passed the thin, open spaces between the poles. Drums there were also, and a great rhythmic chanting crossed the jungle night that reminded Gazda of the music from Ginny’s tribe.

  He had heard the drums striking up as he and Harkon approached, but now the drumbeats were blended with other noises like birdsong to create a complex web of sound.

  As he listened, Gazda hooted softly, the rhythmic beat and lilting accompaniment arousing him with its familiarity, conjuring pictures in his mind of night apes in rigid coverings like shells who danced with females dressed like Ginny.

  Then in the distance a horn was blown in strident notes and the night apes answered by voicing victory calls. The males raced into darkness as their mates cried out—and blood began to flow and pool on the ground over which the tribes clashed.

  Gazda panted fearfully as these conjured sounds and images reminded him of the music he had heard before—and fearing some trick of the bone-faces, he slapped his hands over his ears to drown it out.

  Pushing the strange images away, he glanced to see if Harkon was distressed, but she clung to a nearby branch unaffected, her black face was calm, and a patient, hungry look gleamed in her eyes.

  The huntress’ white teeth flashed when she felt his gaze upon her.

  Gazda panted and hooted quietly to himself imagining his friend with yellow eyes, and fur the color of her gleaming black skin. How like a panther she appeared there, perched upon the branch with her fingers spread like claws, and the muscles rippling over her lean form.

  Lethal, and thirsty for blood, she only needed a tail.

  The night ape knew that seeing all of her Bakwaniri enemies in one place had awakened a hunger in her much like his own, and though she was not a beast, she bared her teeth like she wished to sink them into bone-face flesh.

  Just as Gazda did.

  A grayish pall hung over the Bakwaniri village, and upon it came the smell of flames, smoking wood and roasted flesh that brought Gazda’s scarlet lips back in a sneer. He did not like the smell, for who would ruin blood and meat by setting it aflame?

  And such flame, for the end of the narrow tree-nest was bright with fire and all around it glimmered other small fires on poles.

  The night ape’s skin prickled and his hair twitched along his scalp for it was plain that the bone-faces were masters of fire and of music also. Would he be capable of fighting so many of his kind when they had such power? Would some among them also know of the thunder-hand?

  Yet, Harkon knew of fire, and she had no fear of it. It galled Gazda to think that the bone-faces handled the mysterious flame, so he determined to
overcome his own fears regarding it.

  If the bone-faces could use it, then why not Gazda? Was he not a great fighter and killer? Was he not King of the Apes?

  But the smell grew stronger and like the music began to draw pictures from his mind, again of a towering stone lair with high walls over which great fires flickered, and then he saw himself standing with other night apes. All of them wore hard coverings—like shining stone skins—and had hairy faces like Fur-nose, and they looked at Gazda as the fire blazed in the background, as night apes screamed and flesh sizzled in the heat.

  “Gazda,” the night ape said to steady his nerve and break the spell the smoke had set upon him. “Gazda goes to look!”

  Harkon turned to him, puzzled.

  First he would travel along the riverbank where tracts of black muck glistened. There he would add a layer of mud-skin to hide his white flesh from the waxing moon that now lay hid behind the cloud. Gazda was not happy with the bright orb for on the trail it had come out to reveal him against the shadows.

  “We kill the Bakwaniri now?” Harkon asked, though it did not sound like a question. She was ready to move.

  “We will kill the bone-face devils,” Gazda said, with fragments of other languages appearing in his speech. “But I will look at their lair first.”

  Harkon raised her eyebrow at the shift in language and tone, but she understood him still, so only nodded.

  “Will we kill the Bakwaniri now?” she queried.

  “No. Many Bakwaniri will kill Harkon, and kill Gazda, too!” the night ape grunted, petulantly. “Gazda...arata.” He made a hand motion to pantomime a great trunk coiling from his face as he pointed at the giant skull on the village wall. “The bone-faces will kill us like Magnuh.” He went quiet as he searched his ape-vocabulary and what he knew of Harkon’s language for the word for “swarm.”

  “But we kill many before the Bakwaniri kill us,” Harkon snarled, anxious to climb down from the tree—tired of waiting.