“Ser?” Egg said. “The water. Look where it goes.”
The ditch ended under Coldmoat’s eastern walls, spilling down into the moat from which the castle took its name. The gurgle of the falling water made Dunk grind his teeth. She will not have my chequy water.
“Come,” he said to Egg.
Over the arch of the main gate a row of spider banners drooped in the still air, above the older sigil carved deep into the stone. Centuries of wind and weather had worn it down, but the shape of it was still distinct: a rampant lion made of checkered squares. The gates beneath were open. As they clattered across the drawbridge, Dunk made note of how low the moat had fallen. Six feet at least, he judged. Two spearman barred their way at the portcullis. One had a big black beard and one did not. The beard demanded to know their purpose here. “My lord of Osgrey sent me to treat with Lady Webber,” Dunk told him. “I am called Ser Duncan, the Tall.”
“Well, I knew you wasn’t Bennis,” said the beardless guard. “We would have smelled him coming.” He had a missing tooth and a spotted spider badge sewn above his heart. The beard was squinting suspiciously at Dunk. “No one sees her ladyship unless the Longinch gives his leave. You come with me. Your stableboy can stay with the horses.”
“I’m a squire, not a stableboy,” Egg insisted. “Are you blind, or only stupid?”
The beardless guard broke into laughter. The beard put the point of his spear to the boy’s throat. “Say that again.”
Dunk gave Egg a clout in the ear. “No, shut your mouth and tend the horses.” He dismounted. “I’ll see Ser Lucas now.”
The beard lowered his spear. “He’s in the yard.”
They passed beneath the spiked iron portcullis and under a murder hole before emerging in the outer ward. Hounds were barking in the kennels, and Dunk could hear singing coming from the leaded-glass windows of a seven-sided wooden sept. In front of the smithy, a blacksmith was shoeing a warhorse, with a ’prentice boy assisting. Nearby a squire was loosing shafts at the archery butts, while a freckled girl with a long braid matched him shot for shot. The quintain was spinning, too, as half a dozen knights in quilted padding took their turns knocking it around.
They found Ser Lucas Longinch among the watchers at the quintain, speaking with a great fat septon who was sweating worse than Dunk, a round white pudding of a man in robes as damp as if he’d worn them in his bath. Inchfield was a lance beside him, stiff and straight and very tall… though not so tall as Dunk. Six feet and seven inches, Dunk judged, and each inch prouder than the last. Though he wore black silk and cloth-of-silver, Ser Lucas looked as cool as if he were walking on the Wall.
“My lord,” the guard hailed him. “This one comes from the chicken tower for an audience with her ladyship.”
The septon turned first, with a hoot of delight that made Dunk wonder if he were drunk. “And what is this? A hedge knight? You have large hedges in the Reach.” The septon made a sign of blessing. “May the Warrior fight ever at your side. I am Septon Sefton. An unfortunate name, but mine own. And you?”
“Ser Duncan the Tall.”
“A modest fellow, this one,” the septon said to Ser Lucas. “Were I as large as him, I’d call myself Ser Sefton the Immense. Ser Sefton the Tower. Ser Sefton with the Clouds About His Ears.” His moon face was flushed, and there were wine stains on his robe.
Ser Lucas studied Dunk. He was an older man; forty at the least, perhaps as old as fifty, sinewy rather than muscular, with a remarkably ugly face. His lips were thick, his teeth a yellow tangle, his nose broad and fleshy, his eyes protruding. And he is angry, Dunk sensed, even before the man said, “Hedge knights are beggars with blades at best, outlaws at worst. Begone with you. We want none of your sort here.”
Dunk’s face darkened. “Ser Eustace Osgrey sent me from Standfast to treat with the lady of the castle.”
“Osgrey?” The septon glanced at the Longinch. “Osgrey of the chequy lion? I thought House Osgrey was extinguished.”
“Near enough as makes no matter. The old man is the last of them. We let him keep a crumbling towerhouse a few leagues east.” Ser Lucas frowned at Dunk. “If Ser Eustace wants to talk with her ladyship, let him come himself.” His eyes narrowed. “You were the one with Bennis at the dam. Don’t trouble to deny it. I ought to hang you.”
“Seven save us.” The septon dabbed sweat from his brow with his sleeve. “A brigand, is he? And a big one. Ser, repent your evil ways, and the Mother will have mercy.” The septon’s pious plea was undercut when he farted. “Oh, dear. Forgive my wind, ser. That’s what comes of beans and barley bread.”
