A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Read online

  Ser Eustace rounded on Dunk, his mustache quivering with rage. “You had no right to send them away. No right! I told them not to go, I forbade it. I forbade you to dismiss them.”

  “We never heard you, my lord.” Egg took off his hat to fan away the smoke. “The chickens were cackling too loud.”

  The old man sank down onto Standfast’s lowest step. “What did that woman offer you to deliver me to her?” he asked Dunk in a bleak voice. “How much gold did she give you to betray me, to send my lads away and leave me here alone?”

  “You’re not alone, m’lord.” Dunk sheathed his sword. “I slept beneath your roof and ate your eggs this morning. I owe you some service still. I won’t go slinking off with my tail between my legs. My sword’s still here.” He touched the hilt.

  “One sword.” The old knight got slowly to his feet. “What can one sword hope to do against that woman?”

  “Try and keep her off your land, to start with.” Dunk wished he was as certain as he sounded.

  The old knight’s mustache trembled every time he took a breath. “Yes,” he said at last. “Better to go boldly than hide behind stone walls. Better to die a lion than a rabbit. We were the Marshals of the Northmarch for a thousand years. I must have my armor.” He started up the steps.

  Egg was looking up at Dunk. “I never knew you had a tail, ser,” the boy said.

  “Do you want a clout in the ear?”

  “No, ser. Do you want your armor?”

  “That,” Dunk said, “and one thing more.”

  There was talk of Ser Bennis coming with them, but in the end Ser Eustace commanded him to stay and hold the tower. His sword would be of little use against the odds that they were like to face, and the sight of him would inflame the widow further.

  The brown knight did not require much convincing. Dunk helped him knock loose the iron pegs that held the upper steps in place. Bennis clambered up them, untied the old grey hempen rope, and hauled on it with all his strength. Creaking and groaning, the wooden stair swung upward, leaving ten feet of air between the top stone step and the tower’s only entrance. Sam Stoops and his wife were both inside. The chickens would need to fend for themselves. Sitting below on his grey gelding, Ser Eustace called up to say, “If we have not returned by nightfall…”

  “…I’ll ride for Highgarden, m’lord, and tell Lord Tyrell how that woman burned your wood and murdered you.”

  Dunk followed Egg and Maester down the hill. The old man came after, his armor rattling softly. For once a wind was rising, and he could hear the flapping of his cloak.

  Where Wat’s Wood had stood they found a smoking wasteland. The fire had largely burned itself out by the time they reached the wood, but here and there a few patches were still burning, fiery islands in a sea of ash and cinders. Elsewhere the trunks of burned trees thrust like blackened spears into the sky. Other trees had fallen and lay athwart the west way with limbs charred and broken, dull red fires smoldering inside their hollow hearts. There were hot spots on the forest floor as well, and places where the smoke hung in the air like a hot grey haze. Ser Eustace was stricken with a fit of coughing, and for a few moments Dunk feared the old man would need to turn back, but finally it passed.

  They rode past the carcass of a red deer, and later on what might have been a badger. Nothing lived, except the flies. Flies could live through anything, it seemed. “The Field of Fire must have looked like this,” Ser Eustace said. “It was there our woes began, two hundred years ago. The last of the green kings perished on that field, with the finest flowers of the Reach around him. My father said the dragonfire burned so hot that their swords melted in their hands. Afterward the blades were gathered up, and went to make the Iron Throne. Highgarden passed from kings to stewards, and the Osgreys dwindled and diminished, until the Marshals of the Northmarch were no more than landed knights bound in fealty to the Rowans.”

  Dunk had nothing to say to that, so they rode in silence for a time, till Ser Eustace coughed, and said, “Ser Duncan, do you remember the story that I told you?”

  “I might, ser,” said Dunk. “Which one?”

  “The Little Lion.”

  “I remember. He was the youngest of five sons.”

  “Good.” He coughed again. “When he slew Lancel Lannister, the westermen turned back. Without the king there was no war. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  “Aye,” Dunk said reluctantly. Could I kill a woman? For once Dunk wished he were as thick as that castle wall. It must not come to that. I must not let it come to that.

