LOG: Haroun and Miles - The Rudiments of Strategy

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Haroun teaches Miles to play chess. Miles is an eager student.



Haroun looked at the chessboard. Classic and elegant in its simplicity. No bright flashing lights, no electronic bleeps and bloops, nothing to keep the Short Attention Span from wandering. Only there was, if you had the right mindset to appreciate it. "Miles? Would you like to play a game?" he said, settling back in his chair to wait for the boy's answer.  He took a sip from his ice-cold water to wet his throat - this might take some convincing.

Looking up from the game boy he had been gleefully tapping away at, Miles gaze zero-d in on the board. There had been the talk of learning Go a while ago, which he remembered only too well - and he knew that was a chessboard and so not a Go board, but then again, Miles thought a board game was still, in short, a game. And that was a good thing. Flipping the game off without bothering to save his game, he nodded once, the set the unit carefully on the table before sliding to the floor to trot over. "Miles would like that, yes." He peered at the board, and the pieces with unconcealed curiosity. "Miles has seen this before. The Fat Lady used to play it sometimes, with-" he stopped and instead leaned a bit. "Haroun wants to teach Miles to play chess, yes?"

Haroun tried not to give things away, but he was supposed to encourage the boy to talk about his past life, as a means of accepting it and moving beyond it. "If you'd like." he said. "It is an ancient game, first played centuries ago in India. From there, it spread all over the world. The game is very simple to learn, with only a handful of pieces to learn how they move. But there are nearly endless possibilities in how any given game can play out. So - interested?" he asked with a smile.

"Yes!" Miles was curious to know more about the game's history, but he was also learning that there wasn't always a rush to know everything at once. That lesson had taken a while to make its way through, too. He still forgot sometimes. "Please." There was a chair in front of table the chessboard was on, set to face Haroun, and after fetching a pillow to adjust the height so that he'd not end up having to hop each time to reach the board, Miles settled himself in his place with a small bounce, admiring the pieces and waiting for instructions.

Haroun smiled. So far, so good. "This is a classic chess-set. If you like the game, we'll get you one where the pieces are more to your liking." he said. He reached into the box and pulled out a white pawn. "This piece is called a pawn. There are eight of them per side. They can move one square, straight ahead." He put the pawn down on the board to demonstrate. "Do you understand?" he asked, as he reached into the box to pull out the rest of the white pawns. "They are the least of all the pieces in chess. The least versatile, the least powerful. But there's a trick to them that I will get into later."

The way Miles eyed the pawns left no doubt that somehow, they had caught his fancy right off the bat - whether that was what Haroun had meant to do or not, the very description of them now had Miles convinced that there was Something to be done with pawns. "Miles understands." There were other pieces coming out of the box now. A tower was set down and then the knight, which also drew Miles intent attention. Knights were meant for Something as well, as far as he was concerned. "Miles knows that one - it is a knight?" He looked up curiously at Haroun, waiting for the answer. The Fat Lady and the Slim Man had always played in silence, in deference to the fact that the man could neither talk nor hear.

Haroun nodded. "Yes, that's the knight. This one here is the rook..." he said, pointing to the castle. "And this one here is the bishop." he finished, referring to the taller, more slender pieces. "Which just leaves two pieces - the King and the Queen." He toyed with the last two pieces after setting everything into its proper place. "The Queen is the strongest piece on the board. She is the most flexible in terms of movement, and has the greatest reach. But there is just one of her. The King is in many ways one of the weakest pieces. He can only move one space in any direction, and if he is captured and lost, the game ends." he said. "Now, let me set up my side of the board, and I'll show you how each piece moves."

"Okay!" Watching attentively, Miles made not a sound as Haroun set things up. He remembered how some of the pieces were supposed to be set up, from watching from afar when in his cage, at a time which seemed so far ago and yet sometimes not, and recognition flickered clearly in his eyes every now and then as Haroun's hands moved in a gesture that was simply... familiar. The Queen, Miles remembered, had been the Fat Lady's favorite piece during certain parts of the game, and that he filed away for later. For now, he needed to know the rules before trying to figure out how to do what and when - that's how it had worked for the computer game, when he'd started playing Warcraft. He grinned a bit, looking forward to this new game even more at the thought.

"All right." Haroun said once everything was set up. "The Pawn I've already gone over. Rooks here move only in straight lines - either forward/back or side-to-side. They may move as many spaces as they wish." he said, demonstrating with his own rook. "Bishops are very similar, but they can only move on the diagonal." he added, demonstrating for Miles's benefit. "Note that one Bishop is one color, and one is on the other. Something that bears thinking about." Unless he missed his guess, the boy had picked up on that already, but getting him thinking in strategic terms was never a bad idea. "Queens can move in any of the eight directions, as many spaces as they like. Kings may move one space, in any direction. The odd one out is the Knight."

