The Caste of Sleen Trainers

Brown and Black
He no longer now wore the brown and black common to professional sleen trainers.
Beasts

Most common - Prairie Sleen and Forest Sleen
There are many varieties of sleen, and most varieties can be, to one extent or another, domesticated. The two most common sorts of trained sleen are the smaller, tawny prairie sleen, and the large, brown or black forest sleen, sometimes attaining a length of twenty feet. In the north, I am told the snow sleen has been domesticated. The sleen is a dangerous and fairly common animal on Gor, which has adapted itself to a variety of environments.
Slave Girl

Prairie Sleen
7 feet in length
...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;
Nomads

Forest Sleen
20 feet long
1,100 pounds in weight
The animal was some twenty feet in length, some eleven hundred pounds in weight, a forest sleen, domesticated. It was double fanged and six-legged. It crouched down and inched forward. Its belly fur must have touched the tiles.
Beasts

Most domestic sleen are bred. It is difficult to take and tame a wild sleen. Sometimes young sleen, following the killing of the mother, are dug out of a burrow and raised. If they can be taken within the first two months of their life, which seems to be a critical period, before they have tasted blood and meat in the wild, and made their own kills, there is apparently a reasonably good chance that they can be domesticated; otherwise, generally not.
Slave Girl

Although grown, wild sleen have been caught and domesticated, this is rare. Even a sleen which has been taken young may revert. These reversions can be extremely dangerous. They usually take place, as would be expected, in the spring, during the mating season. Male sleen, in particular, can be extremely restless and vicious during this period.
Slave Girl

Most common - herding, tracking, guarding and patrolling
Sleen are used for a multitude of purposes on Gor, but most commonly they are used for herding, tracking, guarding and patrolling.
Slave Girl

Herding
The verr and the bosk are the most common animals herded;
Slave Girl

If I were found on the plains near the camps or the bosk herds I knew I would be scented out and slain by the do- mesticated, nocturnal herd sleen, used as shepherds and sentinels by the Wagon Peoples, released from their cages with the falling of darkness.
These animals, trained prairie sleen, move rapidly and silently, attacking upon no other provocation than trespass on what they have decided is their territory. They respond only to the voice of their master, and when he is killed or dies, his animals are slain and eaten.
There would be no question of night spying on the Wagon Peoples.
Nomads

They caught her north of the bosk herd. We could see her white body, and the dark, sinuous, furred shapes converging upon it. Then she was surrounded, and she stopped. Then the spleen opened a passage for her, indicating to her which di-rection she was to go. Where else she turned she was met with the fangs and hisses of the accompanying animals. When she tried to move in any direction other than that of the opened passage they snapped at her, viciously. A single snap could tear off a hand or foot. Then two of the sleen fell in behind her and, snarling and snapping at her heels, drove her before them. We saw her fleeing before them, trying to es-cape the swift, terrible jaws. We feared, more than once, that they would kill her. A female who cannot be herded is de-stroyed by the herding sleen.
Marauders

The sleen now resumed their rounds, patrolling the perimeter of the pen. The new animal had been added to the herd. They were no longer interested in it, unless it should attempt to leave the pen.
Marauders

We saw a sleen herding a girl back to the pen. She was turning about, crying, scolding it, but it, snarling, relentless,snapped at her, cutting at her heels with its fangs. She: before it, weeping, running to the pen.
Ivar and I laughed. "They are useful beasts in herding women," he observed.
Marauders

The Hurt, raised on large, fenced ranches, herded by domesticated sleen and sheared by chained slaves, replaces its wool four times a year.
Assassin

A sleen may bring a girl in, stumbling and weeping, from pasangs away, driving her, as Kurii take little notice, through their very camp, until she is entered into a herd. Four days ago I had seen a girl drive, in which several sleen, fanning out over a large area of territory, had scented out scattered, hiding slave girls and, from various points, driven them into a blind canyon, where a waiting Kur had swung shut a wooden gate on them, fastening them inside. Sleen are also used to patrol the large return marches of groups of foraging expeditions, those marches between the temporary holding areas and the main camp. The order of such a march is typically as follows: captured humans, in single file, form its center.
Marauders