  A few green trees still stood where the west way crossed the Chequy Water; their trunks were charred and blackened on one side. Just beyond, the water glimmered darkly. Blue and green, Dunk thought, but all the gold is gone. The smoke had veiled the sun.

  Ser Eustace halted when he reached the water’s edge. “I took a holy vow. I will not cross that stream. Not so long as the land beyond is hers.” The old knight wore mail and plate beneath his yellowed surcoat. His sword was on his hip.

  “What if she never comes, ser?” Egg asked.

  With fire and sword, Dunk thought. “She’ll come.”

  She did, and within the hour. They heard her horses first, then the faint metallic sound of clinking armor, growing louder. The drifting smoke made it hard to tell how far off they were until her banner-bearer pushed through the ragged grey curtain. His staff was crowned by an iron spider painted white and red, with the black banner of the Webbers hanging listlessly beneath. When he saw them across the water, he halted on the bank. Ser Lucas Inchfield appeared half a heartbeat later, armored head to heel.

  Only then did Lady Rohanne herself appear, astride a coal-black mare decked out in strands of silverly silk, like unto a spider’s web. The widow’s cloak was made of the same stuff. It billowed from her shoulders and her wrists, as light as air. She was armored too, in a suit of green enamel scale chased with gold and silver. It fit her figure like a glove and made her look as if she were garbed in summer leaves. Her long red braid hung down behind her, bouncing as she rode. Septon Sefton rode red-faced at her side, atop a big grey gelding. On her other side was her young maester, Cerrick, mounted on a mule.

  More knights came after, half a dozen of them, attended by as many esquires. A column of mounted crossbowmen brought up the rear and fanned out to either side of the road when they reached the Chequy Water and saw Dunk waiting on the other side. There were three-and-thirty fighting men all told, excluding the septon, the maester, and the widow herself. One of the knights caught Dunk’s eye—a squat, bald keg of a man in mail and leather, with an angry face and an ugly goiter on his neck.

  The Red Widow walked her mare to the edge of the water. “Ser Eustace, Ser Duncan,” she called across the stream, “we saw your fire burning in the night.”

  “Saw it?” Ser Eustace shouted back. “Aye, you saw it…after you made it.”

  “That is a vile accusation.”

  “For a vile act.”

  “I was asleep in my bed last night, with my ladies all around me. The shouts from the walls awoke me, as they did most everyone. Old men climbed up steep tower steps to look, and babes at the breast saw the red light and wept in fear. And that is all I know of your fire, ser.”

  “It was your fire, woman,” insisted Ser Eustace. “My wood is gone. Gone, I say!”

  Septon Sefton cleared his throat. “Ser Eustace,” he boomed, “there are fires in the kingswood too, and even in the rainwood. The drought has turned all our woods to kindling.”

  Lady Rohanne raised an arm and pointed. “Look at my fields, Osgrey. How dry they are. I would have been a fool to set a fire. Had the wind changed direction, the flames might well have leapt the stream and burned out half my crops.”

  “Might have?” Ser Eustace shouted. “It was my woods that burned, and you that burned them. Most like you cast some witch’s spell to drive the wind, just as you used your dark arts to slay your husbands and your brothers!”

  Lady
Rohanne’s face grew harder. Dunk had seen that look at Coldmoat, just before she slapped him. “Prattle,” she told the old man. “I will waste no more words on you, ser. Produce Bennis of the Brown Shield or we will come and take him.”

  “That you shall not do,” Ser Eustace declared in ringing tones. “That you shall never do.” His mustache twitched. “Come no farther. This side of the stream is mine, and you are not wanted here. You shall have no hospitality from me. No bread and salt, not even shade and water. You come as an intruder. I forbid you to set foot on Osgrey land.”

  Lady Rohanne drew her braid over her shoulder. “Ser Lucas,” was all she said. The Longinch made a gesture, the crossbowmen dismounted, winched back their bowstrings with the help of hook and stirrup, and plucked quarrels from their quivers. “Now, ser,” her ladyship called out, when every bow was nocked and raised and ready, “what was it you forbade me?”

