The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror
Page 73
A lonely place, Dunk thought. He did not like the feel of it. Old instinct made him reach for his sword hilt, before he remembered that the Snail had won his sword. As he fumbled at his hip where his scabbard should have hung, he felt the point of a knife poke his lower back. “Turn on me, and I’ll cut your kidney out and give it to Butterwell’s cooks to fry up for the feast.” The knife pushed in through the back of Dunk’s jerkin, insistent. “Over to the well. No sudden moves, ser.”
If he has thrown Egg down that well, he will need more than some little toy knife to save him. Dunk walked forward slowly. He could feel the anger growing in his belly.
The blade at his back vanished. “You may turn and face me now, hedge knight.”
Dunk turned. “M’lord. Is this about the dragon’s egg?”
“No. This is about the dragon. Did you think I would stand by and let you steal him?” Ser Alyn grimaced. “I should have known better than to trust that wretched Snail to kill you. I’ll have my gold back, every coin.”
Him? Dunk thought. This plump, pasty-faced, perfumed lordling is my secret enemy? He did not know whether to laugh or weep. “Ser Uthor earned his gold. I have a hard head, is all.”
“So it seems. Back away.”
Dunk took a step backwards.
“Again. Again. Once more.”
Another step, and he was flush against the well. Its stones pressed against his lower back.
“Sit down on the rim. Not afraid of a little bath, are you? You cannot get much wetter than you are right now.”
“I cannot swim.” Dunk rested a hand on the well. The stones were wet. One moved beneath the pressure of his palm.
“What a shame. Will you jump, or must I prick you?”
Dunk glanced down. He could see the raindrops dimpling the water, a good twenty feet below. The walls were covered with a slime of algae. “I never did you any harm.”
“And never will. Daemon’s mine. I will command his Kingsguard. You are not worthy of a white cloak.”
“I never claimed I was.” Daemon. The name rang in Dunk’s head. Not John. Daemon, after his father. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. “Daemon Blackfyre sired seven sons. Two died upon the Redgrass Field, twins . . . ”
“Aegon and Aemon. Wretched witless bullies, just like you. When we were little, they took pleasure in tormenting me and Daemon both. I wept when Bittersteel carried him off to exile, and again when Lord Peake told me was coming home. But then he saw you upon the road, and forgot that I existed.” Cockshaw waved his dagger threateningly. “You can go into the water as you are, or you can go in bleeding. Which will it be?”
Dunk closed his hand around the loose stone. It proved to be less loose than he had hoped. Before he could wrench it free, Ser Alyn lunged. Dunk twisted sideways, so the point of the blade sliced through the meat of his shield arm. And then the stone popped free. Dunk fed it to his lordship, and felt his teeth crack beneath the blow.
“The well, is it?” He hit the lordling in the mouth again, then dropped the stone, seized Cockshaw by the wrist, and twisted until a bone snapped and the dagger clattered to the stones. “After you, m’lord.” Sidestepping, Dunk yanked at the lordling’s arm and planted a kick in the small of his back. Lord Alyn toppled headlong into the well. There was a splash.
“Well done, ser,”
Dunk whirled. Through the rain, all he could make out was a hooded shape and a single pale white eye. It was only when the man came forward that the shadowed face beneath the cowl took on the familiar features of Ser Maynard Plumm, the pale eye no more than the moonstone brooch that pinned his cloak at the shoulder.
Down in the well, Lord Alyn was thrashing and splashing and calling for help. “Murder! Someone help me.”
“He tried to kill me,” Dunk said.
“That would explain all the blood.”
“Blood?” He looked down. His left arm from shoulder to elbow, his tunic clinging to his skin. “Oh.”
Dunk did not remember falling, but suddenly he was on the ground, with raindrops running down his face. He could hear Lord Alyn whimpering from the well, but his splashing had grown feebler. “We need to have that arm bound up.” Ser Maynard slipped his own arm under Dunk. “Up now. I cannot lift you by myself. Use your legs.”
Dunk used his legs. “Lord Alyn. He’s going to drown.”
“He shan’t be missed. Least of all by the Fiddler.” “He’s not,” Dunk gasped, pale with pain, “a fiddler.”
