To travel at such speed was simple so close to his lair. For years Gazda had cut trails in the jungle, leaving clues for himself by removing strips of bark and cutting notches in the trunks of trees and branches so the light wood stood out in contrast for the night ape’s nocturnal eyes.
The King of the Apes also knew the trails that animals used to move quickly through the jungle, lofty arboreal lanes for avoiding predators, and other paths that led to food and water.
Most of these came off the greater tracks made by the elephant Magnuh and his herd of giants, and with these familiar ways etched in Gazda’s memory, he had little trouble gaining on his quarry.
That did not rule out a necessity for jungle lore and woodcraft, for the night was dark, and many creatures moved through the forest to confuse the trail that he pursued.
So, Gazda was forced to halt at times to study the spoor on branches: the scent of crushed leaves that spoke of time and space; the shape of twigs snapped away; and boughs broken and bent in the direction his quarry carried the brown-haired female.
Amid this flurry of action, the night ape identified the creature that had stolen her. First he found a tuft of mangy fur caught in a splintered branch, and later the stink of infection lurking, before he identified the crippled ape by the taste of brown saliva droplets on broad green leaves.
Omag had returned to steal a mate, and by the ease with which the creature kept ahead of his pursuit, Gazda’s own trail might have led him to her.
The night ape did not know the brown-haired female, but he still shuddered remembering the traitor’s gruesome cave.
Gazda snarled as he ran through the treetops; his grimace exposing the fighting fangs that gleamed in the growing daylight. Dawn would drain his strength he knew, but no sign of this coming weakness was yet shown in the rippling thews that flung him through the twilight.
There was a female to rescue, and many old debts to settle.
As his fury reached its boiling point, he halted on a stout branch where throwing back his head he beat upon his swelling breast and roared the challenging cry of a bull ape.
CHAPTER 17 – By Vine and Branch
Many miles ahead, Omag recognized the night ape’s roar, and while he did not remember it voiced with such passion or power, the sound did little to alter the crippled ape’s resolve. He hurtled on instead, emboldened by his knowledge of the growing sunlight’s effect upon his foe.
Omag knew that the power of the sun’s rays weakened his night ape challenger, and he was certain that if it did not bring sleep to Gazda outright, it would still drain him of his uncanny strength and leave him no different than any other ape.
Powerful, but no match for a silverback like Omag.
The exile and traitor Sip-sip had spent the last few weeks watching his old tribe for sign of Gazda, as word had reached him that the night ape had claimed the crown.
That thought burned Omag deeply for had he not slain the mighty Goro and then his foolish son Ulok in a single challenge? True, Goro’s tribe had resisted the right of Omag’s rule that followed, but there was no precedent to allow the crown to fall to Eeda’s foundling.
Life in exile had been difficult for Omag, and had ended in the deaths of his loyal blackbacks who had died by the fangs of jungle beasts and bone-face arrows and two had even fallen to the crippled ape’s axe-head cane.
Deposed King Omag had led his retinue of six loyalists east to the river that bordered Goro’s land, and from there to the forested cliffs near the Bakwaniri village, thinking he might feed his followers on their pungent flesh, even making the bold promise to claim the bone-face lair behind the pointed sticks.
But something had changed in the months since he’d last fed upon Bakwaniri, for the jungle had been filled with their hunters, and in each direction the outcasts turned there had been bone-faces and flying arrows. Driven in retreat to rocky lands by Omag’s cave had given them poor rest and no comfort for there was little but rotten bones to eat, though two of his unfortunate blackbacks had provided feasts for other creatures.
Left alone finally, and with the flesh of Bakwaniri females beyond his reach, Omag had decided to return to the tribe in Goro’s lands and challenge the new king for the crown. He had expected Baho to have taken up the mantle, and believed it so when he first set his single eye upon the apes at a distance for there he had recognized the old silverback’s balding crest.
It was only when the crippled ape advanced in the shadows and communicated with a blackback sympathizer, Dogo son of Tobog, that Sip-sip had learned the shocking news.
Gazda was King of the Apes? Without threats, display or battle, and sanctified by the blood of old females? Pah! Eeda’s freak had been given the crown by cowards and fools.
Omag claimed the kingship still by tribal law, by challenge and the Two Trees, and by the blood of not one, but two mighty silverbacks.
He was king—no other.
Omag’s disease had progressed steadily during his time in exile with isolation, pursuit by his enemies and poor nutrition to accelerate the blight.
Grizzled grew his mangy hide, marked by blisters, pocked by open sores and darkened by rotting flesh. Hideous he was to look upon with but one eye, his right, to confound his depth perception, opposite the open sore that cratered the other side of his head. There his mouth gaped around a festering wound. Suppurating gums showed holes where splintered molars had loosened and fallen out—though three of his grim fighting fangs remained.
Omag’s spine had twisted to further hunch his back, and though the bones in his arms and legs were bent and
