Avram Davidson - The Scarlet Fig - Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

For just a portion of a moment the knightly eyes had left their attention to the Vergil Mage’s, and Ser Minnimus Rufus remarked, “Almost I’m sorry that this house is closed and that we can’t come in. I am always fascinated by the interiors of things — vehicles, buildings, women —”

“But attend, Ser Minnimus, attend —”

Ser Minnimus looked away no more. He attended.

The great flight of the fowl in the consulate of Calpurnius Otto had been certainly a matter of wide consideration and had become even a set subject for the boys at the rhetors’ schools. Vergil went briefly over the matter with the thick small knight. — There had been strong great gales into the west of Europe, blowing from the Sea of Atlantis — Three days they had been blowing, agreed Ser Minimus: his broad brow concave, his nose somedel retrousse, somewhat auburn his hair, and his beard cut short. A faded red the plaster now so largely broken off the front of the closeted house on the steps of which Vergil now sat. — and upon the early morning of the fourth day there was seen, first seen, over the lands of the Friesians and the Beiges, flying straight in from the wide vast sea, a skyful of birds such as none had seen before. High, too high up for any arrow, bolt or quarrel or slung of shot to reach, but every so often some single fowl of that throng had fall dead upon the earth: a fowl, a bird, of what origin such a welkin of them? Gone over the lands of the Friesians and the Beiges, next the immensity of bird had descended into rest upon the fields of the Burgundians: and ate them full of all the planted grain until the land was bare; then gate they up and resumed their sundimming flights. Passing over the broad lands of the Loringians and the Swabians, their dung descended in hot torrents, burying and burning the barley, wheat, and rye; so that had it not been for the crops already gat into the granaries and the rootcrops still under the surface of the earth, stark famine had gripped them all in those lands.

And the very stanes of the walled cities and the monuments upon the temple walls had been scored deep by the acid scourings of the vast-flying bird-hordes, and so might the marks thereof be seen till now. So Ser Minnimus agreed and nodded, nodded, eyes into Vergil’s eyes. — Flying yet across the territories of the Bayers, the Avars, and the Gepides, gradually the flocks flew lower and slower, and word of them passed ahead by couriers’ horses as they rested them two day and half a day in the Forests of Pannonia, thet the weight of them brack all the branches off of all the trees: not alone that they ate them up every single acorn and filbert and walnut and every other nut of food upon which many depended not for mere refreshment or a muncheon but for prost food , making their bread, for ensample, of acorn and of chestnut meal, nutmeal for their polenta and gruel as had it been of barley: the fell fowl consumed the lot. So, so as they lifted off and swarmed away like locusts, these birds, the forests of Pannonia they began to sicken and to die: might none trenching nor any accustomed and benevolent dunging help a stivers worth: the forests failed entire and complete. And now all the lands of Pannonia are but broad fields, horned cattle and the fleecy ewe graze where once in time the green-clad hunter went to slay the antlered roebuck and the broadchest stag, the white-tusked boar and e’en the westward outreaches of the wooley byzont of Byzontinople, and the southmost clamors of the gigant urus with the high-held, wide-reaching horns.

Thence the flocks of intrusive fowls borne on the diminishing winds and gales though from ane horizont to tother horizont the birds still flew, ower the shelly seacoasts of Bohemia, ower the Ister and the Dunave, the lands of the Moraves and the Moldaves: hourly lower and hourly slower, what time they settled yet again in their tremendous settlings: atween the Wends and the Wallachs they sate them, sometimes twittering upon the breaking branches and betimes squatting on the very grounds like so many small small swine: then gan they their rut to make, masses covering masses, their sensual screeching closing out whatever sounds, all the day they shuddered, he upon she; and whilst they delved, there crept up and down upon them on silent feet the Bulgars in their thousands and the Petchenegs by tribes, all with broad nets such as not alone the fowlers use but even the nets with which the fishers draw through rivers and through lakes: these they cast over the heedless birds, in their ecstasies refusing flight. There came upon them eekit the Polones with brooms and clubs, and nameless hordes and yortes: Soon the noise of the great beatings and clubbings drowned out even the shrill delights of cock and hen; vast as their number was, they rose not up to flee while the hosts of hungry men rained blows upon them, cotched all in snares which they did not cotch in nets nor simply brute to death with winnowing-fans and grain-flails and cudgels and whatsoever sticks they might in haste seize up or break off. Rods, bastoons, and bacculas.

For three more days this slaughter so continued, meanwhile a blizzard of plucked feathers blew along the whole zone of clime as leaves do blow in the season of falling leaves, what time the canny peasant gathers the fallen leaves as unsown crops and stores tham in barton and in byre to spread for the cattle to dung upon, and then he spreads them on his fields and round the roots of hungry trees — so all about did the feathers serve for leaves. Salt from every store of salt and every lick thereof was brought and every barrel keg firkin hoghead and vessel whatsoever was filled with corns of salt to conserve the flesh of the odd-fowl; and fires the smoke of which went up to take the place in the briefly empty skies where but a few days afore flew the vasty massy masses of the birds, for the smoking of them: and yet and yea, they, the folk of men, ate swiftly of them that could not in any way be conserved, grilling their tender flesh by the fires and crisping them upon the coals, licks of flames spurting higher as the fat —

“Even so,” said Ser Minnimus Rufus. “Even so have I seen in the shops of such as serve rare things for sales, such as the tiny, saddled sea-horses, the serrate morses’ teeth and the spirally tushes of the nare-whales, have I seen what they swore upon Nemesis and Belial and Bogbella and sundry sorts of ghouls and ghad-she-whats, that they were dried and desiccated corses of said marvel-birds as rode across Europe from ane part to other as like to passengers upon ships they birds rode upon the enorment winds — and yet, Ser Vergil: did they look unto me as mere doves or pigeon-birds, whereas one should think such marvels might hap to have the forms of pococks or phaynixes —”

“That a marvel, rather in itself, that they did not,” said the sage, Vergil, his grey-green eyes a-looking into the brown-with-just-a-hint-of-ruddy-color, those of the dwarly knight.

Who asked, “Well, and then and thence, whence cam they, my Master and my Mage? if not from some large land —”

Clemens had begun again, after some short while silent, to huff and puff, like unto the sibylant soft sounds as make move the lid of the vapor-bath, that Bath of Mary [16] That “Mary is the Mate of Melcarth,” divers muckle many say; but so the Matter sayeth nought, neither yea nor nay: the Matter sayeth not. ; but he for a marvel (yet another marvel!) said nothing — said nom word. Left it to his friend the Magus Mago to espeak it all. Who, “Consider, Ser Knight, my Minnimus Rufus: what such a great land it would take to breed and nourish such an infinity of living birds as nigh estroyed our land of Europe whilst merely they passed over! Consider, then, what immensities of plains! of forests! of fruitful fields! in order to maintain such an amplitude of birdery! Vast continents, it may be said —”