“No. He is Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name. Or so he would style himself, if ever he achieves the Iron Throne. You would be surprised to know how many lords prefer their kings brave and stupid. Daemon is young and dashing, and looks good on a horse.”
The sounds from the well were almost too faint to hear. “Shouldn’t we throw his lordship down a rope?”
“Save him now to execute him later? I think not. Let him eat the meal that he meant to serve to you. Come, lean on me.” Plumm guided him across the yard. This close, there was something queer about the cast of Ser Maynard’s features. The longer Dunk looked, the less he seemed to see. “I did urge you to flee, you will recall, but you esteemed your honor more than your life. An honorable death is well and good, but if the life at stake is not your own, what then? Would your answer be the same, ser?”
“Whose life?” From the well came one last splash. “Egg? Do you mean Egg?” Dunk clutched at Plumm’s arm. “Where is he?”
“With the gods. And you will know why, I think.”
The pain that twisted inside Dunk just then made him forget his arm. He groaned. “He tried to use the boot.”
“So I surmise. He showed the ring to Maester Lothar, who delivered him to Butterwell, who no doubt pissed his breeches at the sight of it and started wondering if he had chosen the wrong side and how much Bloodraven knows of this conspiracy. The answer to that last is ‘quite a lot.’ ” Plumm chuckled.
“Who are you?”
“A friend,” said Maynard Plumm. “One who has been watching you, and wondering at your presence in this nest of adders. Now be quiet, until we get you mended.”
Staying in the shadows, the two of them made their way back to Dunk’s small tent. Once inside, Ser Maynard lit a fire, filled a bowl with wine, and set it on the flames to boil. “A clean cut, and at least it is not your sword arm,” he said, slicing through the sleeve of Dunk’s bloodstained tunic. “The thrust appears to have missed the bone. Still, we will need to wash it out, or you could lose the arm.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Dunk’s belly was roiling, and he felt as if he might retch at any moment. “If Egg is dead—”
“—you bear the blame. You should have kept him well away from here. I never said the boy was dead, though. I said that he was with the gods. Do you have clean linen? Silk?”
“My tunic. The good one I got in Dorne. What do you mean, he’s with the gods?”
“In good time. Your arm first.”
The wine soon began to steam. Ser Maynard found Dunk’s good silk tunic, sniffed at it suspiciously, then slid out a dagger and began to cut it up. Dunk swallowed his protest.
“Ambrose Butterwell has never been what you might call decisive,” Ser Maynard said, as he wadded up three strips of silk and dropped them in the wine. “He had doubts about this plot from the beginning, doubts that were inflamed when he learned that the boy did not bear the sword. And this morning his dragon’s egg vanished, and with it the last dregs of his courage.”
“Ser Glendon did not steal the egg,” Dunk said. “He was in the yard all day, tilting or watching others tilt.”
“Peake will find the egg in his saddlebags all the same.” The wine was boiling. Plumm drew on a leather glove and said, “Try not to scream.” Then he pulled a strip of silk out of the boiling wine, and began to wash the cut.
Dunk did not scream. He gnashed his teeth and bit his tongue and smashed his fist against his thigh hard enough to leave bruises, but he did not scream. Ser Maynard
used the rest of his good tunic to make a bandage, and tied it tight around his arm. “How does that feel?” he asked when he was done.
“Bloody awful.” Dunk shivered. “Where’s Egg?”
“With the gods. I told you.”
Dunk reached up and wrapped his good hand around Plumm’s neck. “Speak plain. I am sick of hints and winks. Tell me where to find the boy, or I will snap your bloody neck, friend or no.”
“The sept. You would do well to go armed.” Ser Maynard smiled. “Is that plain enough for you, Dunk?”
His first stop was Ser Uthor Underleaf ’s pavilion.
When Dunk slipped inside, he found only the squire Will bent over a washtub, scrubbing out his master’s smallclothes. “You again? Ser Uthor is at the feast. What do you want?”
“My sword and shield.”
“Have you brought the ransom?”
“No.”
“Then why would I let you take your arms?”
