Still holding tight to the swinging branch and trying to climb, he saw with some relief that Ooso had not fallen. She clung to their original perch above him—her eyes wide in terror, staring down not at Gazda, but at something below him. As bark shredded from the quivering branch in his hands the night ape looked down between his feet.
Magnuh!
Like a mountain of stone, the great bull elephant stood so tall that his head was just ten feet below Gazda. The rough gray skin on the mammoth skull was covered with pulverized bark from where the giant had rammed the tree in which the night ape had been perched with Ooso.
On both sides of this titanic forehead, great ears bigger than Goro flapped, and snapped in the air. The beast’s red eyes glared upward from the hard flesh just behind a pair of gargantuan white fangs. These curved outward to either side and ripped bark from the tree with their sharp points.
Gazda saw the great red mouth full of crushing teeth open, and the mass of flesh over it suddenly come alive. Just as old Baho had warned, a long, flexible arm shot upward from the face, and grabbed for the night ape’s legs.
He shrieked, and kicked at the thorny, gray trunk as a weird two-fingered hand at the end slid off his pale leg where it had tried to grab him. The action caused the branch on which Gazda hung to flex and drop him lower, before jouncing him upward...
...only to dangle him lower again!
Eeda screamed and challenged Magnuh from a tree across the open space before she leapt from her perch, and began swinging through the forest that circled the grassy clearing, heading toward Gazda.
The short, spiky hairs on the bull elephant’s mighty trunk scratched Gazda’s legs as the monster tried to catch him in its muscular coils.
But the night ape kicked to swing his feet away from the beast as the trunk lashed upward at him, bruising his calves.
The other apes shouted, and taunted the monster from the safety of distant trees as Gazda bounced at the end of his slender tether.
Magnuh trumpeted his rage and rammed his mighty tusks into the tree again, shaking the pillar-like trunk, and causing Gazda’s hands to slide farther down the limb.
The trees came alive with screaming apes as the tribe moved around the clearing. The braver blackbacks were roaring challenges, and Goro, too, had come closer, drawn by the bull elephant’s wrath.
The king of the apes beat his chest and bellowed his rage at the behemoth.
Gazda’s heart was drumming and his lungs were heaving as he bobbed just above the giant beast’s head.
The night ape could hear his mother’s noisy approach. She was a creature of wrath herself, and Gazda feared that her passions would drive her to death in his defense. Magnuh’s small eyes blazed for such an opportunity. He wanted blood, and Eeda’s desire to protect her son had no limits.
But then Gazda’s concern was dispelled by mere chance, for Magnuh rammed the tree again stripping great sheets of bark from it, the branch in Gazda’s hands snapped and he fell.
The intensity of the elephant’s hatred was such that his eye had shifted from its prize for a single second, and in that moment Gazda landed full upon the monster’s head.
Skin crawling at the touch of Magnuh’s bristly flesh, Gazda crouched and coiled every muscle—a life of jungle living had made them like steel.
He sprang away from the beast, just as its trunk swung up to throttle him.
And so powerful was Gazda’s leap, and so well-timed, that he hurtled in an arc, flying from his tree to the next, where he caught a high branch and scrambled upward, just as his mother arrived at the same tree.
She swept him into her arms, and holding fast to their perch, they scolded and screamed at Magnuh. Gazda’s hair was still on end, and his heart raced. He searched for any sign of Ooso, and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the little she-ape on the tree across from him where she had climbed higher during the attack.
Robbed of his prize, mighty Magnuh went mad, tearing at the trees and ripping up the very soil with his enormous tusks, pounding and crushing the berry bushes and grasses in the clearing until there was nothing left alive.
And as he raged, Magnuh turned his burning red eyes back up into the canopy where they searched for Gazda.
Gazda would remember this attack for its savagery, but he would also credit it for the recovery of his courage. He had first escaped the leopard that killed Poomak, and now to thwart the raging giant below. What in the jungle could defeat the night ape after that?
The beast’s fury had brought him back to life as it had tried to snuff him out and Gazda would show his gratitude by plotting revenge upon the monster for it was plain that the bull elephant had focused his spite directly at him.
In the months and years that followed Gazda sought out Magnuh whenever the beast’s wandering brought him near the tribe, and always from high above would the night ape throw stones and sticks, and he would spit and scold the beast so that it could never rest within the green jungle, or calm its raging hatred in Goro’s land.
But a victory was not to be, for as Gazda looked for Magnuh, so did it seem that the elephant kept a special interest in the night ape, and on more than one occasion would a large round stone be hurled to crack against the side of a tree very near where Gazda was perched.
Such random attacks were never successful, but they were always answered by Gazda’s angry scolding, and by a continuation of their grudge.
While this animosity festered it was given some relief by the roaming habits of Goro’s tribe and the elephant herd’s migrations to the grasslands on the