“I am not a brigand,” Dunk told the two of them, with all the dignity that he could muster. The Longinch was unmoved by the denial. “Do not presume upon my patience, ser… if you are a ser . Run back to your chicken tower and tell Ser Eustace to deliver up Ser Bennis Brownstench. If he spares us the trouble of winkling him out of Standfast, her ladyship may be more inclined to clemency.”
“I will speak with her ladyship about Ser Bennis and the trouble at the dam, and about the stealing of our water, too.”
“Stealing?” said Ser Lucas. “Say that to our lady, and you’ll be swimming in a sack before the sun has set. Are you quite certain that you wish to see her?”
The only thing that Dunk was certain of was that he wanted to drive his fist through Lucas Inchfield’s crooked yellow teeth. “I’ve told you what I want.”
“Oh, let him speak with her,” the septon urged. “What harm could it do? Ser Duncan has had a long ride beneath this beastly sun, let the fellow have his say.”
Ser Lucas studied Dunk again. “Our septon is a godly man. Come. I will thank you to be brief.” He strode across the yard, and Dunk was forced to hurry after him.
The doors of the castle sept had opened, and worshipers were streaming down the steps. There were knights and squires, a dozen children, several old men, three septas in white robes and hoods… and one soft, fleshy lady of high birth, garbed in a gown of dark blue damask trimmed with Myrish lace, so long its hems were trailing in the dirt. Dunk judged her to be forty. Beneath a spun-silver net her auburn hair was piled high, but the reddest thing about her was her face.
“My lady,” Ser Lucas said, when they stood before her and her septas, “this hedge knight claims to bring a message from Ser Eustace Osgrey. Will you hear it?”
“If you wish it, Ser Lucas.” She peered at Dunk so hard that he could not help but recall Egg’s talk of sorcery. I don’t think this one bathes in blood to keep her beauty. The Widow was stout and square, with an oddly pointed head that her hair could not quite conceal. Her nose was too big, and her mouth too small. She did have two eyes, he was relieved to see, but all thought of gallantry had abandoned Dunk by then. “Ser Eustace bid me talk with you concerning the recent trouble at your dam.”
She blinked. “The… dam, you say?”
A crowd was gathering about them. Dunk could feel unfriendly eyes upon him. “The stream,” he said, “the Chequy Water. Your ladyship built a dam across it…”
“Oh, I am quite sure I haven’t,” she replied. “Why, I have been at my devotions all morning, ser.”
Dunk heard Ser Lucas chuckle. “I did not mean to say that your ladyship built the dam herself, only that… without that water, all our crops will die… the smallfolk have beans and barley in the fields, and melons…”
“Truly? I am very fond of melons.” Her small mouth made a happy bow. “What sort of melons are they?”
Dunk glanced uneasily at the ring of faces, and felt his own face growing hot. Something is amiss here. The Longinch is playing me for a fool. “M’lady, could we continue our discussion in some… more private place?”
“A silver says the great oaf means to bed her!” someone japed, and a roar of laughter went up all around him. The lady cringed away, half in terror, and raised both hands to shield her face. One of the septas moved quickly to her side and put a protective arm around her shoulders.
> “And what is all this merriment?” The voice cut through the laughter, cool and firm. “Will no one share the jape? Ser knight, why are you troubling my good-sister?”
It was the girl he had seen earlier at the archery butts. She had a quiver of arrows on one hip, and held a longbow that was just as tall as she was, which wasn’t very tall. If Dunk was shy an inch of seven feet, the archer was shy an inch of five. He could have spanned her waist with his two hands. Her red hair was bound up in a braid so long it brushed past her thighs, and she had a dimpled chin, a snub nose, and a light spray of freckles across her cheeks.
“Forgive us, Lady Rohanne.” The speaker was a pretty young lord with the Caswell centaur embroidered on his doublet. “This great oaf took the Lady Helicent for you.”
Dunk looked from one lady to the other. “You are the Red Widow?” he heard himself blurt out. “But you’re too—”
“Young?” The girl tossed her longbow to the lanky lad he’d seen her shooting with. “I am five-andtwenty, as it happens. Or was it small you meant to say?”
