The truth had angered Gazda because at first he felt betrayed by his mother, since she had never told him. Did the entire tribe know? Why did she not trust him?
And yet, though his thoughts and blood had boiled within him, his heart relented finally, as he remembered her long unwavering devotion, and he chastised himself for being callous. He knew how much his mother loved him, so for her to lose a son would have hurt her beyond all injuries.
He eventually resolved to never question her about it. It was her past, not Gazda’s.
However, the night ape determined to do something about the ape that had caused her pain when he returned. And he did return.
Omag dropped out of the trees late one day when the tribe had gathered by a mango grove, and the old queens quickly fell to grooming him. The crippled ape’s disease had continued to deform his flesh in his absence, but all could see that his travels had led him to good fare, for a thick layer of fat was slung about his waist and his muscles bulged like ripe fruit.
He smelled of blood and putrefying flesh, and there was a look on his disfigured face also, of cunning, satisfaction and calm that set many of his enemies grinding their teeth.
Gazda was furious, but not so much that he would challenge Omag to a battle of honor—though he childishly dreamed of such a thing. The crippled ape was a bull ape still, and was many hundreds of pounds of muscle and ferocity.
And so while Gazda imagined fighting the failed silverback, he had no illusions about who would win a battle tooth by tooth and muscle to muscle.
However this was not the night ape’s first such grudge.
From that point forward, Gazda employed the same methods he had used so effectively against his nemesis Magnuh. When Goro called a halt to the group’s wandering, when food was found or suitable sleeping trees were near, Gazda would slip quietly into the forest as the other apes began foraging or building nests.
The tribe had grown used to Gazda lurking in the jungle at night, or keeping to the shadows, and there was his contentious habit of seeking daytime sleeping places, and so his disappearances rarely drew much attention anymore.
But now, goaded by this pursuit of vengeance, Gazda would use the cover of the dense foliage to search about for suitable missiles before moving into a guarded position. He had always been an accomplished aim during throwing games with his friends, and he rarely missed.
From these impromptu blinds he would launch his attacks at the crippled ape. Whether it was a stone, rotten fruit or animal dung, Gazda always targeted Omag’s bony brow.
The night ape was no fool, and always took a position well away from his victim, since he knew that should he ever be discovered, he would suffer punishment not unlike that Omag had meted out to his dead brother. Moreover, he risked arousing Goro’s ire as well for disrespecting his elder.
Gazda always lobbed each missile at a steep angle so that it would complete its flight on a sharp downward path that would maximize the impact while obscuring its trajectory.
After making the throw, he would crouch in the underbrush with a hand clamped over his mouth. A heartbeat and a breath would pass and down would come the missile to crack against Omag’s mangy skull.
Gazda would grit his teeth to keep from panting or hooting at the joke as the crippled ape reacted to the throw. Omag would let fly a thunderous growl while leaping up, red eyes glaring as he cast about his fellows.
Any ape that lounged or foraged near would regret laughing at the incident, for he would immediately become the object of the offended anthropoid’s wrath, and in fact some few incidents occurred where lesser apes were savaged by Omag’s teeth and claws.
The tribe quickly learned to keep their enjoyment of the joke on Sip-sip to themselves, and save it to share later with the others.
And so, Omag was left to puzzle out these seemingly random acts for himself. In the thick jungle with covering leaf and creeper at all sides, he could not conceive of any reason for these flying objects.
The falling missiles came unpredictably after the first time. When they came—and they kept coming—the intensity and duration of the attacks were uncertain. Some days when three had hurtled down Omag’s furious response would grow to apocalyptic proportions.
He did not understand where the missiles came from, but he could not dispute the fact that they always seemed destined for his head. The crippled ape was worked into a terrible rage at times, in which he charged about in bristling anger, biting and mauling, until the terrified she-apes climbed into the trees with their infants to wait for Goro to come forth and silence Omag with a fearsome display of his own.
The night ape would break from his campaign of bombardment when such severe disturbances resulted, and he might not take up the cause again for weeks or months after.
He did not wish to anger his king.
So Gazda would put away the stones until boredom or Omag’s bullying drove him back to it, and he wasn’t the only member of the tribe to lament that these strange missiles had only drawn blood once.
CHAPTER 11 – The Lair of Fur-nose
Eventually, Gazda’s boredom led him to Fur-nose’s lair. He had heard stories about the strange creature that had lived within the tree-nest. The night ape knew the place and had seen its vine-covered exterior many times on seasonal trips the tribe took to the coast. The apes craved the berries that grew in great profusion around the clearing where the lair sat up in a group of old trees.
The odd creature had been killed, but the few apes that had seen inside Fur-nose’s lair did not remember enough to say how. Still