  Dunk had heard enough. “If you cross the stream without leave, you are breaking the king’s peace.”

  Septon Sefton urged his horse forward a step. “The king will neither know nor care,” he called. “We are all the Mother’s children, ser. For her sake, stand aside.”

  Dunk frowned. “I don’t know much of gods, septon…but aren’t we the Warrior’s children, too?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “If you try to cross, I’ll stop you.”

  Ser Lucas the Longinch laughed. “Here’s a hedge knight who yearns to be a hedgehog, my lady,” he said to the Red Widow. “Say the word, and we’ll put a dozen quarrels in him. At this distance they will punch through that armor like it was made of spit.”

  “No. Not yet, ser.” Lady Rohanne studied him from across the stream. “You are two men and a boy. We are three-and-thirty. How do you propose to stop us crossing?”

  “Well,” said Dunk, “I’ll tell you. But only you.”

  “As you wish.” She pressed her heels into her horse and rode her out into the stream. When the water reached the mare’s belly, she halted, waiting. “Here I am. Come closer, ser. I promise not to sew you in a sack.”

  Ser Eustace grasped Dunk by the arm before he could respond. “Go to her,” the old knight said, “but remember the Little Lion.”

  “As you say, m’lord.” Dunk walked Thunder down into the water. He drew up beside her, and said, “M’lady.”

  “Ser Duncan.” She reached up and laid two fingers on his swollen lip. “Did I do this, ser?”

  “No one else has slapped my face of late, m’lady.”

  “That was bad of me. A breach of hospitality. The good septon has been scolding me.” She gazed across the water at Ser Eustace. “I scarce remember Addam any longer. It was more than half my life ago. I remember that I loved him, though. I have not loved any of the others.”

  “His father put him in the blackberries, with his brothers,” Dunk said. “He was fond of blackberries.”

  “I remember. He used to pick them for me, and we’d eat them in a bowl of cream.”

  “The king pardoned the old man for Daemon,” said Dunk. “It is past time you pardoned him for Addam.”

  “Give me Bennis and I’ll consider that.”

  “Bennis is not mine to give.”

  She sighed. “I would as lief not have to kill you.”

  “I would as lief not die.”

  “Then give me Bennis. We’ll cut his nose off and hand him back, and that will be the end of that.”

  “It won’t, though,” Dunk said. “There’s still the dam to deal with, and the fire. Will you give us the men who set it?”

  “There were lantern bugs in that wood,” she said. “It may be they set the fire off, with their little lanterns.”

  “No more teasing now, m’lady,” Dunk warned her. “This is no time for it. Tear down the dam and let Ser Eustace have the water to make up for the wood. That’s fair, is it not?”

  “It might be if I had burned the wood. Which I did not. I was at Coldmoat, safe abed.” She looked down at the water. “What is there to prevent us from riding right across the stream? Have you scattered caltrops amongst the rocks? Hidden archers in the ashes? Tell me what you think is going to stop us.”

  “Me.” He pulled one gauntlet off. “In Flea Bottom I was always bigger and stronger than the other boys, so I used to beat them bloody and steal from them. The old man taught me not to do that. It was wrong, he said, and besides, sometimes little boys have great big brothers. Here, have a look at this.” Dunk twisted the ring off his finger and held it out to her. She had to let loose of her braid to take it.

  “Gold?” she said, when she felt the weight of it. “What is this, ser?” She turned it over in her hand. “A signet. Gold and onyx.” Her green eyes narrowed as she studied the seal. “Where did you find this, ser?”

  “In a boot. Wrapped in rags and stuffed up in the toe.”

  Lady Rohanne’s fingers closed around it. She glanced at Egg and old Ser Eustace. “You took a great risk in showing me this ring, ser. But how does it avail us? If I should command my men to cross…”

  “Well,” said Dunk, “that would mean I’d have to fight.”

  “And die.”

  “Most like,” he said, “and Egg would go back where he comes from, and tell what happened here.”

  “Not if he died as well.”

