The Mystery Knight

The herald climbed his platform once again. “Ser Glendon the Bastard stands accused of theft and murder,” he proclaimed, “and now comes forth to prove his innocence at the hazard of his body. Daemon of House Blackfyre, the Second of His Name, rightborn King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, comes forth to prove the truth of the accusations against the bastard Glendon.”

And all at once the years fell away, and Dunk was back was at Ashford Meadow once again, listening to Baelor Breakspear just before they went forth to battle for his life. He slipped the war lance back in place, plucked a tourney lance from the next rack; twelve feet long, slender, elegant. “Use this,” he told Ser Glendon. “It’s what we used at Ashford, at the Trial of Seven.”

“The Fiddler chose a war lance. He means to kill me.”

“First he has to strike you. If your aim is true, his point will never touch you.” “I don’t know.” “I do.”

Ser Glendon snatched the lance from him, wheeled about, and trotted toward the lists. “Seven save us both, then.”

Somewhere in the east, lightning cracked across a pale pink sky. Daemon raked his stallion’s side with golden spurs, and leapt forward like a thunderclap, lowering his war lance with its deadly iron point. Ser Glendon raised his shield and raced to meet him, swinging his own longer lance across his mare’s head to bear upon the young pretender’s chest. Mud sprayed back from their horses’ hooves, and the torches seemed to burn the brighter as the two knights went pounding past.

Dunk closed his eyes. He heard a crack, a shout, a thump.

“No,” he heard Lord Peake cry out in anguish. “Noooooo.” For half a heartbeat, Dunk almost felt sorry for him. He opened his eyes again. Riderless, the big black stallion was slowing to a trot. Dunk jumped out and grabbed him by the reins. At the far end of the lists, Ser Glendon Ball wheeled his mare and raised his splintered lance. Men rushed onto the field to where the Fiddler lay unmoving, facedown in a puddle. When they helped him to his feet, he was mud from head to heel.

“The Brown Dragon!” someone shouted. Laughter rippled through the yard as the dawn washed over Whitewalls.

It was only a few heartbeats later, as Dunk and Ser Kyle were helping Glendon Ball off his horse, that the first trumpet blew, and the sentries on the walls raised the alarum. An army had appeared outside the castle, rising from the morning mists. “Egg wasn’t lying after all,” Dunk told Ser Kyle, astonished.

* * *

From Maidenpool had come Lord Mooton, from Raventree Lord Blackwood, from Duskendale Lord Darklyn. The royal demenses about King’s Landing sent forth Hayfords, Rosbys, Stokeworths, Masseys, and the king’s own sworn swords, led by three knights of the Kingsguard and stiffened by three hundred Raven’s Teeth with tall white weirwood bows. Mad Danelle Lothston herself rode forth in strength from her haunted towers at Harrenhal, clad in black armor that fit her like an iron glove, her long red hair streaming.

The light of the rising sun glittered off the points of five hundred lances and ten times as many spears. The night’s grey banners were reborn in half a hundred gaudy colors. And above them all flew two regal dragons on night-black fields: the great three-headed beast of King Aerys I Targaryen, red as fire, and a white winged fury breathing scarlet flame.

Not Maekar after all, Dunk knew, when he saw those banners. The banners of the Prince of Summerhall showed four three-headed dragons, two and two, the arms of the fourth-born son of the late King Daeron II Targaryen. A single white dragon announced the presence of the King’s Hand, Lord Brynden Rivers.

Bloodraven himself had come to Whitewalls.

The First Blackfyre Rebellion had perished on the Redgrass Field in blood and glory. The Second Blackfyre Rebellion ended with a whimper. “They cannot cow us,” Young Daemon proclaimed from the castle battlements after he had seen the ring of iron that encircled them, “for our cause is just. We’ll slash through them and ride hell- bent for King’s Landing! Sound the trumpets!”

