His mother was not so easy to trick, however, so the night ape was often pleasantly bemused to climb out of his hiding place and find her chewing nuts or lazing near, a curious mix of love and reprimand upon her heavy features.
CHAPTER 20 – Magnuh
With each kill Gazda’s taste for blood grew in concert with his pride. His continued successes with panther, pig and python caused him to hunt the large antelopes that sometimes followed Magnuh’s kind into the jungle where groups of them foraged along the elephant trails.
He risked impalement from their lethal horns, but those daylight victories only encouraged him. When gangs of cunning baboons entered the forest for figs, Gazda tracked and killed many despite their monstrous fangs.
The night ape usually hunted such prey from above, sliding and slinking from shade to shadow from trunk to branch, his strong finger and toenails driving into the tree bark like claws, and then with a powerful hissing roar he would leap upon some hapless creature and kill it.
Often he would use his long knife, but not always, preferring as he did the feel of frightened flesh beneath his fingers, sometimes forgetting the weapon’s role in his growing courage.
He enjoyed these challenges, relishing his power over the defeated prey, drinking their fear before sinking his teeth into their flesh. Then a potent resonance would surge through his muscles, as their living strength spurted into him—as his heartbeat raced and theirs diminished.
At other times, he would master his prey to study, gripping the hapless creatures in his powerful arms, forcing them to struggle for their lives as he held them still—before slowly leaning in to bite.
In time, the night ape grew careless.
One afternoon, Eeda became worried about Gazda. She had had only fleeting contact with him for days beyond her counting, and she was suddenly gripped by a mother’s anxiety.
This worry had come upon her as the tribe retreated to the trees after detecting some subtle alteration in the animal calls and birdsong that usually dominated the day—there had been a minor change in the pitch or rhythm as happened before storms, or when a predator was near.
The she-ape did not know where her son was, but suspected he would be deep in his daytime sleep and vulnerable, so she ignored the warnings of the other apes, and began a frantic search of the forest floor for places he might have retired.
She whimpered as she went, stooping beneath a silent sense of doom. As always she feared that he would not be hidden well enough from the predators that stalked the jungle paths, or that a direct assault upon his safety had caused the fear that suddenly colored the day.
Unfortunately for Eeda there were other beasts than animals in the jungle.
Hunters from the curious Bakwaniri tribe had entered Goro’s lands from the east. These men lived on the far side of the river that bordered the silverback’s range. The jungle thinned past their village as the land swept up to the grassy plateau that led on into the mountains.
These men hid their faces behind hardwood masks carved into the shape of human skulls. Symbols of death were prevalent in everything about them: skeleton warriors were tattooed on their muscular shoulders and chests; skulls and bones were impressed upon their hand-woven and leather apparel; while naked skulls grinned at intervals upon the carven shields they carried, and marked the arrows, bows and spears they used to kill their prey.
The three hunters had set out days before, emboldened when a spell cast by the village sir-jon, a wizard, affirmed their new leader’s order to explore the forbidden lands west of the river for sign of the monster that had haunted its banks.
The sir-jon said they would succeed, and so encouraged these frightened hunters who had grown up in the shadow of the beast. Few had seen it and lived, but all knew the story of a hairy giant that devoured Bakwaniri women.
These men had been sent out with other small groups of hunters to track the beast and kill it or bring news of its lair and kind. Then would the Bakwaniri leader send an army to destroy all trace of it and end the reign of River Demon.
Nearby, as Eeda sought out Gazda’s sleeping place; she sprinted from shadow to shallow through the thick undergrowth and finally burst onto the game trail where the three Bakwaniri hunters were inspecting strange tracks in the dirt.
All of these men knew of gorillas and chimpanzees and enjoyed their flesh, and to them Eeda looked a delicious prize. The hunters were startled by her sudden appearance, but not so much that three arrows could not be fired, and one strike the she-ape in the arm.
Eeda cried out in pain when she felt the missile hit, and a moment passed before she turned to see the bone-faced apes upon the path.
She screamed again.
As the startled warriors struggled with shaking hands to set arrow to bow, the she-ape bared her fangs and charged as their second volley flew wide. Eeda snapped her teeth like she was about to attack, but veered suddenly to the side and clambered up a tree trunk to where the lowest branches hung.
Gazda had just come awake, disoriented, with his mother’s scream in his mind. He had killed a large antelope at midday and gorged on its blood—and while replaying the struggle in his mind, he had found a quiet place and slept...
...until he heard his mother’s cry—and then she cried again!
He leapt out of his shadowy resting place and turned in the direction of her call.
The night ape threw his head back, and beat upon his savage breast until from him came the powerful challenging cry of the bull ape, a call he
