Dorath

Dorath
English gloss	ox / draft beast (translation, not identification)
Role	Haulage
Where found	Every city and road; Eldershore breeds the finest
Size	Nearly two Streid (about six feet) at the shoulder; 2,000–3,500 Weith
Kept / wild	Kept; feral herds exist
Used for	Hauling; meat, milk, cheese, leather, and bone when it can no longer pull
Associated cities	All; Eldershore · Forgegate · Clearhold · Shining Reach
Lexicon	Dorath

The Dorath is the great draft animal of the Known World, the beast on which all overland trade depends. It stands nearly six feet at the shoulder and weighs up to three and a half thousand Weith — barrel-chested, heavily muscled through shoulder and neck, low on four short wide-set legs. Its thick dark hide grows in overlapping segments with raised edges: not armor, but near enough that a healthy adult shrugs off bites that would cripple another animal. Predators know it and go for the young, the sick, and the old. It carries a single broad blunt horn or a paired set.

The ring

Attacked, Dorath do not scatter. They close into a tight ring with the young in the center and hold it. A team of eight or ten ringed around a stopped wagon wards off most attacks, and the sight of the ring forming discourages the rest. An experienced caravan master learns the ear positions of his Dorath and the low rumble that means the animal has noticed something the humans have not; a foolish one ignores it once and does not get to twice.

Temperament and work

Calm, steady, and slow to panic, which in a world where panic kills is prized over speed. A Dorath grows attached to a handler of years and answers his voice quickly; to a stranger it is merely functional. It keeps about three Keiloe-Streid an hour — near enough three miles — and holds it all day, making fifty miles between camps, which is slow by every standard except that nothing else will do it day after day without breaking down. It needs less special feed, resists disease better, and rests less than most riding animals. Its cost is room: cities with heavy Dorath traffic widen their commercial and harbor streets for it.

By city

Eldershore's herds are the finest in the world and sell at high prices. Forgegate reads a merchant's team as a statement of standing. Stormharbor considers them a useful tool. Clearhold breeds a line sure-footed on mountain rock. Shining Reach has turned handling them into a fine craft with its own traditions.

As food

A Dorath is never raised for food — too slow to mature and too expensive — but an animal that can no longer pull three thousand Weith can still feed people, and nothing is wasted. The meat is rich and dense, best slow-cooked or smoked. Females unsuited to the caravan are milked, and Dorath cheese, aged and long-keeping, is among the most common foods in the world, with distinct varieties in every city. The hide makes heavy leather for caravan covers, aprons, boots, and belts; the dense bone becomes handles, buttons, and reinforcements.

Hidden truth — not known in Teraell

The Dorath was engineered before the Fall and hardened in its wars, when predators were loosed on farmland; the ring is a designed response, not an instinct. It went feral in the collapse and was domesticated a second time by Eldershore, whose traders tell proud stories of their forebears' skill. The skill was real. The animal had taken a harness before. Its plating, however, is borrowed from the native animals of Teraell, which carry dermal bone as a matter of course.

See also

• Animals of Teraell · The Roads · Moving Goods