Instead, knights and lords and men-at-arms muttered quietly to one another, and a few began to slink away, making for the stables or a postern gate or some hidey-hole they hoped might keep them safe. And when Daemon drew his sword and raised it above his head, every man of them could see it was not Blackfyre. “We’ll make another Redgrass Field today,” the pretender promised.

“Piss on that, fiddle boy,” a grizzled squire shouted back at him. “I’d sooner live.”

In the end, the second Daemon Blackfyre rode forth alone, reined up before the royal host, and challenged Lord Bloodraven to single combat. “I will fight you, or the coward Aerys, or any champion you care to name.” Instead, Lord Bloodraven’s men surrounded him, pulled him off his horse, and clasped him into golden fetters. The banner he had carried was planted in the muddy ground and set afire. It burned for a long time, sending up a twisted plume of smoke that could be seen for leagues around.

The only blood that was shed that day came when a man in service to Lord Vrvwel began to boast that he had been one of Bloodraven’s eyes and would soon be well rewarded. “By the time the moon turns, I’ll be fucking whores and drinking Dornish red,” he was purported to have said, just before one of Lord Costayne’s knights slit his throat. “Drink that,” he said as Vrvwel’s man drowned in his own blood. “It’s not Dornish, but it’s red.”

Elsewise it was a sullen, silent column that trudged through the gates of Whitewalls to toss their weapons into a glittering pile before being bound and led away to await Lord Bloodraven’s judgment. Dunk emerged with the rest of them, together with Ser Kyle the Cat and Glendon Ball. They had looked for Ser Maynard to join them, but Plumm had melted away sometime during the night.

It was late that afternoon before Ser Roland Crakehall of the Kingsguard found Dunk among the other prisoners. “Ser Duncan. Where in seven hells have you been hiding? Lord Rivers has been asking for you for hours. Come with me, if you please.”

Dunk fell in beside him. Crakehall’s long cloak flapped behind him with every gust of wind, as white as moonlight on snow. The sight of it made him think back on the words the Fiddler had spoken, up on the roof. I dreamed that you were all in white from head to heel, with a long pale cloak flowing from those broad shoulders. Dunk snorted. Aye, and you dreamed of dragons hatching from stone eggs. One is likely as t’other.

The Hand’s pavilion was half a mile from the castle, in the shade of a spreading elm tree. A dozen cows were cropping at the grass nearby. Kings rise and fall, Dunk thought, and cows and smallfolk go about their business. It was something the old man used to say. “What will become of all of them?” he asked Ser Roland as they passed a group of captives sitting on the grass.

“They’ll be marched back to King’s Landing for trial. The knights and men-at-arms should get off light enough. They were only following their liege lords.”

“And the lords?”

“Some will be pardoned, so long as they tell the truth of what they know and give up a son or daughter to vouchsafe their future loyalty. It will go harder for those who took pardons after the Redgrass Field. They’ll be imprisoned or attainted. The worst will lose their heads.”

Bloodraven had made a start on that already, Dunk saw when they came up on his pavilion. Flanking the entrance, the severed heads of Gormon Peake and Black Torn Heddle had been impaled on spears, with their shields displayed beneath them. Three castles, black on orange. The man who slew Roger of Pennytree.

Even in death, Lord Gormon’s eyes were hard and flinty. Dunk closed them with his fingers. “What did you do that for?” asked one of the guardsmen. “The crows’ll have them soon enough.”

“I owed him that much.” If Roger had not died that day, the old man would never have looked twice at Dunk when he saw him chasing that pig through the alleys of King’s Landing. Some old dead king gave a sword to one son instead of another, that was the start of it. And now I’m standing here, and poor Roger’s in his grave.

“The Hand awaits,” commanded Roland Crakehall.

Dunk stepped past him, into the presence of Lord Brynden Rivers, bastard, sorcerer, and Hand of the King.

Egg stood before him, freshly bathed and garbed in princely raiment, as would befit a nephew of the king. Nearby, Lord Frey was seated in a camp chair with a cup of wine to hand and his hideous little heir squirming in his