“And I,” snapped Raymun angrily. “I only meant—”
His cousin cut him off. “Who else fights with us, Ser Duncan?”
Dunk spread his hands hopelessly. “I know no one else. Well, except for Ser Manfred Dondarrion. He wouldn’t even vouch that I was a knight, he’ll never risk his life for me.”
Ser Steffon seemed little perturbed. “Then we need five more good men. Fortunately, I have more than five friends. Leo Longthorn, the Laughing Storm, Lord Caron, the Lannisters, Ser Otho Bracken … aye, and the Blackwoods as well, though you will never get Blackwood and Bracken on the same side of a melee. I shall go and speak with some of them.”
“They won’t be happy at being woken,” his cousin objected.
“Excellent,” declared Ser Steffon. “If they are angry, they’ll fight all the more fiercely. You may rely on me, Ser Duncan. Cousin, if I do not return before dawn, bring my armor and see that Wrath is saddled and barded for me. I shall meet you both in the challengers’ paddock.” He laughed. “This will be a day long remembered, I think.” When he strode from the tent, he looked almost happy.
Not so Raymun. “Five knights,” he said glumly after his cousin had gone. “Duncan, I am loath to dash your hopes, but …”
“If your cousin can bring the men he speaks of …”
“Leo Longthorn? The Brute of Bracken? The Laughing Storm?” Raymun stood. “He knows all of them, I have no doubt, but I would be less certain that any of them know
him.
Steffon sees this as a chance for glory, but it means your life. You should find your own men. I’ll help. Better you have too many champions than too few.” A noise outside made Raymun turn his head. “Who goes there?” he demanded, as a boy ducked through the flap, followed by a thin man in a rainsodden black cloak.
“Egg?” Dunk got to his feet. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m your squire,” the boy said. “You’ll need someone to arm you, ser.”
“Does your lord father know you’ve left the castle?”
“Gods be good, I hope not.” Daeron Targaryen undid the clasp of his cloak and let it slide from his thin shoulders.
“You?
Are you mad, coming here?” Dunk pulled his knife from his sheath. “I ought to shove this through your belly.”
“Probably,” Prince Daeron admitted. “Though I’d sooner you poured me a cup of wine. Look at my hands.” He held one out and let them all see how it shook.
Dunk stepped toward him, glowering. “I don’t care about your hands. You lied about me.”
“I had to say
something
when my father demanded to know where my little brother had gotten to,” the prince replied. He seated himself, ignoring Dunk and his knife. “If truth be told, I hadn’t even realized Egg was gone. He wasn’t at the bottom of my wine cup, and I hadn’t looked anywhere else, so …” He sighed.
“Ser, my father is going to join the seven accusers,” Egg broke in. “I begged him not to, but he won’t listen. He says it is the only way to redeem Aerion’s honor, and Daeron’s.”
“Not that I ever asked to have my honor redeemed,” said Prince Daeron sourly. “Whoever has it can keep it, so far as I’m concerned. Still, here we are. For what it’s worth, Ser Duncan, you have little to fear from me. The only thing I like less than horses are swords. Heavy things, and beastly sharp. I’ll do my best to look gallant in the first charge, but after that … well, perhaps you could strike me a nice blow to the side of the helm. Make it ring, but not
too
loud, if you take my meaning. My brothers have my measure when it comes to fighting and
dancing and thinking and reading books, but none of them is half my equal at lying insensible in the mud.”
Dunk could only stare at him, and wonder whether the princeling was trying to play him for a fool. “Why did you come?”
“To warn you of what you face,” Daeron said. “My father has commanded the Kingsguard to fight with him.”
“The Kingsguard?” said Dunk, appalled.
“Well, the three who are here. Thank the gods Uncle Baelor left the other four at King’s Landing with our royal grandfather.”
Egg supplied the names. “Ser Roland Crakehall, Ser Donnel of Duskendale, and Ser Willem Wylde.”
“They have small choice in the matter,” said Daeron. “They are sworn to protect the lives of the king and royal family, and my brothers and I are blood of the dragon, gods help us.”
