The mount of the Wagon Peoples, unknown in the northern hemisphere of Gor, is the terrifying but beautiful kaiila.
The kaiila is a silken, carnivorous, lofty creature, graceful long-necked and smooth gaited. It is a viperous and undoubtedly mammalian, though there is no suckling of the young. The young are born vicious and by instinct, as soon as they can struggle to their feet, they hunt, it is an instinct of the mother, sensing the birth, to deliver the young animal in the vicinity of game. With the domesticated kaiila, a bound verr or a prisoner might be cast to the newborn animal. The kaiila, once it eats its fill, does not touch food for several days.
The kaiila is extremely agile, and can easily outmaneuver the slower, more ponderous high tharlarion. It requires less food, of course, than the tarn. A kaiila, which normally stands about twenty to twenty-two hands at the shoulder can cover as much as six hundred pasangs in a single day's riding.
The head of a 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 transparent 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. The kaiila is most dangerous under such conditions, and, as if it knew this, often uses such times for its hunt.
(Nomads of Gor)
"Necessity is a man's mount. Not a woman's plaything."
The Singer stood outside my wagon, shouting for me... asking whether or not I was home. "No!" I wasn't home! She didn't budge though, and hollared back that she was
glad I wasn't home, as she intended to ride my Necessity in my absense.
After that I heard a lot of loud commotion and I was forced out from beneath my blanket to endure the freezing nip of the autumn morning air. You can just tell sometimes when you very first get out of bed, that a day will not be such a good day.
My leathers were still draped over the wagon's harness, and despite the fact that neither T'zuri nor Sakmeta (who was there waiving a cookpot in the air), thought to hand me my clothes. Yet they both made complaint that I was not wearing them when I stepped outside my wagon. It is a
little hard to grease your skin with bosk fat... with clothes already on. Plus which,
sleeping in leathers is just out of the question.
Yet soon enough I pulled my clothes on, after drawing water-squigglies in the mud behind the wagon.
"I brought you a pot, Kazhuye!" She sounded so smug, even though I had told her last time I had no need for women's things. I'd been just about to tell her again too... when it suddenly dawned on me that perhaps I'd not have to stand out in the freezing cold every morning at the crack of dawn to do my business. Instead I considered the posibility of reserving such business near the warmth of my own small firewell inside the comfort of my own wagon.
"You're welcome," she added a bit smugly later on. Though in truth, it was not something I asked her for to begin with. Why does she think I owe her a debt of gratitude?
"T'zuri... he is a warrior's kaiila!" Headstrong. That's what the Singer is. "He will throw you!" And laugh about it too! I raced ahead of her and wound Necessity's tether down so tight, that his snout lay perpendicular to the wagon's spoke, and the great beast was hunched over somewhat immobile. "Now come around here and sneak up very quietly behind him." I know my kaiila
very well.
No sooner had I tethered him down and tied several knots... Kurt the Kassar came riding up on his own mount. Now was just not a good time, and though I tried to pull the knots loose... they were not about to budge! Mostly because Necessity was pulling hard against them in his aggitation.
"Have you come to withdraw your claim to the Stake, Kassar?"
Instead that Kassar had the a udacity to reach down as if he meant to hoist the Singer... the Tuchuk Singer! into his saddle and ride off with her. Too, he said he had no intention of withdrawing, and that I'd need all the luck I could get with him as my foe.
HA! "Luck has no part in it, Kassar. I intend to wipe the ground with you using sheer
skill!" Afterall, a Tuchuk does not earn the moniker 'man of peace' by being light in the saddle or an amateur with the lance and quiva! Kurt! What the hell does
that name mean? Alright... so it means 'bold.' I'm pretty sure it means 'small brain' too. Or... 'small parts.' That was Kurt, alright.
Once the Singer had gotten herself dressed, she left my wagon and started heading off... to her own wagons, I knew. Out of compulsion I walked with her. Hoping perhaps to make her see things reasonably.
