Run-Followers

Overview

Run-followers are the sharks of the Tidebound Reaches. They live along the current roads and the outer water, and at two times of year they come in close: when the returning runs cross into brackish water, and when the young come down from the rivers to the sea. The Thaluren name them, as they name everything, by what they do. The young are what they follow.

Appearance

A run-follower is a grey shark about as long as two tall men, heavy-bodied and powerful, with a blunt snout, small black eyes, a tall curved fin on its back, and a long upper lobe to its tail. It is slate-grey above, fading abruptly to white below, and many carry the pale scars of old wounds. Its mouth is a wide crescent of rows of serrated, triangular teeth. It swims with a slow sideways sweep of the tail, and can turn and strike with a burst of speed that leaves a swirl in the water. It makes no sound.

Habitat and Range

They live in the open coastal water of the Tidebound Reaches and out along the current roads towards the Far Set and the edge of the Unrun Sea. In the seasons of the runs and of the young's descent they gather off the estuary mouths and along the seaward edge of the Kelpshade in dozens. They rarely go up into brackish water and never into the rivers.

Behaviour and Temperament

Run-followers hunt fish, seals, porpoises, and anything weak or alone in the water. They learn where food comes at the same time each year and wait there. When the Thaluren young come down, small, unpractised, and many, the sharks cruise the mouths and the channel edges and take stragglers. They are wary of large groups and of anything that fights back, and a guarded run seldom loses an adult to them.

Life Cycle

The females bear live young, a few pups at a time, in shallow sheltered water away from the mouths. The pups grow slowly and live twenty or thirty years.

Uses and Dangers

To the Thaluren the run-followers are the sea's first test of the young. In the season of the descent, escorts from the sea settlements gather at the mouths and along the Kelpshade's edge, keep the young in close bands, and drive the sharks off with spears and noise; every settlement remembers the years they failed. A lone adult swimmer in the outer water at dusk is in danger too. The Thaluren do not hunt the sharks for food, but kill those that press in.

Lore and Belief

By Thaluren custom the young who come down are counted at Turningshoal, and the count notes the run-followers' toll with the rest. The Thaluren say the sharks keep their own run, because they come back to the same water at the same time each year, and they hold that this is a run that honours no one: the sharks come back, but for themselves alone. A young Thaluren who has outswum a run-follower carries the story into adulthood, and is listened to.

Where It Appears

• The Tidebound Reaches
• Writers' Guide: The Tidebound Reaches and the Unrun Sea