Be Thou My Good: Chapter 3 (Patreon)

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Be Thou My Good 3: Stone

The road was long.

This was, I decided, true for any army on the march. The invention of  cars and trains made travel faster, certainly, but the Squire's Legion  of Doom—singular—had only horse drawn carts for supplies.

Their destination, the city of Marchford, was yet a few days away, and  as things stood, I rather thought the boredom would kill me before  Catherine Foundling made up her mind about it. The other prisoners were  distrustful at best, and the soldiers leery of a potential 'Hero' in the  making.

I heard only whispers, but it was clear that one of the officers had poisoned the well against me. Maybe even Hakram.

He seemed like the cautious, far seeing, type.

And with that thought firmly in my mind, I found myself less than  surprised when he approached one evening, the Apprentice in tow, asking  if I cared to pass the evening with a game.

I smiled at his words.

"And shall I be a player, or a piece?"

To which he'd held up a bag in his hand of bones, shaking it as game  pieces clacked against each other within the fabric. "I do mean a game."  His voice was ever a rumble. "It's one of my own making, and I'd  appreciate your insight."

I turned an eye to the Apprentice. The chubby boy had been peering at me  interestedly through his glasses the whole time. At my raised eyebrow,  he shrugged. "It's an interesting little counting game."

"So, I suppose you have questions for me as well then?"

"Hmm?" He tilted his head, blinking back and forth at the two of us.  "Why else would I be here?"

I chuckled. "As long as I get something better than the slop you've been feeding us."

Hakram gave a nod of acknowledgement, gesturing for me to follow him.

"Where are you from?" the Apprentice asked. "At first glance you look  Proceran, or maybe even a freakishly tall Duni, but your features are  anything but."

"I don't imagine you see very many Procerans, in the Wasteland." Just  listening to the muttering of the soldiers and the other prisoners had  helped clear up many of my questions about the wider world, at least in  general.

To the East was the Wasteland, and the Dread Empire of Praes. They ruled  the once kingdom of Callow as well, which sent bells of 'once and future' ringing in my head the moment I'd heard.

Only more so, given that this very Legion had been dispatched to crush a rebellion in that very kingdom.

A massive mountain range followed to the west of Callow, separating the  Kingdom and the Empire from a small host of other nations. The first and  largest of those nations was Procer, a large nation that, according to  one of the silver spears whose mother had been of Callowan stock, made  it a point to invade Callow about half as often as the Empire did.

And then both sides tended to turn around and mock those very same  Callowans for being bitter and distrustful, going by the comments made  by the rest of the Silver Spears.

All told, it seemed like a tug of war between bad and worse, with one  side claiming the light of the heavens washed away their sins, and the  other making no excuses for each new depth of depravity to which they  sank.

Of course, that hardly told me where Squire stood.

"Well." Apprentice's voice drew me out of my musings. "Not very many live ones."

Case in point.

"In that case," I said. "I'm definitely not from Procer."

Hakram gave a gravely laugh as he held open the flap to a slightly larger tent. "I think that only makes him more interested."

I took in the robed youth, the way his eyes glinted behind his glasses.

"I suppose it's too late to claim it was a lie, in any case."

"Why not just tell me?" The boy sank into one of the better chairs within the tent.

There was a rug, at least, along with a brazier for warmth and light.  Though other than a rough wooden table and some camp stools there was  little else.

I wondered who carried the table when they broke camp each day.

I hummed at Apprentice's question.

At first glance, it seemed foolish to place so much weight on a simple  answer. Just as arrogant as to assume that this world would somehow  grant me power, shaped by the way I acted, that I was significant just  because I thought I was.

On the other hand.

When had foolish arrogance stopped me?

We were all small. So small, in the end. I knew that better than  everyone. I knew that I was perhaps the smallest and weakest of all.

But in that weakness, we can move mountains. We can topple cities.

We can kill gods.

And so, I smirked mysteriously. It wasn't something that came naturally to me, but I liked to think that I'd had an excellent teacher. "A woman has to have her secrets, Apprentice."

