But Gazda’s immediate anger had subsided as he drank the creature’s life away, and afterward he sank to his knees to calmly study the bone-face’s clothing and equipment again, thinking he might take them for his own use. The questions they raised were too exciting to ignore, and something of their design resonated in the night ape’s breast.
He licked at the blood that still colored his lips and chin, thinking that the blood and flesh tasted much like that of a chimpanzee...and the smell of it was ape. And with that, he decided with some finality that the bone-face was a night ape similar to his own kind—and Fur-nose’s.
Then he wondered if perhaps Omag could be induced to explain the similarities between his diseased flesh and that of the bone-face’s for at close range they looked to be the same.
But Gazda shrugged, uncertain if he was prepared to mention Sip-sip’s disabilities for the crippled ape was sensitive and vengeful when any attention was drawn to them.
He decided that the dangers of asking Omag would be warranted if it might help explain how the night ape came to be Eeda’s child...
...and how the events had unfolded that led to her end.
Growling angrily at the thought, Gazda lifted the bone-faced ape overhead and flung the body to the ground far below where it hit with bone-crushing force near where it had dropped its long, sharp stick.
The night ape had just started wrapping the bone-face’s possessions in its woven vest when movement below drew his eye to the jungle floor.
Expecting to see a hyena going for the dead flesh, he was startled when another hairless ape moved carefully out of the thick green brush.
But this was no bone-face, this one was black in color and without hair from head to toe, and its shape and scent soon confirmed that it was female.
She carried a long knife similar to Gazda’s and unsheathing it, she moved cautiously toward the dead bone-face, her eyes alert for movement. In her other hand was a long sharp stick with a knife-like blade affixed to one end.
Gazda barked a warning and dropped rapidly branch to branch, before sliding down the tree trunk and leaping between this stranger and the body.
The hairless female’s dark face and limbs became like stone, but her eyes shone white rings of surprise as she stopped. And yet she did not flee but held her place—and Gazda wondered if she intended to eat the bone-face meat.
Her knife was out, and its tip was pointed at Gazda.
The female’s eyes narrowed as she glared at him with neither fear nor anger; and perplexed, the night ape did the only thing he could think of.
He barked again, and beat upon his chest until the dried mud-skin and hunting marks he’d daubed there came off in clouds of dust.
One corner of the female’s mouth came up in a half-smile as Gazda stamped his feet and growled at her exposed teeth.
Confused by her reaction, since it was clear she had not shown all of her fighting fangs, Gazda moved some feet back from the bone-face where he squatted in the dirt to watch, and sniff at the air between them. Already the female’s scent was growing stronger to him, and was a heady vapor that made a jumble of his thoughts.
His nostrils flared as he captured more of her perfume on the warm breeze.
The female was dressed in a leathery vest and short cape, with a knee-length loincloth that sprouted from a wide belt. Her forearms and calves were covered in the same leathery material that protected her chest and neck, and while it appeared stiff and hard it did not hamper her movements.
Gazda studied the strange designs that swirled in raised lines over her garments and he felt an urge to take them away from her. She could be no match for his strength, and it would allow him to see the body beneath.
The black female kept her long sharp stick in one hand, tipped back and balanced on her shoulder as she knelt over Gazda’s kill. The night ape growled quietly, but she did not flinch, using her knife to cut a patch of long hair from the bone-face’s scalp.
Gazda watched her puzzled, tilting his head to left and right, as she then tied this bloody trophy to a collection of similar hairy tufts that were knotted into a long, twisted cord that hung from the belt at her slim waist.
Pointing at the dead thing on the ground, she said something then in a commanding tone, “Bakwaniri!”
Gazda looked at the corpse and up at the female, and he grunted the name for “meat” in his ape language.
The female’s eyes went wide at the animal sound, but she repeated slowly: “Ba-kwa-niri.”
She followed this with complicated chattering that reminded Gazda of the irritating sounds made by the bone-face that lay dead between them.
But the black female continued this, pointing at the body, chattering and gesturing to the trophies on her belt, and while the night ape did not understand her “sounds,” he somehow understood her meaning.
The thing on the ground was not just “meat” it was a “Bakwaniri.” The bone-face was called that just as he was called Gazda...
He marveled at his sudden intuitive leap, and he hooted happily, slapping the ground in his enthusiasm as he repeated the word in garbled fashion.
The female showed all her fangs in a smile and the night ape growled menacingly, but quickly calmed down when she nodded agreeably before chattering again.
Gazda lost the words, but he was amazed to understand her meaning: “I am Harkon the huntress. I mean no harm to the ape-man.”
“Ape” he understood, but “man?” He studied her slyly, puzzling at the mental picture as it faded. Did the strange word mean “hunter” to this female? Such a meaning would make sense, since he was an ape and a hunter.
This Harkon was like Gazda, a great hunter also, but her strength was directed solely at the bone-faces. She hated the Bakwaniri.
Gazda raised nose, snuffling at the air and picking up traces of her female scent. Had he smelled her trail before? Was she familiar in these lands?
