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Dunk waited all evening in his clearing with the horses and the tall canopy of trees, and then all night, and then he waited some more. At dawn he heard footsteps crushing the foliage and cracking twigs beneath them, and turned with a sort of disbelieving hope rising in his throat, half expecting to see Egg’s bald head scrambling towards him. But it wasn’t Egg who stepped into the clearing. The hope turned to ashes in Dunk’s mouth.
Aerion Brightflame scowled. One of his teeth was missing, and he was wearing a plain but oddly shaped hat with a feather sticking out. Underneath, his hair was a dark, muddy brown, patchy in places and pulled back in a messy tail against his neck. His cheeks were red and the rims of his eyes as well, and when they met Dunk’s, they flashed with an anger that mirrored his own.
“My father ordered me to join you,” spat Aerion; the words whistled through his tooth-hole. Without ceremony he started kicking at the fire to douse it, stomping around the clearing picking things up and hurling them into bags with the average amount of rage of a twelve year old told to pack for summer camp.
“I never said I’d take you on,” said Dunk, when he’d regained himself enough to speak; he grabbed Aerion’s arm before he could do any more damage to the saddlebags, pretending not to relish his hiss of pain. “I said I’d take Egg as my squire. Where is he?” A humiliated anger was growing in him. He couldn’t let it swell, or he’d say something he’d regret, so he pulled Aerion by the arm after him, out of the clearing and into the judgemental sunlight. “I don’t want you squiring for me.” That was one way to end up dead in a ditch, probably inside of a week.
“I’d rather not squire for the likes of you either,” glowered Aerion, his feet scrambling in the mud in an effort to get away, “the thought makes me feel like I’m being flayed alive, actually, but—where are you taking me, you oaf? They’ve already left.”
Dunk stopped dead. Aerion laughed meanly.
“Yes,” he said, wrenching his arm away, “they’ve left for Summerhall. I suppose my father didn’t want to give you a chance to say no. Well, don’t feel special, he didn’t give me a chance either.”
“We can still catch them,” Dunk managed to say. “If we ride now. They won’t be travelling fast, all those horses, all those men. We’ll get this fixed.”
Aerion sniffed disdainfully. Dunk hadn’t even known you could put that much tone into a sniff. He whirled on him and jabbed him in the centre of his royal chest. “You don’t want to come with me either. Go and get the horses.”
“If I don’t come with you,” said Aerion sourly, “my father has made it clear that I’m to be disinherited. The thought of living like one of you makes me sick, but if I must, I’d rather it not be permanent. So: I am your squire.” He spread his hands mockingly.
“Why do I care if you’re cast aside?” Dunk snarled. He seized Aerion by the front of his shirt—wool, plainly coloured but so clearly expensive to the touch that he almost let go—and shoved him roughly back. “Squire for me, then. Go and get the horses, and don’t break the saddlebags. We’re going after them.”
“I want to see prince Maekar,” Dunk said, before he’d even finished reining up beside the procession; a sole kingsguard, the tailrider, gaped at him. Dunk didn’t flinch. He didn’t have time for propriety—if Maekar hadn’t executed him for disrespect earlier, he wouldn’t now.
“Get my father,” snapped Aerion, pulling Chestnut to a halt behind him.
This time, the knight scrambled to obey. There was a shout and another and the entire royal procession halted, hooves in the mud, as Prince Maekar Targaryen trotted his courser towards them. “Leave us,” he said brusquely to his guards, and waited until they’d given him lingering curious looks and departed out of earshot before he spoke again.
“Aerion,” the prince began icily, then stopped in bemusement when a clamour of voices interrupted him. Dunk’s (“you can’t mean to do this!”), Aerion’s (“he doesn’t want me, father, I told you—“) and another, small and high pitched and Egg-like, which said, indignantly, “see! I told you they’d come back!”
Egg bounded forwards, evaded his father grabbing for him from his horse, and scowled up at Dunk. “I begged him to be your squire, Ser, really I did, only he won’t listen to me—“
“Nor should I,” said Maekar sharply. “You’re but a child. Aerion, explain yourself.”
Aerion muttered something under his breath, turned his head to the side, shifted in the saddle.
“It’s me that should—“ Dunk began awkwardly, feeling wrong footed. “My prince—“
“Spit it out,” said Maekar, no less waspishly.
Dunk ducked his head and obeyed. “Prince Maekar,” he acquiesced, “I thought you agreed that Prince—Egg—Aegon—would squire for me. What you said yesterday—“
“You made several points,” said Maekar, pulling on his gloves as the wind picked up. “All of them correct. Aegon is going to spend his mornings working in the stables at Summerhall, under the command of the serving folk there. He will learn to polish armour, groom a horse, and muck a stall. On some afternoons he will be taken to the markets to sample the smallfolks wares. He will learn to mend his own clothes. He will venture out hunting, when he’s of a decent age, and what he hunts he’ll eat. I do owe you my thanks, Ser. I have time to correct his education.”
“But if you say you owe me,” said Dunk desperately, grasping, “then—I’ll take anyone else as my squire. Daeron.”
“Oh, that’s delightful!” laughed Daeron. “Tally ho!”
Maekar’s lip twitched. Dunk found himself so wrong footed by his stern face giving an inch that he almost missed what the prince said next.
“Aerion will travel with you,” Maekar continued, “eating salt beef and sleeping on the ground and going under a common name. I have had it put about that he is to be sent to Lys, as I said, so nobody ought to accost you. It might even do him some good.”
Dunk discovered that he was not above begging. “Please,” he started.
But Maekar held up a hand, implacable. “This is an order from the crown,” he said, in a hard tone. “What will Aerion learn in Lys, fathering bastards, taking up with—women of the night—with all the pleasures of the city at his beck and call? Nothing. He is our problem. My problem,” he conceded. “And I am entrusting him to you, Ser Duncan, to be dealt with.”