The crippled ape made this assertion in part to undermine his “weak” king, but there was also some tentative hope that Goro would act for Omag had been unnerved since hearing that bone-faces entered Goro’s land on the day the she-ape Eeda had disappeared.
While they had not been seen in the territory since, he did feel a certain constriction in his throat to imagine them crossing the border to hunt for him.
He had grown much jumpier after learning of this, though it had emboldened him to kill the bone-face for his fine weapon. Not long before that he had stuffed himself on female...and at the thought of the flesh, Omag’s nerves thrilled and a deep desire heated his guts.
“Sip-sip!” he lisped, subconsciously lapping at the saliva that the craving had cause to flow from his damaged mouth. The crippled ape slapped a big hand over his mangled lips and scowled at a young ape that had turned toward the sound.
Lions? Omag had begun to wonder if Goro could chase the bone-faces from his land.
Gazda smirked from where he watched the scene astride a tree limb whetting the blade of his long knife on a rough stone. He had learned to sharpen the weapon by copying the actions of night apes in his dreams. It had pleased him to understand one of the things they did.
“The lions will leave,” Goro said, quietly munching nuts, shifting his weight as two females groomed his silver back. “This is ape land.”
“The lions will leave when they are full of ape flesh!” Omag cried, and his supporters screamed their agreement.
The tribe struggled with the terrifying discussion. Even Ooso had carried her daughter Yulu over to where the other nervous mothers crowded closer to the trees.
“No! We watch for lions,” Goro said, shrugging his massive shoulders. “Goro and the blackbacks will warn the tribe, and apes will be safe in the trees. Lions do not climb.”
“The king would let the trees protect us?” Omag countered, saliva slithering out of his ruined face in amber strings. His long tongue, now dotted with blistered lesions, popped out of the ragged hole in his cheek to lap at it.
“Sip-sip” came the sound again.
At this point, Gazda slid his knife away and climbed down to the ground where he stood with the loyal blackbacks who had formed a solid semi-circle behind the king.
“The lions will leave,” Goro growled, rising onto all fours. “We must be calm. Goro watches.”
“So Goro fights the lions?” Omag said sharply, swinging his arm to indicate the aging queens behind him, and the other blackbacks that had moved in back of them with Ulok. “And the apes can rest.”
“Goro will fight any lions that come,” the silverback rumbled, seemingly growing larger as he spoke. The hair on his back and swelling shoulders quivered. “Goro is king, and he has spoken.”
Omag stared at the silverback with his bloodshot eyes, but the tribe had noticed that he, too, had shrunk down as Goro postured. The crippled ape’s breath came hard and fast from his ragged face and made a greasy farting sound.
But no one dared pant or hoot at the embarrassing noise.
“Then Omag will not question the king or his word,” Omag said slyly, as he and his supporters knelt in the grass before the silverback. “Goro will fight the lions.”
CHAPTER 25 – Strange Apes
Weeks later, Gazda was swinging through the jungle canopy, flitting from branch to branch so quickly that when an alarming odor startled his senses he misjudged his leap and fell far short of the next intended limb in his path.
The night ape plunged 50 feet toward the forest floor before his outstretched hand snagged the flexible tip of a long branch that bent mightily but held his weight after much jostling and bouncing.
With the limb clenched in his fist, the night ape sniffed the warm air, casting for another whiff of...and there it was, he recognized the pungent smell. His free hand came up and he rubbed the fingertips beneath his nose, remembering the curious scent he’d noticed when pressing the wooden bone-face over his own.
The strange thing was left behind by creatures that Baho had claimed attacked Gazda’s mother and struck her with a sharp stick. Her scream had baited Magnuh’s trap.
Before Eeda’s son had...
Nosing the air, the night ape bared his fangs. He heaved himself high up the tree before springing free of it, hurtling by vine and branch toward the scent.
Moving at this, his fastest, speed through the high branches, Gazda became a blur, almost flying bough to branch. The dappled afternoon sunlight did not slow him, so dense was the shadow that gripped the trees—so concentrated was the fury that propelled him.
Few of the arboreal creatures even witnessed his passing, though some birds drowsing in the trees squawked suddenly and lifted off—unaware that the night ape was long gone by the time they knew he had been there.
The scent was growing stronger as Gazda raced through the canopy when his eye caught movement on the trail far below. He checked his forward motion by hooking his fingers on a stout branch and swinging completely around it once, twice and a third time, before he let go and dropped through the crowd of limbs, slowing his descent by grabbing at the most flexible branches, angling his fall, until he could grip the tree trunk to use the rough bark as a brake until he stopped.
Then moving silently, he crept out on a limb some 20 feet above the strange creature. The hair on his neck bristled, and his body went rigid as his claws raked deep grooves in the branch beneath him.
A bone-face! Like the creatures that had attacked his mother...that later caused her death.
Could it be the very one? It was moving cautiously along the trail, stalking beneath the trees, the oversized eyes looking this way and that as the long
