* * * *
The hedge knights did not prove hard to find. Egg spied their fire flickering in the woods along the lakeshore, so they made for it, leading the animals behind them. The boy carried Dunk’s helm beneath one arm, sloshing with each step he took. By then the sun was a red memory in the west. Before long the trees opened up, and they found themselves in what must once have been a weirwood grove. Only a ring of white stumps and a tangle of bone-pale roots remained to show where the trees had stood, when the children of the forest ruled in Westeros.
Amongst the weirwood stumps, they found two men squatting near a cook fire, passing a skin of wine from hand to hand. Their horses were cropping at the grass beyond the grove, and they had stacked their arms and armor in neat piles. A much younger man sat apart from the other two, his back against a chestnut tree. “Well met, sers,” Dunk called out in a cheerful voice. It was never wise to take armed men unawares. “I am called Ser Duncan the Tall. The lad is Egg. May we share your fire?”
A stout man of middling years rose to greet them, garbed in tattered finery. Flamboyant ginger whiskers framed his face. “Well met, Ser Duncan. You are a large one ... and most welcome, certainly, as is your lad. Egg, was it? What sort of name is that, pray?”
“A short one, ser.” Egg knew better than to admit that Egg was short for Aegon. Not to men he did not know.
“Indeed. What happened to your hair?”
Rootworms, Dunk thought. Tell him it was rootworms, boy. That was the safest story, the tale they told most often ... though sometimes Egg took it in his head to play some childish game. “I shaved it off, ser. I mean to stay shaven until I earn my spurs.”
“A noble vow. I am Ser Kyle, the Cat of Misty Moor. Under yonder chestnut sits Ser Glendon, ah, Ball. And here you have the good Ser Maynard Plumm.”
Egg’s ears pricked up at that name. “Plumm ... are you kin to Lord Viserys Plumm, ser?”
“Distantly,” confessed Ser Maynard, a tall, thin, stoop-shouldered man with long straight flaxen hair, “though I doubt that His Lordship would admit to it. One might say that he is of the sweet Plumms, whilst I am of the sour.” Plumm’s cloak was as purple as name, though frayed about the edges and badly dyed. A moonstone brooch big as a hen’s egg fastened it at the shoulder. Elsewise he wore dun-colored roughspun and stained brown leather.
“We have salt beef,” said Dunk.
“Ser Maynard has a bag of apples,” said Kyle the Cat. “And I have pickled eggs and onions. Why, together we have the makings of a feast! Be seated, ser. We have a fine choice of stumps for your comfort. We will be here until midmorning, unless I miss my guess. There is only the one ferry, and it is not big enough to take us all. The lords and their tails must cross first.”
“Help me with the horses,” Dunk told Egg. Together the two of them unsaddled Thunder, Rain, and Maester.
Only when the animals had been fed and watered and hobbled for the night did Dunk accept the wineskin that Ser Maynard offered him. “Even sour wine is better than none,” said Kyle the Cat. “We’ll drink finer vintages at Whitewalls. Lord Butterwell is said to have the best wines north of the Arbor. He was once the King’s Hand, as his father’s father was before him, and he is said to be a pious man besides, and very rich.”
“His wealth is all from cows,” said Maynard Plumm. “He ought to take a swollen udder for his arms. These Butterwells have milk running in their veins, and the Freys are no better. This will be a marriage of cattle thieves and toll collectors, one lot of coin clinkers joining with another. When the Black Dragon rose, this lord of cows sent one son to Daemon and one to Daeron, to make certain there was a Butterwell on the winning side. Both perished on the Redgrass Field, and his youngest died in the spring. That’s why he’s making this new marriage. Unless this new wife gives him a son, Butterwell’s name will die with him.”
“As it should.” Ser Glendon Ball gave his sword another stroke with the whetstone. “The Warrior hates cravens.”
The scorn in his voice made Dunk give the youth a closer look. Ser Glendon’s clothes were of good cloth, but well-worn and ill-matched, with the look of hand-me-downs. Tufts of dark brown hair stuck out from beneath his iron halfhelm. The lad himself was short and chunky, with small close-set eyes, thick shoulders, and muscular arms. His eyebrows were shaggy as two caterpillars after a wet spring, his nose bulbous, his chin pugnacious. And he was young. Sixteen, might be. No more than eighteen. Dunk might have taken him for a squire if Ser Kyle had not named him with a ser. The lad had pimples on his cheeks in place of whiskers.
