Mindgames: Fool's Mate (5 page)

‘The rules of the game are now more complex,’ he said, twirling the end of a moustache between his fingertips, ‘as before, you will move to the hexagons you are directed to, and as before you will fight to the death anyone you find there. These basic rules remain the same.’ No one spoke. All watched and waited. The General continued, ‘However, you will receive additional vocal instructions, sometimes telling you to follow light lines that will appear on the ground, telling you what to do with some weapons, and occasionally telling you to defend more than one hexagon. This will all come clear to you during the game. Now, take your positions.’

The General finished his speech with a wave of his baton.
Carroll looked askance at Ellery then walked to blue five as his wristband instructed him.

♠♠♠

The game commenced as it had before. Carroll went to his starting hexagon and Kruger and Ellery moved into positions either side of him. Shortly he was moved to the next hexagon in, then the next and the next. It was after he stepped into the seventh hexagon that things began to change.

‘
Follow the yellow line,’ came the General's curt instruction in his ear. He peered down at a yellow line that had appeared, growing from where he stood and extending itself into the next hexagon at a walking pace. He followed where it directed him, knowing it would certainly not be back to Kansas.

As he entered the next hexagon the line began to grow at a greater rate. He
glanced back and saw that it was now shrinking from behind and was already out of the hexagon he had started in. He picked up his pace to keep with the line. It did not take much imagination to guess what would happen if he did not.

To begin with he was trotting to keep up, then finally, running. All his concentration centred on getting his breath and following the line. Then, it came to a halt, and gasping, he halted with it. As it faded he cursed himself for smoking. After all, his new body was probably free of addiction.
Once he had his breath back he checked his wristband to confirm that he was in the correct hexagon, then stood upright and scanned around.

Scattered all around there were combatants swinging at each other with clubs, knives, and other weapons of death. There were others sprinting to keep up with lines, and still others, like
Carroll, who were waiting their turn. Amongst all this were ubiquitous oily balefires that told of both victory and defeat. Directly ahead of him Carroll saw three possible opponents advancing on him a hexagon at a time. They appeared to be ancient Egyptians so he guessed they were from Anubis's team. To one side he saw the recently resurrected Cavalier, advancing a hexagon at a time to intercept the three. Carroll watched as he entered a hexagon at the same time as one of the three, the ensuing rush to grab weapons, then the two backing off clutching sabres. Next they quickly engaged, and the Egyptian did not stand a chance. He was decapitated in seconds.

‘
General instruction,’ the General informed his team. Carroll would have laughed at the pun at any other time and in any other place. ‘Retain your weapons. I repeat: retain your weapons.’

Still grasping his sabre t
he Cavalier advanced to meet the next Egyptian. Carroll did not see what happened next because a flare of light distracted him. He turned to see a short, broad-bladed sword lying at the centre of his hexagon. He lurched over to grab it up. By the time he turned back to see what had happened to the Cavalier he was dead and burning and the Egyptians were close. One of them, he saw, carried a trident, the other, a morning star, and not the pretty kind.

‘
Move at will within the red line,’ was the General's next instruction. Carroll checked around as a red like appeared to enclose four hexagons including his own. The General continued with, ‘Kill all opponents who cross the line. Members of your own team can join you to help with the defence. Do not kill them.’

Somewhat superfluous instructions
Carroll thought. He had known what he had to do from the moment the red line had appeared. He checked to see if anyone was being sent to help him. Distantly he could see Julius and closer the Masai, both were coming towards him a hexagon at a time. Having not yet gained a full understanding of the game he did not know if they would reach him before the Egyptians nor if they were being sent to help at all. He turned to face his prospective opponents, wondering if he would ever understand the rules, wondering if there were any.

Judging the pace at which they
were approaching Carroll reckoned that the one with the trident would reach him about two minutes before the one with the morning star. Holding his sword in readiness he wondered if he would be able to kill the first one in two minutes.

The first Egyptian stepped over the line and advanced slowly.
Carroll could not allow this. The fight had to be quickly finished. He leapt forwards flailing his sword from side to side, then staggered back as the prong of the trident grazed his ribs. He saw an opportunity then and stepped forwards once again to invite attack. The Egyptian stabbed at him once again. He moved slightly to one side, the prong of the trident again grazing his ribcage, then he closed his arm down on the trident and caught its haft in his armpit. The Egyptian tugged at it and too late realized this was the wrong thing to do. Carroll's sword came down and gashed his arm through to the bone. The man staggered away trying to stem the flow of blood, his face twisted with shock.

Carroll
turned the trident as the second Egyptian entered the area he was set to defend and threw it like a spear. It entered below his opponent's sternum. With a look of surprise the man fell back and sat down, then his expression changed with his awareness of pain to come. Carroll did not give him a chance to suffer that pain. He stepped in close, and putting as much force behind the blow as he could, split the unfortunate man's head in two. He then turned to the one he had wounded. There was a pool of blood gathering below his gashed arm and obvious impatience in his expression.

‘
Hurry,’ intoned Carroll's translator. For a moment Carroll could not understand what he meant. Then, as the man closed his eyes then and tilted his head to one side, Carroll realized that this man wanted a quick death. Carroll quickly obliged him then, after collecting up the spare weapons moved as far from the two corpses as his area allowed. Behind him dull thuds marked the ignition of the two corpses and he turned to see them burning brightly, spewing oily smoke into the air and tainting it with a smell like roasting pork. Carroll swallowed bile.

