“Everything is for something. That’s why.”

“That’s no answer.” Tulland moved one of his tutor’s stones out of formation. His tutor hardly ever played disrupting moves in that way, favoring simply setting up his own stones in sound, self-sustaining formations that damaged Tulland’s plans simply by exerting their tactical influence on the rest of the board. Safe from disturbing the other stones, Tulland pulled the stone off the board entirely, tossing it in his bowl of prisoners. “I’m for something. But I can’t jump ten times my own height.”

“But the field jumpers can, yes. That’s what I’m saying, boy.” The old man ignored the gap in his own defensive wall that Tulland’s theft of a piece had left, placing a stone in a completely unrelated part of the board in such a way as to completely frustrate two future attacks Tulland had been looking forward to. “They are for jumping. It’s the way they negotiate with the realities of this world. They are shaped and designed specifically for that task, and precious few others. Would you say you are for jumping?”

Tulland glared at the board, then played an ally stone near his tutor’s last placed piece in an attempt to salvage at least one of his offensives.

“No. But I have legs. I have muscle and bone. I have all the same pieces.”

“And yet, you can do so much more with them. With the same leg, you can kick. Or dance. Or run. Or walk, for that matter. You can draw lines and figures in the dirt, or tap in frustration after I do this.” The tutor half-smiled and played a piece that not only put a knife into any future plans of attack Tulland might have had with his semi-recovering offensive, but also gave the tutor an almost perfect attack angle on Tulland’s territory. “You have versatility. But that field jumper you were contemplating? It has none of those options. It can simply jump. Every hook in its shell to which a muscle is attached, every bit of weight in its body, and all of its attention are focused on just that one task. It’s very, very good at it.”

“Then why don’t they dominate? Not the field jumpers, but something like them. A cat that is good at pouncing, or a viper that’s good at striking. If they are better at it than we’ll ever be.” Tulland placed a stone in what he now suspected was an absolutely useless attempt to make his tutor sweat a bit. “Why is the world ruled by the one species of generalists, rather than some or all of the specialists?”

“Ah. The big question you’ve been working up to, I see.”

The tutor ignored Tulland’s feint, just as Tulland had expected him to. He put another attacking stone down firmly in the center of Tulland’s last remaining territory. Tulland would be able to kill the attack, he knew, but not before his tutor had profited so much from the attempt that any idea of winning was now a pipe dream. He would have forfeited, if it was polite to do so and he had any hope at all of winning the next game, or the one after that.

“Yes. Why do humans win?” Tulland asked.

“The quick answer is that often times, we don’t. Lives fall to various sorts of beasts and illnesses much more often than I’m pleased to contemplate,” the tutor said.

“And? What about the longer answer?”

“It’s about the long game. Do you know why I beat you at stones and armies? Every time?”

“Why?”

“Because you build needles. You place your stones to make sharp, dangerous things. Things with a point so fine that they would pierce the gods themselves if they ever touched.”

“But they never do. Why?”

“Because a needle can only point in one direction. And at any place but the point, it makes a poor shield. Do you know what I build?”

“What?”

“Supply wagons. Larders. Chains of goods that move here and there.” Tulland looked at his tutor’s formations and saw none of that, but assumed that the old man’s frequent effortless victories were enough to win him the benefit of the doubt. “Things that serve no matter the situation. And sooner or later, your needles find themselves without targets at which they can easily point. Outside of their one developed use, they shatter. Needles have always been fragile, Tulland.”

The old man took pity on Tulland then, forfeiting the game for him, as was his right when things were as clearly one-sided as they had become. Tulland helped him clear the board, putting every stone back in the appropriate patch before facing the board once again.

“Eventually, your needles might break apart my pantries and food-wagons, Tulland. But you and I both know that won’t matter much if I still win most of the time.” The tutor tapped his knuckles on the counter in time with those last four words. “That’s what versatility allows you to do. Rather than building needles that can win at their chosen strength, you should build in such a way as to hit others in any weakness they might present. In that direction lies victory.”

—

Tulland didn’t need a dream to remember that particular lesson. It had been drilled into him a thousand different ways over hundreds of games of stones. Facing down the chomping mouth-parts of a giant ant, it was hard to question his tutor’s wisdom. With similar strength, he could never beat the ant at its own chosen angle. He had to find his way around that strength if he wanted a chance to win.

What are ants for? Carrying things. Digging. I don’t think I can get it to do either of those, right now. But besides that…

Tulland dodged another two lunges from the ant before it hit him.

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Walking in straight lines. They’re built to follow other ants.

Tulland had been mostly dodging backwards, but immediately jumped to the side when the next attack came. The ant followed, but not before Tulland’s spear hit it twice in the flank. It didn’t get hurt much, but this was the first time Tulland had found more than a split second to try hitting the ant since the fight started. Better yet, the ant almost overshot him as it turned to follow him, seeming to need a tiny bit of extra time beyond the movement to lock back onto his prey’s position.

Tulland jumped again, and the same situation repeated itself. It was that delay at the very end of things that ended up paying him out. As he stabbed in that moment of safety, he caught the ant in the joint of its neck, bearing down hard for just long enough to dig the point of the spear three or four inches deep.

