“That’s what I was afraid of. That means we can’t get to the adventurers, damn it, and there’s no way to know that their apis won’t rush off to warn the authorities. I wish the menaces couldn’t fly, but there’s nothing we can do about it,” Damaris said, taking a moment to steady herself as she considered, then nodded firmly. “Right, nothing to be done for it, we’re going to have to speed things up.”
Both of the others looked surprised at that, though Leah’s eyes widened more. She looked at the desk, hesitating, then cleared her throat. Damaris looked at her pointedly, which prompted the woman to speak.
“Ah, sir… I thought we didn’t know where the seal was, though,” Leah said, looking confused. “How can we speed up?”
That made Damaris let out a barking laugh, and she turned to the desk behind her, grabbing a map and unrolling it as she spoke. “Earlier, that was true. However, Shala broke enough of the code to find it a bit less than an hour ago. If you’d managed to pin down the adventurers, that would have been damn near perfect, but we’ll work with what we have.”
The map showed Bearton and its environs, but more particularly, it showed the northern part of the Teeming Jungle, and Damaris pointed at a red x-mark that was deep in the jungle, scowling at it.
“It’s here, much deeper than any of us thought it’d be, which makes our lives difficult. Egan could probably get there with his people eventually if he was careful, but we don’t have time to take the subtle approach,” Damaris explained quickly.
Leah’s lips pursed as she looked at the map, visibly wincing as she nodded. “I see that, sir. What do you need me to do? Keep up the perimeter?”
“No. At this point it’s essentially pointless, I’m afraid,” Damaris said, letting out a breath and shaking her head. “No, pull all of your company back to town and post guards, while the rest of you get ready for the trip back home. Pack up what we need, and prepare a couple of wagons to carry Abigail and the other prisoners. Come morning, I’m taking everyone else with me to retrieve the damned seal.”
“Yes, sir!” Leah said, her eyes brightening as she saluted.
“Don’t get too comfortable, though,” Velk interjected, grinning as he added, “You’re in charge of packing all the plunder we got here, and there’s a lot of it. You might need to pack a few extra wagons while we’re gone.”
That made the half-elf’s nose wrinkle, but she nodded firmly, looking at Damaris. “Yes, but we’re making progress! That’s worth more than a bit of drudge work. Do you think it’ll be too difficult to get the seal, Major?”
“It shouldn’t be, not with our levels, but there’s always room for being taken off guard,” Damaris said, looking at the map a last time, then rolled it up again. She needed to put it in a scroll case for the trip, and she reminded herself to find one as she continued. “Now, get moving. I want your people as well-rested as we can manage before we leave.”
“Yes, sir!” Leah acknowledged, and quickly left to get to work.
* * *
It was all the apis could do to keep from humming the tune that she’d learned from Joy, as entertaining as it was. She’d been teaching it to a few dozen of her friends when the attendant had told her she was needed for the scouting mission, so it was at the top of her mind, and far more pleasant than the sight before her.
“I’m a bee, I’m a bee…” the apis whispered under her breath, looking down at the human town in confusion, trying to figure out what was wrong with it.
She’d expected the structures to be strange, so that wasn’t the issue, and neither was the odd tendency to waste space. She didn’t understand why only two or three individuals would live in a space that would’ve housed two dozen apis comfortably, but that was fine. She was less fine with the smoke coming up out of their chimneys, but she grudgingly supposed that fire was necessary for people who wanted to cook their food, as much as she hated to admit it. Heat would be easier if they lived together, but she couldn’t force sanity into an entire other species.
No, the problem was that the only ones who were outside were armed, the apis realized at last. A woman had just opened her door, a bucket in her hand, then quickly closed it again at the sight of a couple of soldiers on the road outside. When she looked again, the apis realized that all of the people outside were armed, and most of them were armored. Not that there were very many of them, and the apis made a quick count of all those she could see, including a couple that were moving in and out of a building which held some four-legged, hooved creatures. There were a couple of wagons out front, which she barely recognized from some of her previous scouting trips.
