“You are no knight,” said Black Tom. “Are those tears in your eyes, oaf?”
Tears of pain. Dunk pushed up off his knee, and slammed shield-first into his foe.
Black Tom stumbled backward, yet somehow kept his balance. Dunk bulled right after him, smashing him with the shield again and again, using his size and strength to knock Heddle halfway across the sept. Then he swung the shield aside and slashed out with his longsword, and Heddle screamed as the steel bit through wool and muscle deep into his thigh. His own sword swung wildly, but the blow was desperate and clumsy. Dunk let his shield take it one more time and put all his weight into his answer.
Black Tom reeled back a step and stared down in horror at his forearm flopping on the floor beneath the Stranger’s altar. “You,” he gasped, “you, you . . . ”
“I told you.” Dunk stabbed him through the throat. “I’m better with a sword.”
Two of the men-at-arms fled back into the rain as a pool of blood spread out from Black Tom’s body. The others clutched their spears and hesitated, casting wary glances toward Dunk as they waited for their lord to speak.
“This . . . this was ill done,” Butterwell finally managed. He turned to Dunk and Egg. “We must be gone from Whitewalls before those two bring word of this to Gormon Peake. He has more friends amongst the guests than I do. The postern gate in the north wall, we’ll slip out there . . . come, we must make haste.”
Dunk slammed his sword into its scabbard. “Egg, go with Lord Butterwell.” He put an arm around the boy, and lowered his voice. “Don’t stay with him any longer than you need to. Give Rain his head and get away before his lordship changes sides again. Make for Maidenpool, it’s closer than King’s Landing.”
“What about you, ser?”
“Never mind about me.”
“I’m your squire.”
“Aye,” said Dunk, “and you’ll do as I tell you, or you’ll get a good clout in the ear.”
A group of men were leaving the great hall, pausing long enough to pull up their hoods before venturing out into the rain. The Old Ox was amongst them, and weedy Lord Caswell, once more in his cups. Both gave Dunk a wide berth. Ser Mortimer Boggs favored him with a curious stare, but thought better of speaking to him. Uthor Underleaf was not so shy. “You come late to the feast, ser,” he said, as he was pulling on his gloves. “And I see you wear a sword again.”
“You’ll have your ransom for it, if that’s all that concerns you.” Dunk had left his battered shield behind, and draped his cloak across his wounded arm to hide the blood. “Unless I die. Then you have my leave to loot my corpse.”
Ser Uthor laughed. “Is that gallantry I smell, or just stupidity? The two scents are much alike, as I recall. It is not too late to accept my offer, ser.”
“It is later you think,” Dunk warned him. He did not wait for Underleaf to answer, but pushed past him, through the double doors. The great hall smelled of ale and smoke and wet wool. In the gallery above, a few musicians played softly. Laughter echoed from the high tables, where Ser Kirby Pimm and Ser Lucas Nayland were playing a drinking game. Up on the dais, Lord Peake was speaking earnestly with Lord Costayne, while Ambrose Butterwell’s new bride sat abandoned in her high seat.
Down below the salt, Dunk found Ser Kyle drowning his woes in Lord Butterwell’s ale. His trencher was filled with a thick stew made with food left over from the night before. A bowl o’ brown, they called such fare in the pot shops of King’s Landing. Ser Kyle had plainly had no stomach for it. Untouched, the stew had grown cold, and a film of grease glistened atop the brown.
Dunk slipped onto the bench beside him. “Ser Kyle.”
The Cat nodded. “Ser Duncan. Will you have some ale?”
“No.” Ale was the last thing that he needed.
“Are you unwell, ser? Forgive me, but you look—”
—better than I feel. “What was done with Glendon Ball?”
“They took him to the dungeons.” Ser Kyle shook his head. “Whore’s get or no, the boy never struck me as a thief.”
“He isn’t.”
Ser Kyle squinted at him. “Your arm . . . how did . . . ”
“A dagger.” Dunk turned to face the dais, frowning. He had escaped death twice today. That would suffice for most men, he knew. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. He pushed to his feet. “Your Grace,” he called.
A few men on nearby benches put down their spoons, broke off their conversations, and turned to look at him.
“Your Grace,” Dunk said again, more loudly. He strode up the Myrish carpet toward the dais. “Daemon.”
