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"While you train him, my master-at-arms will finish your own training.” The prince gave [Dunk] a shrewd look. “Your Ser Arlan did all he could for you, I have no doubt, but you still have much to learn.” (The Hedge Knight)
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Prince Maekar regarded Dunk evenly. “A year or two has turned into four, I see,” the prince said, in a tone of voice that sounded mild enough to begin with, at least mild by Prince Maekar’s standard. Soon enough, however, he frowned and was swiftly transformed into the stern and severe man Dunk remembered from their last encounter beneath the elm tree.
“I took you for a man of your word, ser. Was I completely mistaken in my faith?” the prince asked, in a tone of voice that reminded Dunk of the man who had thundered, “I did not come here to take counsel from a hedge knight.”
And yet, taking counsel from a hedge knight was precisely what the prince had done, when he sent his youngest son to squire for this hedge knight. Even Dunk the Lunk knew better than to remind the prince of that fact, however. He began to try explaining the reasons for his tardiness on coming to Summerhall, but Egg was already talking … and talking … and talking.
“Perhaps you misheard Ser Duncan at the time, Father. Perhaps Ser Duncan actually said a year and two,” Egg said, holding up one finger of his right hand and two fingers of his left hand. “That would certainly make three years, in which case, we are not too late, only by a year or so.”
Dunk grimaced. You are almost three-and-ten, lad, not that boy of nine I first met at Ashford, he thought. Surely Egg should have known better by now than to provoke his father in this manner, even if his intention was good, which was to defend Dunk from his father’s accusation? Hadn’t he taught Egg better than this, in the four years the lad had spent squiring for him as they travelled across the realm?
As expected, Prince Maekar scowled and glowered. “I did not come here to be taught how to count by my youngest son,” he snapped. “I am perfectly capable of adding one and two together, and there is nothing wrong with my hearing. There was nothing wrong with my hearing at the time, in fact. A year or two, not a year and two. That was what Ser Duncan promised. Wasn’t it, ser?”
“It was, Your Grace,” Dunk admitted. “But matters in the North took much longer to resolve than we had expected, and then of course there was –“
Egg interjected, “And then there was the great mystery that had been plaguing Raventree for many moons. Ser Duncan and I cleverly solved that mystery to everyone’s satisfaction, except perhaps the culprits themselves. Lord Blackwood was ever so impressed and grateful to us both. He said that he would write to his cousin Lord Brynden to tell him about –“
It was Prince Maekar’s turn to interrupt, “I know all about your exploits in the Riverlands and elsewhere,” the prince said, though he did not sound so cross this time.” He turned to Dunk and said, in a voice devoid of any inflection, “Allowing my son to squire for you did not turn out to be such a great calamity after all, Ser Duncan.”
Egg was grinning widely. “That was a compliment, ser, a great big compliment, in case you didn’t notice.” He leaned closer towards Dunk, standing on tiptoes so he could whisper to Dunk, “My father is not the sort of man who would clap you on the back and say, ‘Good job, man!’ This is as good as it gets, coming from my father.”
Dunk had to work hard to stifle his laughter and to maintain an appropriately solemn expression. “Thank you, Your Grace, for your faith and your trust in a humble hedge knight like myself,” he said to Prince Maekar.
“I do not require your gratitude, ser, only the fulfilment of your promise,” the prince said, sternly. “Are you now prepared to swear your sword to me, and to serve as a knight of my household?”
Dunk hesitated. Egg stared at him with disbelief, tugging at Dunk’s cloak and imploring, “Tell him, ser. Tell my father that you are prepared to swear your sword to him. You said so yourself, on our way to Summerhall. I’ll still be your squire, and one day, when I have earned my spurs, you will knight me with your sword. Arise, Ser Aegon of House Targaryen, you will say, after you have knighted me. You want to serve at Summerhall, you told me that yourself. You have had your fill of life on the road, you said, and if you ever find Tanselle again …. well, no woman would ever wish to marry a hedge knight, you said. She would want stability, a guaranteed wage and a roof over her head, you said.”
Still Dunk hesitated, looking at his feet, at the ground beneath his feet, and at everything else except at Egg or at Egg’s father.
Prince Maekar thundered, “Are you going back on your word, hedge knight?”
