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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people,
organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
I
t was a dark and stormy morning. The night had
been dark and stormy as well, but saying so at the
beginning of the chapter would have been copyright
infringement. Rain slashed out of the stormclouds and
onto the soaked sails and deck of a cargo ship that
struggled through the whitecaps.
Down in the corners of the hold, men and women in rusted
armor sat on crates and leaned on broken swords and shat-
tered dreams. These were the legendary Heroes, formerly of the
International Heroes Guild, and currently on the run from the
near-total annihilation of their once proud guild.
In case the reader is unfamiliar with the somewhat lacklus-
ter book entitled Hero, Second-Class, which preceded this one,
there is in fact a reason for brave Heroes to be fleeing for their
lives on a rickety boat hastening south away from their home
base.
If the reader is actually familiar with said book, he or she
need not read this section, but it may amuse nonetheless.
Our protagonist, the young red-headed Hero pacing
the unsteady planks in the aft starboard corner, was Cyrus
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world like a storm at sea to chill you through your scales and
make you feel alive. Unless you could be in a storm at sea and
feel the warm blood of your foes trickle through your claws at
the same time. Now that was truly living.
And Vesuvius hoped to be truly living very soon . . .
Cyrus tumbled across the deck as the ship slammed back into
the sea. Something was most definitely wrong. They had either
hit a whale, or . . .
“Solburg! Thank the gods!” yelled the captain, salt water
dripping from his beard, which was stained and brown. “Get
some of those layabout ’Eroes out here. There’s a military boat
of some kind come alongside, and it’s most definitely ’ostile!”
“Military?” Cyrus asked, clutching a rail for support and
staring across the furlong of water at the looming vessel. It was
almost twice their size, and judging from the number of bal-
lista ports in the sides, it was hardly a merchantman. “What
device are they flying?”
“Two flags,” the captain replied, peering through the rain
at the unidentified vessel’s mast. The sky above was a thunder-
ous black, tinged with orange and red, presumably from the
setting sun above them. “One’s a fanged red skull on black. The
other looks like a gauntlet with somm’at in it.”
Cyrus shook his head. “Bok in a bucket. It’s one of Voshtyr’s
ships. I’ll go get whatever Heroes are in fighting shape. Try to
contact their captain and see what he wants. And don’t tell him
there are Heroes on board, or they might sink us.”
“Aye, lad. That was me intention. Now, stop givin’ orders to
yer captain, and get them ’Eroes out ’ere, just in case.”
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What was going on was the concerted effort of the two pale
men on the corsair ship as they hovered over the large crystal.
“The fools keep trying to ram us with that tub of theirs,” one
of them said with exasperation, sweat mingling with rain on
his forehead.
“Well, let them get clossse,” Vesuvius said calmly, “but
keep them from damaging my ssship. If the Heroesss want to
throw away their livesss, we’ll let them!” Raising his voice, he
shouted to his Ranshan crew, who were all armed to the teeth
and scaled to the tails. “If the Heroesss want a fight, we’ll give
them one. Aye, ladsss?”
The crew roared and hissed in agreement and promptly
began to sing. Fourscore hearty lizards with their rough,
throaty voices, stomped their scaled feet and thumped their
heavy tails on the deck.
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Fire Ballistae!
Keep Steady the Rudder!
On Target with all, aye?
So fire another!
Hey, Ho! Hey, Ho! Hey Ho Harr!
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years old, but Cyrus could see the excitement and hope in his
eyes.
The Swift Strike nodded. “Thank you, boy. At least there
are still some stout hearts on this vessel.”
“More than ye’d think, actually,” said the old sailor with
the wooden clogs and single eye. Several more sailors stepped
forward in ranks between the Heroes, wielding boathooks and
oars.
Cyrus smiled grimly. “Great. Looks like we might stand
half a chance after all.”
The one-eyed sailor chuckled darkly. “Aye, sir. Takes more
than a few swashbucklin’ lizards ta scare me.”
“Glad to hear it,” Cyrus replied, rainwater dripping off his
nose. “Look out! Here’s the next wave!”
The second wave of Ransha swung over the railing, but
the hardy sailors of the merchant vessel stepped forward and
braced their assorted weapons.
Oversized lizards slammed into the oars and boathooks and
fell flailing into the sea. But there were simply too many for the
few sailors to deal with, for then the third wave landed. Then
the battle truly commenced. Seven Heroes and fewer than a
dozen seamen faced over fourscore trained and armed Ranshan
warriors, and the victor was anything but certain.
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Ransha said, rubbing his claws together. “Let him aboard, then
dessstroy the other vesssel.”
Another Ransha swung across the gap between the two vessels,
intent on wreaking havoc. His havoc remained unwrought,
though, as the moment he crossed the gunwale onto the mer-
chant ship, Cyrus stepped forward and thrust his palm upward
into the pirate’s jaw. The Ransha fell to the planks, neck
snapped, twitching slightly.
Cyrus took hold of the rope, and pushed himself off the
ship. The wind whistled around him as he swung through the
air, the chill rain stinging his face.
And then he was on the deck of the opposing ship. Cyrus
let go of the rope and slid across the wet planks, knocking
down one of his scaled antagonists and stealing his weapon, a
flat-topped, wave-bladed sword.
