Chapter Text
Dunk doesn’t go to Baelor’s funeral. No one would want him there, anyway. He doesn’t even want to be there. Doesn’t want Baelor to be there, either. Wants Baelor to be living, to be breathing, to be… just to be.
He looks down at the shattered shield between the roots of the Elm tree. Egg had brought it to him sometime after the Trial. After Baelor’s body-
He’d thought the shooting star was a symbol of hope. Of change for the better. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? Dunk the Lunk, thick as the castle walls. That’s him. Never been anything better. Never will be. Never could be. Baelor had believed otherwise, clearly, but look where that got Baelor.
“No good deed goes unpunished. Sure, I meant well. Well, look at what well-meant did,” Dunk mutters to himself, as he looks towards the Keep, where there is smoke starting to fill the air. “Baelor,” he whispers, turning away. “My road of good intentions led where such roads always lead. No good deed goes unpunished. Well, Baelor, I promise, no good deed will I attempt to do ever again.”
He clutches Arlan’s sword, and the leads for Chestnut and Thunder, pulling them along behind. He looks back towards the Keep, the black smoke billowing into the air.
“Let all Westeros be agreed, I am wicked through and through,” he say. He mounts Chestnut and rides away, into the plains.
He does not look back.
They say Ser Duncan the Tall died at Ashford, that his wounds festered and he slunk away to die of them. It's true, in a way.
No one knows where the Gallows Knight came from, though, to hear him tell it, he was born at Ashford, amidst salt and smoke.
There are rumours, that Baelor Targaryen didn’t die at Ashford. That, instead, the blow to his head was so devastating he forgot who he was, and that he is the Gallows Knight. That the reason he never shows his face to anyone is because his skull is so disfigured. There’s even an explanation for how the prince would have grown so much larger. Black magic, you see? Prince Valarr was rumoured to dabble with his great uncle and aunt sometimes. Maybe he tried to save his father and the Gallows Knight was the result.
The first time someone asks the knight the question, he drags them out to the tallest tree in the village, a great old elm. He says no word as he strings the man up there and leaves him to hang, reminiscent of the sigil on his shield. None ever asks the question to his face again.
But they whisper it among themselves, still.
The Great Sickness comes. Punishment for Ashford, some say, for the killing of Prince Baelor. Others say it’s punishment for the black magic that made him the Gallows Knight.
Regardless, the sickness does not touch the knight. As if the Stranger themselves watches over him, the Gallows Knight walks hither and thither and is unhindered by the sickness that fells even his most devoted.
What is it the Iron Born mutter among themselves? What is dead may never die but rises again harder and stronger?
Well, the Gallows Knight certainly has.
The Gallows Knight rides in no tourneys. He defends no Keeps. He is brave, if one considers reckless disregard to be bravery. He is not just. He does not defend the young, or the innocent, and he protects no women. He does not obey captains, liege lords, or even the king, the few times he’s been commanded to stop in the name of King Daeron… stop in the name of King Aerys.
In that sense, he’s just like every other knight out in the wide world. He swore his oaths but who remembers those unless remembrance comes with glory? Who remembers those unless remembrance comes with a reward worth the cost?
Who remembers those but ashes scattered in the wind?
He has followers. Squires, some would call them. Orphaned boys he found on the road. They can stay with him, if they earn their keep. Can learn at his side, but he will not knight them.
“If the world had less knights, perhaps it would be a better place,” he says, when he’s asked once why he does not knight them. “Prince Baelor believed in knighthood, where is he now? Where did kindness and goodness get him? Where is his chivalry? Where is his justice? Not here. Not there. Not anywhere. This is not a world for the just.”
Still, he has followers. Orphaned boys. Some orphaned girls. They can learn, too, can learn to wield the sword, the mace, the spear. They can learn to defend themselves and to defend others, but they will never be knighted. They stay with the Gallows Knight because the Gallows Knight does not protect them, no. But he does avenge what is his. So long as they stay with him, so long as they are part of his camp, to lay a hand upon them is to lay a hand upon the Gallows Knight and he does not abide touch.
The realm is at war. Black dragons, red dragons. The Gallows Knight doesn’t care. Not really, but it does lend itself to an opportunity. One he’d never thought to consider before.
He considers his growing army of orphans. Most drift in and out and then back in again as their wants and their needs demand. Some, find better protections elsewhere, as he always knew they would. But a great number of them stay, take on their own squires, and they their own, in time.
No, it would still be too much of a risk. Too difficult to bring about. He could convince the small folk, rally his little army to their defence. To the betterment of their lives. But… no. Intentional good deeds, even for the sake an eventual bad deed, are still good deeds. They would be a means to an end but still a means.
No.
The dragons can fight among themselves.
It is Lyonel that crosses blades with him at the end of all things. Lyonel who dances that age old dance with him.