“No, Your Grace,” Dunk finally replied. “Only I wonder … I wonder if I could –“
“Say what you will, ser. Four years ago, you were brave enough to tell me some very unpalatable hard truths about my sons. Did you misplace your courage on the way to Summerhall, pray tell?”
“No, I did not,” Dunk replied. Gazing at Prince Maekar steadily, he finally said, “If it pleases Your Grace, I would like to request a boon from you.”
“A boon? A reward, you mean? Is it gold you want? Should you swear your sword to me, you will be paid every quarter, like all of my other household knights. The men who serve me are not my slaves,” the prince replied, sounding mightily offended.
It was now or never, thought Dunk. If he did not ask for it now, it would be too late, and then there would be no turning back. The lie that began as something relatively small would assume a gigantic proportion.
Oh, who was he kidding? The lie was gigantic from the start. He had wanted to be a knight so badly that he was willing to tell that great big lie at Ashford. That was one of the reasons he could not be so wroth with Egg for the boy’s own lie about his identity, when Dunk first met him. In fact, Dunk felt closer towards the boy for that very reason.
He had thought long and hard about how to finesse the matter with Prince Maekar, even though finessing anything had never been one of Dunk’s strengths. Egg could have found some clever way to deal with it, to be sure, for the boy’s wit was second to none in Dunk’s estimation, but this was not a secret that Dunk was willing to share even with Egg.
Forgive me, lad, but I could not make you a partner in my crime.
“I wish to be knighted by your hand, Your Grace,” Dunk announced, throwing out the words as swiftly as he could, before he would lose his courage, or his nerve. He meant to continue, It would be the greatest honor of my life to be knighted again by Your Grace’s own hand, and it would be most fitting, since I will be serving as a knight of your household, but those words would not come out of his mouth.
Prince Maekar frowned. “You are already knighted, ser. You were knighted by Ser Arlan of Pennytree on his deathbed. That was your claim when you entered the list at Ashford. Are you telling me now that you were lying at the time, that you were never knighted at all?”
Dunk paled. “Your Grace … I –“
“Think very carefully before you speak, ser,” Prince Maekar warned, in a very low voice that sounded much more intimidating than his usual thundering speech. “I entrusted the fate of my son, the fate of a prince of the blood, into your hands. My own brother, who was the heir to the throne, died in defense of you during the trial of seven, and he died by my own hand. After all that, if –”
Egg came to Dunk’s rescue. “Ser Duncan only meant that he wanted to be knighted again, Father, but by your hand, this time.”
“For what reason, exactly? He did not squire for me. He squired for this Ser Arlan. If the knight he squired for had already knighted him, then surely there is no need for him to be knighted again?”
Flustered by Prince Maekar’s endless barrage of questions, Dunk could not speak the words he had actually practiced in his head many times before. Did His Grace behave in this manner even with his own children? Dunk wondered what it would be like to be on the receiving end of the prince’s endless barrage of questions on a daily basis.
Prince Maekar gave Dunk a shrewd look, the same look he had given Dunk four years ago, when he said that Dunk still had much to learn about being a knight, despite Ser Arlan doing his best to train him.
After a long, long pause that felt like an eternity to Dunk and Egg both, Prince Maekar seemed to have finally come to a decision. “Perhaps Ser Arlan’s knighting of you was not done exactly as it should have been done?” he asked, very pointedly.
Dunk nodded with relief. “It … it was done while he was dying, Your Grace. I did not stand vigil in a sept for a night, and I was not anointed by a septon with the seven oils to … to con…”
“Consecrate your vows,” Egg whispered in Dunk’s ear.
“To consecrate my vows,” Dunk added. “And there was … there was no witness to my dubbing.”
“Any knight could make a knight, and under certain pressing circumstances, like before or during a battle, exceptions could be made and some of the rituals and customs could be waived,” said Prince Maekar.
“We … we were not going into battle at the time, Your Grace.”
The prince stroked his beard, lost in thought. “But this Ser Arlan was dying, you said, when he knighted you. His impending death could count as a pressing circumstance, in which case –“
“Your Grace –”
Dunk was feeling desperate. If Prince Maekar refused to knight him, what then? Should he have bribed some random knight he met somewhere on the road to knight him, before arriving at Summerhall? But how would that be any better than the original lie he had told?
You must tell Prince Maekar the truth!
