Then they both turned and walked away. But they always seemed close after that, before the first one died. So close that you could almost feel it between them, invisible and warm as a summer breeze in the air.
And then that second thing before supper happened.
Shad said to Rostov, “Are your lookouts good enough to let one a’ them patrols out there get through for a little while t’night?”
“Yes.” Rostov nodded. “Why?”
“Build a couple more fires. And have every man lay out an extra bedroll. From a distance, in the dark, it’ll shape up t’ be a sixty-man camp.”
But Rostov had already started nodding before Shad finished talking. “We’ll let them through just far enough and long enough to give them that impression, and then drive them away.”
Shad said, “Just for the hell of it, think I’ll ride lookout with your men m’self t’night.”
“You take the first half of the watch and I’ll relieve you for the second.”
Shad didn’t disagree with Rostov, which for him was a quiet agreement.
“For Christ’s sake,” Old Keats said, “let’s try t’ not shoot any more of Verushki’s men. He’s all set t’ blow sky-high any minute.”
“We want ’em t’ ride out in one piece,” Shad said, “so they can report what they think they’ve seen.”
Rostov doubled his guard right after supper, and Shad was getting ready to ride off, when Slim said, “Mind if I come along, boss?”
A little later they left camp together, and the rest of us built the extra fires and laid out the added bedrolls. Most of us had only two blankets, so it was kind of cold sleeping in just one, with the other one made up off to one side with an imaginary fella in it. I’d stuffed a few clothes and a couple of rocks into my other blanket to make a sort of a dummy. But that dummy was sure sleeping a hell of a lot better than I was. It was not only cold, but my cut hand was throbbing, so I finally gave up and pulled on my boots and went over to the nearest fire, where four men were gathered.
Natcho and Old Keats were watching Rostov and Igor, who were seated and playing some kind of a game on a checkerboard by the light of the fire.
In the silence, Natcho was the only one who glanced at me as I came up. “Chess,” he said.
It seemed like both he and Old Keats had a fair idea what was going on, and I didn’t want to appear too dumb. “Yeah.” I nodded as though this came as no news to me at all. “Quite a lot like checkers.”
Rostov gave me one of those expressionless looks, which still somehow managed to hold brief, silent laughter deep in his eyes. “You understand the game?”
I’d done it again. “Well, t’ be perfectly honest, Captain, there’s a whole lot I don’t know about it—hardly at all.”
Igor now made a funny kind of a zigzag move with a piece shaped like a horse’s head, and then Rostov made an even funnier move clear across the board at an angle and wound up taking one of Igor’s pieces.
“T’ be real perfectly honest,” I said, sort of hinting for a clue about these strange moves, “I guess I’ve just about forgotten every damn thing I ever did know about it.”
“The word ‘chess’ is a derivation of the Persian word ‘shah,’ meaning ‘king,’” Rostov said, waiting for Igor’s next move. “It’s a game of war that’s probably more than four thousand years old.” Then, as they continued playing, he patiently named all the pieces and the different ways they could move, which I immediately forgot.
But then Rostov said something none of us forgot. “It’s not only a game of war. There’s a great deal of philosophy in it. And it represents the way the world has been for thousands of years. Even since the beginning of time.
“The king and the queen, each in its own way, have and wield the ultimate power. In approximately equal proportion, they use religion and their military, the bishops and the knights, to defend whatever positions they may choose to take and to attack the enemies of those positions. The castles at each corner of the board represent their crucial power of wealth in terms of land and possessions.”
He paused, frowning inwardly at the comparison he was making, and moved by it. Then, finally, he continued. “But always and forever, it’s the pawns, the simple people themselves, who are the first to be sacrificed ruthlessly, for whatever reasons seem at the moment to be an advantage to any of the others.”
None of us had ever heard any game defined like that, and it was plain to see that Rostov was thinking of a lot more than just chess.
After a silence, I said, “Sure beats the hell outta checkers.”
Studying Rostov, Old Keats added quietly, “You like the game of ‘king.’ But you sure don’t like livin’ it in real life, here in Russia.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Poor damned pawns.”
“It’s almost impossible,” Rostov said, “but if a pawn can manage to get to the far end of the board, while he’ll be under the heaviest possible attack, he’ll also have a chance of becoming the most important piece there.” He glanced at Igor and at some of his sleeping cossacks. “We are the pawns. And Siberia is our far end of the board.”
Igor nodded at these words, as thoughtful as the rest of us. And then, concentrating, he slowly made his next move.
It was also his last move.
Without hesitation Rostov shifted a piece to another square and said, “Checkmate.”
Under his breath, Igor grumbled a couple of words in Russian that must have translated something like “Sonofabitch!” Then he grinned and shrugged and knocked one of his pieces down in a gesture of defeat.
They turned the board over then and I saw that it was actually a small box that they could put the pieces back in and then snap shut. Putting them away, Rostov said, “Checkmate is from the Persian shah mat, which means ‘the king is dead.’”
“And no king was ever more dead than mine,” Igor said. Then he added quietly, “I’d never thought of the philosophy of chess that way, sir. It’s almost as though—” He hesitated, uncertain of which words to use.
But Rostov understood. “As though each game contains its own complete life-and-death drama.”
Igor nodded, and now snapped the filled chess box shut.
Rostov stood up and stretched his shoulders, and then we heard the shots. There were about seven of them, in quick, broken order, and the roaring guns were close enough out there in the dark to make my ears ring a little.
By the second or third shot, Rostov had already swung into the saddle of his nearby black and was racing off into the night toward where they were coming from. All over the camp, sleepy men were reacting in different ways, some of them leaping out of their bedrolls, others just raising up slightly, still partly asleep and groggy.
Now there were three more shots, farther away, and then silence. I doubt if the whole thing, from first to last shot, took more than a minute or so. For myself, I’d figured it best to make it back to my bedroll and get out my old Remington .44 and cock it, just in case. And then the shooting stopped.
Everybody in camp had a gun at hand by then. But already, even while a couple of fellas were still swearing and jerking on their boots, there was the sound of distant, galloping hoofbeats returning.
“Four horses,” Natcho said.
It was Shad, Rostov, Slim and Nick who rode out of the night and up to the light of the fires. Nick had a grin so wide that it ran from the bearded half of his face clear over to crinkle up the scar running down the other side. He and Rostov rode on a few paces to tell the cossacks what had happened, as Shad and Slim dismounted near us.