Chapter Text
It was still too dark when Dunk awoke.
From his small alcove in the back of the Drizzlewood stables, he could hear men yelling in the square outside while nervous hooves skittered over the cobblestones. As he found his hose and shirt in the pile he had left them in not many hours before and pulled them back on with hurried movements, he heard one of the men starting to sing off-tune, some of the others falling in before finally shouting themselves hoarse by belting out the chorus together.
It can’t be a fire then, Dunk thought to himself as he made his way down the middle of the stables, stopping to murmur low at those horses he knew to be the most skittish, his large hand finding their soft muzzles in the dark. Once they had calmed, he turned towards the door leading to the square.
There were four men out there, three of them off their horses while one still slumped in his saddle, his hands gripping blindly at his horse’s mane to keep himself from falling.
Dunk had never reckoned himself to be a perceptive man, nor had anybody else, for that matter, but he didn’t need to take in much of what was happening in this village square in the middle of the night, to know without doubt that these men were drunk. Very drunk.
Drizzlewood was too far from the Kingsroad to either benefit or suffer from passing travellers. If you found yourself in Drizzlewood, you usually intended to be there. The stables was a remnant from a time when a rider was a more reliable messenger than a raven, especially in a storm. Birds are cleverer than men: if the winds howl around them, they wait it out. A man sent with a message will ride through lightening strikes if his lord had ordered him to do so.
So there was always a couple of fast palfreys stabled here, in case a message needed to be sent and quickly. The local general merchant, a man called Master Kent, paid a fee to keep a couple of sturdy mares at the stables, the ones he took with him every month, going to a market near Storm’s End. Drizzlewood was part of the Stormlands, but Lord Paramounts and windswept castles were almost as foreign to them as the delights of Dorne.
In a window across the square, somebody opened a shutter, and a lighted lamp was held high to find out who was disturbing the peace of this quiet village. This pushed Dunk into action, seeing it as his responsibility to protect the sleep of his neighbours.
“Good men,” he called out. “What is your business here?”
“Cut the tail, stuff the dog, and bring it home to mother!” The song ended with a shouted chorus, the men throwing their arms wide like they had just won a great battle by reaching the final repetition.
The light from the window caught some of the golden embroidery on the men’s cloaks – A rampant stag. Though Dunk had never seen it before, there could be no doubt that these men belonged to the Baratheon household, that they served the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands.
“My Lords,” he amended, coming closer to the men, “Will you need your horses stabled for the night?” What’s left of the night, Dunk thought to himself.
One of the men finally discovered Dunk next to him. He reared back, loose-limbed with drink. “Gods be good, man, I thought you were a stone statue come to life. They eat well in whatever this place is called, do they?”
“Drizzlewood,” Dunk supplied. He had had this height since the age of fifteen. Whatever witty comments men could think up, he had already heard them.
“Ya hear that, boys? And you thought we were in fuckin’ Fawnton.”
“I still say we’re in Fawnton.”
“This giant says we’re not.”
“Wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, which looking at the size of him is not very far at all. Notorious tricksters, is giants.”
“That’s pixies.”
“Fuckin’ giants, as well.”
“You’re drunk, what do you know?”
“We’re all fucking drunk, cunt.”
The man next to Dunk leaned in like he was going to share a secret. “We’ve just come from a wedding. Well, I say, just… There were a couple of inns between the wedding and here, as well. Very good ale at those inns, very good. You’ve got an inn here in Dazzlewood?”
“Drizzlewood,” Dunk corrected. “We do, but I don’t think Mistress Bramble would like to be woken in the middle of the night. Not for ale, anyway, but for beds, yes.”
“So no ale?” His voice grew mournful.
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, milord?”
The man leaned back to take Dunk in. “Never knew giants to be boring.”
“I can stable your horses, milord, and rouse the innkeeper for you.”
The man nodded, his head looking like it might tumble from his shoulders. “For the right amount of coin?”
“No.” Dunk shook his head as if it was obvious. “Because you’re in a strange place and you need the help.”
The man chuckled. “Lessons in chivalry to be had right here in Bramblewood, given to us by gentle giants.”
“Drizzlewood.”
“As you say. Well, giant, fetch the mistress of the beds and take care of our horses for the night.”
Dunk was right: Mistress Bramble, her usually tightly woven braid hanging down her back over a hastily donned wrap, was not happy for her door to be knocked on in the middle of the night. It was only when the men emptied a purse of coins into an unwashed cup sitting in the common room, more of them silver than copper, that she agreed to pour them into whatever beds could be found, already resigning herself to scrubbing their piss from the sheets come morning.
