Chapter 38: Bee Respectful
“What about this?”
Belissar had spent the night brainstorming what he could do to improve the Tower’s defenses. It was now morning, and he was in the farmhouse along with the soldier bee that had helped him weave linen. The soldier crawled along the table towards a stick Belissar had placed on it and tried to pick it up with her mandibles. Her wings buzzed softly as she started a slow dance. Belissar let out a sigh.
“No good, huh?”
Belissar’s first idea was a simple one. If it was too dangerous and took too long for him to approach the Pit Traps with a torch, then why not let the soldier bees carry the torch instead? They could fly with it overhead and drop it into the pit from above, even if there was another shade around to interfere. It was low risk and, well, even if Belissar didn’t want to accept it, the bees were willing to fly into danger if they had to.
He was running into some issues, however. Soldier bees may have been gigantic for bees, but they were still fairly small in the grand scheme of things, so a full-sized torch was out of the question. What was worse was the lack of grasping appendages. Their legs were designed mainly for walking, so they were limited to their mandibles. That meant the torch had to be thin enough to be held within the soldier bee’s jaws, as well as light enough to be carried without excessive imbalance during flight.
But on the flip side, the torch couldn’t be too small, either. The smaller the torch, the longer it would take to start a fire in the Pit Traps. A flame that was too small might even be extinguished as it fell from the sky or when it landed. Likewise, a small torch wouldn’t last very long and so would have to be used quickly after being lit. That could lead to a situation like before, when Belissar couldn’t get the torch to the pit before the shades escaped. And finally, if the torch was too small the bee itself could get burned by it, which would prevent its use entirely.
So, Belissar and the soldier bee were experimenting with different stick sizes to find the right balance, but they hadn’t found a suitable one just yet.
It was then that Belissar was interrupted by another challenger message. He turned his Tower sight to the entrance and found the bear people had returned. This time, the old woman and her group had stayed home, and it was just the big guy and his warriors. His name was Metsaitti, or something, if Belissar recalled correctly.
Niobee flew in front of him as he stopped.