by Robin Hawdon
It was Black Sting who answered. 'You may have who you wish. We want to talk with those who represent the workers' opinions.'
Five Legs nodded. 'As long as you realize that we have little influence over those opinions,' he said. 'This was a spontaneous, unanimous action. No one ordered it.'
Black Sting acknowledged this with a brief nod. 'All the same, you are their spokesman. You have their respect.'
'What do you wish to discuss?' asked Five Legs.
Black Sting went on: 'Snake's Tongue's party has still not returned. It is now several sun-ups since they left. I can only assume that they've been captured or killed, or at any rate prevented from returning in some way. Any one of those possibilities means that they have probably encountered the red ants. Now, I've got soldiers posted out in the forest as lookouts, but all they can do is give us some warning of the red ants' approach, which may come at any moment. It's surely madness for us to be in such a state of disarray, to be squabbling over internal matters, at such a time as this. What is the point of winning concessions over points of the colony's organization if the colony is destroyed in the process?'
Five Legs considered the statement carefully. 'Perhaps,' he said slowly, 'the members of my caste consider those concessions to be even more important than the safety of the colony.'
Black Sting's eyes burned with angry incomprehension. 'More important?' he demanded. 'More important than the achievement of generations of ants? More important than the survival of Our Great Mother and her young Queens and all their brood? More important than the existence of their own entire community?'
'Perhaps they feel that they have no real place in that existence. Perhaps they feel that their community has no respect for their own existence.'
'But what of that existence?' Black Sting was totally bewildered. 'What of their own lives? Are they prepared to lose those to win a mere moral argument?'
Five Legs looked round at Still One, who stood just behind him. 'As Still One says,' he replied, 'freedom of choice is perhaps the one issue over which a creature will perhaps give up his life.' He stared over at the mound with its great, gaping rift, where a dozen ants had died the day before. 'I don't know,' he said. 'Which is preferable, death in the execution of the Council's ambitious designs, or death at the whim of the red ants? You must ask the worker-ants themselves.'
Black Sting looked towards the fragile figure behind Five Legs. Strangely, the two ants had never communicated before. 'You are the one they call the Story Teller?' he asked.
Still One nodded – the tiniest movement.
'Is it your stories that have begun these wild ideas?'
The usual pause. Then Still One answered, 'A story cannot decide the destination. It can only illuminate the way a little.'
Black Sting studied the smaller ant for a moment. Then he turned back to Five Legs. 'I have respected you, old one,' he said. 'I had thought you cared for the well-being of our colony.'
'Indeed I do,' answered Five Legs gruffly: there was a sudden impediment in his throat. 'But the well-being of a colony means the well-being of its individual members. Perhaps we feel that no one cares enough for that.' He cocked a feeler in Black Sting's direction. 'It's not much that we're asking, you know.'
Black Sting lifted his proud head. 'It is a great deal. It is the overturn of our whole traditional system of organization. It is the undermining of the chain of command by which we survive.'
Five Legs shook his head sadly. 'We don't wish to overturn, or to undermine anything. We only want our voice to be heard.' He looked towards Great Head as if to appeal to the one with whom he had most in common. But the latter could only shrug and look unhappily away.
Black Sting raised his antennae in an imperious gesture of finality. 'Well, let us see what another night out in the cold will do to your followers' resolution,' he said.
He was about to turn away when Dew-Lover, who up till then had been glowering from the background, lumbered forward saying, 'One moment, leader.' He stopped in front of Five Legs waving his feelers towards him suspiciously. 'I smell honeydew. Have you been taking it?'
'A little,' replied Five Legs. 'Still One gave me some to ease my stiffness; I had an uncomfortable night. But no more than my ration.' He added pointedly, 'You needn't worry, Dew-Lover. The supply is being collected and preserved as usual.'
The huge ant glared at him and then at Still One, a resentful anger burning in his eyes. 'It seems to me that you ants are all too free and easy with the colony's honey-dew,' he growled viciously. 'Is that what you mean by the well-being of the workers, eh? Unlimited access to the honey-dew supplies.'
