Blood jetted as his clawed fingers closed in the man’s soft flesh—tearing skin and muscle, crushing cartilage and bone.
Gazda punched another man’s mask with an iron fist, driving wooden shards and facial bone through the brain, and unhinging the skull. It flopped about on shredded tendons as the body took a faltering step before it died.
The night ape moved more quickly than the bone-faces could, and several times he slipped aside to let one of them take the sharp point of a spear or arrow flung at him.
Gazda splintered shields and weapons. He tore into his enemies with all the ferocity and power of the panther, employing the hunting and killing crafts he had learned from the powerful beasts. Biting through one man’s collarbone, he leapt over the next where with a handful of hair he guided his descent, landing behind and twisting the bone-face’s head so violently that it came off.
Two bone-faced guards that had kept their presence of mind stepped forward with spears low and ready, but Gazda jumped away from them toward a tall post and kicked off to come down inside the range of their spear-points where he snapped one stout shaft in half and used its blade to disembowel both men.
The night ape was crouched over one dying bone-face rending him limb from limb when a spear flew from behind and struck. Gazda screamed at the pain and at the metal spear-point jutting from his right shoulder, but he simply snatched the blade and tore the length of missile through.
He turned in place to seek the warrior who had thrown the weapon, but he could not tell which trembling mask had done it, so he killed all three before the wound in his shoulder had closed.
Gazda guzzled blood from the third man’s throat. Its power pounded in his heaving breast and its heat surged through his limbs.
With dying bone-faces all around, he started toward the cooking fire and the great cage, but the wailing of an infant brought him around.
With the help of Gazda’s friends, Harkon had found nine captives within the stone basements, though sadly, none of these was her son. The big white man had helped her snap the brittle Bakwaniri chains that held some, and he broke down the doors that imprisoned others.
In total 11 were freed, though she only half-recognized five who may have come from her own tribe. Children and young adults they were, but much time had passed, and their years as slaves had left them shattered and hopeless. It would take time to know their own faces, let alone their savior’s.
But they could act, so for two women and two young men, she scavenged weapons from the dead and tasked them with protecting the children in the group.
Van Resen could see that the black huntress was alternately anxious, sad and aggressive, as she looked for whomever she had lost, as she granted liberty to any black slave she found.
But always she looked hard at the new faces, only to turn away in anger and desperation.
The scientist knew they would be running out of time for the low boom of thunder had finally brought a shower of rain. The flames would be dying down at the other end of the village, so that distraction would soon end and the masked men would return.
Ahead, the warrior woman halted as the thick smoke rolled, and with a single motion she shot an arrow into the shadows. A dying man fell from the murk.
More would be coming...and Gazda had yet to appear.
Harkon glared at Gazda’s friends who were useless in a fight. While that might be excusable to those busy with the unconscious women, it was the unencumbered man with gray curls that vexed her most for he stopped at each dead Bakwaniri to rob the corpse!
What kind of creatures did the ape-man call his own? This thin one plundered any that Harkon killed, halting often on the way to the gate.
He was no fighter...and they were her spoils—and she had no time for trophies!
She had thrust and killed often with her spear before switching to the bow, a hungry white smile upon her cheeks. The huntress was pleased that some of her own folk had weapons or had made them from what laid about the village—but with that thought came her yearning for Anim.
She could not find him.
Each glimpse of the cook fire brought her lips away from her teeth and she wished to kill these Bakwaniri until her broken heart failed. But if she tried to kill them all the others would pay the price. Already, she could see that the fires were dying ahead of them, that Harkon’s group had to pass that way to reach the gate.
A greater fight was yet to come.
Though Gazda had not appeared, Harkon did not fear for the ape-man.
She turned to his friends gesturing with her weapons raised to either side, pointing into the thick, black smoke and charging toward the gate. Crying out her encouragement, she bade them follow.
The big white man bearing the younger woman was the only one whose eyes said he understood. Another warrior.
But her call rang hollow in her ears for she had failed her son! Anim was gone.
Perhaps the big man could have saved him—her little boy... Had she waited too long?
The huntress slung her bow across her shoulder, and shifted her spear into her hands as she led the others through the drifting smoke.
A masked warrior appeared with club raised—and he died with her spear through his heart.
Another jumped out with arrow nocked—and her knife quivered in his eye.
The open gate was near—torches burned to either side—and she called her people and to Gazda’s friends—urging them to run for the jungle, to run for freedom—as a sound came to her ears. Children, crying out in fear! Weeping they were alone...afraid.
The tears of shame in Harkon’s eyes burned away as she turned to the fires. She
