Chapter Text
Dunk woke with a start, his heart hammering rabbit-quick in his chest. HIs hands scrabbled for purchase against the roughened earth, and for a blurred moment he was on the battlefield still, his sword gone somewhere out of reach, the drumming of horse hooves all around him; the cry of carrion birds overhead circling low, and his doom on the horizon. He blinked furiously, before his hand went to his side, fingers probing with some sadistic curiosity at the wound he knew would be there – deep stabbing into his gut, the wild-eyed prince above him and spit and blood and dirt on his face – and found nothing. He sat upright, frowning as he patted all down down his side. The sharp and unmistakable pain of his wounds was now fading, like dew against the heat of the morning sun. He pulled at the fabric of his tunic clumsily, until he could see with his own eyes the hale and unblemished flesh of his torso. He blinked, blinked again, hard. It was as though he was seeing double for a moment: his stomach with a gaping, bloody wound; his stomach pale and unscarred, freckles dotted lazily across his skin and nothing but the markings of sleep upon him.
Dunk turned on his side, and promptly threw up.
Once he had come back to himself, washing out his mouth with some watered down wine and retching into some poor patch of grass, he took stock. Rain was pattering down on the leaves of the oak tree overhead, and there were only a few droplets who made it through the land on him, his hair, his face, their tiny fingers running down below the seam of his collar and pooling on his skin. The air was crisp, and there was a fog rolling in from the plains. He had never had a dream so vivid as the one from that night. His dreams were usually fanciful things, Ser Arlan turned into a bird, himself on a horse that had the strength and the speed of a hundred steeds, a hundred honey cakes all for him; all silly imaginings. This was– it was as though he’d been on the field itself, his feet steeped in the mud, the noise of battle so loud that it had become a ringing silence in his mind, and death chasing his steps at every turn.
Chestnut whickered from behind him, and he sighed, levering himself up on his arm and letting her push her nose gently into his chest.
“I know, girl,” he said, rubbing at her nose, the soft skin of her cheek. “You must be pretty worried too, hm? What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
“My father says that talking to horses is the pastime of madmen,” piped up a small voice from behind him. Dunk turned with a start; Egg was staring up at him, his eyes huge and pale in his face.
“Your father says a lot of things,” he replied, shortly.
“I’m sorry ser, truly.” Egg shook his head; it was odd now, to look at him and not see an impudent young boy– or to see a lad and at the same time, a prince. A prince! Dunk thought. Tell that to anyone who’d seen Egg running around barefoot in the mud, rolling around like a joyful piglet.
“It’s alright lad,” he said, for the dream was still stuck like a burr in his throat, the shrieking cry of his young voice raised in desperation and fear, Dunk’s face pressed into the wet earth like a corpse. He blinked. “No harm done now, anyway. All’s left to do is to– well. Battle your family, I suppose.”
“You’ll win,” Egg said. He frowned, looking up at him, before shielding his eyes against the sparse morning sun. “Of course you will, ser. You’re a great knight.”
“I’m glad you think so lad,” Dunk laid his palm across his head, scrubbing at him like you might a small dog. “Of course, I’m only going to get to the trial at all by mustering up six men to fight alongside me– and I don’t know how I’ll be doing that.”
Egg blinked where the rain kept running into his eyes.
“Oh! I thought that–” he turned, spinning around on his heels before raising his hands to his mouth. “Ser? Ser, where are you?”
“Sorry, sorry!” A cloaked man came out then from the bushes, tucking himself back into his pants. “Had to piss– you know how it is when lady nature calls. Ser Duncan!”
“Raymun,” Dunk said, and clasped hands with him firmly. “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m carrying a message from my cousin,” he said, brightly; his grin was a balm to Dunk’s quickly fraying spirit. “He’s to take up arms with you at the trial– and he’ll be able to muster up a few men, so he says.”
A memory: betrayal, a sneer; one of their number lost and a braying of horns as the great gates opened.
“D’you–” Dunk hesitated. “D’you trust your cousin, Raymun?”
“‘Course I do!” He paused, then wincingly continued. “I mean– I sort of do. As in, I’d like to. He’s– a bit of a wanker really but he’s honourable as they come.”
“So he wouldn’t leave us all in exchange for,” the echoing voice across a fog-laden field, stomach dropping and dread filling his chest; he blinked effortfully back into the present, rain on his hands, the sun behind grey and white clouds; the breeze, rustling at the leaves. “A lordship?”
Raymun chewed at his lip. His eyes darted back and forth, at Dunk, at Egg, the sky, the ground.
“Gods be good, he would do that,” he burst out, finally. “Seven hells– what was I thinking! It would be just like him, chasing along some title as if he’s just some dog that can be bought.”
“Peace,” Dunk said, sheepish now; what was he doing, placing such stock in a strange dream? “I didn’t mean to question your cousin's honour like that– I suppose I just have a funny feeling about all this.”
“It’s fair enough, Ser Duncan,” said Egg. “There are always tales that warn of watching for betrayal at your lowest moments.”
“And this is a ‘lowest moment’ for me, is it Egg?” He said it chidingly, but Egg fixed him with a look so like his uncle, and shrugged. Dunk sighed. It was, he could admit, certainly a situation he had never thought to find himself in before. “Right. Well– I suppose we’d better go find some real allies then.”