Now half the hall grew quiet. At the high table, the man who’d called himself the Fiddler turned to smile at him. He had donned a purple tunic for the feast, Dunk saw. Purple, to bring out the color of his eyes. “Ser Duncan. I am pleased that you are with us. What would you have of me?”
“Justice,” said Dunk, “for Glendon Ball.”
The name echoed off the walls, and for half a heartbeat it was if every man, woman, and boy in the hall had turned to stone. Then Lord Costayne slammed a fist upon a table and shouted, “It’s death that one deserves, not justice.” A dozen other voices echoed his, and Ser Harbert Paege declared, “He’s bastard born. All bastards are thieves, or worse. Blood will tell.”
For a moment Dunk despaired. I am alone here. But then Ser Kyle the Cat pushed himself to his feet, swaying only slightly. “The boy may be a bastard, my lords, but he’s Fireball’s bastard. It’s like Ser Harbert said. Blood will tell.”
Daemon frowned. “No one honors Fireball more than I do,” he said. “I will not believe this false knight is his seed. He stole the dragon’s egg, and slew three good men in the doing.”
“He stole nothing and killed no one,” Dunk insisted. “If three men were slain, look elsewhere for their killer. Your Grace knows as well as I that Ser Glendon was in the yard all day, riding one tilt after t’other.”
“Aye,” Daemon admitted. “I wondered at that myself. But the dragon’s egg was found amongst his things.”
“Was it? Where is it now?
Lord Gormon Peake rose cold-eyed and imperious. “Safe, and well guarded. And why is that any concern of yours, ser?”
“Bring it forth,” said Dunk. “I’d like another look at it, m’lord. T’other night, I only saw it for a moment.”
Peake’s eyes narrowed. “Your Grace,” he said to Daemon, “it comes to me that this hedge knight arrived at Whitewalls with Ser Glendon, uninvited. He may well be part of this.”
Dunk ignored that. “Your Grace, the dragon’s egg that Lord Peake found amongst Ser Glendon’s things was the one he placed there. Let him bring it forth, if he can. Examine it yourself. I’ll wager you it’s no more than a painted stone.”
The hall erupted into chaos. A hundred voices began to speak at once, and a dozen knights leapt to their feet. Daemon looked near as young and lost as Ser Glendon had when he had been accused. “Are you drunk, my friend?”
Would that I were. “I’ve lost some blood,” Dunk allowed, “but not my wits. Ser Glendon has been wrongfully accused.”
“Why?” Daemon demanded, baffled. “If Ball did no wrong, as you insist, why would his lordship say he did and try to prove it with some painted rock?”
“To remove him from your path. His lordship bought your other foes with gold and promises, but Ball was not for sale.”
The Fiddler flushed. “That is not true.”
“It is true. Send for Ser Glendon, and ask him yourself.”
“I will do just that. Lord Peake, have the bastard fetched up at once. And bring the dragon’s egg as well. I wish to have a closer look at it.”
Gormon Peake gave Dunk a look of loathing. “Your Grace, the bastard boy is being questioned. A few more hours, and we will have a confession for you, I do not doubt.”
“By questioned, m’lord means tortured,” said Dunk. “A few more hours, and Ser Glendon will confess to having killed Your Grace’s father, and bo
th your brothers too.”
“Enough!” Lord Peake’s face was almost purple. “One more word, and I will rip your tongue out by the roots.”
“You lie,” said Dunk. “That’s two words.”
“And you will rue the both of them,” Peake promised. “Take this man and chain him in the dungeons.”
“No.” Daemon’s voice was dangerously quiet. “I want the truth of this. Sunderland, Vyrwel, Smallwood, take your men and go find Ser Glendon in the dungeons. Bring him up forthwith, and see that no harm comes to him. If any man should try and hinder you, tell him you are about the king’s business.”
“As you command,” Lord Vyrwel answered.
“I will settle this as my father would,” the Fiddler said. “Ser Glendon stands accused of grievous crimes. As a knight, he has a right to defend himself by strength of arms. I shall meet him in the lists, and let the gods determine guilt and innocence.”
Hero’s blood or whore’s blood, Dunk thought, when two of Lord Vrywel’s men dumped Ser Glendon naked at his feet, he has a deal less of it than he did before.
