The Totem-Maker (part thirty-seven)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Five

The Mustering Grounds

(part thirty-seven)

Four days in which I’d expected, shunned and alone here, to meditate, to pray, that if the gods willed any service of me, they would grant the charity of revelation.

“You say start…”

His laugh was angry, and satisfied. “Yes. A thing you have not suspected, Gifted One.” He pointed to that I’d first noticed about him, the stamp on his brow where a heavy blow had misshaped his skull. “Each chapter of our order is dedicated to a virtue. You know the virtues.”

“Honor,” I said. “Faithfulness. Love.”

“Three?”

“No, Stol, I name my guesses. I don’t know your Order’s doctrine.”

“If Pride were virtue, that you would know.”

“Do virtues save then, as sins destroy?”

He struck a pose of thought, held it for a punishing minute. “I won’t waste your hours of life on debate. And yet one day, you…why suppose not?…you will hold place in the Senate, and if sauce is wit, you will find an appetite for yours. For this day, for all this night, and all tomorrow, we will play a game. Not a game of fortunetelling. The War-Maker’s game. Go.”

When I’d rolled my pallet, and shouldering it scurried back, I found a board laid on the floor. Polished slate, etched with lines, twenty rows of squares. The pieces were dobs of glass, as the blower drops in the sand.

“Lay them out. Blacks your side, whites mine.”

I scooped murky greens and pearls from a bowl to sort, again and again, it needing two hundred to fill the squares on my side to the center, where Stol’s met them. To a place between us he scooted a spool on a spindle. The spindle was marked with an arrow, the spool in squares of red and gold, numbered.

“Do you suppose it matters who goes first?” he asked.

“You. And I will learn whether it does.”

“You expect to have that luxury. In battle. In warfare.”

“No.” I centered two or three men that sat imperfectly. “No. I can bear harsh teaching, Stol. That I had from Elberin. Tell me what you would like. If I play badly, shout at me, or sneer. Do you suppose I care?”

I knew orders of knighthood put postulants to absurd ritual, mystery made so by withholding the commonplace reason—that frightened holders of rank hoped to wring ambition out of any who might unseat them. I did not aspire to it. I could not see my future suffer if I enraged my tutor.

He spun the spool, and the number was ten.

“Your move then. Take ten of my men, and place one of yours on the tenth square.”

40

To Be and to Choose

The Totem-Maker (part thirty-eight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)