Then his foes were atop him. Cyrus lashed out in all direc-
tions as Ranshan pirates stabbed at him with pikes and blades,
trying to find a gap in his guard.
I can’t use my magic, or they’ ll know who I am, Cyrus thought
as he embedded his blade in an opponent’s skull, then spun and
used the corpse to block an incoming spear. But it sure would
be handy right about now if I could . . .
“Cyrusss Sssolburg!” someone bellowed from across the
ship.
Cyrus kicked another pirate over the railing, then looked
across the deck. A Ransha head and shoulders taller than the
rest dressed in an oiled cloak and a magnificent tricorner hat
stood on the opposite deck, pointing a cutlass at him. His scales
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•••
The bolt of lightning Cyrus pulled from the sky was several
orders of magnitude larger than he had been expecting. It
struck him and split, scattering into a dozen smaller bolts that
struck the Ransha surrounding him, blasting them off the deck
or slaying them outright.
It also wiped Cyrus from the deck, or, rather, through it.
“By the Ssseven!” the Ransha swore. “Leftenant! Find the
Hero!”
“I’m right here,” Cyrus said, crawling out of the smoking
hole in the deck. The bolt had knocked him down into the
ship’s interior. He felt his hair steaming from the contact with
the heated air around the bolt.
He saw that he’d caused quite a bit of damage. More than
he’d meant to, actually. The lightning bolt had punched him
through three of the ship’s six decks and charred twenty feet
of planking in every direction around the hole. A half-dozen
twitching Ransha lay outside the blast radius, their electro-
cuted spasms made worse by the pouring rain. To add a Cherry
of Malevolence to the Cake of Destruction, a portion of the
blast had even put a crack in the vessel’s main mast.
Cyrus climbed the rest of the way out and stretched his arms
and neck. “Now what were you saying about your employer?”
“Ah, in good time, Sssolburg,” the Ransha said. “Firssst,
allow me to introduce myssself. I am Vesssuviusss Ypsssilon,
Ssscourge of the Ssseven Ssseasss.”
“Takes a lot of time and hissing to spit that out, doesn’t
it?”
“’Tisss worth it for a proper title,” Vesuvius said, planting
his clawed feet squarely on the deck. “Now, I have ordersss from
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“Agzina sicayim, you albino pic!” the pirate swore. “If you
won’t do it, I will!” He reached out and slapped his palm onto
the diamond’s surface.
“No! Don’t touch—” the pale men yelled in unison, but it
was too late.
The pirate’s face registered first shock, then intense pain
as he screamed aloud into the storm. He turned his wild-eyed
gaze on Cyrus.
A blow like a Titan’s hammer smashed into Cyrus’s stom-
ach, sending him hurtling across the deck, through the guard
railing, across the gap of choppy water, and through the planks
of the ship he’d started out on. His body punched a hole near
the waterline. When the ship rolled back to starboard again,
the boat began taking water.
“Stop this madman, quickly,” said one of the pale men.
He gestured at the wide-eyed and gibbering pirate sergeant.
The light from the crystal blistered the sergeant’s hands, but he
seemed unable to let go of it.
“I cannot,” replied the other, looking into the pirate’s
twisted face. “His mind has broken. If I touch it now, he may
harm my mind as well.”
“I’ ll kill all of ’em!” the sergeant yelled, choking as the veins
in his face and neck began to stand out. “GrraAAAH!”
Three things happened simultaneously. First, hairline fis-
sures appeared like a spiderweb across the surface of the over-
sized diamond device, prompting looks of horror on the faces
of both the pale men. Second, the ship bearing the Heroes
shuddered, and with a splintering crack, rent itself in half, spill-
ing men and cargo into the stormy water. Last, the sergeant’s
eyes went from wide-eyed fear and fury to frozen open and so
bloodshot that there was no white visible in them.
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“Kris!”
Kris’s ears barely picked up the shout as they swiveled
toward the sound. She turned her head to see who had yelled.
Cyrus swam toward her, pushing a damaged life raft. “Get
in and raise the tarp!” he shouted.
Kris released her grasp on the crate and struck out across
the waves toward the boat. Reaching it, she clambered inside
and began setting up the foul-weather shelter included with
most life rafts.
Cyrus heaved himself in beside her and lay on his back,
breathing heavily as the rain pounded down on his face.
The lifeboat was no more than twenty feet long and five
feet wide. It was more like a longboat than a lifeboat, but it
had a collapsible tarpaulin over the stern for bad weather and
a footlocker helpfully but unimaginatively labeled TOOLS in
large red letters. Beside it was another locker labeled, just as
bluntly, FOOD. Water two inches deep covered the floor and
was seeping in from somewhere Kris couldn’t see. Its surface
rippled constantly from the pounding rain and rocked off the
boat in the waves.
Cyrus looked like he’d been drowned, smacked with a
gigantic meat tenderizer, run through a laundry wringer, set
on fire, drowned again, and then used as ballista ammunition.
“Are you all right?” Kris asked worriedly.
Cyrus shook his head. “No,” he groaned. “I just got punted
through the side of the ship. My back hurts like the Ninth
Torment.”
“Here, let me get this set up,” Kris said, looping a bit of rope
about the gunwale of the boat to secure the tarpaulin before
kneeling down next to her mate. “Can you move to under the
shelter?”
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