Five Legs said nothing. Black Sting wheeled away. 'Come, Dew-Lover,' he said impatiently.
Dew-Lover gave a final, lingering look at the two worker-ants, which seemed to say that they had not heard the last of the matter, and turned to follow Black Sting and Great Head back towards the mound.
Five Legs watched them go, sighed, and said, 'Ah, it is a hard thing to try and change the traditions of time, is it not, Still One?'
The latter nodded. 'It is. But they will change whether one seeks it or not. That is what time is for.' And he turned and began to climb his birch tree once again, leaving Five Legs to report what had been happening to the other worker-ant leaders who were hurrying across the clearing towards them.
It was later that day, when the sun had risen to its highest point and the worker-ants exposed out in the open were keeping a nervous lookout aloft for the swooping shadows of feathered hunters, that the retribution came. And not from any high-flying creature, but from the most earthbound of their own kind: Dew-Lover himself.
Five Legs was limping about near the gorse clump, organizing the digging of shallow trenches to provide some protection against the cold during the night, when he was interrupted by that easily recognizable voice growling behind him.
'All right you cunning old schemer, let's see how clever you really are.'
Five Legs turned to see Dew-Lover glowering at him from a few paces away, where he had just emerged from the grass stems. With him was his habitual escort of two hulking soldiers.
'Come with us,' ordered the huge ant.
'Where to?' asked Five Legs.
'You'll find out,' replied the other and gestured with his feelers to the soldiers, who moved forward and aggressively prodded Five Legs after him as he moved off towards the mound.
The worker-ants left behind muttered and bobbed anxiously amongst themselves until Wind-Blow, who had witnessed the incident from some way off, came hurrying up to demand what had happened. Then he rushed off again amid a flurry of distraught imprecations to tell the others.
Meanwhile Five Legs was led up the lower slopes of the mound into one of the tunnel mouths and down through the darkness of the passages to an obscure chamber within. By the time he reached it he was panting with the effort of having to keep up the pace that the soldiers had imposed. As he was thrust inside the chamber he was immediately aware of Still One's scent in the blackness.
'You here too, Story Teller?' he asked. 'Are you all right?'
'I'm all right,' replied the other's voice quietly.
'Don't be so sure about that,' hissed Dew-Lover's voice from near by. Five Legs was aware of the soldier's heavy scent hanging oppressively around him as the other came close and thrust his head towards him in that intimidating way that he had.
'Right now, old one, you and I are going to have a little talk. This treasonable nonsense has gone on long enough. If it had been left to me, I'd have had you and the rest of the workers' leaders killed right out there in front of them all at the very first sign of rebellion. That would have put an end to it quickly enough. However, luckily for you, more cautious counsels prevailed.' He thrust his head still closer and his voice sank to a vicious rasp. 'But that doesn't stop me from dealing out a little punishment on my own account. Perhaps then you'll think twice about challenging the authority of those above you.' A savage kick knocked Five Legs'
two forefeet suddenly from under him and he fell heavily to the ground.
He lay there for a moment, the breath knocked out of him. Strangely, although he felt pain, he felt no real fear. If this is the way I am to go, he thought, then so be it. I am old now and tired. I have had my time; it doesn't matter now. But then he remembered Still One, and thought: it is not the same for him though. He still has youth and strength. He can still be of use to the colony.
He raised himself up and said, 'You can do what you wish with me – it doesn't matter – but why have you brought the Story Teller here? He has done nothing.'
'Oh, has he not indeed?' Dew-Lover growled. He swung about to where Still One was standing. 'It seems to me he has done a great deal. It seems to me that he has been generously bestowing his honey-dew – our honey-dew – on all and sundry who fancied it. It seems to me that, with his stories and his honey-dew, he has been one of the chief sustainers of this upstart revolt.' His heavy feelers hovered questingly about Still One. 'I wonder how much fresh honey-dew he has been helping himself to in the process – eh?'
Still One answered quietly. 'I do not take honey-dew.'
