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They watch, chests heaving with outrage and stomachs churning with a calcifying grudge, as Ser Steffon Fossoway crosses the muddy stretch to join the accusers.
Rafe's eye twitches. She curses, spits in the mud, and grips the hilt of her sword in an effort to keep herself from doing something impulsive. Like running up behind the spineless ogre and stabbing him in the back, preferably severing the vertebrae to ensure he never fucks over another man again.
Fucking knights. Fucking men. All that blubbering about oaths and titles, and what good is it for? Dunk, who isn't even a knight, has more honor in his fucking empty head than any of these men put together. Excepting the Targeryen with unusually kind eyes—how did a man like that look kind after all he's lived through?—and the Baratheon who won't stop grinning at her like they're in on a joke together. And looking at Dunk like he fucking hung the fucking moon in the fucking sky, but that's besides the point.
Five. They're down to five champions.
Raymun demands to be knighted. Dunk freezes—because he doesn't know the words and he can't, anyway—but Baratheon has him. Which is strange, because Rafe has always told Dunk lords were never half as noble as the peasants who sheltered them from the wind and rain while on the road. They never cared, never did their fucking duty—or else the world be a slightly less fucked place. But Lyonel the Stag seems determined to prove her wrong, which—
He laughs when she calls him a cunt, jeers when she spits at his feet, and insists she dance with him and Dunk when he's deep in his cups. She supposes, begrudgingly, he isn't that bad for a lord.
More importantly, he hasn't gone blabbering to anyone. About the fact that she's not a youth accompanying Ser Duncan the Tall but a woman in disguise. With her hair sawn off near her ears and dirt smudged purposefully all over her face, she resembles many peasant youths they've crossed on the road since following Arlan out of Flea Bottom. Her armor is rough, her cloak worn, but it's enough to hide from most cursory glances.
Women may be punished for impersonating men if the wrong man catches them. She would have rather impersonated a knight—since Dunk isn't so good at it and one of them ought to be—but she would be punished twofold for impersonating a man and a highborn. So she reluctantly settled for the lesser crime.
Egg commended her on the choice after inquiring about her status as a woman disguised on the road. She wanted to box his ears, convinced he was making fun of her. Now, given that he's a prince, she supposes he may have been somewhat serious.
But—
Dunk needs a seventh champion. Or he'll forfeit the trial, and he'll lose his leg and hand, and then she'll have to drag him around in a cart for rest of their sorry fucking lives.
Not on her watch. Not while she's still kicking. Not while Dunk's got that wounded, earnest look in his face that Arlan and Flea Bottom both should have beaten out of him but never managed to.
Rafe turns to Lyonel just as Raymun rises from his kneel. Dunk is by the gate on horseback, opposite the Targaryen who accused him.
From here, Rafe can see the dragon's mane smelted into Aerion's armor. She remembers the way he drove his lance into the horse during the tourney. Not to win, but for the sake of being cruel. Because he could.
Like he'd broken the puppeteer's fingers because he could. Accused Dunk because he could.
If there ever was a man who deserved to be called a cunt and dragged down into the mud for it, it was Prince Aerion Targaryen.
“Knight me,” Rafe says. Her voice comes out hard and low.
Lyonel's eyebrows arch in surprise as he turns to face her. He is truly shocked, she realizes—but only for a moment. Grave understanding settles over him briefly before he flashes her a resigned smile. “Don't suppose I could talk you out of it?”
“No.” The scar slashed across her throat burns, the sensation a brief flare before it dissipates.
Rafe fears neither discovery nor death. Even though fear is as natural to any living thing as breathing, though it will come to her once she swings up on horseback and pulls her sword from its sheath, the real fear is being alone. To be in a world without Dunk, who has been by her side since she was old enough to know and remember what it was to be hungry.
Lyonel bids her to kneel.
Rafe swallows, tasting copper in the back of her throat, and sinks to one knee.