Dunk counted on his fingers. “That makes six. Who is the seventh man?”
Prince Daeron shrugged. “Aerion will find someone. If need be, he will buy a champion. He has no lack of gold.”
“Who do you have?” Egg asked.
“Raymun’s cousin Ser Steffon.”
Daeron winced. “Only one?”
“Ser Steffon has gone to some of his friends.”
“I can bring people,” said Egg. “Knights. I can.”
“Egg,” said Dunk, “I will be fighting your own brothers.”
“You won’t hurt Daeron, though,” the boy said. “He
told
you he’d fall down. And Aerion … I remember, when I was little, he used to come into my bedchamber at night and put his knife between my legs. He had too many brothers, he’d say, maybe one night he’d make me his sister, then he could marry me. He threw my cat in the well too. He says he didn’t, but he always lies.”
Prince Daeron gave a weary shrug. “Egg has the truth of it. Aerion’s quite the monster. He thinks he’s a dragon in human form, you know. That’s why he was so wroth at that puppet show. A pity he wasn’t born a Fossoway, then he’d think himself an apple and we’d all be a deal safer, but there you are.” Bending, he scooped up his fallen cloak and shook the rain from it. “I must steal back to the castle before my father wonders why I’m taking so long to sharpen my sword, but before I go, I would like a private word, Ser Duncan. Will you walk with me?”
Dunk looked at the princeling suspiciously a moment. “As you wish. Your Grace.” He sheathed his dagger. “I need to get my shield too.”
“Egg and I will look for knights,” promised Raymun.
Prince Daeron knotted his cloak around his neck and pulled up the hood. Dunk followed him back out into the soft rain. They walked toward the merchants’ wagons.
“I dreamed of you,” said the prince.
“You said that at the inn.”
“Did I? Well, it’s so. My dreams are not like yours, Ser Duncan. Mine are true. They frighten me.
You
frighten me. I dreamed of you and a dead dragon, you see. A great beast, huge, with wings so large they could cover this meadow. It had fallen on top of you, but you were alive and the dragon was dead.”
“Did I kill it?”
“That I could not say, but you were there, and so was the dragon. We were the masters of dragons once, we Targaryens. Now they are all gone, but we remain. I don’t care to die today. The gods alone know why, but I don’t. So do me a kindness if you would, and make certain it is my brother Aerion you slay.”
“I don’t care to die either,” said Dunk.
“Well, I shan’t kill you, ser. I’ll withdraw my accusation as well, but it won’t serve unless Aerion withdraws his.” He sighed. “It may be that I’ve killed you with my lie. If so, I am sorry. I’m doomed to some hell, I know. Likely one without wine.” He shuddered, and on that they parted, there in the cool soft rain.
T
he merchants had drawn up their wagons on the western verge of the meadow, beneath a stand of birch and ash. Dunk stood under the trees and looked helplessly at the empty place where the puppeteers’ wagon had been.
Gone.
He had feared they might be.
I would flee as well, if I were not thick as a castle wall.
He wondered what he would do for a shield now. He had the silver to buy one, he supposed,
if
he could find one for sale … .
“Ser Duncan,” a voice called out of the dark. Dunk turned to find Steely Pate standing behind him, holding an iron lantern. Under a short leather cloak, the armorer was bare from the waist up, his broad chest and thick arms covered with coarse black hair. “If you
are come for your shield, she left it with me.” He looked Dunk up and down. “Two hands and two feet, I count. So it’s to be trial by combat, is it?”
“A trial of seven. How did you know?”
“Well, they might have kissed you and made you a lord, but it didn’t seem likely, and if it went t’other way, you’d be short some parts. Now follow me.”
His wagon was easy to distinguish by the sword and anvil painted on its side. Dunk followed Pate inside. The armorer hung the lantern on a hook, shrugged out of his wet cloak, and pulled a roughspun tunic down over his head. A hinged board dropped down from one wall to make a table. “Sit,” he said, shoving a low stool toward him.
Dunk sat. “Where did she go?”
