Animals known to the Rencers in the Vosk Delta

A brightly plumaged bird sprang from the rushes to my left, screaming and beating its sudden way into the blue sky. In a moment it had darted again downward to be lost in the rushes, the waving spore stalks, the seed pods of various growths of the Gorean tidal marshes. Only one creature in the marshes dares to outline itself against the sky, the predatory Ul, the winged tharlarion.
Raiders

The rence growers, in spite of the value of their product, and the value of the articles taken in exchange for it, and the protection of the marshes, and the rence and fish which give them ample substenance, do not have an easy life. Not only must they fear the march sharks and the carnivorous eels which frequent the lower delta, not to mention the various species of aggressive water tharlarion and the winged, monstrous, hissing, predatory Ul, but they must fear, perhaps most of all, men, and of these, most of all, the men of Port Kar.
Raiders

I had also been used to carry heavy kettled of rence beer from the various islands to the place of feasting, as well as strings of water gourds, poles of fish, plucked gants, slaughtered tarks, and baskets of the pith of rence.
Raiders

It was late in the afternoon, the fourteenth Gorean Ahn I would have guessed. Some swarms of insects hung in the sedge here and there but I had not been much bothered: it was late in the year, and most of the Gorean insects likely to make life miserable for men bred in, and frequented, areas in which bodies of unmoving, fresh wather were plentiful.
Raiders

Marsh Beetle

I heard a bird some forth or fifty yards to my right; it sounded like a marsh gant, a small, horned, web-footed aquatic fowl, brad-billed and broad-winged. Marsh girls, the daughters of rence growers, sometimes hunt them with throwing sticks.
Raiders

The calls of marsh gants, a kind of piping whistle, seemed more frequent now, and somewhat closer.
Raiders

I heard some domestic marsh gants making their piping call. The wandered freely on the island, leaving it to feed, then returning later. Wild marsh gants, captured, even as young as gantlings, cannot be domesticated; on the other had, eggs, at the hatching point, gathered from floating gant nests, are sometimes brought to the island; the hatchlings, interestingly, if not permitted to see an adult gant for the first week of their life, then adopt the rence island as their home, and show no fear of human beings; they will come and go in the wild as they please, feeding and flying, but will always, and frequently, return to the rence island, their hatching place; if the rence island, however, should be destroyed, they revert entirely to the wild; in the domesticated state, it will invariably permit themselves to be picked up and handled.
Raiders

The rence growers, in spite of the value of their product, and the value of the articles taken in exchange for it, and the protection of the marshes, and the rence and fish which give them ample substenance, do not have an easy life. Not only must they fear the march sharks and the carnivorous eels which frequent the lower delta, not to mention the various species of aggressive water tharlarion and the winged, monstrous, hissing, predatory Ul, but they must fear, perhaps most of all, men, and of these, most of all, the men of Port Kar.
Raiders

My leg slipped from the island into the water and suddenly a tiny tharlarion struck it, seizing his bit of flesh and backing, tail whipping, away. My leg was out of the water, but now the water seemed yellow with the flashing bodies of tiny tharlarion, and beyond them, I heard the hoarse grunting of the great marsh tharlarion, some of which grow to be more than thirty fieet in length, weighing more than half a hundred men. Beyond them would be the almost eel-like, long-bodied, nine-gilled Gorean marsh sharks.
Raiders

To my right, some two or three feet under the water, I saw the sudden, rolling yellowish flash of the slatted belly of a water tharlarion, turning as it made its swift strike, probably a Vosk carp or marsh turtle.
Raiders

Needle Flies

I flicked a salt leach from the side of my light craft with the corner of the tem-wood paddle.
Raiders

I heard the squealing of a domestic tarsk running nearby, its feet scuttling in the woven rence of the island, as on a mat. A child was crying out, chasing it.
Raiders

The Ul - winged tharlarion

To my right, some two or three feet under the water, I saw the sudden, rolling yellowish flash of the slatted belly of a water tharlarion, turning as it made its swift strike, probably a Vosk carp or marsh turtle.
Raiders

On his forehead there was tied a headband formed of the pearls of the Vosk sorp.
I wondered what in particular there might be to spy about on a rence island.
Ho-Hak still did not speak, but sat on the shell of the Vosk sorp, looking down at the weapons, mine, before him.
Raiders

To my right, some two or three feet under the water, I saw the sudden, rolling yellowish flash of the slatted belly of a water tharlarion, turning as it made its swift strike, probably a Vosk carp or marsh turtle.
Raiders

The rence growers, in spite of the value of their product, and the value of the articles taken in exchange for it, and the protection of the marshes, and the rence and fish which give them ample substenance, do not have an easy life. Not only must they fear the march sharks and the carnivorous eels which frequent the lower delta, not to mention the various species of aggressive water tharlarion and the winged, monstrous, hissing, predatory Ul, but they must fear, perhaps most of all, men, and of these, most of all, the men of Port Kar.
Raiders

My leg slipped from the island into the water and suddenly a tiny tharlarion struck it, seizing his bit of flesh and backing, tail whipping, away. My leg was out of the water, but now the water seemed yellow with the flashing bodies of tiny tharlarion, and beyond them, I heard the hoarse grunting of the great marsh tharlarion, some of which grow to be more than thirty fieet in length, weighing more than half a hundred men. Beyond them would be the almost eel-like, long-bodied, nine-gilled Gorean marsh sharks.
Raiders

Immediately following I saw the water seem to glitter for a moment, a rain of yellowish streaks beneath the surface, in the wake of water tharlarion, doubtless its swarm of scavengers, tiny water tharlarion, about six inches long, little more than teeth and tail.
Raiders

I did see a large, harmless zarlit fly, purple, about two feet long with four translucent wings, spanning about a yard, humming over the surface of the water then alighting and, on it's padlike feet, daintily picking its way across the surface.
Raiders