Heart of a Lion shook his head. Chaos whirled like a cyclone around him, and people died before he could think, let alone act. Up on the quarterdeck, three sailors were clubbed down by four merrow who flailed their spear butts again and again on the bloody carcasses. At the prow, the sahuagin shaman made a tearing motion with green, scaly claws, and a pirate dropped dead, clutching his heart. The feisty Belinda's luck ran out, for as she belabored one merrow with a broken boarding pike, another dropped a fist like an anvil that hammered her to the deck, which was awash in the turpentine-reeking fluid.
All this Heart of a Lion glimpsed in seconds, then the attack stalled. Surviving sailors and pirates clustered around their captain. All hunkered at the starboard side of the cog, with the pirates' tethered dromond dipping and pitching alongside. More merrow rose to the attack, some climbing the sides of the dromond and tramping across the deck, trailing water. The defenders were surrounded-twenty weary fighters and their aging captain, who wanted only to go below and take a nap. Their future was bleak. Stand and die under bludgeoning fists and claws, or jump over the side to drown, or be crushed between the ships' hulls, or else be eaten by more denizens of the depths.
Unless…
'Grab that barrel!' barked Heart of a Lion. Half a dozen casks tumbled and rumbled along the deck. 'And that one-broach the ends! The rest of you, strip your shuts or sashes.'
Not comprehending, but glad to follow any orders that might save them, the knotty-armed seamen righted the barrels and stove in the ends with belaying pins. Ripe fumes of sap and sugar wafted around the survivors. As blood-spattered merrow closed on the humans like a wolf pack, Heart of a Lion ordered the shirts and sashes sopped in the liquid until it puddled around their feet. One man hissed as the fiery fluid stung in a long gash down his shin.
'Fling the juice in their faces-hurry!'
Bare-chested men and a few women hopped forward and whipped the wet clothing at the merrows' evil, elongated faces. Wincing, flinching, the sea ogres shielded their sea-green eyes from the spatters, and shied away, shoving back their bloodthirsty mates.
'They hate the stuff,' crowed Heart of a Lion. 'It offends their noses!'
'So what? It's their claws and teeth that'll kill us!' Always grumpy, Harun snapped a shirt at the monsters and drove them back, but had to soak his shirt while the creatures surged in. 'We can't flick laundry at them all day. How do we stop them? Or escape?'
Heart of a Lion shook his head, black beard waggling. He hadn't planned that far ahead. Once the repugnant liquid ran out, or the merrow girded their courage, they'd be massacred. What to do? It didn't help his concentration that the leader of this murder spree, the fish-headed sahuagin, was still perched on its tentacle, raised higher now to observe them. The shaman croaked and rasped like a demented seagull, urging the merrow on with curses and charms.
'I don't know what else,' growled Heart of a Lion, 'but I'll fry that fish-fiend and bear it to the Nine Hells with us.'
Sighting down his fire-casting wand, Heart of a Lion eyeballed the crooked sea devil as he stroked his fat hand down the polished brass. 'As'tal rifa!'
Came a VA-VOOMF! like a volcano coughing, and the whole world exploded into flame.
Heart of a Lion hooted as the sahuagin shaman was smashed in the gut by a flaming fist. The foul creature bled red as it tumbled off the octopus tentacle and splashed in the sea. As he lowered the brass tube,
Heart of a Lion saw that his enemies, crew, and both ships were ablaze,
'Memnon immolate my soul! Who knew the stuff was flammable?'
Heart of a Lion goggled. Across two decks raged fire white-hot and glimmering blue. Flames scurried like rats across deck furniture and wreckage, soared up ratlines, rimmed the sails, and ran rings around the scuppers and gunwales. High above, rigging sparkled and winked like fireworks, and black jots of burning tar rained. Some pirates yelped as their clothing or hair burned, but cooler heads knocked them down and beat out the flames, or else hurled folds of canvas over them. Pirates and sailors leaned far over the side, braving the grinding hulls, to sop their clothing in sea-water. They slapped the cool brine on sparks atop people and ships.
