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It took Dunk longer than it should have to realize something unusual about this child.
They'd met in the woods near Ashford, by a narrow bend in a stream. All Dunk had wanted was somewhere to wash the road off herself before she made her way into Ashford town; what she'd found was a skinny girl already washing in the creek, bald and big-eyed, staring at Dunk like she was the one invading her territory. "Does your family know where you are?" was the first thing Dunk said to her.
It should have worried Dunk more when the girl bit her lip and said, "I hope not."
But then, Dunk had run into plenty of orphans on her travels, and even more children so neglected they might as well be orphans. Dunk had been one herself, in those hazy memories where she still chased pigs through Flea Bottom. So it had been no hardship to offer the girl a place riding alongside her, especially since Sweetfoot had taken to her immediately.
But still, some strange swirling doubt built up inside Dunk's belly every time she looked at the child. Or maybe it was the way the trees shifted right at the bend in the path. She tried to set the queasiness aside as she scanned the woods. "Do you have anywhere to go, by the by?" she asked mildly. "Anyone who can keep you?"
The child - Egg, she'd said to call her Egg - nodded quickly, a new brightness in her eyes. "I have a brother in Oldtown," she said, looking more excited as she thought. "We'll go to Oldtown. He'll help me when we get there, I know it. He can help you too - a reward or work or anything you want. I promise!"
Dunk smiled almost against her will - a child's enthusiasm could do that - but it vanished again as she caught another movement beyond the trees. Not headed toward them, she didn't think, but farther down the road... "Aye, maybe," Dunk said, "but we have to get ourselves to Oldtown first."
She stopped Thunder for a moment, listening. Then she turned back to Egg, who was watching her with those owl-like eyes. "Here," she said, drawing the knife from her belt. "Do you know how to use one of these?"
"Well, er. I can cut meat." Egg said, gingerly hefting the knife in her hands.
Seven hells, we'll have a time getting out of this one, Dunk thought. "Keep it with you," Dunk said softly. "I want to get a better look at what's beyond the curve. The inn at the ferry is only two miles behind - if there's any trouble, you turn around and fly on Sweetfoot fast as she'll carry you." Which wasn't fast, but better than the child's own skinny legs.
The child squared her chin, her forehead wrinkling as she frowned. "I want to stay with you," Egg said.
Dunk wanted to be patient, but her nerves began to fray. "Your wants won't matter if you get a sword in your gut," Dunk replied. "You do what I say or I'll clout you in the ear, girl, you understand?"
At least then the girl nodded. Which was just as well, because it was then that Dunk heard the scream up ahead.
"Go back!" Dunk called to Egg as she urged Thunder forward, her heart pounding to the sound of Thunder's hooves. When she rounded the curve in the road, she saw the cause of the commotion - bandits surrounding a rickety caravan, two of them dragging the caravan's occupants out while the third tore through the wagon's chests. When Dunk saw the largest bandit yank a young woman to her knees as she clawed at his legs, Dunk's blood surged hot while she readied her sword and her shield. Arlan of Pennytree had told her the knight's vows like he'd taught her her prayers to the Seven - let me be a knight, she thought, even just this once.
The battle did not take long. These bandits had outfitted themselves with stolen armor and stolen weapons, but both their armor and their fighting had obvious cracks in it, and they hadn't been expecting a madwoman on a destrier to join the fray, cutting one bandit down on her first charge. Dunk sustained only one injury - a shallow slice down the side of her leg when she heard a high voice calling "behind you!" and lost her sight on the second bandit she'd been fighting. As she sent her sword into his neck, she whirled on her horse to see Egg charging up behind her, pointing at the third bandit escaping into the woods.
"I thought I told you to stay back!" Dunk said when Egg finally met up with them.
"I thought he was going to charge you," Egg said ruefully. Then her face broke into a smile. "I saw you out there. Like a real knight."
"I'm not a knight," Dunk replied, trying not to let the reminder sting. "But I'll be as close as a woman can." This is all I know how to be. All I ever want to be.
The girl looked her over once, then nodded. "So if you're not a ser," he said, "are you my lady?"
"Gods, no," she said, laughing. "Dunk is fine."
