“Can I take these guys?” Marco whispered. “In a fight. If we had too.”

Riv took a second to answer. “Dello? Absolutely. He’s a Rower. He’s strong, but he can’t fight. Gamble? No way. His dad paid to have him leveled. He’s at fifteen, last I heard, with a spear class.”

“Damn. And the last guy?” Marco asked.

“Rice is somewhere in between. He has more levels than you, but he sucks. Fights with daggers, but it surprised everyone when he got a combat class.”

“Huh.”

In the meantime, Gamble seemed to have made up his mind.

“You two stay here and make sure nobody leaves. I’m gonna go sweep the dungeon,” Gamble said as he stepped out of the light and his footfalls in the sand clomped away from the boat towards the dungeon.

“You sure you don’t want help?” Rice, the first voice, asked.

“You’d slow me down. Now stop talking and get watching. If they sneak by you…”

“I got it,” Rice said. “Big trouble. Go clear your dungeon.”

Gamble wandered off into the distance, grumbling under his breath about something. Marco waited in the dark until he was gone.

“We have to take back the boat. And we have to make sure they won’t chase us. Could they catch us, Riv?” Marco asked.

“Probably. Dello is a good Rower. Fast. That’s why he could get here from home in the first place. You could beat them. Or kill them. So long as Gamble isn’t there, they shouldn’t be too much trouble.”

Killing hadn’t occurred to Marco. He had never done it before, but if he was going to eventually have to, these guys weren’t the worst start he could imagine. They had left a friend to die alone. That was one of the most terrible crimes he could think of, and the sea was never going to be a friendly place.

“You want to do that?” Marco asked Riv only. It had to be his call. If Elisa had a problem with it later, they could handle that then. “We probably could, like you said.”

“My choice?” Riv raised his eyebrows. “Just like that?”

“Your justice to take. Or not.”

“I wouldn’t. Gamble’s dad has a lot of resources. That’s how he gets away with stuff like this. Although he’s never gone this far before. Either way, you don’t want that much heat.”

“Heat I can handle. It’s a drop in the bucket at this point,” Marco said.

Riv rubbed his cheeks and shook his head.

“It’s more than just heat. It’s also… look. Have you ever had a kitten?” Riv said.

“What?”

“A kitten. My mom got one a while back, for company when dad was away. They hurt things, but you can’t blame them for it. They don’t know what they are doing.”

“Those are adult men, Riv.”

“Sure. But dumb ones. They do whatever they want, and whenever they accidentally break something, Gamble’s dad pays to have it fixed. I doubt they even know there’s something he can’t fix. Not really. If it’s up to me, I just want to teach them a lesson. Something that maybe gives them a chance to mellow out before they really do kill someone.”

Marco thought for a bit. They needed three things, as he saw it. They needed to disable the guys guarding their ship, to take their ship back, and to keep the little nasty one from effectively chasing them. And they needed to do it all fast. It wouldn’t take Gamble long to run that dungeon if he was a higher level than Marco.

“Okay. I’m going to go in and fight. You two gang up on the Rower. I’ll take down Rice. Then we’ll hurt their boat somehow. Put a hole in it. Hopefully, that gives us enough of a lead that we can get away.”

“A Rower can patch that kind of thing,” Elisa commented.

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“Yeah, but it takes time. That’s the best option we have. Riv, hold that guy still for Elisa if you can’t take him out yourself.”

“Are you sure you will be fine fighting alone?” Elisa whispered. “He’s higher leveled.”

“Probably. If you get done, come help. Otherwise, I’ll do my best to stay alive.”

They snuck towards the lantern-light in the dark. Marco was hopeful they’d get close enough for a true ambush before they were spotted, but it wasn’t meant to be. They were close but not truly in attacking range when they heard a yelp. The lantern flared up brighter as someone poured more magical power into it, and suddenly all five of them could see each other.

“You hold still! We are taking you…”

Marco was already moving, ignoring anything and everything that Rice could have possibly said. His weapons sprang from his belt as Rice pulled two daggers and also leapt into the fray. The dagger user caught Marco’s sword on one and deflected his gun with the other.

He was fast. For a moment, Marco wondered how Riv had thought this guy sucked at fighting. Then, when the guy stood there with a gloating look on his face but making no effort to follow up on his attacks, Marco understood. It was a game to him. He didn’t seem to understand it wasn’t for other people. That Marco wasn’t going to stop until he and his friends were safe.

