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In the fog of war, strategy is sometimes a secondary consideration. Can instinct and strategy work as one? Occasionally. But only with caution. Survival is instinctual, and often one may assume that a successful survival is equal to a successful strategy.
This assumption, of course, regards only the piece, and not the whole.
He finds himself, unheeded, on the other end of the field, a pillar of black in the gloom. A bright slice of pain just under his helmet, across his mouth, and his whole body aching. The shouting rings in his ears. He presses his lips together, holding his pain in, tasting blood, tense, as the shouting goes on for eternity until it resolves. Then he looks across, and sees-
"Checkmate," he shouts, hoarsely and feeling the sting of dried blood giving way. Heads turn in his direction, white and black both. He shouts again, feeling the words crack in his throat, lifting his helmet, tossing it aside. Pawn no longer. "Black knight checkmates!"
The white king stares, and around him, his bishops stare. There is nowhere to turn.
Distantly he hears his brethren take up the cry, calling and recalling back across the field. The white pieces throw down their weapons, the black rush to his side. The bishops remove their mitres, the king his crown.
The battle, today, is over.
His king is triumphant, pulling him close, jovially patting him on the back. Congratulations, praise, laughter, beating at him from all sides, and for an instant, his eyes meet those of the black queen. Bottomless dark eyes framed by her armored finery, familiar eyes, and then another well-wisher pulls him away.
It's been so long since Polydeukes has seen those eyes, this close, this clear.
--
When they were pawns, her name was Paz. He would tease her about this, such a small name for a tall girl, and she would fire back about how unaccountably sweet his name was for a bitter man. The choice had been out of their hands, and no pawn would ever acknowledge their old name, but the ribbing helped each pawn remember to respond to the name they were given.
Most newcomers to the castle began as pawns, all outside things removed, even down to names. It was supposed to be egalitarian. Fair. It seemed a contradictory matter, when the kings ruled together and sat at the top by dint of birth, no effort, no struggle. They might choose to promote a pawn or two, but it was more often the queens and the knights, the rooks and bishops who did that. Currying favour, seeking patronage. But all respected the game, and the decisions made within it, pawn or king.
Some maintained a color affiliation, some went back and forth. He was always a black pawn. He had no personal loyalties then but a love for the color itself. She preferred to change as the whim took her, often changing color just to make up the numbers needed for a game. It was love of the game that kept her returning, that had drawn her here where the jockeying for power, for favor, was so standardized. And often and often she threw herself into the fight, such that the higher pieces began to notice her, her ferocity and her delight, her bloodlust and her passion.
It was the changing that kept greater favor from her, for rooks and bishops little trusted the back and forth of her deeds. No loyalty to color nor even to a single superior: the only thing you could predict was that she suited better on your side. So she was first pick of the pawns, but not of those uplifted outside a game.
She didn't mind. She never minded. All she had given up, all she had thrown away, and it was just this, the game. The death of a king. The ones who were untouchable outside the game, the ones whose losses were permission that few people really took. Mostly ceremonial, but at the heart, a loss was a loss, and mercy was a gift, not a right.
Paz didn't checkmate for years and years, and when she did —
When she did, she picked up the crown the king threw down, and smiled at him with blood in her teeth, and thrust her sword upward. Then, with no backward glance, she turned and strode toward the king whose colours she wore, to offer her the crown.
The first death by checkmate in a generation, and she didn't even preen.
It was the game. She had the right, and she used her right. None could touch her, pawn or no.
After that, it felt as though he was the only pawn who truly talked to her. Everyone called her Paz, no chatter, no jocundity, but he still found things to needle about her. She didn't seem to notice a difference, so he tried not to make it so.
--
The kings regarded her with mixed apprehension and approval. In her was their conflict made real, no longer just a way of settling the score but an end to petty fights and squabbles. Once a game was announced it could not be called off, and many kings were coward enough not to risk the chance of having her opposite rather than beside.
In fact, Paz would kill no other king. Not while still a pawn, at least. But the kings didn't know that yet. So they looked at her warily, stepped out of her way, despite the difference in their ranks. She always met their eyes as they passed.
They were, some whispered, looking their death in the face.
Polydeukes only ever asked her about it once.
They'd finished another tryst, would have to vacate the supply closet soon. Catching their breaths, clutching each other, foreheads together. Paz could feel her hair coming unravelled; he must have pulled out her braid loose. Partly in retaliation, partly just to touch him more, she slid her fingers through his curls, getting a good fistful close to the scalp, and tightened her grip. Not pulling him away. Just holding him.
She could feel his shuddering breath, the way his grip got harder on her hip, and she laughed, giddy at all those pieces together. He didn't resist when she pulled, tipping his head up just enough for her to have access to his jugular. His other hand stroked her skin. Tracing something, memorising something. She could feel his muscles move under her lips, just slightly.