Tracking
...tabuk and slave girls are the most common animals tracked;
Slave Girl

I had thought it was trained to hunt tabuk with archers, but it clearly was not tabuk it hunted now.
I knew the look of a hunting sleen. It was a hunter of men.
...
"I know little of sleen," she said. "I had thought It a sleen trained to hunt tabuk, in the company of archers, little more than an animal trained to turn and drive tabuk, and retrieve them."
Beasts

In his own compartments the pursuit had seemed to end, for it seemed Saphrar had disappeared, but Kamchak did not show the least irritation or annoyance.
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.
"Bring lamps and torches," said Kamchak.
Kamchak now gave his kaiila to a subordinate and, on foot, carrying torch and quiva, began to prowl down the passage, beside him the two snarling sleen, behind him Harold and I, and the rest of his men, several with torches, even the slaves with gold. Guided by the sleen we had no difficulty in following the track of Saphrar through the pas- sage, though often it branched variously. The passage was, on the whole dark, but where it branched there was often set a mall, burning tharlarion oil lamp.
Nomads

I wondered if, now that the canals were barred, slaves escaped from Port Kar.
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

"If we had hunting sleen," said the other, "and could find her trail, we would have her in our bracelets before dusk."
Captive

"We can get her back when we wish," he said. "I have arranged for the girls of Hura, more than a hundred of them, to be in the forests about the camp. If they do not pick her up, I shall go forth in a day or so and retrieve her myself."
"You seem confident," I said.
"There is little possibility of losing her," said Marlenus. "I had her bedding, a blanket changed this morning. She thinks that she washed her blanket but I substituted another, an identical one from another girl."
"Tonight," I said, "she would not have slept on the cleaned blanket."
"Of course not," said Marlenus.
"And," I said, "in Laura there are trained sleen."
"Yes," said Marlenus. "And given the scent of her blanket there will not be difficulty in picking her up, even if we begin to search days from now."
The sleen is Gor's most perfect hunter.
"Even," said Marlenus, "if we did not have the blanket the smell of the shelter in which she slept last night should be sufficient for the sleen."
Hunters

Guarding & Patrolling
the uses to which the sleen is put in guarding and patrolling are innumerable; it is used to secure borders, to prowl walls and protect camps; it may run loose in the streets after curfews; it may lurk in the halls of a great house after dark; it may deter thieves from entering locked shops; it may stand sentry upon wharves and in warehouses;
Slave Girl

The sleen have various uses; some are merely used as watch animals or guard animals; others are used as points in the advance of squads, some trained to attack putative enemies, others to return to the squad, thus alerting it to the presence of a pos-sible enemy; others are even more highly trained, and are used to hunt humans; of the human-hunting sleen, some are trained merely to kill, and others to hurry the quarry to a Kurii holding area; one type of sleen is trained to destroy males and herd females, distinguishing between the sexes by scent.
Marauders

Prisoner Control
there are many such uses to which the sinuous beasts may be put; an interesting use which might be mentioned is prisoner control; a tiny circle is drawn and the prisoner must kneel, or assume some prescribed position, within it; then, should the prisoner attempt to rise to his feet, leave the circle, or break the position in the slightest, the beasts tears him to pieces.
Slave Girl

Other uses of trained sleen
Aside from these common uses, sleen are put to other uses, too. In Thentis, for example, sleen are used to smell out contraband, in the form of the unauthorized egress of the beans for black wine from the Thentian territories. They are sometimes, too, used by assassins, though the caste of assassins itself, by their caste codes, precludes their usage; the member of the caste of assassins must make his own kill; it is in their codes. Some sleen are used as bodyguards; others are trained to kill in the arena;
Slave Girl

Performing Sleen
...others perform in exhibitions and carnivals. There are many uses to which such animals are put.
Slave Girl

