A chirping sound from overhead brought his piercing eyes up to regard the green canopy and the darkening sky behind it. The sun was setting.
He looked back down at his prey and grunted.
Gazda had inherited the pragmatic nature of his adoptive tribe of apes, and so he shifted his gaze to gauge the condition of the black panther skin loincloth that hung from his taut waist. He had worn the garment for many months already, but it was still comfortable.
The night ape shrugged.
He had hides aplenty at his lair, so had no need to skin the corpse at his feet.
Gazda would replace his loincloth when it lost its luster, well before the jungle damp had rotted it. His super-charged olfactory powers would demand the exchange.
Black panther fur was still best for obscuring his work as a nocturnal hunter, though the beasts had grown more rare than their spotted cousins. Under the full moon, Gazda wore capes made from the ebon hides, but at most other times he restricted his camouflage to mud-skin spread over his muscular limbs. He found the capes confined his movements while on the hunt and the slick covering was enough to keep his white body from shining.
He still had hidden caches of the capes at the Grooming Rock, Two Trees and Fur-nose’s lair, but they tended to rot before he could use them. The garments were striking but impractical.
Still, he preferred the black panther for that use, and to honor the first lessons taught him by the dangerous beasts. Patterning his hunting techniques after theirs had made him the most lethal predator in the jungle.
So panthers were often in his thoughts when he beat upon his chest and sounded the victory cry of a bull ape over the bodies of prey and enemies alike.
Yet, he had resisted giving that call over this kill even though the panther had eluded him for several nights and deserved the dedication. Gazda smiled fiercely, remembering the hunt.
The beast had taken him on a long, meandering chase that had led north and south again over three days until its climax in the dense forest near the night ape’s lair.
He had surprised the panther by lying in wait before the sun had set.
The predator had earned the night ape’s admiration, but Gazda could only honor him in his thoughts for he knew his victory call traveled many miles, and the sound would alert Sip-sip to his presence.
Of late, the night ape had grown hungry for his enemy’s blood.
Five months had passed since Gazda’s becoming the silverback, and despite his new responsibilities he had tracked the crippled ape many times.
If he came across old trails, or caught wind of the fugitive’s running sores, he would charge recklessly in pursuit. Always, the trail had faded, or would lead him to another predator’s rotting kill or a noisome fungus that only smelled like Omag.
Once a promising trail led Gazda far to the east of his tribe and to the very border of his lands, where a lifetime of respecting Goro’s edicts had left the night ape hesitating.
He was far from home, memory of Goro’s death was fresh and the tribe was traumatized, but his hate for Omag was such that he had cast all other considerations aside. Gazda was into the trees and across the border in a heartbeat, where upon an eastern course Sip-sip’s spoor followed a river and the tracks of many Bakwaniri.
Gazda had known that he was close to the bone-faces’ territory for their trail had been clear where he had followed Omag’s into the border lands.
But, the night ape did not fear the Bakwaniri, and had long been curious about their distant lair; yet he had passed over his hatred for them in his pursuit of Omag.
The crippled ape’s treachery had always been upon his mind, and now his absence was explained. Sip-sip had passed over the border.
Goaded by his need for vengeance, Gazda had moved swiftly on Sip-sip’s trail, and was spurred to greater speeds when he saw the tracks grew younger the farther east he flew.
And there by the rippling water he found them to be a half day old and no more.
Akaki had told Gazda of Omag’s cave by the river near the bone-faces!
So the night ape had sprinted after the traitor until his trail disappeared at the water’s edge.
Casting farther north and east, Gazda found a jagged cliff of granite over which jungle grew like hair, and there, old marks in the dirt had led him to a cave high in a sheer gray wall that he scaled with thorny vines.
He did not find Omag within, but the crippled ape’s hideous tale was told by the grisly contents of the damp and dripping cleft.
Scarlet trails were marked upon the floor in places, as though many bleeding things had been dragged—or had dragged themselves.
There were places on the angled walls were marks had been scratched by broken fingers, and sometimes by splintered bones.
Shapes and images had been set there in blood and gore that looked like birds, trees and the moon and other symbols resembling those that Gazda had seen in Fur-nose’s skin-stones.
Reeking of rot and dung the recess slanted up toward the back where a flat space held the crippled ape’s bed of stinking leaves; and in all corners lay the cracked and gnawed bones of Bakwaniri females.
It had seemed to Gazda’s acute perception that the shadows still rang with screams of pain and torment; and though the stench of death lay heavy in the place, he delayed in the dark to look and see.
Flesh still hung on partial skeletons that littered the stained stone floor. Shriveled and dead Bakwaniri faces clung to broken skulls; the females’ mouths hung open and pleading, their gaping eye sockets were shaped by
