The Sworn Sword

spurs and galloped through the grass.

Dunk had no choice but to follow. Ser Arlan’s longsword rode his hip, a good straight piece of steel. If these ditchdiggers have a lick of sense, they’ll run. Thunder’s hooves kicked up clods of dirt.

One man dropped his shovel at the sight of the oncoming knights, but that was all. There were a score of the diggers, short and tall, old and young, all baked brown by the sun. They formed a ragged line as Bennis slowed, clutching their spades and picks. “This is Coldmoat land,” one shouted.

“And that’s an Osgrey stream.” Bennis pointed with his longsword. “Who put that damned dam up?”

“Maester Cerrick made it,” said one young digger.

“No,” an older man insisted. “The gray pup pointed some and said do this and do that, but it were us who made it.”

“Then you can bloody well unmake it.”

The diggers’ eyes were sullen and defiant. One wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. No one spoke.

“You lot don’t hear so good,” said Bennis. “Do I need to lop me off an ear or two? Who’s first?”

“This is Webber land.” The old digger was a scrawny fellow, stooped and stubborn. “You got no right to be here. Lop off any ears and m’lady will drown you in a sack.”

Bennis rode closer. “Don’t see no ladies here, just some mouthy peasant.” He poked the digger’s bare brown chest with the point of his sword, just hard enough to draw a bead of blood.

He goes too far. “Put up your steel,” Dunk warned him. “This is not his doing. This maester set them to the task.”

“It’s for the crops, ser,” a jug-eared digger said. “The wheat was dying, the maester said. The pear trees, too.”

“Well, maybe them pear trees die, or maybe you do.”

“Your talk don’t frighten us,” said the old man.

“No?” Bennis made his longsword whistle, opening the old man’s cheek from ear to jaw. “I said, them pear trees die, or you do.” The digger’s blood ran red down one side of his face.

He should not have done that. Dunk had to swallow his rage. Bennis was on his side in this. “Get away from here,” he shouted at the diggers. “Go back to your lady’s castle.”

“Run,” Ser Bennis urged.

Three of them let go of their tools and did just that, sprinting through the grass. But another man, sunburned and brawny, hefted a pick and said, “There’s only two of them.”

“Shovels against swords is a fool’s fight, Jorgen,” the old man said, holding his face. Blood trickled through his fingers. “This won’t be the end of this. Don’t think it will.”

“One more word, and I might be the end o’ you.”

“We meant no harm to you,” Dunk said to the old man’s bloody face. “All we want is our water. Tell your lady that.”

“Oh, we’ll tell her, ser,” promised the brawny man, still clutching his pick. “That we will.”

On the way home they cut through the heart of Wat’s Wood, grateful for the small measure of shade provided by the trees. Even so, they cooked. Supposedly there were deer in the wood, but the only living things they saw were flies. They buzzed about Dunk’s face as he rode, and crept round Thunder’s eyes, irritating the big warhorse no end. The air was still, suffocating. At least in Dorne the days were dry, and at night it grew so cold I shivered in my cloak. In the Reach the nights were hardly cooler than the days, even this far north.

When ducking down beneath an overhanging limb, Dunk plucked a leaf and crumpled it between his fingers. It fell apart like thousand-year-old parchment in his hand. “There was no need to cut that man,” he told Bennis.

“A tickle on the cheek was all it was, to teach him to mind his tongue. I should of cut his bloody throat for him, only then the rest would of run like rabbits, and we’d of had to ride down the lot o’ them.”

“You’d kill twenty men?” Dunk said, incredulous.

“Twenty-two. That’s two more’n all your fingers and your toes, lunk. You have to kill them all, else they go telling tales.” They circled round a deadfall. “We should of told Ser Useless the drought dried up his little pissant stream.”

“Ser Eustace. You would have lied to him.”

“Aye, and why not? Who’s to tell him any different? The flies?” Bennis grinned a wet red grin. “Ser Useless never leaves the tower, except to see the boys down in the blackberries.”

“A sworn sword owes his lord the truth.”

“There’s truths and truths, lunk. Some don’t serve.” He spat. “The gods make droughts. A man can’t do a bloody buggering thing about the gods. The Red Widow, though… we tell Useless that bitch dog took his water, he’ll feel honor-bound to take it back. Wait and see. He’ll think he’s got to do something.”

“He should. Our smallfolk need that water for their crops.”

“Our smallfolk?” Ser Bennis brayed his laughter. “Was I off having a squat when Ser Useless made you his heir? How many smallfolk you figure you got? Ten? And that’s counting Squinty Jeyne’s half-wit son that don’t know which end o’ the ax to hold. Go make knights o’ every one, and we’ll have half as many as the Widow, and never mind her squires and her archers and the rest. You’d need both hands and both feet to count all them, and your bald-head boy’s fingers and toes, too.”

“I don’t need toes to count.” Dunk was sick of the heat, the flies, and the brown knight’s company. He may have ridden with Ser Arlan once, but that was years and years ago. The man is grown mean and false and craven. He put his heels into his horse and trotted on ahead, to put the smell behind him.

Standfast was a castle only by courtesy. Though it stood bravely atop a rocky hill and could be seen for leagues around, it was no more than a towerhouse. A partial collapse a few centuries ago had required some rebuilding, so the north and west faces were pale gray stone above the windows, and the old black stone below. Turrets had been added to the roofline during the repair, but only on the sides that were rebuilt; at the other two corners crouched ancient stone grotesques, so badly abraded by wind and weather that it was hard to say what they had been. The pinewood roof was flat, but badly warped and prone to leaks.

A crooked path led from the foot of the hill up to the tower, so narrow it could only be ridden single file. Dunk led the way on the ascent, with Bennis just behind. He could see Egg above them, standing on a jut of rock in his floppy straw hat.

They reined up in front of the little daub-and-wattle stable that nestled at the tower’s foot, half hidden under a misshapen heap of purple moss. The old man’s gray gelding was in one of the stalls, next to Maester. Egg and Sam Stoops had gotten the wine inside, it seemed. Hens were wandering the yard. Egg trotted over. “Did you find what happened to the stream?”

“The Red Widow’s dammed it up.” Dunk dismounted, and gave Thunder’s reins to Egg. “Don’t let him drink too much at once.”

“No, ser. I won’t.”

“Boy,” Ser Bennis called. “You can take my horse as well.”

Egg gave him an insolent look. “I’m not your squire.”

That tongue of his will get him hurt one day, Dunk thought. “You’ll take his horse, or you’ll get a clout in the ear.”

Egg made a sullen face, but did as he was bid. As he reached for the bridle, though, Ser Bennis hawked and spat. A glob of glistening red phlegm struck the boy between two toes. He gave the brown knight an icy look. “You spit on my foot, ser.”

Bennis clambered to the ground. “Aye. Next time I’ll spit in your face. I’ll have none o’ your bloody tongue.”

Dunk could see the anger in the boy’s eyes. “Tend to the horses, Egg,” he said, before things got any worse. “We need to speak with Ser Eustace.”

The only entrance into Standfast was through an oak-and-iron door twenty feet above them. The bottom steps were blocks of smooth black stone, so worn they were bowl-shaped in the middle. Higher up, they gave way to a steep wooden stair that could be swung up like a drawbridge in times of trouble. Dunk shooed the hens aside