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

Sleen mate in spring
Sleen mate in the "missionary" position

The mating of sleen is interesting. The female, if never before mated, flees and fights the male. But he is larger and stronger. At last he takes her by the throat and throws her upon her back, interestingly, belly to belly, beneath him. His fangs are upon her throat. She is at his mercy. She becomes docile and permits her penetration. Shortly, thereafter, their heat growing, they begin, locked together by legs and teeth, to roll and squeal in their mating frenzy. It is a very fierce and marvelous spectacle. It is not unusual for slave girls, seeing this, to kneel at their master’s feet and beg their caress. After the female sleen has been taken thusly once, no longer need she be forced. She follows the male, often rubbing against him, and hunts with him. Sometimes she must be driven away with snarls and bites. Sleen, interestingly, often pair for life. Their rutting, however, is usually confined to the spring.
Slave Girl

Usually 4 sleen in a litter
6 month gestation period
Sleen usually have white fur at birth, the fur growing darker by following spring
It mates once a year in the Gorean spring, and there are usually four young in each litter. The gestation period is some six months. The young are commonly white furred at birth, the fur darkening by the following spring. Snow sleen, however, remain white-pelted throughout their life.
Slave Girl

Training is a balance of instincts and conditioning
It was a precisely trained beast, but no training is perfect. It is a balancing of instincts and conditioning. It is never perfect. The beast, at the nearness and intensity of my scent, was becoming uncontrollable. The critical attacking distance for a sleen in the wild is about twenty feet. This distance, in a herd sleen, of course, is much smaller. I could see its excitement mount. The fur about its neck rippled and bristled. Then I saw it gather its four hind legs beneath it.
Slave Girl

The beast was well trained. It knew well how to herd a slave girl. It had a sense of the distance, and of my limitations; its speed and endurance which, I suspect, were superior to my own. It had herded other girls. It kept me at my limits, not permitting me to think, but only to run, frenziedly, madly, a driven, herded slave girl, seeking her cage.
I was at its mercy. It set me the pace which I must make, if I would live.
I cried out with misery, running.
It drove me perfectly.
Slave Girl

These animals, trained prairie sleen, move rapidly and silently, attacking upon no other provocation than trespass on what they have decided is their territory. They respond only to the voice of their master, and when he is killed or dies, his animals are slain and eaten.
Nomads

Training sleen to track and herd slaves
I and Chanda had been used for purposes of demonstration.
Sleen had been dragged to us, to take our scent. We had been held by men while the animals had taken our scent. Then Chanda had been released.
She had been run first. Then I had been released. I had been run shortly after her.
I had run wildly, in misery over having been given away by Clitus Vitellius. I had fully determined, in my hysteria and misery, to escape. What a foolish slave girl I was!
I had run wildly. I had almost fainted when a brown, sinuous shape sped past me.
I saw it turn Chanda, and, snarling, begin its attack. She fled back toward the training pit. I saw her stumble once, and the beast seize her leg, and she screamed, and then she was again on her feet, running, her hands extended before her. The girl either permits herself to be herded expeditiously, swiftly, or she dies. I turned to flee. I screamed. It was there, in front of me. It lifted its head. I stumbled back, my hand flung before my face. It snarled hideously. Distracted by the first sleen, that in pursuit of Chanda, I had not even seen this sleen, whose brain was alive with my scent, circle me and approach.
"No! No!" I cried. "Go away! Please, go away!"
It crouched there, not five feet from me, its head lifted, hissing, snarling.
"Please, go away!" I Wept.
I saw its belly lower itself to the ground, the bead still lifted, watching me. Its tail lashed; its eyes blazed. It inched forward. It had two rows of fangs.
...
With a cry of misery I turned and fled. I ran back toward the training pit and the open cage that had been designated for occupancy by the Earth-girl slave.
I ran wildly, helplessly. It ran behind me, snapping and snarling. I felt its breath on my legs. It cut with its teeth at my heels. I gasped. I fought for breath. It drove me faster and faster.
Slave Girl

This sleen in training has just herded a slave into a cage
I knelt head down, shuddering, my hands over my head, in the center of the tiny cage. Once its snout thrust against me, and I whimpered. I smelled its breath, felt the heat of it on my flesh. The bars were wet where it had bit at them; the ground, too, about the cage was wet where the beast’s saliva, in its frenzy, its lust for killing, had dampened the clawed dust.
"Back," called Thurnus, coming to the sleen and putting a rope on its neck, dragging it away from the cage. "Gentle! Gentle, Fierce One!" coaxed Thurnus. He thrust his head near the large, brown snout, cooing and clicking, his hands in the rope on its throat. He whispered in its ear. The beast became pacified. Thurnus took a great piece of meat and threw it to the animal, which began to devour it.
"Excellent," said Clitus Vitellius.
Slave Girl

