Book 6: Chapter 44 - The Game (RAW)

Chapter 44 - The Game

"For the grace of your hospitality, I offer you this: If it is gold and silver you require, bring me your sick and dying, and by my hand, they will be saved for the price that you dictate. If total rule is your desire, give me lives to feed upon, and I will turn their deaths into strength. Man or great beast, it matters not. The stronger and more violent, the better. Deliver unto me a river of it, and by all that is true, I will deliver this city to you."

- Attributed to Gilgamesh of Uruk to Sultanah Aelayah I the Benevolent.

Detaching ourselves from the Dwarven city was a slow, lazy affair, the movement of a great laborious beast made of a thousand men. The clatter of metal and leather, the creak of wagons rolling. A procession that would end, as such things always did when armed men were involved, in violence. A Dragon, as the mercenaries liked to call it in their hubris and pride. They had no idea, of course, what a Dragon truly was.

I walked alongside Theodore, my great lizard, as we trundled along with the others, my mount behaving like an overly large, enthused dog. Toward the center of our column, I often saw Cordelia preaching, a vision of steel and red fire, telling any who would listen that this was the way of things, the way of a new order. Her words, thanks to her charisma, found fertile soil in a few, creating a small cadre of new believers. I found I could not summon the urge to dissuade her of her notions of my divinity; perhaps it would be useful. They had heard of my deeds, the violence that I had unleashed, a thing that was beyond mortal men.

Larynda, despite everything, was the ever-present font of bubbly cheerfulness. The ease of the acquisition of the Heart of the Mountain further proved that my quest was not a futile one; it was merely an inevitability that she had to walk along with me. The final ingredients, she told me, were a bit more esoteric and would have to be researched. Larynda had suggested that the University of Quas would be a prime location to find more information. I promised we would go there once I had settled my debt with Damien. She thought I was being honorable, for she clung to the stories that Enkidu had told her, but for me, it was simply a matter of enjoying some of my newfound freedom. To enjoy a side quest, a pleasant diversion before the main quest. Now every day was no longer a struggle to survive, and I found myself, despite everything, finally enjoying my stay in this strange and alien world.

“You look all broody, you know—again,” Larynda called out from her seat on a wagon, looking for all the world as if we were on a picnic instead of part of a large body of armed and dangerous men.

“I look broody, as you say, because I am trying to think,” I replied, the response almost rote now, born from hundreds of such exchanges. Elwin, it seemed, had left an indelible impression on my ward.

Ghosts, it seemed, could come in many forms.

The question came to me almost before it was a conscious thought. “Are you happy, Larynda?”

The girl frowned, beautiful features crossed in thought. “Eh? What do you mean? I guess I am. Better than it was before, I guess… just…”

“It is a simple enough question,” I pressed, and beside me Theodore snuffed in agreement.

“Well, if I had to put a word on it, happy might be too strong of a word. Like, happy is when you feel… well, happy… really on top of the world. If I was happy all the time, there wouldn’t be much space for anything else. I suppose then, I am content,” she replied after a few moments of thought.

It was a surprisingly deep answer for the girl—a deep answer for anyone, really—and it caught me completely off guard.

“That is a very interesting way of looking at things,” I managed lamely, now lost in maudlin thought.

Was I happy, or content, as Larynda put it? Was there space in my life for anything other than the endless struggle? I caught a glimpse of Estaza in the wagon ahead and found myself smiling. Despite myself, I felt some of my bitterness dissolving, an illusion that all men allow themselves.

Estaza smiled at me and gave me a wave, and I grinned back like a young boy that, I suppose, I was—or at least had been.

“I will try to hold on to that thought, at least until another person tries to smash my brain in or a large monster tries to swallow me,” I stated half-jokingly.

Both of those possibilities were very darkly real; my powers and the strength of my arm were the only protection I truly had. Or were they?

“Ha, no worries about that, Gil! I’ll just blast them down. My command of Water grows daily… and I can do other stuff, too. Just that it’s a bit less predictable, and it doesn’t really do what I want… but kind of what I feel. It is strange and right all at the same time,” my ward confessed.

I understood. On some primal level, I understood. It was, in a way, similar to my own. The magic had a will of its own… what was I thinking again? It was enough that Larynda commanded great power, and I was in my own way content.

“I am proud that you are doing well in your studies,” was my generic comment.

“You really do sound like an old man sometimes, Gil, you know that? ‘I am proud that you are doing well in your studies,’” she mimicked.

Anyone else and I would have simply backhanded them. A strike that was, more often than not, lethal with my current strength. A simple matter of overwhelming attack power versus a paper-thin defense rating. However, coming from Larynda it was simply water off a duck’s back and triggered no such response from me.

“You up to play a game later, that Chesa game?” piped Larynda, sensing something was off, fearful that she had pressed too far.

“Chess, Larynda,” I corrected. “Yes, we will have time to play once we stop for the day. But the game can also be played in the mind. It will be instructional, and a test of memory. And this way we do not have to wait.”

It was a challenge, a whetstone to grind her intellect against, and a bit of sport all rolled into one. It would be intriguing.