He blinked owlishly. "What does gender have to do with it?"

"I'll leave that to you to figure out." I pulled over one of the camp stools. "I'm sure you'll prove equal to the task."

Across from us, Hakram took a seat as well, the simple stool creaking under his weight.

It was rather obvious who the large chair was for, but the orc ignored  it with aplomb. He still towered over both of us regardless.

"So, you have a game you want me to play?" It made a certain amount of  sense, after all. How many stories about chess―or other games of  strategy―were there, where playing against someone gave you a sense of  who they were?

Like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.

"Here." He upended the pouch over the table, sending a collection of  small stones spilling out over the table, along with three smaller bags.

I blinked. "Is there a board?"

He chuckled. "Not for this game." Hakram sorted the pebbles into their  pouches with a deft hand, leaving a small pile left over. "I first came  up with it when I was a child in the steps. We didn't have wood to  waste."

So, a long-term project then. It spoke volumes about him, didn't it?

"What's it called then?"

"I named it Tower-Raising."

I snorted.

Harkram seemed more amused than anything. "You don't like it?"

"A name should be more evocative, shouldn't it?" Maybe it was that I was  born in the twenty-first century, the age of TV marketing and email  spam. "Unless you don't want it to catch on."

He laughed once. "Shatranj doesn't have an evocative name."

"You're only proving my point." I took the bag of stones he handed to  me, after mixing the three of them up in a wooden bowl. "Shatranj is  entrenched, after all."

"And what if I don't particularly care if it's successful?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Then why would you be having people play it?"

The big man shrugged, "I like to hear people's perspectives on the game. It helps me refine the rules."

"Then my advice is you should change the name." I shrugged. "But I suppose I'll play this Tower-raising game of yours."

Hakram nodded. "Each player is given a different number of stones,  secretly. Six, eight, or ten. The goal is to amass 20 stones, by taking  them from other players, or the Kingdom of Callow." He gestured to the  small pile of stones off to the side.

"The Kingdom of Callow?" I chuckled. "The very same Kingdom of Callow that you are now suppressing a revolution in?"

"That would be the case."

"And how has that worked out for you." I paused. "In the game, I mean."

Apprentice chuckled. "Ah! Because you are implying things aren't working out for us in the real world as well."

"It certainly was an implication before you stated it outright," I said.

Apprentice nodded happily, and I couldn't help but hide a small smile behind my fingers.

Well, if they didn't kill me, I could see Apprentice and I becoming good  friends. There was something to be said for those who would always call  a spade a spade.

Namely that I'd never had enough of them in my last life.

Honest people, that is. Not spades.

Though I'd not had many spades back then either…

"It goes about as well as things usually did for the Wasteland."  Hakram's voice drew us back to the game. His hand, the one made entirely  of bone that is, twirled one of the unclaimed stones. "If a tower isn't  raised in twenty turns after the first stone is stolen from them,  Callow takes us all."

Well, I thought, wasn't that ironic.

It wasn't hard to learn that Squire was Callowan after all.

After I nodded, he went on to explain the various rules for taking and  giving stones, bribery, alliances, and oaths were all included.

As was, amusingly, a way to destroy your own stones, to threaten the other players into action.

It was a delightful little rat race Hakram had designed.

And Apprentice said it was based—rather faithfully in his words—on the  actual politics of the wasteland. "Though," he added right after. "It  doesn't accurately account for the power of higher workings. Which is  its greatest flaw in my opinion."

"No game is perfect," Hakram rumbled in reply.

I smiled. Really, it made sense why the Apprentice would refer to it as a  'counting game.' On the surface, it would be rather easy to keep track  of how many stones the other two players had, at least with a bit of  practice.

Of course, for anyone without the sorcery to swat aside armies, it was  clearly a lying game, just one that was also lying about its purpose,  however transparently.

Something to think about later.

"I think I get it," I said after the explanations came to an end. "Who starts?"

Apprentice checked his bag. "If I begin can I ask the first question?"