Mindless, the merrow suffered and died. Many were ablaze. Flames licked up their legs as if they waded through a grass fire. Some beat at the flames and only ignited then: hands and seaweed hair. Many galloped, bellowing in pain, to the sides of the ships and dived headlong. One broke its neck ramming the brown armored hide of a giant seahorse. Another merrow hanged itself by snaring its long neck in rigging while jumping overboard. A few, unable to act for the searing pain, fell on the decks and rolled and writhed. Further saturating themselves in flammable liquid, they were incinerated. Evil, oily smoke wafting from charred corpses stank like burning garbage. Only a couple of merrow had yet to catch fire, and they ran in panicked circles below dripping ratlines and falling sails ripe with flame.
'To the dromond! Board Shark's Fang!' A true captain again, Heart of a Lion shoved people headlong up onto the gunwale, even picked up a few and lobbed them bodily into the low-built dromond. 'Harun, make ready to set sail! Saida-no, she's dead-Kalil, pull a hatchet and cut the grappling ropes! Jassan, helm the rudder to haul us away from the cog! You sailors, beat out those flames!'
A slave to custom, Heart of a Lion refused to leave the deck until his crew was safe. Once all the living were aboard, he cast a last look around the cog to see if anyone remained.
The ship was a vision of hell. Smoke roiled and billowed across the deck like thunderclouds. Through dark curtains he glimpsed burning, dying merrow like ghosts condemned to torment, staggering or crawling or writhing in thrashing balls. Paint curled and burned in long, uneven stripes. All the rigging, dried by the fierce southern sun, blazed like tinder. Glancing aloft, the pirate chief saw that the standing and running rigging would soon collapse the burning sails and smother everything. Barrel after spilled barrel burned madly, and Heart of a Lion wondered if the sealed barrels would soon explode like the fire from his wand. If so, he needed to get many sea miles distant. Turning to mount the gunwale with a grunt — he paused.
Something had caught his eye. Movement where it shouldn't be. Whirling, he faced the billowing fire. The horrific heat dried his face and eyes, making him squint, but somewhere…
There!
'Shar shield her most shameful son!' prayed the pirate. Clutching his fire wand, he ducked his head and charged the flames.
What he'd seen was a huddled, crawling figure, not a dying merrow, but the marine lieutenant Belinda Destine. She'd been hammered to the deck but not killed, too tough to die. Sweating buckets in fright, barely daring to breathe, he zigzagged past knee-high flame, skirted a rolling, burning barrel, stopped, dashed under a flaming flap of sail, then-his heart stopped cold-leaped over the open hatchway and crashed clumsily on one knee. An ankle popped like a old twig, and agony coursed up his leg.
Still, the fat pirate reached the lean lieutenant by skittering clumsily to her side. Dazed, she crawled aimlessly away from the nearest fires. Her pink silk shirt smoldered and her yellow sash was ablaze. With no breath to explain, Heart of a Lion ripped off his turban, beat out the fire, then dropped the greasy, burning folds. Kneeling/ gasping, he hooked a meaty arm around her slim middle and rolled her to his broad shoulder. With a grunt, and a grimace of pain from his sprained ankle, the pirate chief squinted in smoke and fire and staggered toward the dromond, which seemed to lay a hundred leagues across a burning wasteland that would put all nine of the Nine Hells to shame.
Limping, cursing, praying, Heart of a Lion groped toward safety and cool, sweet air. His burden mashed his shoulder and his sprained ankle. He had to circumvent the mainmast, then the mizzen, because the entire starboard side of the cog seemed engulfed in flame. If he couldn't get past the fire at the prow, he'd have to risk the ocean- and he'd never learned to swim, an instance of laziness he regretted now, but perhaps not for long.
'Come-uh! — daughter of disaster! We can't- oww! — tarry here!' Heart of a Lion gabbled at the unconscious girl to keep up her courage, or his. 'My, they must feed you marines-uh! — oats and hay! Come, this is no worse than a forest fire, or so I hear-what?'
Rearing from the smoke, tall as a flaming volcano, like a ghost from his haunted past, loomed a merrow scorched black along both its sides. Mad with pain, the monster lunged into the mizzenmast, bounced off, then saw the humans and roared a challenge.
Heart of a Lion had no weapon, neither scimitar or even dagger, and was saddled with an unconscious woman besides. Lacking anything else, he used what came to hand-the brass fireball wand.