The boy had been savagely beaten. His face was bruised and swollen, several of his teeth were cracked or missing, his right eye was weeping blood, and up and down his chest his flesh was red and cracking where they’d burned him with hot irons.
“You’re safe now,” murmured Ser Kyle. “There’s no one here but hedge knights, and the gods know that we’re a harmless lot.” Daemon had given them the maester’s chambers, and commanded them to dress any hurts Ser Glendon might have suffered and see that he was ready for the lists.
Three fingernails had been pulled from Ball’s left hand, Dunk saw, as he washed the blood from the boy’s face and hands. That worried him more than all the rest. “Can you hold a lance?”
“A lance?” Blood and spit dribbled from Ser Glendon’s mouth when he tried to speak. “Do I have all my fingers?”
“Ten,” said Dunk, “but only seven fingernails.”
Ball nodded. “Black Tom was going to cut my fingers off, but he was called away. Is it him that I’m to fight?”
“No. I killed him.”
That made him smile. “Someone had to.”
“You’re to tilt against the Fiddler, but his real name—”
“—is Daemon, aye. They told me. The Black Dragon.” Ser Glendon laughed. “My father died for his. I would have been his man, and gladly. I would have fought for him, killed for him, died for him, but I could not lose for him.” He turned his head, and spat out a broken tooth. “Could I have a cup of wine?”
“Ser Kyle, get the wineskin.”
The boy drank long and deep, then wiped his mouth. “Look at me. I’m shaking like a girl.”
Dunk frowned. “Can you still sit a horse?”
“Help me wash, and bring me my shield and lance and saddle,” Ser Glendon said, “and you will see what I can do.”
It was almost dawn before the rain let up enough for the combat to take place. The castle yard was a morass of soft mud, glistening wetly by the light of a hundred torches. Beyond the field a gray mist was rising, sending ghostly fingers up the pale stone walls to grasp the castle battlements. Many of the wedding guests had vanished during the intervening hours, but those who remained climbed the viewing stand again and settled themselves on planks of rain-soaked pine. Amongst them stood Ser Gormon Peake, surrounded by a knot of lesser lords and household knights.
It had only been a few years since Dunk had squired for old Ser Arlan. He had not forgotten how. He cinched the buckles on Ser Glendon’s ill-fitting armor, fastened his helm to his gorget, helped him mount, and handed him his shield. Earlier contests had left deep gouges in the wood, but the blazing fireball could still be seen. He looks as young as Egg, Dunk thought. A frightened boy, and grim. His sorrel mare was unbarded, and skittish as well. He should have stayed with his own mount. The sorrel may be better bred and swifter, but a rider rides best on a horse that he knows well, and this one is a stranger to him.
“I’ll need a lance,” Ser Glendon said. “A war lance.”
Dunk went to the racks. War lances were shorter and heavier than the tourney lances that had been used in all the earlier tilts; eight feet of solid ash ending in an iron point. Dunk chose one and pulled it out, running his hand along its length to make sure it had no cracks.
At the far end of the lists, one of Daemon’s squires was offering him a matching lance. He was a fiddler no more. In place of swords and fiddles, the trapping of his warhorse now displayed the three-headed dragon of House Blackfyre, black on a field of red. The prince had washed the black dye from his hair as well, so it flowed down to his collar in a cascade of silver and gold that glimmered like beaten metal in the torchlight. Egg would have hair like that if he ever let it grow, Dunk realized. He found it hard to picture him that way, but one day he knew he must, if the two of them should live so long.
The herald climbed his platform once again. “Ser Glendon the Bastard stands accused of theft and murder,” he proclaimed, “and now comes forth to prove his innocence at the hazard of his body. Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name, rightborn Kin of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, comes forth to prove the truth of the accusations against the bastard Glendon.”
And all at once the year fell away, and Dunk was back was at Ashford Meadow once again, listening to Baelor Breakspear just before they went forth to battle for his life. He slipped the war lance back in place, plucked a tourney lance from the next rack; twelve feet long, slender, elegant. “Use this,” he told Ser Glendon. “It’s what we used at Ashford, at the Trial of Seven.”
“The Fiddler chose a war lance. He means to kill me.”
