Chapter №3 – Playing Risk-like Games (Patreon)

“We finish today?”

“Yes, we have finished for the day eadhenchik.”

A week, or two, had passed and Boris had become able to string together the simplest of sentences. Thankfully the maid, apparently named Anna, dumbed down her sentences in front of Boris so he could mostly understand her. He definitely didn’t like being spoken to that way, but it’d have to do until he comprehended the local language, or managed to make his way back to Montenegro. Boris had tried to talk about his own situation, asking when he was going to be let free or where the mad scientist was, but Anna definitely didn’t understand Boris’ best attempts at making more complicated sentences. He didn’t know how to say “mad”, “scientist”, and “bastard who forced me to be here I swear to God I’ll suffocate that git to death whenever I find him”.

At least, life was good for now. He went back to his room, as cramped as it ever was. It seemed to be some sort of bedroom repurposed to be a storage room judging by items constantly going in and out of it. Boris didn’t mind as long as nobody disrupted his beauty sleep, which had happened a couple times as Anna had barged into the room to take out a pan or something similarly minor.

What wasn’t minor was the noise made by pans clanging together. Anna was quite clumsy too, taking five minutes and raising more hell than an artillery barrage just to take something out. She was like an icon of plain clumsiness: short brown hair most unnotable in its nature, so were her brown eyes, one thing of note was the plenty of freckles on her face. Her stature was small and thin, with her gray dress and white apron she could blend into the background of any scene except for when she caused a scene of her own after spilling a bucketful of water onto the floor. Then she’d dutifully bow down to apologize to a superior if they were present (Boris had occasionally seen fancily dressed folk pass by them) before quickly working to dry the scene before anyone else arrived at the scene.

Boris felt bad for Anna as well, so he’d voluntarily help her like the gentleman he was. Cleaning the carpets felt like nothing to him after he had spent two long years cleaning the dreadful Montenegrin latrines, those “latrines” being nothing more than a hole in the ground for crap to go into. At least the latrines here were a whole lot more civilized, with porcelain thrones for all lined up along the walls for Boris to enjoy desecrating.

With thoughts like the above swirling above his crammed mind, Boris felt like he was being flushed down the drain of life. He’d have continued his moody and oh-so deep considerations if not for the door to his room creaking open the slightest little bit. His body jerked up, his hands went for a rifle that wasn’t there, and he prepared to meet the foe that had come to ambush him.

“Zaustavi!” he loudly declared, pointing his imaginary rifle towards the intruder. Then he felt back after having shouted at this visitor, who definitely (unless he was in some sort of horror story) not there to kill him.

“Sorry!” This was a word that Boris had quickly learned from Anna. However, the person apologizing this time wasn’t Anna, but another semi-familiar person. Boris remembered her as “one of the rich gits who passed by the corridor”: a little girl of little age, her hair carefully shaped into a set of golden twin drills that flowed down to her shoulders. Her blue eyes were naïve, not the sort who’d come to murder someone in their sleep. Probably. Most likely. Boris hoped he wasn’t about to be stabbed to death by a murderous child. For all he knew, this girl was one of the mad Hungarian scientist’s subjects who had gone mad, or any number of other horrifying possibilities. “May I come in?”

“Who the hell are you?!” replied Boris, not caring for how fancifully dressed the girl in front of him was. Having his sleep interrupted had made the man quite angry.

“I’m- I’m Lady Himelly Rabanowicz of Yeczi-Sherifeld!” She clenched the skirt of her pinkish dress, ever so fancy with the countless frills adorning it, and curtsied with upmost gentility. Boris was about to vomit in response to the overwhelming stench of bourgeoise culture. “Um… glad to meet you.”

“I, Boris Borisović of Montenegro.” He attempted to imitate the curtsy of this little Rabanowicz, though all he managed to do was raise his skirt up a tiny little bit in a motion that only vaguely resembled a curtsy. “Now, get out…” Wait, she is a lady, and I’m in the outfit of a servant… Suddenly Boris jumped out of the bed and ran towards the bourgeoise girl in front of him. “I’m sorry! So sorry! Please forgive me!”

The little lady was confuddled for a second facing the swift barrage of apologies from the maid. “Okay, okay.” She waited until Boris stopped the apologies. “I’m bored.” she declared; the word “bored” had been taught thoroughly by Anna thanks to the many times she muttered that word under her breath. “Want to Kur’inshpel? It’s very enteghlenen!”

Now, Boris wasn’t enthusiastic about whatever a Kur’inshpel was, but the young lady in front of him seemed to be enthusiastic about whatever it was. However, a proper Montenegrin man like Boris was enthusiastic about one thing and one thing only: sleep. “No.” If he risked receiving a thousand lashings by rejecting the demands of the upper classes, so be it! It mattered not as long as he got to rest at the end.

“No?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No!”

Dejected was the young lady, so dejected that her eyes began watering and her nose began sniffling. “No?” She looked like a baby whose candy was taken away and then crushed under the boots of the metaphorical candy thief. This made Boris the evil baby-crushing candy thief in this analogy, which he didn’t like.

“…fine.”

