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At first, this little game of chess strikes Ivar as a waste of time.
He does not know who this boy is, why he brought a chessboard and all its pieces to Ivar's room, or who prompted him to do it. He does not particularly care. Mostly, he is curious. Though perhaps grateful, somewhere, for the distraction – and what a thorough distraction it is, Ivar supposes – he still thought it to be useless. The boy is a child, and not in the way a child is a child in Kattegat. He is soft, rosy, dressed in silks and other fine materials. His hair is neatly combed and looks recently soaped. He is weak, and Ivar can smell it on him the moment he walks into the room.
But this boy sets the chessboard down and raises his eyebrows as though to ask, will you play?
He asks Ivar the Boneless, the crippled son of Ragnar Lodbrok – and he must know who Ivar is, as a guest in his home – to play chess. It's absurd, is what it is. But Ivar is too struck by the offer to turn it down, and so the boy sets up his board and pulls close a chair. He sits down without the flourish of royalty, as Ivar has come to expect of these fussy Saxons, nor with the power of an Earl. He has almost no presence to speak of, and yet he places each piece on the board with fearless purpose. Ivar watches all this leaning back in his chair, eyes narrowed. It is a bizarre scene, and he does not know what to make of it. What would his father do?
The boy moves his first piece. Ivar settles, his hand resting against his chin. The game is on, and what a game it becomes. At first, Ivar doesn't bother to expend much effort. The boy is young and weak, nothing like the people of Ivar's homeland, so he will be no challenge. But piece by piece, turn by turn, the boy stops him in his tracks, and he does so without hardly blinking. As though he is expending as little effort as Ivar, in the beginning. A few turns more and Ivar decides he has had enough and makes to sacrifice his king, to end this farce, but the boy blocks this move, too, as though reading Ivar's very thoughts; he stares at Ivar for a moment before doing it, gaze wholly unreadable. Ivar stares back, stone-faced, and then the corner of his mouth quirks up in a faint smirk. This boy – though perhaps weak – is smart. He is smart like Ivar, like few others ever are.
And so the game begins again, and Ivar finds an enjoyment in it that he did not expect. He has had chances few and far between to test his intellect like this, his mind for strategy. He watches each piece like a predator, moves his own pieces like limbs of his own, and attempts to get a feel for the boy's strategy. It is unexpectedly difficult. Perhaps his face is deceptively youthful in appearance, because Ivar feels as though he is facing Floki, not some soft child from an even softer kingdom. There is experience, or perhaps raw talent, in his movements. He never falters, never seems to waver in his judgement, and his judgement is always sound. Each move is one Ivar understands in recollect, and it all seems to be part of a bigger picture, the pieces of which he collects turn by turn. It seems almost like an art, in Ivar's mind; a precise, careful drawing, one of this strange boy's design.
The boy wins.
The boy wins, and Ivar can only raise his eyebrows and nod and offer a bewildered smirk. He is already working through his own failure, pinpointing flaws in his strategies, hoping for a moment for a rematch. He thinks he might play chess with this boy over and over again if only for the feeling of meeting an equal, a challenge, for the first time in years. The boy smiles back at him, neither smug nor cowed, and cribs his hands on the table. He looks like he wants to ask a question, or maybe introduce himself, but they are interrupted by servants who usher the boy from the room, taking the board and pieces with them. Perhaps some other time.
--
Ivar sees him one last time before he leaves, this time with the knowledge that his father will die here in this ugly place and at the hands of that shameless, coward of a king. The boy finds him and, before Ivar can even begin to consider what he wants or what he's doing here, hands Ivar a piece from the chessboard. He hands Ivar the king, engraved on the back with a name that Ivar can unexpectedly read. It is – a parting gift, he supposes. He glances at the boy, looking for mockery and finding none, and it appears to be true. It is a gift, the first Ivar has ever received, and it was given in good faith by a boy he does not know, whose home Ivar will sack in the future to avenge his father's death.
He cannot think as to what this means. He is utterly stunned.
'Alfred.' Ivar thinks, and holds the piece in his hand like a holy item, a seer's talisman. He will not forget this.