For six months, the Turk and I shared that cell. We had shed our shame and put aside our prejudices of each other, for our isolation bred familiarity. We even had somewhat of a routine. Every day, we would wake up at around the same time and, for exercise, press the soles of our feet together and push as hard as we could in an effort to make the other bend his knees. After this, sometimes Andrei or Eirene would arrive with the first meal of the day. My companions would ask me how I fared and update me on the goings-on above deck, but more often than not it was a marine whom I had never seen before. It was likely that the fresh faces were new replacement troops from Gibraltar, which by Aidar’s reckoning we had reached several days prior.

After mealtime, we would argue to keep our wits sharp. Aidar would often cite words of wisdom from Muslim scholars, which I could not verify, and I would in turn reference the Cossack kharacterniki – our wise men and sorcerers. At no time could one tell when the other was full of shit.

We would stop when Master Ferguson came down below for his daily lectures. Over time, I began to mimic his accent and vocabulary, and my understanding of English grew to such a level that I sounded more and more like a proper Englishman. Ferguson would frequently put me to the test on the knowledge he passed on to me, and was quite pleased at the speed at which I put his lessons to memory. He had even given me a notebook and pencil to write down what I had learned.

Since I wrote in my own language, Ferguson had no idea what I had written down, and in fact the notebook contained a log of interesting conversations Aidar and I had heard from the sailors and marines abovedeck. The deck boards above us were thick, but not airtight. From eavesdropping alone, I had learned that the Peregrine had been ordered back to the Bight of Benin to protect British shipping from pirates in the area. Judging by the number of days we had been out at sea after our resupply at Gibraltar, I reckoned we had indeed made it back there again.

A return trip to West Africa meant that we might encounter Lord Garlington again, and I had not yet told Aidar about him, as there were still some things that I would rather have kept to myself. However, I had kept memories of the wretch buried for far too long, and I thought it would be good if someone could share in my displeasure.

“Have you ever known a man who was so vile that the depths of hell would be too good for him?” I said as I fiddled with a bone from our morning meal.

“I tend to believe that the depths of hell would be suitable punishment for even the most irredeemably evil, but I know what you mean. You are asking me if I have any enemies that I would never forgive until the end of days, yes? Well, no – I know no one of the sort. If I cannot forgive them, then paradise is lost to me. I sense you are going somewhere with this.”

“Our nearest port of call, Cape Coast, is run by a certain English governor named Garlington. He runs the slave market there and takes demonic pleasure in raping his slaves – male and female alike – to rob them of their dignity and crush their spirits just before he sells them off.”

Aidar merely nodded in silence.

“Are you not shocked? Angered?”

“While this is a grave sin, the practice is extremely common. When men have absolute power over other men they will do whatever they please, especially when they consider the men in their possession to be greatly inferior than themselves. You Europeans tend to enslave by race, while we abide by our laws and enslave by religion.”

“Are you trying to justify his actions?” I said, slightly offended.

“No, I am just telling you the realities of the slaving business. What of this man, this Garlington?”

“Well, he believes me to be dead. He sent Captain Barrett to execute me himself.”

“And yet you live, why?”

“Even Barrett, as bad as he is, harbors great disdain for the monster governor of Cape Coast. In fact, I think it’s rather fortunate that I am confined in this cell. If he were to see me again, he would kill both Captain Barrett and myself… just as easily as he killed my other friends…” my voice softened as I remembered Lady Rebecca and Captain Glass, and my heart felt a deep ache within.

“Your friends? It seems to me that being acquainted with you eventually leads to violent demise one way or the other. First your entire Cossack band was destroyed by my people in the old country, and here in Africa your friends suffer destruction at the hands of the British.”

“Don’t joke about that.”

“I apologize, Rodion Ivanovich. I acknowledge I was a little callous. I find that humor is a fine salve to the wounds of despair.”

“If a salve is applied to a wound, then it must be also healed. I find that vengeance is the best healer.”

Aidar wagged his finger, “No, no, no. If that were true, killing me would have brought you peace long ago.”

“Who says it won’t?” I said with a weak chuckle.

“You joke, but remember, our nations are still officially at war. You have a duty to your czarina and I have a duty to my sultan. I hope we never meet in battle. However, I do wish you the best of luck in taking vengeance on these redcoats. That, I would not mind at all.”

The rapid beating of the marines’ drums cut our conversation short. It was a beat to quarters. Above us, dozens of boots scrambled to their positions on the gun decks. I could hear MacRae yelling commands to the lads amidst the cacophony of other voices.

“A beat to quarters?” asked Aidar, looking through the thin slits in the deck boards above us.

“Yes, I believe so. Who knows, this could be your rescue.”