“I knew it was you,” Lyonel says, as the Gallows Knight kneels in the dirt before him, the visor of his helmet knocked clean off. If the Gallows Knight could rise he would, but the stag had gotten a good hit to the back of his knee and that was him. “When your boy said that he’d found your shield and naught else, only to hear rumours of a tall knight from Ashford. The Gallows Knight. I knew it was you.”
“He was not my boy,” the Gallows Knight says, for he has not thought of Prince Aegon, little Egg, beyond fleeting memories in years. “And you did not try to stop me?”
“You made your own choices, Duncan,” Lyonel says, sighing. “He’d hate you for it, you know? Your prince.”
“I know,” the Gallows Knight answers. “But if he wanted me to remain his good man, he should have survived long enough to ensure it.”
“I’m sure he would have, if he’d had the chance,” Lyonel says, shaking his head. “It would have been better if you’d never met him. I could have been everything you ever needed.”
“Perhaps. Sometimes I think the world would have been better if I’d never even heard of Ashford. Perhaps even if I had died in Flea Bottom,” the Gallows Knight says, with a weary sigh. “I am tired, Lyonel. People talk about how difficult it is to be good all the time, but they don’t know the half of it. It’s exhausting being bad, but I have done too much to go back, now.”
“You could still come back with me. Cast aside this mask, be Ser Duncan the Tall again,” Lyonel says, but the Gallows Knight simply shakes his head.
“No. He died at Ashford,” the Gallows Knight says. “I know you have been instructed by the king to kill me. I wish it were him. I wish he was the one who was here. He’s the one who ruined it all. It should be his blade that ends me, like it was his mace that ended him.”
“He’ll never know. He thinks you’re just some rogue. Sometimes, I think your boy knows, and then other times I think ‘there’s no way he knows’.”
“He’s not my boy.”
“He killed Aerion for you, you know?” Lyonel asks, the Gallows Knight pauses. “Oh, you didn’t know. The official story is that he went mad, drank wildfire thinking it would make him a dragon. That was all your boy though, slipped wildfire into his drink his first night back from Lys. Only learned of it because your boy turned up on my doorstep, riddled with guilt.”
“He’s not my boy,” the Gallows Knight says, though his chest hurts. His heart. Sometimes, he forgets he has one. Made sure he forgot he had one. “What did you tell him?”
“Well, I told him he did good, let him stay for awhile and then I sent him on back to his father. He’s a good boy, a good man, now.”
“As it should be,” the Gallows Knight says, sighing. “Come on then, Lyonel. Time to finish it. I’m tired. I want to rest.”
“I hated you. I loved you. The worst part of it all is that I still do,” Lyonel says, before his sword swings through the air.
Dunk closes his eyes and dies with a smile on his face.
He wakes beneath the tree at Ashford. He recognises it instantly, will never forget the fucking thing.
Gods. But surely he’s in the seven fucking hells.
Dunk sighs, but pushes himself up. He’ll go through the motions. If this is to be his punishment for choosing to betray everything he and Ser Arlan and Baelor ever believed in, then he will accept it. He earned it.
Baelor’s helmet is different. Every single other fucking thing about this morning has gone as Dunk remembers it, except that. Dunk can’t stop staring, Baelor’s staring back, a dark look in his mismatched eyes. It’s almost like Baelor wants to speak with him-
And then the horn sounds and there’s no time for thinking of anything but survival.
Dunk makes sure to actually geld Aerion this time. The Gallows Knight never learned the arts of jousting or tourney melee; he learned the art of war. He perfected the violence of the mace, the elegance of the spear, the swiftness of the sword. He lived and he breathed blood, death, violence, gore for decades.
He does not miss this time and Aerion’s yield is called early.
Dunk hopes it’s enough to save Baelor, but well, what does it matter if it isn’t?
This is the seven hells. He'll just go again when he fails.
“Your grace, I am your man,” Dunk says, the words falling from him like they are the last he’ll ever speak and he’s running out of time to speak them. “Please, your man.” Baelor’s hand falls on Dunk’s shoulder, caresses the back of his neck.
“I need good men, Ser Duncan,” Baelor says, and Dunk does not want this. He does and he does not. He has spent decades reliving these moments. Now, he will spend the rest of eternity doing so. It’s what he deserves. But he doesn’t want it. “The realm needs good men,” Baelor says, Dunk stills. That’s not right. Baelor… he never got to finish that sentence. He never- “If you are to be my good man, Ser Duncan,” Baelor says, Dunk stares, holding his mismatched gaze, unable to look away. Unable to do anything but listen and look. “You must remain my good man. I have no use for Gallows Knights, do you understand?” The air rushes out of Dunk like he’s been punched.
Baelor knows.
“I… yes, your grace,” Dunk says, for how could he say anything else?
“Good, then rise, Ser Duncan. You are sworn to my service, but there will be an official ceremony later,” Baelor says, turning away. “I will send Maester Yormwell for you.”