No! She was not. The night ape grunted negatively. He would have remembered her scent. Gazda gave a coughing bark as he waved at the thing on the ground, trying to make her understand that she could eat the bone-face meat if she wished.
He nodded and repeated his assent as Harkon the huntress started backing away, nodding also. The night ape hoped that she would kill many more Bakwaniri, for they had helped cause Eeda’s death.
His mother...
The bone-faces and Magnuh had played their parts, and while Gazda had plans for the Bakwaniri, of the bull elephant, there had been no sign. The night ape had yet to decide whether such a confrontation was worth tracking down when the outcome would likely mean his own death, and there was still blame enough at home.
Gazda struggled with the fact that he—the son—had fed upon and killed the only thing in his life that had ever cared for him, had raised and defended him despite his many differences.
Tears suddenly came into his eyes, and he growled to negate them, shaking his head violently so that the long black hair fell forward to cover his face.
Harkon paused at the trail’s edge to watch him, tipping her face from right to left, curious about Gazda’s meaning.
Then she set her weapons aside and put her hands out in front of her, fingers spread and palms down, and the night ape did the same.
It was a simple gesture, but both understood its meaning. Like her garments it was uncomplicated, and elegant, nothing like the brutish and harsh language and laws of Goro’s apes.
Harkon and Gazda understood each other. They were both night apes! Had he found his tribe at last?
She retrieved her weapons and backed away, leaving Gazda by the corpse as she melted into the thick undergrowth that choked the jungle floor there.
Gazda’s mind clung to her scent, her actions, and to her clothing, and he glanced down at his own rough black loincloth, glad that he wore it—saddened that he had not brought his cape.
They were not as refined as Harkon’s gear, but Gazda was not just some hairless ape—or what she had suggested
an ape-man? No. He was different from the other strange apes in the jungle.
Gazda looked up into the tree thinking of the dead Bakwaniri’s bundled gear and he scowled at the thought of using it. The clothes were more refined than his own, but they smelled worse, reeking of disease and stained with foulness. The creature’s weapons and tools had only filled the night ape with anger and guilt.
He could never use them without thinking of his mother’s death.
But his memory played back to Harkon’s garments, and a thrill of excitement made him hoot and pant with pleasure. Those coverings had seemed practical, and their lines and dark coloration suited his hunting techniques, and would disguise much of his pale skin.
With a final glance along the way that Harkon had taken, Gazda quickly climbed back up into the tree where he investigated his bundle of booty.
The clothing he threw aside, and after it the sharp sticks were cast away. He dropped the bent stick and string that he could not understand, and paused a moment as he considered retrieving the bone-face’s long sharp stick from the forest floor.
Harkon used a similar weapon but Gazda decided against it when he imagined moving through the trees with the awkward thing. Besides, he had no idea how he could employ its sharp end when in close quarters battle with his prey.
The Bakwaniri knife was of inferior quality, but he still wedged it firmly between some branches, memorizing its location in case he ever lost his own blade.
Gazda kept the decorative arm- and ankle-bands. They were made of a substance similar to his long knife, but it was the motif set into them that drew his eye: two were marked by grinning skulls, another of entire skeletons with linked hands and feet and a fourth of long bones crossed in a patterned series. He copied their placement from where he’d found them upon their former owner, dividing them up to slide over his ankles and upper biceps.
Finally, he studied the Bakwaniri’s bone-face covering, in his mind comparing it to the one he had in his lair. Between them he could distinguish differences that made him favor the mask he already possessed, so after catching a whiff of decay, he flung the one in his hands away.
With a final admiring look at his interesting new adornments, Gazda laughed and then leapt into motion, swinging through the trees to where he had left the tribe combing the crumbled ruin of a fallen ironwood for grubs and insect eggs.
CHAPTER 26 – The Lions
As Gazda swept from tree to tree, he again mused upon Harkon’s fine body coverings, and on Fur-nose, whose garments were made of flimsy stuff that pulled apart into threads like spider webbing.
Those marvelous strands had come to mind when he saw Harkon’s leather apparel for it was edged with colored string or webbing. Gazda had seen a connection, and felt it was more proof that night apes were an advanced group of creatures capable of wonders like long-knives, body coverings, the incredible tree-nest and the fantastic things inside it.
Gazda released his hold upon a swinging vine so that he flew some 30 feet in an arc, to where he dug his strong fingers into the ridged bark of an enormous tree.
He climbed upward to rest on a branch where he yawned and studied the Bakwaniri ornaments again; turning the band on his left arm to make the carven skulls move around his bicep.
The night ape snatched a lock of his long black hair and chewed on its end as he studied the way he had come through the trees.
The thick, leafy wall of jungle looked impenetrable, but he knew that Harkon would be in there hunting Bakwaniri for their hair, and a surge of excitement almost caused him to dash after her and join in the killing.
But he would hunt for her track later.
At the moment, he had to tell Goro what he had learned of these Bakwaniri because the silverback’s lands were not open to strangers.