“Or yours,” he shrugged, “as highly unlikely as that may be.”

I expected the violent roar of cannons, but what I heard instead was a rapid thumping sound all over the outer larboard hull.

“Arrow fire. Definitely yours,” I groaned. “Do you think they’ll make it?”

“Judging from the last action we had?” Aidar scoffed, “Highly unlikely.”

The Peregrine’s larboard guns roared their reply to our adversary and rocked the ship, but the thumping continued, and now it came from the stern as well.

“There’s more than one,” I said, rising to my feet, alarmed at the possibility that the ship might actually be overrun.

“Calm yourself, man,” said Aidar. “If my people are victorious, I will make sure no harm comes to you.”

Above us, we heard a loud explosion and the shattering of wood from the Peregrine’s hull, followed by screams.

“Enemy vessel to the starboard side!” Someone shouted, “Fire as she bears!”

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Aidar and I exchanged concerned glances before looking back up towards the gun deck.

“We’re surrounded,” I said.

“That much is obvious,” said Aidar, with a hint of nervousness in his voice. “I wonder if they even know if I’m here?”

The hatch to the brig burst open and Eirene bolted down the stairs, sweating and angry.

“This is madness!” she said through gritted teeth. “We cannot lay our guns low enough to fire on the enemy, and the marines can’t even raise their heads over the gunwales for fear of getting nicked with an arrow! I had to crawl all the way here from the quarterdeck, so you two should show your damn gratitude!”

“Gratitude for what?”

“We need every man on deck for this action. My orders, not the captain’s. Here!” From her coat pocket, she produced the key to the brig and tossed it to me. “Your weapons are in the armory just ahead of you.”

“Excellent!” I said with a grin, “Time to cut down some Turks!”

Aidar raised an eyebrow.

“Come now, friend Aidar – you said it yourself. We are still at war.”

“Actually,” said Eirene, “They are not Turks at all. We face an entire flotilla of Africans. Likely Maroons – renegade slaves.”

I was taken aback by Eirene’s revelation. These Maroons were likely fighting to keep their freedom from the British, just like my Cossack brethren would have done against Czarina Catherine and her empire. Here I was on the wrong side of the fight, unable to communicate to our assailants that I shared their views of liberty and freedom from oppression. I looked at the key and thought to myself that I had to fight to live, if nothing else.

“I shall meet you back on deck, sir!” said Eirene, already ascending the staircase. “May God be with you.”

“This is a fight for survival,” I said mostly to myself. “If the poor bastards wanted to sink a ship, they should not have chosen the one I was on.”

I grabbed the key and unlocked the cage. It was glorious feeling to be free of those iron bars, but I had no time to relish it. I had to arm myself with all haste, and the only thing that separated me from my shashka was an unlocked wooden door.

I burst into the ship’s armory with Aidar following close behind me. There was normally a marine on watch here, but it seemed that truly every man was on deck, for the armory was completely unguarded. Although every man on board had taken a weapon, and thus many of the racks lay bare, there were a few serviceable muskets that sat in their cradles, calling out to me to be put to their purpose.

However, I ignored the weapons of the common marines and sailors, as my eyes were drawn to an ornate mahogany box that was labeled “Property of Captain Barrett. Do not handle under pain of death.”

Intrigued, I undid the latches on the container and beheld a weapon of beauty, a true Afrodita of the battlefield – a four-barreled flintlock pistol. I took the weapon in my hand and admired the fine gold inlay and woodwork, as well as the engraving on the barrel. However, I could not admire it for too long as I still had to find my shashka. She had been away from me for too long.

“I found your damn butter knife,” said Aidar.

I turned to him and contemplated smashing in his jaw with the butt of my new pistol for referring to my shashka as a butter knife, but he threw my sheathed sword at me, forcing me to catch her.

My anger at his puerile jape dissipated when I held her ruby red scabbard in my hands once again. Unsheathing her, I found her to be in perfect condition, and, seeing my reflection in the blade, I realized that my hair had grown to my shoulder in the six months I had been imprisoned.

“I will never let you part with me again,” I said as I gave the hilt a tender kiss.

“You talk to your sword? What an eccentric you are,” Aidar lifted a mace out of a crate of captured enemy weapons. The shaft was as long as his forearm and the mace head was the size of his fist. “I am only glad I will not have to fight my own people, but I fear our time down here together may have granted us both an aversion to the sun. Once we step out into the fray, we shall be quite blind. Are you prepared?”

“First, we must make our way to the gun deck, and that is still covered by the main deck above. Only there will we be bothered by the sun. Besides, I have fought with smoke in my eyes before. This may not be so different.”

Aidar scoffed, “I doubt that very much.”

