Unless the challenge came for open battle.
Such as that which descended from the west.
CHAPTER 39 – Lords of the Jungle
Gazda leapt softly to the ground many yards from the elephant and there he beat his great chest, threw back his head and howled his challenge again.
The mammoth Magnuh swung his massive head about, and lifted his mighty tusks toward the heavens to roar his acceptance of the call to war. The earth shook beneath his feet, and vast sheets of muscle quivered with anticipation for blood and wrath.
The bull charged Gazda where he stood unmoving, and he struck the night ape with his craggy skull—smashing him against a gnarled tree, where the elephant wrapped his trunk around the night ape’s corded neck and with a violent whipping action, catapulted him through the dense jungle.
Gazda curled into a ball as he smashed through brush and branch, snapping and splintering the forest as he flew, until he bounced up again, to race through the undergrowth toward the elephant that charged out of the trees.
The reckless night ape smiled while twisting at the waist to launch a hard fist at the monster’s bulwark head. A terrific concussion knocked the stunned Gazda onto his back, where the giant stamped on his right leg.
Pain flashed through Gazda’s body, but it did not consume his aching heart.
Then Magnuh turned his bony skull and hooked the night ape with a tusk to flick him skyward—where the tumbling Gazda lashed out with a gory hand to catch a high branch. In the space past it, he saw the first faint glimmer of stars.
“The night comes,” Gazda grunted, like it was curse, even as the growing darkness regenerated the many damages already inflicted upon his form.
Gazda looked about beneath him and then swung back and forth to build momentum so that with a simple kick he flew over the elephant’s head to sink his sharp nails into a neighboring tree.
Below him Magnuh watched the feat and roared, whipping the air with his trunk.
“Kill me if you can!” Gazda laughed grimly up on his new perch, bracing his hands on a thick branch and his feet against the tree trunk as he gauged the distance to the elephant’s head. “No one will care.”
Magnuh bellowed, and shook his shoulders, lowering his bony skull as Gazda shot himself downward with all the strength in his coiled thighs. There was a great crash at impact of elephant and night ape, and both powerful creatures were flung back stunned.
Earthbound again, they faced each other in a small, rough open circle; their arena defined by a ring of high-limbed trees.
Magnuh lowered his tusks and charged toward the night ape with his forehead sweeping lower to catch and crush his foe who stood his ground with arms outstretched, corded muscles rippling in the growing dark.
Gazda’s eyes flickered with fire as the elephant’s thick skull crashed against his chest, but the night ape dug his naked feet into the ground as he was forced backward, the earth tearing up along a pair of deep black grooves—until Gazda’s feet found purchase.
And with his arms wrapped near the thick stumps of the monster’s tusks, Gazda laughed into the elephant’s red eye as the beast twisted its mighty head to left and right to force his release from the night ape’s hold.
To no avail. Gazda sneered and sank his sharp fangs into Magnuh’s bristly brow. He roared, as the monster bellowed, striving uselessly to tear the night ape’s arms from his body.
Gazda’s feet were braced against rock and root, and from this position he pushed, shoving the elephant by increments backward in anticipation for what was to come.
Incensed, Magnuh felt the earth slip beneath his own gigantic feet, but he quickly got his footing and pushed back.
But Gazda was ready and with all the strength in his body, trembling by sinew and thew, with skeletal joints screaming; the night ape pulled on the elephant’s tusks, using the beast’s momentum as it pitched forward against his immoveable strength.
Magnuh bellowed as his weight shifted toward his head, as his body followed and as the night ape heaved and thrust with all of his strength.
The great bull elephant tipped over Gazda, rolling forward on his tusks and thundering down upon the back of his broad skull, slipping so his great shoulders wedged between the ground and the trees that held his body angled up against their leaning trunks.
His mighty legs and feet kicked at the night sky.
Panting with humor and pain, Gazda dragged himself from the hole torn in the earth and tried to gain his feet, but he staggered as Magnuh kicked at the air, groaning as the tree trunks that held him snapped and splintered with loud reports like thunder.
The ground shook as the giant struck and Gazda stumbled—raw new pain blinding him. Wincing, he saw that his right leg had snapped backward mid-thigh and was regenerating quickly in the darkness, popping and clicking as the bone reset itself.
Agony flared up his right forearm from where it had exploded gorily beneath the strain, and this he quickly grasped by the wrist and pulled. Crack! He cried out at the action, as the splintered bones slipped back beneath the flesh, as the skin began to knit.
“Can’t you kill me?” Gazda croaked huskily as the great beast kicked its mighty forelegs, rolled and righted itself. Rising to his full height, the bull elephant roared his outrage, and in the twilight his head and hide showed many wounds—but no surrender.
“One of us must die, Magnuh!”
The monster watched the night ape limp toward a jumble of broken tree limbs and roots where he chose a long stout piece of hardwood ten feet in length.
Gazda turned as Magnuh trumpeted.
The beast’s eyes burned with a desire for blood and domination as he stamped and tore at the broken earth conjuring from it a terrifying malevolence of titanic proportion.
The bull elephant charged explosively as Gazda stood his ground
