I approached the council and they grew silent at my approach. Rats, they were not friendly with me. Rather… perhaps it was a good thing. Maybe they should fear a king.
“Forgive your king, I am not yet as wise as I would like to be. How shall we observe our opponent’s first moves? Surely it is not as simple as looking at our ‘map’…”
I was never going to accept a chessboard as a map.
“…As if it is a crystal ball.”
“A crystal ball?” A knight asked
“It’s a euphemism for supernaturally clear and educating object.”
“But the map is quite good at educating.” A bishop interjected.
“Surely there is a disconnect between our documentation... and... well...” I pointed at the table and the board.
“Ahhh!” One of the knights exclaimed. “Naturally! You should visit the queen, it is largely her and to a lesser extent us!” The healthy looking old man gestured at his fellow old men. “Who shall be, each in our own ways, monitoring the situation.”
Reassuring, but lacking information, the knights were tricksters I supposed.
I filled the pause with my own words. “I was serious about understanding the full context of this war with fresh eyes.”
The men looked among each other, clearly aware of that which I was not.
“Yes, the board, your queen has jurisdiction regarding that pawn.” A rook, the one who did not afirm, broke the silence.
Oh… that made sense. I reexamined the board.
Turn one, white pawn at D four. Only the queen could counter its assault.
What did the chess people call it? “Protection?”
Silly name, it was vengeance capacity or avenging threat or something. The pawn was dead if…
Well I was the white king, or, was on the white team, we, I…
Someone, hopefully myself if this realm was simple, would be deciding if that pawn died. They would be on white, not black.
At least if the game didn’t drag beyond a few turns.
I was pretty sure I had locked myself out of winning on an early game checkmate.
The rook who affirmed offered advice. “Go talk to her, through her you may know the pawns, through us you may know every pawn.”
Figures the old men would want to send the young one off.
What was it about a child upon the throne?
I wondered at the ideal age for a ruler.
None of anyone’s business I guess.
I thanked them for their time and look ed for my queen, but she was already gone.
A servant girl smiled and offered me a cup of wine.
I took it, forced myself to drink it and helping myself to the last of some eggs. Asked
“Perhaps I can have some sweet water?”
“Of course, anything for my mighty lion!” She bubbled.
I harumfed internally, peasant girls had the audacity to flirt with the king? A soft and banal kingdom this must be.
Which, perhaps for a modern mind as mine, was a good thing. Training wheels for the irreverent.
Would I really prefer a kingdom where this women was punished for her insolence? Was I that misanthropic? That narcissistic?
I finished my eggs and washed them down with the sweet water of the mountain I had yet to visit.
Then I ventured to the courtyard to find my queen. I was not used to consuming alcohol, but apparently my body thought nothing of it.
No, I didn’t forget about my threat of preventing people from leaving the room. But my queen had rather proved that I was all bluster. For she was already gone.
My queen was not to be found in the cozy and tranquil courtyard.
‘Twas practically a garden. Fat and happy bees under gently pungent trees, they were not fruit trees.
No that one was a pecan… that one a magnolia, wisely planted away from permanent structures, how odd. A withered mesquite bush?
I would have thought I was in the alps. Austria, somewhere with a hint of Eastern Europe and France.
Next I would see an American pit bull.
The courtyard garden outside my keep was quiet. Only the full sound of a distant horseshoe hammer and the scape of a quiet old man fashioning a longbow reached my ears.
Well if you didn’t count the songbirds or ducks.
I loved ducks. Geese too.
Perhaps a fruit tree would be found somewhere, but I focused instead.
Keep behind me, three towers, to my fore, port and starboard, a mountain behind me.
Tower right seemed artful, tower forward seemed plain and temporary, tower left seemed professionally crafted and dominant.
My queen probably went left. And so I turned left and walked a short distance down a hill.
The small keep village peaceable and showing no signs of war. Unless you counted the fact most of their employ seemed martial.
