Given that one of the first things Lyra had shown him were weapons, and that the guards had spears, he knew that the ponies had the concept of ‘a tool which is meant to wound or kill.’ Not wanting to appear overly hostile, he drew a sketch of a pony sticking a spear into another pony—it was crude, but Twilight seemed to get the idea. It might have been his imagination, but she seemed a little queasy at the thought of actually stabbing a pony with a spear, which made him wonder how she’d been chosen as a leader. On the other hand, maybe it was better that the apparent local commander of the military forces was against bloodshed and death: it turned out that replacing the eyes with exes was a universal sign for dead—another handy bit of knowledge.