But if I tell him the truth now, that I was not a knight at all when I entered the list at Ashford and when I took his son as my squire, his wrath would be even worse than it was back then. He would certainly kill me this time, perhaps without the benefit of a trial by seven or even a trial by combat.
Then how long will you continue with this monstrous lie? What happens when the time comes for Egg to be knighted? Will you knight him and make a false knight of him too?
Prince Maekar interrupted Dunk’s raging argument with himself. The prince pronounced, “If you are to serve as a knight of my household, then it is better that you are knighted properly, following all the required customs and rituals, like all of the brother knights you will be serving with. I will not have it rumored and whispered behind my back that I am giving you any kind of preferential treatment. They had to stand vigil in the sept, your brother knights; kneeling in front of the Warrior for the whole night until their knees were raw and bloody, as I had to do, when I was knighted. You must endure the same thing, to make you truly one of them, truly one of us.”
“A knight must bleed, Ser Arlan used to say, for blood is the seal of our devotion,” said Dunk, feeling relieved beyond measure that Prince Maekar had agreed to knight him, but also feeling remorseful towards the old man who had done his best to train Dunk to be a true knight. It was not the old man’s fault that he did not actually knight Dunk, as Dunk had always claimed he did. The chill and the fever took Ser Arlan so quickly and so suddenly that he had no time to do anything at all.
“I am truly grateful for this boon, Your Grace,” Dunk said to Prince Maekar.
The prince made no reply to Dunk’s expression of gratitude. He went on to say, “You will stand vigil in the sept tonight, and your knighting will take place just after sunrise tomorrow. Aegon will take you to the sept. I will bring our master-at-arms to be the witness to your knighting. He is the one who will finish your training as a knight, like I told you four years ago.”
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The sept at Summerhall was a large and airy place, like the castle itself, befitting its status as a summer castle. Dunk could not help but wonder what the Prince of Summerhall thought of Summerhall. It seemed almost too cheery an abode for the gloomy Prince Maekar, and it was too lightly fortified to boot, making it hard to defend from any attack. Perhaps that was the main reason the prince kept a large retinue of household knights in his service.
Dunk was wearing a shift made of undyed wool. To signify humility, Egg had told him, though the shift felt softer and more comfortable on his skin than the roughspun tunic Dunk was used to wearing. Egg had brought the shift, and he had also insisted on helping Dunk to change his clothes, as he had usually done before.
“I am still your squire, ser. I am only performing my usual duties,” Egg said, solemnly.
Dunk quickly looked away. He feared that his guilt, and thus the truth, would be written all over his face, and would be revealed to all and sundry. He followed Ser Arlan’s instructions as far as he could remember them, and Egg corrected him on certain matters. First, he laid his sword over the Warrior’s knees, before piling his armor at the Warrior’s feet. Finally, Dunk knelt on the hard stone floor before the altar.
“You must stay in that position for the whole night, ser. You cannot stand up to relieve the cramps, or lie down because you feel sleepy,” Egg reminded him.
Dunk frowned. “I know, lad. What do you take me for, an ignorant babe still suckling on his mother’s teats?“
“My father might send one of the other knights to check on you, you see, to make sure that you are observing the rituals correctly.”
“I will not move even an inch,” Dunk promised. “Now go to your room. It is long past your bedtime, I would wager. We are not on the road anymore, Egg. Your father has certain rules that must be followed in his household, I’m sure.”
It was Egg’s turn to frown. “Oh yes, there are rules and rules aplenty in Summerhall,” he replied with a grimace. “My father is very fond of them, ser.”
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Later, Egg returned to the sept wearing a cloak with a hood that covered his head and most of his face. Dunk did not know how long he had been kneeling, but all of his joints ached, even the ones far from his legs.
“What are you doing here, lad? You are supposed to be in bed,” he scolded Egg.
“I am keeping you company, ser,’ Egg said, as he knelt on the floor beside Dunk. “I thought you might be feeling –“
“I am not afraid! Spending the night alone in a sept is nothing to be afraid of,” Dunk insisted, heatedly.
“I thought you might be feeling lonely, ser,” said Egg, sounding slightly affronted. “Typically, a group of knights are knighted together, and they stand vigil in the sept as a group, not each man by himself.”
