Utinam populus Romanus unam cervicem haberet!One morning the hunters who supplied the invaders found a giant owl in one of the nets they had laid overnight. Crying out that it was a tsulekh, they would have slain and burnt it on the spot; but they drew back, shivering in disbelief and superstitious horror when it opened its heavy beak and spoke unto them in archaic words of their own tongue, begging for its life. Hereupon the hunters swung their bows off their backs, meaning to strike it down at distance and leave it in their abandoned net. But their captain ordered them to desist, and had the creature tied and dispatched to the camp to be interviewed by his general.Suetonii Vita Caligulæ.
The general read the scribbled note that came with the bird, whose beak was tied with a strip of cloth, then ordered it chained to a herm in his tent and the tent cleared. Now he cut the beak free and asked, feeling most foolish despite his confidence in the words of the hunter-captain, “I hear that thou dost speak, Sir Owl.”
The owl worked its beak in silence for a moment more, then hooted and replied in hollow but clearly articulated tones, “Aye, and I do at that.”
“And how is it that thou knowest our tongue?”
The owl bowed its head and rocked on its perch, then said, “I once dwelt in your land, with many others of my kind, before your folk drove us forth, repudiating the worship ye had once paid us. We owl-folk learn tongues easily and forget them not, though they lie in disuse in our brains for centuries.”
“Then thou art indeed a tsulekh, as the vulgar term it?”
The owl had snapped its beak at the word, and now preened the feathers of its breast for a half-minute, before once again fixing its great eyes on its interlocutor.
“Tsulekh I am not,” it said. “I eat no carrion and haunt no graveyards, and I am mortal, though my life extends far beyond that of your kind.”
“Whether thou liv’st another day remains to be seen, Sir Owl,” returned the general.
“I will render such service to you as I am able, in exchange for my life.”
“Then thou wilt tell me more of the land we invade, and guide our steps to its final conquest.”
“That I will do and gladly,” said the owl, “for its folk are no friends of ours and shoot us down now whenever they see us. If ye would conquer them, then know this: that a half-day’s flight from here — two days’ march, I should judge, in your reckoning — lies their capital, wherein rests half their strength and all their pride. Overthrow it and ye are three-quarters to conquest. But they are a hardy folk, bred to war and brutality, and ye will pay dear in the siege, unless ye have the key of the city gates. I speak metaphorically, for the true key would avail you little, when the gates would open to release a hornet-swarm of warriors upon you.
“For which reason ye must first divert to a certain shrine of theirs, wherein ye will find, with my words to guide you, a certain sword of rare and ancient manufacture. And with the sword ye will have the city.”
“With but a single sword?”
“Aye. With but a single sword. Watch.”
And the owl leaned sideways, grasping a fold of arras in its beak and dragging it close, whereon it struck with its foot, driving its talons through the heavy cloth.
“Ye see this, my lord, the talons of my foot driven through the cloth? Yet ye do not see my foot. I liken this to the folk of the city ye must overthrow. They are many talons on a single foot, connected on another plane that ye men do not see. Without the sword of which I speak, ye must strike off the talons one by one and pay heavily for each. With the sword, ye can strike off the foot and see all talons fall as one.”
“Aye?”
The owl shook the fold of arras free from its foot and hooted softly.
“Aye, my lord. Or liken it to a forest of many trees that in reality spring from a single great root. Ye might cut down the trees one by one, with great waste of labor and time, or seek out the root and kill them all at a stroke.”
“Then tell me more of this shrine, Sir Owl, and the sword hidden therein.”
A week later, the general led a small detachment of his army into the shadow of the city’s walls under a flag of parley constructed at the owl’s direction. The owl itself, which had revealed its name to be Uumbroth-Mummol, was carried with him, chained to a standard-pole, and two guards held between them a prisoner whom the owl had questioned, discovering that he was native-born of the city and connected, through that hidden plane, with all its folk. The general bade his trumpeter blast a challenge, and the owl, speaking at his direction, addressed its folk in their own tongue, calling on them to surrender in its harsh avine accents.
