Despite the bees that desperately attacked him, the leader of humans threw his torch. The colossal stone thing made an arc through the air and hit the top of Hill Rock, crushing several dozen ballistas and all the bees that manned them in an instant.
Then it fell away and rolled on the ground, crushing several more bees that were too close to Hive Under Rock's entrance. But to the relief of Bloodhero and all other bees, instead of falling into the hive, the torch rolled away and stayed there, still burning.
The nearby grass caught fire imdiately, and the nearest trees promised to follow quickly; but Bloodhero had no ti to worry about the spreading fire.
The humans were already trying to run away, and she flew up to catch them. The reserve force flew after her without delay.
"Attack their faces! Split into hundreds and reach every human, left to right! Force them to stop, so our sisters could catch up with them and keep dealing damage!" Bloodhero shouted, knowing that her ssengers will pass the orders to lower-rank officers. "For the Empire!"
"FOR THE EMPIRE!"
Without hiding, the entire swarm charged at the humans, forcing them to pause. As they grew closer, the thousand bees split into hundreds, each of which aid at one of the humans.
The size of bees' swarms was small compared to the size of ten humans, but when bees got right into humans' faces, they paused on pure reflex.
Bloodhero was there, directly leading the fourth hundred against a human who ran from the area the fastest. By the ti he reached her position, she and her bees just had the ti to reach his eye level.
The gaze of a human was disturbingly alien, and the cloth that covered his face didn't make him less ugly.
"Attack with fire!" Bloodhero commanded, raising her stone hamr.
It was a weapon not fitting for circumstances, but it was the sign that she was a commander of this force.
Her soldiers raised their pots of flaming resin and, with battle cries, began throwing them at the human's face. However, their attack was too slow.
The human let out so noise, then swiftly raised his hand, protecting the face and throwing away a dozen bees who got too close. So fire pots hit the hand, but the fire was blown away when the human waved this hand at the bees.
"He stopped in place! Keep attacking!" Bloodhero shouted, dashing away from the blow's way. "They can't attack with fire that close to themselves!"
She could see the main force of her army catching up with the humans. In no ti at all, they will attack again.
And her sneak attack force was there, too! Several dozen bees were hanging on the legs of three humans—they got there, after all, so it was only a matter of ti until these humans got stung.
'If we kill these humans, it will be most of their soldiers! The rest of the village's populace is human foragers and workers—if they attack us, the entire village will starve. We can stop all the human attacks right *now*!'
Bloodhero's subordinates needed no further encouragents.
The bees from the reserve force buzzed around human faces, trying to distract them even if they couldn't deal enough damage. They didn't care if so of them got swatted away by human hands.
For a mont, Bloodhero thought it might all end with total victory.
Then the human leader shouted sothing, covered his eyes with a hand, and resud running even faster than before—right at Bloodhero!
She didn't even have ti to get away. The human crashed right into her, throwing her aside like a tree leaf. Clutching her hamr, Bloodhero flew several dozen ters toward the ground before her wings stopped her fall.
Then she saw other humans running with the sa determination!
With their size and protective clothing, they could just ignore a hundred bees and break through.
Amid all other noise, Bloodhero heard cries of victory and pain from Warrior Bees who stung humans' faces, only to be trapped in their skin by their own barbed stingers. But humans only twitched from this, never slowing.
Fire had a stronger effect. The burning humans dropped their torches as they ran. One tried to pat down the fire on his burning head; the other took off clothing that was burning.
This slowed them both down and gave more bees an opportunity to sting—but it just wasn't enough.
Until suddenly, one of them cried out and stumbled. As he fell, he reached out for his leg, where several dozen bees cut through clothing and were stinging his ankle.
Seeing this, two other humans slowed down and turned toward their comrade. One kept running a mont later, but the other returned to the fallen one and tried to lift him.
The bees in the vicinity took their chance to attack them both.
Those were the final events of today's battle. By the ti Bloodhero gathered enough bees to get command again, eight humans had escaped completely and two were stung to death.
This ti, Bloodhero was sure that they were running back ho and not to another colony. The survivors would nurse their stings for a while.
"A victory. The enemies were too cowardly to accept a fight, but we *made* them," Bloodhero declared to her Chief Warriors and the Advisers of the Hive Under Rock. "So, today was a victory! But whether it was a big or a small one, we will find out only after we put out all the fires and count our losses!"
The work on both began imdiately. After considering the size of human torches, the local Industry Adviser made calculations and said that it will be the easiest to dig out trenches around them to stop fire until it went out on its own.
While local bees worked on that, Bloodhero's soldiers were gathering all the dead bees in rows and counting their nas and numbers.
'And because the humans escaped, they will attack again soon enough, I'm sure,' Bloodhero thought, looking at the death count—1 thousand of her forces, 4 thousand of local ones. 'A big war, then.'
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