Chapter nine
StungPandemonium! Utter confusion! Men ran and swiped and flapped and swatted everywhere I looked. The river fringing the camp splashed and spouted as men leaped bodily in. Soon the water was dotted with human heads, ducking and surfacing, like berries washed in a basin.
The wasps and bees and hornets — and other typically Kregish stinger horrors — swarmed so thickly in the air they appeared solid clouds, black and yellow, red and orange, bottle green.
Our poor saddle animals, of course, both of the ground and the air, went mad. They galloped or flew off and with a sinking heart I knew we’d not see them again for some good long time. Or, to be more accurate, some evil long time.
I was not stung once.
Everywhere I looked the swarms pirouetted and swooped. They were maddene