Whistles and Commands
Wulfstan lifted his head and uttered a long, shrill whistle, of the sort with which Kurii summon herd sleen. One of the animals must have been within a hundred yards for it came immediately. Wulfstan lifted Thyri by one arm and threw her before the beast. "Take her to the pen," said Wulfstan to the animal.
Marauders

He dismounted and picked up a lounging garment from the vast sleeping platform in the room, holding it to the noses of the two sleen. "Hunt," said Kamchak.
Nomads

Sand training pit surrounded by low wooden walls for observers outside
Cages for slave girls to be herded into
Meats for rewards
Whips and ropes
Poles
They left the training pit. On my hands and knees, miserable, in the hot sand, the rope on my neck, I looked about the training pit, at the rack of whips and ropes, the sleen tethers, the cages, the wooden barrier about the training area, and then, on my hands and knees, made my way through the sand and out of the training area toward the hut of Thurnus, the rope dragging behind me.
Slave Girl

The cage was in a sleen training pit, surrounded by a low, wooden wall and floored with sand. Within the walls were several individuals, my sisters in bondage, those still the property of Clitus Vitellius, one of whom was encaged like myself, Chanda, who was sitting in her cage, wrapping a cloth about her bleeding leg; Thurnus; another of his girls, Sandal Thong; some men assisting Thumus; and Clitus Vitellius, and some of his men. Within the ring, too, were some eight sleen, tied on short tethers to stakes, at the sides; and a rack of meats, and poles, and ropes and whips, used in the training of the animals. Outside the low walls, several individuals observed the proceedings, the balance of the men of Clitus Vitellius, some villagers, including some peasant boys, and Melina, veiled, the slack, fat companion of the huge Thurnus.
Slave Girl

It wore a leather sleen collar but there was no leash on the leash loop.
Beasts

The cages the slaves were herded into
The cage is tiny, but stout. I could kneel in it, or crouch, or sit, with my legs drawn up. I could not extend my body, nor stand upright. The roof of the cage was about the height of a man’s belt. It is so constructed that it can be linked with other cages, or tiered. Though there is a wooden floor to the cage, the wood is placed over bars. The entire cage, thus, is barred. The bars, and their fastenings, were heavy. The cage in which I had locked myself would hold not only a girl; it would also have easily and efficiently held a strong man. It was, accordingly, an all-purpose slave cage.
Slave Girl

On the other side of the bars of the vertically sliding, lowered gate the blazing eyes of the sleen regarded me. I cried out with misery.
...
I heard the scraping of the teeth on the bars; it pulled the cage, moving it, until it caught against the chain and stake which anchored it. Then it moved about the cage on its six legs, its long, furred body angrily rubbing against the bars. It tried to reach me from another side.
Slave Girl

I had locked myself in the slave cage. When I had flung down the vertically sliding gate behind me, two notched projections, bolts, welded to the flat bar at the gate’s bottom had slipped into iron-inclosed spring catches, heavy locks, one on the bottom left, one on the bottle right, the gate being thus secured. I could not open these locks. They responded to a key, slung on the string about the neck of Thurnus. It is necessary to engage the locks not only because the animal follows so closely and the gate must be swiftly lowered, but because if the locks are not engaged, it will thrust its snout beneath the bottom of the gate, between the bottom of the gate and the floor of the cage, and, throwing its head up, fling up the gate, and have access to the cage’s occupant. The girl’s choices are simple. Either she locks herself in the cage, imprisoning herself helplessly at the pleasure of the cage owner, or the animal destroys her.
Slave Girl

The kennel was a cage, a sleen cage, tipped on its side, fully barred, sunk mostly into the ground. The cage in its original attitude, when used for sleen, would have been some four feet in height, six feet in width and twelve feet in length. Tipped on its side, to better accommodate humans, it was some six feet in height and four by twelve feet in breadth and length. In this attitude, it was entered from the top.
Slave Girl