It was late in the afternoon when the apes approached the lair of Fur-nose. A pair of blackbacks that had gone ahead to scout returned to report that something had changed. The clearing and the tree-nest were quiet, and the entrance to the structure that had always been shuttered and unassailable to them now stood open slightly. A finger’s breadth, and no more—a gap that showed a strip of shadow within.
Goro ordered the females to wait with the young at the trees as he moved forward with the blackbacks in a group. These apes that had never been so close to the tree-nest before now approached very cautiously. Those who had survived previous encounters remembered the sting of Fur-nose’s thunder-hand, and were reluctant to invite its roar.
Suddenly, a group of adolescent blackbacks were overcome with excitement and charged ahead—pushed to recklessness by their warrior natures. Goro growled low, but the foolhardy group ignored him. And then, they suddenly stopped and veered left and right, barking and snapping at something hidden by the plant life.
The largest of them turned to catch Goro’s eye and hoot a warning, as the king pushed through the high brush, snarling and growling at his underlings until he finally thrust through the ring they had formed.
The body of Tobog lay on its face. Old Baho came forward to bend over the larva-riddled corpse to sniff at the dark hole in the back of its head.
“Tobog fought thunder-hand,” Omag said from over Goro’s massive shoulder, and the silverback grunted in agreement as a curious chorus of barks issued from the assembled males.
“Tobog was brave,” Omag said, insolently, and then sipped at saliva that was leaking from his broken face.
“Tobog was stupid,” Goro rumbled, and old Baho panted his assent.
The blackbacks had formed a defensive wall of muscle around Goro while he leaned over the dead ape, and it was Baho who rose from investigating the rotting corpse to say: “Fur-nose was hurt but lived.” He lifted his leathery hand and sniffed the thick skin, before lowering it and pointing at the crushed grasses. “His blood trail washed by many days going there...” He gestured toward the strange tree-nest. “To his lair.”
The king chomped his powerful jaws and ordered three of the blackbacks to stand guard over the females and infants where they were already eating berries and digging into the black earth for grubs.
Goro led his cadre of lieutenants toward the strange structure. Hypervigilant in an old foe’s territory, his silver hair prickled on his mighty shoulders.
None could deny that the tree-nest had changed since they’d last been near. It wasn’t just that the nest was open; the very scent of it was different.
Omag stayed by Tobog’s corpse, ever anticipating the day when the king’s bravery would get him killed—and quietly hoping this was the day.
“Stupid Tobog,” he muttered, echoing Goro’s sentiment.
Omag had been close to Tobog and would have benefited if the young bull ape had come into power. With his death, Omag was left with allies in the aging queens Akaki and Oluza who had been prepared to back dead Tobog in a bid for power over Goro. A new silverback would have rewarded such loyalty, which would have opened a doorway for Omag’s designs on the kingship.
He grunted once, and his disfigured lips flapped and made a farting noise that caused him to glare around angrily, looking for any mockery or dissent; but there were none to witness and deride him—only Tobog’s corpse was near.
Omag growled. He would reward such mockery with death. Already on the trail had he overheard a pair of blackbacks panting happily as they retold the story: Sip-sip and the flying infant.
Sip-sip! Omag would not have attempted to punish both the younger males at the same time, but he knew them by name: allies of old Baho, one of them his son. The crippled ape would remember their joke when he caught them alone, and then they would remember his rage.
Omag’s loyalists had told him that such insolence had long been shared among the adolescents and young apes. Likely, Eeda’s son had mimicked them to earn the crippled ape’s fury.
“Sip-sip!”
Omag had repeated the sound himself by reflexively sucking at saliva that dangled from his ruined mouth. He bared his fangs when he noticed the dazed, young female passing by him.
Eeda seemed deaf and blind. She walked through the grass toward the tree-nest trailing after Goro and his blackbacks, her dead son still in hand.
Again Goro’s weakness has failed him, Omag thought. The king should have forced the female to end this mourning for the dead infant had begun to stink worse than Tobog!
Goro grunted, and the other apes halted in the long grass to sniff the air. The smell of death lurked around the tree-nest, but something else was loose upon the breeze. Past Fur-nose’s lair toward the beach came a cold and sickly smell that reminded them of decay and rotten wood—and something else—a metallic taste it brought to mind, of blood.
Nosing the air with his blackbacks, Goro quickly discerned the source—a small cluster of trees of a kind they knew normally offered juicy leaves and succulent bean spears.
Normally, the apes would have fallen upon such a find with relish, but there was something wrong with these in smell and the look—the leaves had wilted. The tree bark was dark and greasy and underlaid with sickly purple veins.
With a very quiet cough, pant and shake of his head, Goro ordered the other apes to avoid the noisome trees as he led them toward the lair of Fur-nose.
The group’s courage swelled the closer they got to the tree-nest for thunder-hand had not spoken with smoke and flame, and Fur-nose had not