“I have need of them.”
“That’s no good reason.”
“How about, try and stop me and I’ll kill you.”
Will gaped. “They’re over there.”
Dunk paused outside the castle sept. Gods grant I am not too late. His sword-belt was back in its accustomed place, cinched tight about his waist. He had strapped the gallows shield to his wounded arm, and that weight of it was sending throbs of pain through him with every step. If anyone brushed up against him, he feared that he might scream. He pushed the doors open with his good hand.
Within, the sept was dim and hushed, lit only by the candles that twinkled on the altars of the Seven. The Warrior had the most candles burning, as might be expected during a tourney; many a knight would have come here to pray for strength and courage before they chanced the lists. The Stranger’s altar was shrouded in shadow, with but a single candle burning. The Mother and the Father each had dozens, the Smith and Maiden somewhat fewer. And beneath the shining lantern of the Crone knelt Lord Ambrose Butterwell, head bowed, praying silently for wisdom.
He was not alone. No sooner had Dunk started for him than two men-at-arms moved to cut him off, faces stern beneath their halfhealms. Both wore mail, beneath surcoats striped in the green, white, and yellow undy of House Butterwell. “Hold, ser,” one said. “You have no business here.”
“Yes, he does. I warned you he would find me.”
The voice was Egg’s.
When he stepped out from the shadows beneath the Father, his shaved head shining in the candlelight, Dunk almost rushed to the boy, to pluck him up with a glad cry and crush him in his arms. Something in Egg’s tone made him hesitate. He sounds more angry than afraid, and I have never seen him look so stern. And Butterwell on his knees. Something is queer here.
Lord Butterwell pushed himself back to his feet. Even in the dim light of the candles, his flesh looked pale and clammy. “Let him pass,” he told his guardsmen. When they stepped back, he beckoned Dunk closer. “I have done the boy no harm. I knew his father well, when I was the King’s Hand. Prince Maekar needs to know, none of this was my idea.”
“He shall,” Dunk promised. What is happening here?
“Peake. This was all his doing, I swear it by the Seven.” Lord Butterwell put one hand on the altar. “May the gods strike me down if I am false. He told me who I must invite and who must be excluded, and he brought this boy pretender here. I never wanted to be part of any treason, you must believe me. Tom Heddle now, he urged me on, I will not deny it. My good-son, married to my eldest daughter, but I will not lie, he was part of this.
“He is your champion,” said Egg. “If he was in this, so were you.”
Be quiet, Dunk wanted to roar. That loose tongue of yours will get us killed. Yet Butterwell seemed to quail. “My lord, you do not understand. Heddle commands my garrison.”
“You must have some loyal guardsmen,” said Egg.
“These men here,” said Lord Butterwell said. “A few more. I’ve been too lax, I will allow, but I have never been a traitor. Frey and I harbored doubts about Lord Peake’s pretender since the beginning. He does not bear the sword! If he were his father’s son, Bittersteel would have armed him with Blackfyre. And all this talk about a dragon . . . madness, madness and folly.” His lordship dabbed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. “And now they have taken the egg, the dragon’s egg my grandsire had from the king himself as a reward for leal service. It was there this morning when I woke, and my guards swear no one entered or left the bedchamber. It may be that Lord Peake bought them, I cannot say, but the egg is gone. They must have it, or else . . . ”
Or else the dragon’s hatched, thought Dunk. If a living dragon appeared again in Westeros, the lords and smallfolk alike would flock to whichever prince could lay claim to it. “My lord,” he said, “a word with my . . . my squire, if you would be so good.”
“As you wish, ser.” Lord Butterwell knelt to pray again.
Dunk drew Egg aside, and went down upon one knee to speak with him face to face. “I am going to clout you in the ear so hard your head will turn around backwards, and you’ll spend the rest of your life looking at where you’ve been.”
“You should, ser.” Egg had the grace to look abashed. “I’m sorry. I just meant to send a raven to my father.”
So I could stay a knight. The boy meant well. Dunk glanced over to where Butterwell was praying. “What did you do to him?”
“Scared him, ser.”
“Aye, I can see that. He’ll have scabs on his knees before the night is done.”
