The Mystery Knight

fly across the lake.”

“I’d sooner swim, ser.” Egg swam well, and Dunk did not. The boy turned in the saddle. “Ser? Someone’s coming up the road behind us. Hear the horses?”

“I’m not deaf.” Dunk could see their dust as well. “A large party. And in haste.”

“Do you think they might be outlaws, ser?” Egg raised up in the stirrups, more eager than afraid. The boy was like that.

“Outlaws would be quieter. Only lords make so much noise.” Dunk rattled his sword hilt to loosen the blade in its scabbard. “Still, we’ll get off the road and let them pass. There are lords and lords.” It never hurt to be a little wary. The roads were not so safe as when Good King Daeron sat the Iron Throne.

He and Egg concealed themselves behind a thornbush. Dunk limiting his shield and slipped it onto his arm. It was an old thing, tall and heavy, kite-shaped, made of pine and rimmed with iron. He had bought it in Stoney Sept to replace the shield the Longinch had hacked to splinters when they fought. Dunk had not had time to have it painted with his elm and shooting star, so it still bore the arms of its last owner: a hanged man swinging grim and gray beneath a gallows tree. It was not a sigil that he would have chosen for himself, but the shield had come cheap.

The first riders galloped past within moments; two young lordlings mounted on a pair of coursers. The one on the bay wore an open-faced helm of gilded steel with three tall feathered plumes: one white, one red, one gold. Matching plumes adorned his horse’s crinet. The black stallion beside him was barded in blue and gold. His trappings rippled with the wind of his passage as he thundered past. Side by side the riders streaked on by, whooping and laughing, their long cloaks streaming behind.

A third lord followed more sedately, at the head of a long column. There were two dozen in the party, grooms and cooks and serving men, all to attend three knights, plus men-at-arms and mounted crossbowmen, and a dozen drays heavy-laden with their armor, tents, and provisions. Slung from the lord’s saddle was his shield, dark orange and charged with three black castles.

Dunk knew those arms, but from where? The lord who bore them was an older man, sour-mouthed and saturnine, with a close-cropped salt-and-pepper beard. He might have been at Ashford Meadow, Dunk thought. Or maybe we served at his castle when I was squiring for Ser Arlan. The old hedge knight had done service at so many different keeps and castles through the years that Dunk could not recall the half of them.

The lord reined up abruptly, scowling at the thornbush. “You. In the bush. Show yourself.” Behind him, two crossbowmen slipped quarrels into the notch. The rest continued on their way.

Dunk stepped through the tall grass, his shield upon his arm, his right hand resting on the pommel of his longsword. His face was a red-brown mask from the dust the horses had kicked up, and he was naked from the waist up. He looked a scruffy sight, he knew, though it was like to be the size of him that gave the other pause. “We want no quarrel, m’lord. There’s only the two of us, me and my squire.” He beckoned Egg forward.

“Squire? Do you claim to be a knight?”

Dunk did not like the way the man was looking at him. Those eyes could flay a man. It seemed prudent to remove his hand from his sword. “I am a hedge knight, seeking service.”

“Every robber knight I’ve ever hanged has said the same. Your device may be prophetic, ser…if ser you are. A gallows and a hanged man. These are your arms?”

“No, m’lord. I need to have the shield repainted.”

“Why? Did you rob it off a corpse?”

“I bought it, for good coin.” Three castles, black on orange. . where have I seen those before? “I am no robber.”

The lord’s eyes were chips of flint. “How did you come by that scar upon your cheek? A cut from a whip?”

“A dagger. Though my face is none of your concern, m’lord.” “I’ll be the judge of what is my concern.”

By then, the two younger knights had come trotting back to see what had delayed their party. “There you are, Gormy,” called the rider on the black, a young man lean and lithe, with a comely, clean-shaven face and fine features. Black hair fell shining to his collar. His doublet was made of dark blue silk edged in gold satin. Across his chest an engrailed cross had been embroidered in gold thread, with a golden fiddle in the first and third quarters, a golden sword in the second and the fourth. His eyes caught the deep blue of his doublet and sparkled with amusement. “Alyn feared you’d fallen from your horse. A palpable excuse, it seems to me; I was about to leave him in my dust.”

“Who are these two brigands?” asked the rider on the bay.

Egg bristled at the insult: “You have no call to name us brigands, my lord. When we saw your dust, we thought you might be outlaws — that’s the only reason that we hid. This is Ser Duncan the Tall, and I’m his squire.”

The lordlings paid no more heed to that than they would have paid the croaking of a frog. “I believe that is the largest lout that I have ever seen,” declared the knight of three feathers. He had a pudgy face beneath a head of curly hair the color of dark honey. “Seven feet if he’s an inch, I’d wager. What a mighty crash he’ll make when he comes tumbling down.”

Dunk felt color rising to his face. You’d lose your wager, he thought. The last time he had been measured, Egg’s brother Aemon pronounced him an inch shy of seven feet.

“Is that your war horse, Ser Giant?” said the feathered lordling. “I suppose we could butcher it for the meat.”

“Lord Alyn oft forgets his courtesies,” the black-haired knight said. “Please forgive his churlish words, ser. Alyn, you will ask Ser Duncan for his pardon.”

“If I must. Will you forgive me, ser?” He did not wait for reply, but turned his bay about and trotted down the road.

The other lingered. “Are you bound for the wedding, ser?”

Something in his tone made Dunk want to tug his forelock. He resisted the impulse and said, “We’re for the ferry, m’lord.”

“As are we…but the only lords hereabouts are Gormy and that wastrel who just left us, Alyn Cockshaw. I am a vagabond hedge knight like yourself. Ser John the Fiddler, I am called.”

That was the sort of name a hedge knight might choose, but Dunk had never seen any hedge knight garbed or armed or mounted in such splendor. The knight of the golden hedge, he thought. “You know my name. My squire is called Egg.”

“Well met, ser. Come, ride with us to Whitewalls and break a few lances to help Lord Butterwell celebrate his new marriage. I’ll wager you could give a good account of yourself.”

Dunk had not done any jousting since Ashford Meadow. If I could win a few ransoms, we’d eat well on the ride north, he thought, but the lord with the three castles on his shield said, “Ser Duncan needs to be about his journey, as do we.”

John the Fiddler paid the older man no mind. “I would love to cross swords with you, ser. I’ve tried men of many lands and races, but never one your size. Was your father large as well?”

“I never knew my father, ser.”

“I am sad to hear it. Mine own sire was taken from me too soon.” The Fiddler turned to the lord of the three castles. “We should ask Ser Duncan to join our jolly company.”

“We do not need his sort.”

Dunk was at a loss for words. Penniless hedge knights were not oft asked to ride with highborn lords. I would have more in common with their servants. Judging from the length of their column, Lord Cockshaw and the Fiddler had brought grooms to tend their horses, cooks to feed them, squires to clean their armor, guards to defend them. Dunk had Egg.

“His sort?” The Fiddler laughed. “What sort is that? The big sort? Look at the size of him. We want strong men. Young swords are worth more than old names, I’ve oft heard it said.”

“By fools. You know little and less about this man. He might be a brig-and, or one of Lord Bloodraven’s spies.”

“I’m no man’s spy,” said Dunk. “And m’lord has no call to speak of me as if I were deaf or dead or down in