“A hundred and twenty? Maybe a few more inside… with as few people as they put inside, maybe two hundred… not that many,” the apis said, a bit nonplused by the thought. The idea of a hive, however minor, falling to that few enemies was mind-boggling to her. Perhaps they’d been a lot stronger than the defenders, though. Still, she wasn’t going to make decisions on her own. She was one of a dozen scouts, and she was sure the attendant would want to hear from all of them.
With a shrug, the apis turned around to head for their meeting point. She was sure the others would be along shortly, then they could head back to the hive, where it was snug and warm.
Maybe she’d even make it in time to hear some more of Joy’s stories. The thought of that brightened the apis’s mood.
The world outside a hive was just so interesting.
* * *
Silverhoof circled the perimeter of the camp at a trot, nervousness making him far more restless than he’d like, but he was unable to stay still. What he wanted was to keep rushing toward Bearton through the night, but he couldn’t do that, not if he didn’t want to lose time in the end. He glanced at the camp, and the sight of it eased his mind somewhat.
The duke hadn’t taken Silverhoof’s words lightly, and he’d immediately mustered half the Knights in the city. Doing so had taken half the day, unfortunately, but it was time well spent, in Silverhoof’s opinion. Four hundred armored, mounted Knights were nothing to take lightly, not when every last one of them was level fifteen or higher, and also with them were twenty priests, twenty-five magi, and a group of messengers. The horses of the last probably could have gone through the night, but heavy warhorses needed their rest.
Adding that force to close to a hundred adventurers was more than enough to deal with most incursions, Silverhoof had to admit, but only if the town was still intact. That was his main anxiety, though the supposed messages he’d received from Abigail made him think that they’d occupied the town instead.
“I can hope. I can only hope,” Silverhoof muttered, circling a rock along his path, keeping an eye out for trouble. With the need for rest, it would take him a day and a half more to reach Bearton, which he hoped would be fast enough. It should be, but one never knew with the Kingdoms of Darkness.
However unlikely, it was possible that all of this was an elaborate ploy to draw them out of position, which was why the duke hadn’t sent more soldiers with him. Instead, the duke was putting the various garrisons around the duchy on high alert, and informing His Majesty of the threat as well.
If that wasn’t enough, Silverhoof didn’t know what would be.
Chapter 31
“Mmmm!” Joy said, stretching hard as her back popped, a happy smile on her face, then opened her eyes and blinked as she met the level, slightly annoyed gaze of Cora, though she could barely see it in the room. Joy looked at her for a moment, then said, rather brightly, “Good morning, Cora!”
“You grabbed onto me again. Why me? Stella was right there!” Cora said, her tone helpless. “I thought I was going to melt, I was so warm!”
“Oh, sorry!” Joy said, blushing, and hesitated as she took a sniff, then continued in the same bright tone. “You smell like flowers and nectar, I think. That’s probably why I come after you.”
Cora let out a sigh, then sat up, murmuring. “Well, at least I got some sleep.”
The room
was mostly dark, with no illumination in the walls. Instead, the only light filtered through from other rooms through the fabric curtaining off the chamber. It was warm, snug, and Joy rather liked it, even if it could’ve slept three times as many of them. Even better was the smell pervading the hive, in her opinion. The scent of a queen was incredibly comforting, and she couldn’t help her excitement due to that. Even if it wasn’t her queen.
The other apis had been wonderful to socialize with as well, and Joy had stayed up late, telling stories about what she’d seen in Irador, what Seldrim had been like, the creatures along the roads, the way the world was so huge, and even about the Flower Forest and the Blackstone Mines. The other apis had been fascinated, and she’d been deluged with questions. She’d nearly given a container of lemonade to an attendant for the queen, with the right ratio of honey added, of course, but she’d decided to wait until she’d rested. Joy didn’t want to drop one of them, and she’d been quite tired when she’d gone to bed. And latched onto Cora, apparently.
