Chess is the struggle against the error

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Playing chess in the park with Nina had become a strange, regular ritual. The Bull liked rituals, though, and having somewhere to be once or twice a week help him set other parts of his life in order. He liked chess, too: it kept his mind active. Playing against Nina did that two-fold, as she tended to try to cheat in one way or another. He didn't blame her, but it kept him on his toes.

"Check," she said triumphantly, her green eyes bright.

Bull surveyed the board and moved his king to protect it. She moved a knight; he took it with his rook. Nina pouted.

"All out of horsemen," she sighed as she propped her head on her hand, elbow on the table. She made what seemed to be a reckless move with a bishop and Bull reacted with staid calm to defend his king.

"Checkmate!" Nina declared. Bull blinked and had to look at the board, wondering what he had missed. In her quick move withe bishop, she'd drawn his attention away from her queen. He surveyed the board, but she was right: there was nowhere to move his king that would be safe.

"You're getting better," he said as he sat back. Nina looked very pleased with herself. "Another game?"

"Sadly I have a few clients lined up for this afternoon," she said as she rose, smoothing out her coat. "Same time next week?"

"Of course." Bull rose with a quiet grunt. He wore a metal brace on his left leg, and the old pain bothered him more in the cold. He accepted a hug from Nina and kissed the top of her head. She was a kind girl.

As she left, Bull carefully sat back down, using the stone table for support. He stretched his bad leg out and started setting the board up again. He was wearing more clothes than he ever had in Thedas, mostly at Dorian's and Krem's insistence. Krem tailored everything for him. Today it was a long-sleeved v-neck sweater. He'd brought his coat with him, but for now it sat under him to protect him from the chilly stone bench.

Comments

[flightfromennui]

Anthony is only a half-decent chess player, but he has played plenty of it over the years, and he rather likes the game. There is a calm strategy involved that naturally appeals to him. it requires one, with mathematical precision, to read one’s opponent and anticipate his moves. The particularities of it—specific strategies, particular traditions—don’t interest him quite as much, but he enjoys the way the game itself stretches his mind. These days, he doesn’t have many opportunities to play, though he has taken up a game or two in the park since coming to Darrow.

The pair currently playing make for a strange sight: the man is horned, enormous, and silent, the girl chatty and relatively petite beside him. Anthony has seen the horned man before, of course, at the Halloween party less than a week before, and Guy had mentioned his conversation with him as well. It’s difficult not to be curious about someone who looks so very…unusual.

Once the girl leaves, Anthony decides to approach. “Interested in another game?"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull tipped his head when he man approached. He wasn't familiar, and that alone was a welcome surprise: most people in Darrow didn't just approach him. The locals still weren't sure what to make of him and the rest of the transplants, well... they all had their opinions about what he might or might not be. Standing out wasn't new to him; the only difference in Darrow was that he knew he was alone. His people weren't out there somewhere.

He regarded the man a moment before he nodded toward the seat Nina had just abandoned.

"Always," he answered, his voice warm and low. He finished setting up the pieces.

"Black or white?" he asked. The board could be turned easily, and Bull generally allowed his opponents to have their pick.

[flightfromennui]

Anthony isn’t entirely made of stone; calm, cool, and collected he may be, but one cannot ever entirely prepare for the experience of speaking to a man who looks like a medieval demon. His eyes flick upward. The horns are…impressive, to say the least.

“White,” says Anthony, who is practical enough to accept a slight advantage when offered to him.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"They're real," he said almost absently as he turned the board around. He was used to people looking, and he could always catch it, even when they were trying to be subtle or polite. "My neck would be broken by now if I was just wearing them for fun."

His neck was thick, clearly built to support horns that were nearly as wide as his shoulders.

"I'd say that you could touch them, but you don't strike me as the kind of person that touches strangers."

[flightfromennui]

Anthony’s mouth curls up slightly at the corner. He already knows that those great horns are real, but he appreciates the logic of their owner’s statement. Wearing such a headdress if one was not built for it would cause all sorts of trouble.

He begins their game by moving his pawn. “It is generally considered impolite,” he says. “Though I imagine that doesn’t stop most people in your case."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull actually chuckled. He moved the pawn opposite his opponent's: a stalemate in the middle of the board that would stay that way unless either pawn had occasion to attack.

