Holmes had drawn white, and he came out, whirling his knights across the board like a berserker with his chain mace, sixteen squares of shifting destruction that had me slapping together hasty defenses at half a dozen spots across the board, summoning and abandoning bishops and rooks, spraying pawns ahead of the fray and leaving them in odd niches as the action stumbled away across the board. One after another he swatted aside my defenses, until in desperation I separated my royalty, moving my queen away from the vulnerable king to draw my opponent's fire. For a time I succeeded, but eventually he trapped her with a knight, and I lost her.
"What's the matter with you, Russell?" he complained. "Your mind's not on the game."
"It is, you know, Holmes," I said mildly, and reached forward to move a pawn, and with that move the entire haphazard disarray fell into a neat and deadly trap that depended on two pawns and a bishop. In three moves I had him mated.
from The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King
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