The Ambuscade Board

“There weren't always Dragons in the Valley. You’re rushing, Clara. Again. From the top.”

In one swift motion, Clara Renshaw went from hesitantly shifting the wooden token beneath her fingers to firing it across the table like a lethally-minded tiddlywink. In the same split second, though, her narrow eyes widened to orbs of pure panic, as she saw the counter fly high off the table towards the face of her downcast mentor – before relaxing again as his left hand swiftly caught it, an inch from his grizzled beard.

“You’d do well to focus less on the pawns,” he said, eyes still downward, toying with the octagonal, flame-emblazoned counter in his palm, “and more on the board.”

As his right hand brushed aside the remaining pieces, Clara’s gaze ambled reluctantly downwards. Before her, the Ambuscade board. The old mahogany slab, its battered edges and faded carvings just about still clear enough to play on, to make out its three columns (‘terrains’, she should say), from left to right: Mountains, Valley, Shore. The same as always. The same squares and abstract lines she’d stared down at like this every evening, in this same room, after every shovel shift for the last six years. How could she possibly have more to learn, Clara thought, from a board she saw in her own sleep? Surely she’d beaten this little game enough – the past year it’d gotten easy for her, trivial. But tonight was different.

The patchy straw chair creaked beneath her as she shifted side to side, her eyes wandering off to the small, porthole-round window at her left side. The smog was thick today, she thought. But through the panel of sheer grey she could still make out a glimpse of reddish light, proof enough she needed that the sun had not yet set.

“You know the drill, Clara,” murmured the man hunched across the table, as he meticulously reset piece after intricately carved piece. “Lesson ends when you repeat the sequence. Perfectly.”

“Oh, come on, Olin!” Clara sighed, head lolling back as she gripped the wicker arms of the chair. “I’ve solved all your equations, haven’t I? I’ve listened to your stories – sorry, your ‘histories’. I just can’t with the Ambuscade today, I’m – “

“Distracted?” Olin’s eyes snapped upwards with his words, piercing through from behind the curtain of his drooping, matted locks. “Impatient? Got somewhere else on your mind?”

Clara’s gaze couldn’t help but betray herself – one quick glimpse back to the window, then down to the board in shame.

“Exactly the time when someone will outwit you, Clara. When you need to be at your best.”

Clara huffed, folding her arms defiantly – but nonetheless shifted into place, watching the movements of her mentor with effortful attention.

One by one, Olin slid the wooden pieces into and out of various positions on the board. Slowly at first, then gathering in pace, he sent them gliding expertly from section to section with an ease that made each counter briefly seem an extension of his careful index finger. Clara tensed as she tried to take the sequence in, to force it in, her mental note-taking more laboured and deliberate than usual - thoughts forming as sentences where usually Olin’s wooden ballet would dance over her vision like a breeze.

Three Elves to the Mountains, alright, then five more to the Shore. With Griffins, two either side. Now three-to-one. The Elves swapping places, two-by-two. Circling. No Dragon in the Valley yet, don’t miss that one.

“Remember, don’t let your eyes be drawn out wide, or you’ll miss the ambu-“

“Shh – not fair!” Clara snapped, arms taut, eyes lost in the board. “Just the moves.”

Olin smiled and continued, his pace quickening as he looked up at Clara. Now in rapt concentration, he watched her eyes flicker voraciously across the table, as she brushed back the few rogue, long strands of red from her choppy, self-hewn hair, smearing yet more soot across her cheekbones with an absent-minded backhand wipe. She looked older by the day lately, Olin thought, stepping ever further from the little girl he first sat opposite, producing the wooden toy she’d marvelled at. And grimier. At home in a body scarred too young with the welts and bruises of the city’s workfolk – looking more and more like the rest, like part of Behemoth itself. And less and less like her mother.

With his attention so balanced between the pawns at his fingertips and his now absorbed apprentice, for once Olin completely missed the tell-tale, steady rattle in the teacups at the board’s edge, creeping throughout the counters of his little cabin until suddenly -

“OH FOR THE LOVE OF - !”

Olin’s bellow was barely audible over the enormous shudder that shook the whole room, blasting the counters out of their careful positions and across the chamber, like beads of water resounding off a freshly struck snare-drum.

“Damn and blast, Clara, I tell you, it’s getting worse!” he grumbled, hobbling up from his chair to the little window, before spitting on a handkerchief and wiping furiously, as though it would clear the thick screen of fog itself as he peered out. “Who’ve they got manning the suspension grinds these days? Toddlers? Amateurs!”

Clara, meanwhile, had swiftly collected the counters from the floor, then sat back as she waited for her mentor to collect himself. As she muttered furiously beneath her breath, her eyes scanned the cramped chamber, its various baubles and trinkets steadily slowing to their familiar tinkling quake, as the room’s cupboards and high-stacked crates rocked themselves out of their furious tremor. Amongst the golden knick-knacks and long-broken pottery of Olin’s eclectic collection, she watched as a regal, stone, female bust perched high atop his narrow wardrobe hobbled herself towards the very edge, leant right over with a judgmental sneer, then righted herself back into place at the last second. Slowly, the great reverberation beneath their feet, beneath the city itself, settled into almost stillness, along with Olin’s protestations. And all the while her feet tapped away at the chair, still muttering to herself until the moment he turned back to face her.

“Honestly, I don’t know what they’re –“

“I’m ready,” she burst out, clutching for the counters.

“But - well I only made it to sixty-three moves, Clara” Olin protested, “not the full four-score.”

“Too late.”

Clara had already begun before Olin could return to his seat. Leaning over the board beside her instead, he watched as, with a furious rigour, Clara recounted the entire sequence. The little counters engraved with black daggers (the Elves), golden claws (the Griffins) and red flames (the Dragons) shifted across the terrains with a desperate urgency – but with perfect accuracy, piece by piece until the final Dragon slid triumphantly into place.

“Now I can go?”

Clara smirked up at Olin, one hand already searching beneath the table for the strap of her shoulder-bag. “Please?”

Olin heaved a deep, teasing sigh.

“I suppose,” he smiled, shifting back with a start as Clara sprung from her chair and up towards the door. “You’ll see why this old thing matters one day, girl.”

“It’s just a game, Olin,” she huffed over her shoulder, swinging the rickety door open and practically off its hinges.

“Far from it,” he called, clutching at a counter, “these things might be realer than you know!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know if I ever see one!”

“A Dragon?” Olin cried out half-heartedly to the left-open door without hope of reply – until a soot-smeared face suddenly popped back round, bemused.

“No”, said Clara. “A ‘Shore’.”

As the door slammed behind her, Olin waited, listening over the endless grinds and whirring of the city outside, until he could make out that her footsteps had long gone. Settling back down into his chair, the mementos packed into his little cabin tinkling like wind chimes around him, he suddenly flipped over the Ambuscade board, felt subtly along the grooves for some kind of latch and, eventually, prized the mahogany slab clean in two.

Its contents fell out onto the table with a delicate heft – an envelope landing before him like a weighty feather, its careful lettering face upwards:

‘For Clara. In Time.’