I tapped my chin, thinking for a second. Well, if Hakram wanted this  little game of his to serve as a test of my character, I decided I'd  rather oblige him. I was on screen right now, after all, conversing with  quite literally two Named Characters. It was a bit odd, stepping out of myself like this.

But I was excellent at dissociating.

"Sure." I held out a hand towards him. "I'll answer one question each round, if you give me a stone."

Apprentice frowned. "But then I'd only be able to ask eight questions."

I blinked, holding off the urge to look inside my own bag. "I'm sure," I  managed after a moment, "we'll be able to think of other arrangements."  I shook my head. "The only question I won't answer is where I'm from,  then, in that case."

Apprentice hummed to himself, fiddling with his glasses as he weighed my offer.

Off to the side, Hakram chuckled. "That's not how the game is meant to be played."

I raised an eyebrow. "Isn't it?"

He shrugged, crossing two muscled arms over his leather armor.

"Very well." Apprentice held out a stone to me. "What happened to your arm? The burn patterns are interesting."

I rolled the stone across my fingers, dropping it in my own pouch. That  brought me to seven, and the Apprentice, unless I'd completely misread  him, had started at eight, leaving Hakram the ten.

That was some coincidence.

"It was crushed by falling rocks, when I raided an… enemy fortress, I  suppose would be the best way to put it. One of my companions cauterized  it."

"And the burn patterns?"

I raised my good hand in a claw. "He summoned the flame in his palm, like so."

Hakram leaned forward. "That must have been excruciating."

I flicked my eyes towards him. He was so softly spoken, but I was hardly the only person in this tent who was down a hand.

"We might even have a similar pain tolerance."

Hakram showed a hint of his fangs. They were sharply curved things, meant to tear flesh from bone. I'd yet to find out if orcs actually ate the bodies of defeated foes.

But they certainly had the teeth for it.

"That would be interesting."

I shrugged. "Does that answer your question, Apprentice?"

He nodded distractedly, bouncing his pouch of stones in his hand, as if weighing the worth of each question.

"I suppose next is my turn." Hakram drummed the fingers of his good hand  on the table. "Taylor… would you allow me to take a stone from  Apprentice?"

Apprentice blinked at Hakram. "Is this betrayal?"

I shook my head. "It's not in my interests, I'm afraid."

"Apprentice?"

But the bespectacled young man had checked out again the moment he'd  heard my response. Hakram only chuckled. For a moment I thought he'd  just take a stone from Callow, putting a limit on the game now that I'd  snatched the reins.

Instead he took a stone out of his own pouch.

"I'll destroy one of my own stones then." He placed it delicately back into the main bag, off to the side.

I frowned, confused for a moment before the action clicked. He was limiting the game in another way.

Assuming that I also stole a stone from Hakram with Apprentice's 'help,'  he'd be losing two stones a round. That was five for me, plus eight  from Apprentice and my own six still put me one stone short of building  my tower.

Of course, in that case, I could just steal from Callow. But I doubted he would simply let it play out.

Should I take a stone from Callow now? But that would let Hakram 'destroy' another one of his stones.

I chuckled.

And here I thought I was being quite clever, only for this seemingly  simple game to grow impossibly more complicated the moment I'd brought  real motivations into it.

Maybe that's what it needed though, just a little more complexity.

"Apprentice, a stone from Hakram for a question?" I asked.

He nodded absently, and Hakram chuckled and handed me a stone. That was  eight. Then I caught myself with a wry smile. The game really had roped  me in.

"Perhaps there's something to this game after all."

"Thank you," he said sardonically.

"Here I thought you wanted my feedback."

"Who brought you to Callow?" Apprentice drummed the table with his fingers. "And why?"

I raised an eyebrow. "That's two questions."

He held out a stone.

"Well, I suppose that works as well." I slipped the stone into my pouch  and thought about my answer. "It was a woman who brought me here.  Ostensibly an ally then, but an enemy many times over before." I rested  my cheek against my palm. "I tend to work well with people who were  previously my enemies."

