I Only Summon Villainesses

Fargo’s hand moved to his sword.

The moment it did, everything changed.

Derry’s voice cut across the deck like a blade. “Stations! Now!”

The crew scattered in practice precision, as though they’d been waiting for this. Every casual lean against the railing, every idle stance near a rope — all of it had been positioning.

Fargo drew his blade, blood still streaming from his nose, and lunged toward Kassie.

He didn’t reach her.

Derry’s massive hand caught the officer’s wrist mid-swing. The grip was brutal — I heard something creak — and then Derry twisted, redirecting the momentum, and hurled Lord Fargo off the deck.

The man flew, cleared the railing and crashed onto the boarding bridge with a wooden crack. The planks splintered beneath him but held, and Fargo scrambled, trying to rise.

“Bridges!” Derry roared.

Three crew members moved as one. Axes came down on the ropes securing the boarding bridges. They struck and struck until it stuck — a crew member wrenched it free and swung again.

And finally the bridges fell away, plunging into the churning water below. Fargo barely managed to grab the railing of his own ship as the wood disappeared beneath his feet.

Kassie was already moving. She grabbed the unconscious soldier by his collar and tossed him casually toward the gap between ships. He sailed through the air and crashed onto the Naval vessel’s deck in a heap.

“Sails!” Derry bellowed. He was already striding toward the helm, his massive frame eating distance with each step. “All canvas! Move your asses!”

The deck erupted into controlled chaos.

I stood there for a moment, watching crew members scramble up rigging like spiders, unfurling sails I hadn’t even known existed. Hidden canvas dropped from secondary mast. At that moment, I realized… this ship had been running light.

Po appeared beside me, grinning despite the situation. “Mr. Cade! You might want to hold onto something!”

“What—”

Derry reached the helm and seized the wheel.

And the ship lurched.

I stumbled, grabbed the nearest rope, and felt the deck tilt beneath my feet. The sails caught wind with a sound like thunder cracking, and suddenly we were moving, cutting through the water like a blade through silk.

Behind us, the Naval Prefecture ships scrambled to respond. I could see officers shouting, crews rushing to their own sails. But they’d been caught flat-footed. Their boarding bridges were gone. Their commander was bloodied and screaming orders from the wrong deck.

We had a lead.

Derry spun the wheel, and the ship banked hard to starboard. I slid across the deck, barely keeping my grip, and watched the horizon swing wildly.

“How—” I managed.

“Captain knows these waters!” Po shouted over the wind. His tail was wagging despite everything. “Every current, every wind pattern! Those big ships can’t match us in the channels!”

The Naval vessels were turning now. Slower than us, but turning. Three of them, spreading into a formation that would cut off escape routes.

Except Derry wasn’t running straight.

He spun the wheel again — another hard turn, this time to port — and aimed us directly at a stretch of water that looked no different from any other.

Then the ship dropped. The deck fell away beneath my feet for half a heartbeat, my stomach rising into my throat, before we slammed back onto the surface and shot forward even faster.

“Current!” Po explained, his eyes bright with excitement. “Undercurrent! The big ships can’t ride it — too heavy! They have to go around!”

I looked back. The Naval ships had split — two trying to follow, one breaking wide to intercept. But the two behind us were falling back, their heavy hulls unable to catch the current Derry had found.

The third ship, though.

It was faster than the others and sleeker. It was already cutting across our projected path with alarming speed.

Derry saw it too. His eyes narrowed, hands steady on the wheel, reading something in the water I couldn’t see.

“Nisha!” he called.

She appeared at his side instantly. “Captain.”

“Thirty degrees starboard, there’s a sandbar they don’t know about. They’ll have to brake or beach. When they do, we cut behind them.”

“And if they don’t brake?”

“Lord Fargo is stupider than he looks.” Derry’s grin was savage. “Either way, we win.”

I watched Nisha relay orders to the crew, watched sails adjust by degrees, the ship’s angle shifting subtly, observed Derry’s eyes track the intercepting vessel like a predator watching prey.

The Naval ship was closing fast.

So fast that I could see the crew on their deck now. See them readying something — grappling hooks, maybe, or harpoons. They were going to try to catch us before we could pass.

“Captain—” someone started.

“Wait.”

The ship was almost on us. A hundred meters… Fifty. I could see individual faces now, officers pointing, shouting.

“Captain—”

“Wait.”

It seemed to have gotten closer twenty meters now…

Derry spun the wheel.

Our ship banked hard — impossibly hard — the deck tilting until I was sure we’d capsize. Water sprayed across the bow. Ropes groaned under strain.

And the Naval ship shot past us.

They tried to turn and follow. But they were moving too fast, committed to their intercept trajectory, and the water ahead of them—

The sandbar.

I heard the impact before I saw it. A grinding, crunching sound of wood meeting sand at speed. The Naval ship lurched, its bow riding up onto the hidden bar, and suddenly it wasn’t a ship anymore — it was an obstacle, dead in the water, the crew tumbling across the deck.

We slipped behind them like a ghost.

The two pursuing ships were too far back now. The channels ahead twisted and narrowed — passages that Derry navigated without hesitation, spinning the wheel, calling adjustments, reading the water like text on a page.

A few minutes passed behind us and the Naval vessels fell away, first turning into specks on the horizon. Then nothing.

Derry released the wheel with a long exhale, rolling his massive shoulders.

“Someone get me a drink,” he rumbled. Then he turned and looked at me.

His expression was unreadable.

“You.” He pointed one thick finger at my chest. “That was stupid.”

I opened my mouth to respond but Derry intercept right again, grinning.

“But I liked it!”