The bird flew to her and she gave it grains of rice for it’s trouble. It gave her a message for hers.
Alarmed she conjured the chessboard.
I spotted the change, black pawn to .
“That was quick” I said. A response in moments?
“The panther is a quick man.” The queen replied.
“Can he move twice?” I asked, almost rolling my eyes.
“Move twice? He’s a cautious person, he will wait for our response before committing, as is wise.”
Interesting…
The idyllic mountains and the people were too lazy to plan ahead.
Too honorable?
Well I suppose war is pretty pointless if you can’t relax in between turns.
Which is why pawns did most of it right?
Rooks, bishops, queens, just got the kills. Pawns did the dirty work.
And I the King? The best gig of the whole war, I couldn’t even die, the game ended before I did.
At least in chess.
I examined the board, updated now that the panther had made his move.
Black pawn at E six
So I guess I respond with White pawn at E four.
Two pawns under the shadow of one knight, who wouldn’t be able to aid D four, how did that work?
Obviously it was the rules of the game, but what did it mean IRL. Err, in real, Afterlife? Extended Dream? What was going on here?
No doubt the old world would assume I was in a video game.
Disney, the spooks and their insane architect of the simulation fetish… I wouldn’t miss it.
The day passed, breakfast as normal, I went exploring the castle again.
Many of my guards had marched, I suppose that they would be lead by some pawn, E Two… They were all the way at E four by now… in less than twelve… no sixteen… hours? The realm must be small, perhaps I was only a petty king or duke.
I wasn’t sore, so I visited the melee yard and spent most of my time sparring with the few royal guard that stayed, again we donned armor, I craved the feeling of soreness, I wanted to tax my body and feel it fail, for I had not found that edge yet.
Our training ground was open air, a smoothed dirt yard in between the stable and the kennel, to desensitize the animals to the sounds of metal on metal. Perhaps also the men, and myself, to the blazing hostility of the outdoors. Old trees spread their roots into the edge of the training ground making the center the least hazardous place to stand. The castle walls and workshops and workers toiled peacefully around the skeleton garrison and myself as we trained.
We had a sort of time of effectiveness problem. Proper armor is heavy I did eventually get tired, but I guess the lion gets tired much slower than his fellow royal guards. Really, despite our operational security play at anonymizing me behind a helmet. It’s rather obvious to tell which of us is me if you attend one of our training sessions. I’m a little larger than them, a little smoother in motion. I last a bit longer. Though I still have to take breaks and shed armor with regularity.
The lion, or whoever operated this body before me must have been a religious martial artist. For I was the unwitting benefactor. I only had to commit and my body already knew what must be done. Naturally thinking too hard I embarrassed myself a few times this day. But among practitioners there is often little shame.
I asked to follow the basic forms for hammer and halberd, I wanted to focus on them, understand what I was doing. Center myself in the craft.
Inevitably we sparred. Three hundred pounds of steel and flesh on each man. No doubt we could slaughter countless on the battlefield, but we might not last thirty minutes. Though I embarrassed myself in forms, I was easily the favorite in any sparring match.
I’m also not supposed to, but technically allowed (king rights) to actually hit people with a giant hammer, of which I have many. Not that I did, it would have been mean.
Anyway, armor is expensive, costly to repair, and the like. My hammers and picks, the best weapons for exhausting, battering and crippling men in armor are not supposed to be brought to proper bear in training.
We sparred with polarm and sword, not hammers and picks. Which is fair. I completely understand.
But I am a little bothered with how often my guards train with a sword, any joker in armor with a sword is going to have near total, if perhaps temporary, superiority over an unarmored peasant. Their risk is going to be a crazy killer like me who is willing to hammer your joints, grab your helmet or throw you under a horse.
Maybe we should train for that instead of wacking each other with sticks.
I talked to the blacksmith during my breaks and well… I’m going to be interviewing a bunch of miners and mountain men for odd stones they find.
It would be cool to make an osmium hammer.
I should have become a geologist in the past life, I knew you could find it with nickle? It was a platinum derivative, so whatever it was, rare.
Would I be reinventing the periodic table?
Well if I did I hoped it could work out better than last time.
But the sun grew long under the wholesome clatter of men’s yells and metal. Various people came and went watching our training. Entertainment or business, perhaps it was all security theater.
That little dog Wednesday even made an appearance. Too skittish to visit the arena of men, resting guards would offer leather scraps and play tug with the dog, that nervously watched and avoided the sound of metal on metal.
She was such a princess despite looking and sounding the savage.
The day ended as the previous, with a big protein meal, drinking, and my cute, but eerie wife kindly interrogating me as to my day. As if my mother, how bothersome.
The enemy, the Panther of Black, moved the bishop to E seven, my response was Pawn E five. Let’s see what that enemy knight does. I needed to get more material out, that’s what they called it right? Too much of the war was stuck behind the pawn wall.
Tomorrow I really was going to be sore. I hoped.
Seize the center of the board in chess, get the pieces out… I knew that much.
The queen apologized to me before we slept, for she had brought paperwork to the bedroom.
Though she sat in my lap, I fell asleep while she was explaining our income to me. That wasn’t like me, I used to be a sort of wannabe uncle scrooge type. I liked counting my money, even if a computer just made up a number on the screen for me.
Maybe I was just physically tired.
I guess I should be happy, I had done what countless men could not, through no effort of my own.
I had replaced in death or dream, or whatever this was, my computer with a pretty wife. Truly the final luxury to rule all luxuries, and here I was bored of her. How foolish of me.
She would apologize for boring me in the morning, but perhaps I and not she, should be sorry.