Herd Animals

Overview

Herd animals here are the beasts that live by moving: driven from grazing to grazing, counted in heads rather than housed in byres. The largest herds belong to the Orc kindreds of the Windscar Pacts, for whom a herd is food, shelter, trade, and the currency in which wrongs are answered; their beasts, the stair kine, have a page of their own. Dwarven farmsteads of the Ironspine drive smaller herds to summer pasture, and Ogre camps on the frontier pastures keep beasts of their own. The cattle and sheep of the Cradle web farmlands have pages of their own (Cattle, Sheep), as do the beasts that carry loads (Pack Animals).

Appearance

The Shelf Herds of the Windscar

The kindreds' herds are stair kine: shaggy, double-coated beasts between a large goat and a small cow in size, the colours of the ridges, that climb the cliff stairs sideways.

The Hold Herds of the Ironspine

The herds of the Dwarven terrace farms are small, black or dark red, short in the leg and broad in the chest, with thick hides and short, blunt horns. They are heavy for their size and slow, built to climb terrace steps to the high pasture and to stand out mountain weather. They low deeply and seldom.

The Beasts of the Threshold Camps

Ogre camps on rough uplands and frontier pastures keep whatever hardy beasts the ground will carry, most often rangy, long-legged stock of no settled breed, bought or traded from the peoples they work among.

Habitat and Range

The stair kine graze the shelves of the High Scars and the rims and floors of the Rimward Basins, and are driven down to the Soundchain stations and the Leeward Folds (see Stair Kine).

On the terraces of the Ironspine the hold herds go up to summer pasture and come back down before the passes close. Ogre threshold camps keep their beasts wherever the camp is working that season.

Behaviour and Temperament

Driven herds of every kind follow their oldest beast rather than the drover, and graze ground bare if they are left on it. The hold herds are slow and patient on the terrace steps and bunch in the lee of the walls when the weather turns; threshold-camp beasts are as mixed in temper as in breed.

Life Cycle

Hold herds breed in spring and are culled in autumn when they come down from pasture. A beast that survives its first winters may give milk and young for ten years.

Uses and Dangers

The Windscar herds are the kindreds' living store and the price their wrongs are paid in (see Stair Kine). The cost of every driven herd is water and grass, and an overgrazed pasture or a soured well can ruin a camp or a farmstead.

Dwarven herds give milk, meat, and hides, and everything a farmstead such as Barleystep raises goes up to its hold. Ogre bands carry other people's wounded animals as part of their burden work, and a beast too heavy to walk off a shelf may come down on an Ogre's back.

Lore and Belief

The kindreds' tale of the Still Well, in which the herds sickened at a soured well until the Storm-Caller drove the camp on, belongs to the stair kine (see Stair Kine). Dwarven farmsteads say a hold herd that will not go up to the high pasture in spring knows of a late snow.

Where It Appears

• The Ironspine
• Soured-Well Sickness
• Stair Kine