The Totem-Maker (part thirty-eight)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Five

The Mustering Grounds

(part thirty-eight)

Rapid was the exchange of tests, up to the dozenth spin. The board cleared, and ignorant to any means of victory, I advanced my men every which way, taking Stol’s as the spool indicated.

He could have his game; I had only time.

But I saw wide gaps grow on the board. If I were to win seven steps, I might gain one captive. If Stol won eight, he might take my lone patrol, draw overnear my outpost of six.

The fewer men left, the more strategic every move.

“But there are players, you know, players who are at the game for days…the board may sit while a man goes about his business, and when next he visits his opponent, he has thought of the best answer. But then his opponent has thought, too. Because we have ten on the spool, each man can move one to ten squares. Each encroach is limited by his first position…the edge of the board, the center… They have tried for centuries, those who tend the great charts. Each possible move of each possible piece by each possible turn of the spool. I am far from being so good.”

My teacher twice that night defeated my army, allowing me at last to nap when I’d grown too sleepy to attend. Pride, Stol very secret about this, had won me his regard. I was a maker of mental charts, young in the eyes of others, but old in the years I’d spent at it, those pleasant games of the fortuneteller.

I woke to fresh cold air filling the hall.

Stol said, “Eat your breakfast and come down to the water trough.”

Half dreaming I obeyed. My head was full of the War-Maker’s game, the puzzle of whether it mattered to plan, until the field had cleared. Or was it true…so complicated were the numbers destined upon each piece…that like the paths of the stars, the game was ordained, and the reading of each man’s fate attainable?

All the slaughter, then, of the early rounds could not be waste, but a terrible necessity. If it had been war.

I hated this…I felt Lotoq urging me towards an answer none had discovered…

My mind moving glass soldiers, I came heedless to the trough. And got a great surprise. Stol strode up behind me, grabbed my nape and dunked my head.

“Make yourself alert! There is almost nothing about fighting I can teach you in two days. Tell me why we played the game.”

I inhaled, drew in water, snuffled it out on my sleeve. “Strategy, for me to have an idea of it.”

“Take this knife.”

He said so after a long pause. He said further, arriving at it, “To have an idea! No, I think you have never tried to arrange matters for your own ends. That has nothing to do with why we should be here at all!” He busied himself with a wooden shield, the gathering of it one-handed from the wall it leant on, the thrusting of it to my open arm. “Take this as well.”

41

To Be and to Choose

The Totem-Maker (part thirty-nine)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)