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The trek from the smithy towards camp was an exercise in misery. Thick mud squelched under his boots, and with each step Dunk felt he was sinking closer to his grave.
Raymun had offered him a resting place in the Fossoway tent, but Dunk could not bear to rely further on his kindness. He would feel more comfortable under the stars, anyway, but even those were denied him. The rain had ceased, but the sky above remained a hopeless sheet of grey-black nothingness. Not even a falling star could help my luck this night.
Dunk slumped to the ground beneath his old elm, letting the last of the leftover rainfall drip onto his back, and felt utterly alone. He came to Ashford alone, and if he could not find six men to champion him by dawn, he would die alone. Or at least lose hand and foot, and a knight without those was no knight at all. Not even Egg, princeling that he was, would be able to do anything about it.
Dunk pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes to keep tears from spilling out. Crying’s no use for a knight, he heard Ser Arlan say. But Dunk did not feel like a knight now.
“Ser Duncan. I thought I might find you here.”
Dunk looked up and blinked away the spots in his vision. A slender figure in dark clothes stood at the edge of the clearing. The man lowered the hood of his cloak. Even in the dim lantern-light, Dunk easily made out his face, with the greying beard and crooked nose that only served to accentuate his stately features.
“Your Grace,” Dunk gasped. He nearly slipped in the mud as he scrambled to kneel, but was stayed by Prince Baelor’s hand. The prince approached and entered the shade of the tree.
“May I?”
Dunk hesitated. He wasn’t certain about the idea of the prince soiling his fine tunic to sit with him in the muck, but if a prince wanted to sit where he pleased, what rights did a hedge knight have to refuse him? He nodded, and Baelor lowered himself onto one of the elm’s sturdy roots.
“Aegon told me where you made camp. I must admit, though I knew full well you were a hedge knight, seeing it for myself… the thought of him sleeping out here humors me.” Were it any other man, Dunk might have assumed he was being mocked, but the prince’s voice was nothing but genuine.
“How is the lad?” Dunk asked, though he knew full well in that moment Egg was likely barging into every pavilion on the meadow. The image of the young prince gathering all of his influence just for him threatened to bring forth tears again. He swallowed them.
“Just as restless as everyone else, I imagine,” Baelor said with a knowing look. “I hear he still means to squire for you on the morn.”
“He told you?”
“Secrets are not so easily kept within a castle, ser. You would be surprised how easily a sound is carried through the stone.” He sighed, settling against the tree. “He is quite fond of you, you know.”
“I do know,” Dunk said without hesitation. “And I, him. I meant what I said, Your Grace. He’s a good boy.”
“Indeed he is.”
Baelor produced a wineskin from beneath the folds of his cloak and took a sip before offering it to Dunk.
“I shouldn’t—“
“Please, ser. I brought more than I would deign to drink, and I shan’t waste Lord Ashford’s good wine. You need it more than I, besides.”
Dunk accepted the wineskin. They had shared the same wine together earlier in the lord’s chambers, but there was something more intimate in this, passing a shared vessel back and forth like friends or brothers. Dunk noticed the prince watching him as he drank and he became self-conscious, wiping a stray drop from his chin.
He wasn’t sure if it was the wine, but the prince was a good deal more relaxed than Dunk had ever seen him. The collar of his tunic had come slightly undone, exposing his throat and the sparse silvery hairs at the top of his chest. His hands were naked, free of the signet rings that marked his authority, and streaked with dirt. Were it not for the natural dignity he carried himself with, Dunk thought it possible to mistake the man for another hedge knight.
It was then that the absurdity of the moment struck him. He might be dead in a few short hours, and he was sitting under a tree drinking with the heir to the throne. Dunk could not help but laugh.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, Your Grace,” Dunk said, embarrassed. “It’s just—well, this is all ridiculous, this whole business. Not that I don’t understand the weight of it, mind, the politics and all, but it’s just that… only… never mind.” Dunk slouched, defeated by his own ineloquence, and was thankful for the darkness in hiding his reddening face.
He was saved by a small miracle. Prince Baelor laughed, too—a vibrant, real laugh that seemed to fill the clearing and Dunk’s heart both. It reached the fine creases around his eyes and brightened the whole of his countenance. He had never looked less, and more, like a prince, Dunk thought.