He took full advantage of that mentality without so much as a thought when the butt off his gun swung back down, slamming on the crown of Rice’s head and knocking him out cold.

“Huh. Neat.”

Marco ran over to where his friends had already managed to pin the screaming Rower to the ground and knocked him unconscious with a single kick to his chin.

“Can you two move? I mean really move. Because we have to go.”

“Just a second to catch my breath,” Riv heaved. He was pale and a little winded. “Then I’ll be ready.”

“Elisa, get the tarp off the ship. I’ll disable the rowboat.”

Marco ran up to the boat, which was larger than his ship by a fair margin. He shot it with his gun, hoping to punch a hole straight through it. The shot thudded into the wood, leaving a dent but not seriously hurting the boat.

“It’s strong!” Marco exclaimed.

“It would be. His dad bought it for him. It wasn’t cheap.”

“I’ll try to stab through and pry a whole board out.”

Riv shook his head.

“There’s no time. Just set it adrift. That kick hit Dello hard. He won’t be up for a while. Rice and Gamble won’t take the boat out without him, and dragging it back to shore won’t be easy. With any luck, they’ll get stuck here.”

“I guess they can’t starve.”

“They won’t have time to. Daddy Gamble will send someone looking for them soon enough.”

“All right then. Let's do it.” Marco set his foot on the boat, cut the rope securing it to shore, and shoved it into the water as far as he could. Whatever enhancements the boat had, one of them must have been designed to help it get through surf more easily. It slid away through the water like a stone sliding across ice, settling a good fifty or sixty feet out before bobbing placidly in place. “That should do it.”

Elisa and Riv worked on The Foolish Endeavor for a moment, freeing it. Marco could see that there was something different about the ship and that, luckily, its upgrade had fully finished so that it could be moved around. A few notifications hit Marco as he beheld the ship, but there was no time to deal with them when a stronger-than-him Gamble might be back any time to see why his friends were screaming. The tarp fluttered to the ground, and the three of them spent as little time as possible pushing the ship back into the water.

Dragging Riv, Marco stomped into the water and more or less threw him over the railing before jumping in himself. Elisa, unburdened by an entire additional human, kept pace. They managed to reach the side of the ship, which Riv clung to weakly as Marco scaled the side, untied a rope, and dropped it to the others.

When he climbed back down, Marco paused for a few seconds before issuing instructions. “Bad news guys. We need to get her up and running now. I mean five minutes ago. Sorry, Riv. Can you start rowing away from the shore? As much as you can.”

The tired man nodded and started working on the simpler of the tasks needed to get the ship moving.

“Why are we in such a hurry?” Elisa casually untied a few knots, freeing some canvas sail from the mast. “You can’t be that eager to try the ship out.”

“Because, Elisa. Listen.”

The sound of the water hitting the side of the ship was overlapped by a softer noise of a shrill, distant voice screaming at someone, then the splashing of water as the voice started to move closer.

“The earlier scream from the Rower would have carried to the entrance of the dungeon,” Marco explained. “Now, Gamble’s swimming out. And if he gets here, we are dead. Now get to work, and hurry.”

Marco ran back and forth across the deck of the boat like a madman, doing everything he could while pausing to instruct Elisa on the finer points of hurried knot-tying. For once, there was a topic he knew more than her about, and he didn’t have time to crow. The little would-be murderer was coming towards them fast, and the race to get the ship moving was close enough that none of them really knew who would win.

Riv’s rowing helped. But for better or worse, Marco could still hear the sound of splashing water getting closer and closer. There was a part of Marco that wanted to stop and prepare for the incoming fight. But he pushed that urge down as he continued getting the ship ready for sailing.

Finally, with one last burst of activity from Marco, a sail caught wind. They heard a hand slap wood and a dismayed shout as the sail filled and they started to seriously move away from the island.

“Phew,” Marco said. “Good job, Elisa.”

“Thanks.” Elisa leaned on the railing, weakly. “That was too close.”

“But we made it. Now, Riv. Do you still want us to take you home? Because it seems like it might be a nicer place now that your enemies are all trapped on this island.”

“Honestly?” Riv looked wistfully back toward the island. “Yes. This was a lot of fun, but also sort of a lot to take in a single night. Let’s get me home.”