They're fucked. Royally, painfully fucked. There's blood everywhere, horses shrieking in pain or shock, soil and blood and viscera in her nostrils like she's face-down in the mud instead of heaving her sword towards Steffon the Applefucker, determined to drive it into him.
How dare he, how dare he. She'll fucking gut him, groin to sternum, press his face into the mud with the heel of her boot. Two of their champions are dead—fuck, she forgot their names already—and the accusers keep coming. Those damned, infernal, ferocious Targaryens and their fucking Kingsguard and their fucking—
Adrenaline and rage propels Rafe forward. She's smaller and slighter than every other man in the mud right now, but she knows about a man's center of gravity, where to hit them to knock them off balance. And, of course, it helps if you take out their legs. So she bashes him with her sword, stuns him with a hard blow against the shield that makes her own teeth rattle before she swings, aiming for the soft part behind the knee. Even with armor, it's a vulnerable spot—a favorite of expert archers', so she's been told—and the ensuing screech of pain as Steffon the Applefucker collapses into a bloody heap in the mud is music to her hears.
Rafe means to finish him off. She should—he deserves it. But then she hears Egg's voice; the sound cuts across the clearing, through the haze of blood and battle, allowing for one cold, horrible moment of clarity.
“Get up, Ser!” Egg shouts from the stands.
Rafe frowns. He looks so small up there.
“Get up, Ser!”
Rafe's gaze falls to the target of his calls. For a moment, she cannot reconcile the sight that meets her eyes. It takes her several blinks and harsh exhales to understand that she is seeing Dunk on the ground, struggling to move.
For a horrible moment, Rafe's world narrows to a single point. Everything else falls away. There's only her best friend, that stupid, block-headed boy who thought his mother would come back for him even though he knew she was dead—there's only the one person in the world she knows without a doubt who she can count on, who has counted on her since the day they met in Flea Bottom.
He has been battered and bloodied. He looks close to death.
The prince—fucking Aerion Targaryen—approaches, looking not too pretty himself anymore. Whatever Dunk managed to do to him, Aerion took damage.
Rafe looks, and looks, and looks.
And then she moves. Abandoning Raymun's worthless cousin to the mud, possessed with a rage she has not known since a knife slashed across her throat in that dark alley with pigs snuffling and the stench of unwashed bodies making her choke, Rafe barrels towards him.
The sound she lets loose from her mouth comes from the throat, pulled deep from the diaphragm. It is not a battle-cry. It is not a taunt. It is a sound of agony. A promise to return the paint dealt a hundredfold, until every bit of it inside of her has been wrung out of the guilty party by spilling their blood on her sword.
If she looked up, she would see Egg's head whip to the side to look at her. If she looked up, she would see Breakspear Targaryen's brow furrow before his eyes widened in realization. But she doesn't look up.
Rafe charges Aerion. Even though he sees her coming and plants his feet, the force of her crashing into him sends him stumbling backwards.
Even wounded, Aerion is a skilled fighter. But knights, as skilled and strong as they are, are taught patterns, formations, practiced movements. They fight like men trained to go to war. They do not fight like beggars who have tasted desperation every moment of their lives.
Rafe doesn't fight like a knight. She fights like a gutter rat, a street urchin, vicious and quick with the intent to leave a wreckage so gruesome behind no one will think of trying to take Dunk away from her again. Of trying to take her dream away—the one where she has a life worth living, doesn't end up in a pauper's grave or as a smear on the bottom of some fucking lord's boot, and has someone to share that triumph with, even if he is a fool—again.
The style of fighting throws Aerion. But he's quick, fuck him—quick in the head and on his feet, fuck, she hates him—and even though she's managed to stick him in the shoulder and the side with her blade, it doesn't feel any closer to a victory. So she changes tactics, channels Dunk as best she can, and launches herself at him. Tackles him, screeching through the sensation of his sword piercing her breast, tearing the flesh through the bindings and layers of cloth and leather as they collapse into a pile in the mud.
