As indecision grew heavy in the pit of his stomach, he cast about the trees at his fellows—feeling some relief to see little Ooso and tiny Yulu high up in an ironwood, while in the branches below them Kagoon’s massive black form lurked protectively.
They were out of danger, but Goro...
Already, the king’s fur was slick with scarlet and the flesh on his shoulders was torn in ragged strips. Even at such a distance Gazda’s nostrils grew full with the smell of battle and his heart raced for blood.
Goro was either weakening, or the first lioness had set her teeth in his throat for the great silverback fell forward suddenly, and as he did, the beast upon his back shifted positions to sink her fangs into the flesh at the base of his neck.
His spine would soon be severed, and the tribe knew then it would be over.
Goro was weakening, but he was not finished. He roared his frustration, great muscles shivering, for he could not reach back to remove the second lion without opening his throat to attack from the first.
That lioness beneath him had sunk her teeth deep into his chest muscles, but would shift and strike like a snake if he lifted his chin. The silverback knew it was only a matter of moments. His primitive fury surged through him and he squeezed the lioness under him with all his strength—and there was a cracking sound.
Distantly he heard an uproar as the tribe’s warning and scolding cries turned to something else. Something was happening! More danger? The silverback could not help them.
The tribe still scolded the lions, but some it seemed, the blackbacks were cheering.
And the lioness on Goro’s back suddenly screamed, spun and jumped off of him. The silverback ignored the wet coolness that flooded over his shoulders, and growling he pressed his great forearm against the lioness’ throat beneath him. His titanic muscles swelled as he crushed her against the earth.
There was another cracking sound.
Behind him the apes had been cheering Gazda. The night ape had finally broken away from his mother’s memory, and defying Goro’s order had swung through the trees until he hurtled to the ground behind the rending pile of feline muscle perched atop his king’s back.
Even Baho could not contain himself and cheered with the others, while Omag, Ulok and the aging queens scowled as they scolded them all.
Gazda had leapt forward quickly, reaching out for the lioness’ tail which he brought up to his gaping mouth and with his razor sharp teeth sheared off the tufted tip. Thick red blood jetted from the severed tail into the night ape’s mouth.
The lioness had yowled and turned about with long claws lashing out for Gazda, who sprinted away from the battle with her hurtling close behind.
Goro crushed down on the lion’s throat until he felt muscle and bone shift and fracture one against the other beneath his forearm. And at last the beast’s fangs slid from his chest. The big silverback closed his fighting canines over her head and with one great bite, split her skull open. Hot blood flowed into Goro’s mouth as the beast beneath him shuddered and went still.
But there was no time to rest. The silverback heaved himself upright and staggering, turned to see the other lioness moving away across the clearing in pursuit of Gazda.
The night ape could move as quickly as the other apes did on all fours, but he could also employ an unsettling but speedy sprint by raising himself onto his hind legs and charging along like he was about to fall onto his face.
The other apes could also walk on their feet alone, but could never match the night ape’s agility or speed. Gazda kept ahead of the lioness by dodging back and forth, but she was quickly learning his movements and soon her claws would catch.
Goro thundered after them, screaming as he pounded toward the beast. His challenge brought the lioness at last around to where she growled at him in kind, and started back toward the bleeding silverback, his many injuries making him the easier kill.
The king bellowed, and snapped his bloody fangs in anticipation for the lioness’ neck. The bull ape was badly mauled, torn and bleeding everywhere, but his mind was alive with fury that the beasts had dared hunt in his lands, and though he doubted he would survive this fight; he panted joyfully for a final battle, pelting toward the lioness with the last of his strength.
The apes in the trees went silent as the lion ran at Goro and leapt.
The silverback screamed and met the charge with all his might. The big carnivore struck him in the chest and the impact threw both great beasts in a heap where they rolled and struggled on the ground.
Yet just as quickly, Goro felt the lioness in his arms go limp. Puzzled, yet growling mightily, the silverback pulled himself up to see that the beast was dead.
But Goro had not killed it. Instead, Gazda lay there wrapped around the lion’s body, just as an infant ape clings to his mother’s back. Only, he was not suckling. The night ape had his shining fang out and was sinking it again and again into the great cat’s side. Its coat was torn to ribbons; the internal flesh was exposed and stained dark crimson.
Gazda had used Goro’s charge as a distraction and had come after the lioness when she had turned, leaping onto her back as she raced toward the king.
Goro wiped at his bloody brow with a shaking hand, and then sat down quite heavily.
Gazda’s face was lined with worry as he pulled his limbs from under the lion’s corpse.
The silverback’s vision was swimming and tinted red where his torn scalp leaked blood into his eyes. He felt great thirst and weakness, but he climbed back to his feet as Gazda approached.
Farther on, the bull ape could see the rest of the tribe climbing down from the trees to cross the clearing. The smell of carnivores and blood made them move cautiously.
“King Goro fights the lions,” Gazda said, licking blood from the shining fang in his hands.
