I’m the King but it’s Chess.

My Guards saluted and shouted good evenings. As we waited for the second gate of my castle’s gatehouse to let us through.

My Queen and I ignored them.

“Does a mule pull that chain?” I asked.

“I forget.” she responded lazily from the dip in-between my shoulder and chest where she had rested her head.

A giant airlock for people, and we were through. Heavy wooden and iron security that belonged in a kung fu movie.

I admired the kingdom of White’s take on the halberd.

I would have designed it.

A spear at the end, with a knob-bed tooth just off at a thirty degree angle. But there was no axeblade head at the end.

Instead it was a narrow spar of sharpened metal, sometimes white speckled obsidian, like a half moon at the head, it formed a second point, another thirty degrees from the spear head. Almost as far distant, as if to let a wide sweeping cut skip getting stuck on, or abusing that spear-point.

The moonhead halberd, I suppose that is what I would call it tapered down to the shaft. The moonblade gave the impression of decapitations, larger ones the impression of a weapon made to chop the head off a horse.

I wasn’t sure I believed it. But I head heard rumor of the horse chopper.

The wooden shaft that held the polearm was normally thick, heavy wood. Oak… Hickory…

Beautiful weapon, I had played with a few of them earlier this week and my body once again itched for the practice.

I liked the ones that were mostly shaft and no blade. I found the funny little spear tooth at the end amusing. I liked the metal blade as a hook at the end of the weapon.

But in all honesty it was probably not a specialized tool. Just a glorified tool of intimidation that might someday double passably as a can opener for disloyal knights. I guess that’s all you needed. All that was responsible really.

To improve a weapon and make war more terrible? So that more unhealthy children could suffer longer in tortured peace? To give the murderous despots such as myself less reason to have a noble body? Hah! To degrade humanity to so many rats scrambling over the earth.

Disgusting… like the home I left behind.

I was going to talk to the Pontifex right?

My queen and I had practically hopped out of the still moving coach as it headed back to the stables and carriage-house.

“What are you craving for supper O Lion.” She asked me.

“Pulled pork, do we have it?”

“You should go Hog hunting sometime soon! O that tis a noble endeavor.”

I like pigs, and dark age hog hunting didn’t sound like something I wanted to do, especially if dogs were involved.

But good pulled pork might make it worth it.

“So no pork O dove?”

“Of course we have pork!” she feigned distress “Achh” She grabbed at my neck ineffectually and tried to pull herself to my ear.

I leaned a little bit to humor her.

“Why must you play at being a peasant? It’s embarrassing!” She hissed in my ear.

I looked at her and her anger had disappeared from her face. She batted her eyes at me as if begging me to do something for her.

“Sup with me O Lion.”

“Of course O Dove, you know I am ravenous.”

She smiled and teleported away….

The Pontifex, I needed to ask him what he thought about being moved or sent to war… about the quartermaster...

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I ascended the priest's white tower, and found him in the messy piles of tombs and texts and odd millipede that made the common area of the living quarters of the Tower of the Pontifex, my white bishop of the white square.

I saw him with his spectacles sitting at a mostly clean mahogany desk. He was studiously reading a scroll.

“O Pontifex I called to him, what do you think happened to the quatermaster? Do you think our opponent has captured or killed him?”

The old man turned his head backwards over his head to look at me the way a seal might if it lounged on a rock.

It was graceful in most mammals but awkward in apes.

“I imagine the Black Queen is torturing him, tis what the White Queen would do.”

“Does that really work?”

“No but it amuses Queens.”

“Does the enemy Queen have a name?”

“Yes, your brother Panther Married Black Bear Who Sleeps Most Deep.” The Pontifex. Returned to looking at his scroll, one of hundreds that adorned boxes and bags strewn through this messy chamber.

“A poetic name.” I answered, looking around to see a nervous looking disciple carefully snuffing out a few candles in the corner of the room, before ducking into a much cleaner, and much plainer looking chamber behind a cheap wooden door.

“Yes though I suppose where the kingdom of white would endeavor to determine through trial the identity of the quartermaster, the kingdom of black would seek to overwhelm the senses until the quartermaster is not who he once believed he was.”

“What does that mean?” I supposed it was a sort of philosophical difference between light and dark.

“Our enemy is a little more emotional and moody than we are. They capture for fun and spectacle, we just seek to set them free of obligation.”

I didn’t really see a difference.

“When I move you” I asked him. “And it will be soon, will you be concerned or worried about the eventual outcome? How does your ‘movement’ manifest?”

“The quartermaster organized a labor strike of some sort at an important national mine I believe. I’ll likely redefine and corrupt some aspect of the region of the night.”

“Do you think that we could convince the Panther to surrender with such activities?”

“I thought that was the whole point.” The Pontifex looked at me judgmentally, as if he was tired of kings.

“Do you like the countryside? The people?” I asked him.

“No, I like the maids of this castle…” he turned back to his dour parchments.

I frowned, the dead ones… perhaps that’s why he was not happy.

“What would you do if you were king?” I asked.

The man seemed extremely tired, he looked at me with a disappointment I had not realized people could feel. A tiresome gaze that spoke of broken trucks and lost hours to nothing.

A gaze I remembered, in mechanics, in managers, in CEO's who lost their job, their company, the thing they built for twenty years. I had never seen it in the eyes of someone younger than forty.

“I’d get more maids. New maids, better maids, ones that don’t piss off the queen.”

I didn’t really know what I expected here. Also how old was this guy? Had he no respect for youth?

Should I be more worried about Fleur Secundus?

I realized my hand was on my chin scratching at unshaven stubble as if lost in thought, suppose I was.

The Pontifex must have realized he was causing the mighty mental gears of his noble Lion to turn. His face turned apologetic.

“Tis a king’s right and a man’s eternal desire. I am just an old priest who missed out on a happy youth… forgive me. I’ll enjoy the countryside, and I am rather sure there is no way we could have saved the quartermaster. Rest easy O Lion!”

It wasn’t quite groveling, but I’m an antisocial man. Why did I even bother to talk to this guy?

I guess he was right, I was a king, I should ignore other men and just take their women…

Gross.

But I guess that’s what the devil mother nature had planned.

Sometimes the world seems evil, I much prefer when it seems good.

“I am sorry to disturb you Pontifex, I am simply lost in contemplation regarding the confusion of war.”

“Do not be sorry O lion, those who are less wise shall take it for weakness.”

He was wrong, all shall take it for weakness for it was, the weakness that makes me polite is the weakness that marks me for death. If it was not wisdom then people who didn’t think, the animals we keep, the animals we don’t… none of them would experience it.

Only civilized fools were polite. It took nearly a decade to train most humans to ignore their instincts. Maybe it went quicker with dogs or horses… And to think we called them well trained as if we were doing the work.

My priest sits on the iceburg of hunger and sees not the beast.

I gingerly avoided stepping on scrolls and scrimps as if they were valuable and made it to the door outside.

I opened the door and imagined myself falling forty feet to my doom as wind on the tower struck my face. Trying to lean towards the center of the tower, I descended these awful stone steps aware of every mote of dust that fell away under my weight.

Stone may not flex before the human eye, but all things do at some level.

Basic safety standards for buildings… I could not tolerate the dark ages.

But the setting sun was beatuiful, if only I had all day and a peaceful week to enjoy this place.

Suppose I did, I was the king, I wasn’t going to battle tomorrow morning, probably.

I guess assassins could stab me in my bed. But that almost seemed like an easy way out at this point.