"Most people, unless they're drunk, wouldn't dare. The worst they do is stare. Though I have been called a demon on occasion... I think one woman threw some blessed water at me once."

He looked up.

"What should I call you?"

It was a pointed question: it was not what is your name, though that would have been just as easy, and perhaps more regular a thing to ask.

[flightfromennui]

“Charming.” Even in a city as full of strange creatures as Darrow, this horned man stands out. Anthony has to imagine that more than one person has run screaming from him; he is surprised that more have not tried holy water.

Speaking to him, though, is rather like speaking to any other man. Especially with a chessboard to focus on, Anthony finds his opponent’s strange looks easy to set aside.

“Anthony Blunt.” He makes his next move. “Anthony.” The man has chosen an interesting way to ask the question; Anthony echoes it back at him. “What should I call you?”

Guy had called him Tib, but Anthony has a feeling that is not his actual name.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"The Iron Bull," he answered, glancing up to watch Anthony's face after that revelation. "But most people end up shortening that to Bull."

He didn't mind - it was less a mouthful and it still got his attention. Bull surveyed the board, then moved a knight.

"My people don't have names. I had to choose one when I left them."

[flightfromennui]

Well, that certainly explains the nickname. Anthony can’t quite imagine referring to someone as ‘the Iron Bull,’ or even just ‘Bull.’

“It is an unusual choice.” He surveys the board for a moment and moves his bishop. “Do you not call each other anything at all where you come from?”

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"We get a string of numbers as kids. We get job titles when we're old enough to have them. We give each other nicknames all the time."

He shrugged and moved his next piece. He knew how strange Qunari society sounded to anyone that lived outside of it, and how hard the theory that structured it might be to understand. Still, it was how he had been raised and how he lived for the first thirty years of his life.

[flightfromennui]

“How very utilitarian.” His statement is neither criticism nor praise—it is spoken merely as plain fact. Anthony finds himself equally mystified and intrigued by the world the Bull describes. When he can set aside how unbelievable it sounds (which is difficult) he can, somewhat, appreciate the cold logic that seems built into such a system.

“Why iron?” Usually Anthony would not ask so many questions, but his chess-playing companion seems quite willing to answer.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull shrugged. "We don't have family units. Every child is raised to be a full part of the community. No child is unwanted, and no child is left to starve because its parents can't feed them."

He watched Anthony's next move and considered his own.

"Eh, matches the skin tone," he said with a chuckle. "You make weapons out of it. It occurs naturally. And it was the first thing that popped into my head."

[flightfromennui]

Anthony smiles faintly. Like the society he came from, the man’s name carries a certain practicality that he can appreciate.

“Did your arrival in Darrow force you to invent a name for yourself?” he wonders.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"No. I've been living as the Iron Bull for ten years or so. I took the name when I left my people and traveled to the southern continent."

Sometimes he couldn't believe how long it had been since he left Par Vollen. He had changed in ten years, though some days in Darrow he realized he had not changed as much as he once thought.

"Honestly, if I had arrived in Darrow when I was still living in the north, I might have just kept my title. It wouldn't mean anything to anyone here."

[flightfromennui]

Despite having encountered many people in Darrow who come from different worlds, Anthony has never discussed anyplace so foreign-sounding as the Bull’s home in such detail. Even Biffy and Lyall’s world, for all its magic, strikes him as less strange. And besides, The three men are far too English to ask each other prying questions.

The opportunity he has now before him is a fascinating one.

“What was your title?"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Hissrad," he answered. "Which very roughly translates to 'keeper of illusions.'" He considered for a moment, then huffed. "Gatt always translated it as liar."

He moved another piece, then sat back a bit. Bull shifted his weight on the bench and stretched out the leg with the brace on it, careful to keep it off to the side rather than under the table.

[flightfromennui]

Anthony remains silent for a little while as he studies the board and considers his next move, but the Bull’s answer brings a smile to his lips. “I take it these were not innocent illusions, then,” he says finally, moving one of his pieces.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"No," he said with his own small smile. "The Ben-Hassrath are complicated, and I shifted between specialties about mid-way through my life. For ten years I tried to keep the peace on Seheron. That island is a sack of cats, duty rotations are usually only two years at a time to avoid burnout. I was there for eight."

When Anthony moved a piece, Bull's counter-strike was quick.

"After that, I shifted specialties. I was sent to the south to spy."

