Animals and their Uses: Humans as Food

Animals and their Uses: Humans as Food

Sometimes the foraging squads of the Kurii had been accompanied by trained sleen, often four of them.  Twice, in my reconnoitering, I had had to kill such beasts.  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 to attack putative enemies, others to return to the squad, thus alerting it to the presence of a possible 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.  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.  These humans are usually thralls and bond-maids, but not always.  The spoils are carried by the captured male humans, unless there are too many, and then the residue is divided among the bond-maids.  Kurii burden the males heavily; they can think of little more than the weight they carry, and the next step; furthermore, their wrists are usually tied to the straps of their improvised back packs.  Kurii, unlike Goreans, do no subject bond-maids to heavy labor; it toughens their meat; the bond-maids are separated from the males, that they be deprived of leadership; furthermore, the technique of keeping prisoners in single file, separating them by some feet, and preventing speech between them, tends to make conjoint action between them unlikely.  Prowling the long single-file of prisoners, male and female, in alternate groups, bond-maids thus used to separate files of men from one another, will be sleen.  Should any individual, either male or female, depart by so much as a yard from the line of march, or attempt to close the gap between himself and a fellow prisoner, the sleen prevent this.  Once I saw a girl stumble and two sleen, immediately, snarling and hissing, sprang toward her.  She leaped, weeping, to her feet and darted to her precise place in the line, keeping it perfectly, casting terrified glances at the vicious predators.  The line of prisoners and sleen is, on both sides, flanked by the Kurii foragers.  There are thus five lines, the center line of prisoners and spoils, its flanking lines of sleen, and on either side, the flanking lines of Kur foragers.  Human prisoners of Kurii, incidentally, are usually stripped; Kurii see no reason to give animals clothing.  (Marauders of Gor)