Dun Dogs

Overview

Dun dogs are the wild dogs of the Windscar. They hunt in packs of about a dozen across the shelves of the High Scars and the rims of the Rimward Basins, and they follow the kindreds' herds and escorted parties at a distance for days, waiting for a beast or a person to fall behind. When an escort says a pack is on the line, the herd watch is doubled and nobody walks alone.

Appearance

A dun dog is the height of a herding dog but leaner and longer in the leg, with a deep chest, a narrow waist, and big round ears that turn like cups towards every sound. Its short coat is blotched in patches of dun, tawny, smoke-grey, and dirty white, so that no two dogs are marked alike and a pack lying in scrub disappears into it. The tail is bushy and white-tipped and is carried high when the pack runs. They trot for hours with their heads low, run down prey in a long loping chase, and call to one another with soft hoots and twittering yips that carry a long way across the shelves. Their dens stink of carrion.

Habitat and Range

Dun dogs range over great stretches of open shelf, thin grass, and dry ravine, following the wild grazers and the driven herds alike. A pack's country is wider than any kindred's grazing round, and the same pack may be met at the Whetgap in spring and on the basin rims in the dry months. They avoid the strongholds and the busiest camp rings, and do not go far into the deep desert of the Glassbelt, where water fails them.

Behaviour and Temperament

A pack hunts together under one breeding pair, mostly at dawn and dusk. It runs down antelope and other prey by endurance rather than speed, coursing it in turns until it tires, and a herd beast that strays or lags is easier still. The dogs are cautious with people and seldom attack a grown, upright adult, but a child, an injured walker, or a straggler on a long shelf is another matter. They test a camp at night, circling and calling, and learn quickly which herd watch is lax.

The pack is close and affectionate within itself. Dun dogs feed their young and their injured by bringing meat back in their bellies, and an old or lamed dog is kept fed by the others.

Life Cycle

Only the leading pair breeds, and the female bears a large litter, often ten pups or more, in a den in a ravine bank or an old burrow, in the calm months after the windy season. The whole pack feeds and guards them. Young dogs leave in small groups of brothers or sisters to find a new pack. They live six to ten years.

Uses and Dangers

Dun dogs take kids, lambs, calves, and weak herd beasts, and in a bad year a pack can cost a camp ring more stock than raiders do. The kindreds answer with herd watch, fire, and noise, by keeping their beasts bunched at night, and with the hunt: a pack that has begun taking stock is followed to its den. Escorts count the dogs as one of the reasons a straggler is a party's responsibility, and a captain who leaves a lame walker behind on a line where dogs are running owes the walker's kin a blood-price if the dogs take them.

Lore and Belief

The kindreds say that dun dogs follow the dying and can smell a failing beast or a sick traveller before anyone in the camp knows. A pack that will not leave a party's line is taken as a sign that someone in it will not reach the next shelter. Their spotted coats are said to be the shadows of the rocks they lie among, and a hunter who wears dun-dog hide is held to walk unseen, which hunters do not try on the shelves twice.

Kindred herders pay well for a pack-leader's pelt, and the tale of the girl who held a fallen herd beast's carcass against a dun-dog pack through a night on the shelves is one the escorts tell new hands.

Where It Appears

• The High Scars
• The Rimward Basins
• Writers' Guide: The Windscar