Rafe hits him with everything she can. The hilt of her sword, her elbows, tries to knee him in the groin and bangs it into his armor. She swears, a furious, wordless cry as she tries to clobber him to death with the blunt end of her weapon.
With his visor up, she can see his face. He is outraged, probably scandalized at having to actually fight to win his trial. Rafe doesn't care. He may be a prince—he may have never gone hungry once in his life or had to fight for the clothes on his back or sleep under an open sky because there was nowhere else to rest after wandering the road for hours searching for shelter in a storm—but he's never tasted desperation. Never known it. Never been driven by it.
But Rafe is distracted by her rage. A broken blade is driven into the soft tissue below her collar bone. Screams tear from her throat, the pain white-hot and bright as it stuns her. It only lasts an instant, but it's enough for Aerion to throw her off balance.
If she weren't fighting for her life—Dunk's life, their lives—Rafe would think it funny that a prince would be wrestling in the mud with a peasant. Lyonel would laugh, surely.
They both are beginning to flag. Trying to tear another man apart, clad in heavy armor, is tiring work. Rafe's speed begins to dwindle; Aerion's movements grow sloppier, less polished, turning from cruel to necessary.
His hand hooks in the rim of her helm, just beneath her chin. In retaliation for what is about to come, Rafe drives the fingers of his left hand into a puncture wound on his thigh, making him screech. His arm spasms; his fingers hook under the beaten, cheap iron and pull; in order to prevent her neck from being snapped at a bad angle, Rafe must allow her head to jerk in the same direction. The momentum of the tug pulls the helmet from her head, freeing her dark hair from its confines as it spills across her forehead and over her ears.
Rafe curses as her sword is knocked from her hand. She settles, then, for yanking her helmet back, meaning to smash Aerion's stupid, princely face in. But his stupid, princely, greedy fingers have clenched around the iron. He means to keep it from her—perhaps bash her face in with it.
Rafe spits at him, curses pouring from her mouth as he twists the broken blade embedded shallowly in her chest while she kicks the wound in his thigh.
“I'll kill you,” she rasps, voice ragged and strained, “I'll kill you, you fucking dragon cunt—”
Later, Lyonel will ask what could have possibly given her away considering that both she and the prince were locked in combat, desperate to tear apart the other. And she won't have an answer. Perhaps it's the proximity, perhaps it's her voice, perhaps the early morning sun hits her face just right. Who fucking cares? All that matters is that Aerion pauses, his steel-clad fingers locking tight around her throat as his nostrils flare and his eyes go so wide she hopes they roll out of their sockets.
“You,” he hisses. Disbelieving, outraged, probably—hopefully—insulted. “You're a—”
Rafe slams her forehead into the bridge of his nose. His cry and the warm, steady stream of blood now pouring down his face effectively cut him off.
She's about to lift her helm to smash him over the head, wanting to finish this once and for all, when someone comes by on horseback behind her, sword held aloft.
Rafe means to dodge. But, at that same moment, the bleeding prince beneath her bucks, moving her just enough so that the hilt of the sword connects with the back of her skull.
Rafe collapses into the mud, unconscious. The last thing she hears is Egg screaming her name.
When Rafe opens her eyes some hours later, it is not Dunk she sees. Nor is it Lyonel, or even Egg.
No. It's fucking Baelor Breakspear Targaryen.
“Fuck,” Rafe croaks, wincing as pain lances through her skull, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut.
Is this it? Is this the—
“I was informed by Lord Baratheon you can be quite charming despite having the manners of a wild boar,” is what he says to her, his tone both dry and gentle, making her crack her eyes open to ensure she isn't fucking dreaming. “It seems his description was apt.”
Rafe stares at him, helpless to do anything but say, “that fucking prick.”
Baelor laughs. He laughs, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
Fuck. Peasants aren't supposed to make princes laugh, are they? How much trouble is she in, exactly? Though she supposes, if he's to be her executioner, it'll be a sight friendlier than having to deal with fucking Aerion—
Fuck! She's speaking to the heir to the Iron Throne and hasn't even addressed him properly. She's alive, so that means... what?