A fletcher, a smelter, a dog kennel with war dogs…
And there they were, gatorator, or was it Wednesday?
That little feral dog barked at me.
She was no heavier than forty pounds. A living cannonball of playful urgency. A crook in her tail where it broke wagging. Her frantic barking turned into howls as she failed to recognize me at this distance. The chain did not bother her.
She was deft at not getting tangled, unlike many dogs I had met.
Was I wrong? Surely this dog was not the same, it’s fur was only slightly darker and more mottled than the brilliant whites that decorated the verdant castle town.
I walked to the kennel and a horde of excited dogs began to bay as they detected a human.
“Would the king like to hunt?”
A kennel boy spoke up in a business like tone. Ye nearly yelled over the dogs, I wondered how long he would keep his hearing.
He walked towards me and I gestured to a tall hedge, we stepped behind it and the howling roar of wanton hunger was dulled.
“What is this brown striped dog?”
I was speaking of the oversized terrier, or perhaps it was an undersized mastiff. The one I knew from my past life.
“It’s Wednesday, my lord, Wednesday the hunter…”
I must not have answered quick enough because the lad continued.
“You know there is no critter so able when it comes to finding the burrows of the wee beasts. She is a hound unique, shame she is barren.”
I wondered if it was so, it would have ruined the color coordination among the kennel.
The dogs, like much of the decoration, were mostly all white. My parents had, with a sour vet visit in another world, helped preserve the inbred nature of this kingdom’s royal hounds.
Wendsday was a deep chestnut tiger brindle. Or she was in the old world. Now a white coat was background to chestnut and roan stripes.
I was lost in thought, the kennel hand volunteered.
“Perhaps you had an execution in mind? The small folk such as myself love to watch criminals torn apart.”
I blinked,
“No I was just wondering as to the polite intelligence of Wednesday, have the kennel any wisdom on the matter?”
“Nay sire… I say tis a wild wickedness.”
“Surely the creature would not be such a great ratter if she was not clever.”
“Too clever for anyone’s own good my lion, she recognizes too many a handler.
“The mind of a beast that beholds the sky trapped in a body that beholds the ground.”
“Be not fooled my king, she is as a strumpet seeking status.”
I wondered with exceeding wonder at the lateral nature of our discussion, was this boy a noble? Or was he truly a lowborn as his dress implied.
“Well if the animal is intelligent and is barren, perhaps it belongs not in the kennel.”
“Sire…?”
“Let the creature free to roam, if it causes trouble I shall put it down myself.”
“Nonsense!” The young man protested.
“Do the people in this castle sneeze at dogs? Do they fear them?”
“No….”
“Are there many young children?”
“Children are not permitted in the castle my lord”
Huh, interesting. I wondered why… my mind dimly alighted on the possibility of uncompromising military security.
“Shall any take issue with an intelligent creature roaming the grounds of the castle?”
“No sire… but tis only a dog, they are not…”
“Clever…?” I finished.
“No sire.”
“I want something I understand in this castle during wartimes my boy. I just trust this one to be polite.”
“May the knights and butchers take her hunting sire? She is quite the pointer and tracker.”
“So long as she is never a bait dog.”
“Insult us not lord, twould be a waste of good dog and good game.”
I bade the young lad fetch his master to see me a bit outside the range of the auditory assaults every dog projected at the strange man outside their home. The agreement was given witness and formalized.
Moments later the chain was unlatched and Wednesday bounded over to me with that manic head first abandon of the old world’s pit bull. Then only moments after having said hi and checked my hands and feet for ‘ID’ the hound became dominant over the terrier and she stood a statue watching songbirds.
I continued on to the tower I presumed the queen’s. The little hound now white followed me. If it was not clear, the creature clearly recognized me.
The tiniest little knight.
Any smaller and the knight would lack stopping power. Which, despite everything was probably the knight’s most important statistic.