Twenty-two months after the fall of Alness, the Mongoose and Meerkat have been hired to lay claim to the salvage of a wrecked ship.

In “Wreck of the Cassada”, Jim Breyfogle continues the Mongoose and Meerkat’s grand tour of exotic locations, this time under water, as the duo is hired to claim the shipwrecked hulk of the Cassada for a local baron. It’s a simple job, or so it seems, as all they need to do is retrieve the keel plate from the wreck and attest that the ship was truly abandoned. But rivals seek to claim the myriad treasures stranded in the sea, so the Mongoose and the Meerkat will have to forcibly ensure the wreck is deserted–even if it means feeding the sharks swirling around it.

Mangos is the Mongoose, a skilled, boastful, and hotheaded swordsman, while Kat is the Meerkat, a beautiful yet mysterious woman who favors the oblique approach to her well-chosen blade. Together, they’ll take on any job to keep their purses full and their cups overflowing.

Mangos often serves as the perspective character for the series, as Kat still has too many secrets to be shared. As such, he is often placed in situations are better suited to Kat’s subtlety than a swordsman’s bravado. Over the course of the tales, his impulsiveness has been tempered by how Kat’s knowledge has given the pair more options in their various jobs than just hack and slash. As a result, Mangos often becomes a secondary character in the stories while we wait for Kat’s cleverness to carry the day.

This is not one of those stories.

After a run of stories building on the lore of Alness and navigating various intrigues and deceptions, “The Wreck of the Cassada” returns to the basics of the series: imaginative action inspired by exotic locations. And if the plot is relatively straightforward. you can always count on a bit of a twist.

Mangos and Kat are muscle, meant for clearing the shipwreck’s decks of rival salvage teams. This job, for once, is completely in Mangos’s wheelhouse as a fighting man. And retrieving the keel plate from under water, as usual, falls to Kat’s well-stocked grab bag of esoteric skills. That is, until Kat takes a light but bloody wound in the fighting on the Cassada, and the sharks start circling.

Mangos must dive to retrieve the keel plate, another in a long procession of tasks outside his normal skills. But now, he must navigate the rocks and shoals without Kat’s assistance. It’s time to see what the swordsman has learned. And there are more than just sharks looking to make this his final exam.

Like other heroic stories, the question is not will Mangos survive, but how. It is an extension of the Golden Age of Mystery’s games with readers. Where those mysteries teased the reader to figure out the mystery before the detectives, pulp adventure often relies on figuring out what scrap of information or gear will free the hero from whatever locked room they may find themselves in-metaphorically, that is. And where certain sword and sorcery duos are reliant on their swordarms, while underwater, Mangos is forced to rely on the quick thinking and cunning that have become the Mongoose and Meerkat’s calling card. And, more importantly, he’s forced to do so alone.

Not bad for a little punk swordsman that Kat found drunk in a bar.

For the relative lack of lore this time around, there still is an unavoidable feeling of a stage being set for some future spectacle. Cirsova editor P. Alexander has purchased 18 Mongoose and Meerkat stories, and we’re right around the center mark of that run. The ever-present opening that states how many months have passed since the fall of Alness comes across more as a countdown instead of a passing of time. And the stories have recently centered around gaining various advantages. In “The Wreck of the Cassada”, this is the favor of the Bursa, one of the notables of the city of Alomar.

“When dealing with the Bursa,” the Hand said, “you take anything he will pay.”

“No,” said Kat, “that we won’t do. But it might be useful to have him indebted to us.”

And as Mangos’s role expands from hired muscle to diver, the promises of the Bursa’s favor grow. What the Mongoose and Meerkat might call in this powerful marker for is yet unknown. Most of the mysteries of the series remain open, including the many around Kat. But another piece of the puzzle surrounding the inevitable conclusion may have fallen into place.

The world of the Mongoose and Meerkat may be a magical world, but most of the threats faced by the duo are human and inventive applications of natural phenomena. What Mangos discovers under the sea would, in the hands of another writer, have been reduced to the mainstay of a mere sea monster. As to what he finds, well, that is left to the reader. But it is refreshing to see a series where the tricks of the non-magical are as inventive and varied as the mages that fill many of today’s fantasies.

All in all, it continues to be a pleasure to open up each new issue of Cirsova to be greeted by the latest Mongoose and Meerkat adventure as, in the words of Mangos, they “pursue without asking what we chase, and when we catch it, let us chase again.”