Shelf Antelope

Overview

Shelf antelope are the wild grazers of the Windscar: small, quick, fawn-coloured antelope that move across the shelves of the High Scars and the outer slopes of the Rimward Basins following the grass, as the kindreds do. They are the main prey of the wind cats and dun dogs, and a welcome hunt for any camp.

Appearance

A shelf antelope stands about as high as a goat but is slighter and much longer in the leg, with a short tail it flicks constantly. Its back and flanks are sandy fawn, its belly and rump white, with a dark band along each flank where the two meet and a dark stripe down each cheek. Both sexes carry horns, the bucks' longer, ringed, and curving back and up like a lyre. When alarmed a herd bounds away in high stiff-legged leaps, all four feet off the ground at once, flashing the white rump. They are mostly silent; a buck snorts and whistles at a threat.

Habitat and Range

They live in herds of a few dozen on the thin grass of the shelves and rims, moving with the season: up to the high shelves in the calm months, down towards the basin rims and the green fringe of the Long Pan after the storms. A good flood on the Long Pan draws them in hundreds. They can go long without drinking, taking water from dew and the plants they eat.

Behaviour and Temperament

They graze and browse at dawn and dusk and rest in the heat of the day. One or two always stand watch. They are wary but not foolish: they will graze within sight of a camp ring that is not hunting them and run from one that is. Bucks fight for ground in the breeding season, clashing horns with a dry clack that carries across a shelf.

Life Cycle

A doe bears one fawn at the end of the windy season, hides it in the grass for its first weeks, and returns only to feed it. Fawns join the herd by summer. A shelf antelope lives about ten years, if it lives long enough to grow.

Uses and Dangers

They are game for the kindreds: meat, a fine light hide for bags and footwear, and horn for spoons, toggles, and handles. A hunted herd is driven towards hidden archers or into ravines, and the kindreds' customs share the meat among the camp ring that hunted. Their only harm is grass: in a dry year a large herd on a kindred's grazing ground is competition, and herders drive them off.

Lore and Belief

The kindreds read the herds. Antelope moving early down the shelves mean an early windy season, and a herd that will not leave a grazing ground means the grass beyond it is worse. A kindred that moves on before the grass is spent is said to go like the antelope, which is praise; one that stays too long is said to stand like a stronghold.

Young hunters of the kindreds prove themselves by running down a buck on foot across the shelves, and the kindreds hold up the runner who chased one for two days and brought it home on her shoulders.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals