Sea of Dekatos

Chapter 1

Wentai was hit by a spray of warm seawater, but the hot sun made such things a pleasant part of sailing. In minutes they would be sailing through rocky waters near the center of the sea. Whirlpools grew dangerous in shallow areas so he walked to the front of the ship and took the wheel from Placidus. It was connected to a vane on the front of the ship just below the water line. He angled the ship so they would sail between a frothing, swirling whirlpool and some jagged rocks. 

The rowers pulled hard. While almost every whirlpool had a tentacled beast at the bottom, the crew's confidence in his navigational skills was absolute, and none of them would consider questioning him. The tentacled creatures, an advanced form of barnacle, nested wherever fish were plentiful. Young barnacles, freshly released from a parent, were mobile but unable to feed. They scuttled away after birth, finding shallow areas or whirlpools, and attached themselves to a rock. There they grew limbs and began to catch fish. The ones at the bottom of whirlpools grew quite large on the steady supply of fish being funneled down to them.

"Wentai," said Placidus. "Ships ahead." 

Wentai looked where his sailing companion pointed and saw large wooden vessels, cumbersome and slow, in the distance. From the design they appeared to be from Lau Cing, the mercenary city. Founded by deserters, exiles, shipwrecked sailors, defeated armies and survivors of shattered units, Lau Cing now had a proud reputation of taking anyone in and making a warrior of them. Wentai had no interest, however, in sailing anywhere near their ships; skirmishes on the sea were commonplace, and his vessel might offer a tempting target, especially if food stocks in Lau Cing were running low. He did not know if they would recognize him or not, but Wentai had a reputation on the sea for finding schools of fish.

He turned the wheel to the left and the ship headed toward both the whirlpool and the rocks. His ship was fit for the task. He had designed it with three square sails so each one could be tilted in a different direction. The front sail, under the expert guidance of Placidus, turned the prow to the left. The rear sail turned the tail of the ship to the right, a technique that made their vessel the most maneuverable one on the sea.

They skirted the rocks and pushed dangerously close to the whirlpool. It was large enough to easily swallow them, but Wentai brought his beloved vessel in close. The water of the sea was pure and clean, and a tentacle-beast laired at the bottom, awake and beginning to move its sucker-lined limbs. Wentai glanced back at Placidus, who had also seen it. "Don't worry," Wentai said with a smile. "This one can't reach us." A long orange limb snaked out of the water toward them but the soft, prehensile tip missed their hull by a few paces.

Wentai's ship was caught in the whirlpool and turned ninety degrees to the right as it followed the swirling currents, but with a hard left turn of the wheel his vessel pulled away, escaping the flow and heading off between the rocks. Wentai spun the wheel, weaving among the jagged mineral outcroppings. Behind him, his crew grinned; this was common practice for such fine sailors. The distant wood vessels made no attempt to follow them. 

The ship pulled up near a flat outcropping of rock, about thirty paces across, and he found what he was looking for. Wentai knew that the submerged portion of the rocks in this area were lined with tiny mussels, too small for the consumption of men but perfect for the stomachs of fish. Beside his ship was a running shoal of pink fish, thousands of them, all streaming underwater on whatever important mission caused fish to move so quickly. In the distance was a tall rocky island which might house sea-bird eggs, while a closer island was flat and low, perhaps hiding mussels.

Wentai ordered the anchor dropped and when the men looked over the side a cheer went up; even Wentai's mouth watered as he imagined himself frying the delicious, buttery fish, and salting a full barrel of them. He daydreamed for a moment of a life in his new house filled with dried fish, pots of kelp, shelves full of books, and for diversion, chariot races. There was little more a man needed.