Exchanging horses while travelling

[cptbutton]

The powerstone discussion over in the GURPS forum reminded me of something I've wondered about.

When our heroes trade their winded horses for fresh ones, how do the finances of that work?

I mean in the standard plot, where the heroes must get to the Citadel of Doom before the full moon when the princess will be sacrificed. They ride off on their horses all day, and then trade them for fresh horses in a town and then ride all night, etc.

Assuming they are private individuals, not royal couriers or something, how do they pay for this? Their horses are all tired out, but presumably will be good as new after a day or two of rest and food. On the other hand, horses aren't equal because of age, strength, etc.

Are these deals really just a case of selling your old horses and buying new ones, with all of the haggling and checking of teeth, etc, that implies?

Or were there some kinds of standard conventions or a guarantees system to police unfair deals? Seems unlikely in many eras.

[Turhan's Bey Company]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Assuming they are private individuals, not royal couriers or something, how do they pay for this?

Assuming they're private individuals and we're talking about historical examples, this generally doesn't happen. One could attempt to trade horses once the current mount got tired, I suppose, but it'd be like haggling a used car trade every few hours, and innkeepers don't necessarily have stables of spare horses lying around. Historically, it usually took wealthy governments (imperial Persia, China, Rome, and Byzantium, late Medieval HRE, Tudor England, etc.) or sometimes coalitions of wealthy merchants to support a rapid, long-distance postal relay infrastructure. Only people with official permission could use the horses and roadside facilities. People without had to plod along at a much slower rate or travel with strings of horses (like the Mongols) so they can switch off as they get tired.

What those heroes can do, though, is get that permission. Bribe an official, or hit up a patron for a favor, and you can wave an officially sealed document at local station masters as you hop off one horse and onto another.

[sambudak]

The method I used was to steal the horses I needed. Not always easy, a good idea, or all that heroic. We'd go through all the "in the name of the King" stuff, but what it amounted to was just taking them.

What's the word? Commandeer?

[Frost]

As the other have said unless you have acess to a relay system it won't happen it would be at best costly and nonsensical. The nearest aproximation would be to travel with a number of remounts swapping between them regularly in order to permit them some rest, backed up by a supply of cash to replace animals lost during the journey. While this won't be as effective as a relay system it will allow better time than than using a single mount.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by sambudak

The method I used was to steal the horses I needed. Not always easy, a good idea, or all that heroic. We'd go through all the "in the name of the King" stuff, but what it amounted to was just taking them.

What's the word? Commandeer?

S.T.E.A.L. (Surreptitious Transportation of Equipment to an Alternate Location)

[cptbutton]

Thanks for the replies.

Can't cite a specific example, but I think I've seen this done in novels, not that that proves anything.

[sambudak]

So have I. If it's for your game you can just say whatever seems right to ya. I don't really know how long you can gallop a horse before it's to blown to run more. A couple hours maybe? So the stations would have to be maybe twenty miles apart?

If you just took along remounts they'd still have to go the distance, but how that'd extend the range I dunno.

[Hans Rancke-Madsen]

I've read (yeah, fiction) about horse dealers having arrangements with horse dealers and innkeepers in neighboring towns. "Just leave him with Honest Joe in Nexttown". It's probably rare in Real Life, but it might work for a fictional setting.


Hans

[RogerBW]

A rich gentleman in Regency England would pay to have some of his own horses stabled along a route he expected to take at speed.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Originally Posted by sambudak

So have I. If it's for your game you can just say whatever seems right to ya. I don't really know how long you can gallop a horse before it's to blown to run more. A couple hours maybe? So the stations would have to be maybe twenty miles apart?

Oddly enough, for reasons having nothing to do with this thread, I looked up that canonical example of a real world horse relay system, the Pony Express, today. Anyway, the service apparently owned 400 horses, and used 184 stations which were an average of 15 miles apart, with the maximum distance being about 20 miles. Note also, that the horses weren't generally going all out. So, if the rider is really pushing the horse, he's probably not going to get 20 miles out of it. Also, apparently the horses' average speed was about 15 mi/hr and topped out around 25 mi/hr when they were being pushed. The riders themselves didn't travel more than 100 mi/day, and since the route took 10 days to cover almost 2000 miles, that meant that the riders also switched off.