As they gathered men, good men, Dunk could not help but feel that he had somehow taken this path before, that he was fitting his feet into the indented footprints of a journey once treaded, one that lay somewhere in his periphery, pale hands cupped over his eyes and guiding his steps. He could barely pay attention as Ser Beesbury, Rhysling, Hardying, each swore to ride alongside him; not from any true loyalty to his own cause of course, but each with their own grudges, against the young prince, against the crown itself. Some of the talk bordered on treasonous, and Dunk closed his ears to it, still pondering upon the meaning of his strange dream.
It was only upon the arrival of Lord Lyonel Baratheon that Dunk straightened once more, coming back into the world through the roaring buzzing in his ears. His shield was a firm pressure against his arm, the weight of his sword comforting at his hip. Lyonel grinned like an animal baring its white teeth, slavering and vicious; it seemed that he carried the spirit of his dancing with him always, whirling motion, bloodthirst and passion.
He felt only that they’d taken a step wrong— or a step off — the path once. As Ser Steffon rode up to join their party, Egg scowled at him. Dunk had spoken to him, only sparsely about his dream. Egg, of course, had immediately believed him wholeheartedly.
”My brothers all dream,” he’d said, matter-of-factly, as he swung his dagger through the air. Where he’d gotten that from, Dunk had no idea. “Dragon-dreams, they call them. Aerion dreams all the time that he’s a dragon, though I don’t know whether that’s a real dream or just his. Daeron sees visions— as you know.”
His arm laid flat over his throat, eyes staring up at him from a hollowed face, all his edges dulled from years of ale and wine and hopeless despair.
“I know,” he said, shortly. He placed little stock in such portentous dreams, yet he recalled the cadence of Daeron’s low voice, the chord it had struck through the air and into the center of him, the thrumming of something that was true; a song that his body knew.
“I don’t think you’re mad, ser,” said Egg, and he raised his small hand to pat it against Dunk’s arm. “At least, not yet.”
”Thank you Egg,” he replied. It would have been condescending from anyone else, but he could only smile at the ringing sincerity in his voice. “I’ll remember that.”
Thus, when Raymun pulled his cousin to the side of their party and they all pretended not to listen, Dunk was not surprised when their voices grew louder and louder, until Ser Steffon threw up his hand and shoved Raymun to the side.
“And don’t think you’re coming home with me,” he shouted behind him, as he led his horse in a circle, sneering at Dunk as he passed. “Good luck finding anyone else.” He raised his voice as he left, gesturing to the remaining knights sat silently upon their steeds. “And if you all knew any better you’d leave him too.”
They were all silent as he led his horse in a quick clip away from them.
”Dickhead,” Ser Rhysling said, leaning to the side of his steed and hawking spit into the dirt. “The gods will remember his cowardice.”
”That’s good,” Dunk said, only a little miserably. “But what will I do?”
”You have me, Ser Duncan!” Raymun puffed up his chest, hand on the hilt of his sword. “I will fight by your side.”
“But—“ a kneeling figure, the sword of a great stag, the looming presence of the warrior like a great shadow behind Dunk’s back. He swallowed, and nodded his head.
It all felt a blur as the herald called, the fog laden field, the young prince’s helm all twisted iron and his pinched and sneering face, Lord Baratheon dismounting and laying his sword gently upon Raymun’s shoulders, as Dunk called desperately for someone— anyone— to assist him. Somehow, he knew that no-one would rise to his call. His feet were treading steadily now upon the path, bending and weaving inexorably in front of him. He tried desperately to move in a different direction, any direction; he knew where this path would lead him; sloping down and down past death and suffering; grief and anger and helplessness caught deep in his chest, deeper than any wound; the time for any deviation had passed, he could feel it, he knew, knew it like he knew his bones within his flesh; he could not describe his knowing but could only be staunch in how real it felt in his heart, down to the marrow of him. Vines growing slowly up a great oak tree; the tangled roots underneath the great expanse of a forest; the rustle of leaves in the wind; the scent of clean water and new growth thick in his throat; the cry of birds; the sun reaching its hands desperately through the gaps in the overgrowth; the dark and fertile mulch of the soil. He was an ant marching determinedly to a presupposed destination; he was the hawk circling overhead eyes fixed upon its prey; he was the deer, utterly still and ears pricked against the wind.
Prince Baelor rose; and like the groaning of a great tree unearthed in a storm; the cry of a stag, its crowned head raised in agony and fear; a dragon beating its great wings overhead; he fell.
Dunk found himself babbling as the maesters and the Kingsguard rushed to his side, his hand under the dead weight of Prince Baelor’s shoulder, the other cupped behind his— behind where his skull should be and where it ended; the cracking of egg shells against a hot iron pan, the sizzling popping of the pooling white and orange and the strange viscous pulp laid gently in his palms; the prince’s eyes, staring up unseeing at the sky, glass marbles—
“Why this again,” Dunk said, his body curving itself over the prince’s as though there was a taut string running through his stomach down toward the prince’s own heart, “please gods no, not this again, no, no—“
Not—
Again—
The rustling of the leaves—
The roots rising—
A seed, a tree, a branching outline across the sky—
A path stretching beneath his feet, a ribbon flickering onward into the distance—
Dunk woke with a start. The oak tree shivered above him. He rolled over and vomited, helplessly, into the grass.