The ant began to panic, spraying a clear mystery liquid behind as it moved. Tulland didn’t suppose that whatever that liquid was or wasn’t supposed to do boded very well for him. He continued to dance around the ant, stabbing it over and over, trying to take it down before the other ants finally finished with whatever troubles they were having in the pit and climbed up.

Tulland finally landed the attack he was looking for, digging into a spot so close to the previous good blow to the ant’s neck that he was able to crank back on the branch and rip out of a chunk of meat. The ant thrashed for a few moments after that, but apparently something important enough to take the animal down had been damaged in the process, leaving it writhing in panic for a few more moments before it stopped moving entirely.

It was just in time. At that moment, the remaining three ants came to the surface, much more yellow than their brother had been, having taken a much more direct dose of the flower pollen. Tulland braced as all three of them started to move, but not towards him. First, they found the chemical trail of their fallen brother, then the corpse itself, then turned here and there as if searching for Tulland and unable to find him.

Huh. Tulland hardly even needed to dodge them as they worked around the area. Are they blind? They aren’t getting anywhere near me.

Now that the flowers were busted apart and Tulland was smelling them for the first time with his wits about him, he was struck by how very strong the aroma was. It was an acidic sort of smell that was permeating through the air, something that seemed like it would clear his sinuses if it was any stronger.

And ants, as far as he could remember, were blind. They got around by smelling things. Or so his tutor swore.

Now Tulland had two things to work with. The first was that the ants didn’t do a very good job turning, and the second was that they really couldn’t see that well with their antennae covered in stinky flower dust. That was a weakness and a vulnerability exploited, all in one go. And while the ants didn’t appear to be noticeably intoxicated, they were still plenty screwed up.

They have two vulnerabilities that negate their specializations. And here’s ol’ Tulland, all generalized and having thumbs.

And it was still barely enough. The ants couldn’t see very well, but either by some bit of his scent sneaking through the interference or vibrations in the ground, they could make guesses. The three ants lunged at him one after another, not difficult to dodge as individuals but posing much more of a threat as a group.

Tulland managed to evade all of them more or less, but still brushed by the sharper bits of the mandibles at least a few times. He felt lucky that was it. There was some kind of acid in them, for sure, something that set his nerves on edge as well as on fire whenever they made small cuts.

After several lunges, he did find a rhythm of sorts. The ants would lunge, and he’d counter-lunge, trying to bury the point of his spear wherever it could find purchase. It worked, but slowly, and he was wearing out.

He had to work quickly, but that wasn’t nearly as much of a challenge when the first of the ants was finally hobbled. As the other two ants danced around trying to catch him, he kept the slowed ant in between him and them as much as possible, stabbing and stabbing until he finally clipped something important and took the second ant down.

The third ant got lucky. Just as Tulland got his spear out of the second, it was on him, clamping down hard on his leg, if not quite hard enough to get through the vines on him. Tulland finally gave up on trying to preserve his vines, giving them permission to try whatever briar-like things their instincts told them might get the ant off him. True to form, they decided to encircle and constrict, sticking with what they were good at.

It didn’t work very well on the ant, but it was something. After a few seconds of struggling to part the mandible of the ant with his spear, some of the thorns finally started to make contact with the softer flesh under the joints of the exoskeleton. The ant didn’t seem to have a complex enough mind to really understand pain, but something in the chemicals the briar carried still seemed to have some effect on its nervous system. It twitched just enough for Tulland to get his leg out, and in just enough time that the limb still mostly worked.

Tulland ignored his bleeding, burning leg and jumped in with his spear held in both hands. He swung it rather than stabbing with it, knocking the ant’s head down with the sheer momentum and weight of the hit, then pulling back and stabbing forward into the exposed neck joint. The spear tip went farther this time, sinking in a good foot before getting stuck. He lifted his foot up to dislodge the weapon, then turned to face the last of his problems.

The fourth ant had just about cleared its antennae of the clinging powder by the time Tulland got to it, and appeared to be sensing just fine again. He decided to practice with it, to the extent that he could. He had some more flower bombs in his bag, as well as four vines on his person he hadn’t even tapped into yet. In the case an emergency came calling, he would be able to call all of them to action at once.

But if that emergency didn’t happen, he was going to use this as an opportunity for practice that he could hardly count on any other time.

The ant was a lot more powerful than him and probably at least as quick, but it had a lot less range and was much, much dumber. Tulland decided to kill the thing with as many safe, light strikes as he could, pushing in just far enough to barely strike before pivoting to the side, getting in a few more shots, and withdrawing.

Tulland was faster and stronger than he had ever been, and had a few self-grown allies to handle almost all of his fighting for him. But he very clearly sucked at the actual movements and tactics of doing battle, and got next to nothing from any of his skills to help him with that. It was a problem that he needed to fix. No matter how many briars he grew or how many flower-bombs he was able to develop, eventually something would get through his various layers of defense to him and his humble spear, and his ability to keep himself alive the good, old-fashioned way would start to matter again.

Slowly and methodically, Tulland picked the ant to pieces. By the time it was dead, he had dodged in a full circle around it a dozen times, aimed at every joint in its armor, and had learned a lot.

Was he any good? No. But he wasn’t quite as bad anymore, and any split-second that he gained in future fights was time to think of something else that might save his life. That was worth it.

Once all the ants were dispatched, Tulland dusted himself off, grabbed one of the ants by the leg, and dragged it back towards the pit. It was now time to make sure the back half of the day was just as productive.