[flightfromennui]

Anthony’s knows far too little about the Bull’s world to understand most of what he describes, but he does know what a spy is. He smiles faintly.

“Keeper of illusions,” he muses. “A rather elegant name for a messy business."

The Bull's last move has left Anthony in check. He studies the board for a long moment before moving his king away.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull bobbed his head one way and then the other, like he was trying to decide if he agreed on calling it messy business.

"Tangled," he decided as he surveyed the board. "It only gets messy if you lose track of the pieces. Getting information, passing it along, that was easy. Most of the people in the south look like you, they're human. Most of them were impressed I could speak, never mind read or write."

[flightfromennui]

“Spoken like a spy,” Anthony quips. He doesn’t disagree with the Bull’s assessment of intelligence work, really—what he likes about it is just how neat it can be, in fact—but speaking dismissively of such things still comes as a knee-jerk reaction to him.

“Those in the south think poorly of you people?” he surmises.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Dogmatic, unintelligent ox-men," he answered. "Most of the people in the south have only seen - or heard of - our army. There are a handful of Qunari colonies along the northern coast and there are Tal-Vashoth - those that have left the Qun or were born outside of it - but there aren't many. We can be a difficult people to understand if you grow up outside of our way of life."

Bull shrugged and looked across the table. "But I made it a point to try to understand humans. Even if half of what you do is strange to me."

[flightfromennui]

“Plenty of what we do seems strange to me as well,” Anthony quips. As he considers his next move, he muses, “Though I would argue that the particularities of our strangeness are rather varied. The English are strange in a way very different from the Chinese.”

He chooses a bishop. “And both might be quite different from the humans you know."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"But there are fundamental parts of human society that I had no concept of until I was older. Families, for example," he said as he watched Anthony move the bishop. "I was raised in a cohort of children roughly my age. The Qunari do not have family units - no mother, no father. I have no idea who bred me or birthed me, and it doesn't matter."

He moved another piece, a knight. Chevalier.

[flightfromennui]

Anthony thinks about what the Bull has said for a moment, though he seems to be studying the board. “That is unusual,” he concedes, speaking without judgement. “I suppose there may be some isolated tribes who forswear family bonds, but I am no anthropologist.” He smiles for a brief moment and captures his opponents knight with one of his own.

“I am not certain our attachment to relations does us much good,” he concedes, quoting mildly, "The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb"

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

Bull wrinkled his nose when Anthony took his knight. "Under the Qun, there are no higher loyalties. No one and nothing comes before your people. Not having families or romantic relationships is an easy enough way to solve that. And one of the harder parts for most converts to grasp, but they get used to it."

He moved a bishop into line with Anthony's knight.

[flightfromennui]

“Well, presumably your people come before someone else’s people,” Anthony observes with a touch of a smile. He is being pedantic, yes, but not without reason. By the sound of it, the Qun remain loyal to their own people the same way that the virulently patriotic remain loyal to their nation.

“Converts?” he wonders aloud. “That makes you sound more like a religion than a race of people."

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Mm, all people, ideally. But there are some disagreements regarding how that should look in the wider world," he mused.

"Yes, and no," he said regarding the idea of religion. "The Qun is a philosophy. It governs our entire way of life. The Qunari are followers of the Qun, but also a race of people. You are not, and could never be, Qunari. Just like I, no matter how hard I try, could never be human."

[flightfromennui]

“Then who are these converts?” Anthony asks. Perhaps it is really the fierceness of the Bull’s appearance, but he wonders if what the Bull calls converts are actually those his people have conquered. Anthony is an Englishman: he knows very well how empires expect their colonists to conform to a way of life while still treating them as something other.

[shok_ebasit_hissra]

"Many of them are former slaves of the Tevinter empire. Others are humans or elves that decide the Qun offers a better way of life. I saw one old woman convert because of how we treat our elders. Gatt, who worked under me, converted because we liberated him from his Tevinter master and offered him equality. Life under the Qun isn't always easy for Viddathari, it's often a lot of adjustment."

Bull shrugged. "It's not a good way of life for everyone."

[flightfromennui]

“But it is a better way of life for some,” Anthony says, thinking that he begins to understand. Radically different ways of life can offer much to some people, particularly those who are given very little by the rest of society. And the Qun, as strange as they sound, have a way of life whose rationality appeals to him.

He moves his knight. “Check."