"Why did you kill him?"
They were close enough that he would feel it if she had tensed up, but she didn't. Her body was as slack as if he'd asked any other question. Whose turn it was at laundry. Whether she wanted fish for the evening meal. She was silent a while, and then she turned his question around on him.
"Why did I kill him, or why did I kill him?"
He wasn't sure. Wished he could take it back. After a minute more of silence he felt her nod, and pull away, and begin to put herself to rights. She left first.
--
He only treated her differently after that capture.
He fought for black, as always, and in this game she fought for white. He hadn't sought her out. It was simply the nature of the game.
He was down before he knew what had happened. His ribs ached with the blow, sensation arriving slowly after recognising he was off his feet. As he raised himself on his elbows, he could make out her back, walking away, already heading for a new opponent.
They'd met in battle before, but not like this. Not like this.
He breathed in, and breathed out, and dropped back down, lying there on the field, staring up at the sky. Waiting for the game to be over, wanting it to be. But a fellow pawn found him and picked him up, thinking him over-injured. He had to pretend he'd had the wind knocked out of him to save his dignity.
She stopped seeking him out in hallways and at table, eventually.
It wasn't as if they had never met or spoken again after her rise. He'd fought for her, fought against her, bowed or murmured polite acknowledgement as the occasion warranted. There hadn't been that easy camaraderie, her blasé amusements to his occasional retorts.
But that had gone before she'd promoted. The promotion just gave him an excuse.
-
"Have you a name yet?" asks the king as the pieces move off the field. "Polydeukes was good, so this should be even better."
"I've never known anyone not to have some idea of what they'll name themselves," says one of the bishops. "Just as a starting point."
"He's barely knighted and you've got his head whirling already," says the other bishop, shaking her head. "Let alone a knight. No one ever prepares for being a knight."
"The man adapts quickly," the queen says, Alkidike says, from her place at the head of the group. She slants a glance at him, her helmet hiding most of her face. Familiar and unfamiliar, all at once.
"I should hope!" says his now-fellow knight, clapping him on the shoulder. The other knight comes up on his other side, grinning at some huge joke.
"Always best to adapt to whatever his tour has in store!"
Ah, so that's it. He peeks at her, just a brief look. Her expression does not change, not from what he can see.
"Eat well," someone says. He isn't sure who. "Everyone wants a piece of a new knight, so prepare yourself!"
"Are you speaking of his body or his stamina?" asks another, laughing at her own joke. The company breaks out in ribaldry and laughter, buoyed by victory and his personal triumph. He lets the noise wash over him, smiling. Here too is camaraderie.
Beside him, a rook falls in step, and he looks over. She winks at him, and the face sparks something in his memory; this was a pawn he knew. He barely hears her comment, but he feels heat in his cheeks. "Perhaps you shan't go very far on your tour."
--
He fidgets in his new armour. He ought to have trained with it longer than a handful of days, but she would be in the next game, and he had barely spent a thought in volunteering. And now he looks across the field at Alkidike, her mouth firmed beneath her helmet, chin lifted high. Her lips are pressed together, he knows, not of nerves, nor of fear. She clenches her jaw not to smile.
Each side bows to the other. The observers watch, silent, excited. The kings lift their swords. And it begins.
Moves and moves into the battle, he finds her again. She's already splashed with blood, eyes burning with her joyous fervor. They aren't in a position where either can attack the other, so he turns away. He has a game to play.
Near the end, only four of each left on the field, he sees her in the distance. They are about to clash, black and white, and he has to hold himself back from rushing into the fight. Strategy cannot be neglected this late. Personal feelings have no place in the game.
She strikes down his rook, and turns. He moves then, without thought. No delay here. Ahead to where she will move. He can hear his bishop behind him, her rook somewhere beyond. His king shouts, something indistinct. She will kill him if she can. She has never hesitated, when checkmating.
She moves. He moves. Again. Again. The dance of battle, neither catching the other, and the ever-encroaching spiral into the end.
"Check!" comes the cry, and he sees his bishop at the ready. One heartbeat, one breath, and then he's down. She barely spares him a glance before moving on.
He doesn't bother getting up, merely listening to the clashes of sword and shield. The sky is blue as blue above, cloudless and clear. The end of the game is near. If she is the one to checkmate, his king will die.
"-mate!" comes the cry, and he cannot tell who cries it. His armor seems to have gotten heavier since he donned it this morning, he is nothing more than weight and pain. It's not any different as a knight than as a pawn. He wonders why he thought it would be.