Goro grunted, pride suddenly burning in his veins, renewing his strength. He took a deep breath as the other apes drew closer.
Rising upright the silverback set one great foot upon the dead lioness, and throwing back his head, he beat his powerful chest with bloody fists, loosing the victory cry of a bull ape.
And then he fell onto his knees as the night ape moved to steady him.
“Goro fights lions with Gazda,” the big silverback gasped, and then he panted lightheartedly, swatting the night ape with a massive hand and knocking him for a tumble.
Soon, the females and infants stopped a safe distance on as the blackbacks approached the dead lions. There the males screamed and leapt, running back and forth between the lifeless beasts venting their rage upon them with fangs, fists and rocks.
Gazda and Goro walked together toward the tribe where Baho panted and hooted in joy, and the females hurried forward with concern upon their frightened faces. The night ape joined with them to tend and lick clean the mighty Goro’s wounds.
As the blackbacks continued to display their outrage upon the dead lions, Goro looked at Gazda and grunted appreciatively as he accepted the handful of grasses that was offered.
Chewing the green blades for their moisture, the silverback felt a shadow of his strength return. His reign as king might continue yet.
Across from them Omag, the aging queens, Ulok and a group of resentful blackbacks had remained in the trees.
Cold was the glare in the crippled ape’s eye.
1910
Sixteen years of age.
CHAPTER 27 – Harkon the Huntress
It was almost three years ago that Capan Seetree of the Bakwaniri had ordered his hunters into the forbidden lands. A fire had been set in his soul and the flames would burn at each feast or festival until the River Demon and its kin were dead and their meat was hissing on the fire.
The range of this beast had been sounded, and hunters were sharpening their blades and making ready to set out as they had every season.
Each Johnnie boasted he would be the one to take the monster’s head—despite the fact that all had failed, and many died or were never seen again, lost as they were
in the twisted jungle that the River Demon called home—a jungle as vast as the ocean the first fathers had said, and just as quick and lethal for any crewmen sunk within it.
But their quarry had proved to be a slippery fish, as was its folk that seemed to move quietly beneath the green murk, leaving little sign of their passing. The returning hunters would speak of finding the spoor but never the beasts, and it was impossible to know what the missing lads had found.
In the years since his dear daughter’s death, Seetree’s efforts had slain many other creatures and men, with no River Demon skull, flesh or skin to show for it.
In fact, since hunters had first found its trail and followed it across the forbidden lands toward the coast, the beast had doubled back many times to slay their women; the poor hearties gone forever down that raw, red gullet.
Because efforts to slay the beast were meeting with little success, and women continued to die, Seetree had tried to shift the focus from immediate results to their greater accomplishments, and he would often hold festivals by the great fire where he broke out the grog and roasted the best slaves for a feast to celebrate the ship’s history.
He’d have the best music played amidst wanton dancing and the night would spin under the stars as the wizard’s apprentices flayed their captives alive.
Then capan, fust and sir-jon turned out in their best gear to remind the crew that the first fathers came from a great place more powerful than the jungle that rose in leafy waves about the ship, or any flesh-eating demon that dared lurk in its wake.
The “best” gear had been altered by years with most of the original metal weapons and tools of the fathers’ falling victim to time, lost or worn away by rust and use or ground down to nothing by endless sharpening.
Of blacksmithing to repair the things only the rudiments remained to them and that was reserved for making crude weapons, rough nails to build, implements to cook and chains to hold their slaves.
Families in the crew might brag ownership of heirlooms or the like: ratty scabbards, bent swords, and blunt knives that upon inspection would be exposed as broken nubs better used for skinning bananas than repelling enemies.
This decay did not in any way deplete the importance of what artifacts remained, and so the positions of capan, fust and sir-jon being of some repute were all identified by certain badges office.
Like the other Bakwaniri males, they wore masks of wood though their “skull” faces ended at the cheekbones to allow for the long braided beards that each official cultivated.
The capan wore a hat of woven feathers that unknown to its wearer was crafted in the shape and design of head coverings that once denoted the British admiralty, while at his hip hung a cutlass much dwindled by long sharpening until it was half its original length and width when it was drawn.
Of clothing there was nothing genuine left, though flairs of their sea going history still rode in the cut of their beaded coattails, hyena fur epaulets and tight snakeskin leggings and boots.
The fust wore similar attire, though his hat had four points instead of three, and was furry. From his waist was suspended a saber that remained sheathed at all times to hide the fact that there remained only a rusted spike projecting from its tarnished hilts.
Being a wizard, the sir-jon wore a long waistcoat and breeches of lizard skin, and with him he carried two sacred objects for which he had only passing knowledge of their original use. A rusted quadrant swung from his neck by a length of rawhide, and under one arm he carried a much-weathered spyglass.
Neither did he employ to determine his position upon the earth, but rather as optical devices for gauging the nature of things in the wild, and the content of men’s souls.
But so caparisoned, these men appeared supreme against the savage backdrop, and the echo of history would affirm the crew’s belief in itself, and its leaders.