Three of the men had already left their horses to Dunk’s care and stumbled through to the backrooms of the inn, when Dunk noticed their fourth friend still swaying in his saddle. He kept an eye on him as he took the other three horses through to the stables, removing their tackles, brushing them down, and settling them in for the night with plenty of hay and water. He worked quickly and in the dark, knowing this stable like his mother’s womb. Once it could be avoided no longer, he returned to the square to discover that the three drunks really had forgotten all about their friend. He was still just sitting there, his horse having found a patch of weeds sprouting among the cobblestones to nibble at.
“My lord,” Dunk called out. The man’s head jerked slightly before falling towards his chest again. He was asleep, as deeply as you could be asleep while still sitting on a horse.
Dunk couldn’t leave him there. Once the singing had stopped and the men had dispersed, the light from the other side of the square had been extinguished, and so Dunk couldn’t make out any more of the man than a vague silhouette to reach for as he pulled him from the horse. Dunk was strong, always had been, but when the dead weight of a tall and broad man almost fell on him, it took all his strength not to crumble to the ground. He pulled at the man’s arm, hoisting it over his own shoulder as he stooped to hold it there. Glancing towards Mistress Bramble’s inn, he saw that the door was shut and the windows were dark. She would not be glad to be disturbed for a second time that night. And from the smell of this man, he should be more at home in a stable than the house of a decent woman.
Dunk made a decision then and hauled the man back to the stables. His alcove wasn’t large or even furnished, but it was warm and it was comfortable. This man could have woken up in worse places than that.
After having dropped him onto the straw-stuffed mattress that was Dunk’s bed, he left him there to sleep, finding his way in to the stall of his favourite palfrey. Sweetfoot was aptly named because he could have slept under her very hooves, and never feared to be stomped on in his sleep. She was a sweet thing, though rather too fond of apples. Sleep found him easily, knowing that tomorrow would be another day of work.
When Dunk woke again, it was light outside and somebody was pouring out water. He got to his knees and stuck his head above the partition of the stall. No, not water, he realised as he saw the back of his visitor and the tell-tale hunch of a man focused on his own cock. He was pissing in Dunk’s stables.
“Oi!” he yelled. “Take that outside!”
“Why?” The voice still held a slight slur to it. “My piss worse than horse’s piss?” He shook and tugged himself away before turning to face Dunk.
It was the first time Dunk had ever met a man wearing an earring, well, anyone wearing an earring. People of Drizzlewood were plain people, more like to spend what little coin they had on an extra set of working clothes than baubles to dangle from your ears. The man was older than Dunk had imagined, thinking his group to have been a bunch of young lads not much used to drinking, but this man was older than Dunk, grey streaks in both his curly hair and his thick beard. He could have been a respected father and husband, but here he was standing in front of Dunk, obviously still tipsy from the night before.
“That’s not—” Dunk was caught short, thinking up a feasible argument. “Horses can piss in the stables. It’s their stables.”
“And an invited guest cannot? Very poor hosts, these horses.”
“Invited is one word for it. You were sleeping like a hibernating bear, and I had nowhere else to put you.” Dunk got to his feet then, tired of kneeling on the stamped clay floor.
As he rose up in front of the man, he saw his eyes widen, his mouth fall softly open within the dark ring of his beard. The man blinked once, twice. “You’re very large,” he said, the drink still sitting in his belly obviously removing any attempt at subtlety.
“Aye, I know it.” Dunk came out from the stall and faced the man standing in the aisle, Dunk’s alcove just behind him. “Your friends have all slept in the inn. It’s just out the door there and to the left side of the square. There’s a sign outside of an ale barrel.”
“Original idea.” He ran his tongue over his gums, the sounds it made evidence of a dry mouth. “So my companions all abandoned me in my hour of need, did they?”
“They were very drunk, too, milord. I hardly think they ought to be judged by whatever choices they made last night.”
“Ah, but it is what men do and say when they’re drunk that reveal their true selves. It’s the rest of time, when we hide behind pleasantries and pageantry, that’s made up of lies.”
“I don’t think that’s true, milord.” Dunk scratched Sweetfoot behind the ear to distract her from searching his pockets for treats. “The first time I got drunk, I stood on a table and proclaimed myself to be the finest cockerel imitator in all of the Stormlands and got to proving it. My friends said afterwards that I had sounded more like a field mouse with a cough.” He grinned as he remembered. “I don’t think that fool on the table is any more my true self than the Dunk who works everyday in the stables.”
