Round 7
A hush seemed to descend over the oak-panelled parlour as Jonathan meticulously squared up the deck in preparation for what was sure to be an epoch-defining hand of their pinochle joust. His rousing performance in the previous round had not only regained him the coveted lead but utterly demoralized his esteemed opponents through sheer, clinical excellence.
Still, both Sarah and Victor were fiercely proud warriors of the baize in their own eminent rights. As the cards were ceremonially re-dealt, each warrior studied their newly gleaned holdings with the practised intensity of champions steeling themselves for one final, climactic confrontational melee.
Sarah's eyes flitted urgently across her arrayed resources, her mind rapidly cycling through potential melds, combinations, and stratagem pathways. While her layout contained several potently promising court cards intermingled throughout the suited stacks, nothing overwhelmingly formidable leapt forth to instantly proclaim itself a dominant force. She chewed her lower lip pensively, recognizing that this climactic gambit would require her to elevate her inherent deftness and calculated risk embracement to unprecedented heights.
To Sarah's right, Jonathan maintained his rigidly stoic exterior - the infuriatingly inscrutable mask of unreadable tranquillity personified. However, his keen instincts subtly detected the glimmers of promise amidst the ostensible mundanity - the foundations of not one, but three respectable melds lay dormant amongst his holdings like coiled serpents awaiting decisive deployment. The barest hint of a self-satisfied smirk played across his chiselled features as he appraised the promising possibilities portending ahead.
At last, all scrutinizing gazes turned expectantly toward the sage elder as Victor straightened his own cards into their regimentally suited columns. That insufferably smug cat-like smile that all had arrived to both anticipate and loathe crept across his craggy features as his eyes narrowed in acknowledgment of not one, but two distinct sets of promising high trump holdings sleekly nestled within his grasp. Barely containing an undisguised bark of haughty laughter, the wizened master prepared to decidedly set the stakes for their climactic showdown.
"20 points," Victor stated evenly, making a show of languidly tapping the arrayed cards against the aged oak tabletop. Despite the seeming triviality of the number, his reedy baritone carried a basso undercurrent of menacing undertone that hinted at unfathomably darker machinations lurking just beneath the deceivingly modest surface.
Jonathan's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as he weighed the verbal gauntlet his esteemed adversary had so overtly thrown down. Even from Victor, such a seemingly paltry opening figure could portend untold worlds of looming peril if not approached with appropriately elevated levels of guarded respect and implacable caution.
After allowing the palpably thickening tension to reach a crescendo boiling point, Jonathan responded with a subtle upward tilt of his distinctly cleft chin. "I shall match your bid at 20 points for the opening salvo."
Sarah's russet gaze now darted between her two formidable counterparts as her mind rapidly calculated the escalating gambit being brazenly posited over the plush baize. Both men had now overtly staked their aspirations for winnowing scoring at a moderate yet still highly defensible plateau. She knew that underbidding at this juncture could squander her prime earning potential in an inexcusably suboptimal manner. But escalating higher risked overextending herself catastrophically beyond the point of recovering stabilization.
Finally, after subjecting her concentrated allocations of neurons to a seemingly interminable barrage of contingencies and gambit simulations, Sarah reached her ultimate decision. Steeling her features into a visage of ice-sculpted determination, she levelled her alluring yet disconcertingly penetrating copper-fired gaze directly towards the wizened elder. "Very well, Victor...if modest wagers are how you insist on opening this climactic duel, then 28 points shall be declared as my committed bid this round."
The subtlest of arched eyebrows and sidelong glances were exchanged between Victor and Jonathan in silent acknowledgement of their mutual piqued interest over Sarah's intriguingly elevated stance. Clearly, the raven-tressed beauty was not conceding the grand finale of their skirmish campaign without mounting a full-throated attempt at securing her hard-earned glory.
The decision now ricocheted back to Victor as he pondered the continually evolving scenario currently unfolding across the baize. "28 points, you say?" he murmured in a tone dripping with feigned dubiousness as he pantomimed exaggerated contemplation. After allowing Sarah's challenge to gestate amidst the thickening tension for a perfectly timed interval, the elder's reedy timbre resounded with renewed vigour. "Miss, I shall contest your bid at 32 points."
Jonathan issued an undecipherable grunt of an acknowledgement as he rapidly reassessed the continually shifting indicators arraying the battlefield of opportunity currently sprawling before them. When at last his turn in the perpetual rotation arrived, he responded in kind with an economical demurral, "32 points shall be the figure I stake as well."
Now it was Sarah's turn once more to ponder her path as the stakes exponentially spiralled upwards towards the stratospheric. Both of her esteemed counterparts had forcibly elevated the ante substantially in the span of mere minutes, fueling an increasingly pressurized atmosphere of make-or-break contingencies.
The auburn-tressed beauty's delicate mouth set into a grim line of flinty determination as she absorbed the gauntlets her cohorts had so brazenly thrown down. Mustering her rapidly coalescing resolves, she levelled her molten regard directly towards the two men, seemingly peering straight into the deepest bastions of their implacable competitive souls.
"You leave me no course but to press the limits most decidedly..." Sarah's melodic contralto carried the undercurrents of a darker, dangerously undulating undertone as the words cascaded forth. "I shall claim the final bid of this round at 36 points."
A momentary hush more palpable than an obtrusive physical presence seemed to descend over the oak-panelled parlour as Sarah's formidable declaration hung suspended in the atmospherically thickened air. Both Victor and Jonathan's jaws slackened infinitesimally in tandem - utterly blindsided by their opponent's sky-high elevation of the stakes at such a potentially ruinous level.
