Wild Kine

Overview

The wild kine are the great wild cattle of the Witnessfields. They graze the old terraces, long gone to grass and heath, beyond the Grey Line where the herders of Flockturn turn their flocks back. No herder follows them and no lord hunts them. Flockturn leaves them alone for the same reason it leaves the land alone.

Appearance

A wild bull is far bigger than any farm ox: taller at the shoulder than a Human, deep-chested and long-legged, with great forward-curving horns pale at the base and black at the tips, as wide across as a Human's outstretched arms. Bulls are dark brown to nearly black with a pale stripe down the spine and a pale muzzle; cows are smaller, lighter-horned, and dun or reddish. Calves are a bright chestnut.

They move slowly in a loose herd, grazing, and turn together to face anything that comes near. A bull bellows deep and long in the autumn, and paws the ground and lowers his horns before he charges.

Habitat and Range

Wild kine live on the grassed terraces and heath of the Witnessfields, among the marker roads and the roofless witness halls, and on the rough upland margins of the Confluence Basins just outside the Grey Line. How far into the Witnessfields they range nobody outside knows. They are few, a few herds seen from the edge.

Behaviour and Temperament

Herds of cows and young keep together under an old cow; bulls go alone or in small groups and join the herds in autumn. They graze grass, heath, and the young shoots of thorn, and drink at the culverts and the pools that collect on the old terraces. They are wary of people and avoid them, but a bull with a herd will run down anyone who comes near on foot, and a cow defends her calf.

Life Cycle

Calves are born in late spring, one to a cow. Wild kine live perhaps twenty years.

Uses and Dangers

They give nothing to anyone, because nobody hunts them. Their danger is to the scholars, salvagers, and treasure-seekers who cross the Grey Line on foot and meet a bull among the terraces, and now and then to a Flockturn herder whose flock has strayed too near. A wild bull has been known to come out past the markers and fight a herder's bull.

Lore and Belief

Flockturn herders call them "the registers' cattle". Land inside the markers is already spoken for, they say, and so are the beasts on it, and a herder who took one would be taking from the dead who sealed it. They will not hunt them, and look sideways at outsiders who try. Some basin Humans say the wild kine are the descendants of the archive world's own herds, gone wild when the cities shut, which nobody can prove. Scholars camping at Stillgate's gate keep a fire burning all night when the herds are near.

Treasure-seekers who go past the markers for the archive world's buried strongrooms tell of being run down by a bull among the terraces, and of companions gored and left where they fell, and the tales have not stopped any of them going.

Where It Appears

• The Witnessfields
• Writers' Guide: Sealed and Silent Places