Hakram gave a minor chuckle at my words, but otherwise said nothing.

"As for why?" I shrugged. "Because she decided not to kill me."

Apprentice pouted. There really was no other word for it. "These answers aren't very helpful."

"I don't know why she put me in Callow." I reached into my bag, rolling  one of the colored stones between my fingers. "I thought she was going  to kill me. In a way, I was almost looking forward to it."

At that, Hakram leaned forward. "Oh?"

I chuckled. It was a noise without joy. "Is it truly so strange, to want nothing more than rest? I suppose it would be; you're both young yet."

"You speak like you're so much older than us."

"Age is a number. I find scars to be more telling." I raised my stump of  an arm; the burn scars Apprentice had been so clearly interested in  plain to see as the loose fabric slipped back. "Case in point."

Hakram placed his own arm on the table, drumming fingers of bone against the wood.

"Well, I didn't call you children, did I?"

The Apprentice crossed his arms. "You implied it."

At that, I could only offer another shrug. "Tell you what, come back  after one of you loses a second limb, and then we can talk about scars."

At that, Hakram and Apprentice both looked at me.

"It was my second." I grinned. "I'm surprisingly difficult to put down, for a squishy pink human."

Hakram hummed, pulling out a flask of something from a chest. "I think you might get along well with Catherine."

I tipped my head back and forth. "Perhaps."

"You don't think so?" Apprentice asked.

Like and like did often compliment each other. But adding fire to more fire rarely ended well.

Catherine Foundling seemed fond enough of burning things for the both of us.

Instead of saying that, I just smiled. "A claim like that is always a  flip of a coin. Though, certainly…" My smile turned sharp. "We'll never  be just acquaintances now."

Hakram and Apprentice shared a glance.

"I don't believe that was ever on the table." Apprentice chortled,  glasses glinting merrily in the low light. "People are rarely  indifferent towards Catherine. I believe it's part of her charm."

Hakram, of course, had a shrewd look in his eyes. I wouldn't put it past  him to know exactly how much information I'd heard about Catherine  Foundling, to be weighing just how likely it was that I puzzled that  much together from things I'd actually heard.

It was almost funny. The big, solid man should have reminded me of Brian, with his soft yet firm way of speaking.

But if anything, Hakram had much more in common with Lisa. He just lacked that burning need to be the smartest person in every room. Which, to be fair, was probably her biggest weakness.

No matter how much I loved her for it.

"It's your turn by the way, Hakram."

He hummed. "I will destroy another of my stones." Seven to go. I sucked on my lip.

The next few rounds were defined more by the questions than the passing  of stones. Whatever plan Hakram had, for the moment, he was more than  willing to wait.

"What do you know of sorcery?" Apprentice asked first.

"Little," I told him. "Save for that it can accomplish almost anything,  with enough patience and study." The boy seemed oddly pleased at that  response.

"A simplistic point of view. But it's better to know your ignorance than to wallow in it."

So of course, next he asked about education.

"In most countries it's standardized, and often paid for by the national  government." I quirked my lips, remembering my own college woes.  "Often, it is required until eighteen. Though some countries offer free  education to the brightest to continue their studies indefinitely."

"Fascinating. If only the empire applied similar practices."

I thought the rest of the continent would be rather happy that the  wasteland still practiced an ad hoc system. But perhaps under an evil  empire, public education would be an even bigger mess than back on  Earth…

No, probably not.

"What do the workings of your homeland look like?" was the next question.

Workings? "They are slow, involved things. Every change is in small,  incremental steps, but over thousands of years we have created wonders  that can even be used by normal men and women." I smiled. "There is very  little actual magic involved."

"Sounds almost like the gnomes."

"Gnomes?"

Apprentice smiled. "One stone!"

I turned to Hakram.

"One of the greater powers beyond Calernia," he rumbled. "They monitor  the magical and technological development of other nations. If the  gnomes discover something they deem objectionable… they send a red  letter."

