Egg-Takers

Overview

Egg-takers are the long, ambushing hunter fish of the rivers of the Tidebound Reaches. They live in the pools and weed beds of the lower and middle courses, and in spawning season they gather on the spawning grounds and the nursery gravels to eat eggs and young. The Thaluren name them for what they do, and the Thaluren Sanctuary Custodians and the Kavari nursery custodians take turns driving them off the waters both peoples guard.

Appearance

An egg-taker is as long as a child is tall, the biggest longer, a long, narrow, muscular fish with its back fin set far back near the tail, so that it looks like an arrow. Its head is long and flat, its jaws broad like a duck's bill and lined with hundreds of backward-pointing teeth. It is olive-green on the back, with rows of pale gold bars and spots along its flanks that break up its outline among the reeds, and a white belly. It hangs motionless in weed or shade, then strikes in a sudden lunge too fast to follow. It smells strongly of river mud.

Habitat and Range

They live in the slow pools, weedy margins, and deep side channels of the Reaches' rivers, from the brackish upper estuaries up to the middle courses, where the gravel runs and spring-fed side channels begin. They are rarer in the cold upper tributaries.

Behaviour and Temperament

An egg-taker hunts by waiting: fish, frogs, crayfish, ducklings, anything that passes within reach. In spawning season it changes its habits, moving onto the spawning reaches and nursery gravels and staying there as long as eggs and young are to be found, nosing into the gravel and lying in wait at the edges. It is bold, greedy, and unafraid of anything its own size. It does not attack grown people, but it will strike at a hand in the gravel.

Life Cycle

Egg-takers spawn in early spring in flooded weedy shallows, before the runs come up. The young grow fast, eating each other, and a big one may live twenty years.

Uses and Dangers

They take Thaluren eggs and the newly hatched young from the spawning grounds, and Kavari young from the nursery gravels, and a few of them on a spawning reach can do great harm to a clutch. In the season of the return, Sanctuary Custodians and Kavari custodians share the guarding of the reaches where their waters meet, by agreement between the two peoples: they patrol the gravels, drive the fish off with spears and nets, and kill them. The Kavari eat them, smoked; the Thaluren will not.

Lore and Belief

Where the two peoples share the work, the egg-taker is one of the few things they agree about. The Thaluren say an egg-taker on a spawning reach was let in by a careless watch, and a custodian who loses a clutch to one feels the debt. The Kavari say the egg-takers know which reach will be used before the custodians do, and watch them for it. Neither people believes the egg-takers can be driven out for good.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Animals