I’m the King but it’s Chess.

That support was likely to end up the rook who did not validate.

The Rook of the West.

I had just castled my way of Rook of the East, the one who validated unnecessarily.

Forgive me I’m very sensitive to validation of any sort. I don’t trust it.

It is a form of buying and selling beauty. Which, as I understand is always a self-destructive practice for both the buyer and the seller.

Better to speak only in slights and insults to maintain the thick and hardy skin among those who would speak.

If those who would not speak for fear of conflict had something important to say well...

Personally, I would rather not hear them, if they would act counter to what they say, they would only prove that they are not to be trusted. Since they fear reprisal for their words, one must assume their actions are counter to begin with.

Deception however much I hated it may be in necessity and war, So I do not begrudge the Rook of the East his sale of beautiful words.

But if he was any other than a rook… one who did not practice violence...

I wouldn’t tolerate a night or a bishop or a queen in that way

Unless I was married to them or something...

My point is that self-destruction is a trait one values in war and if you had not noticed, I believe that is the common thread between both of my rooks.

I got myself more properly dressed and nearly tripped down the stairs onto my sword over a page.

Somehow, a child had entered into the castle.

“We had forgot of the king!” His high-pitched youthful voice rang

A deeper voice further down the stairs called out in correction.

“We cannot depart without a king and sought to find him for we knew not where he was! Be careful with thy tongue young man!”

This is one of my royal guard, of course. Or the few of them that didn’t depart to E five.

I hadn’t met that pawn who leads them. But between De Phoebe and church girl I imagine the woman who practiced the swords might be more appealing as replacement queen.

Scratch that actually...

My mind cycled back to my previous life.

I knew her type and she probably had better tattoos than most women.

I have never met this woman when I was already judging her for a pugnacious and needlessly crude attitude I had witnessed in others I assumed to be the sort to thrive among soldiers.

I do appreciate crudeness but in this brand of militant woman I imagined must be Lieutenant of the Royal Guard… this type had tended to appreciate the meaner points of crudeness rather than the fun points of rudeness.

My quiet and patient nature made me a natural target of such types, and therefore I despised them. For invariably irrational men and the civil society gave them a free pass to act as harpies. Like so many locusts they ran roughshod over the careful cultivation of others. Taking delight in any protest they met short of the executioner’s silent ax.

If there was one justice in the past world it was that the materialistic nature of violence erased such bravado.

Which is perhaps why I was even in this world in the first place if my Queen truly had imported me or at least my memories as a relaxing salve for the Lion’s flame.

Perhaps before I had inherited this body, this body was the irrational man who defended the escapades of such a character as Erica Zwei. For that was her name.

As king, I was Captain of my royal guard

But the bitch Lieutenant, who is the pathetic lackey to every supervillian, would have been Miss. Erica.

Perhaps she was nice to myself, a violent and dominant king.

But I rather imagine that some among my royal guard may find satisfaction in a grisly fate for her when she is captured.

She is a pawn after all it’s very likely that she will be before this war is over.

By the way this is entirely sexist misanthropy talking. I’m not sorry.

My modern urge to pack my belongings for a trip was entirely foolish for the host of people who lived within my castle and generally offended what little privacy a king had were fastidious. Everything that I could want and many things that I would never have thought to bring were already ready to depart before I had fully realized the immediate implications of castling.

It was my order after all that I was off to visit the remote fortifications in the east.

No, I tend to enjoy traveling more than most I think. I am convinced others take it too seriously.

But this business that follows about the traveler I find more vexing than any amount of lost time.

In this being a king suits me. For if I was a peasant, my hesitation, my useless questions and my general amusement at making everyone’s life about fifteen percent more miserable would have probably been met with consternation.

I’m a jerk when I travel, and it’s not because I’m in a bad mood. It’s because you are.

;)

But eventually, we were off and I tried it up and down the line of the entourage on a healthy red and freckled champagne destrier who spooked the mares and brought sober look into the eyes of the geldings.

I would’ve been content to ride by my lonesome and get lost on my journey.

Perhaps after a day or two of walking, I would have tired and wished I had not sent out on the journey having forgotten article of clothing, or realizing how difficult the travel would really be.

But that would be a better fate than this.

I might’ve even tolerated a few camping companions some bodyguards, and maybe a servant or two to ride with me long distances, developing sores and lamenting of unique insects.

But I had the worst of all worlds

For as I learned, I was to travel eighteen miles in two days

Which, if my mathematics do not fail me put our average speed at approximately one third a mile per hour.

Which is optimistically about two thousand feet over sixty minutes. Which becomes a little more than thirty feet a minute.

Which means that we will move at about six inches every second.

I don’t think I’m alone in considering such an uncomfortable pace.

OK maybe it was a foot every second, or maybe even a foot and a half if we didn’t travel through the night.

But because almost every individual in the castle had to accompany, the king no matter where he went in order to offer him some sort of service even if unsolicited this was going to be the pace that we took.

Such was a King’s wealth, that I could entertain an entire circus of young women two or three times in the time it took the cooks and the Fletcher’s and the Smiths and the jeweler and the maids and the royal guard and the royal guards families and the stable hands and the hound Masters and the hunters and the maids of light and the scribes and their spiritual advisors, the odd financiers and their heralds and the apothecaries and their barbers and everyone’s grandmother and everyone’s cousin and everyone everyone’s brother who was always a useful guy, but is never today.

Suppose it is no wonder that kings in every story had troubles with women..

It was almost enough to convince me to ride ahead on my lonesome on this poor horse of mine who was fit to stomp people to death, but probably not to travel cross country for forty miles without a little bit of excitement.

So I considered summoning a stable master to swap my horse. But I’d rather suspect it that I would be tailed by a swift rider who had studied swift riding more than I had.

Of course, I could simply tell the rider not to but that minor point of bureaucracy defeated the freedom that I desired to feel.

To be upon the road was to be free.

To be bound by fences and property and the rules of the road. Well, that was an erasure of the fantasy I craved.

And so instead of beating the crap out of my guards today. Instead of enjoying a cathartic pain from my metal arms battering me into a satisfied exhaustion on the sparing fields. Instead of heaving javelins or generally enjoying the habits of the sportsman who hunted men...

I failed to find my happy place as a horrid horde of chattering monkeys followed orders I had given to the best of their mediocre abilities.

The glorious castle my queen and I had woken up in was left with only a few score occupants.

And those occupants had already set a few straw and wooden dummies to stand guard along the walls.

Rook of the East huh? What did he have for me?

A messenger brought me news. A bishop spotted moving at Algrementa Quas…

Heh…

I guess my brother wasn’t a chess player at all.

Or this was a legendary bait.

“I need personnel at B two to move to B Three.” I responded.

And I left my underlings to debate what exact town was B two and three.