Gazda’s sun-weakness had come upon him when he returned to the tribe late that afternoon, and the apes were preparing to bed down by the time he came awake to hunt for his supper, so it was not until the following morning that he could tell Goro about the bone-faces.
The apes were searching for their breakfasts on the cluttered and uneven ground in an open gash in the jungle where fallen trees had given way to new saplings and much undergrowth. Massive trees formed a dense wall of interwoven branches where the forest edged the narrow clearing.
The night ape was crouched before the silverback and about to speak when Aluga, mate of Baho, tore screaming out of the thick foliage and pushed her way between them. The fur on her shoulders, breasts and belly was soaked with red, and cruelly marked by claws.
As the tribe quickly gathered, Aluga chattered that she had just escaped death. Two lionesses had ambushed her close to the nearby stream when she had bent to drink. It seemed their starving state had made the beasts impatient, and so their attack had failed when the she-ape wriggled free.
Aluga shrieked and screamed like no other, and soon even old Baho’s concern was drawn by her dramatic tale. He sat by Goro with his large hands over his ears as a pair of she-apes tended his noisy mate’s wounds.
The king ordered his lieutenant and the blackbacks to get the females and infants into the trees while he performed a rearguard action by pacing the trail back toward the stream. The males would then protect the tribe and under Baho’s leadership await Goro’s return.
Few of the frightened apes missed the king’s many angry looks at Omag, who hoisted himself into the trees with an impudent expression of amusement upon his distorted features.
As the tribe was climbing into the branches, Goro started retracing the she-ape’s path, but came to a sudden halt when a gaunt lioness appeared out of the thick undergrowth near the clearing’s edge.
She had followed Aluga’s trail and tracked her right back to the tribe.
Terror seized the heart of every ape, and screaming with unbridled panic, they clambered higher into the trees, seeking protected perches where they could safely scold and taunt the unwelcome predator.
Gazda did this also, caught up in the king’s order and the tribe’s fear, and he was soon 50 feet above the clearing where he turned upon a bough to see that Goro had not moved.
The king stood his ground before the lioness. A deep rumbling sound came from the silverback, as his massive body seemed to swell and dwarf the very open space around him.
Shouting encouragement, Gazda watched as Goro’s bull-ape roar caused the lioness to flinch and the great carnivore cowered before the king of the apes—shaking. Thus emboldened, Goro pounded his mighty chest and with fangs bared he charged the beast, tearing up stones, plants and rotten logs as he hurtled toward the cringing lioness.
Gazda recognized the trap too late, so he could only scream an unheard warning as Goro pounded closer to the cowering beast. For that lion was the bait to draw the king in and when he was close enough...
...another lioness launched out of her hiding place in the underbrush as Goro passed, and landed full upon the great ape’s back.
Gazda and the other apes screamed and shook the trees at this duplicity and cowardice.
Goro howled in fury as this second lioness raked his shoulders and lower back with long, sharp claws. She hacked at the thick muscle about his neck with her fangs, seeking his jugular.
When the king reached back with his powerful hands to pull the lioness off, the first beast made her attack, jumping at Goro’s chest and face.
The rest of the apes shrieked and scolded from the trees, threw sticks and stamped on swaying branches to no avail as their king battled the lions alone.
Several blackbacks looked to old Baho who was reluctantly holding his position. It was clear on his face and in the cries of his fellows that they wished to test their strength against these lions; but the former silverback was torn by his duties to his friend and to the leadership bestowed upon him, for indeed he had also inched his way lower where he shook the branches with fighting fangs displayed.
Baho was torn, for it was the way of the apes to do their duty. He had been ordered by
the king to guard the tribe not Goro. The king was doing his duty, so must Baho, and the blackbacks had been charged with the tribe’s protection also.
Watching and howling and shaking the trees only helped infuriate these beasts who were many and the lions but two.
Some of the most eager had slipped down their respective tree-trunks and hesitated by the gnarled roots, eager to join the fight.
But Omag bellowed close to old Baho. He hung hand and foot from overhead scolding any blackback who had moved to the ground, or dared work up a fighting frenzy. The huge Ulok loomed there also, backing up his crippled mentor by roaring for order. Between them and the aging queens every blackback was reminded of the king’s pronouncement that “he” would fight the lions.
While not 80 feet from them, Goro wrapped his massive arms around the first beast, hissing as the lioness behind him sank her fangs again and again into his mountainous shoulders—his “silver” back hung in shredded strings of crimson gore.
The king drove his own long fighting canines into the first lioness’ shoulder as he crushed her against his chest in a smothering embrace. The snarling carnivore slashed at his forehead.
Gazda was struggling with the memory of his mother. Had she still lived, she would have crept up onto the branch beside him having read from his bearing that his fear was gone, and that his impulsive nature would soon make him act against the tribal laws.
She would have recognized this, and slipped her strong arms around her son where he would alternately try to break her grip while raging at the lions that battled Goro.
Though she no longer lived to protect him, her memory was there to hold Gazda in place, and so the night ape wrestled with the lessons Eeda had taught him.
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