“How long have you been a knight?” Dunk asked him.
“Long enough. Half a year when the moon turns. I was knighted by Ser Morgan Dunstable of Tumbler’s Falls, two dozen people saw it, but I have been training for knighthood since I was born. I rode before I walked, and knocked a grown man’s tooth out of his head before I lost any of my own. I mean to make my name at Whitewalls, and claim the dragon’s egg.”
“The dragon’s egg? Is that the champion’s prize? Truly?” The last dragon had perished half a century ago. Ser Arlan had once seen a clutch of her eggs, though. They were hard as stone, he said, but beautiful to look upon, the old man had told Dunk. “How could Lord Butterwell come by a dragon’s egg?” “King Aegon presented the egg to his father’s father after guesting for a night at his old castle,” said Ser Maynard Plumm.
“Was it a reward for some act of valor?” asked Dunk.
Ser Kyle chuckled. “Some might call it that. Supposedly old Lord Butterwell had three young maiden daughters when His Grace came calling. By morning, all three had royal bastards in their little bellies. A hot night’s work, that was.”
Dunk had heard such talk before. Aegon the Unworthy had bedded half the maidens in the realm and fathered bastards on the lot of them, supposedly. Worse, the old king had legitimized them all upon his deathbed; the baseborn ones born of tavern wenches, whores, and shepherd girls, and the Great Bastards whose mothers had been highborn. “We’d all be bastard sons of old King Aegon if half these tales were true.”
“And who’s to say we’re not?” Ser Maynard quipped.
“You ought to come with us to Whitewalls, Ser Duncan,” urged Ser Kyle. “Your size is sure to catch some lordling’s eye. You might find good service there. I know I shall. Joffrey Caswell will be at this wedding, the Lord of Bitterbridge. When he was three, I made him his first sword. I carved it out of pine, to fit his hand. In my greener days my sword was sworn to his father.”
“Was that one carved from pine as well?” Ser Maynard asked.
Kyle the Cat had the grace to laugh. “That sword was good steel, I assure you. I should be glad to ply it once again in the service of the centaur. Ser Duncan, even if you do not choose to tilt, do join us for the wedding feast. There will be singers and musicians, jugglers and tumblers, and a troupe of comic dwarfs.”
Dunk frowned. “Egg and I have a long journey before us. We’re headed north to Winterfell. Lord Beron Stark is gathering swords to drive the krakens from his shores for good.”
“Too cold up there for me,” said Ser Maynard. “If you want to kill krakens, go west. The Lannisters are building ships to strike back at the iron-men on their home islands. That’s how you put an end to Dagon Greyjoy. Fighting him on land is fruitless, he just slips back to sea. You have to beat him on the water.”
That had the ring of truth, but the prospect of fighting ironmen at sea was not one that Dunk relished. He’d had a taste of that on the White Lady, sailing from Dorne to Oldtown, when he’d donned his armor to help the crew repel some raiders. The battle had been desperate and bloody, and once he’d almost fallen in the water. That would have been the end of him.
“The throne should take a lesson from Stark and Lannister,” declared Ser Kyle the Cat. “At least they fight. What do the Targaryens do? King Aerys hides amongst his books, Prince Rhaegel prances naked through the Red Keep’s halls, and Prince Maekar broods at Summerhall.”
Egg was prodding at the fire with a stick, to send sparks floating up into the night. Dunk was pleased to see him ignoring the mention of his father’s name. Perhaps he’s finally learned to hold that tongue of his.
“Myself, I blame Bloodraven,” Ser Kyle went on. “He is the King’s Hand, yet he does nothing, whilst the krakens spread flame and terror up and down the sunset sea.”
Ser Maynard gave a shrug. “His eye is fixed on Tyrosh, where Bittersteel sits in exile, plotting with the sons of Daemon Blackfyre. So he keeps the king’s ships close at hand, lest they attempt to cross.”
“Aye, that may well be,” Ser Kyle said, “but many would welcome the return of Bittersteel. Bloodraven is the root of all our woes, the white worm gnawing at the heart of the realm.”
Dunk frowned, remembering the hunchbacked septon at Stoney Sept. “Words like that can cost a man his head. Some might say you’re talking treason.”