“They make for Dome. The girl’s uncle, there’s a wise man. Well gone is well forgot. Stay and be seen, and belike the dragon remembers. Besides, he did not think she ought see you die.” Pate went to the far end of the wagon, rummaged about in the shadows a moment, and returned with the shield. “Your rim was old cheap steel, brittle and rusted,” he said. “I’ve made you a new one, twice as thick, and put some bands across the back. It will be heavier now, but stronger too. The girl did the paint.”
She had made a better job of it than he could ever have hoped for. Even by lantern light, the sunset colors were rich and bright, the tree tall and strong and noble. The falling star was a bright slash of paint across the oaken sky. Yet now that Dunk held it in his hands, it seemed all wrong. The star was
falling,
what sort of sigil was that? Would he fall just as fast? And sunset heralds night. “I should have stayed with the chalice,” he said miserably. “It had wings, at least, to fly away, and Ser Arlan said the cup was full of faith and fellowship and good things to drink. This shield is all painted up like death.”
“The elm’s alive,” Pate pointed out. “See how green the leaves are? Summer leaves, for certain. And I’ve seen shields blazoned with skulls and wolves and ravens, even hanged men and bloody heads. They served well enough, and so will this. You know the old shield rhyme?
Oak and iron, guard me well …”
“ … or else I’m dead, and doomed to hell,
” Dunk finished. He had not thought of that rhyme in years. The old man had taught it to him,
a long time ago. “How much do you want for the new rim and all?” he asked Pate.
“From you?” Pate scratched his beard. “A copper.”
T
he rain had all but stopped as the first wan light suffused the eastern sky, but it had done its work. Lord Ashford’s men had removed the barriers, and the tourney field was one great morass of grey-brown mud and torn grass. Tendrils of fog were writhing along the ground like pale white snakes as Dunk made his way back toward the lists. Steely Pate walked with him.
The viewing stand had already begun to fill, the lords and ladies clutching their cloaks tight about them against the morning chill. Smallfolk were drifting toward the field as well, and hundreds of them already stood along the fence.
So many come to see me die,
thought Dunk bitterly, but he wronged them. A few steps farther on, a woman called out, “Good fortune to you.” An old man stepped up to take his hand and said, “May the gods give you strength, ser.” Then a begging brother in a tattered brown robe said a blessing on his sword, and a maid kissed his cheek.
They are for me.
“Why?” he asked Pate. “What am I to them?”
“A knight who remembered his vows,” the smith said.
They found Raymun outside the challengers’ paddock at the south end of the lists, waiting with his cousin’s horse and Dunk’s. Thunder tossed restlessly beneath the weight of chinet, chamfron, and blanket of heavy mail. Pate inspected the armor and pronounced it good work, even though someone else had forged it. Wherever the armor had come from, Dunk was grateful.
Then he saw the others: the one-eyed man with the salt-and-pepper beard, the young knight in the striped yellow-and-black surcoat with the beehives on the shield.
Robyn Rhysling and Humfrey Beesbury,
he thought in astonishment.
And Ser Humfrey Hardyng as well.
Hardyng was mounted on Aerion’s red charger, now barded in his red-and-white diamonds.
He went to them. “Sers, I am in your debt.”
“The debt is Aerion’s,” Ser Humfrey Hardyng replied, “and we mean to collect it.”
“I had heard your leg was broken.”
“You heard the truth,” Hardyng said. “I cannot walk. But so long as I can sit a horse, I can fight.”
Raymun took Dunk aside. “I hoped Hardyng would want another chance at Aerion, and he did. As it happens, the other Humfrey is his brother by marriage. Egg is responsible for Ser Robyn, whom he knew from other tourneys. So you are five.”
“Six,” said Dunk in wonder, pointing. A knight was entering the paddock, his squire leading his charger behind him. “The Laughing Storm.” A head taller than Ser Raymun and almost of a height with Dunk, Ser Lyonel wore a cloth-of-gold surcoat bearing the crowned stag of House Baratheon, and carried his antlered helm under his arm. Dunk reached for his hand. “Ser Lyonel, I cannot thank you enough for coming, nor Ser Steffon for bringing you.”