Dew-Lover hesitated. 'What? Why not?'
'I feel no need for it.'
The soldier retorted scornfully, 'Nonsense! Everyone takes honey-dew if they can get it.'
'Not everyone.'
'Don't lie to me, you cunning little maggot! You have the smell of the stuff about you whenever I meet you.'
'Naturally. I work with it.'
'And you make very free with it too. Well, we'll soon see how much you have inside you at this moment.' Dew-Lover turned to one of the two soldiers. 'Where are those crushed yew berries?'
Five Legs felt a pang of anxiety. Ants take the juice of yew berries as an emetic, but only in minute quantities as an overdose can prove fatal. 'Be careful!' he exclaimed. 'That is poisonous if you take too much.'
'Everything is poisonous if you take too much,' said Dew-Lover. 'Even honey-dew. Isn't that so, Story Teller?'
'It is so,' replied Still One.
'Then we'd better make sure you haven't taken too much of that. For your own sake.' Dew-Lover took some of the pulpy, bitter-smelling mess which the soldier had brought forward between his mandibles and, pinning Still One against the wall of the chamber with one heavy forefoot, rammed the substance hard into the other's mouth. Still One choked and spluttered, fighting to clear his throat, but the more he fought the deeper the huge soldier thrust the noxious stuff down his gullet. Gasping and retching, Still One ceased struggling and slid down the wall. Dew-Lover turned to the soldier. 'More,' he commanded.
Five Legs clambered to his feet and lumbered forward. 'No!' he exclaimed. 'You'll kill him!'
Ignoring him, Dew-Lover turned back to Still One with a fresh dose between his jaws. Again he thrust the stuff hard between the other's own mandibles. With all his feeble strength Five Legs hurled himself against the soldier's great body and his weight temporarily threw the other off balance, causing some of the pulp to drop. Dew-Lover turned on his assailant with a roar, grasped the old ant under the head with his mandibles, and slammed him viciously against the wall. Then he reared up in front of him and drove his thick, heavy sting deep into Five Legs' belly.
Five Legs felt the agony of the thrust even through his stunned, fading consciousness. He gave himself up, almost with relief, to death. He heard the new voice which rang across the scene as some distant intrusion from another world.
'Dew-Lover!'
Dew-Lover hesitated on the point of injecting his poison. Slowly, reluctantly, he withdrew his sting and turned towards Black Sting whose voice had stopped him. The latter stood in the chamber entrance, his eyes glinting in the darkness, his antennae tensed to pick up the details of the situation. Five Legs, lay, stunned and wounded, where Dew-Lover had left him. Still One was vomiting in a corner with terrible agonized heaves, as if he would retch out his very entrails.
For a long moment Black Sting did not move. The sound of heaving breath, of Still One's retching, and the scents of the various ants present, mingled with the odour of blood and yew berries, told their own tale. In those few moments Black Sting experienced a revelation that was to change him for evermore. He who was so used to violence, to pain, and to death – he who was trained in the uncompromising ways of discipline and of battle – when faced now with this spectacle of two ordinary worker-ants so assaulted in this wretched place, felt a sense of pity and of responsibility that all the horrifying examples of war in the open could never evoke. He stepped forward and with a burst of rage slashed across the side of Dew-Lover's head with his mandibles. Dew-Lover staggered back, the blood pouring from the wound.
'Get out!' Black Sting hissed. 'Get away from here and if you come near me again before it has been decided what to do with you, I shall kill you.'
The huge ant skulked past him and staggered off into the darkness. Black Sting turned to the other two soldiers, who were cowering against the walls. 'Fetch medicine and treatment for these two at once. And I warn you, if either of them dies your own lives will be forfeit.'
The soldiers scurried off to obey. Black Sting went to Five Legs, and touched him with his feelers. 'How are you, old one?' he asked. But Five Legs only mumbled incoherently in reply. Black Sting turned to Still One, whose retchings had subsided to a weak gasping. The soldier realized that he could do nothing here for the moment and with a grim face he turned and left the chamber.