“Oh. Forgive me for misunderstanding your intention, Egg,” said Dunk.
The apology seemed to mollify Egg. He went on, “I would have come sooner, ser, but it took me a long time to escape from my sisters. They insisted on coming to the sept too, but I told them that you wouldn’t want to be seen by Prince Maekar’s daughters while wearing only a shift.”
Mystified, Dunk asked, “Why would your sisters want to come to the sept with you?”
Egg stared at Dunk with disbelief. “To see you, ser, of course. To see the famous Ser Duncan the Tall. Daella and Rhae have heard all the stories about your heroics at Ashford Meadows, at Whitewalls, in the North and in the Riverlands. They couldn’t stop talking about you, ser, and they kept asking me questions after questions about all the great feats performed by the great and the mighty Ser Duncan.”
Dunk looked at Egg shrewdly. “Did you feel hurt and slighted Egg, when your sisters failed to mention your own contributions and your own heroics?”
Egg refused to admit this. He crossed his arms, pouted his lips and said, “Why should I feel hurt or slighted? It’s nothing to me what Daella and Rhae think. They can think and say whatever they wish. They can ignore me to their heart’s content. After all, I’m just a boring old brother, not a fascinating stranger like yourself, ser.”
Dunk almost laughed, before he remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. “You are not jealous, are you, Egg?”
Egg replied to the question in a roundabout way. “I am ever so glad to finally see my sisters again, because I have missed them very much when I was away, but they seem … they seem more interested in you than in the brother they have not seen for a long time, ser. Rhae said we have all the time in the world to catch up, but can I please take them to see the famous Ser Duncan now because you might leave very soon. I told them and told them that you are not going anywhere, that you are staying right here in Summerhall, but my sisters don’t seem to believe me.”
“It is only a temporary interest in something new, I’m sure. Your sisters will lose interest in me after a few days, you’ll see.”
Egg looked thoughtful. “Well, I don’t want that to happen either, ser. You are very important and very interesting to me, and I want my sisters to be interested in you, too. Not just for a little while, but for a long, long time.”
“I’m afraid your sisters will be terribly disappointed when they finally meet me, Egg,” said Dunk, gravely. “I am not really the great and heroic knight from all those stories they have heard. I am not even a … a –“
“But you are a true knight, ser. A true knight protects the weak and defends the innocent, and that is what you have been doing all along. It does not matter to me if Ser Arlan never really said the right words to make you a knight.”
Dunk was struck speechless. He forced himself not to look away from Egg’s face. “Have you always known, Egg?” he asked, very quietly, almost whispering the words.
“Not always. I suspected, but I only knew for sure when you would not knight Raymun Fossoway before the trial of seven. Ser Lyonel had to do it.”
“I couldn’t make Raymun a false knight too. I just couldn’t. That would be making the lie even worse than it already was.”
Egg nodded. “You did the right thing, ser.”
“What about your father, Egg?”
“What about my father, ser?”
“Do you think your father suspects?”
Egg pondered the question. “I don’t know. But even if he does, he would never admit it. Not to anyone, least of all to himself,” Egg finally replied.
“Why not?” asked Dunk. “Why wouldn’t he punish me for that monstrous lie? He has every right to do so.”
“Because he can’t afford to know for sure, ser. You heard what he said before. Too much is at stake.”
Think very carefully before you speak, ser, Prince Maekar had warned Dunk.
“Sometimes I feel sorry for my father, ser, but I know that he would hate it very much indeed if he knows that, so it is not something I could ever tell him,” Egg continued. “The one thing my father could not bear the most is to be pitied.”
“Even by his son?”
“Especially by his son.”
Dunk stared at Egg for a long, long time. The lad had grown, there was no doubt about that. He had grown not just in height, but more importantly, he had grown in his head and his heart.
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The septon was still prattling on and on. After a long sermon about the virtues of each face of the Seven, he was now saying, “It is good of you, truly good of you, Ser Duncan, to want to observe all the proper rituals for the knighting ceremony, even though you were knighted already before. I hope you have done a great deal of reflecting while keeping vigil in the sept. The gods will truly reward you for your humility, ser.”
Dunk nodded earnestly. Prince Maekar, on the other hand, did not bother hiding his irritation or his impatience. “Make it quick, Septon Reed, before we all perish of old age.”
