Rodion ran through the crumbling hallways of the castle prison towards the cell block where the slaves were kept. Bits of rubble fell on his head and shoulders with every roar of cannon fire from the sea. Candles were being snuffed out by falling debris, and it was getting harder to see inside the already dimly-lit corridors.

The horrific smell of slavery betrayed the location of the African cell block. In Rodion’s block, where the deserters and prisoners of war were kept, it only smelled of piss and sewage. In the slave’s cells, the smell of all manner of human leavings mingled with the lingering stench of blood and death.

“Ogonna!” he cried out, remembering the name of the slave he had shared a tender moment with so long ago, “I am here to set you free!”

In the darkness, Rodion had to slow down to a walk. To help him find his way, he ran his hands along the walls. Soon, his fingers slipped from the hard lime walls onto the cold metal bars of a prison cell.

A weak, claw-like hand reached out and grabbed Rodion’s sword arm. He instinctively jerked it free and turned to face the hand’s owner.

“Nceda usincede!” cried a weak voice from within the cell. “Please, help us!”

A lump formed in Rodion’s throat. He was reminded of the days he spent in Tatar captivity, and he wasted no time freeing the Africans so they would not share the same fate. Rodion pressed his four-barreled pistol at the cell’s padlock and opened fire, releasing a human deluge of slaves that had been crammed into a cell made for a quarter of their number.

“Run back down the way I came to get to the armory!” Bellowed Rodion as he prepared to shoot the padlock off the next cell, “Every man must arm himself and fight! Today is the day you reclaim your humanity!”

Overcome with deep feelings of revenge, the men that were slaves no more whooped the war cries of their many languages and charged down the corridor. As Rodion shot off more locks, the cries grew louder and more violent. In the midst of the frenzy, Rodion shouted,

“Ogonna? Does anyone know Ogonna? I need to find her!”

But no one could understand him, or no one cared to reply. Vengeance was on the forefront of the mind of every slave, and they were determined to soak the white sand in British blood.

As Rodion opened up more cells, he began to lose hope that Ogonna could be saved at all. They met so long ago, and Garlington had indeed promised to sell her on that very day.

“Perhaps she is among this multitude,” he muttered to himself, “if she is not, I can save all these souls at the very least. Their violence will be her justice.”[https://i.imgur.com/u30LgOi.png]

“Where the bloody hell is Captain Rochat?!”

Garlington watched his fortress fall around him from his office balcony that overlooked the castle courtyard. A sense of dread crept closer every minute. From his vantage point overlooking the courtyard, he saw his men run about aimlessly as cannonballs burst the ground around them, unable to return fire at the Peregrine in the distance.

In one place, a round from the Peregrine had punched through a tree, crushing a guard that had been using it as cover. In another, a ball had hit a man square in the chest and exploded him into a fine pink mist. On the ramparts, two brave men had attempted to aim one of the fort’s guns towards the Peregrine, but a shot crumbled the wall beneath them, sending them plummeting into the rubble to their death.

Suddenly, the guns in the distance stopped firing. Garlington’s men used this moment of respite to form up and consolidate their defenses. Gunners rushed up to the few batteries that had not been reduced to rubble, and infantry took their positions on the castle ramparts in anticipation of an enemy attack from the beach.

With shaking hands, Garlington fetched his spyglass and looked out into the distance to see that the enemy vessel had indeed launched jolly boats for a shore party.

“The fools…” he said to himself, “They’ll be cut apart by the castle’s batteries before any of them lays a ragged toe on my beach. This battle is over.”

In the courtyard below, a voice cried out,

“Matem todos! A vingança é nossa!”

At this, the double doors of the prison compound burst open. Hundreds of slaves flooded into the courtyard armed with muskets, clubs, pistols, and the whips of their former slave drivers. The men defending the castle gate died first, cut down by the furious wailing, crying mob before they could even discharge their weapons.

Garlington watched in horror as the throng of freed slaves ran up the stairs to the batteries and butchered the artillerymen, whose screams for help went unheeded by their comrades, who thought it better to jump over the walls and dash their heads against the rocks below.

The governor had seen enough. He burst out of his office and summoned his cadre of life guards to protect him as he made his way out the castle through its rear gate. His ship, the Baron’s Reply, was anchored further down the shore, away from the violence. It was time to beat a hasty retreat.

