Hers had been a race of happy people who were lovers of children and good company. As she studied the trampled earth for sign and track, the last remnants of that joyful breed was squeezed from her heart as it hardened for the grim task ahead.
Rather her son and husband were dead than food for fat Bakwaniri oafs. Despair came upon her briefly then, but rather than weep, Harkon growled, and as she rose to her feet, her eyes blazed with hatred and desire for Bakwaniri blood.
She had stalked out of the ruin of her people, eyes searching for a trail.
She followed the track for many days until she came upon the strange Bakwaniri village but immediately understood that there was no frontal attack a sole warrior could make upon its high walls. The best Harkon could manage was to climb into the trees that grew around the clearing and peer over the palisade there to watch the distant figures move within.
Slaves and Bakwaniri she saw aplenty but she could not identify her child.
For a time she despaired because her quest looked hopeless. How could she help Anim from outside the walls?
And so, she did the only thing she could do and vented her impotent fury on any Bakwaniri she found hunting gazelle in the high plateau, setting snares for monkeys in the jungle near the village or collecting fruits that grew along the river.
Also, she targeted the small groups of masked men that crossed the river to hunt in the west. There from each dead Bakwaniri she killed by spear or knife, Harkon would cut a lock of hair and scalp to make a belt of vengeance that would remind her of the things that she had lost—that she was unlikely to ever find again.
Yet there was some hope, for Harkon knew that behind the palisade Bakwaniri life continued—and the diseased reavers kept their captives as slaves until it was time to eat them.
There was a chance her boy lived still, and so she continued hunting Bakwaniri, and searching for some means to know if Anim could be rescued.
And if it did turn out that her son was dead? The thought was colored crimson, and what mother could think it and not contemplate bloody murder.
If the question even entered her head, a Bakwaniri would lose his hair.
Harkon hunted the masked men, and came to know their habits so well that she read some of their history in their spoor. These reavers were alien to her world there was not doubt, and in their looks, behavior, clothing and tools she recognized the shadow of white slavers blended with the blood of long lost native tribes.
This added passion to her quest, and such a thing was useful for her prey was difficult to catch. They rarely left the area of their village alone, and even in groups seldom slept outside its walls, a condition perhaps of their inherited weaknesses. A disease inflicted each of them that slowly ate their flesh and twisted their limbs, and must have made prolonged excursions outside their walls exhausting for any but the youngest.
They feared something else also, for it was plain in the way they guarded their people as they bathed, or drew water or performed any chore outside the wall.
But what they feared, she did not know.
Harkon was yet to be woven into their nightmares, because her victims were usually found after jungle scavengers had left few remains, and so, the losses were credited to the greater jungle of which they were already terrified.
It was in the jungle where Harkon did her best work. Its dense surrounds allowed her to pick at the hunters from concealment, and with her spear or knife come to terrify her prey. If any man wandered from his fellows or lagged behind, she would close with him and he would die.
She was pleased to hunt them in this way, for her kills were many and such losses within the jungle preyed upon the Bakwaniri minds.
As they trembled, Harkon puzzled over ways that she might save her son, and bring about the release of other captives.
Yet never did a rescue seem possible when there was but one person to make the attack, and so she wracked her brain for a plan involving something more than vengeance.
As the dilemma grew frustrating she released her anger in her hunt upon the clumsy Bakwaniri, terrorizing them as they moved along the game trails for they were unused to the jungle west of the river, and she had been born to it.
As had another whose presence Harkon would soon come to see as a boon.
For there was a white man who lived with the apes and he liked to kill Bakwaniri, too.
CHAPTER 28 – Lurking Vengeance
Harkon had seen him first and then watched from afar, often while hidden high in the trees. She would marvel at this strange sight of a man interacting with a large tribe of apes like he was one of them.
Other than his loincloth and possession of a knife and sheath, he behaved like an ape in every other sense. He did not appear to speak but made monkey-like chattering that allowed him to communicate with those beasts.
Harkon had seen him move about on all fours, scampering quickly in a gait similar to the knuckle-walk that was natural to the apes around him. While still at other times, he’d stand upright, and walk or run with back arched, and shoulders and arms wide.
He did seem to believe he was an ape, and Harkon had thought he was an imbecile left behind by slavers that had somehow been adopted by the intelligent beasts.
Or so she had believed until she met him face to face, and then she’d seen intelligence in his gaze, and curiosity and a grasp of language that far exceeded his hairy family’s greatest expectations.
She’d been hunting a Bakwaniri at the time on a western
