Fauna

Horses

Horse

Every horseman rides his own horse, and so do you.

	Walk	Sprint
Horse	8 m/s	20 m/s

A horse leaps off the mark: past 5 m/s within 0.75 s and at 90% of its sprint within 3 s. It coasts to a stop, backs up at 2 m/s and turns wider the faster it goes. Every ten points of riding make a horse 2% faster and 3% handier. A tree’s trunk stops it as a wall does, but nothing slows it between the trees. A marsh or snowfield caps it at 0.7 of its sprint. It wades water up to 1.5 m deep and crosses ice 12 cm thick. Space in the saddle jumps a hedge, wall or fence: a wall at a trot, a hedge at a full gallop.

A horse has 200 hp, twice a man. Blows that land low on its rider (from a man on foot, an arrow or a javelin) wound it by half of what reached him. A horse brought down throws its rider and dies, and lies where it fell until the field is cleared. Out of a fight it mends.

Breath and rest

A horse has its own breath. Run out, it is blown: it only trots, at 55% of a gallop, and lathers. Spur a blown horse on and it may go lame (3% a second), and then it only walks. An army’s horses keep their own Rest. Spent, they hold back an army with riders. A stall at an inn gives them back a quarter an hour, and a coaching inn swaps spent horses for fresh ones at 40 silver each. See Inns.

Gear and food

A horse wears barding, which stops 15 to 45% of the blows that come up at its rider and slows it 5%, and can carry saddlebags holding 25 kg. Couched in the saddle above 10 m/s, a lance strikes with the horse’s speed behind it. Braced spears stop horses.

Horses graze, except in winter, when each eats 2 kg of fodder a day from the train.

Getting horses

Livery stables in towns sell spare horses at 1 gold 80 silver. A spare horse walks in the train and carries 100 kg like a mule. After a fight, the side that holds the field catches the loose horses, two minutes’ work for a man each.

Mules and oxen

Mule

Ox

Mules carry the train’s packs and oxen draw its wagons.

	Walk	Sprint	Carries	Price
Mule	6 m/s	8 m/s	100 kg	1 gold
Ox wagon	5 m/s	7 m/s	600 kg	4 gold 10 silver

An army goes at the pace of its slowest man or animal. Wagons need roads through forest. See Parties.

Farm animals

About one in six of a village’s farm folk is a herder where it has meadows. Each herder keeps one flock or herd:

Animals	Size	Where
Cattle	5 to 12	Every third herder
Goats	8 to 18	Every other herder in uplands, over 400 m or in hills and mountains
Sheep	16 to 36	The rest
Pigs	2 to 5 a sty	In gardens; out to the common wood in autumn
Hens	4 to 9 a hen house	In gardens
Geese	4 to 10	On the village green

A flock follows its herder out to pasture by day and is folded at night on the pasture nearest the village. While the herder is haymaking, harvesting or at a feast, and in winter, it stays on its fold. Hens and geese are shut in at night. Animals walk through gates and round hedges.

When an army comes, the village’s animals run in to their folds and the poultry is shut in.

Driving herds

Raiders drive a village’s animals off into their train. A village’s herds grow back over a year. A driven herd slows the army to 4 m/s, or 6 sprinting, and is slaughtered for food, smallest animals first, when the train runs short.

In autumn, villages with their herds whole send drovers to market. See Travellers.

Wild animals

Animal	Where
Deer	Herds of a stag with hinds
Boar	Herds in the woods
Wolves	Packs in the hills and taiga
Birds	Flocks
Gulls, seabirds, seals	Coasts

Each keeps to its own ground, away from towns and villages. Herds wander, rest, move lower in winter and have young in the warm half of the year. They walk in file when they move and graze when they stand. Deer and boar run from you.

At dusk the bats of some deep caves stream out of the mouth.

In the sky

Creature	Where and when
Jellyflies	Herds of great see-through bells, from a cottage’s size to a manor house’s, drifting 50 to 800 m up with their tendrils trailing. They gather over the world trees, the goddess’s bones and the still lakes, drift off on the wind and work their way home again. They swarm in the spring bloom (days 4 to 14). By day they are pale and pearly; by night they glow soft blue or pink.
Starlings	At dusk in autumn and winter they gather over the reedbeds and the fields round the villages, fold into one great wheeling shape at sunset and drop into the roost within the hour.
Rooks	Round the villages’ trees all year: out to the fields at sunrise, back loud at sunset.
Geese	Long Vs crossing the disc, north in early spring (days 3 to 13) and south in autumn (days 35 to 45).
Crows and ravens	Circling a battlefield for two days after the battle, more the more fell.
Space whales	Once a year a pod about 9 km long swims in from the stars, grazes the cloud tops for a day or two and lazily makes its way back out. By night pale lights wink along their flanks.

They are the look of the sky: nothing hunts them.