'I am black and you are white,' said Rebecca, rising to Ben's assertion that women did not have the mind-set to excel at chess. Hinting that she had some modest ability herself, and frequently played with friends, she had challenged him to join her in a game.
There would have to be a handicap, though, in view of his professed superiority.
'Fine by me,' he agreed.
'So your queen removes itself from the board.'
The board was marked out on the lawn before them, some ten meters square, and the pieces, though motionless for the moment and standing to attention, were all living breathing people, two ranks of women dressed in thin black shifts facing two ranks of men wearing nothing more than short white kilts.
On Rebecca's instruction a tall, blond, rather effeminate man stepped from the playing area, removing the crown he wore to denote his status and surrendering it.
'White king's bishop also, if you please,' she then said, and a muscular young man stepped back from the nearest rank, removing the mitre he wore.
She took this from him and handed it to Ben. 'You will be the white bishop and I will be the dark queen, the sacred versus the profane,' she told him, gesturing that he should move to the square just vacated while she took up her own position on the far side of the board.
Grinning, Ben joined the rank of white pieces.
'White moves first,' said Rebecca, her voice lifting to carry across the distance which separated them.
'King's pawn forward two squares,' said Ben.
A thick set man with a shaven head moved forward.
'King's pawn forward one square,' Rebecca said, almost mirroring Ben's move, and a buxom young brunette advanced forward, breasts bouncing beneath her thin dress, an eager smile on her face. Taking up her new position, she swayed from side to side, her knees flexing and bending as if she was about to engage in battle rather than a simple -well maybe not all that simple- game of chess.
The two opposing pieces were close enough to reach out and touch, only one square separating them, and they eyed each other in anticipation.
'Queen's knight to queen's bishop three,' Rebecca countered Ben's next move, and a slender woman sidled between the pieces in front of her, moving more cautiously, less eagerly than the pawn before her.
She was a gaunt willowy woman, her hair pulled back so severely from her expressionless face that it was almost like a skull cap, a helmet; her eyes were dark and unblinking as she regarded the white pieces ranged before her, her hands flat by her side, partly hidden by the folds of her skirt, one holding what Ben took to be a short sword, a symbol of her rank.
Surveying the board, trying to accustom himself to his unfamilar view of it, Ben advanced another pawn, opening up avenues through which he could strike at Rebecca's pieces.
And so it went, each of them moving cagily until, some dozen moves into the game, Rebecca gave what sounded like a snort of derision, smirking at Ben through the crowd of pieces.
'To hell with caution! Let's see some adventure!' she said, her arm extending, fingers snapping her instruction. 'King's pawn takes queen's pawn!'
Ben had this pawn guarded by the first he had moved, was about to remark on Rebecca's sacrifice of her piece to no great advantage when he saw the eager young brunette launch herself at his man.
'Rebecca-?'
Her arms winding around his neck, her legs wrapping about his waist, such was the force with which Rebecca's piece hit Ben's that she toppled him onto his back.
'Rebecca? What the hell is going on?' Ben asked.
'Why the captured piece surrenders to the one who takes, of course!' she said, as if the rules of the game should have been all too obvious.