These festivals were laid out when the season or situation demanded, for the capan had been forced by the grumbling crew to alter his plans for revenge. He was asked to keep half of his hunters close, for many said there was little point of searching in the west for a creature that visited their homes.
Yet none spoke of elections for there was booty to show for their years of hunting the demon. The Bakwaniri slave ranks had grown to bursting as bellies swelled with the flesh they’d taken from small black tribes discovered hiding in the deep verge and pillaged for meat, slaves and gold as the hunters combed the dense jungle to the north, south and west.
Young female slaves were always needed to give healthy babies to Bakwaniri hunters and to grow the population of the ship; while slaves of any gender were worked until they were needed in the kitchen.
But such plunder would never be enough for Capan Seetree, robbed as he’d been and bereaved, for he knew his daughter’s spirit could only rest when the River Demon’s head was hung from the mainmast.
They simply had to find the beast.
Generations spent roasting slaves and stalking the hoofed animals of the upper terrace had not prepared the Bakwaniri for hunting jungle creatures. The dangers were numerous, and it seemed they were not unopposed.
The recurring disappearances of Bakwaniri Johnnies on the hunt, and the mutilation of their corpses suggested that there might be something other than the River Demon to whom a debt was owed.
Seetree’s plans might have changed, but the fire of conquest within him still burned brightly, fuelled by his need for vengeance and the disease that ate at his brain.
However, it seemed that he was not the only keeper of a flame.
For hundreds of years raiders and slavers, foreign and native-born, had pillaged the lands of the West African coast destroying and making extinct civilizations and peoples too numerous to count, while leaving too few to conceive of their loss.
A holocaust blazed where one group of people after another were made slaves or killed, their treasures and land taken, before all trace of them was destroyed.
There were many such peoples, and their survivors clung to life in the shadows of the dense jungle that had birthed them and concealed their existence.
For generations, one tribe of warriors had been whittled down to nothing. Their numbers were reduced until they had not enough people to grow or revisit days of glory—nor to carry the traditions of their past.
The dwindling few who remained had spent the days surviving, avoiding raiders and slavers and putting off the inevitable end. An end that came quite recently for this small group that had lived in a pocket of dense jungle in the northeast of Goro’s land. These warriors with their children had moved there no more than two years past.
A small group of Bakwaniri hunters tasked with finding the River Demon had stumbled upon their hiding place, and returned in force to raze it. The men and children were made slaves or killed in the process, and the women of breeding years were taken as wives.
Save one.
She was called Harkon, a great hunter of animals that in the intervening years had come to be the hunter of men, and seeker of revenge.
Whether her captured people had met the butcher block, or were now slaves of Bakwaniri masters, none could say; but Harkon had devoted her life to finding out and rescuing any she could, while bringing death to those who’d pushed her people from the very earth.
The Bakwaniri had to die for crimes they’d committed against her. Recent years had shown the diseased and masked warriors moving out past their former range, reaving and slaving as they went, and in the end they had attacked a place where her people had lay hidden.
Harkon’s race was all that was left of one of many lost African tribes and kingdoms. Wars, famine, slave raiders and the Bakwaniri hunters had all but annihilated a people who had once boasted golden halls with ivory thrones.
A joyous people had been made to weep, and all that remained of hers was a small group of some few hunters, old men and women and a handful of children. There had been little left when the Bakwaniri had come and there would be no future unless Ha
rkon acted.
And if there was no future, then she would see to it that the criminals similarly disappeared, or that she would die pushing them to the brink.
Harkon’s tribe had been forced in its defense to take up a nomadic existence, leaving little trace as they passed, creating temporary huts within a palisade of sticks and bushes whenever required. The tribe moved constantly and at a moment’s notice.
At any indication of an enemy, the old men and women would lead the children to prearranged hiding places, while the warriors remained behind to fight a rearguard action.
However, the last attack by the Bakwaniri had come by stealth after they had stumbled upon the little tribe. When their reinforcements had arrived, the masked men had fallen on Harkon’s people without warning, slaying and capturing what warriors remained, and taking the old men and women, and children before they had a chance to hide.
Harkon had been out of the camp at that time. As the greatest hunter it was her task to procure meat for her people. There were so few left, they could not spare any more than one of their protectors at a time for obtaining meat.
When Harkon returned home she found herself alone. Even the dead had been collected and carried away. Man, woman and child, even Harkon’s husband was nowhere to be seen, though his favorite string of beads she found in a sticky pool of blood.
Favorite, for it had been made for him by their son, Anim—a boy of four years who was missing with the other children.
Young he was but quick to learn the chores around his mother’s camp. She found herself hoping Anim would be useful to his captors—if he yet lived.
Harkon knew that the Bakwaniri made slaves of those captives they did not eat, and she vowed to find and free her boy and any others who still breathed.
Hers had been a race of happy people who were lovers of children and good company. As she studied the trampled earth for sign and track, the last remnants of that joyful breed was squeezed from her heart as it hardened for the grim task ahead.
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