Time passed slowly as seated at the edge of the four hexagons
Carroll waited for instructions, meanwhile watching distant pillars of smoke and distant combats, and listening to the clashing of weapons and to the screams. Julius and the Masai were sent elsewhere and no more opponents came against before the General contacted him.

‘
Move to the red hexagon within your defensive perimeter.’

Carroll
stood and obeyed, keeping to the other side of the hexagon away from the smoking and blackened remains of one of the Egyptians. As soon as he stood upon that hexagon the perimeter line disappeared with a brilliant flash.

‘
Advance now as indicated by the light on your wristband.’

Carroll
studied his wristband then moved to the yellow hexagon adjacent, and so advanced: the trident in his left hand, the sword in his right, and the morning star hanging by its thong from his belt.

And so advanced the nightmare.

The next two opponents matched against him – a turbaned fakir and shaven-headed Nubian – stood little chance against him. With both of them he threw the trident first to mortally wound then moved in to finish the job with the sword. On both occasions he felt sickened and relieved. After dealing with them he was sent chasing a yellow line again then set to defend four hexagons. This time no-one came up against him and after a wait of half an hour or more he was moved on a hexagon at a time. Now the game-board was changing as from hexagon to hexagon he had to step up a couple of inches and, far ahead, surrounded by pillars of smoke like bars, stood a small peak. When this peak became clearer to him through the hazy twilight he felt a vague stirring of recognition, of excitement, of deja vu. A shiver of horripilation ran up his back and for no immediately apparent reason he turned in the direction of his most recent combat. Standing near the blackened and smoking husk of a man was a spectral figure, a figure through which smoke passed undisturbed: the Clown.

Carroll
stared at the figure for a moment then said, ‘Well?’

The Clown's reply gusted: rose and fell, advanced and retreated like a spring breeze.
Carroll only caught a few of the words but the meaning came over clear.

‘
...voice ... physical ... presence.’

The Clown's voice was as tenuous as his physical presence, this,
Carroll realized was the essence of what he was being told.

‘
You want to tell me something though,’ said Carroll.

By the movement of the Clown's lips
Carroll could now see that he repeating something over and over again, and he damned himself for not taking the lip-reading course that had once been offered him.

‘
Win... freedom...’ were the only words he heard, and as he heard those words the Clown faded out of existence. Carroll took the words one way only, and he fought.

A
samurai died with the trident in his throat. A Zulu warrior died with the broken end of Carroll's sword in his ribs and provided Carroll with a knife which he threw at his next opponent, a Nubian, whose skull Carroll shattered with the morning star. At the foot of the peak he slew a Red Indian, but not before that one put a cut across his chest, and bleeding, he gazed up at what he presumed to be his destination.

The peak curved up like the roof of a pagoda or a Chinese hat. It rose in steps, each step being a hexagon, and these steps getting progressively higher. Here the
concentrated fighting filled the air with thick smoke and the reek of burning flesh. And shortly Carroll contributed to it. Three smoking corpses marked the path he had been directed along up the slope. He was luckier than them, not just because he had won, but because he had something to fight for other than to prevent pain.

As
Carroll jumped up the two foot step to the next occupied hexagon he hurled his trident at the half-seen figure thereon. There was a clang and the trident went spinning away through the smoke. Once on the hexagon Carroll advanced with a sword and dagger he had recently acquired. The Egyptian who faced him with a small mace and scimitar seemed familiar.

‘
You,’ said Carroll.

‘
You,’ Ramses mimicked, his smile haughty.

Carroll
moved in, wary of thrown weapons.

‘
It is a trick I use infrequently,’ said Ramses, on discerning the reason for Carroll’s wariness. ‘A trick that can only be used against someone who's guard is down.’

Carroll
replied with a sweeping cut at Ramses’ head, followed by an attempt to plant the dagger in his gut. With a clang and a blur of steel the sword-blow was deflected, and Ramses casually dodged the knife. He then attacked with mace and scimitar in rapid succession. Steel rang and clattered and sparks flew from honed edges. He did not break through Carroll's guard though. In a moment they parted and circled.

‘
You see, it would have been stupid of me to have thrown away one of my weapons. I would surely have been dead by now.’ The Egyptian was panting only slightly.

‘
Do you want to escape from all this?’ Carroll countered. Ramses launched a sudden vicious attack which nearly broke through Carroll's guard. He only pulled back when Carroll managed to slice his arm..

‘
I am a god!’ he yelled angrily, then punctuating his words with swipes of his mace and scimitar, ‘Where are my riches? Where... are... my... slaves?’

On the last word
Carroll saw an opening and stabbed with his sword. The opening closed and he retreated with a cut on in arm in exactly the same place as the one he had given.

‘
Cut for cut,’ said Ramses.

Carroll
decided to try something.

‘
The Clown knows,’ he said, ‘he knows of riches and slaves and men who claim to be gods.’ His words had more effect than his blows had been having.

Instead of carrying through an attack he had initiated
Ramses pulled back with an expression of confused half-comprehension on his face. It had been a mistake to pull back at that point, one that Carroll took advantage of. His sword went in and out of the Pharoah's throat in an incarnadine splash. Ramses staggered back gurgling. As he sank to the ground he stared at Carroll accusingly.

‘
I'm sorry,’ said Carroll, ‘but he said I should win,’ then he checked his wristband and moved on.

Nearing the top of the peak
Carroll saw it was surmounted by one large hexagon. As he drew closer he spotted charred remains all around it, and even as he watched, a man rolled over the side sheathed in blood and flickers of nascent flame.