“You are on, Gil!” declared the girl, brightening at once. “So we imagine the board and just… play in our heads?”

“Exactly. Picture it. Picture the board and hold it in your mind,” I instructed, an endeavor that actually challenged me.

The wagons rattled on, harnesses creaking in slow rhythm. I watched the road, the men. In my mind, I saw the sixty-four squares with the opposing pieces arranged in place. Two armies of black and white about to do battle

“I’ll start,” she declared, already drifting into that inner space. “I want the center.”

I saw her first pawn stride forward to claim the center. I answered in kind, my own pawn stepping out to meet hers, then another beside it, the two foot soldiers bristling at one another across the middle.

“You’re trying to copy me,” she muttered after calling out her move.

“I am trying to stop you,” I replied. “This is the standard response.”

She began to develop her pieces. One of her knights hopped out, leaping over pieces to fork a few pawns. A bishop slid out behind it along a dark diagonal, pinning one of my defenders in place: if it moved, something more valuable would die. My rook. My castle.

“You learn fast,” I noted. “You are thinking of threatening my pieces across multiple fronts.”

“See! I learn fast,” she commented. “I can see further ahead now!”

And she could. The picture was crude, but it was there. On my side I answered by bringing my own minor pieces out—my knights securing the center, bishops stretching from corner to corner, my pawns stepping carefully to claim squares without overextending. At each mental step I kept track of threats: what covered what, where the trades favored me, where they favored her.

“You’ve left that pawn hanging,” I pointed out as the column swayed around a bend.

“It’s not hanging,” she shot back. “My bishop can take anything that tries to touch it.”

“Your bishop is also the only thing keeping my knight from forking your king,” I reminded her. “If it moves, you open a hole.”

She went quiet for a moment, replaying it in her mind. “Fine,” she admitted. “Then I’ll bring my other knight out instead and guard it that way.”

“Better,” I said.

Slowly the position grew more tangled. Her bishops started to threaten my pieces that dared step onto their lines. I felt her smug satisfaction even before she spoke.

“If you save the bishop, you lose the rook,” she said, a little too pleased. “If you save the knight, you lose the bishop. You can’t save both.”

“That,” I allowed, “is a fork well spotted. But you have forgotten what covers the squares behind them. I can trade for an equal number of points.”

I imagined my own pawn shuffling forward, snapping the overreaching knight out of existence. Her little tactic collapsed. She groaned. It was a failure of memory rather than strategy or tactics.

“That was rude.”

“That was preparation,” I said. “The pawn was there before your idea. You attacked into a defended square.”

“Then next time I’ll check your stupid little foot soldiers first,” my ward grumbled.

We traded pieces in our heads as the day wore on. Pawns vanished, leaving ragged holes in the once-solid. I traded a knight for a better position. This was the beauty of chess, it represented a war. It represented the sacrifice of it. 

“A shame,” she said anyway, sensing my irritation. “Almost like you’re not perfect.”

“Blasphemy,” I said dryly.

Eventually the position was simplified. Her boldness and failure to press the points advantage cost her dearly. What remained on her side was a battered king and a single pawn, trudging up to try and claim a promotion. My forces had been pared down too, but I still held a single rook. The bare minimum for a checkmate.

“So I’m doomed,” she said.

“Mostly,” I agreed. “But not completely.”

I began to shepherd her in my mind, driving her king toward the corner with my own king stepping closer, my rook always cutting off escape squares—never quite giving check, never quite landing the final blow.

“You will lose at this rate,” I stated bluntly. 

“Maybe… but I like picturing this game, I think I might be onto something. It is sort of fun,” Larynda replied with a customary smile.

The wagons rolled; someone cursed at a pack animal; Theodore snorted and shook his great head. Between my ears, the position tightened like a noose. Her king was forced to shuffle to the corner. Carefully, delicately, I arranged things so that any move she might imagine was either illegal or suicidal.

Silence. I could almost hear her checking, one square after another, rejecting each in turn..

“…I can’t,” she admitted. “Everywhere he can go, he just… dies.”

It was an apt enough expression. Dies.

“And yet,” I said, “I have not actually struck him. He is not in check. Only surrounded by it.”

Her head turned, just enough for me to see her eyes widen as understanding clicked into place.

“That’s… that’s stalemate,” she said. “Right? That stupid thing you told me about where you look completely dead, but because you can’t move anything without cheating, it’s a draw.”

“Correct,” I said. “You have no legal moves. You are not in check. The game is over, and neither of us wins.”

She let out a long breath, then laughed. “So I didn’t lose.”

“No,” I conceded. “You did not lose.”

“You let that happen,” she accused. “You could have finished me off three turns ago. I felt you setting up something nasty.”

“Several somethings,” I said. “But that was not the lesson I wanted to teach.”

“Next time I’m going to win,” she huffed. “Properly. No silly stalemates.”

“Then next time,” I said, smiling despite myself, “I will use every trick I know.”

“You’re on, Gil,” she replied cheerfully. “And don’t you dare go easy on me.”