Their entertainment had made them hot; they went back to the stream to cool off. The game with the crater insects had served its purpose and exorcised the fear of their first encounter. They were feeling “lucky” again. As they sat in the stream, Niall raised the idea that had been in the back of his mind for the past two days: persuading the family to move from the desert to this land of abundant food and water. Hrolf’s eyes brightened with enthusiasm, but it lasted only a moment.
“The strong one (Jomar) would never agree to come. He is afraid of the spiders.”
“But the spider patrols come only twice a day.”
“But where we live now, they come only twice a month. And in the desert, they never come at all.” He added, after a pause: “Where my mother’s people come from, they come about once a week.”
It had never struck Niall that Ingeld originally came from somewhere else; he had assumed she had always been a member of the family.
“Where was that?”
“In the place of ruins, three days’ march to the south.”
“What is a ruin?”
“It’s a. . .” Hrolf looked puzzled; he had no words to explain what he meant. “It’s a place where men used to live in the days before the spiders.”
“The days before the spiders?” For Niall, this was an equally startling concept.
“The legend says there was once a time when men ruled the earth, and thousands of them lived together in the ruins.”
“Thousands?” That idea struck Niall as absurd; he found it quite impossible to imagine more than a few dozen human beings. “But how could thousands live in burrows or caves?” He was trying to envisage a city made of underground holes. If the ground was honeycombed with holes, surely it would collapse?
“Not burrows or caves. You’ve seen a termite’s nest?” Niall had, indeed, seen a strange, brown cone on one of their hunting expeditions. “Men used to live in places like that, above the ground.”
“And were they not afraid of the death spiders?”
“The strong one says there was a time when the spiders were as small as my fist, and they were afraid of men.”
This was such a revolutionary concept that it took Niall some moments to absorb it. It filled him with a tingling excitement that was tinged with a touch of fear. Men who challenged the spiders died a horrible death. Niall was too imaginative to be courageous. Yet this amazing thought — that men might once have been masters of the earth — brought a sensation that was as delightful as running water. Suddenly, there were a hundred questions that he wanted to ask.
He was distracted by a movement further downstream, and for a moment his heart skipped with alarm. Then he recognised his brother Veig, standing in the middle of the stream and beckoning to them. They waded ashore, collected their rope and spears, and hurried to join him.
Veig was in a state of suppressed excitement.
“Where have you been? I’ve looked everywhere.” Niall started to tell him about the crater insect, but Veig interrupted him. “They’re fighting.” He pointed in the direction of the ants’ nest.
“Amongst themselves?”
“No, stupid. The red ants are fighting the black ants. Come and see.”
It was an amazing sight. Hundreds of dead ants lay on the ground under the great tree, red ones as well as black. And there seemed to be red ants as far as the eye could see; they were pouring out of the undergrowth in a regular column. And although they were considerably smaller than the black ants, they were far more formidable as fighters, swifter and more compact. When a red ant faced a black ant, it hurled itself towards it with concentrated determination, trying to bite the front leg. The legs of the black ant were longer and more spidery than those of the red ant, and if the red ant succeeded in avoiding the mandibles of its adversary, it seized the leg in its grip and then braced its legs and wrestled. The black ant could only attempt to bite its armoured back. In many cases, a second red ant — they seemed to greatly outnumber the black — would grab a rear leg too. Within moments, the damaged legs would be hanging uselessly or lying severed on the ground. With two of its six legs destroyed, the ant was helpless. The red ant would attack it from the side and try to turn it on its back, then would attack the “throat” — the point where the head joined the thorax. While the ant was kicking helplessly, the second aggressor would attack the point where the thorax joined the rear section, the petiole and gaster. What impressed Niall was that the whole operation looked so oddly deliberate and planned: the red ants even seemed to bite and tug in unison. Sometimes — but not often — the black ant could outmanoeuvre them. If it could keep its front legs out of the clutches of the attacker, then the red ant would disappear under its belly, and the black ant could attack its rear legs, or the “waist” between thorax and petiole. Even so, another red ant could then attack the undefended legs.
They watched the battle with intense excitement. The ants completely ignored them, even when they blundered against their legs. This was obviously a grim war to the death; the red ants were determined to force their way into the rival nest.
“But what are they fighting about?” Niall asked. It seemed incredible that two lots of ants who lived scarcely a mile apart, and who had co-existed in peace — Niall had seen both black and red ants foraging side by side for melons — should suddenly engage in mutual slaughter.
At first it appeared that the red ants were bound to be winners. But after half an hour or so, this was by no means so self-evident. It was true that there were far more red ants swarming around the nest; but as fast as the black ants were killed or disabled, more of them poured out of the hole in the ground. Their tactic, it seemed, was not to try to engage large numbers of the enemy but simply to make sure that the red ants were unable to invade their nest. To Niall, it seemed an incredible example of courage and altruism. When a dozen or so black ants poured out of the nest, each one must have known that it would be dead within minutes; yet there was no sign of hesitation or fear. If there were enough black ants underground, it looked as if they would eventually drive off the enemy by sheer courage and persistence.
Then a strange thing happened. From the direction of the nest of the red ants, a column of black ants came marching. Niall assumed that they were workers who had been out foraging and were now returning to defend their nest. He was baffled when these newcomers advanced on the entrance to the nest and suddenly began to attack the guards. The defenders themselves were obviously just as confused. To judge by their smell, the newcomers were their own kind, friends who could be allowed into the nest. Yet the friends were trying to kill them. They fought back unwillingly, as if convinced that it was all a mistake.
This confusion gave the red ants the chance they needed. While the guards were struggling with the newcomers, the red ants pushed past them and into the entrance. A new wave of defenders poured out, to be met by the bewildering spectacle of the guards fighting to the death with their own kind.
Veig suddenly chuckled; this was so unexpected that they both stared at him in surprise. Veig slapped his thigh.
“Now I understand. Jomar knows all about ants. The red ants are slavers. They capture the larvae of the black ants and turn them into slaves. They’re trying to get into the nest to steal more larvae.”
Now they understood what was happening. The black newcomers were slaves, and had been summoned to attack their own kind, which they did with blind obedience. At some point in the battle, it had dawned on the red ants that they could use their own slaves as shock troops. This revealed a degree of intelligence. Yet they were not intelligent enough to see that all this fighting was unnecessary. The slaves could probably have walked unchallenged into the nest of the black ants and kidnapped all the larvae they wanted. . .
The black ant defence had now broken, and red ants were pouring into the nest. In the dark corridors inside there would be slaughter and confusion. Niall suddenly felt saddened. He had hoped the black ants would win. He turned away and waded upstream towards the date palms; he was beginning to feel hungry again.