I hoped that my dragon riders will find the escaped humans before they reach their village.
Despite all efforts of the Beemarine and Beehound dragon riders, the scaly bird-brains would rather fly anywhere but to where these humans were walking!
All this time, Ambrosia was not-so-quietly glad that I wasn't going on a dangerous mission *yet*, at least.
Only two days later, I got to sit in the empty Council Chamber and listen to some news.
"We saw them in the village, Father! And I mean our sisters," Invincible-13 reported, gesturing at her companion. "Hound-Solo is ready to describe everything."
Hound-Solo nodded, but didn't stop wrangling her wrists. She was standing so close to Invincible-13 that their shoulders were touching, and clearly wanted nothing more but to hide behind the Beemarine's back.
For this search mission, I arranged the dragon riders in pairs. One of the pair was an experienced rider—most of which were Beemarines. Another was a Beehound, whose task was to track the humans.
Since this was just a scouting mission, more people weren't necessary, and I felt like having smaller teams will help Beehounds work.
Now I saw that not only Beehounds felt better in small teams, they even seemed to befriend their Beemarine sisters…
I smiled at that, although my heart wasn't in it.
"What did you see, Hound-Solo?"
Hound-Solo bit her lip and looked at Invincible-13, who nodded encouragingly. The Beehound took a deep breath and began talking in short and quiet phrases.
"The Scourge landed on the roof of one of the giants' buildings. It was taller than the giants' heads. We could see most of their colony from there. 79 giants gathered in a valley between their houses. They all talked so loudly that Scourge almost flew away. One giant raised a jar from something transparent and I saw our sisters inside. I couldn't make out their faces or smells—"
"They put my girls in a fucking *glass jar*! It better have at least some holes for air, or I *will* make them suffer even more than my sting normally would!"
I was clenching my fists. Although I expected something , hearing it still made me want to bite someone! Someone responsible!
But righteous anger wasn't helping right now, so I took a deep breath and tried to calm down.
"Sorry for interrupting you. Hound-Solo, I'm going to ask you for more details again. Starting with the rest of this tale."
She nodded and hugged Invincible-13's hand. The Beemarine silently patted Hound-Solo's shoulder.
Hound-Solo wasn't the only Beehound to share her story with me today. Disaster and Woe, together with their riders, visited the human village as well—and they shared their parts.
Asking them all pointed questions took time, but in the end, I had a lot of raw information, from which I could deduce what was going on with the humans.
Although I didn't know their language or culture, so far, they acted more or less like the humans I knew—bug faces aside. I could vividly imagine what they were thinking at that moment.
Hound-Solo caught the village in the middle of a major argument, which began when the three escaped humans returned home with their "trophy" and news about seven dead people.
Clearly, the villagers had a different opinion on this news. They split into two groups: one was led by fear, and the other by anger and greed. To my joy, the fearful group was larger—but it appeared to consist mostly of women. The overall influence of both groups was probably equal, at least right now—because the argument went nowhere important today.
In the end, the villagers dispersed. Some gathered again later in a building that must've been a temple and prayed—a memorial without bodies of their dead.
Later, a group of twelve people went out into the pillar mountain plains and left some things lying on the ground: massive pieces of copper jewelry and what looked like a giant piece of bread that Disaster was glad to snack on.
These twelve humans clearly tried to appease the bees—just like some superstitious villager would try to appease spirits of the forest.
The thought made me smirk.
In a way, bees sure were similar to pixies… And if they had a similar reputation, it would only work best for the Bee Empire.
The angry part of the villagers were less busy. They mostly kept arguing with everyone.
At least they didn't seem to organize another attack—but they kept the prisoners.
It was hard to follow movements of a relatively small glass jar around the village, especially after it was waved in front of anyone (I feared to imagine how the bees inside were feeling).
But from the report of Woe's riders, the jar was last seen before a man brought it to an herb-smelling building at the edge of the village.
Of course—a magical bee-fairy had to be kept in the house of a local witch/shaman/apothecary.
But this only worked well for us. A building that stood at the edge of a village was easier to infiltrate. And its windows weren't even covered with glass—for all I knew, that jar I saw made 90% of the glass in this backwater place.
By the time I finished extracting the reports, it was evening, and the dragons flew to their nests to sleep. Too bad—I didn't want to wait a single extra day, and it'd be easier to be stealthy at night.
Good thing bees were so small compared to humans. It was easy to be stealthy.
Next morning, as soon as the dragons returned, the rescue teams were already there, ready to the very last bee. And I was there, of course.
"Please, Amby, don't worry too much about me. I will be there and back! Well, maybe in a week, if we will have to fly from the village on our own two feet."
Ambrosia gave me her most unimpressed look and kissed my cheek.
I beamed and waved at all the other bees that came to see the rescue teams off.
"We will soon return with triumph!" I promised. "Now, riders—get on the dragons, and we are taking off!"