Chapter Text
Summer in King’s Landing carried only the stench and sorrow of his childhood. Dunk misliked spending any time there, but summer was the worst, for it seemed for him only a time of sickness and rot; of fruit overripe and bursting, spilling out wet flesh for swarming flies; rats fat on their spoils and sweat beading across his skin with a heat that sat thickly on his back. Egg was in good humours still, his straw hat sat jauntily on his head as he chattered away with the merchants walking alongside them on the Kingsroad.
They’d journeyed to the free cities of Essos, and had returned burnt and smiling. Egg was still red and peeling, and Dunk himself had a smattering of freckles laid heavy across his face and shoulders. The young boy had grown lanky in his first brush with manhood. He’d become suddenly clumsy again, like a foal just dropped in the field, limbs somehow everywhere at once; it was as though he was having to relearn everything about his body from the beginning. Dunk watched, laughing quietly at his ungainly seat on Mera as Egg leant down to talk to a passing silk merchant and ended up almost slipping straight out of the saddle.
They crested the rolling green hillside, with the walls of the city proper in the distance. Ahead, brightly coloured pavilions sprouted out of the earth, like so many strange and beautiful flowers. Flags bearing the heraldry of the great and noble houses fluttered in the gentle summer’s breeze. Floating toward them on the back of the wind came the jaunty strumming of a minstrel’s lute, punctured by an occasional raucous cheer. The tourney grounds were alive with the sounds of people, the bellowing and jeering and laughter that came whenever you got one too many lordlings around each other with swords in one hand and a jug of ale in the other. They left Thunder and Mera tied to a fencepost in a grove of birch trees nearby, before taking a turn about the grounds.
It was surprising, Dunk thought, how life seemed a slow and meandering thing, with one plodding step put in front of the next each day the same as the last. That was, until you glanced up and found that the world around you was changed and where you were was so far from where you’d begun. As they rooted up something to eat – Egg licking up the sticky-fingered remnants of a lemon cake while Dunk dusted himself clean of the crumbs of his meat pie– it seemed that all their acquaintances had decided to come to the hastilude, celebrating the recent betrothal of Egg’s youngest sister the Princess Rhaella to Ser Endrew of House Tarth.
The first reunion came in the form of a hand clapped hard in the middle of Dunk’s back. He turned, startled to find his arms suddenly full of a mass of red curls and speech so quick it was difficult to parse out the individual words. Then Ser Raymun raised his head and grinned up at him and Dunk let out a cry, thumping him on the back and embracing him with such passion that he lifted him clear off the ground.
“What are you doing here!” Dunk said, once they were past the stage of unintelligible shouting.
“Oh you’d never guess what’s happened since I last saw you,” Raymun said, grinning up at him. He puffed out his chest, gesturing behind him; distantly, Dunk saw a pavilion flying the crest of a green apple. “That’s my crest there. Mine! You’re looking at Ser Raymun, House Fossoway of New Barrel.”
“Gods above!” Dunk cried. He looked down at his friend with renewed admiration, before a smile stole over his lips. “And as for the members of this great house…?”
“My lady wife and I,” Raymun said, and he waggled his brows, “have been quite busy in the meantime. It’s no small feat founding a whole new branch of the apple tree you know!”
Just then, a woman slid her arm around Raymun’s waist and nestled into the space between his arm and his chest; Dunk found himself looking down at the familiar face of Lady Rowan Fossoway.
“Ser knight!” She said, smiling. “What a pleasure to find you here.”
“The pleasure is all mine, m’lady.” Dunk took her hand and bent his head over it; she was beaming when he looked up again, cheeks flushed as she looked back toward Raymun, pressing a kiss on his cheek.
They left the pair with promises to visit them later in the evening, Raymun insisting that Dunk and Egg had to meet all the new green apples they had rolling around. As they were leaving, Egg piped up, with a face of deep contemplation.
“D’you wonder if I could say something about ‘being the dragon’ as often as Ser Raymun talks about apples?”
“I don’t doubt it lad.” Dunk said, honestly. “But if you start, I’ll have no choice but to clout you in the ear.”