What, exactly?
“Dunk,” she croaks, shifting on her cot. “Where's—” she winces, hating herself before she mumbles, “Y'r Gr'ce.”
Instead of informing her he's going to cut off her legs, ship her off to a place where girls who impersonate men are punished, or admonish her for her lack of respect and clear disdain for her betters, Baelor assures her that Dunk's wounds are being tended to, and—excepting any more Trials of Seven—he will live to see another day.
He also, with an air of both resignation and amusement, recounts how Lyonel Baratheon swore upon the graves of every man who died fighting in his service that the lord was not aware Rafe was a woman at the time of her being knighted, and requested leniency on her behalf—for what was more honorable than trying to save a man's life?
“He said that?” Rafe asks, a little stunned. She's going to have to thank him. How does one even thank a lord? It's not like she can ask Dunk; he knows even less than she does.
“Yes,” Baelor says. “He was... quite adamant on vouching for a pardon on your behalf.”
Oh. A pardon.
… but peasants didn't get pardons, did they?
Baelor's expression sobers. “Lyonel is a good man at heart. Though he prefers merrymaking to the machinations of his station, he can be quite shrewd—and convincing.”
Rafe swallows. “Will,” she clears her throat, “will Dunk and Egg get 'n trouble, Your Grace?”
Baelor blinks rapidly for a moment, then shakes his head. “No. After conferring with my brother and his son, we have decided... it is best to conceal your deception from the public.” He sighs. “To be not only humiliated by a peasant, but a peasant woman... Aerion's reputation would not recover.”
Rafe wrinkles her nose at that. The reputation of a prince isn't her problem, but highborn always think they have to do things to keep up the way of things, and if they don't, then everything will go tits-up. She thinks, to herself, it wouldn't be so bad if everyone knew a prince got beaten bloody by both a hedge knight and a peasant girl. But being alive and not immediately punished for her crimes will have to suffice.
It takes great effort, but Rafe doesn't comment on this.
Baelor's mouth twitches as if he can sense her thoughts. He probably can.
“You must know,” Baelor tells her, serious again, “that you cannot be pardoned a second time if you are caught impersonating a highborn man. Disguise yourself all you like, but there is only so much a man of my station can do about repeated offenses.”
Rafe wants to roll her eyes, settling for sighing instead. “I won't trick Lyonel into making me a knight again, Your Grace,” she says, even though they both know she did no such thing.
Baelor does smile at that.
It's disconcerting. All her life, any man with an ounce of power has lorded it over her. And not just her, but anyone within spitting distance, anyone who could be forced to bend the knee with their face in their dirt and told it was their place. And here this man sits, beside her cot on a creaking stool. He will inherit the throne one day—everyone says so—and Rafe, to her chagrin, is beginning to see why.
“Can I say somthin'?” she asks, thinking about all the times Dunk has bumbled through interactions in an attempt to prevent her from offending a present party.
Baelor nods, once, an eyebrow arched.
“You're not so bad, for a prince. Might even be a good king someday.”
Baelor looks at her for a long time. His face does something funny—creases, smooths over, and then he smiles. It's almost sad, but his eyes crinkle at the corners.
“Thank you, my lady,” he says at length.
Rafe snorts. “'m not a lady.”
“It is not as if I can call your Ser.”
If Dunk said that, she would've called him a cunt and laughed. But she can't exactly call the heir to the Iron Throne a cunt and laugh at him.
“No.” Rafe shrugs. “Suppose you can't.”
“It's good that you won't be a knight anymore,” Egg informs her over breakfast. “You couldn't pass as one anyway.”
“You little—” Rafe tears the hard crust of her still-warm bread and hurls it at him. Egg laughs, catching it in his hands before biting into it.
Breakfast, though punctuated with the occasional grunts and groans of pain, has been a lively affair. Dunk looks half-dead, one eye swollen shut while the rest of him looks like a butcher took a turn at trying to skin him. Lyonel and Raymun are stiff, slightly better off but slow-moving and careful as they pile their plates high with food and let the room fill up with the sounds of their voices.
