Fred Saberhagen Book of the Gods 01 The Face of Apollo

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since even the Intruder had seen the like. In flight the great bees of certain swarms made a peculiar,
distinctive buzz-fluttering sound, and a whole swarm in the air generates a heavy roar.
For anyone who had much experience with the bees, it was easy to tell by the sound whether the swarm
was angry or just on the move somewhere.
One insect landed close in front of Jeremy's eyes, on the cen-tral pedestal of the village shrine. In his left
eye the small live body glowed with a vital fire.
Some of the bees producing special honey for these villagers had bodies half as long as a man's hand.
Odylic bees, some prod-uct of what the legendary technofolk had done to life a thousand years ago or
more. Others of the six-legged honeymakers were only half as long but that would be quite large
enough. Large, multifaceted eyes. All workers, these, and with ferocious stingers. Their wings snarled at
the air, mere blurs, too fast for Jeremy's right eye to follow, although his left, moving in the same track,
could catch detailed pictures. It seemed that nothing in nature ought to move as fast as those thin wings.
When Jeremy saw the first, isolated bee scout, it was easy to mistake its right-eye image for that of a
hummingbird. But when he saw it through his left eye, there could be no mistake.
A moment later it had come down on a bandit's neck. And a moment after that, with a twitching of its
posterior against his skin, it had done one of the things that a bee does best.
A large swarm of them, descending in their mindless anger, could rout any human army, inflicting heavy
loss of life on any who tried to stand and fight. Protective clothing was of course possible, but ordinary
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military armor had so many chinks and gaps that it was practically useless.
And now the bees descended in their thousands, on all who were not marked with the Eye of Apollo.
Jeremy, looking around him, thought not a single citizen of the village was being stung.
Suddenly the brigand nearest Jeremy bellowed and began making frantic thrashing motions with his
arms.
The three rapists who had been coupling with the girl released her they suddenly needed all their hands
for something else and she collapsed on the floor and crawled away, trying to pull the remnants of her
clothing around her. But there were no beeson her body, not a single one, and she was no longer in need
of the fragile protection clothes could give.
The three who had been her chief attackers displayed much greater energy, and the sounds that they
were making grew even louder than before, even less human. One man, with the lower half of his clothing
off, replaced with a breechclout of buzzing brown and blue, went out of the house through a window,
two others through the door. Their limbs were all in frantic motion, legs springing in a useless and
spasmodic dance, arms swatting in a frenzy, hands working without hope at the task of scraping, beating
away, the droning, writhing layer of gauzy, speed-blurred wings and furry bodies, poison needles, and
piercing sound that had now engulfed them. The men whose legs still functioned might have tried to run,
except that now they could no longer see. Jeremy observed clearly the complete disappearance of one of
the bandits' heads inside a clump, a knot, of angry bees. When the pink-white surface that had once been
the man's face ap-peared again, his head was swollen beyond all recognition as a human part, the mouth
all filled with foam.
The droning had now risen to what seemed a deafening vol-ume. It was almost enough to drown the
screams of men.
Few of the other bandits were any better off. Swords and bat-tle hatchets and short spears were waving
in a few hands, but to no avail. Jeremy observed more than one demonstration of the fact that an active
man or woman could catch one of the insects in one hand and crush it or knock it out of the air with a
brisk arm swing. Of course the human would almost certainly survive the painful sting of a single bee. But
meanwhile three more bees, or a dozen, or a hundred would be stinging him. And Apollo's memory
informed Jeremy, quite dispassionately, that ten or a dozen stings from the stock of these apiaries were
very com-monly enough to kill an adult human.
So far Jeremy had not been stung, and he knew, with perfect confidence, that he was not going to be.
So he raised his bound hands before his face and began steadily worrying with his teeth at the cord
fastening his wrists. Really he was very tired, much energy had been drained from him, and as soon as [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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