The Kaiila
The kaiila is the mount of the Wagon warrior, and several of these are kept with each Wagon, the actual number being determined by the wealth of the individual warrior. The kaiila is both swift and graceful, standing twenty to twenty-two hands high at the shoulder. It is both vicious and beautiful, and inhabits only the southern hemisphere of Gor. It does not suckle its young, who must hunt and kill the moment they are born. For this reason, a bound verr or slave is left in the vicinity of the newborn in the Wagon Camp. The kaiila must only be fed once every few days, and it is has extraordinary powers of endurance, being able to travel as much as six hundred pasangs in a day.
The Bosk
The bosk is much like a large yak or oxen, perhaps a relative of the musk ox of Earth's Ice Age. It is a huge beast with a humped back like a bison, with a thick shaggy pelt. Ill- tempered and dangerous, with two long horns.
The Sleen
Another of the important animals in the a wagon camp is the Prairie Sleen. This animal is the nocturnal guardian of the camp. The sleen is a vicious carnivore, caged during the day, and set free only at night to roam the perimeter of the bosk herd. They are also used as trackers for escaped slaves, and can follow a scent that is a month old. When they find their quarry they kill and eat it. A sleen cannot be approached by anyone but its own Master. Anyone else, it will kill. Each night, it is imperative that everyone be safe in the camp before the sleen are released. When a sleen's Master dies, the sleen itself must be slain, and fed to its own kind.
Animal Quotes
"The Wagon Peoples grow no food, nor do they have manu- facturing as we know it. They are herders, and it is said, killers. They eat nothing that has touched the dirt. They live on the meat and milk of the bosk. They are among the proudest peoples on Gor, regarding the dwellers of the cities of Gor as vermin in holes, cowards who must fly behind walls, wretches who fear to live beneath the broad sky, who dare not dispute them the open, windswept plains of their world."
"The bosk is said to be the Mother of the Wagon Peoples, and they reverence it as such. The man who kills one foolishly is strangled in thongs or suffocated in the hide of the animal he slew; if, for any reason, the man should kill a bosk cow with unborn young he is staked out, alive, in the path of the herd, and the march of the Wagon Peoples takes its way over him."
"The bosk, without which the Wagon People could not live, is an oxlike creature. Its is huge shambling animal with a thick, humped neck and long shaggy hair. It has a wide head and tiny red eyes, a temper to match that of a sleen and two long, wicked horns that reach out from its head and suddenly curve forward to terminate in fearful points. Some of these horns, on the larger animals, measured from tip to tip, exceed the length of two spears."
"Not only does the flesh of the bosk and the milk of the cows furnish the Wagon Peoples with food and drink, but its hides cover the domelike wagons in which they dwell; its tanned and sewn skins cover their bodies; the leather of its hump is used for their shields; its sinews form their thread; its bones and horns are split and tooled into implements of a hundred sorts, from awls, punches and spoons to drinking flagons and weapon tips; its hooves are used for glues; its oils are used to grease their bodies against the cold. Even the dung of the bosk finds its uses on the treeless prairies, being dried and used for fuel."
Nomads of Gor pp. 4-5
The mount of the Wagon Peoples, unknown in the northern hemisphere of Gor, is the terrifying but beautiful kaiila. It is a silken, carnivorous, lofty creature, graceful, long-necked, smooth-gaited. It is viviparous and undoubtedly mammalian. The young are born vicious and by instinct, as soon as they can struggle to their feet, they hunt. The kaiila is extremely agile and can easily outmaneuver the slower, more ponderous high tharlarion. It requires less food, of course, than the tarn. A kailla, which normally stands about twenty to twenty-two hands at the shoulder, can cover as much as six hundred pasangs in a single day's riding."
"The head of the kaiila bear two large eyes, one on each side, but these eyes are triply lidded, probably an adaptation to the environment which occasionally is wracked by severe storms of wind and dust; the adaptation, actually a transparent third lid, permits the animal to move as it wishes under conditions that force other prairie animals to back into the wind or, like the sleen, to burrow into the ground. The kaiila is most dangerous under these conditions, and, as if it knew this, often uses such times for its hunt."
Nomads of Gor, pg. 13-14
"The kaiila of these men were as tawny as the brown grass of the prairie, save for that of the man who faced me, whose mount was a silken, sable black..."
Nomads of Gor, page 14
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