We faced each other across the chessboard.  My side of the clock ticked my time away, second by second.  Despite the dwindling remainder of my half of the hour with which we had started the game, all I could do was sit and stare.

I realized with growing certainty and dismay that I would have to reveal one of my most prized and secret gambits much too early.  It was only the first game of the five we had agreed upon, and already I would lose a trump.

I reached for the knight and paused my hand over it, willing my mind to find another way.  There was none and I knew it.  I touched the piece, grabbed it and moved it.  My hand tapped the clock on the way back to its perch on the arm of my chair, temporarily stopping my own countdown.

My opponent raised an eyebrow; he saw the sacrifice I was making of the knight but not my ultimate goal.  Of course, he wouldn’t — he couldn’t — see the danger until it was too late.

He moved, trapping my knight behind his lines and keeping it from withdrawing.  The next move would allow him to take the piece with no chance of retaliation from me.  Then he started my clock again, not realizing that the clock no longer mattered and that I had won.

I raised my hand from the arm of my chair, but instead of reaching for the board, I curled my fingers and rapped with my knuckles on the table next to it.  Tap… tap-tap-tap… tap… tap-tap.

My opponent glance up at me and I held his gaze, daring him to discern what my knuckles signified.

“Check,” I said.

I saw his eyes flick momentarily down to the board, then back up at me.  They narrowed.  They returned to the board.

“What the hell,” he muttered, “is this?”

“Trojan Horse,” I said, gesturing at the new pieces on the board.  Three tiny rooks, a bishop and five pawns had climbed out of the hollow knight when I knocked on the table.  They had then quickly and silently killed off the wall of pawns keeping the bulk of my forces away from his king.  By the time he realized what had happened, they were already setting fire to one of his rooks.

The End

I was trying to read the assigned pages in my Geometry textbook when the idea of the Trojan Knight came to me.  I almost instantly concocted several scenarios in which I could spring something like this on my unsuspecting friends during a chess match as a joke.  However, shortly thereafter, I realized that this was not going to leave my head easily and I still had quite a bit of reading to do.

Therefore, I resolved to get the idea out of my head by typing it up and inflicting it upon you.  Enjoy.