They encountered Lyonel at his tent, with his own lady-wife, whose name Dunk had forgotten and it was for everyone’s luck that Egg ducked in to greet her, shooting him a wide-eyed grin as he bent to kiss her hand. It seemed everyone was in high spirits, and Dunk thought once more of the days all those years ago at Ashford; how he’d entered alone, not just in friendship but in the world. It’d been so powerful, the feeling of loss and loneliness that had characterised those initial days after the passing of Ser Arlan. But here, it seemed wherever he turned he saw a friendly face; the Lady Rohanne and Ser Eustace; Ser Maynard Plumm and Glendon Ball. For all that they had travelled through the realm – making friend and foe alike – Dunk had not realised that they may think fondly of him; he had not realised he might receive affection, companionship; he had not realised he would be remembered.
It was hard then not to think then, of the prince. It seemed to him with each passing year that the people spoke less and less of Prince Baelor, the once-Lord Protector and Hand of the Realm. Dunk’s life and standings had changed remarkably since his passing. It stung him to realise that he would never see the same; never would see who that man might be now, who he may be in two-score years, who he might have been with the crown on his head and sat upon the Iron Throne.
They were sat in the pavilion of House Baratheon when this latest wave of melancholy had overcome him. He’d been staring morosely into his cups until Lyonel clapped him on the back, his voice ringing in his ear and disrupting his thoughts as a stone thrown in the lake. It only took a moment's inquiry until his face grew drawn and serious; for all that Lyonel did not like the Royal House, and for all he did not understand Dunk’s feeling, and the latent loyalty he still held toward – for him – that prince of so long ago, he loved Dunk. So when, upon his departure and return, the minstrels began to strike up a familiar bawdy tune, Dunk found that the shock inside of him was no less than the sweet blossoming of being truly understood.
‘Grass is green in summer,’ came the warbling voice of the red-haired bard, and Dunk saw Egg from clear across the room stand, pumping his fist in the air as he raised his voice in song. It seemed that The Hammer and The Anvil was no less loved, as people began to stamp their feet, clapping and laughing. He laughed as he marched his way into the center of the dancing men and women, hooting at the top of his lungs as the song lilted through each new ribald verse. The evening passed through the golden haze as Lyonel drew Dunk up and started strutting around him, proud stag horns framed in the glowing torchlight; as Raymun lifted Lady Rowan and spun her round the room, her smile dazzling as her dress glittered with golden thread on rich green velvet; as Egg leapt around him tripping over his own feet as he danced. His melancholy dissipated like mist under the watchful eye of the morning sun, as he stamped and clapped and laughed, the stars glittering high above them in the dark evening sky.
The following day came the great melee. The grounds were already prepared, in a ring with damp clay packed down into the earth. Various knights were already cavorting about to try and gain favours from the giggling noble ladies in the stands, holding their heads high as they took their horses in slow rounds along the fenceline. There was a blonde and handsome knight – a Lannister, from the look of him, Dunk thought – who seemed particularly fawned over. He had a proud, straight nose and a charmingly lopsided smile, looking up at the young ladies with his flop of hair falling over his eyes. It was no surprise when he arrived at the match with a vibrant green ribbon tied about his forearm, fluttering in the wind.
Dunk had chosen a blunted sword as his weapon. Another remarkable reflection on time struck him, that the last time he’d been in a melee such as this – for Dunk was usually not given to partaking in hastiludes for fear of losing his horses – it’d been on a grey and misted field. He could still see it, the scream of horses and black Targaryen armour rising from the fog like the fey and terrible kings of long ago. His face was warm from the heat of the sun. He could smell the floral and spiced oils of the nobility sat in their wooden stands, the musk of the stables and his own sweat. He breathed. He swung his blade experimentally and nodded; it would suit.
He did not last overly long in the round, enough to have made a good showing but bowing out respectfully as finer knights than he stepped through the frenzy with light feet and steel that sung through the air. These were the fine and beautiful knights at home under the wide cloudless sky of summer, with pollen thick in the air and everything in such a state of growth and vibrancy that you could hardly remember such a thing as autumn existed; that all things would age and wilt and fade away. No, it was hard to think of such things when laughter rang out as pleasantly as the sound of steel clashing against steel, when plated armour shone blue-green under the white light of the sun, and each thrust seemed a pose that left the audience gasping and cheering in their wake.