“Why would Cora smell like a flower? Or flowers?” Brianna asked, yawning slightly as the woman stretched, covering her mouth with one hand. “I’ve never noticed anything like that.”
“I don’t know! She just does. It isn’t much, just a little,” Joy said, holding the fingers of one hand close together as a demonstration.
“I don’t use perfume, so it definitely isn’t that. I have no idea why I would smell like a flower,” Cora said, sighing again as she looked over. “How’re you, Joy? You stayed up late.”
“Oh, I’m great!” Joy said, smiling broadly as she started pulling on her armor. “I got to talk to lots of apis, and they wanted to know all about what it’s like in the cities and other hives. Then I slept, and now… now we can help the hive! I hope, anyway.”
“We’ll see,” Stella said, looking significantly more worried, now. “If there are a lot of invaders, it’s possible we won’t be able to do much, and I’m worried about what’ll happen if that’s true. We don’t have all the time in the world, after all.”
“True, we could be trapped here… but then again, we also could level up a lot, I think. The jungle here isn’t exactly tame,” Brianna replied thoughtfully.
“Either way, no reason to worry too much!” Joy said, trying to distract them as she grinned broadly. “Today’s today, not tomorrow! Let’s do what we can now!”
“As you like, Joy,” Cora said, smiling indulgently, then stood up, rolling a shoulder as she muttered. “I shouldn’t have slept on that. Anyway… time to find out what they learned, I think.”
“Yep!” Joy said, her smile broadening as she stood up, then waited as she realized that Brianna wasn’t ready yet.
It took a few minutes for the others to get ready, during which Joy was practically bouncing in place, her antennae out, tasting the pheromones in the air. The hives weren’t quite the same, with the pheromones a little different, but they were similar enough that Joy could get the gist of what was going on. It was too hot in the upper levels, so some of the apis were moving water up to help cool it while others were probably moving to an entrance to circulate in cooler air, they needed more workers to help feed the young, and someone had found a particularly nice flower patch to the east. The last was most intriguing to Joy, but she knew better than to interfere. The nastiest fights between hives were over flower patches, in her experience.
Besides, she didn’t need much more honey. Possibly if she got the pure royal jelly, but Joy wasn’t going to count on that until it was in her hands. Even the offer of the queen to let her get it made Joy almost tremble with excitement. The queen had been so beautiful and regal, in her opinion.
“Alright, there we go,” Brianna said, standing up. “I’m ready to go when you are.”
“Good! Let me see if I can find the nearest attendant…” Joy said, pulling the curtain aside and taking a sniff of the air. She hadn’t been thinking about finding a queen’s attendant before, so she hadn’t really paid attention to where one was, but it didn’t take much to notice them. While their pheromones weren’t hugely different from other apis, they were rather distinct, so she pointed to the left in the warmly lit halls. “This way!”
Apis were already hard at work, and Joy passed several workers cleaning cells along the walls, ones that had held honey, at a guess, and went down a few ramps on her way into the lower levels of the hive. They’d been resting in the middle levels, which tended to be safer from what Joy remembered. The spots near the entrances were dangerous in the case of attacks.
“Is it always this busy in a hive, Joy?” Stella asked, her voice barely audible over the chatting apis, the sound of wings fluttering, and footsteps. Joy looked over her shoulder and grinned back at Stella.
“Pretty much! It’ll probably calm down in the winter, though. We don’t hibernate anymore, from what I heard, but if we aren’t active, we won’t eat as much and we’ll live a little longer,” Joy explained cheerfully. “There’s always work to do, though!”
“Ah, that explains it. A bit, anyway,” Stella said, staying close behind Joy as they threaded through the crowd. Not that it was threading, really, but more that the other apis just sort of flowed around them, and Joy did her best not to interfere with those moving the other direction.
Soon they reached a lower floor, and Joy’s eyes lit up as she spotted the attendant after a moment. The woman was in an alcove with a pair of apis, examining a table which they’d built. It was different than most of the tables that she’d seen other species make, without a proper base, but she thought that the pole on one side was supposed to attach to a wall, and that it was narrow enough to be out of the way most of the time.
