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Sleen on Gor
A strange noise escaped me, an incredible laugh. It was a thing I could see, could feel, could fight! With an eagerness and a lust that matched that of the beast itself, I rushed forward in the darkness and when I judged its leap I lunged forward with the broad-headed spear of Gor. My arm felt wet and trapped, and was raked with fangs and I was spun as the animal squealed with rage and pain and rolled on the road. I withdrew my arm from the weak, aimlessly snapping jaws. Another flash of lightning and I saw the sleen on its belly chewing on the shaft of the spear, its wide nocturnal eyes unfocused and glazed. My arm was bloody, but the blood was mostly that of the sleen. My arm had almost rammed itself down the throat of the animal following the spear I had flung into its mouth. I moved my arm and fingers. I was unhurt. In the next flash of lightning I saw the sleen was dead. Outlaw It is at night that the sleen hunts, that six-legged, long- bodied mammalian carnivore, almost as much a snake as an animal. I had never seen one, but had seen the tracks of one seven years before. Outlaw I climbed downward. The sleen is a burrowing animal. It seldom climbs. The panther can climb, but it is accustomed to take its hunting scents from the ground. Hunters I caught a strange, unpleasant scent, much like a common weasel or ferret, only stronger. In that instant every sense was alert. I froze, an almost animal response. I was silent, seeking the shelter of stillness and immobility. My head turned imperceptibly as I scanned the rocks and bushes about the road. I thought I heard a slight sniffling, a grunt, a small doglike whine. Then nothing. It too had frozen, probably sensing my presence. Most likely it was a sleen; hopefully a young one. I guessed it had not been hunting me or I would not have been likely to have smelled it. Perhaps I stood thus for six or seven minutes. Then I saw it, on its six short legs, undulate across the road, like a furred lizard, its pointed, whiskered snout swaying from side to side testing the wind. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was indeed a young sleen, not more than eight feet long, and it lacked the patience of an older animal. Its attack, if it should detect my presence, would be noisy, a whistling rush, a clumsy squealing charge. It glided away into the darkness, perhaps not fully convinced that it was not alone, a young animal ready to neglect and overlook those slight traces that can spell the difference between death and survival in Gor's brutal and predatory world. Outlaw The head of the kaiila bears two large eyes, one on each side, but these eyes are triply lidded, probably an adaptation to the environment which occasionally is wracked by severe storms of wind and dust; the adaptation, actually a transpar- ent third lid, permits the animal to move as it wishes under conditions that force other prairie animals to back into the wind or, like the sleen, to burrow into the ground. Nomads We had been treated to exhibitions of juggling, fire swal- lowing, and acrobats. There had been a magician, who par- ticularly pleased Kamchak, and a man who, whip in hand, guided a dancing sleen through its paces. Nomads Kamchak, once a day, at night, the hour in which sleen are fed, would throw the girls bits of bosk meat and fill a pan of water kept in the cage. Nomads On Kamchak's right there walked a master of sleen, who held two of the vicious, sinuous beasts in check by chain leashes. Nomads He dismounted and picked up a lounging garment from He vast sleeping platform in the room, holding it to the noses of the two sleen. "Hunt," said Kamchak. The two sleen seemed to drink in the scent of the robe and then they began to tremble, and the claws on their wide, soft feet emerged and retracted, and their heads lifted and began to sway from side to side. As one animal they turned and pulled their keeper by the chain leashes to what appeared to be a solid wall, where they rose on their back two legs and set their other four legs against it, snarling, whimpering. "Break through the wall," said Kamchak. He would not bother to search for the button or lever that might open the panel. In a few moments the wall had been shattered, revealing the dark passage beyond. Nomads The two sleen were snarling and pulling at their collar. The tawny hair hanging from their jaws was flecked with the foam of their agitation. Their eyes blazed. The claws when they emerged and retracted and emerged again tore at the rug. Nomads I was relieved to see that Kamchak signaled his bowmen not to fire. He then waved them, and the others, with the exception of Harold and myself, and the Sleen keeper and his animals, back several yards. Nomads Slowly Kamchak, and Harold and I, and the sleen keeper, dragging the two sleen, walked backwards. The animals raged against the chain leashes, maddened as they were drawn farther from Saphrar, their prey. Nomads Cernus of Ar wore a coarse black robe, woven probably from the wool of the bounding, two-legged Hurt, a domesticated marsupial raised in large numbers in the environs of several of Gor's northern cities. The Hurt, raised on large, fenced ranches, herded by domesticated sleen and sheared by chained slaves, replaces its wool four times a year. The House of Cernus, I had heard, had interests in several of the Hurt Ranches near the city. Assassin The nearest solid land was about one hundred pasangs to the north, but it was open land, and, there, on the edges of the delta, there were log outposts of Port Kar, where slave hunters and trained sleen, together, patrolled the marshes' edges. The vicious, six-legged sleen, large-eyed, sinuous, mammalian but resermbling a furred, serpentine lizard, was a reliable, indefatigable hunter. He could follow a scent days old with ease, and then, perhaps hundreds of pasangs, and days, later, be unleashed for the sport of the hunters, to tear his victim to pieces. I expected there was not likely to be escape for slaves to the north. That left the delta, with its interminable marshes, and the thirst, and the tharlarion. Hunting sleen are trained to scent out and destroy escaped slaves. Their senses are unusually keen. Tuchuks, in the south, as I recalled, had also used sleen to hunt slaves, and, of course, to protect their herds. Raiders "Burn the camisk and binding fiber," said Verna. I watched the garment and fiber thrown on the flames. It would not be used to give my scent to domesticated sleen, trained to hunt slaves. Captive "It is close," said the man. He looked at me. "Sometimes the sleen will follow a quarry for pasangs, before making its strike, lurking, approaching, withdrawing, then at last, when satisfied, attacking from the darkness." Captive Suddenly there was a horrifying squeal and a splintering of wood. I screamed. The head of a sleen, eyes blazing, its long needlelike teeth snapping, thrust through the small, broken window, the shutters (pg. 155) splintered to the side. Snarling, it began to wiggle its shoulders, like a cat, through the opening. ... The large, wide, triangular head of the sleen, its nocturnal eyes blinking against the sudden light of the fire, thrust further into the room, followed by its shoulders, then its right, clawed paw. Captive The sleen has six legs. It is long, sinuous; it resembles a lizard, save that it is furred and mammalian. In its attack frenzy it is one of the most dangerous animals on Gor. Captive Once I nearly stumbled on a sleen, bending over a slain Tabuk, a slender, graceful, single-horned antelopelike creature of the thickets and forests. The sleen lifted its long, triangular jaws and hissed. I saw the moonlight on the three rows of white, needlelike teeth. I screamed and turned and fled away. The sleen returned to its kill. Captive Domestic sleen Let her stay in the marshes until she had had her pretty fill, and then let her crawl whimpering back to the portals of the house of Bosk, whining and scratching like a tiny domestic sleen for admittance, to be taken back!Sea Sleen And behind them, in a rich swirling cloak of the fur of the white, spotted sea sleen, sword in hand, looking wildly about, was another man, one I did not know.Prairie Sleen ; farther to one side I saw a pair of prairie sleen, smaller than the forest sleen but quite as unpredictable and vicious, each about seven feet in length, furred, six-legged, mammalian, moving in their undulating gait with their viper's heads mov- ing from side to side, continually testing the wind; gorean_librarian@yahoo.com 
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