Eel

"How long have you been slave?"

He looked at me, puzzled. "Six years," he said.

"What were you before?" I asked.

"An eel fisher," he said.

"What city?"

"The Isle of Cos," he said.

. . .

I looked out, over the marsh. Then I again regarded the eel fisher, who was first oar.

"Were you a good fisherman?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "I was."

Raiders of Gor     Book 6     Page 84

A man walked by carrying a long pole, from which dangled dozens of the eels of Cos.

Slave Girl of Gor     Book 11     Page 343

A pirate running for the ship missed the bow rail and fell into the water. He began to thrash and scream in the water, attacked by eels. I looked down, into the water. Below me the water was swarming with eels. The blood from my back, I realized, running down the blade and dripping into the water, had attracted them.

. . .

"Well done," I cried. "Well done!" I was elated. I could scarcely feel my pain, or the burns of the ropes. I was only dimly conscious of the wetness of my back. Then something wet and heavy, slithering, leapt upward out of the water, and splashed back. My leg felt stinging. It had not been able to fasten its jaws on me.

I looked downward. Two or more heads, tapering, menacing, solid, were emerged from the water, looking up at me, Then, streaking from under the water, suddenly breaking its surface, another body, some four feet in length, about eight or ten pounds in weight, leapt upward. I felt the jaws snap and scratch against the shearing blade. Then it fell twisting back in the water. It was the blood which excited them. I strove again, then, to escape, pulling against the bonds, trying to abrade them against the back of the blade.

I was now, suddenly, alarmed. My struggles had done nothing more than to lower me a few inches on the blade. I now feared I might be within reach of the leaping eels. I tried to inch upward on the blade. Pressing my legs and arms against the blade I could move upward to my original position, but no further, because of the ropes on my ankles, catching on the bottom side of the blade fixture, and it was extremely difficult and painful to hold myself that high on the blade.

I was sweating, and terrified. Then the flagship of Policrates, responding to another impact, lurched to starboard, and, terrified, I slipped back down the blade. My feet, bound back, on each side of the blade, were little more than a foot from the water. Again, frenzied, in terror, I tried to struggle. But, to my dismay, I was again held perfectly. I could not even begin to free myself. I was absolutely helpless. I had been bound by Gorean men.

I felt another stinging bite at my leg, where another of the heavy, leaping eels tried to feed. Again I inched my way painfully, by my thighs and forearms, higher on the blade. If we could get to free water I did not think the eels would pursue us far from the wharves and shore.

Then suddenly I realized I might have but moments before the ship managed to free itself and back into the river. Suddenly I allowed myself to slide down the blade. "Are you hungry, little friends?" I inquired. "Can you smell sweat and fear? Does blood make you mad? Leap, little brothers. Render me service." I looked down at several of the heavy, tapering heads projecting from the water, at the eyes like filmed stones. "Taste blood," I encouraged them. I thrust back against the blade. I tried to abrade my ankles against the steel.

I knew that the fastening of those jaws, in a fair bite, could gouge ounces of flesh from a man's body. Too I knew that the eel seldom takes its food out of the water, that such strikes, in all probability, had not been selected for. Accordingly, the only inward compensation for the refraction differential would presumably have to be learned by trial and error. More than one of the beasts had already struck the blade and not my body. But, too, they might not understand that the blood source was my body; they might understand, rather, only the point at which blood was entering the water.

The waters beneath me now fairly churned with activity. The ship moved backward a yard. "Help me swiftly, little friends," I begged. "Time grows short!" A large eel suddenly broke the surface tearing at the side of my abraded leg. I felt the teeth scratching and sliding along my leg, its head twisted to the side. Then it was back in the water. "Good, good," I called. "Nearly, nearly. Try again, big fellow!"

I watched the water, giving it time to swirl and circle, and then again, aligning itself, leap toward me. My left ankle, cut deliberately on the back of the blade, oozed blood, soaking the knotted ropes that held it. With the small amount of play given to me by the ropes on that ankle I must manage as best I can. Then, almost too quickly to be fully aware of it, I saw the returning shape erupting from the water. I thrust, as I could, my ankle towards it. Then I screamed in pain. The weight, thrashing and tearing, must have been some fifteen or twenty pounds. It was some seven feet in length. I threw my head back, crying out. My left ankle was clasped in the clenched jaws, with those teeth like nails. I feared I might lose my foot but the heavy ropes, doubled and twisted, and knotted, like fibrous shielding, muchly protecting me, served me well, keeping the teeth in large measure from fastening in my flesh.