Dunk had just retreated to the darkness of the armoury, glancing about idly for Egg when his hands began to shake in his gauntlets, a chill creeping up and over his spine. It was a relief, a smile stealing over his lips. He missed him, he realised. And as he closed his eyes against the darkness creeping in at the edges of his vision, the world shivered–
****
Dunk was on the ground, wet earth clinging to him with lovers' grasp as above him steel clashed against steel and the shrieks and roars of men rang through his ears. There seemed to be no silence in the endless cacophony. Something tugged at him and he flinched backwards. Just then, a hoof slammed down where his head had been. Then, the steed and his rider were galloping past, bellowing, into the depths of the fray, their shadows swallowed in a moment by the grey mist. He had only a moment’s terror, gasping against the choking drumbeat rhythm of his heart before he was moving, shoving himself up and stumbling blind through the mass of bodies. It was his luck that he was armoured, but that was where any similarity to the melee ended. It seemed almost farcical, the peacocking of battle on the fields of the tourney grounds, knights with maidens’ fair favours tied sweetly round their lances, armour gleaming and polished with great lions roaring from inside golden filigree. A cry, from beside him, and a man stumbled bodily into Dunk as an arrow sprouted from the gap in his helm, blood spurting from another embedded in the soft pale flesh of his neck. Beneath him, blood and guts churned into the mud until the ground underfoot seemed to be more wet pulp than earth.
The battle had the echo of something that had been going on for an age, as countless men laid on the earth, hands round their stomachs as if trying to scooping their guts back into their soft innards. Dunk felt sheer animal terror, his heart fluttering in time with the blood rushing to his ears, get out, get out, get out! And yet for all the dead and dying he could see countless more men throwing themselves further into the heaving mass. As Dunk craned his neck to see where he might reach the edge of the melee, it seemed that such a thing might not exist, only bodies upon bodies in an unending train.
There was no time to think, in times like this. He batted away any man that approached him, gritting his teeth as his oaken shield groaned and splintered in his grip. His helm seemed to ring on and on, a vibration that drove straight through his skull from each new blow. He spat out what he thought might be the fragment of a tooth, iron blood slick on his tongue.
He was blinking the sweat and muck out of his eyes when suddenly, the sun cleaved herself in a burnt copper line across the crest of the hill. Silhouetted, a great force of men atop well-muscled steeds, armour gleaming and spearheads catching the white-gold light. The grey mist herself seemed to shrink before them, fingers crawling back down the slope and retreating into herself, swallowing up all stray tendrils. On the breeze came the sweet lowing of a war horn. As the men around him turned, yelling and thrusting their fists into the air, Dunk’s gaze landed on the red-and-black banners snapping in the wind; and beneath, a man sat astride his mount, the proud tilt of his frame recognisable to Dunk even from such great distance.
He was armoured all in black, intricate filigree rippling in whorls across the cold-faced steel. There, emblazoned across his breastplate, a red dragon heralding its ascent to the sky. The clouds finally broke before the sun and white strips of light cut their way down to the earth, making suddenly beautiful the violence splitting the world apart beneath the sky. The black knight raised his hand. The world itself seemed to quiet. Then it came down, and with it, the wave coursed down the hill.
Dunk’s blood roared in his ears as he turned back toward the fray with vigor renewed, white spit flying from his mouth as he swung his sword down hard again, again. All his exhaustion had departed with the sight of his prince – his prince, he thought, blearily, because he was his prince, his man, the truest proof that Dunk had finally found a cause to follow till the end of his days. Then the force of Prince Baelor was upon them. Dunk watched as spearheads sprouted through pale necks in sprays of flesh and blood, the desperate cries of men suddenly turned to those of victory. He turned and fought his way back then, through the tide to where he could still see Prince Baelor’s heraldry held high above him. Then the standard-bearer fell and with it the three-headed dragon toppled into the mulch; Dunk’s breath caught in his throat and he bellowed, swinging his sword then without care as he shoved his way through the heaving mass.
Then suddenly the crowd parted and he saw Baelor, come down from his mount and holding his own, two men already cold and grey by his feet. He’d lost his helm in the scuffle, and there was blood dripping from an unseen wound down his face. His teeth were gritted as he slammed the hilt of his sword into a man's face, swung his shield bodily into another. He was a relentless storm in motion, each movement precise and measured even in the craze of war. Only there, behind him came a snarling Blackfyre soldier, and Dunk saw how his gaze was fixed on the vulnerable flesh of Baelor’s neck, just barely exposed above his maille–
Dunk leapt, and reached, praying to whatever gods were listening as he thrust his sword out between them. The clang of their blades meeting sent his teeth gritting against the pain, his arm shaking and the reverberation thrumming through his muscle straight into the bone. With a roar he slammed the man back and in one sweeping arc divested him of his hand. Baelor turned then, and Dunk saw as his expression flared in relief, lips parting in a savage and bloodied grin.