He counts three birds crossing the empty sky before she appears upside down in his vision, pushing at his shoulder with her boot. "Come on, Nollaig, you can't laze about all day." Her helmet is under her arm, her face dirty, grin brilliant. He lifts a hand for her to take and pull him to his feet.
"It sounds strange when you say it that way." She doesn't release his hand once he's up, so he keeps a tight hold too. Alkidike's grin widens, the look she's always had when she has some plot afoot.
"You'll get used to it. I can come up with something worse, if you like, there's time yet to change it."
"Please don't," he says, dry as dust, and then jolts as something hits him lightly in the back. Not her. He turns to see his fellow knight, rolling her eyes.
"Behave like we've won, will you?"
He stares at her blankly before the meaning of her words hits him, but Alkidike is already tugging him away. Still, his fellow knight calls after them, "don't take pity on her, Nollaig! Just because she captured you doesn't make her any less a loser!"
"Different scoring," Alkidike calls back, laughing, and soon they're off the field, hurrying into the castle.
--
They tumble onto her bed, no heed for each other's bruises and aches, a play-fight of increasing heat. Pieces of armour litter the floor, chainmail fumbled off in jerks and starts and muttered curses as hair snags or mail refuses to budge.
"We ought to've stuck to the usual order," he half-laughs, half-groans, as she straddles him. His chestplate is off, hers isn't, and the opposite goes for the same at their crotches. She grins down at him, hands warm on his chest, and rakes her nails over his nipple. He gasps, and her grin widens.
"This is enough." She rocks against him, or more accurately, against the raised mound of his codpiece. It's fruitless, he can't feel her much more than her hands on his skin and her legs around him, but he rocks back anyway. He doesn't bother grabbing at her. She always gets her way.
Heat builds, and the rough music of metal clinking against metal just excites her more. This is new, they've never been able to do this. Pawns have to return everything to the armory, but higher pieces keep their own. No detours now.
He might well tear the stitches in his lip just keeping his composure, just watching her, so he forces himself to keep his jaw slack, his lips parted rather than caught between his teeth. She doesn't last long between the rush of being with him again and the exhilaration of battle, whether lost or won, and when she leans back he fumbles with the catches to get his last bits of armor off.
She takes him by surprise just when he's gotten it loose, pushes his knees, thighs back so he's folded up underneath her. He yelps, but goes willingly, and it's a quick moment to fumble him out of his breeches. He doesn't last long either, but that doesn't matter. That doesn't matter, to have her here above him, to have her back in his arms.
Sometime later, Alkidike wakes briefly. It's rare now to have another beside her. She's grown used to emptiness in her bed, warmed by nothing more than an ashpan beforeher sleep.
Asleep, exhausted, the lines on his face are smoothed out by the moonlight. Here in her bed is the old Polydeukes, the sweet surfacing from bitter, as if years had vanished in an instance. It's not late enough in the night for stubble to yet appear, but she brushes his cheek, very gently, just to check. Not a prickle. He doesn't stir.
She lays her head down, hooks a leg over his hip and an arm over his torso, and closes her eyes.
--
"Do you know," she says, in the morning, drawing the blade gently up his chin, "I didn't think you'd choose knight. You were going to follow me into queenhood. I even had a name ready for you."
"I can't imagine what monstrosity you were going to saddle me with," he retorts, muffled both by foam and the desire not to add more scars to his face at present. She grins, scraping the blade clean before moving to his other side. Familiar, the way her fingers feel on his skin. New calluses, but the same hand, like their every morning as pawns, Polydeukes and Paz. He always braided her hair out of her face, and now his fingers twitch unconsciously.
"I wouldn't settle for anything less than sweetness," she murmurs, setting the blade down, fetching a towel for him. Their fingers brush as he takes it, and he shivers involuntarily.
She turns away as he pats his face dry, tidying the kit away. Her hair is a messy ball at the base of her neck, wisps escaping, and suddenly he wants nothing more than to loose it all and begin again.
Well. Why not?
He gets an elbow to the ribs for startling her when he loops the towel around her to pull her back, but that's deserved.
--
Her mouth tasted faintly of salt-copper, vision swimming. On her knees, her shattered weapon little more than a prop for her to stay upright, the only thing she could make out clearly was the shouting. Every voice distinct, every syllable clear. How strange, when everything blurred together during the battle.
"No longer." "No longer." "Pawn no longer." "Pick her up, someone!"
Someone had their hands on her. That was good. That meant she could let go.
—
There is always something to be wary of, as regards a queen who rose inside a game.
The fact is, no one wanted her to be a queen. Not that they wanted her not to be a queen, but she has never been a first choice in that regard, or even a fifteenth. Yet this is what the game is about. Ability. An implicit, divine approval of worth.
And so she is a queen, and none can deny her.