Perhaps this septon too, like the High Septon, had angered the prince by saying that no one could truly understand the workings of the gods, Dunk speculated. It was something he should ask Egg later. The boy had left the sept just before sunrise, worried that his father would find out that he had spent the night in the sept kneeling beside Ser Duncan.
Dunk was anointed with the seven oils on his forehead. He had to stop himself from flinching each time the septon’s clammy hand touched his forehead. The oils felt slimy, not just … well, oily.
“This was also done to you as a babe, of course, when you were blessed by a septon in front of the gods and given the name Duncan by your father and your mother,” Septon Reed remarked.
Dunk doubted that very much indeed. It was Egg who had given him the name Duncan, though the lad still remained ignorant of that fact. Perhaps it was now time to tell him the truth.
I told you I was called Dunk, and you laughed and said that you had never heard of any knight called Ser Dunk. And then you asked me if it was actually short for Duncan, so Duncan I decided to be, because Ser Duncan sounded like a more fitting name for a knight than Ser Dunk. And that was what I wanted to be more than anything else in the world: a knight, a true knight.
Summerhall’s master-at-arms was a knight called Ser Ambrose. He carried Prince Maekar’s sheathed sword with both hands, but his inscrutable expression told Dunk nothing about his opinion about this curious knighting ceremony, or about Dunk himself. He barely glanced at Dunk, in fact, his eyes focusing solely on Prince Maekar.
“He is a Dayne, ser, a very distant cousin of my mother,” Egg had told Dunk the night before. “My mother used to say that his skill with sword is more than good enough to qualify him to be the Sword of the Morning, but he is too distantly related to the main branch of the family to be given the Dayne’s legendary ancestral sword.”
After Septon Reed finally completed the anointing ceremony, Ambrose Dayne handed the prince his sword. Prince Maekar unsheathed the sword and bade Dunk to kneel. Dunk went down on one knee, all primed and ready to be knighted, but the prince suddenly asked, “Before we begin, would you like to choose a different name for yourself? Ser Duncan of Pennytree, perhaps?”
Dunk had thought of that before, but it did not seem appropriate to him. Pennytree was Ser Arlan’s home, not Dunk’s home. He had never even been to Pennytree while Ser Arlan was still alive. It would feel as if he was stealing something from the old man, something that did not belong to him and could never belong to him.
“No, Your Grace, I would like to remain as Ser Duncan the Tall,” replied Dunk, calmly but firmly. Prince Maekar raised his eyebrows, but said nothing in reply. Ser Ambrose was actually looking at Dunk for the first time, scrutinizing him intently as if Dunk was now suddenly worthy of his notice.
Touching the blade of his sword on Dunk’s right shoulder, the prince said, “Ser Duncan the Tall, in the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave.”
Dunk recited, “In the name of the Warrior, I vow to be brave.”
Moving the sword from Dunk’s right shoulder to his left shoulder, Prince Maekar continued, “In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just.”
“In the name of the Father, I vow to be just.”
The sword moved back to Dunk’s right shoulder. “In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the young and innocent.”
“In the name of the Mother, I vow to defend the young and innocent.”
Prince Maekar touched his sword to Dunk’s left shoulder again, but this time, there was a pause before he spoke. Dunk waited on one knee, his heart pounding and hammering, fit to burst. He did not dare ask what the problem was. Had Prince Maekar changed his mind about knighting Dunk after all?
Septon Reed cleared his throat, but he seemed far too intimidated by the Prince of Summerhall to say anything at all. It was Ser Ambrose’s puzzled and pointed “Your Grace?” that ended the pause. “In the name of the Maiden, I charge you to protect all women,” Prince Maekar finally continued.
“In the name of the Maiden, I vow to protect all women,” recited Dunk, solemnly.
Protect all women. Had Prince Maekar been thinking about what started the tragedy at Ashford Meadows, namely his son Prince Aerion’s assault of Tanselle, and Dunk’s attempt to defend her? Was that the reason for the pause? Dunk could only speculate.
“Arise, Ser Duncan the Tall, a true knight of the realm.” To Dunk’s surprise, Prince Maekar extended his hand to help Dunk to his feet. “And now you must swear your sword to me, as a knight of my household,” the prince swiftly declared, before Dunk even had the chance to fully catch his breath.