“Yay!” Rabanowicz raised her hands in glorious victory. Trying to be stubborn against a child was hard unless one was to be coldhearted, and Boris found himself to be only a lukewarm bloke in that metaphorical regard.

“Follow me! March!” commanded little Rabanowicz, doing an impressive heel turn followed by an even more impressive goose step. Well, it was impressive to standards of a little girl like her. In truth, her short legs could achieve what might be called a “duckling step” instead: raising her leg a little, then down, trying her best not to trip over the many frills and folds of her dress.

Boris tried to follow her example, but he quickly remembered why he always stayed backmost in every parade. At least he (and the little girl in front of him) was better than his French allies. Those frog-faced snail-eaters could never manage a proper step. The goose step was of dubious training value at best, or of dubious value at all (as noted by a certain George Orwell, “Why is the goose-step not used in England? […] It is not used because the people in the street would laugh.”), but Boris missed the days when he was goose stepping in the training grounds rather than slowly stepping into his grave in the battle grounds. Back in those halcyon days of yore, where he believed that he was to be fighting for King and Country rather than Survival and Sustenance, oh how he wished to return to them…

Unfortunately, as Boris mentally noted, time travel is a bit too ridiculous even if my current situation is already beyond ridiculous… Though, who knows, maybe the mad Hungarian scientist has figured that out as well? Everything seemed to be on the table now that Boris thought about it.

Speaking of tables, Boris’ brain had gone on auto-pilot while walking through the corridors, he had entered a room that had one. Now, rooms having tables wasn’t odd by itself. Plenty of rooms have tables: dining rooms, break rooms, war rooms… This room too didn’t derive its interesting nature from having a table. Rather it was everything around the table, from not one not two but three flintlock muskets hang on the wall, on another wall was a map of some sort and on another were a few fancy cavalry sabers. It was the sort of room that screamed “a military officer lives here”, and Boris was instinctively ready to salute any adults who came into the room. “Is it okay if we enter here?”

“Of course! This is my mansion. We can enter anywhere we please!” Boris watched this scene nervously: many including Boris would agree that having a little lady in the middle of a bunch of firearms wasn’t a good idea. Even a 20th century man like Boris knew that children belonged in the mines, not in the middle of a depot of firearms.

“Here!” Rabanowicz opened a drawer under a table, taking out little square pieces which were colored in various manners. Some had half of it be colored, some had the other half, some had stripes and some did not. She put these little pieces on the table along with five dice, taking out a smaller map from the drawer alongside to put them on. “Now we can play!

“Play what?” Boris didn’t see anything that a little girl would reasonably want to play. He recognized these pieces, in this sort of configuration, to be part of some sort of wargame. These sorts of games weren’t too familiar to him, he had only seen the French officers unfurl a map and invite the Montenegrin officers for a friendly game now and then, but the general format was familiar enough to him. They’d roll some dice, calculate some things, and then remove some pieces accordingly to simulate warfare. Of course, Boris had to wonder why she was interested in such a thing that only snubby laurel-riders liked. Or whether this child knew the rules in the first place. “This?”

“Oh…” Rabanowicz paused. She went to the next room without saying anything, soon returning back with a little doll that was dressed as fancily as her. “You- You could play with her if you don’t want to play with me. I get it – nobody really wants to play with me, so…”

In all honesty, Boris would rather take a nap than play with either. He made a few hesitant gestures, uhming and erring, while trying to find a way to formulate a polite refusal in the strange language he had found himself needing to use.

“But! But if you want to play, I’ll get you sweets. I’ll ask the maids; they’ll get some for us.”

“Yes, let’s play.” Having been convinced by the supreme negotiation skills of Rabanowicz, Boris had no choice but to accept her proposal. The poor man was hungry for something proper to eat after having been sharing the stale bread of Anna. “So, what do we do?”

“Err…” Little Rabanowicz pushed around the pieces, getting them into a formation which’d get any officer who organized it fired. “And… And… You’re supposed to throw this dice?” She threw one of the dice, it landing to show a face with various marking which neither of them could read. “And then… I think you’re supposed to read the results and move the pieces?” She leaned on the table as if it’d help her understand anything.

“Supposed to?” Boris leaned on the table as well, setting his gaze to the mess of multicolored pieces on the table. “Do you… Do you even know how to play this?”

Rabanowicz slowly turned away from Boris, hiding her face. “…no.”

“Then why?”

“I saw the guests having lots of fun with each other, and I thought I could have some fun with someone else as well…” Boris could see one of her cheeks swell in a bourgeoise gesture of pouting.

Boris had to salvage the situation. The heart of a young child and, most importantly, his sweets were on the line. “Uhm… Will you still give sweet if I play with… with…” He pointed at the doll “That.”

“Evacale? We can play evacale! You be the eadhen, I’ll be the lady” Rabanowicz raised the doll up “and she’ll be the eadhenchik!”

“Whatever, get over with.”

With that, Boris had agreed upon a session of evacalethat lasted for two whole hours, whatever an evacale was. He’d quickly find out that she just wanted to play house, and Boris had just gotten the role of being a maid once more, much to his annoyance. The poor doll didn’t live long under the care of old Boris.