Lethal, and thirsty for blood, she only needed a tail.
The night ape knew that seeing all of her Bakwaniri enemies in one place had awakened a hunger in her much like his own, and though she was not a beast, she bared her teeth like she wished to sink them into bone-face flesh.
Just as Gazda did.
A grayish pall hung over the Bakwaniri village, and upon it came the smell of flames, smoking wood and roasted flesh that brought Gazda’s scarlet lips back in a sneer. He did not like the smell, for who would ruin blood and meat by setting it aflame?
And such flame, for the end of the narrow tree-nest was bright with fire and all around it glimmered other small fires on poles.
The night ape’s skin prickled and his hair twitched along his scalp for it was plain that the bone-faces were masters of fire and of music also. Would he be capable of fighting so many of his kind when they had such power? Would some among them also know of the thunder-hand?
Yet, Harkon knew of fire, and she had no fear of it. It galled Gazda to think that the bone-faces handled the mysterious flame, so he determined to overcome his own fears regarding it.
If the bone-faces could use it, then why not Gazda? Was he not a great fighter and killer? Was he not King of the Apes?
But the smell grew stronger and like the music began to draw pictures from his mind, again of a towering stone lair with high walls over which great fires flickered, and then he saw himself standing with other night apes. All of them wore hard coverings—like shining stone skins—and had hairy faces like Fur-nose, and they looked at Gazda as the fire blazed in the background, as night apes screamed and flesh sizzled in the heat.
“Gazda,” the night ape said to steady his nerve and break the spell the smoke had set upon him. “Gazda goes to look!”
Harkon turned to him, puzzled.
First he would travel along the riverbank where tracts of black muck glistened. There he would add a layer of mud-skin to hide his white flesh from the waxing moon that now lay hid behind the cloud. Gazda was not happy with the bright orb for on the trail it had come out to reveal him against the shadows.
“We kill the Bakwaniri now?” Harkon asked, though it did not sound like a question. She was ready to move.
“We will kill the bone-face devils,” Gazda said, with fragments of other languages appearing in his speech. “But I will look at their lair first.”
Harkon raised her eyebrow at the shift in language and tone, but she understood him still, so only nodded.
“Will we kill the Bakwaniri now?” she queried.
“No. Many Bakwaniri will kill Harkon, and kill Gazda, too!” the night ape grunted, petulantly. “Gazda...arata.” He made a hand motion to pantomime a great trunk coiling from his face as he pointed at the giant skull on the village wall. “The bone-faces will kill us like Magnuh.” He went quiet as he searched his ape-vocabulary and what he knew of Harkon’s language for the word for “swarm.”
“But we kill many before the Bakwaniri kill us,” Harkon snarled, anxious to climb down from the tree—tired of waiting.
“First Gazda looks for white man and black man of Ginny’s tribe,” the ape-man said, surprised at how easily the words had returned to him. “He cannot if bone-faces kill Gazda.”
“Harkon will kill the bone-faces with Gazda,” the eager huntress assured. “Gazda can get the white man and the black as Harkon kills the Bakwaniri!”
“No!” the night ape growled, seeing the lost boy in the huntress’ mind. “Anim needs Harkon.”
His companion stared at him wide-eyed, a powerful swell of emotion passing behind her dark features. The storm of sadness and rage in her spirit calmed suddenly, and while her body quivered with a need to strike and kill, she retracted her hatred in the way a panther does its claws.
Ashamed, she lowered her head. In her fury, the huntress had forgotten her son.
“Harkon waits,” she said grudgingly.
Harkon had been too long steeped in her vengeance to accept more waiting, but she was shaken that it had taken Gazda to remind her of Anim.
Had she given up on her son? Did she only use his memory to justify her deeds? It seemed that her desire to punish Bakwaniri had drowned her mother’s hopes in blood.
So Harkon asked Gazda to look for captives of her kind as she settled down to wait. She would re-kindle her hope for her son’s rescue, and kill any Bakwaniri that got in the way.
The ape-man acknowledged her request, scrambled down the tree and disappeared in shadow.
CHAPTER 30 – View of the Kitchen
Once he got a short but dead-to-the-world sleep out of the way, Captain Seward spent most of the time propped up by the one foot high by two foot wide window with a blade of grass clenched between his teeth watching out through the rusty bars and trying to calculate his chances of getting out of the mess he was in.
He was pretty sure it was past midnight, and while the torchlight that ringed the village had reminded him of hope and happy times, the pitch black jungle past the palisade wall told him he had only shadows to escape into—if he could figure a way clear.
A big moon had risen in the sky earlier, poking out from time to time, but it had either set or the clouds had thickened up to cover it. Even with it coming full on, he doubted its pale light would be much help if he was trying to hike out of the overgrown forest.
And where the hell would he go?
The old ranger knew they were lucky to be alive, but there was little else playing in their favor
