Dark Age Signal Intelligence… :pensive:
Downstairs in the dining hall I found the two maids feeding the bird as it hopped around the dining table.
“You know that thing is going to make a mess?!” I called to them.
“You didn’t tell me you had a talking bird! Can we take care of it for you?”
“TAKE CARE! TAKE CARE!” Screamed the bird and one of the maids gave it crumbs of scrambled egg.
Precocious young women, no doubt the bird was playing dumb to gather intel.
“That’s a prisoner of war, he knows what he has done. And he’s a bird now, he’s going to make a mess!”
“We can clean up after him!”
“What was his name?”
“HIS NAME HIS NAME!” The bird repeated.
The bird appeared to enjoy the attention of the two young women more than it enjoyed getting its feat and feathers in the simple breakfast the cooks had left for me.
“My queen informed you two of your duties?”
“Of course!”
“It seems so simple! And she left a note for you.” Smiling the one with frizzy hair handed me a folded slip of vellum. “My friend tried to read it, but she’s so stupid that she can’t.”
I thought the Queen had confirmed they both could read yesterday.
No matter I read the queen’s note, briefly held up by the fact that she had crude and unpracticed, but clearly ornate handwriting.
“Dear Lion of the Rising Sun”
If I wasn’t a warlord already everyone’s language was going to make me one.
“The two nubile bodies who yield to you this message…”
Don’t throw the message away read it.
I stopped,
“Are you sure neither of you read this?” I asked looking up. I needed to learn the names of these two girls. The frizz was drinking and Bunhead had a mouth full of hashed potatoes.
“Absolutely not.” one said after swallowing.
“Absolutely not.” Replied the bird.
I frowned and continued the letter.
“Shall serve me and thee as backup vessels in the event that I should perish, or so I hope. Indeed when you inevitably grow weary of my current form I want you to select or at least accumulate options that I may occupy in such a scenario. Remember to keep favorites.”
The queen drew a little heart at this.
Why did she, I mean it, have to remind me about this? Simply a cross I must bear?
“I may be out of contact for the duration of the war, take good care of our maids. Feed them as if they are nobility for they may be someday, and clothe them as if they are lowborn, for until one is a subject of our interest they shall remain. Please try to keep their virginity intact, I will know, and a virgin is often a better transmitter and receiver for magics anyway.”
Often huh? Suppose it wasn’t for me to know the finer mathematical models of virgodynamics?
The note continued,
“Praises be sung of my magnificent Lion” another heart. “Please stay safe, the war is still young by my reckoning.
Your Love Dove!”
There was a surprisingly good drawing of a mourning dove’s facing away from me looking towards the edge of the page at the bottom. It had well formed wings.
What a practical way to end the note! Almost like an apologetic young prince trying to downplay their own role in projects they owned.
“Would either of you like to read this?”
I asked the two maids.
“READ THIS” Screamed the bird and it hopped over to me flapping its wings.
A bird on the table flapping over oatmeal’s, creams and dried fruits disgusted me. But it was the picture of comedy to the maids.
“You” I pointed to Frizz, “return the bird to its cage at once.”
She stood and obeyed, leaving the table with a healthy energy. The bird must have played nice with her for it hopped to her for a few crumbs of egg.
“You…” I mused at Bunhead. “Can you read?”
“Umm of course.” She stammered on the spot. “I wouldn’t have my duties if I couldn’t.”
She produced another sheet of vellum “To the maids!”
Bigger and more obvious hearts were drawn upon the top, the same crude handwriting but different.
It listed two older women to talk to, a list of cooks and groundskeepers in the castle, a schedule to follow and a series of notes to remember... it featured a note about myself.
“Treat my Lion well, he is the sleepy and deceptively aware monster of my castle. He is managing a war, don’t let his grumpy manner or chipped swords fool you, he is soft and sweet inside.”
Awwwwz, but remember this flattery comes straight from hell itself… It is a reflection of my own failings.
A crude but perhaps to standard middle aged depiction of my queen and I standing with our hands together rested on the bottom. I was holding a sword.
