As Heart of a Lion watched, an ogre drove a spear through a sailor's guts, hoisted the squirming woman by the haft and her hair, then bit out her throat so her head flopped against her spine. Two ogres swatted a pirate flat, then grabbed him by both arms and yanked.
The limbs dislocated, then tore from their sockets in gouts of blood. Many sailors and pirates didn't fight at all, just ran in terrified circles, and Heart of a Lion couldn't blame them. Others fought back. Harun swung a wicked boarding axe to slice a merrow across the waist and spill its guts, then swung the other way to hamstring another rampaging monster and bring it crashing to the deck.
Maddest of all was the berserk Belinda Destine. Since conditions changed rapidly and unexpectedly at sea, Imperial Marines were trained to improvise in battle, to attack with whatever came to hand. Bereft of her sword, Belinda hefted one of the many barrels that rolled and careened across the deck. Gargling her own battle cry, she smashed the barrel into the muzzle of a marauding merrow. Oak slats cracked and liquid gushed over both combatants. Oddly, the sharp reek set the merrow stumbling backward, clawing at its eyes, gasping and retching. Belinda merely shook her streaming blond bangs from her eyes, hefted the empty cask again, and walloped the merrow in the breast. When it fell, Belinda beat the cask to fragments on its hard head. Heart of a Lion grunted at her mindless ferocity, and reminded himself to sheer clear of Imperial Marines.
As humans struggled and died, Heart of a Lion was disheartened to see more merrow swarm over the sides, rapacious as rats. A pirate swung a scimitar to lop off a black-nailed hand against the gunwale, but another merrow seized his sash and yanked him overboard like a pike on a line. A tall and comical head reared suddenly alongside, with goggling eyes like lamps, a long nose like a flute, and raddled brown skin segmented like a scorpion's carapace. A seahorse, Heart of a Lion realized, fully as big as a land steed from the great plains of Amn. Two merrow had wrapped long arms around its neck, and now used the seahorse's curved back to vault onto the ship.
On this benighted day of strange sights, Heart of a Lion was astonished to see that Belinda had spoken true and he'd guessed right. This assault was controlled by a single mastermind.
By the cog's prow, farthest from the fighting, a single octopus tentacle remained suspended in the air, jigging and bobbing as the giant bottom-dweller writhed in pain. Poised on the tip of the tentacle, like a canary perched on a finger, squatted a sahuagin. Tall as a man, hunched like a pelican, with a head like a cod and the body of a frog, finned and spined, the sea devil waved a narwhal tusk as it exhorted its queer troops to attack. It croaked and squawked and waved both crooked arms wildly. Only the barbs of its froglike feet, clamped tight, kept it from toppling. A shaman invoking magic, thought Heart of a Lion, elsewise the pain-wracked octopus would flick it off. Perhaps it hurled more magic to goad the merrow in their attack, not that the bloodthirsty enemies of mankind needed much prodding.
Heart of a Lion's only magic trick was the fire wand, and he had no idea how much dweomer still charged the tube. He should conserve his shots, he thought, except the battle could end within minutes, with the merrow the victors.
"What shall we do, master?" wailed a sailor.
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.