“—pretty. It was pretty .” Dunk did not know where that came from, but he was glad it came. He liked her nose, and the strawberry-blond color of her hair, and the small but well-shaped breasts beneath her leather jerkin. “I thought that you’d be… I mean… they said you were four times a widow, so…”
“My first husband died when I was ten. He was twelve, my father’s squire, ridden down upon the Redgrass Field. My husbands seldom linger long, I fear. The last died in the spring.”
That was what they always said of those who had perished during the Great Spring Sickness two years past. He died in the spring. Many tens of thousands had died in the spring, among them a wise old king and two young princes full of promise. “I… I am sorry for all your losses, m’lady.” A gallantry, you lunk, give her a gallantry. “I want to say… your gown…”
“Gown?” She glanced down at her boots and breeches, loose linen tunic, and leather jerkin. “I wear no gown.”
“Your hair, I meant… it’s soft and…”
“And how would you know that, ser? If you had ever touched my hair, I should think that I might remember.”
“Not soft,” Dunk said miserably. “Red, I meant to say. Your hair is very red.”
“Very red, ser? Oh, not as red as your face, I hope.” She laughed, and the onlookers laughed with her. All but Ser Lucas Longinch. “My lady,” he broke in, “this man is one of Standfast’s sellswords. He was with Bennis of the Brown Shield when he attacked your diggers at the dam and carved up Wolmer’s face. Old Osgrey sent him to treat with you.”
“He did, m’lady. I am called Ser Duncan, the Tall.”
“Ser Duncan the Dim, more like,” said a bearded knight who wore the threefold thunderbolt of Leygood. More guffaws sounded. Even Lady Helicent had recovered herself enough to give a chuckle.
“Did the courtesy of Coldmoat die with my lord father?” the girl asked. No, not a girl, a woman grown.
“How did Ser Duncan come to make such an error, I wonder?”
Dunk gave Inchfield an evil look. “The fault was mine.”
“Was it?” The Red Widow looked Dunk over from his heels up to his head, though her gaze lingered longest on his chest. “A tree and shooting star. I have never seen those arms before.” She touched his tunic, tracing a limb of his elm tree with two fingers. “And painted, not sewn. The Dornish paint their silks, I’ve heard, but you look too big to be a Dornishman.”
“Not all Dornishmen are small, m’lady.” Dunk could feel her fingers through the silk. Her hand was freckled, too. I’ll bet she’s freckled all over. His mouth was oddly dry. “I spent a year in Dorne.”
“Do all the oaks grow so tall there?” she said, as her fingers traced a tree limb around his heart.
“It’s meant to be an elm, m’lady.”
“I shall remember.” She drew her hand back, solemn. “The ward is too hot and dusty for a conversation. Septon, show Ser Duncan to my audience chamber.”
“It would be my great pleasure, good-sister.”
“Our guest will have a thirst. You may send for a flagon of wine as well.”
“Must I?” The fat man beamed. “Well, if it please you.”
“I will join you as soon as I have changed.” Unhooking her belt and quiver, she handed them to her companion. “I’ll want Maester Cerrick as well. Ser Lucas, go ask him to attend me.”
“I will bring him at once, my lady,” said Lucas the Longinch.
The look she gave her castellan was cool. “No need. I know you have many duties to perform about the castle. It will suffice if you send Maester Cerrick to my chambers.”
“M’lady,” Dunk called after her. “My squire was made to wait by the gates. Might he join us as well?”
“Your squire?” When she smiled, she looked a girl of five-and-ten, not a woman five-and-twenty. A pretty girl full of mischief and laughter. “If it please you, certainly.”
“Don’t drink the wine, ser,” Egg whispered to him as they waited with the septon in her audience chamber. The stone floors were covered with sweet-smelling rushes, the walls hung with tapestries of tourney scenes and battles.
Dunk snorted. “She has no need to poison me,” he whispered back. “She thinks I’m some great lout with pease porridge between his ears, you mean.”
“As it happens, my good-sister likes pease porridge,” said Septon Sefton, as he reappeared with a flagon of wine, a flagon of water, and three cups. “Yes, yes, I heard. I’m fat, not deaf.” He filled two cups with wine and one with water. The third he gave to Egg, who gave it a long dubious look and put it aside. The septon took no notice. “This is an Arbor vintage,” he was telling Dunk. “Very fine, and the poison gives it a special piquance.” He winked at Egg. “I seldom touch the grape myself, but I have heard.” He handed Dunk a cup.
The wine was lush and sweet, but Dunk sipped it gingerly, and only after the septon had quaffed down half of his in three big, lip-smacking gulps. Egg crossed his arms and continued to ignore his water.