The information was absorbed, Miles softly repeating the basic moves to himself under his voice to make sure he would not forget. He could ask to make sure, though, he figured. The mention of the Knight brought a faint light to his eyes again - he'd known the Knight was special. Knights always were. His hands, flat on the table now, twitched a bit, just from the longing to reach out and actually hold one of the pieces, but he held back for now. It wasn't his turn to place them and Haroun was still explaining. "What does the Knight do?"

"Knights have the ability to jump over other pieces. They can move one square, then two. Or two squares, than one." he said, demonstrating both variants on Knightly movement for the boy's benefit. "Always in the shape of an L. Do you think you can remember that?" he asked, trying not to condescend but also trying to stress the point. "Now, that's movement. But Chess is a game of combat, and pieces can capture the other side's pieces. I'll show you how right now. For every piece save the pawn, you can capture a piece by merely moving into the space the captured piece occupies. Like this." he said, demonstrating a rook capturing a pawn. "For pawns, however, it works differently. Pawns attack on a diagonal, even though they cannot normally move in such a direction. Here, it is easier to show you." he said, setting up two pawns in the appropriate places. "The white pawn here can capture the black pawn like so."

Though he wasn't grinning widely, there was still very much an 'Eureka!' sort of air about the little boy as he went utterly still for a moment. This was like playing Warcraft, in a sense. The pawns were grunts and there were things you could do with grunts that were positively momentous. And the Rook could be a Farseer, the tower was Demolisher and the knight... the Knight was an orcish Blademaster. The other pieces were all assigned characters within a few seconds and Miles grinned suddenly. And then carefully repeated the moves allowed out loud, only needing to be reminded a few times until he had them all down. "Miles understands. And there are special moves that Miles can learn later, right?" It made sense that any game built on rules like this would have exceptions and the like. All games did.

Haroun grinned and nodded. "There are. We'll get into those later. No need to complicate things right off the bat. Now, the special thing about Pawns that I mentioned - if you move a Pawn all the way across the board to your opponent's back row, you can turn the Pawn into a Queen, even if you still have your original Queen." he said. "Do you understand? One final thing - white always moves first. Always. So, since you're playing on the white side of the board, you get to go first." he said, resetting his demonstration pieces back to their starting positions.

Several nods later, all in answer to each of Haroun's queries about understanding, and Miles was more than ready to play. Some of the strategies he'd used in Warcraft would most certainly not apply here - but the general philosophy of that game would and then some. Oh, he could see it now... "Miles would like to play now," he said, eagerly. "Please." And Haroun was already setting up the black pieces as well, and Miles allowed himself one moment of reaching out, to touch one of the pawns, oh so delicately.

He already liked this game a great deal.

~*~

Haroun looked at Miles and quirked an eyebrow by way of an apology as he moved his bishop into position. "Check and mate." he said, studying the board one more time just to be absolutely sure. He wasn't about to make that mistake again. "You play extremely well for a newcomer. Doubly-so for a lad of your years." he said with pride. "Did you have fun?"

"Yes!" Beaming, Miles looked down at the board. He already had a sense of what he'd done wrong and what not to do again - ever. And there was also the fact that any mistakes had been pointed out in unmistakable ways as Haroun had capitalized upon them, which meant there'd been a lot to learn even beyond the basic game mechanics. And he hadn't lost his other Blademaster, which rather satisfied him. Knight, he reminded himself. He had to remember that. "Miles would like to play again. And learn more, please! Miles likes chess." There was much finality to the statement.

Haroun grinned. "Good! We'll play again another day. In the meantime, I think Shan has some beginner's books on chess - both in the history of the game and in the how-to-play senses of the game, down in the library. Why don't you go check them out when you get a couple of free moments? Tomorrow, if your homework is done and Alison tells me it is OK, I'll teach you how to play Go. That one's even easier to learn, but has far, far more strategy than even Chess does."

Reading was no longer the laborious process it had once been and Miles bounced in his chair again, both at the prospect of learning Go as well, and the general thought of playing more chess. "Miles will go do that now!" Why wait for something when you could do it now? When you could do it at all, at that, Miles reflected, wriggling down from the chair and grabbing the cushion to put it back in it's place. He paused though, eyeing the board. "Would Haroun like help to put the pieces back in the box before Miles goes to get the books?"

Haroun shook his head. "This time, I'll put the board away. Normally, loser of the match clears the board. But this time, I will make an exception. Go on, and tell Shan I said hello." he said with a fond smile.

"Miles will!" There was a short, on the spot dance as Miles tried to both head out the door and go towards the couch at the same time - the couch destination finally sunk in and he headed that way to set down the cushion, patting it once before darting off at a barely restrained trot towards the door. Books. Chess. Grunts and Blademasters and - "Thaaaaank you!" he called out, even as he hit the door and made it to the hallway, and then trotted off at higher speeds in the direction fo the library.

Haroun grinned and shook his head as he collected the pieces to put them away. "I think I've created a monster." he said to himself as he cleaned up.