Soon, the females and infants stopped a safe distance on as the blackbacks approached the dead lions. There the males screamed and leapt, running back and forth between the lifeless beasts venting their rage upon them with fangs, fists and rocks.
Gazda and Goro walked together toward the tribe where Baho panted and hooted in joy, and the females hurried forward with concern upon their frightened faces. The night ape joined with them to tend and lick clean the mighty Goro’s wounds.
As the blackbacks continued to display their outrage upon the dead lions, Goro looked at Gazda and grunted appreciatively as he accepted the handful of grasses that was offered.
Chewing the green blades for their moisture, the silverback felt a shadow of his strength return. His reign as king might continue yet.
Across from them Omag, the aging queens, Ulok and a group of resentful blackbacks had remained in the trees.
Cold was the glare in the crippled ape’s eye.
1910
Sixteen years of age.
CHAPTER 27 – Harkon the Huntress
It was almost three years ago that Capan Seetree of the Bakwaniri had ordered his hunters into the forbidden lands. A fire had been set in his soul and the flames would burn at each feast or festival until the River Demon and its kin were dead and their meat was hissing on the fire.
The range of this beast had been sounded, and hunters were sharpening their blades and making ready to set out as they had every season.
Each Johnnie boasted he would be the one to take the monster’s head—despite the fact that all had failed, and many died or were never seen again, lost as they were in the twisted jungle that the River Demon called home—a jungle as vast as the ocean the first fathers had said, and just as quick and lethal for any crewmen sunk within it.
But their quarry had proved to be a slippery fish, as was its folk that seemed to move quietly beneath the green murk, leaving little sign of their passing. The returning hunters would speak of finding the spoor but never the beasts, and it was impossible to know what the missing lads had found.
In the years since his dear daughter’s death, Seetree’s efforts had slain many other creatures and men, with no River Demon skull, flesh or skin to show for it.
In fact, since hunters had first found its trail and followed it across the forbidden lands toward the coast, the beast had doubled back many times to slay their women; the poor hearties gone forever down that raw, red gullet.
Because efforts to slay the beast were meeting with little success, and women continued to die, Seetree had tried to shift the focus from immediate results to their greater accomplishments, and he would often hold festivals by the great fire where he broke out the grog and roasted the best slaves for a feast to celebrate the ship’s history.
He’d have the best music played amidst wanton dancing and the night would spin under the stars as the wizard’s apprentices flayed their captives alive.
Then capan, fust and sir-jon turned out in their best gear to remind the crew that the first fathers came from a great place more powerful than the jungle that rose in leafy waves about the ship, or any flesh-eating demon that dared lurk in its wake.
The “best” gear had been altered by years with most of the original metal weapons and tools of the fathers’ falling victim to time, lost or worn away by rust and use or ground down to nothing by endless sharpening.
Of blacksmithing to repair the things only the rudiments remained to them and that was reserved for making crude weapons, rough nails to build, implements to cook and chains to hold their slaves.
Families in the crew might brag ownership of heirlooms or the like: ratty scabbards, bent swords, and blunt knives that upon inspection would be exposed as broken nubs better used for skinning bananas than repelling enemies.
This decay did not in any way deplete the importance of what artifacts remained, and so the positions of capan, fust and sir-jon being of some repute were all identified by certain badges office.
Like the other Bakwaniri males, they wore masks of wood though their “skull” faces ended at the cheekbones to allow for the long braided beards that each official cultivated.
The capan wore a hat of woven feathers that unknown to its wearer was crafted in the shape and design of head coverings that once denoted the British admiralty, while at his hip hung a cutlass much dwindled by long sharpening until it was half its original length and width when it was drawn.
Of clothing there was nothing genuine left, though flairs of their sea going history still rode in the cut of their beaded coattails, hyena fur epaulets and tight snakeskin leggings and boots.
The fust wore similar attire, though his hat had four points instead of three, and was furry. From his waist was suspended a saber that remained sheathed at all times to hide the fact that there remained only a rusted spike projecting from its tarnished hilts.
Being a wizard, the sir-jon wore a long waistcoat and breeches of lizard skin, and with him he carried two sacred objects for which he had only passing knowledge of their original use. A rusted quadrant swung from his neck by a length of rawhide, and under one arm he carried a much-weathered spyglass.
Neither did he employ to determine his position upon the earth, but rather as optical devices for gauging the nature of things in the wild, and the content of men’s souls.
But so caparisoned, these men appeared supreme against the savage backdrop, and the echo of history would affirm the crew’s belief in itself, and its leaders.
These festivals were laid out when the season or situation demanded, for the capan had been forced by the grumbling crew to alter his plans for revenge. He was asked to