  “I don’t think you’d kill a boy of ten,” he said, hoping he was right. “Not this boy of ten, you wouldn’t. You got three-and-thirty men there, like you said. Men talk. That fat one there especially. No matter how deep you dug the graves, the tale would out. And then, well…might be a spotted spider’s bite can kill a lion, but a dragon is a different sort of beast.”

  “I would sooner be the dragon’s friend.” She tried the ring on her finger. It was too big even for her thumb. “Dragon or no, I must have Bennis of the Brown Shield.”

  “No.”

  “You are seven feet of stubborn.”

  “Less an inch.”

  She gave him back the ring. “I cannot return to Coldmoat empty-handed. They will say the Red Widow has lost her bite, that she was too weak to do justice, that she could not protect her smallfolk. You do not understand, ser.”

  “I might.” Better than you know. “I remember once some little lord in the stormlands took Ser Arlan into service, to help him fight some other little lord. When I asked the old man what they were fighting over, he said, ‘Nothing, lad. It’s just some pissing contest.’ ”

  Lady Rohanne gave him a shocked look but could sustain it no more than half a heartbeat before it turned into a grin. “I have heard a thousand empty courtesies in my time, but you are the first knight who ever said pissing in my presence.” Her freckled face went somber. “Those pissing contests are how lords judge one another’s strength, and woe to any man who shows his weakness. A woman must needs piss twice as hard, if she hopes to rule. And if that woman should happen to be small…Lord Stackhouse covets my Horseshoe Hills, Ser Clifford Conklyn has an old claim to Leafy Lake, those dismal Durwells live by stealing cattle…and beneath mine own roof I have the Longinch. Every day I wake wondering if this might be the day he marries me by force.” Her hand curled tight around her braid, as hard as if it were a rope, and she was dangling over a precipice. “He wants to, I know. He holds back for fear of my wroth, just as Conklyn and Stackhouse and the Durwells tread carefully where the Red Widow is concerned. If any of them thought for a moment that I had turned weak and soft…”

  Dunk put the ring back on his finger, and drew his dagger.

  The widow’s eyes went wide at the sight of naked steel. “What are you doing?” she said. “Have you lost your wits? There are a dozen crossbows trained on you.”

  “You wanted blood for blood.” He laid the dagger against his cheek. “They told you wrong. It wasn’t Bennis cut that digger, it was me.” He pressed the edge of the steel into his face, slashed downward. When he shook the blood off the blade some spattered on her face. More freckles, he thought. “There, the Red Widow has her due. A cheek for a cheek.
”

  “You are quite mad.” The smoke had filled her eyes with tears. “If you were better born, I’d marry you.”

  “Aye, m’lady. And if pigs had wings and scales and breathed flame, they’d be as good as dragons.” Dunk slid the knife back in its sheath. His face had begun to throb. The blood ran down his cheek and dripped onto his gorget. The smell made Thunder snort and paw the water. “Give me the men who burned the wood.”

  “No one burned the wood,” she said, “but if some man of mine had done so, it must have been to please me. How could I give such a man to you?” She glanced back at her escort. “It would be best if Ser Eustace were just to withdraw his accusation.”

  “Those pigs will be breathing fire first, m’lady.”

  “In that case, I must assert my innocence before the eyes of gods and men. Tell Ser Eustace that I demand an apology…or a trial. The choice is his.” She wheeled her horse about to ride back to her men.

  The stream would be their battleground.

  Septon Sefton waddled out and said a prayer, beseeching the Father Above to look down on these two men and judge them justly, asking the Warrior to lend his strength to the man whose cause was just and true, begging the Mother’s mercy for the liar, that he might be forgiven for his sins. When the praying was over and done with, he turned to Ser Eustace Osgrey one last time. “Ser,” he said, “I beg you once again, withdraw your accusation.”

  “I will not,” the old man said, his mustache trembling.

  The fat septon turned to Lady Rohanne. “Good-sister, if you did this thing, confess your guilt, and offer good Ser Eustace some restitution for his wood. Elsewise blood must flow.”

  “My champion will prove my innocence before the eyes of gods and men.”

  “Trial by battle is not the only way,” said the septon, waist deep in the water. “Let us go to Goldengrove, I implore you both, and place the matter before Lord Rowan for his judgment.”