“How can the truth be treason?” asked Kyle the Cat. “In King Daeron’s day, a man did not have to fear to speak his mind, but now?” He made a rude noise. “Bloodraven put King Aerys on the Iron Throne, but for how long? Aerys is weak, and when he dies, it will be bloody war between Lord Rivers and Prince Maekar for the crown, the Hand against the heir.”
“You have forgotten Prince Rhaegel, my friend,” Ser Maynard objected, in a mild tone. “He comes next in line to Aerys, not Maekar, and his children after him.”
“Rhaegel is feeble-minded. Why, I bear him no ill will, but the man is good as dead, and those twins of his as well, though whether they will die of Maekar’s mace or Bloodraven’s spells ...”
Seven save us, Dunk thought as Egg spoke up shrill and loud. “Prince Maekar is Prince Rhaegel’s brother. He loves him well. He’d never do harm to him or his.”
“Be quiet, boy,” Dunk growled at him. “These knights want none of your opinions.”
“I can talk if I want.”
“No,” said Dunk. “You can’t.” That mouth of yours will get you killed someday. And me as well, most like. “That salt beefs soaked long enough, I think. A strip for all our friends, and be quick about it.”
Egg flushed, and for half a heartbeat, Dunk feared the boy might talk back. Instead he settled for a sullen look, seething as only a boy of eleven years can seethe. “Aye, ser,” he said, fishing in the bottom of Dunk’s helm. His shaven head shone redly in the firelight as he passed out the salt beef.
Dunk took his piece and worried at it. The soak had turned the meat from wood to leather, but that was all. He sucked on one corner, tasting the salt and trying not to think about the roast boar at the inn, crackling on its spit and dripping fat.
As dusk deepened, flies and stinging midges came swarming off the lake. The flies preferred to plague their horses, but the midges had a taste for man flesh. The only way to keep from being bitten was to sit close to the fire, breathing smoke. Cook or be devoured, Dunk thought glumly, now there’s a beggar’s choice. He scratched at his arms and edged closer to the fire.
The wineskin soon came round again. The wine was sour and strong. Dunk drank deep, and passed along the skin, whilst the Cat of Misty Moor began to talk of how he had saved the life of the Lord of Bitterbridge during the Backfire Rebellion. “When Lord Armond’s banner-bearer fell, I leapt down from my horse with traitors all around us—”
“Ser,” said Glendon Ball. “Who were these traitors?”
“The Blackfyre men, I meant.”
Firelight glimmered off the steel in Ser Glendon’s hand. The pock-marks on his face flamed as red as open sores, and his every sinew was wound as tight as a crossbow. “My father fought for the Black Dragon.”
This again. Dunk snorted. Red or Black? was not a thing you asked a man. It always made for trouble. “I am sure Ser Kyle meant no insult to your father.”
“None,” Ser Kyle agreed. “It’s an old tale, the Red Dragon and the Black. No sense for us to fight about it now, lad. We are all brothers of the hedges here.”
Ser Glendon seemed to weigh the Cat’s words, to see if he was being mocked. “Daemon Blackfyre was no traitor. The old king gave him the sword. He saw the worthiness in Daemon, even though he was born bastard. Why else would he put Blackfyre into his hand in place of Daeron’s? He meant for him to have the kingdom too. Daemon was the better man.”
A hush fell. Dunk could hear the soft crackle of the fire. He could feel midges crawling on the back of his neck. He slapped at them, watching Egg, willing him to be still. “I was just a boy when they fought the Red-grass Field,” he said, when it seemed that no one else would speak, “but I squired for a knight who fought with the Red Dragon, and later served another who fought for the Black. There were brave men on both sides.”
“Brave men,” echoed Kyle the Cat, a bit feebly.
“Heroes.” Glendon Ball turned his shield about, so all of them could see the sigil painted there, a fireball blazing red and yellow across a night-black field. “I come from hero’s blood.”
“You’re Fireball’s son,” Egg said.
That was the first time they saw Ser Glendon smile.
Ser Kyle the Cat studied the boy closely. “How can that be? How old are you? Quentyn Ball died—”
“—before I was born,” Ser Glendon finished, “but in me, he lives again.” He slammed his sword back into its scabbard. “I’ll show you all at Whitewalls, when I claim the dragon’s egg.”