The beast, suddenly, perhaps puzzled by the impeding cordage, shifted its grip. It began to tear then at the ropes. Its mouth must have been filled with blood-soaked, wirelike strands of rope. The blood doubtless stimulated it to continue its work. Its tail thrashed in the water. It twisted, and swallowed, dangling and thrashing. Then, its mouth filled with rope, pulled loose, it fell back into the water. Again I struggled. Again I was held. I struggled yet again, and this time heard the parting of fibers, ripping loose. I twisted against the blade, my ankles free, and, by the ropes on my wrists, swung myself up and behind the blade, getting my right leg over the upper part of the blade fixture.

"Ho!" cried a voice, angry, above me and to my right. I saw the spear blade draw back to thrust. I clung to the blade, crouching on the flat blade mount. Ropes were on my wrists, but my hands were separated by, say, a foot of rope, as I had been bound on the blade. When the spear struck toward me, I seized it, behind the blade, at the shaft rivets, and jerked it toward me. The fellow, unable in the moment to release the weapon, was dragged over the rail. He struck against the blade and, screaming, half cut open, slid into the water. The spear shaft was twisted from my grasp. The water churned beneath the blade. Bubbles exploded to the surface. It seemed scarlet. "Feed, little friends," I told them. "Feed well, and be thanked."

Guardsman of Gor     Book 16     Pages 129 - 133

There is commonly little danger of eels near Victoria, save near the shadows and shallows of the wharves themselves.

Guardsman of Gor     Book 16     Page 135

"He might have me thrown to the eels in his pool!" she said.

Magicians of Gor     Book 25     Page 324

Many estates, particularly country estates, have pools in which fish are kept. Some of these pools contain voracious eels, of various sorts, river eels, black eels, the spotted eel, and such, which are Gorean delicacies. Needless to say a bound slave, cast into such a pool, will be eaten alive.

Magicians of Gor     Book 25     Page 428

Perhaps, even, the container might have been slowly filled with mud or sand, or with fast-growing poisonous molds, or with dark water, in which swam the tiny, razor-teethed eels kept in large pools at the palatial villas of some Gorean oligarchs, both as a delicacy, and as a standing admonition to slaves, to which swift, snakelike, voracious creatures they may be thrown.

Kur of Gor     Book 28     Pages 43 - 44

"We have an eel pool in a nearby garden," said Peisistratus. "By now the eels are doubtless hungry."

. . .

"Prepare," said Peisistratus, to his men, "to take her to the eel pool."

. . .

"There is a haunch of tarsk in the kitchen," said Peisistratus. "Let the eels be fed."

Kur of Gor     Book 28     Pages 295 - 297

Torn between her lingering pretenses of freedom and her slave needs, she had been found insufficiently pleasing by her masters, and was to be cast to eels in a pool in a Pleasure Cylinder, associated with a Steel World.

Swordsmen of Gor     Book 29     Page 554

"We will attend to the body," said Genserich.

"What is left of it," said a man.

"Leave it for urts," said Aeson, "or cast it into the river, for eels, for river sleen." The river sleen is a small animal, seldom more than two or three feet in length, including the tail. Few weigh more than two or three stone. It is not to be confused with the common sleen, or the aquatic sleen, the sea sleen, which are large animals.

Smugglers of Gor     Book 32     Page 427

The exception here, of course, was Nezumi, who, if recognized, might have been remanded to Yamada's executioners for the eel death, or worse.

Rebels of Gor     Book 33     Page 431

I recalled the eel pool in the stadium, or theater, of Lord Yamada. I did not doubt but what some similar arrangement, or worse, would be at the disposal of Lord Temmu.

Rebels of Gor     Book 33     Page 627

"She is a barbarian. She is cheap. Who would want her for anything, save as sleen feed, or to cast her to eels in some garden pool?"

Avengers of Gor     Book 36     Page 106

"Regard the slave," I said to my agent. "See the small feet, the slim ankles, the sweet thighs, the delightful, well-formed, fundament, the slender waist, the joys of her figure, the soft shoulders, and the graceful, metal-encircled neck. Surely, you can think of some use for this exquisite object other than feeding it to sleen or eels."

Avengers of Gor     Book 36     Page 107