Under the cover of the chaos around him, Garlington and his men managed to slip out of the castle undetected, gathering every able-bodied Briton they came across to crew the Baron’s Reply and escape with them. Soon, the governor and his crew –a quarter of the two hundred men that normally crewed the man of war – had found themselves jolly boats by the beach, and were now rowing towards the ship that would be their salvation.

A league away on the quarterdeck of a French polacre now named the Muhalif, Aidar Pasha gazed through his spyglass at the tiny specks on the water that seemed to be jolly boats making their way towards what looked like a sixty-four-gun man-of-war in the distance.

“Well, we can’t have that,” he said to himself as he collapsed his spyglass. “Monsieur Chuquet! Votre attention s'il vous plaît!”

“Oui, pacha?” cried a sailor descending from the ship’s ratlines.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Toutes les voiles dehors, naviguer face au vent! We want to kill that English behemoth yonder before she wrecks everyone’s day. We have windage and the Vengeance is too far off to make a difference. It’s up to us. Everyone, look lively now, vite! Vite!”

The swift-sailing Muhalif turned and presented its starboard side to the Baron’s Reply. She only had twelve guns to the Baron’s eighty, and every man on board knew that their lives depended on sinking the jolly boats before the large man-of-war could be crewed.

The gunners, eager at the chance to send Englishmen to the bottom of the sea, loaded and fired the cannons with such speed that the powder monkeys could barely keep up.

Cannonballs flew over the heads of Garlington and his men, rowing like madmen to reach the safety of the Baron’s Reply. The ocean around them turned white from all the rounds plummeting into the water as well as the men’s frantic rowing.

From his vantage point on the Muhalif’s quarterdeck, Aidar Pasha pounded the railing in frustration.

“This is like shooting at a cockroach with a volley of musket fire! Damn them! Starboard battery!” he said in French, “Bring all guns to bear on the ship itself! See if we can sink it!”

Amidst a cacophony of orders in French, the polacre turned very slightly and readjusted its guns to fire on the Baron’s stern. As the first volley let loose, Aidar Pasha looked through his spyglass to see that the cannonballs were merely bouncing off the Baron’s hull. It was if they were throwing rocks at a man in full armor. Amidst the bombardment, the jolly boats had reached the vessel, and now the men were scrambling to get into the ship.

“Siktir… All hands! We shall close to ram the bastards!”

“Comme un bélier? C'est quoi ce merdier?!”

“Yes, we are going to ram them! Full sails, into the devil’s gut!”

[https://i.imgur.com/u30LgOi.png]

Eirene’s boots splashed into the shallow surf as she jumped off her jolly boat at the head of two dozen of the Peregrine’s marines. With their rolled-up shirt sleeves and headscarves in place of their red coats and hats, the men looked very much like the pirates they said they would become.

The castle garrison had managed to form an ad hoc defense on the beach. Soldiers took cover behind rocks and bits of debris to take pot shots at Eirene and her landing party. Musket balls whizzed over her head and kicked up the sand where they landed near her feet. Between their position on shore and the line of British defenses was a hundred meters of open sand.

With a shaking hand, Eirene drew her sword and shouted, “Peregrine’s Marines! Fix bayonets!”

Beside her, a man went down just as he fastened his bayonet onto the lug of his musket. She ignored this and steeled herself as she raised her sword into the air.

“Charge the enemy! Leave no one breathing!”

With a loud roar, the marines poured onto the beachhead and ran at their former allies through a hail of gunfire and the course, shifting sand that caused many to slip and fall. Eirene was right behind them, screaming to quell the fear that beat within her chest.

As she trudged through the wet, sinking sand, she lost her footing and fell on her face just as a musket ball whizzed over her head and struck a man behind her. Never before had she been at death’s mercy as she was on this beach. Part of her wanted to get up, and part of her wanted to lay down on the beach where she was safe.

Being cut down by an enemy’s sword face to face was one thing, but being cut down by an anonymous bullet was another. All around her, the marines charged on towards the enemy defenses even as their comrades fell around them. She grit her teeth, enraged by her own inaction.