The girl smiled then. "That's all right, too," she said. "If you'll be Dunk the knight, I'll be Egg your squire."
The merchants in the wagon turned out to be puppeteers, with chests filled with brilliantly-painted puppets and backdrops painted on Dornish silks. They'd come from Sunspear and worked their way up and down the kingdoms, but they hadn't the coin to pay for a guard no matter how treacherous the road was. "We'll stay with you, Egg and I, if you'll let us share your food and fire," Dunk said, scouring her sword as the puppeteers set up camp.
"We're bound for Oldtown," Egg interjected, her arms crossed.
The head puppeteer glanced at Egg briefly, her eyebrows raised, before turning back to Dunk. "You have yourself a deal," the head puppeteer said. "After Ashford Meadow, we'll follow the Mander. You'll be in Oldtown before long, young one," she added to Egg, turning away from them both when the young woman - Tanselle Too-Tall, she'd called herself to Dunk, the dark-haired girl who'd tried to fight off the bandits with her fingernails - called her to help her fix the dragon puppet.
While the puppeteers busied themselves, Egg pulled up beside Dunk and tugged her sleeve. "We're stopping in Ashford," she said.
"Aye?" Dunk replied, only half-listening.
Egg's face seemed paler in the rising moonlight. "We can't go to Ashford," she whispered urgently.
That startled Dunk enough to tug too hard on the saddle cinch; when Thunder bristled, she patted him to calmness again while she frowned at Egg. "Why not go to Ashford? There's work to be had, prizes to be won." Dunk tried to sound more confident than she felt. People might never call her ser if they could see her face, but the commons loved a mystery knight, and if she could just win a couple of tilts or a good melee she'd be set for a year. Just until I can figure out what to do next. The puppeteers might be willing to have them for now, but she didn't know how long they'd keep them, no matter how strong and cheap her sword was.
"Because - " she stopped. "Never mind."
Dunk knelt in the grass beside her. People never quite knew what to say when she loomed over them. "Because what?" she asked. "You don't have to hide it from me. Who am I going to tell, Egg?"
Egg squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, then everything in her seemed to loosen like a puppet with slack strings. "My - betrothed will be there," she said. "I can't let him find me."
"Betrothed?" Who betrothed a girl so young, except the highborns and the folk with more money than Dunk would ever see?
Egg worried her lip, glancing down and back up. "Well, he isn't really," she said. "But he says he's going to wed me one day. He...he came into my room at night and told me so, that my maidenhead will be his one day and it doesn't matter what I say because I belong to him." Egg's voice had started trembling, but when she spoke again she had new steel in it. "But I don't belong to him, I don't, and I never will. So I left." She stared in Dunk's eyes, unblinking. "Are you going to send me away?"
Dunk nodded slowly as the thought rang in her head, thinking of another girl, long ago. It had taken Arlan of Pennytree a whole month to realize that the big rough boy he'd found in Flea Bottom was really a big rough girl. "The road is no place for a maid, and the sooner you're set and settled the better," he'd said when he found out, and nearly every day after that for years. But he never did find a place for Dunk. Instead he gave her mail to scour and saddles to shine and sacks to pack, worn sets of breeches and lessons with sword and dagger - "to defend your honor," he'd put it, but part of her thought he just wanted someone to teach. If other knights japed about Ser Arlan's girl servant in boy's clothes, Ser Arlan would shrug and say, "She's cheaper than a squire." But he didn't mean that, deep down. He could have left me by the side of the road, he could have left me trapped in Flea Bottom. He didn't. And Dunk would not leave this girl behind, either.
Dunk was careful not to touch Egg as she got up, though something in her wanted to pull Egg into the fiercest hug she could. Egg seemed to appreciate the slight distance.
"It makes no matter to me who you are," Dunk said, sitting up straighter to meet Egg's eyes. "Now. You said you don't know how to use a knife?"
Egg bounced on her feet, her energy quickly returned. "Are you going to teach me?" she said eagerly.
"To defend your honor," Dunk said, nodding as Egg pulled the knife from her belt. "Now, let's work on your grip first."