We doubled back towards the stairs and ran up to the hatch to the gun deck, but as I reached out and grabbed onto the handle to open it up, the thumping sound of arrows came to an abrupt halt. It is not very often that I hesitate to do anything, but that was one of those rare moments.

“Well,” said Aidar, who stared at me with an annoyed grimace a few steps beneath me, “Do you not wish to rush up there and kill things, Cossack? Hurry up! I cannot stand under your absurdly foul ass all day!”

“They’ve stopped,” I whispered. “Something is very wrong.”

“Perhaps your British friends have already won, then?”

“No, there would be cries of victory. Shouting, cheering. I hear nothing.”

“Perhaps they’re all dead then, and we have the ship all to ourselves? What does it matter, we’ll need to come on deck eventually! Have you no balls?”

I momentarily considered my options, but I came to the conclusion that no matter what we decided to do, Aidar was correct. We would still need to come up on deck. The other alternative was to let whoever was in control of the ship search for us below. I did not want to spent the rest of the voyage scurrying about like a rat in the darkness.

Up it was.

I threw open the hatch and jumped out onto the gundeck, pistol ready to fire at the first man I saw.

Not a soul.

The ship’s guns were still in good order, none had been spiked, but all had been abandoned. Traces of blood on the deck boards led towards the staircase that went up to the main deck. I could not hear the loud sound of boots treading on the deck above me, but as I listened closely, I could hear the soft, muffled sounds of dozens of bare feet. There was no doubt about it now – the Peregrine had been taken.

Aidar emerged behind me, just as ready with his mace. He peered around and muttered something to himself in his own tongue.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he whispered. “You were right that we should be worried. I was merely musing on how horribly we might die. But please, brave and noble Cossack, push onward. I cannot wait to see what the afterlife looks like.”

I ignored his sarcasm and made my way towards the next staircase that led to the main deck. Above me, I heard hushed voices speaking in strange languages that I had never heard before. It was clear that the Maroons had emerged victorious. Then, I heard their feet beat down on the deck, as if they were running, and the voices became silent.

It came to me that none of them were on the gundecks below. The blood on the floor indicated that the gunners had been dragged away from their posts.

“Do you smell that?” said Aidar, sniffing the air.

I picked up a whiff of the scent myself.

“Gunpowder.”

“Yes, but where is it coming from?”

The powder on the gun deck was normally sealed inside casks, was very dark. Only hints of sunlight peeked through from gaps in the deck hatch’s grill. I could barely see what lay ahead of me in the darkness. Then, I heard a soft hissing sound.

By the staircase ahead of us, someone had laid down a sizeable stockpile of powder casks, some of them opened with the powder spilling out. What looked like a long, thin rope ran from the pile of barrels to the deck above, and a tiny flame was quickly burning its way along the rope.

“By the Holy Cross, that’s not a rope!”

Aidar and I sprang towards the lit fuse and tried stomping it out to no avail. Thinking quickly, I swung my shashka and cut the fuse in two, leaving the lit half to smolder and burn out.

“The scoundrels tried to blow us up!” Aidar grimaced and spat on the piece of fuse that almost killed us both.

“Which means that they are no longer here, but they could not have gone so far in such a short time. They are most likely waiting for the magnificent explosion they set up. It is very probable that they will return.” I paused for a moment to consider our next move. “We shall set up an ambush.”

Aidar winced, as if he were in pain, “What, just the two of us? I used to have an inkling of respect for your battle sense, now – puf – that is gone. Evaporated into thin air like my hopes of seeing my family again. With my dying words, be sure that I will curse your stupidity. Now, what is this plan?”

“They are likely to send someone back to the ship to check why it has not been blown to bits. Once they send him down to us, we shall take him hostage and demand that they give us a small watercraft of our own so we may make our escape.”

Aidar scoffed, “And if they send more than one man?”

“We shall take the first man that comes down those steps. Use your mace to keep them at bay, I shall hold my shashka to our captive’s throat.”

“And if they decide that the life of their companion is not worth it and they kill us both?”

“Then I will see you in hell and we shall both burn there forever.”

“Ha!” Aidar laughed, “You may burn forever. Hell is not eternal for Muslims.”

The faint sound of shoeless footsteps returned to the deck above us. I could hear two men arguing with each other in their strange language. Then, slowly, I heard them move towards the hatch above us.

Some of the beams of sunlight from the deck hatch above were blocked by a figure peering through, no doubt inspecting what had possibly gone wrong below. I crept back into the shadows, as did Aidar.

We expected the hatch to fly open, and for the unsuspecting Maroon to descend the steps and walk into our well-laid trap. Instead, I heard a hissing sound, and the hatch briefly opened and shut as someone tossed in a large grenade that bounced down the steps and stopped straight at my feet.