“First he has to strike you. If your aim is true, his point will never touch you.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
Ser Glendon snatched the lance from him, wheeled about, and trotted toward the lists. “Seven save us both, then.”
Somewhere in the east, lightning cracked across a pale pink sky. Daemon raked his stallion’s side with golden spurs, and leapt forward like a thunderclap, lowering his war lance with its deadly iron point. Ser Glendon raised his shield and raced to meet him, swinging his own longer lance across his mare’s head to bear upon the young pretender’s chest. Mud sprayed back from their horses’ hooves, and the torches seemed to burn the brighter as the two knights went pounding past.
Dunk closed his eyes. He heard a crack, a shout, a thump. “No,” he heard Lord Peake cry out, in anguish. “Noooooo.” For half a heartbeat, Dunk almost felt sorry for him. He opened his eyes again. Riderless, the big black stallion was slowing to a trot. Dunk jumped out and grabbed him by the reins. At the far end of the lists, Ser Glendon Ball wheeled his mare and raised his splintered lance. Men rushed onto the field, to where the Fiddler lay unmoving, face down in the mud. When they helped him to his feet, he was mud from head to heel.
“The Brown Dragon,” someone shouted. Laughter rippled through the yard, as the dawn washed over Whitewalls.
It was only a few heartbeats later, as Dunk and Ser Kyle were helping Glendon Ball off his horse, that the first trumpet blew, and the sentries on the walls raised the alarum. An army had appeared outside the castle, rising from the morning mists.
“Egg wasn’t lying after all,” Dunk told Ser Kyle, astonished.
From Maidenpool had come Lord Mooton, from Raventree Lord Blackwood, from Duskendale Lord Darklyn. The royal demenses about King’s Landing sent forth Hayfords, Rosbys, Stokeworths, Masseys, and the king’s own sworn swords, led by three knights of the Kingsguard and stiffened by three hundred Raven’s Teeth with tall white weirwood bows. Mad Danelle Lothston herself rode forth in strength from her haunted towers at Harrenhal, clad in black armor that fit her like an iron glove, her long red hair streaming.
The light of the rising sun glittered off the points of five hundred lances and ten times as many spe
ars. The night’s gray banners were reborn in half a hundred gaudy colors. And above them all flew two regal dragons on night-black fields: the great three-headed beast of King Aerys I Targaryen, red as fire, and a white winged fury breathing scarlet flame.
Not Maekar after all, Dunk knew, when he saw those banners. The banners of the Prince of Summerhall showed four three-headed dragons, two and two, the arms of the fourth-born son of the late King Daeron II Targaryen. A single white dragon announced the presence of the King’s Hand, Lord Byrnden Rivers.
Bloodraven himself had come to Whitewalls.
The First Blackfyre Rebellion had perished on the Redgrass Field in blood and glory. The Second Blackfyre Rebellion ended with a whimper. “They cannot cow us,” Young Daemon proclaimed from the castle battlements, after he had seen the ring of iron that encircled them, “for our cause is just. We’ll slash through them and ride hellbent for King’s Landing! Sound the trumpets!”
Instead, knights and lords and men-at-arms muttered quietly to one another, and a few began to slink away, making for the stables or a postern gate or some hideyhole they hoped might keep them safe. And when Daemon drew his sword and raised it above his head, every man of them could see it was not Blackfyre. “We’ll make another Redgrass Field today,” the pretender promised.
“Piss on that, fiddle boy,” a grizzled squire shouted back at him. “I’d sooner live.”
In the end, the second Daemon Blackfyre rode forth alone, reined up before the royal host, and challenged Lord Bloodraven to single combat. “I will fight you, or the coward Aerys, or any champion you care to name.” Instead, Lord Bloodraven’s men surrounded him, pulled him off his horse, and clasped him into golden fetters. The banner he had carried was planted in the muddy ground and set afire. It burned for a long time, sending up twisted plume of smoke that could be seen for leagues around.
The only blood that was shed that day came when a man in service to Lord Vrywel began to boast he had been one of Bloodraven’s eyes and would soon be well rewarded. “By the time the moon turns I’ll be fucking whores and drinking Dornish red,” he was purported to have said, just before one of Lord Costayne’s knights slit his throat. “Drink that, he said, as Vrywel’s man drowned in his own blood. “It’s not Dornish, but it’s red.”
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror Page 74