If this really was a chess board a queen trade might not be a bad idea, if only for my sanity.
I ventured to the stables and met the horses. Wendesday found me and having what must have been a healthy fear of horses did not follow me into the stable.
I really didn’t know much about horses. I knew how to keep my fingers from getting chopped off feeding them carrots. I knew how to mount one. I knew how moody they could be, but that was it.
I knew that Bucephalus was reported to have feared his own shadow. Which implied he couldn’t see that well.
If truth was not fiction it was stranger, all of old Alex’s conquests had happened within the lifespan of a horse.
Was he really poisoned? If your king committed suicide because his horse died how would you report it?
The knight of platinum was dozing. He did not wear armor at the moment.
Would he know my routine?
Half my mind was to steal a horse and rely upon my status to get me out of trouble. Could I steal the horses? Were they mine? I was king… it seemed like the kingdom was in my family not the queen’s. Which implied this stable and by extension these horses were mine.
I had always liked horses. Noble and moody, like myself. Easily spooked and willfully nomadic.
Again like myself. Many would call it cowardice. But airplanes didn’t conquer the world by bravery. They did so by firebombing civilians.
The elves sure weren’t ready for hitler on the screen.
Not that it mattered.
Should I wake the white white knight?
Or was this a vagabond living in the stable on borrowed clothing?
He had eaten breakfast with me so I suppose to be both was to win at the game of life.
But I felt safer touching a fat and happy queen bee than I did kicking this vagabond awake.
But I was king, suppose it was my job.
I kicked him hard in the thigh, my boot was a riding boot, hard toed but not steel, he would bruise.
“Art thou working hard or…” perhaps a stable hand would hear me.
“hardly work…” I roared as if it was a joke.
A slink of metals escaping from their sheath.
My voice turned sour as I had perceived that the man I was waking was responding in a hostile manner.
That was a knife in his hand?
No time to delay, but as was to be remembered, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
My boot stepped over his arm and pinned it to the ground, my right boot, his left hand. My weight towered over the sleeping man and his clean little pile of hay.
A narrow little stabbing dagger for puncturing armor tickled but did not enter my boot, he had no leverage.
“King…” I finished, now angry. Or as angry as I could be. I was never angry. A virtue of patience, the sin of sloth.
The knight in his light but shining half armors turned slightly under the weight of my boot. But he had pulled a knife, I was going to make it uncomfortable.
I knelt upon his chest, daring him to breathe, my left hand grabbed his right arm. His left stretched to the ground under my boot.
This old man was strong, his body flexed and I nearly jumped, stomping upon his arm as my weight recentered.
“Ohh” He moaned, he didn’t drop the knife, his left arm didn’t go limp. “Owe… my king I am old.” He admitted, realizing what had happened.
His right arm elected to fall away, he relaxed as he breathed deeply in a familiar stable.
“Is that any way to treat your king?” I scolded.
“You are very late my good king.” He spoke clearly through his patchy beards
“War is very busy.”
“Your wife is very pretty.”
Could you blame old men? This one was fifty, past his prime, any younger and I might have been offended.
But should I be offended? This was clear disrespect.
I had always considered disrespect a right men earned by living long enough to articulate it. I personally felt that an old dog was permitted to bite without barking.
But a king’s responsibilities… should an old dog I kicked awake be considered an assassin?
“Where were we?” I asked. Taking my foot off his arm and taking an authoritative step back.
I was prepared to try to rip his head off if he didn’t put that knife away.
But he did, and gently stretched.
“There was no need to kick so hard my king! I would have woken to your call.”
“Do you always sleep in the stables?”
“Only when I have the luxury of waiting on someone. You were going to joust today no?”
“I suppose I was.”
Good I would just agree to everything anyone said, and if I died to cynical old men, well that was the queen’s problem.
Riding a horse was simple enough, I had the muscle memories that I did not remember. I just needed to avoid thinking too hard and I looked a natural horse rider.
I followed my guide, the knight of platinum.
A little external field well beyond the walls of my castle. I had not seen the outside till I followed my knight of platinum to the arena at the base of the valley, up the mountain was my castle, we descended the trails carefully carved to be smooth enough for horses.
Not the Appalachians I had known, these were proper Rockies, Alps.
I suppressed the urge to collect an axe and wander blindly into those haunting evergreens that dotted only the shady side of the mountain. I didn’t like bald mountains. They made me nervous for some reason.
I had always had that urge. As a child, as a traveling mechanic, as an office worker. The fear of other men with guns was the only thing I believed that kept me from satisfying such a desire. Yet now, with a horse and not a gun in existence, I did not.
I guess more men would look for me now than in the past life though...
How cool would it be to build another castle? How much would it cost? How much did I have?
But now I traveled with a spear and armors to what otherwise would have been a sports field, a tilt? a melee? What did the movie makers call it?
A small host of other horse riders were already jousting. Or playing at jousting.
Little rings they tried to catch on the lance. A few of the classic little counterweight traps dotted around.
But those were toys for humans, most of the focus right now appeared to be on making sure the horses wouldn’t shy from odd terrain. A large wooden “hashtag” of sorts had been placed at one end of the “tilt” riders took turns sprinting the horse as near enough they could.
We were a quarter mile away, cresting a mountain switchback, my old guide spoke.
“Here you are not the king” the knight of platinum spoke to me plainly, “Nor are you the prince. You are a royal guard in my training for it does no good for anyone to tell the other men they should lose. And even less good to tell men they can defeat the king.”
Which made sense to me. Though I rather disliked the dishonest nature of it. Shame I was not lovable enough to afford the luxury of proper sportsmanship.
The first order of business once arriving, was equipping all of the armor. The second order of business was maintaining that being late was a bad thing.
As a sort of penance for being late the old knight and I tilted at rotating sandbags until our armor dented and abraded. Our bodies underneath ached from impact.
Fifty tilts was the number.
Yeah, I was younger than I used to be so I was unconcerned. Perhaps the pain was good for me,
But the old knight was looking tired already, this could not be good for his bones. It could not be good for him. I should look to find him a more relaxing job.
I’m not a social person, or if I am I don’t like being one. I would dread the outcome in which our training was self defeating, a form of self suicide. Plainly, I wondered where the cosplay ended and the functionality began, there was no way to remove the play from simulation. Perhaps some old lords would share my worries as well, they probably wouldn’t like someone younger than forty thinking about their problems.
But for most everyone else it was just a sport. A sport that might kill them or make them look good. There was almost no way to train the way they would work. Though I guess even the professionals of the modern world didn’t actually try to get hit with real bullets.