“Good man,” he called, over the raging cacophony around them, then, turning with a shout. “To me, men! To me!”
The rest of the battle passed by Dunk in a flurry; he’d stared, unthinking at the man who was now lying dead in the ground. He had been placed to spear Baelor straight through and kill him, had Dunk not been there to intervene.
Dunk had never been a philosophical man, yet he knew with some certainty that he should not interfere with matters of the past that had yet been set in stone. He’d saved a man from being skewered through by a rogue in the streets of Flea Bottom once. He’d thanked him and had just begun to walk on when a horse bolted and caught the back of his head; he’d been dead even before he hit the ground. Countless incidents like this, Dunk’s accidental interference corrected almost immediately by forces unseen; by the guidance of the Seven. The consequence would always come; an injury that was fated would still be; a death could never go unmarked.
Yet it was his hand that had stood between Baelor’s neck and his death, and without him there he would not have lived. Fate had been denied her victim yet she seemed not to care, as the prince, full of vigour and light, carved his way through the Blackfyre host. Then, on the horizon came his brother riding to meet them, and as their great forces collided the battle was won, men sent yelping with their tails between their legs.
****
Dunk found the prince’s pavilion without issue, the royal standard of House Targaryen soaring proudly above, the black and red flag puncturing itself into the sky. All about him were the crests of other great houses; brass buckles on deep blue; a turtle; two white fawns reared up; and largest the proud black stag of House Baratheon. Yet right alongside, heraldry that was largely unfamiliar to Dunk: a red cockatrice with piercing black eye; a golden hand; a black portcullis gate, and the unmistakable sun and spear of House Martell. As he walked through the encampment, he noted the men, so united in the violence of battle now split apart once more, tenuous allyships held like rope bridges swinging across deep ravines.
There were hundreds of cookfires going across the crenellated field, and the smell of smoke and meat and sweat rose to greet him. The thrum of battle had been replaced with the groans of the wounded, calls for ale and wine, and squires hurrying about underfoot with their arms full of dented helms and shields; septons with bundled herbs and maesters hobbling from wound to wound.
Carrion birds soared overhead, their black eyes fixed on the bloating corpses populating the pockmarked earth, like strange growths pushed out of the mud. Already there was talk of pyres and burials, but the rains had been heavy and there was naught the wood needed for such endeavour; though Dunk knew that the fat from the bodies would be enough to set the bonfire blazing for a day-and-night. The smell would be the worst part, but the thickness of rot and decay was worse.
He had never been so close to his memory of the past, pulling rings off of bloated fingers, flesh sloughing off under his grip, bags full of armour that was more blood and muck than iron. Trawling through the corpses of the forgotten, watching Rafe scuttle on in front of him as her thin fingers rifled through dead men's pockets.
Dunk was glad when he ducked inside the prince’s tent, the heavy velvet falling behind him and the noise of the world falling away with it. He could remember the first bath he’d ever had, not long after entering Ser Arlan’s service as his squire. They’d been paid well by some lord or another, and Ser Arlan had gotten them a bed, a real proper bed at an inn, with a bath full of hot scalding water. He’d ducked his head under, and for the first time in his life had experienced complete tranquility, eyes shut and breath held tight in his chest.
Inside, there were all the lavish trappings of a young lordling. Furs piled high and over top of one another; a writing desk strewn about with quill and parchment, ribbons and wax seal for the sending of important messages; in the corner leant a morning-star, sword and shield, and various arms; a meal on the corner of the table, half-picked at and cold. From behind another ripple of fabric then, came a voice.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. You’re here earlier than I–”
Baelor stopped as he ducked through the curtain, blinking owlishly at him. Dunk stared back, mouth suddenly gone dry. He was belting a robe around his waist and his hair was damp and still dripping onto the nape of his neck; Dunk could see the dark and curling hairs on his chest, and his gaze dropped to the shadow of them disappearing under the neck of his robe.
