Diary of Channa Mokart, pages 3-5 - 2nd ND of Fourthmonth VC413

I paddled as smoothly towards shore as I could, barnacles mocking me from beneath mossy beards and thick laughter sinking to meet me beneath the dock. I stood on the shore and shook myself like a mutt. The dock man was still recovering from his bout of hysteria; once he finished I made eye contact and made to leave. Him and the veiled man regarded me as I trudged towards the grass - a beaten soldier, swimming once again towards a sea of wheat declining to meet a less-than-lush forest. Once the last member of the consortium had boarded the boat and the dock man had occupied himself with other contemptuous thoughts, I dropped into a crouch and made my way through the underbrush in hopes he was too oblivious to suspect anything of my movement. I was naught more than a few waving blades of grass.

Mmm.. Stock photos

I crept back towards the beach, shielded by golden grass. The journey to the beach wasn't long, though it would have been shorter f I could have ran.

The boat itself – no giant, by any terms: the use of the word ‘galley’ was debatable – could support some thirty-odd people on the top deck. A lower deck supported ta dozen prisoners that had been rented from the king, enslaved to row the thing. She was no beast, nay, but certainly no shrimp. The galley was  intimidating – two times my height, threatening me with its creaking plywood entirety - but at least it obscured me from the dockhand’s view. A few hooded heads bobbed in and out of sight overtop the ridge that secured the sides of the top deck. They were too distracted – plotting, conspiring of Delphajor’s future. I would have burned them all.

Dripping and pissed off as I already was, the steps I took back into the sea failed to bother me. I swam along the side of the boat, an edgy eel snaking between oars. The thick wood stretched upwards towards the deck, perforated by a series of small openings. On the opposite side of these openings sat slaves or prisoners that I couldn't waste my time sympathizing for; I had my eyes set on my goal. The galley's portholes had become receptacles for the oars, and each one protruded like a pointing finger into the water. Beneath each of the dulled portholes was a protruding ridge, punctured with lines of small holes that looked like sufficient hand holds. The galley had a dozen oars, six on each side, and sixteen portholes. That left two unoccupied portholes on each side, and about twenty feet between me and the closest one.

A dozen lunges towards the ridge had me feeling optimistic, but before I reached it, the oars began to move. Slowly at first, they moved with a power that rendered my body quite useless. Like massive, angry whales, they pounded the water rhythmically, sending the sea around me into a broiling soup of splashing seaweed and confused pike. I grabbed ahold of the nearest oar before it could swing me under the water - a current produced by a slave would not suck me to my death.

The strain on my arms was immense, but the strain on my mind was much stronger. Propelled by the oar, I reached for the handhold. Iron wire tightened into the very fabric of my biceps; my body waved through the water like a fan being flapped by a geisha. The oar swung forward and my fingers brushed against solid wood before I was pulled back; I hissed to distract myself from the agony. Settling both hands on the oar, half-blinded by the whiplash of water, I hoisted myself up another foot closer to the boat. The oar swung 'round again and I reached out. My hand gripped solid wood, my feet simultaneously dislodged from the oar and I found myself hanging from the handhold. My feet hung in the ocean; the current stole one of my leather footwraps. I was able to pull myself up and rest my elbows upon the ridge, gasping while air fought the seawater for the occupance of my lungs.

Here, I hung like a sloth.