At first, Dunk assumed the extra guards in orange-and-white livery on the road as they neared Ashford Meadow were for the bandits. As the caravan approached the tourney field and Dunk saw Egg's face grow pale, she wondered otherwise. The uneasiness came back into Dunk's stomach again as the puppeteers, Dunk, and Egg halted when the guards approached.
"We're looking for a girl," the burliest one said, his broken teeth showing as he spoke. "Eight years old or thereabouts, blonde, small."
Dunk's throat went dry, but Tanselle laughed and shrugged her shoulders. "There are many girls like that in these kingdoms," she said, unaffected as if they spoke of the weather. "What's this one done?"
The guard looked irritated as he looked back at her, but only as a horse might be irritated at a fly. "She took off with some of m'lord's silver and m'lord wants her back bad. Unharmed, you see, for questioning her himself."
"This is all our company," Tanselle's uncle Deryn told the guard. "We've been together since Sunspear."
The guard fixed his narrowed eyes over at Dunk and Egg. "These two don't look Dornish."
"We're of the marches, ser," Egg said quickly, her voice gone lower and thicker in what Dunk thought was a rough approximation of her own voice. "My sister's the best sword in the Red Mountains. Where else but Dorne do you find women with swords?"
The guard barked a laugh at that and stepped back. "You're not in Dorne now, boy," he said, "so I suggest you and your sister mind your tongues." He looked sideways at Dunk. "If she has a tongue, that is."
"We'll have no trouble here," Dunk said, her voice coming back croakily.
"You better not," he said, and let the group through.
But Dunk couldn't help but notice how Egg's hands trembled on Sweetfoot's reins.
The puppeteers set up camp among the crowds of merchants at the edge of the field, just on the outskirts of the dazzling silken tents of the knights and lords come together for the tourney. They'd found a choice spot, with a stall selling armor on one side and a stall with roasted meats on the other, so that Dunk's mouth watered every time she breathed in the warm spring air. Still, she glanced over wistfully at the jousting area just visible over the sea of silk. Don't spoil your luck, she thought to herself - the puppeteers had been good and generous company, and it would do Egg no good if Dunk attracted attention, and she knew in her heart of hearts that this grand company would have little and less wish to include a woman in their ranks...but she couldn't help the sting at the dream so close to her and still so out of reach.
Egg had disappeared into the caravan after tending to Sweetfoot, and Dunk ducked her head inside to find her curled in a ball in the midst of half-open trunks of puppets. "The first show's starting," she said. "Why don't you come out and watch?" They'd have to talk about the guard's words sometime, but Egg looked so jittery that Dunk felt bad about questioning her. Maybe the show would put her a little at ease.
Egg shook her head. "Did you see the pavilions?"
"Aye," Dunk said, "what about them?" Dunk didn't know all the houses on the field, but even she couldn't mistake the green and gold rose of the Tyrells or the black and yellow stag of the Baratheons among the pennants near the jousting field. Even the royal house had a flag there, the snapping wind making the red dragon snarl - she'd heard rumors of princes come to joust and princesses come to keep company with the queen of love and beauty, though Dunk had seen none of them yet. Staying up in the castle, most like, Marya the lead puppeteer told Dunk, and they say the oldest and youngest princess are both ill as dogs, poor things.
"I can't stay," Egg said, gripping her hands tightly on her knees. "Dunk, please, we have to get out of here."
It took some doing for Dunk to maneuver her bulk into the caravan, but she managed to squeeze up right to Egg. No point in them talking loud enough for others to overhear, not about this. "Earlier, with the guard -"
"I didn't steal any silver. It's a lie, a stupid lie." she snapped, then dropped her head and looked abashed. "I'm sorry."
"I know it's a lie," Dunk said. "They don't ask for silver thieves unharmed. But they were looking for you, and they wanted you bad enough to make up a story. Your betrothed - not-betrothed - who is he?"
Egg shook her head, her hand loosening on her knees. "You said I could stay," she said.
That's not an answer, Dunk thought, but in a way it was. Whoever it was that Egg was running from - and he had to be a highborn indeed - Egg needed Dunk to get away. In the name of the Maiden, I charge you to defend all women, Arlan of Pennytree had recited to her. But then, Dunk had spent enough days in the company of tavern maids and innkeeps on the road to know how many knights never kept that vow.