Finally, Victor barked out a solitary desiccated chuckle as the profound implications crystallised within his mind's analytical stream. With a subtly imperious shake of his head, the grizzled veteran issued a derisive dismissal, "Your boldness this evening is admirable, Madame...but gravely misplaced I fear. 36 points shall stand as your solitary bid."
All scrutinizing gazes now pivoted towards Jonathan as the weight of the ultimate decision loomed squarely upon his shoulders. The aristocratic mastermind maintained an inscrutable veneer as his fingers rapidly riffled and re-sorted his cards, mentally tallying and re-tallying his prospects with each passing second. When at last he dragged his gaze upwards to meet their expectant stares, his voice carried an undercurrent of grim resolution.
"No more feints this evening, I fear...40 points shall be my final bid."
This time, even Victor's impeccably honed sabacc face faltered as his craggy countenance registered outright shock - the first detectable chink in his armour throughout the entirety of their campaign. Sarah's jaw dropped infinitesimally as she regarded her oldest compatriot with an undisguised mixture of awe and scepticism, wondering if the master stratagem-weaver had finally overplayed his hand into oblivion.
"Very well, sir..." Victor managed to interject with as much composure as he could muster. "Since you have indeed claimed the ultimate bid of 40 points, by rights you shall lead us off by revealing your melds."
Jonathan gave the barest of regal nods before proceeding to unveil his cards in a meticulously purposeful manner. First, arraying themselves in an inexorable trifecta across the plush baize, he exposed three individual marriages - the king and queen of clubs ceremoniously converging into the king and queen of spades, those regents, in turn, metamorphosing into the imperious jack and queen of diamonds. Already a staggering 28-point meld score had been amassed before their ultimate conflagration even began!
Then, with a subtle flourish, Jonathan exposed his supplemental suit run meld in tandem with his already formidable display - the 8 and 9 of hearts serenely encroaching upon the 9 and 10 of clubs in a harmonious converged conjunction. He audibly announced the construction of the resulting robust 16-point bi-suited sequence, spiking his running meld total to an astronomical 44 points already against his 40-point final bid!
Sarah's dainty hand fell limply to her side as her torso seemed wilted briefly in a pantomime of dismayed exasperation. While she had indeed retained a relatively sturdy meld between the king and queen of hearts worth 20 solid points, its value utterly paled in comparison to the compounded onslaught Jonathan had so overtly assembled before their eyes.
Across the table, Victor maintained his impeccable outward facade of measured tranquillity and resolute competition-sculpted self-assuredness. But when he finally revealed his melds in reciprocation - a mere unassuming 10-point hodgepodge of scattered mid and undercard combinations - even his iron-jawed countenance permitted the barest flicker of concern to perforate his calculated mask as his jaw musculature twitched almost imperceptibly.
The melds starkly quantified and arrayed against the audaciously stated final bid, the tension seemed to further condense within the oak-panelled parlour as Jonathan carefully considered his opening gambit. After a pregnant pause more palpable than an overfilled circus tent, he played his first decisive salvo - the stalwart king of clubs slicing forth across the plush baize in a brazen
demonstration of overwhelming frontal force.
Yet this was merely his opening volley in what promised to rapidly escalate into a masterclass of unfettered pinochle brutalization. From his fortified beachhead, Jonathan mercilessly cleared his remaining high clubs in successive, precisely calculated slaughtering sequences - simultaneously decimating his opponents' last desperate bids to shore up defensive sanctuaries even as he retained enough high cards in other suits to repeatedly punch through their scattered countermeasures.
In the early running, Sarah tried valiantly to mount a stalwart defence by solidifying her heart into an impenetrable bastion. But Jonathan had too thoroughly prepared his offensives, precisely stripping away her final trump presence through a series of mortally accurate cross-ruffs and lead-setting ambushes.
Victor fared somewhat better through the initial onslaught by judiciously safeguarding his own spotty mid-level card runs for just a handful of hard-won tricks. But even the elder master could do little to stem the rising tide of inexorable domination unfurling across the battlefield.
On the penultimate series of plays, Victor finally attempted a desperate manoeuvre - unloading his remaining high trump holdings in a daring gambit to strip away Sarah's remaining melds and re-seize the fleeting offensive initiative. But Jonathan had marshalled his resources too adroitly, ensuring he retained just enough precisely positioned holes in his suit layouts to deflect even this eleventh-hour death knell of a counterattack.
When the last trick finally cascaded to its decisive resolution, all three combatants rocked backwards in their chairs - eyes closed as they absorbed the final damage assessments and rapid-fire tallied their closing scores against the astronomical 40-point final bid threshold...
Sarah was the first to break the silence, her dulcet contralto tinged with the unmistakable weariness of hard-fought accomplishment. "The lady has concluded this round with 36 precise points." She had battled tenaciously to surpass her escalated bid, yet by the barest minimum of clearance.
Victor's grimace was palpable even before he issued his next words, extending a gnarled hand outwards in a gesture of grudging, resigned deference. "A credible showing all around...but my final tally stands at 193 points upon this contest's culmination - short of the heroics achieved here today."
At last, all eyes turned towards Jonathan as the undisputed victor prepared to render his pronouncement. The aristocratic master straightened the folds of his cravat with an almost ecclesiastical sense of ceremony before addressing his compatriots.
"202 points precisely...and with it, the barest whisper of a well-earned victory this evening."