Yet she had to go. Rodion was in within those castle walls, counting on her to rescue him. And she had to prove to herself that she was no toy soldier – she was a proud Greek that shared the blood of Leonidas and Achilles. She would not falter, she would not be afraid. She would rise and fight. Cursing shouts at the reaper, she rose once more to her feet to rally her men to victory.

A bullet struck Eirene down, and she collapsed. With wide, quivering eyes, she could only look on as her blood stained her green uniform red. The figures in the distance began to grow blurry and the world seemed to slow down around her. She fixed her gaze on a point on the beach, something to give her the drive to push forward.

An enemy soldier reloaded his weapon in the distance. He must have been the one that shot her. She would make sure that he paid dearly for that. She stretched out her hand and grabbed a fistful of sand, pulling herself closer, crawling towards him one handful of sand at a time. But her vision blurred even more. She thought that she saw another man in a red coat come up behind the soldier and run him through with a sword. But she was so very tired, and Eirene closed her eyes to sleep.

The slaves had overrun the castle’s defenses and were now pouring onto the beach, attacking redcoats with muskets, blades, and the chains that they had struck off of their feet. At the forefront of the angry mob, Rodion pulled his shashka out of a British soldier that had not reloaded fast enough to engage him.

All around him, the war cries of a dozen tribes shook the collapsing walls of the castle. The symbol of their bondage was ablaze, and their enemies lay dead or scattered around them. The Peregrine’s marines now joined them in the fight to capture the last of the defenders, and soon, it was all over.

Cheers of victory echoed over the pops and booms of joyful musket fire. Rodion himself raised his shashka into the air and cried aloud in his own tongue,

“Svoboda! Mi pobedili!”

Indeed, they had won their freedom. Every man and woman was now free to return home and see their families and tribespeople again, and with this act of victory, Rodion felt that he had finally vanquished the ghost of his own slavery that had been tormenting him for so long. The only thing that could make it better was a kiss from Eirene.

With a smile on his face and sweat on his brow, he made his way to the beach. There, Rodion’s smile vanished. A Peregrine marine, one of the men that he had shared a drink with in days past, was now nothing but a blood-stained corpse sprawled on the sand. The wind carried the weak cries of the wounded who clung to life into Rodion’s ears, and a lump formed in his throat as he witnessed the few survivors minister to their dying comrades with words of peace, for there was nothing else they could do.

“Captain!” cried out Appleton’s familiar voice. He ran up to Rodion and looked relatively unscathed, but his countenance bore a deep terror. “Sir,” he said, panting, “It’s the lieutenant. She’s…”

Rodion’s eyes widened, “Where is she?”

“She’s over yonder, sir,” Appleton pointed to a group of marines huddled in a spot on the beach. The bullet-riddled Union Jack fluttered above them, braced in the arms of a weeping color bearer.

Rodion shoved Appleton aside and sprinted towards the scene. There, resting on a blanket made from the wool coats of the enemy dead, was Eirene. Her wound had been hastily bandaged, but she seemed to be fading. her eyes were barely open and her lips moved, but he heard no sound. He knelt beside her and held her in his arms, pressing his lips to her forehead in a tender kiss as tears streaked down his face.

“I am here, Eirene. Who has done this to you? I promise I will lay them low and grind their bones into powder…”

Rodion stopped as her cold hand caressed his cheek.

“Agapi mou…” she whispered, “Only the brave know how to forgive… be brave.”

With those words, her hand fell limp, and a last gasp left her lips.

The marines lowered their heads in silence, and Rodion held her in a tight embrace as he let his tears flow freely into the soft black hair of her corpse. The Cossack had never heard her call him agapi before, and he would sear that word into his mind forever. It crushed his heart that, in her dying breath, she forbade him his revenge. But as he gazed towards the rolling ocean, he knew that only vengeance would quell his anger.

In the sea beyond, the battle raged on – Rodion saw that Aidar’s Muhalif had engaged a much larger British vessel, and was closing in to ram it. The ship’s size and opulence reeked of Garlington, and the British governor still had much to pay for.

With a parting kiss, Rodion laid Eirene’s body down on the earth.

“Your journey to the afterlife will be paid with coins from Garlington’s own purse. This I promise you.” He stood up, wiped the tears from his eyes, and said to his marines, “Brothers, fetch a boat. The governor dies today.”