them.
'That's a tree,' the boy said, unimpressed.
'It's all the pavilion a true knight needs. I would sooner sleep under the stars than in some smoky tent.'
'What if it rains?'
'The tree will shelter me.'
'Trees leak.'
Dunk laughed. 'So they do. Well, if truth be told, I lack the coin for a pavilion. And you'd best turn that fish, or it will be burned on the bottom and raw on the top. You'd never make a kitchen boy.'
'I would if I wanted,' the boy said, but he turned the fish.
'What happened to your hair?' Dunk asked of him.
'The maesters shaved it off.' Suddenly selfconscious, the boy pulled up the hood of his dark brown cloak, covering his head.
Dunk had heard that they did that sometimes, to treat lice or rootworms or certain sicknesses. 'Are you ill?'
'No,' said the boy. 'What's your name?'
'Dunk,' he said.
The wretched boy laughed aloud, as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. 'Dunk?' he said. 'Ser Dunk? That's no name for a knight. Is it short for Duncan?'
Was it? The old man had called him just Dunk for as long as he could recall, and he did not remember much of his life before. 'Duncan, yes,' he said. 'Ser Duncan of…' Dunk had no other name, nor any house; Ser Arlan had found him living wild in the stews and alleys of Flea Bottom. He had never known his father or mother. What was he to say? 'Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom' did not sound very knightly. He could take Pennytree, but what if they asked him where it was? Dunk had never been to Pennytree, nor had the old man talked much about it. He frowned for a moment, and then blurted out, 'Ser Duncan the Tall.' He was tall, no one could dispute that, and it sounded puissant.
Though the little sneak did not seem to think so. 'I have never heard of any Ser Duncan the Tall.'
'Do you know every knight in the Seven Kingdoms, then?'
The boy looked at him boldly. 'The good ones.'
'I'm as good as any. After the tourney, they'll all know that. Do you have a name, thief?'
The boy hesitated. 'Egg,' he said.
Dunk did not laugh. His head does look like an egg. Small boys can be cruel, and grown men as well. 'Egg,' he said, 'I should beat you bloody and send you on your way, but the truth is, I have no pavilion and I have no squire either. If you'll swear to do as you're told, I'll let you serve me for the tourney. After that, well, we'll see. If I decide you're worth your keep, you'll have clothes on your back and food in your belly. The clothes might be roughspun and the food salt beef and salt fish, and maybe some venison from time to time where there are no foresters about, but you won't go hungry. And I promise not to beat you except when you deserve it.'
Egg smiled. 'Yes, my lord.'
'Ser,' Dunk corrected. 'I am only a hedge knight.' He wondered if the old man was looking down on him. I will teach him the arts of battle, the same as you taught me, ser. He seems a likely lad, might be one day he'll make a knight.
The fish was still a little raw on the inside when they ate it, and the boy had not removed all the bones, but it still tasted a world better than hard salt beef.
Egg soon fell asleep beside the dying fire. Dunk lay on his back nearby, his big hands behind his head, gazing up at the night sky. He could hear distant music from the tourney grounds, half a mile away. The stars were everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. One fell as he was watching, a bright green streak that flashed across the black and then was gone.
A falling star brings luck to him who sees it, Dunk thought. But the rest of them are all in their pavilions by now, staring up at silk instead of sky. So the luck is mine alone.
In the morning, he woke to the sound of a cock crowing. Egg was still there, curled up beneath the old man's second-best cloak. Well, the boy did not run off during the night, that's a start. He prodded him awake with his foot. 'Up. There's work to do.' The boy rose quick enough, rubbing his eyes. 'Help me saddle Sweetfoot,' Dunk told him.
'What about breakfast?'
'There's salt beef. After we're done.'
'I'd sooner eat the horse,' Egg said. 'Ser.'
'You'll eat my fist if you don't do as you're told. Get the brushes. They're in the saddle sack. Yes, that one.'
Together they brushed out the palfrey's sorrel coat, hefted Ser Arlan's best saddle over her back, and cinched it tight. Egg was a good worker once he put his mind to it, Dunk saw.
'I expect I'll be gone most of the day,' he told the boy as he mounted. 'You're to stay here and put the camp in order. Make sure no other thieves come nosing about.'
'Can I have a sword to run them off with?' Egg asked. He had blue eyes, Dunk saw, very dark, almost purple. His bald head made them seem huge, somehow.
'No,' said Dunk. 'A knife's enough. And you had best be here when I come back, do you hear me? Rob me and run off and I'll hunt you down, I swear I will. With dogs.'
'You don't have any dogs,' Egg pointed out.
'I'll get some,' said Dunk. 'Just for you.' He turned Sweetfoot's head toward the meadow and moved off at a brisk trot, hoping the threat would be enough to keep the boy honest. Save for the clothes on his back, the armor in his sack, and the horse beneath him, everything Dunk owned in the world was back at that camp. I am a great fool to trust the boy so far, but it is no more than the old man did for me, he reflected. The Mother must have sent him to me so that I could pay my debt.
As he crossed the field, be heard the ring of hammers from the riverside, where carpenters were nailing together jousting barriers and raising a lofty viewing stand. A few new pavilions were going up as well, while the knights who had come earlier slept off last night's revels or sat to break their fasts. Dunk could smell woodsmoke, and bacon as well.
To the north of the meadow flowed the river Cockleswent, a vassal stream to the mighty Mander. Beyond the shallow ford lay town and castle. Dunk had seen many a market town during his journeys with the old man. This was prettier than most; the whitewashed houses with their thatched roofs had an inviting aspect to them. When he was smaller, he used to wonder what it would be like to live in such a place; to sleep every night with a roof over your head, and wake every morning with the same walls wrapped around you. It may be that soon I'll know. Aye, and Egg too. It could happen. Stranger things happened every day.
Ashford Castle was a stone structure built in the shape of a triangle, with round towers rising thirty feet tall at each point and thick crenellated walls running between. Orange banners flew from its battlements, displaying the white sun-and-chevron sigil of its lord. Men-at-arms in orange-and-white livery stood outside the gates with halberds, watching people come and go, seemingly more intent on joking with a pretty milkmaid than in keeping anyone out. Dunk reined up in front of the short, bearded man he took for their captain and asked for the master of the games.
'It's Plummer you want, he's steward here. I'll show you.'
Inside the yard, a stableboy took Sweetfoot for him. Dunk slung Ser Arlan's battered shield over a shoulder and followed the guards captain back of the stables to a turret built into an angle of the curtain wall. Steep stone steps led up to the wallwalk. 'Come to enter your master's name for the lists?' the captain asked as they climbed.
'It's my own name I'll be putting in.'
'Is it now?' Was the man smirking? Dunk was not certain. 'That door there. I'll leave you to it and get back to my post.'
When Dunk pushed open the door, the steward was sitting at a trestle table, scratching on a piece of parchment with a quill. He had thinning grey hair and a narrow pinched face. 'Yes?' he said, looking up. 'What do you want, man?'