“…I do think it will work, for this purpose. We need you to focus on some that stand on their own, though,” the attendant said, looking at the apis seriously. “In some cases they might be needed outside the hive, and detaching them from a tree or rock would lose quite a bit of wax.”
“Of course, we’ll work on a new type immediately!” one of the workers promised, and the other apis nodded her head vigorously. Then the woman saw Joy and her eyes brightened, exclaiming, “Ooh, you’re Joy, aren’t you! Can I touch your hair?”
“Sure!” Joy said, amused at the worker’s reaction.
“What the…” Brianna muttered from behind Stella.
The apis reached out and touched Joy’s hair, stroking it once, then nodded, pulling away as she grinned. “I was right, your hair is smoother than ours is! I just wondered, since it looked different!”
“Maybe because we’re from different hives,” Joy said, nodding in understanding, though she noticed that all three of her friends looked perplexed.
“Most likely, yes. You were looking for me, I think,” the attendant said, looking at Joy with a smile. The other two workers took the table and moved away, chattering happily among themselves.
“We were! Did the scouts get back safely from their trip?” Joy asked, fluttering her wings a little. “They didn’t get hurt, I hope.”
“No, they didn’t. I wasn’t the one who talked to them, though. You’ll want to go to the attendant organizing things around the entrance,” the attendant said, pointing downward, then explained to Brianna, Cora, and Stella. “Today I’m in charge of expanding the hive and furnishings.”
“Alright,” Brianna said, looking mystified still, and Joy grinned.
“Thank you!” Joy said, bobbing her head happily, and the apis nodded in turn, her own smile wide.
“You’re welcome!” the attendant said, then paused as she added, “Oh, and before I forget… the queen decided that she liked the name your old queen used for the priests. They’re now called humblebees as well. It improved the mood around the hive immensely, so thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” Joy said, the news improving her mood instantly, then she paused, and quickly spoke, reaching into her pouch. “Oh, I forgot about this last night, but I have something for the queen!”
“Oh?�
� the attendant asked, stopping as she’d been about to leave, looking at the wax container Joy pulled out. “What is this?”
“Lemonade with honey!” Joy said, grinning broadly. “I wanted to give it to her last night, but I couldn’t convince myself to talk! She’s just so pretty!”
“Ah, I do understand!” the attendant said happily, her smile warm as she took the jar. “I’ll give this to her when I next see the queen.”
“Thanks!” Joy said cheerfully, then looked at her friends as she continued. “I’ll lead the way, since you all seem to get lost in here!”
“It’s hard to keep my sense of direction,” Stella admitted, looking around. “I never realized how it would look inside a hive, but this explains why some of the other adventurers thought it was easy to get lost.”
As they started moving again, Brianna nodded and spoke. “Agreed, it’s definitely different than I imagined. Especially since the Tulip Hive was building towers like I’d expect in a human city.”
“Mm, different hives do things differently! Their smells are different here, as are their bodies. It’s neat!” Joy said, glancing back with a broad grin. “I’d never have met them if you hadn’t suggested this, and it’s really interesting!”
“Is that why they seem so fascinated with you? I know I was confused when the apis wanted to touch your hair,” Cora said, her voice a little subdued. “It’s almost like you’re famous here, or something like that.”
“I… well, I guess I am!” Joy said, pausing as she considered the idea, which seemed incredibly strange to her, but she shrugged again. “Bees never really leave their hive unless it splits, so for them I’m just… I’ve been places, and seen things that they might never see! I’m an apis from another hive, and the only ones who they’ve met who might be like that are from hives in the jungle, or drones. But all of them were bees, too, so they aren’t really different. They just want to see what I’m like, and talk, ask questions, and that sort of thing! Maybe some of them will even choose names… I doubt it, though.”
Webs & Wards (Beesong Chronicles Book 2) Page 20