“Ser Duncan,” Baelor said, voice pitched up. When Dunk chanced another look – for he had looked determinedly away – he saw that the prince’s cheeks were suspiciously pink in the candlelight. “I wasn’t– I apologise. I thought you were my brother.”
“No, m’lord,” Dunk said, awkwardly. “I– er. If you’re expecting him I can–”
“No, no stay.” Baelor stepped further inside. He frowned at him. Dunk felt pinned under his gaze; even as Baelor was now the younger of the two, he carried about a wisdom that had settled within him somehow without Dunk’s noticing. “You are still armoured, ser.”
“No squire,” Dunk lifted his shoulder, “I don’t mind it.”
“No matter,” Baelor replied. “It has not been so long since I was a squire myself. Would you like me to assist you?”
“Ser!” Dunk said, half-protesting but Baelor was already walking toward him.
The prince stood close enough for Dunk to smell the sweet and spiced oils of his bath, to see where his skin was still pink from the heat. His hair had grown again in the time between Dunk’s travels, gently curling in the hollow behind his ear, against the nape of his neck. His hands came up carefully to the inner crevices of his armour, deftly unfastening the buckles. The warmth of him seemed to seep through the layers of iron and maille, through jerkin into his goosepimpled flesh; it was somehow more overwhelming to have him so close without touching, as though Dunk’s very being was attuned to his presence. It was all encompassing, the sounds of torchlight crackling in their posts, faintly, the voices of men outside and Baelor’s own soft voice bidding him to raise his arm as he divested him of his armour piece by piece. Dunk felt as though he himself were being taken delicately apart; Ser Arlan’s roughened hands peeling back the dirt husk grim of an onion until all that was left was the soft core of webbed transparent layers.
He held himself utterly still as Baelor moved around him, clucking his tongue at the state of him, battered and bruised, covered in the grime of a hard-won battle.
“I saw the men outside,” said Dunk, when the quiet became too much for him to bear.
“Hm?” Baelor had tucked himself into his side as he worked at one of the straps; Dunk could not see his face. “Ah yes. Gods but it seemed that we arrived with but a second to spare. What say you, ser?”
“I agree,” Dunk said, bobbing his head. “The– how did you manage it? The stormlords… I can imagine that they were not pleased to be riding alongside the likes of House Martell.”
He felt Baelor laugh, the warmth of it trickling down his spine, sweet honey. He came round and Dunk caught the edge of his smile, pleased as he ducked his head to look into the gap of his gorget.
“It was quite a bit of work,” he agreed. “Promises made that I don’t think either of them were happy with in the end but– it seems that that may be what I am best for. Talking, that is.” A pause, and then he looked shrewdly up at him. “I would have died if not for you, I think ser.”
The frankness of it shook Dunk, as it always did. The young prince was given to an honesty that seemed to always strike at the heart of him, slipping a hot knife up through his ribs; Baelor’s hands deep in his red and bloodied flesh.
Dunk opened his mouth to disagree but Baelor shook his head.
“I know’t,” he said, slipping his pauldrons down off his arm. “You must needs take my compliment, lest I believe that you think me a liar. Do you think I am a liar, ser?”
“No!” Dunk said it with a ferocity, and at such sudden volume that both of them startled; Baelor laughed half a moment after. He enjoyed doing that, thought Dunk. Praising him and needling him in equal measure. It always caught him off guard, stepping backwards in the dark, only steadied by Baelor’s hand firm on his wrist. He wondered if that was why the prince liked it.
His hands were firm and sure as they roamed over his body, pulling and loosening, his palm sliding up between the gaps in his plates of armour. It seemed that the hunger and ferocity of war had left him, but for the way that his hands– and Dunk could not help but wonder–
“Lean forward,” Baelor said then, his voice coming low over Dunk’s right shoulder. “Good man. There we are.”
Then his cuirass was slipping free, the back of Baelor’s hand brushing against his side underneath the heavy plate; Dunk sucked in a breath, his skin trembling with the mere presence of him; heat like a wood floor under the gentle gaze of the sun. He watched as Baelor worked at him, brow furrowed in concentration and hands working nimbly at the intricate leather straps; utter focus on the task at hand. Dunk felt like little more than a doll, or perhaps a horse; he thought of Thunder stood patiently as he unsaddled her, slipping the bit out of her mouth and tugging the reins off over her ears. He was utterly pliant in Baelor’s hands. Were he to tell him to kneel, or jump, or throw himself to the ground, he would.