“But can you read this?” I produced my note.
And placed them both on the table.
“No tis private sayith the Queen.”
“I order you to read it.”
“And betray her trust?”
Now Bunhead looked sad.
“Nothing terribly secret here, but I think it’s important.” I replied.
She looked at the page.
“I can’t read it. Even if I wanted to.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a special code or something, think you that I a spy?”
“Rather so, clever girl!” I figured I would just let her have it. But I had wanted to see if someone else was picking up that my wife was operating on a terrifying supernatural level that seemed to hold life as little more than a plaything.
I hadn’t quite realized what was going on until she said the word “code.”
Sure I could see a difference in the writing between her note and mine, but I didn’t pay attention until now.
No, the queen and I must be bilingual.
Or… bilitterate?
Or this was a code and I could understand code fluently.
Maybe the girl was a spy and she was lying? Maybe Bunhead could read the entire thing but simply didn’t share that info. Maybe the nobility in this world… well maybe we were murderous foreigners come to subjugate the locals and still wrote in our old tongue.
Paranoia had bitten me before as my note had reminded me.
“That’s so cute, you and the queen have your own secret code!”
I have never felt like I have ever escaped junior high. But dubiously secret codes between individuals was probably the only part of junior high worth keeping.
Trade my wife for sanity indeed, I guess it’s natural the chess king is bound in the shadow of the chess queen.
I reminded myself that all life, no matter how magical, beautiful, pragmatic or forward thinking could be cut short by all manner of cosmic happenstance.
So I ate my eggs while the two maids each had an extra slice of cake.
I entered the parlor where the chessboard lay.
Really this castle was too dim outside the dining hall.
Not enough windows.
But I suppose an emperor would upgrade to a palace with a bit less dark age grime and cavern. A bit more happy humanity. The queen, and certainly the servant girls would probably like that.
But then she liked caves. Most wizards did.
The bird In his cage attacked me with slurs as I observed the chessboard and puzzling over what may have changed, finally noticed that for some reason, the enemy king had moved from C eight to B eight.
He was protecting the pawn at A one.
Which seemed wise, my queen on his corner was likely a bad time. Now I needed something to support her.
The board state…
Oh what would I do? It was too late to wish for the quartermaster or my other knight back. Bait the queen with my knight?
The Panther had so far played defensively, he would never bite, and besides, that would be pretty stupid, to give me his queen for a knight.
That would be a tolerable move, but my two rooks were useless right now… I could castle, king side... which rook was that? Get all my pieces on the one side, and maybe some opportunity would open up?
No… I am white, I need to make the opportunity, I need to force my opponent into misery.
I resolved to castle, and only a moment too late, my hand off the piece, realized this was my only chance to threaten his queen without the rook taking my pawn…
“A threat means nothing though.” I told myself.
But my enemy would have been forced to move his queen back…
I had missed a trick, And I didn’t know what happened when I castled.
I resolved to spend the rest of the day beating the crap out of the castle’s skeleton crew of royal guard in sparing matches.
Opportunity comes and goes in instants, you must be ready and willing to accept the risks.
That or be content to sleep forever.
Yea but "Accepting the risk..." hah! People were rats, they never did, I never would. A rule of life, risk is someone else's problem.
That’s probably the nicest part about being king, I complain but imagine you woke up every day and realized you had a new gold bar, an extra million dollars and a sexy monster that dotes on you.
I don’t know, I could die tomorrow happy having tasted a better life than the cortisol hell I had somehow damned myself to in the past life. I’m an active king right now, but I can’t help but enjoy being unemployed and in no man’s shadow. I could sleep all day, eat all day… really life was looking up, I could do anything as a king.
I could die… yea I think I could, kings died all the time, who cares if I was a good or bad one?
It is relaxing in a way I didn’t know anything ever could be.
“You’re gonna lose hotshot…” The little bird, who had watched me this entire time yapped. “Should have enjoyed your life as the dumb brute while you could. No one is surviving this war!”
Knight of Midnight had no idea what he was talking about, the panther had paper hands. Or so it seemed so far.