"Pack what you need," Dunk said. "I'll tell Tanselle we'll meet up again after the tourney. We'll keep away, for now."
The answer came to Dunk on the third day of the tourney, mounted on a black stallion, his hair gleaming like his sword in the moonlight.
"You might have outsmarted Daeron, little sister," he said, "but did you really think I wouldn't find you?"
"I'll die first," Egg snarled at him. Dunk had never seen her so fierce, both of her hands on her knife and pointed at the man - the prince, Dunk realized with a plummet of dread. Egg stepped carefully back, planting her feet the way Dunk had taught her. "I mean it, Aerion."
"Come now, Aegea," he said lazily, "you know your courtesies better than that. You should be glad I'm keeping your little adventure quiet the way Father and Baelor wanted us to. I've come to rescue you, just as soon as I've disposed of this..." he glanced over at Dunk, his lip curling, "...creature."
"I'm her sworn sword," Dunk said to him, anger swelling inside her.
The prince only laughed as he unsheathed his sword. "Well, come test your mettle, ser. Come face the dragon."
There was no time to saddle Thunder - Dunk threw herself on the warhorse's back just as Aerion charged. She only narrowly escaped the slice of his sword whooshing past her head as she got her seat. "Egg, go!" she shouted, stony resolve filling her as she readied her sword and shield. She knew how this ended - she had no armor, no saddle, no chance. But she could keep him busy long enough for Egg to get away. Gods have mercy on her, she thought as the prince whirled for another attack. When she clashed her sword against his, the thought rang through her bones.
The prince toyed with her, she realized before long. He had one chance to cut Dunk's throat and instead sent his sword to her side, nearly making her drop her shield; Dunk missed one attack and he stabbed at Thunder, making the horse rear. She and Thunder bled, but not deep enough to kill them even as every nerve in her body sang in pain. His overconfidence was her chance. If I can just make him fall...
On his next pass, he leaned over in the saddle, his feet not set right in the stirrups. Dunk took a deep breath and threw herself into him hard.
They fell together as Dunk wrestled them both to the ground, narrowly missing the hooves of their horses. Here his breath had been knocked out, she could pin him down and wrench his helmet off, raining blows on his head - the kind of brawling she'd done in Flea Bottom. Blood filled her mouth - just keep him down for a while, just let Egg - Egg?
"EGG, GO!" she screamed. Why hadn't she gone? Why was she -
Aerion took advantage of the distraction to flip them, his hands grasping around her throat. Dunk saw stars as her vision started to black out -
And then her breath came back, and the pressure let off, and Aerion fell to the ground beside her. In his belly, in a chink in his armor, Egg's knife stuck out while the girl knelt beside Dunk and took gasping breaths.
"He was going to kill you," she said hoarsely. "I didn't mean - I killed him."
But he was not dead, not yet. And Dunk knew no one stood as accursed as the kinslayer. You are her sword, and you can do her this kindness. "No," Dunk said, drawing her sword against his throat. "I did."
Prince Baelor met her in the morning, with Egg - Princess Aegea - by his side.
"If it had been my brother who found you, you would be dead," the prince said, slow and measured as a sept's bell on a feast day. "Someone must pay the price for a prince's murder and a princess' disappearance. If he finds out what transpired here, there is no power in the world that will save you, not even mine." He paused, letting them both take his words in. He had seen the body, he knew full well which wound had killed Aerion, and who dealt it. He kept Dunk's life to protect his niece's reputation, Dunk knew, and Dunk suppressed a shiver at how light her head now hung on her shoulders. "We will say bandits took Aegea and killed Aerion, and that you saved her - but you are sworn to us."
"I'm your sword," Dunk replied, the only vow she could make. She knelt in blood-spattered roughspun and the princess - the princess, Dunk would have such a hard time thinking of her as that - stood in silks, but when Egg lifted Dunk to her feet, it felt right.
"Not just my sword," she said, new steel in her voice, sharp as her knife. Then she smiled, for the first time since the night before. "My knight."