He realised, distantly, as Baelor came round his front again and knelt to slip his hands under and up his thigh that he was half-hard in his breeches, the slow press against his codpiece. Shame bloomed, hot and furious in his throat and across his broad cheeks, biting into his soft flesh. His hands flexed at his sides. He couldn’t dismiss the prince, and not now when he was so very near done. He looked down, mouth opening to speak but all sound halted in his throat. Baelor looked up, as though Dunk had called to him without words. His eyes were dark in his face, and his mouth was a wet glimmer in the torchlight.
“Ser,” Dunk said, hoarse. The very air was thick and heavy in his throat, and he could not tell if it was the smoke or the intent and searching gaze of Baelor that made it so. His hand was resting on the iron plate of his cuisse, his inner thigh. Even through the steel and mail, his palm was an iron brand against Dunk’s skin.
“Is something the matter, Ser Duncan?” Baelor’s voice, typically so composed, was ragged at its edges, torn parchment. Dunk watched the bobbing of his throat, the hollow of his delicate collarbone, his robe falling open over his chest and the velvet hem of it slipping over the lean and supple curve of his shoulder, his muscled arm held in repose as he looked up at the knight.
“I–” Dunk could not speak. How could he, when he knew not what he wanted to say. Dunk was no stranger to the lust that came upon men in the heat of battle, what was happening around them even now in the cool darkness of the tents, bodies pressed against each other, sweat slick skin under panting mouths and roughened palms. How could he not think of it, when the prince was looking up at him with his eyes lit gently by the firelight, the handsome line of his nose and his parted mouth, as though waiting for– waiting for–
Then Baelor’s hand slid boldly up and settled in the gap of his plated armour, a sudden firm pressure where his thigh met his groin. Dunk sucked in a breath; his hand flexed at his side.
“Do you require,” Baelor said, slowly, softly. “Any more assistance, ser knight?”
“I–” Dunk swallowed hard, throat clicking in the silence. He saw Baelor’s pupils grow ever impossibly wider, dark pools in his face, breathing in hard as though he’d caught the scent; a wolf grown still on the plains. Both of them, skirting around an obvious truth, too craven to name the thing simmering just under the skin, in that tender layer between skin and muscle. Dunk wondered if he could take a sharp knife to it, let the truth of himself spill out, cupped in the prince’s fine hands. “Your Grace, I–”
“Not your Grace,” Baelor said, low. He was kneading at the soft muscle of his thigh, the firm press of the heel of his palm, fingers curved around the shape of him. Something of a pleading, yearning noise sat at the base of Dunk’s throat. “I am your squire, am I not ser? Assisting you, as I must.”
“Yes,” Dunk said; his thoughts were wading through honey and his mouth seemed to be much the same. Thick as a castle wall, he thought, and then, more urgent. Speak man!
“Yes what?” Baelor said, and he was proud and beautiful even on his knees, even as he looked up at Dunk, all of the tall, broad length of him.
Dunk’s hand moved slow, as though through the strong current of a river, the ocean’s tide. His world had shrunk to the shape of Baelor, kneeling, his dark eyes, his mouth, the curve of his spine bent in parody of pious supplication. As his hand met his cheek he took a deep inward breath, the muscle of his cheek jumping as for a moment he held his head still before pushing his cheek into Dunk’s roughened palm. His next breath shuddered out of him, as though a great weight had been laid upon his chest and suddenly was gone.
His hands fumbled as he pulled the rest of Dunk’s armour apart, until he was down to his layer of thick boiled leather, a line of small round buttons trailing up to his neck.
A thick silence stretched between them, as Baelor stopped, with no further task to occupy him. Dunk’s hand, now warm on the back of his head, his thumb pressed into the gentle hollows of his skull; their breathing the only sound in the small and private haven of the pavilion.
“I should–” Baelor spoke, at the same time as Dunk began. He was staring at his hand, his rough and weathered skin against the softness of Baelor’s, who was now a man grown and a fine swordsman in his own right, a prince who had just led his own forces to a victory against the rebel army, yet still the young lord who had wanted for nothing, whose birth had been the delight of the realm; who had been told from the moment he was born, the weight of the destiny he would one day bear.