Rafe privately marvels at eating freshly-baked bread, her cups without flies, and her eggs without questionable bits of meat in them. Egg assures her that they'll eat even better once they leave Lord Ashford's estate, though Rafe isn't sure how much nicer things can get. She and Dunk grew up under a livestock's pen; sleeping on the stone floor beneath a thatched roof is a fucking luxury to her.
“If you think a barn is a luxury,” Lyonel drawls, “you will think Storm's End is the grandest place in the all the kingdoms.”
“In all seven?” She arches a brow.
“Nine,” Egg corrects.
“Wait—what?” Dunk asks.
“What makes you think we're going to Storm's End?” Rafe asks Lyonel, narrowing her eyes.
Lyonel, his cup lifted halfway to his mouth, simply waves it at her. “Ser Duncan will come, you will come. He shall be welcomed into my house as a brother and you—” he shrugs, “you can swear at me all you like while I teach you the best drinking songs.”
“Your drinking songs are stupid.”
“That's because you haven't heard the best,” Lyonel insists.
Do they let peasants throw bread crusts at lords in Storm's End? Because Rafe would very much like to do so and not earn herself a beating for it. Lords deserved to have thrown things at them, anyhow—it was good for them. Look at Egg—he was, she thought, better than probably any other prince in the land. Aside from some notable exceptions, of course—which still disturbed her on some base level.
Who ever knew lords could treat common folk like people? Certainly not Rafe. Certainly not the rest of the highborn, either, she reckoned.
Dunk is set on following Arlan Pennytree's example of being a hedge knight until Baelor Targeryen himself declares him a good, honorable man and says he has need of him. Coming from a man of his station, it's the highest and most precious praise Dunk has likely ever heard, excepting Arlan's rare drunken muttering and Rafe's insistence that he doesn't need to be highborn to be great.
Rafe watches, a little awed herself despite how hardened she is, as Baelor sets his hand on Dunk's shoulder. Then, briefly, his cheek. His eyes—dark and kind and so like a king's it makes Rafe a little glad she hadn't cursed him out upon waking—flit to hers, their gazes locking before he turns his attention back to Dunk.
Baelor tells Dunk: “if you are my man, I bid you to accompany Lord Baratheon to Storm's End to complete your training. While you are there, Aegon shall be your squire. Then you shall return and take up your place in my service.”
“I am your man, Your Grace.” Dunk's voice trembles a little. Rafe's eyes sting; she blinks it away as quickly as it came. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Egg smiling.
“Good man,” Baelor says. “Rise, Ser Duncan.”
Dunk rises, a little unsteady, from where he knelt on the floor.
From behind her, Lyonel says, “hear that, lass? Looks like you're going to learn those songs after all.”
“Fuck off,” Rafe says automatically, rolling her eyes at him.
The sound of Lyonel and Egg's laughter fills the room. Dunk smiles at her; his eyes are wet. Fuck, he hasn't looked that happy since Arlan first put a sword in his hands. And there Baelor stands, smiling, his eyes crinkled in a way that makes Rafe wish she could hate him, even just a little, because he really does look like a man who cares. He looks like a good, honorable man who recognizes the good in other honorable men, which is why Dunk is to taken with him, and why Rafe can't find it in herself to muster up even a lick of animosity.
More for Lyonel, then, she thinks, as Lyonel throws an arm around her shoulders—like he would any man of his company.
“I'll go slow,” Lyonel assures her, “so you can memorize the words.”
Rafe jabs him in the side with her elbow.
Lyonel's laughter is bright and bellowing.
As much as it pains her to say it, perhaps Storm's End won't be so bad. Perhaps, should the Gods favor them like they favored Dunk today, she and Dunk will be able to carve out a life for themselves—just as they wished all those years ago under those creaking floorboards in King's Landing.
At least, Rafe thinks, they'll have good company.