Dunk felt a warmth growing at the root of him, and he struggled to name the source of it. It couldn’t yet be the wine. Pride, he decided. Aye, pride it must be, for it is only natural to feel proud when you’ve made a prince laugh. Ser Arlan would scarce believe it. The old man may have broken four lances against the Prince of Dragonstone, but Dunk had made him laugh, and he knew which was the greater feat.
He thought the prince might have come to give advice, perhaps talk of strategy for the coming trial, but it seemed he was content to sit quietly in his presence. Dunk was less comfortable. Each second of silence that passed was one moment less of night, and of life.
A question tumbled from his mouth, desperate to fill the cold air. “Do you have dreams, too, Your Grace?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Baelor tilted his head, amused. “But I suppose you mean like those of my nephew.”
“Aye. He came to me earlier tonight.” As the words left his lips he realized it might have been foolish, divulging Daeron’s sneaking about, but in the same instant decided it didn’t matter. “He said he dreamed of me. That he saw a great dragon atop of me, and—“
Baelor silenced him with a wave of his hand. “Do not trouble yourself. It is true that our dreams sometimes offer prophecy, but they are often only shadows of truth. Flailing at the mind’s shadows is a quick road to madness.” A sad look passed over his face. “Some maesters spend entire lifetimes sifting through the symbols of dreams. It is a task best left to wiser men than we.”
“I cannot dream there are many men wiser than you,” Dunk said. Baelor smiled softly at that, and the sight of it caused such a sudden ache in Dunk’s chest that he averted his gaze.
“You are young, ser, with a long road ahead of you. You’ve many men left to meet.“
He’s just saying that to make me feel better. Yet, Dunk was surprised at the comfort the words granted him. If Prince Baelor believed he would have many travels to come, then perhaps it would be so.
“Forgive my saying, if this sounds insolent to a prince’s ear,“ he said, gripped by a sudden boldness, “but I wish I could know you better. Were the world no bigger than this little camp, and you were not a prince, I should like to think we could be friends. Maybe that is foolish of me.”
Baelor smiled again, a gleam in the darkness. “Ser Duncan, if that makes you a fool, then we are all fools.”
Dunk looked at Prince Baelor, who had closed his eyes, the slight smile still lingering on his lips. He had never seen him like this, peaceful and still, almost sleeping. He thought about Tanselle the puppet-girl, her pretty hands and kind face, and felt a pang of longing. All men are fools and all men are knights.
Baelor hummed in agreement and Dunk flushed, realizing he had spoken aloud. “It is only a line from the puppet show, Your Grace.”
“The puppets have the right of it, I say. As did yourself, earlier,” Baelor replied. “It is ridiculous, this business. This whole world is a foolish one. It is all we knights can do to hold onto the oaths we have made, and the love that binds us to those we serve.”
Dunk did not know what to say to that. The truth of it pressed on his heart. For the first time since laying the old man to rest, he felt utterly understood.
The air felt stiff, suddenly. He thought about making a joke, something about the part of the puppeteer’s line he had left out, but for some reason the idea of broaching the subject of women with the prince made him queasy. Instead, he stumbled into an altogether opposite topic.
“Will you be at the trial, Your Grace? Watching, I mean? Assuming I can gather my men.” Daeron had said that Aerion would fight with his father and the Kingsguard, but that only made six. Aerion could get his seventh from anywhere, but the thought of some familial duty requiring the eldest prince to take up arms against him was almost too much for Dunk to bear.
Baelor said nothing, only turned to face him. The soft glow of the dying lantern reflected in his queer mismatched eyes, one dark as the elm and one violet like a brewing storm, and he had a look like he was searching for something.
“I wish you luck, Ser Duncan,” he said, finally. Though his question was not answered, a wave of relief washed over Dunk all the same.
“You have been kind to me, Your Grace. I know not how to thank you.”
“You have already repaid me in fine company, I should think.” Baelor placed a hand on Dunk’s shoulder. Dunk could taste the wine on the prince’s breath and finally noticed, with some terror, the closeness between them.
The prince observed him tense under his touch, but made no remark. A long and heavy silence passed between them. Then he drew back and it was gone, quicker than it came, like a cloud passing before the sun.
Baelor rose to his feet. “Rest, Ser Duncan,” he said. “You will need it, come dawn.”
As if his command had some magic in it, Dunk felt his eyelids grow heavy with exhaustion. The last thing he remembered before sleep took him was the gentle touch of the prince’s hand upon his cheek. He did not know, when he awoke, if he had dreamed it.