As clear as a memory, Dunk thought again of the sword coming down toward Baelor’s vulnerable neck, his own blade thrust between and fate’s gentle allowance of his hand. He had wanted to tell the prince for so long about the strange and fraying thread that tied them together; to ask whether he knew as though the sky was blue that there was a strange thread between them at all. To wonder, if that was not destiny then– what?
“You did well,” Dunk said, suddenly, voice gentled. “You did so well. You were so brave today.”
Baelor’s gaze seemed to grow ever wider, and he swayed back slowly, as though struck. His gaze was full of hunger as he stared up at him. He rose then, slow, and his hands shook as they touched him.
“Please,” he said, and he drew close, his hot breath cast over Dunk’s mouth as their bodies leant in toward each other. Dunk realised that the feeling inside his heart was a trembling fear, and yet alongside it, the thunderous galloping hoofsteps of the adrenaline of battle not yet shaken through his body, and in the shuddering of the prince he felt his kindred spirit; fear, and bloodlust, and victory and anger. All caught together in a fraught and tangled dance. He wanted– he wanted–
But he knew then that he could not step any closer with the cool thread of deception still netted between them. The truth of him, of all of it, burned like an ember in his throat, and he knew he had to speak; speak, or be done with it forever. His hand trembled where it was pressed to the warm skin of Baelor’s cheek.
“I have something to tell you,” he said, and his voice was thin with fear. Dunk knew with clarity how mad this would seem to him. How could it not, when it seemed mad to him, the man who experienced it? That the gods should lay their hands upon him, nothing but a simple hedge knight, and pluck him through time as if it were nothing, as their lives were as simple as threads intertwined on a weaver’s loom.
“What is it?” Baelor’s voice was quiet. The air seemed to hum around them, the world holding her breath. He could still hear, faintly, the sound of men outside, raised voices and cheers; it seemed as though it was all occurring in an entirely different world, that they’d entered a queer and insulated reality.
“It will seem strange,” Dunk said. “But you– I can hardly believe it myself. But you must.”
Baelor did not reply, his dark eyes fixed on Dunk’s face. He nodded, and Dunk began. It was a stilted, fragmented tale at first, as he started from the beginning, from the first instances he could remember where time was pulled out from beneath his feet. HIs childhood, Ser Arlan, the world he came from. Baelor did not speak, but his eyes grew wider and wider. He did not speak overly of the future, stilled by something in his heart, his mind, a quiet voice and gentle hand that steered him away from etching in the finest details.
“So you know me,” Baelor said; he seemed lost for words, sat back in his chair; Dunk knelt at his feet. “In the– where you come from.” It seemed that to say ‘the future’ was still too much for him, as he raised his hand to his temple; it was such a familiar motion that to see it made Dunk smile involuntarily.
“I do,” he said. A white lie– but still he did not want to bring those worlds together; a black armoured figure in his arms; flames licking their way up from a burning pyre… a selfish desire, to keep this world whole for as long as he could.
Baelor was quiet for a long moment. Each beat of silence drew Dunk’s nerves closer in his chest, a thick and twisted knot in his stomach. If the prince thought he was mad, if he did not believe him, if, if, if–
“It is much to think about,” Baelor admitted. He was looking down at him, and Dunk felt his breath catch in the fondness in his gaze, and the shine of something else behind it. “I– I will have to take my time with it.”
“Of course,” Dunk said, immediately. “Your Grace I– I never meant to deceive an if I had–”
“And if you have, it was for good reason.” Baelor interrupted him, mildly. “I would have done much the same in your position, Ser Duncan. Finding myself in a stranger's land… the gods move through our world in mysterious ways. They speak in languages that we do not understand; and I would not claim to be a septon that might interpret these messages they send. Only that it seems that we are linked, you and I. For reasons that we might not ever understand.”
“Yes, m’lord.” Dunk said, looking up at his prince; the torchlight flickering along the smooth planes of his face, his thoughtful gaze; the wet glimmer of his mouth. The world seemed to quiet again, pooling sweetly between them like golden honey. Dunk’s tongue passed over his lips; Baelor’s gaze dropped fractionally to the motion and he leant forward, the shifting of fabric thunderous in Dunk’s pounding ears–
Then, a scuffling sound at the door and raised voices.
