Once upon a time, if a man was lucky, he might live beyond age thirty.
But then Man grew smart.
Decade by decade, century by century, he managed to claw an additional measure out of that fragile thing called life and his span of years began to grow hand in hand with his ingenuity.
But then Man grew stupid and threw it all away.
By the standards of his time, Bannan was ancient. No one knew in what year he had been born, for people no longer knew how to keep a calendar. No one knew how old he was but since he'd started keeping count Forty-seven harvests had come and gone and so he had a pretty good idea of how many years he had walked this earth.
Today he was feeling every single one of them.
His hair was pure, snowy white and hung down his back, tied in a ponytail. That same back was hunched from a lifetime of physical hardship and honest labor. His limbs were thin, knotted and stringy like the roots of some ancient tree.
When he had been younger, when the honor first became his, he would travel this path five or six times each year but as his age advanced so his journeys grew less frequent. Had it really been a year since he'd last trodden these secret ways?
And so this wasn't the first time, he'd followed this path - but he suspected it might be his last.
He sat down while he caught his breath, he was exhausted, his limbs trembled uncontrollably and he sweated. No point in carrying on, not tonight. He would rest here, even though he was a good four days from his destination. He closed his eyes with sorrow and admitted to himself that he wasn't sure if he could make it.
But the knowledge... the privilege... had to be passed on!
He should have told his eldest son before he left, the way his own father had once told him but he hadn't believed he might never make it back. He hadn't left a letter for he couldn't write - but there was something he could do! Something he enjoyed doing, something he was quite good at. He pulled out a scrap of parchment-like material from his satchel and pricked his finger with a thorn from one of the ugly, spiny plants that grew nearby. He dipped the thorn in his own blood and began to draw.
*****
Spang!
An arrow ricocheted off the rocks and went whizzing over Virdon's head.
Jesus that had been close!
Without a moments hesitation he dove behind a cluster of boulders, heedless to whatever might lay behind them. He scraped some flesh off the palms of his hands and winced, hissing under his breath but shifting the pain to somewhere further down where he didn't have to deal with it right now. He risked a peek over the top of the boulder and saw a mounted gorilla ride by, head whipping left and right.
"Do you see them!" Another gorilla- this one out of sight - called.
"Lost them." The rider grumbled irritably.
Good, that meant Pete and Galen had managed to find cover too. For Burke he wasn't too concerned, he had all the skills and instincts required to elude capture but Galen? The young Chimpanzee wasn't quite so crafty, he learned fast, no doubt about it, he had to, but of the three he was easily the most vulnerable in a situation like this.
"Well get in there after them," shouted the rider Virdon couldn't see.
"What, forget it. Have you seen this mess? I'm not taking Kupra in there! She'll break a leg in a minute."