Still One came as near to death as it was possible to come. Paradoxically, it was the very excessiveness of the poisonous dose Dew-Lover had administered which saved him. It had caused him to vomit so immediately and so violently that relatively little of the stuff had actually entered his system. All the same, it was a close thing. For two days and nights he lay, scarcely breathing, in the chamber to which they had brought him, while they administered antidotes and kept his body warm. Five Legs too lay nearby in the same chamber, where they attended to his bruises and to the wound in his abdomen. His condition was not so critical, for Dew-Lover had not injected any actual poison after this thrust, and the old ant's tough constitution aided a surprisingly quick recovery, but all the same he had to endure considerable pain for a while. His main concern, though, was for the wan figure that lay nearby, and he was forever fussing and chivvying the ants in attendance, who soon got heartily sick of his presence.
However, eventually Still One's breathing became firmer, and his heartbeat stronger, and soon he was able to take a little liquid sustenance without immediately rejecting it – and even, despite his protests, a little of his own honey-dew – which speeded his recovery greatly.
From time to time Black Sting, Great Head and other elders would slip in briefly to see what progress the invalids were making, and the senior worker-ants – Never-Rest, Wind-Blow and the others – were frequently in attendance. It was they who, at the instant of Five Legs' apprehension by Dew-Lover, had sent a hurried deputation to Black Sting, thus bringing about his timely intervention. They were now able to inform Five Legs that the workers had all been allowed back into the mound and that everyone was only awaiting his recovery to begin discussions about their conditions for a return to normal living and working.
For it seemed that the painful incident had had the effect that all their protests and demonstrations could not achieve. Black Sting's stern defence of the old autocratic traditions had crumbled at the revelation of his lieutenant's vicious action, and indeed the wave of revulsion that had spread through the whole community – amongst worker-ants and Council members alike – had brought it home to everyone how interdependent they all were for their safety and well-being: one caste with another, one rank with another, each individual with every other. It was the unanimous verdict of the Council, after consulting with the Queen of Queens, that Dew-Lover should be banished from the colony – sent forth from the mound to survive as best he could alone in the forest – and that the worker-ants should immediately have their request granted fo
r a representation within the Council's ranks.
To this end, as soon as Five Legs was well enough to participate, Black Sting called a meeting of the leaders of all sides to decide what form this membership should take. It was agreed that Five Legs, as the chosen leader of the worker-ants, should be admitted to all meetings of the Inner Council, and that he should bring a deputation of his own choosing to the larger gatherings of the General Council. It was furthermore agreed that as many soldiers should be involved with the reconstruction of the mound as was necessary to complete it in the fastest possible time, without meanwhile endangering the general security.
And so once more work began on the damaged hillock. And this time with an even greater urgency – for further evidence had come in of the red ants' far-ranging activities. . . .
17
It is extraordinary how news gets round the countryside. Via tiny whisperings in the grass, messages on the breeze, scents and sounds in the undergrowth, the tidings of particularly momentous happenings can be transmitted across enormous distances in an almost miraculous way. The variety of insect life in particular – as well as of the other larger species – is so great, their ways of communication so various, their means of travel so diverse and so wide-ranging, that information can be spread abroad via countless intermediaries in ways that the originators could never foresee.
Vague rumours and rumblings of the red ants' scourge of the land had been filtering through to the colony ever since the first dramatic report of the attack on the riverside mound. Now that the general springtime activity was in full flood everywhere, more specific accounts were coming in. Refugees from other ravaged settlements spread their distraught messages far and wide; news of sightings from the air of red ant parties on the march became more and more frequent; stories of dreadful encounters deep in the forest were spread and magnified to spinechilling proportions. There were even odd messages relating specifically to the progress of Snake's Tongue's little force. Their course through the forest had been witnessed, even though the terrain had seemed to them so devoid of life; reports of their stupendous battle with the tree-spider had filtered through; and it was even rumoured that the red ants themselves had been alerted by the fight and had sent scouts to observe the party's progress.