Laughter rose on the city walls before the owl had finished speaking, and refuse began to shower down.
“What do they say, Sir Owl?” the general asked, wiping a smear of rotten fruit from his face as he retired in as dignified as fashion as he might, concomitant with the need both for speed and for the dodging of further refuse.
“They mock you, my lord, and promise that they will be feasting on your slow-extracted liver before the moon wax to its third quarter.”
The general nodded and, judging correctly that they were now out of range, ordered his men to turn again and stand. The trumpeter sounded again, and a bundle carried by the general’s aide-de-camp was ceremonially unwrapped under the gaze of the city walls.
“Flourish it,” ordered the general of that which was uncovered; and mockery was choked in the throats of the watching citizens, for they saw the glitter of the sword as it was flourished, seeming to weigh far greater than appearance suggested, and they guessed its origin from the triumphant hoots and wingflaps of the owl. The general nodded, finally accepting the truth of what the owl had told him, and ordered the prisoner forced to his knees in readiness for beheading, while an aide-de-camp wiped further refuse from his besplattered armor.
“Now, my lord?” asked the guard holding the sword when the general was satisfied that his armor gleamed again as it should. The general nodded and with a double flash the sword rose and fell, sending the prisoner’s head thudding on the earth and his body slumping flat. Blood gushed from the stump of his neck in a stream that continued to flow without apparent lessening. The owl hooted with satisfaction on its pole, saying, “Now ye see the truth of it, my lord. From this single neck the blood of all those in the city is now flowing. Look, see how they already weaken and stagger!”
It was true: the general and his warriors could see that the citizens lining the city walls were beginning to sway, clutching at their throats with cries of horror and grief. The general grunted with satisfaction and kicked a sod of earth into the pool of blood, wherein the prisoner’s shoulders were disappearing, so swiftly did it widen and deepen. He motioned an order with his hand and his party drew back to higher ground.
“I thank thee, Sir Owl,” he said, watching the play of blood-ripples in the pool. “For the ease of this conquest.”
“As I thank thee, my lord,” returned the owl, “for the vengeance thou hast granted me over mine enemies.”
The insolence of its thou’ery was underlined by the mockery of its tone, and the general swung his head up to face it, seeing now a flare of hideous triumph in its great eyes. He shook his head, for his brain had swum a moment with weakness, and rapped out an order.
“Thou, swordsman! Slay me this impudent fowl! I grow weary of its moonish gaze.”
But the owl, with a hoot of derision, flicked the chain from its foot with its beak and sprang from the pole to the earth. Evidently it had worked the thing loose in the night and waited till this moment to avail itself of freedom. The swordsman lunged for it, but the effort of lifting the sword suddenly seemed too much for him and he fell to its knees with a grunt of incredulity. The general, whose head was swimming with a renewed dizziness, tried to draw his own sword and move towards the owl, which had hopped forward and was drinking from the great and ever-growing pool of blood. As the general staggered towards him, it turned its head and snapped its dripping beak, hooting again with triumph.
“Thou fool,” it said, “to think that I spake the full truth unto thee. What I said of the city is true of all mankind, and ye are close kin of this land’s folk, though ye knew it not. Your blood drains scarcely less quick than theirs, and ere the shadows have lengthened a further feather’s-breadth thou and thine army will be dead. We owl-folk shall reign again where once we reigned, thanks to a blow we could never have struck for ourselves. Again, I thank thee, my general. Thy name and lineage shall be preserved in our chronicles.”
It turned to bend its beak to the blood-pool and drink, but if it spake again unto the general, taunting him further in his death-giddiness, he never heard its words through the hum of approaching oblivion that sounded now in his ears, swelling to match the darkness that fell upon his sight and the numbness that invaded his limbs.