I found my eyebrows climbing higher and higher as he spoke. Gnomes? And they sent out Scarlet Letters to people on the naughty list? Was this the same world where less than a  week ago a thousand men had burned alive in the fantasy equivalent of Greek fire?

I waited for the punchline, but Hakram just sat in silence.

"That's it?"

He chuckled. "The last time a kingdom received three letters, the gnomes sank them beneath the sea."

I leaned back. "That's better."

Hakram paused, and Apprentice let loose a cackle.

I hmphed. "At least it's internally consistent!"

"They're also rather arbitrary," Hakram continued. "As far as I've  heard, no one knows what lines of development they restrict." He leaned  in. "The last Red Letter, according to Squire, was for a thresher the  goblins had been working on in their eyries."

I frowned at that. They allowed what was essentially magical napalm, but farm tools were off the table.

The fact tickled something at the back of my mind, but at the moment, I  could only offer a shrug. "That does sound strange." It still probably  wouldn't be a good idea to import muskets.

Because of the gnomes, I meant, not just because giving guns to the Legions of Doom was a poor plan from the outset.

Another few questions passed quickly as I puzzled over the gnomes. They were usually inventors, and inventors did tend to jump on monopolies, but  the small sample size kept me from drawing any actual conclusions, no  matter how much I felt like I should be seeing something obvious.

It was after I'd amassed 16 stones, and Hakram was down to his last that he sprung his trap.

"Would you like one of your stones back from Taylor, Apprentice?"

I blinked once, even as Apprentice weighed his bag with a frown. "It would be nice."

"I'll offer you one of her stones each round, if you vow not to let her take anymore of mine."

A startled laugh escaped my throat. So that was his plan all along. With  one stone left, Hakram had intentionally put himself in a corner. He  couldn't take any action that would result in him losing his last stone,  which meant the bargain to Apprentice was guaranteed.

Even if he tried to take a stone from Callow, the Apprentice and I would easily remove Hakram from the game on our next turns.

Meanwhile, at 15 stones, and now losing one each turn as well as gaining  one, I was still a ways off from completing my tower, and with both  other players in lockstep, there was no way I'd be allowed another  stone, save what Masago gave me for his questions.

A stone that would be taken back by Hakram in turn.

What's more, Apprentice and I had no such arrangement. Our little deal  had been made beyond the game's rules. A fact that Hakram now used to  skewer me.

I'd been right when I'd compared him to Lisa after all.

The Apprentice, of course, grasped all of this immediately, if his unabashed grin was anything to go by. "Agreed."

With a wry smile, I handed over one of my stones. It was hard to be  upset with him, when he clearly only wanted the chance to ask more  questions. Perhaps the old me would have been angry at being played, but  I was not that girl any longer.

And there could be enjoyment in the game even if you were losing, so long as you could see the threads spelling out exactly why.

It was in defeat that the greatest victories of all could be found, after all.

I drummed my fingers on the table as Hakram passed the turn to me. Idly,  I thought about asking Hakram to let me take a stone from Apprentice,  it would be worth a chuckle, if nothing else. At fourteen stones, with  Hakram crushing five of his, there were only enough stones between the  three of us for a single tower.

But just like I'd pointed out at the very beginning, this was a game played between people, not between nameless lumps of rock.

Hakram and Apprentice won as long as I continued to answer questions,  and seeing where my rope ended would be just as valuable as the answers I  provided along the way.

That left Callow. But even that was covered. With 14 stones, it would be  trivial for the two of them to keep me contained and ask all the  questions they wanted before the time limit ran out.

I opened my mouth to praise Hakram's plan, when the flap of the tent was thrown open.

A gust of wind sent the coals in the brazier glowing bright as a short  girl with black hair and even darker armor stalked into the room.

"I thought," Catherine Foundling said. "I told you both to leave her the hells alone."

But as Hakram and the Apprentice shared a brief chuckle at her annoyed glare, I saw the threads around this little game shift just the slightest bit.

"Perfect timing!" I smiled at the Squire. "I was just about to tell Hakram that we needed someone to play Callow."

After all, sometimes the game just needs a bit more… complexity.