The night ape had made his lair some distance to the west of the tribe, so he flung himself into the trees and raced toward his mother’s pain, dodging branch and leaf, flitting past twig and vine, casting about for the true location of her call, and with his powers yet diminished by the sun, Gazda missed what lurked in the dappled shadows of the overgrown trees just ahead.
Magnuh had followed the herd along the jungle trail with mating in mind, when a collection of tasty trees distracted him from the beautiful females. The trees bore fruit that appealed to the jungle giant for they hung from low branches in a dense collection of broad-leafed trees where he could enjoy the cool air while he feasted.
Then had come a familiar cry, and his nemesis was suddenly swinging toward him overhead.
With his full attention focused in the distance, Gazda leapt over the looming shadows with a single thought blazing in his mind: Who dares to harm my mother...
The bull elephant’s serpentine trunk reached up and deftly plucked the night ape from his vine before it lashed like a whip, dashing the night ape against the earth with all the strength in Magnuh’s gargantuan frame.
Gazda’s wits exploded in pain and shock, and he had barely turned over before one of the elephant’s massive feet stamped upon his chest.
Eeda clambered higher into the branches panting with fear and pain as the bone-faces lifted their bows and scanned the leafy heights for her. With the immediate terror passing, the she-ape felt the throbbing in her left arm and shoulder, so whimpering softly; she found a guarded spot near the trunk where she squatted on a branch and licked the bloody flesh where the arrow had pierced her arm.
Below her, the jungle shook as a silverback roared his challenge. The bone-faces turned and sprinted north along the trail away from the sound.
Seconds later, Goro charged out of the trees in answer to Eeda’s call where he tore around the jungle floor ripping up the crowded saplings and throwing their pieces skyward. Again and again he stamped around a wooden bone-face and shield that had been dropped or lost by a frightened hunter.
The Bakwaniri men had had only minutes to escape and were even now sprinting swiftly over the uneven ground seeking out an eastern turn in the path that might eventually take them home. Each of them was hoping to survive, for surely, they could bring news of the River Demon!
With a final bloodcurdling bellow, Goro ceased his display and stood across the trail. The great slabs of muscle on his shoulders and chest heaved as he searched the high branches and hooted his concern for Eeda.
Her resolve now hardened by the king’s presence, the she-ape gritted her teeth and pulled the arrow from her arm without a whimper. She flung the bloody missile aside and licked the wound.
Goro snorted approval as Baho and four blackbacks roared out of the quivering foliage. Their silverback turned with them and ran along the path in pursuit of the bone-faces...
...as Eeda remembered Gazda’s challenging cry and she wondered why he had not yet arrived—but it was then that she heard a monstrous crashing in the trees. The ground trembled and her perch shook as some forest giant trumpeted its victory.
It was Magnuh—was the jungle titan fighting another bull elephant?
An urgency gripped Eeda’s mind and with it, a feeling and thought—perhaps a voice whispering: Mother!
And a horrible realization filled her.
Gazda was in pain, and he was calling out.
Her little son was dying.
Eeda raced through the forest toward the shattering conflict, and almost fell from the branches as trees in her path snapped in half when a great gray body spun and tore through the thick jungle confines. Climbing higher, she screamed angrily at the elephant as it lifted something bloody and limp in its trunk and flung it against exposed rocks.
Bellowing, the beast charged with his bull head down and the gargantuan tusks nailed the fleshy lump against the ground, drove remnants of it deep into the earth.
Then the elephant twisted and ground the points of his tusks, raking a pair of jagged grooves into the hard soil as he scraped the dead thing against the rocks and dirt.
The dead thing that was...
The panicked she-ape swung branch to branch, leaping ever closer, until she hung directly over the bull elephant’s head where she hurled insults down at the giant until his eyes blazed up at her.
Eeda’s heart shuddered for...impossibly, draped across the bloody tusks—was the limp and mangled body of...
“Gazda!” Eeda screamed, and overcome by a fierce maternal instinct she dropped onto the elephant’s tusks and savaged his trunk with her fangs, as the startled beast roared at her impudence and swung his mighty head.
But Eeda’s strong hands snatched up Gazda’s gory remains from the twisted ivory, before sliding along the tusks as the force of the elephant’s spin sent her tumbling.
Magnuh growled and then trumpeted his wrath, but Eeda was up and bolting toward the trees with Gazda’s tattered corpse slung over her shoulder.
The great bull elephant trumpeted his frustration as he lunged, and his powerful trunk lashed out!
Eeda felt its terrible two-fingered tip slide across her back, and catch a tuft of fur that it painfully ripped away as she heaved herself into the lowest branches of the thickest tree.
The elephant roared, and the she-ape scrambled up through a shower of splintered bark and shivered wood as Magnuh rammed the trunk below her.
Eeda whimpered, knowing that Gazda was dead, his crushed bones and pulverized flesh were plain to her as were the holes that gaped in his tattered skin; so she was startled when a sudden crackling noise came from the red ruin, and some strange movement quivered beneath her leathery fingers.
Her son gasped through mangled lips and broken jaw.
The tree rattled again as Magnuh vented his anger
