Free The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann Page B

lout. You were supposed to die in my arms. It’s expected.”
    “I’m only a carpenter but I have my principles.”
    With regal pride and obvious pain, she regained her footing and swayed toward the door.
    Eunostos kept his seat and eyed her warily in case of further mischief. “And you’re going to set Kora and Zoe free?”
    “Of course not,” she shrilled as she stepped out of the door and, nursing her wounded wings, fluttered toward the ground.
    He stamped his hoof. Very well, then, he would have to rescue them.
    “Partridge, Bion, we’re going to war!”

CHAPTER VII
    PARTRIDGE and Bion, as usual, were within an easy bellow of their friend Eunostos. They were in fact at the foot of Zoe’s tree.
    “We saw that Bee woman slither in the door,” admitted Partridge, “and she seemed to be up to mischief. But I didn’t want to interrupt till you called. You might have been trysting.”
    “You know I’m promised to Kora,” snorted Eunostos.
    “Well, you can’t wait forever,” said Partridge tolerantly, as he viewed the ravaged couch.
    “As a matter of fact, we’re going to rescue Kora now.”
    “Oh,” said Partridge, who looked as if he would rather be grazing among the buttercups. But the more martial Bion waved his feelers and bared a pair of small but incisive teeth. In the secrecy of Kora’s tree, hidden from Thriae scouts, if there were such, and treacherous Panisci, for there were certainly such, they formulated their plans. Eunostos was young but he was not so inexperienced as to think that he and his two friends (valiant though they were—well, Bion anyway) could charge the hive of a Bee queen and singlehandedly effect the rescue of Kora and me. He had read about such adventures: the stalwart Minotaur of Hoofbeats in Babylon had rescued a Babylonian princess from captivity among nefarious batmen by assaulting their cave at night and panicking them with his bellows. But that was an epic and Eunostos knew himself to be slightly too young for an epical hero, even though an epical heroine awaited his rescue.
    He could even ask Chiron to attack the Thriae with a troop of Centaurs. Though the Centaurs could probably level the hive, in spite of the winged defenders with their bamboo spears, Kora and I might die in the carnage. Eunostos had witnessed Saffron at her most murderous and he no longer doubted that she would murder her hostages rather than allow them to be rescued. No, he must devise a stratagem. He must rely on subterfuge. He must somehow divert Saffron, the workers, and the drones so that he could enter the hive and rescue us, and only then unloose the Centaurs to launch an attack and forestall pursuit. Subversion must precede invasion.
    “Hello up there!” came a cry from the foot of the tree. It was Moschus, the Centaur. “Has my girl forsaken me?”
    Eunostos thrust his head out of the door and Moschus scowled.
    “I guess she has. These days, the world belongs to the young.”
    “You don’t understand,” Eunostos said, clambering down the ladder, followed by Bion, and then a fat, puffing Partridge. And he explained the plight of both Kora and Zoe. Moschus, whose breath as usual smelled of beer, cried for an immediate assault on the hive. He whinnied and reared back on his hind legs, but Eunostos emphasized the need for caution.
    “If you could just bring some of your friends to the woods nearby…you understand, they mustn’t look warlike. They must look as if they’ve come to graze among the buttercups. And Partridge, why don’t you go with Moschus?” Partridge must be made to feel useful without endangering himself and everyone else with his military ineptitude.
    Partridge beamed with pride; he had been designated as an important messenger but not required to fight. Moschus was less pleased at having to take orders from a stripling of fifteen, and being equated, as it were, with an overweight Goat Boy.
    “Partridge,” he sulked, “must you eat onion grass?”
    Together