“I didn’t know what else to do, ser. The maester brought me to them, once he saw my father’s ring.”
“Them?”
“Lord Butterwell and Lord Frey, ser. Some guards were there as well. Everyone was upset. Someone stole the dragon’s egg.”
“Not you, I hope?”
Egg shook his head. “No, ser. I knew I was in trouble when the maester showed Lord Butterwell my ring. I thought about saying that I’d stolen it, but I didn’t think he would believe me. Then I remembered this one time I heard my father talking about something Lord Bloodraven said, about how it was better to be frightening than frightened, so I told them that my father had sent us here to spy for him, that he was on his way here with an army, that his lordship had best release me and give up this treason, or it would mean his head.” He smiled a shy smile. “It worked better than I thought it would, ser.”
Dunk wanted to take the boy by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattled. This is no game, he might have roared. This is life and death. “Did Lord Frey hear all this as well?”
“Yes. He wished Lord Butterwell happiness in his marriage and announced that he was returning to the Twins forthwith. That was when his lordship brought us here to pray.”
Frey could flee, Dunk thought, but Butterwell does not have that option, and soon or late he will begin to wonder why Prince Maekar and his army have not turned up. “If Lord Peake should learn that you are in the castle—”
The sept’s outer doors opened with a crash. Dunk turned to see Black Tom Heddle glowering in mail and plate, with rainwater dripping off his sodden cloak to puddle by his feet. A dozen men-at-arms stood with him, armed with spears and axes. Lightning flashed blue and white across the sky behind them, etching sudden shadows across the pale stone floor. A gust of wet wind set all the candles in the sept to dancing.
Oh, seven bloody hells was all that Dunk had time enough to think before Heddle said, “There’s the boy. Take him.”
Lord Butterwell had risen to his feet. “No. Halt. The boy’s not to be molested. Tommard, what is the meaning of this?”
Heddle’s face twisted in contempt. “Not all of us have milk running in our veins, your lordship. I’ll have the boy.”
“You do not understand.” Butterwell’s voice had turned into a high thin quaver. “We are undone. Lord Frey is gone, and others will follow. Prince Maekar is coming with an army.”
“All the more reason to take the bo
y as hostage.”
“No, no,” said Butterwell, “I want no more part of Lord Peake or his pretender. I will not fight.”
Black Tom looked coldly at his lord. “Craven.” He spat. “Say what you will. You’ll fight or die, my lord.” He pointed at Egg. “A stag to first man to draw blood.”
“No, no.” Butterwell turned to his own guards. “Stop them, do you hear me? I command you. Stop them.” But all the guards had halted in confusion, at a loss as to who they should obey.
“Must I do it myself, then?” Black Tom drew his longsword.
Dunk did the same. “Behind me, Egg.”
“Put up your steel, the both of you!” Butterwell screeched. “I’ll have no bloodshed in the sept! Ser Tommard, this man is the prince’s sworn shield. He’ll kill you!”
“Only if he falls on me.” Black Tom showed his teeth in a hard grin. “I saw him try to joust.”
“I am better with a sword,” Dunk warned him.
Heddle answered with a snort, and charged.
Dunk shoved Egg roughly backwards and turned to meet his blade. He blocked the first cut well enough, but the jolt of Black Tom’s sword biting into his shield and the bandaged cut behind it sent a jolt of pain crackling up his arm. He tried a slash at Heddle’s head in answer, but Black Tom slid away from it and hacked at him again. Dunk barely got his shield around in time. Pine chips flew and Heddle laughed, pressing his attack, low and high and low again. Dunk took each cut with his shield, but every blow was agony, and he found himself giving ground.
“Get him, ser,” he heard Egg call. “Get him, get him, he’s right there.” The taste of blood was in Dunk’s mouth, and worse, his wound had opened once again. A wave of dizziness washed over him. Black Tom’s blade was turning the long kite shield to splinters. Oak and iron guard me well, or else I’m dead and doomed to hell, Dunk thought, before he remembered that this shield was made of pine. When his back came up hard against an altar, he stumbled to one knee, and realized he had no more ground left to give.