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Chess Stories · episode 1 of 3

The Have-To-Move

Sometimes the strongest move is a quiet one that makes your opponent move.

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  1. Narrator: From Spark and Anvil and GambitTales — this is Baron Tarry, in chapter 1 of the GambitTales cast.
  2. Narrator: This drama uses an AI-generated voice. Voiced via Gemini 2.5.
  3. Narrator: On the high cold pastures above a village called Wend, there was a shepherd named Tarry who was famous, in a small way, for never being in a hurry.
  4. Narrator: The other shepherds ran after strays and shifted their flocks at the first grumble of weather. Tarry simply stood on his hill with his crook and his patient old dog, and waited.
  5. Baron Tarry: I do not have a secret. I only wait. And I make sure that when the waiting gets hard, it is harder for the other fellow than for me.
  6. Narrator: A restless girl named Pim, who hated to lose, climbed the hill in a temper and demanded to know how he never lost a standing contest.
  7. Narrator: Tarry stood her on the good flat top of a slope, and stood himself just below her, and they waited. Soon the flat ran out behind her heels.
  8. Baron Tarry: There is nowhere to shift to now that is not the cold downward slope. I could stand here till spring. You cannot.
  9. Narrator: Aching, Pim stepped back — downhill, onto worse ground — and lost. And then she was thinking.
  10. Narrator: Her eyes went wide, and she gave the thing a name.
  11. Baron Tarry: The have-to-move. Yes. That is the name for it. I did not beat you. I only made it so you had to move, and every place you could move was worse.
  12. Narrator: Years later, a chunky rook in a brass-buttoned waistcoat came puffing up the pasture path, and said his name was Captain Castle, and that far to the south there was a board where players prized this exact strange strength.
  13. Baron Tarry: The board is a ridge folded up small — full of narrow places where one side will run out of good steps.
  14. Narrator: He set his first lesson with great care: a white king and one pawn against a lone black king, and it was Black's turn to move. Black was not in check. Black was not being chased.
  15. Baron Tarry: And yet Black is in terrible trouble. Every square it can step to gives something up. So I make the smallest move I can — a move that changes almost nothing — and hand the turn back.
  16. Narrator: The black king, forced to step, gave up its square, and the white pawn walked home.
  17. Baron Tarry: Stillness is allowed. You are not weak for waiting. There are hard, aching, toe-to-toe moments when the bravest thing you can do is hold your ground — and let the other fellow be the one who has to spend the step.
  18. Narrator: You've been listening to a Spark and Anvil chapter, written by the Spark and Anvil writing team for ages 9 to 14.
  19. Narrator: Apps stay free forever.
  20. Narrator: Curriculum aligned to Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.
  21. Narrator: Released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 for educational reuse. Visit Spark and Anvil for the full transcript.