“I have news,” and it was unmistakeable, the haughty and irritable voice of Prince Maekar carrying on the wind, “if you don’t let me through right fucking now I swear–”
Dunk startled, and Baelor stepped away; the cold air rushed between them and the chill was all the more for the heat still rushing underneath his skin.
“There,” Baelor said, and pointed toward the curtain fallen over his bedchamber, “in there, now. Quickly, before my brother may see.”
Dunk gathered his belongings into his arms and ducked through, blinking in the dark and quiet of the Prince’s private room. He’d seen such luxury only when he and Lyonel had gone hunting in the great forests surrounding Storm’s End; days spent hunting stags and wild boar, with nights of drink and smoke and embers rising from great bonfires. His pavilion had been one of excess, furs and games, men and women lounging about with a seemingly endless supply of wine and roasted meats, sweet fruit with juices that dripped down your fingers no matter how light your grasp. There was a bath, charcoal glowing softly still beneath, herbs floating on the surface of the milky water. The scent of him was everywhere as Dunk breathed. The sweet intimacy of it made him feel awkward as a youth; Baelor’s clothes strewn about on the ground, his bed unmade and books left propped open, in the corner figurines set in strategic formation.
He heard faint voices as Maekar entered, and thought for a moment about ducking his head closer to the entrance to hear what the young prince might have to say, but exhaustion seemed to come upon him in all her glory then. His eyes felt her hands tugging firmly, his shoulders slumped with the sudden weight of all that he had been through, each swing of his sword come suddenly back to his aching muscles.
Just a moment, he thought, sitting on the edge of the bed. I’ll shut my eyes for only a moment.
****
Dunk awoke to the bed sinking under Baelor’s weight. He was sat on the edge of the bed and as his head turned back toward him he was a black silhouette. Dunk squinted at the light piercing through the curtain behind him; he could see the twice-broken line of his nose, the shadow of his beard upon his cheek. His eyes were cast in darkness. He seemed somehow smaller, and Dunk pushed himself up onto his elbows. He knew then, with great certainty that something was wrong; as a bird flies crying from the bush; as a vine grows straining for the light; as brackish water goes untouched.
“He’s dead,” Baelor said. “Daemon is dead.”
“The battle is won?” Dunk’s tongue felt fat and heavy in his mouth.
“Yes,” Baelor said, each word sunken with weight, pebbles dropped into a still pond. “My father’s reign– our line is secured.”
He turned to look at him properly then, and Dunk saw the fullness of his expression then, fractured, a hammer taken to brittle steel. Grief, and anger warred on his face, grown suddenly wan and grey; hope so close to despair that Dunk could feel it in his own throat.
“Our line secured,” he repeated, and his voice cracked as though he were only a boy, and Dunk was reaching for him, his hand cupping round the back of his scalp, and Baelor’s head dropped into the hollow of his neck. His face was wet as he pushed his face into the warm skin he found there. “Everyone will be happy. Jena, my father, my brothers… I am happy. But then why do I– Ser Duncan why– I feel so–”
“Shh,” Dunk said, gentling his hand down the nape of his neck, the tender space between his shoulderblades, the other down the trembling line of his ribs, his side. His voice was gentle; soothing a frightened animal; urging Thunder to calm when she startled, white foam on her flank. “Shh. It’s alright. I have you. I have you.”
The prince sobbed then, a low keening noise from the back of his throat, and it was though a great dam broke; waves breaking in white-grey froth against the rocky shore. Dunk held him, staring into the darkness of his tent, at the rippling layers of dark velvet fabric, red so deep it looked black, a black so full it could be almost red; a warped mirror; envy turned to anger; joy turned to grief. He tried to imagine it, Daemon Blackfyre’s proud and beautiful face, a visage that had been so perfect that he would not have doubted if the Seven themselves had touched their hands upon his brow; now bloodied and rendered unrecognisable in the perforated earth, his silver hair trampled into the mud, his armour dented and fit for nothing but scraps. Baelor, swaying with blood on his gauntlet, his skull caved in and the weight of him in Dunk’s arms, a great tree felled; a dragon plummeted from the sky. The Stranger was a guest unlooked for and unwanted, a shadow upon even the healthiest of men. Dunk turned his face to press his mouth to the gentle curve of Baelor’s temple, and let the prince weep and mourn in his arms as he never would be able to again.