A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms #2
“I will settle this as my father would,” the Fiddler said. “Ser Glendon stands accused of grievous crimes. As a knight, he has a right to defend himself by strength of arms. I shall meet him in the lists, and let the gods determine guilt and innocence.”
Hero’s blood or whore’s blood, Dunk thought, when two of Lord Vyrwel’s men dumped Ser Glendon naked at his feet, he has a deal less of it than he did before.
The boy had been savagely beaten. His face was bruised and swollen, several of his teeth were cracked or missing, his right eye was weeping blood, and up and down his chest his flesh was red and cracking where they’d burned him with hot irons.
“You’re safe now,” murmured Ser Kyle. “There’s no one here but hedge knights, and the gods know that we’re a harmless lot.
” Daemon had given them the maester’s chambers and commanded them to dress any hurts Ser Glendon might have suffered and see that he was ready for the lists.
Three fingernails had been pulled from Ball’s left hand, Dunk saw, as he washed the blood from the boy’s face and hands.
That worried him more than all the rest. “Can you hold a lance?”
“A lance?” Blood and spit dribbled from Ser Glendon’s mouth when he tried to speak. “Do I have all my fingers?”
“Ten,” said Dunk, “but only seven fingernails.”
Ball nodded. “Black Tom was going to cut my fingers off, but he was called away. Is it him that I’m to fight?”
“No. I killed him.”
That made him smile. “Someone had to.”
“You’re to tilt against the Fiddler, but his real name—”
“—is Daemon, aye. They told me. The Black Dragon.” Ser Glendon laughed.
“My father died for his. I would have been his man, and gladly. I would have fought for him, killed for him, died for him, but I could not lose for him.” He turned his head and spat out a broken tooth. “Could I have a cup of wine?”
“Ser Kyle, get the wineskin.”
The boy drank long and deep, then wiped his mouth. “Look at me. I’m shaking like a girl.”
Dunk frowned. “Can you still sit a horse?”
“Help me wash and bring me my shield and lance and saddle,” Ser Glendon said, “and you will see what I can do.”
It was almost dawn before the rain let up enough for the combat to take place.
The castle yard was a morass of soft mud, glistening wetly by the light of a hundred torches.
Beyond the field a grey mist was rising, sending ghostly fingers up the pale stone walls to grasp the castle battlements.
Many of the wedding guests had vanished during the intervening hours, but those who remained climbed the viewing stand again and settled themselves on planks of rain-soaked pine.
Amongst them stood Ser Gormon Peake, surrounded by a knot of lesser lords and household knights.
It had only been a few years since Dunk had squired for old Ser Arlan.
He had not forgotten how. He cinched the buckles on Ser Glendon’s ill-fitting armor, fastened his helm to his gorget, helped him mount, and handed him his shield.
Earlier contests had left deep gouges in the wood, but the blazing fireball could still be seen.
He looks as young as Egg, Dunk thought. A frightened boy, and grim.
His sorrel mare was unbarded and skittish as well.
He should have stayed with his own mount.
The sorrel may be better bred and swifter, but a rider rides best on a horse that he knows well, and this one is a stranger to him.
“I’ll need a lance,” Ser Glendon said. “A war lance.”
Dunk went to the racks. War lances were shorter and heavier than the tourney lances that had been used in all the earlier tilts; eight feet of solid ash ending in an iron point. Dunk chose one and pulled it out, running his hand along its length to make sure it had no cracks.
At the far end of the lists, one of Daemon’s squires was offering him a matching lance.
He was a fiddler no more. In place of swords and fiddles, the trappings of his warhorse now displayed the three-headed dragon of House Blackfyre, black on a field of red.
The prince had washed the black dye from his hair as well, so it flowed down to his collar in a cascade of silver and gold that glimmered like beaten metal in the torchlight.
Egg would have hair like that if he ever let it grow, Dunk realized.
He found it hard to picture him that way, but one day he knew he must if the two of them should live so long.
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 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 alarm.
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 demesnes 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 twisted a plume of smoke that could be seen for leagues around.