“She does like pease porridge,” the septon said, “and you as well, ser. I know my own good-sister. When I first saw you in the yard, I half hoped you were some suitor, come from King’s Landing to seek my lady’s hand.”
Dunk furrowed his brow. “How did you know I was from King’s Landing, septon?”
“Kingslanders have a certain way of speaking.” The septon took a gulp of wine, sloshed it about his mouth, swallowed, and sighed with pleasure. “I have served there many years, attending our High Septon in the Great Sept of Baelor.” He sighed. “You would not know the city since the spring. The fires changed it. A quarter of the houses gone, and another quarter empty. The rats are gone as well. That is the queerest thing. I never thought to see a city without rats.”
Dunk had heard that, too. “Were you there during the Great Spring Sickness?”
“Oh, indeed. A dreadful time, ser, dreadful. Strong men would wake healthy at the break of day and be dead by evenfall. So many died so quickly there was no time to bury them. They piled them in the Dragonpit instead, and when the corpses were ten feet deep, Lord Rivers commanded the pyromancers to burn them. The light of the fires shone through the windows, as it did of yore when living dragons still nested beneath the dome. By night you could see the glow all through the city, the dark green glow of wildfire. The color green still haunts me to this day. They say the spring was bad in Lannisport and worse in Oldtown, but in King’s Landing it cut down four of ten. Neither young nor old were spared, nor rich nor poor, nor great nor humble. Our good High Septon was taken, the gods’ own voice on earth, with a third of the Most Devout and near all our silent sisters. His Grace King Daeron, sweet Matarys and bold Valarr, the Hand… oh, it was a dreadful time. By the end, half the city was praying to the Stranger.” He had another drink. “And where were you, ser?”
“In Dorne,” said Dunk.
“Thank the Mother for her mercy, then.” The Great Spring
Sickness had never come to Dorne, perhaps because the Dornish had closed their borders and their ports, as had the Arryns of the Vale, who had also been spared. “All this talk of death is enough to put a man off wine, but cheer is hard to come by in such times as we are living. The drought endures, for all our prayers. The kingswood is one great tinderbox, and fires rage there night and day. Bittersteel and the sons of Daemon Blackfyre are hatching plots in Tyrosh, and Dagon Greyjoy’s krakens prowl the sunset sea like wolves, raiding as far south as the Arbor. They carried off half the wealth of Fair Isle, it’s said, and a hundred women, too. Lord Farman is repairing his defenses, though that strikes me as akin to the man who claps his pregnant daughter in a chastity belt when her belly’s big as mine. Lord Bracken is dying slowly on the Trident, and his eldest son perished in the spring. That means Ser Otho must succeed. The Blackwoods will never stomach the Brute of Bracken as a neighbor. It will mean war.”
Dunk knew about the ancient enmity between the Blackwoods and the Brackens. “Won’t their liege lord force a peace?”
“Alas,” said Septon Sefton, “Lord Tully is a boy of eight, surrounded by women. Riverrun will do little, and King Aerys will do less. Unless some maester writes a book about it, the whole matter may escape his royal notice. Lord Rivers is not like to let any Brackens in to see him. Pray recall, our Hand was born half Blackwood. If he acts at all, it will be only to help his cousins bring the Brute to bay. The Mother marked Lord Rivers on the day that he was born, and Bittersteel marked him once again upon the Redgrass Field.”
Dunk knew he meant Bloodraven. Brynden Rivers was the Hand’s true name. His mother had been a Blackwood, his father King Aegon the Fourth.
The fat man drank his wine and rattled on. “As for Aerys, His Grace cares more for old scrolls and dusty prophecies than for lords and laws. He will not even bestir himself to sire an heir. Queen Aelinor prays daily at the Great Sept, beseeching the Mother Above to bless her with a child, yet she remains a maid. Aerys keeps his own apartments, and it is said that he would sooner take a book to bed than any woman.” He filled his cup again. “Make no mistake, ’tis Lord Rivers who rules us, with his spells and spies. There is no one to oppose him. Prince Maekar sulks at Summerhall, nursing his grievances against his royal brother. Prince Rhaegal is as meek as he is mad, and his children are… well, children. Friends and favorites of Lord Rivers fill every office, the lords of the small council lick his hand, and this new Grand Maester is as steeped in sorcery as he is. The Red Keep is garrisoned by Raven’s Teeth, and no man sees the king without his leave.”