“Dunk?”
“My name, milord.”
“Quite. Of course. Why wouldn’t it be? Not ridiculous, at all, to go around with a name like Dunk.”
“I’m sure it’s not as fine and storied as yours, milord, but it’s served me well so far.”
From outside the stables, voices appeared and grew loud as the men from last night returned to the square.
“How could you fucking think he was sharing our room? You’d think we’d sleep three to a bed to allow you the comfort of one? Of course, we thought he was with you.”
“I wasn’t thinking at all, was I? I was drunk. We are all were. I was lucky I even found the bed.”
“Well, he’s not here. So you can be the one to report back at Storm’s End how we fucking lost the fucking Lord Paramount in some fucking village in the arse-end of fucking nowhere!”
The man next to Dunk burst out laughing, deep and resonant and thoroughly delighted. No polite titters or mocking chuckles. No, this was a man who felt his mirth fully and never found any reason to curb it. And Dunk now understood why.
“Are you… Are you Lord Lyonel Baratheon?”
“If I say yes, will you forgive me for pissing in your stables?”
“No.”
Lord Lyonel laughed again. “Good man.” He winked at Dunk. “I’d better go outside and relieve them of their worries, don’t you think?”
Sunlight streamed into the stables as Lord Lyonel pushed open the doors, glinting over the white streaks of his hair. “Cunts!”
The three men turned as one, gawking at their Lord who had appeared from nowhere.
“So you desert your commander at his hour of gravest need to find feather beds for yourselves? I should have your heads for that capital offence.”
Dunk had picked up a bucket in preparation for going to the well to get fresh water for the horses, but he dropped it immediately at hearing this, its metal rings clanging loudly against the hard floor. It rolled forward until it rested against the side of Lord Lyonel’s foot.
“They weren’t feather beds,” one of the men outside protested, “horsehair, at best.”
“Rat’s hair, more like,” another one offered up.
“The only rats were the ones lying in them, I should think,” Lord Lyonel replied.
“You can have our heads, lord, but wouldn’t you rather have breakfast? The innkeeper is already dunking thick slices of ham into the pottage.”
Dunk’s belly rumbled at hearing this. He was hungry, too, but the horses needed seeing to before he could show up at Rowan’s house, ready for his usual bowl.
“Alright,” Lord Lyonel said, “Breakfast first, and then I’ll see about having your heads afterwards. Maybe I’ll give them to my new friend, as decorations for his immaculate stable.”
“Friend?”
Dunk felt himself being pulled forward. Even though Lord Lyonel was almost a head shorter than him and not nearly as broad-shouldered, he carried with him an obvious strength.
“This is my friend and saviour,” Lord Lyonel proclaimed to his men, “when night was darkest, when all hope was lost, he pushed me onto a pile of straw and then later on shouted at me for pissing next to a horse which was also pissing at that very moment. The very best of men and you should see him as an ideal to follow, lads. I’ll have his image carved in marble and put in a place of honour at Storm’s End so you’ll never forget.”
“I’m sure you could get the man himself for less coin than a sculptor will charge for a statue,” one of the others called out.
Dunk could feel himself flushing as the men laughed. He was not nearly clever enough to figure out if he was being honoured or if he was being mocked. “I’ll have your horses ready for when you finish your breakfast, milords,” he mumbled to the ground. He pulled his arm from Lord Lyonel’s grip and picked up the bucket at his feet.
If Lord Lyonel watched him go, Dunk had no way of knowing. He kept his head down as he listened for the voices disappearing into the inn, and focused on finding his way to the well. Dunk had had his share of mockery. You didn’t go through life looking like he did without attracting comments and looks. But lords had their own ways about them, it seemed. They not only laughed at you, they laughed at you on several levels all at once.
The four horses were easier to deal with than their riders. They ate their food like they had never tasted anything sweeter at Storm’s End and drank deeply from the water Dunk had toted for them. Grateful beasts, he thought fondly as he pulled their tackle back onto them. A calm descended on him as it always did when he worked with horses. They were predictable, they listened to him and followed his directions, their eyes were calm and even, not full of unknown sparks of humour, glinting as fiercely as the piece of gold hanging from the man’s ear.
The sun was shining fully once the men returned from breaking their fasts. Dunk had aligned their horses, saddled and ready in front of the stables, standing next to them with his head bowed, waiting for either a gratuity or a reprimand. Or another joke that bit more than it tickled.
“There’s my saviour.” Lord Lyonel came to a stop close to him, the smell of smoked meat and small beer clinging to him. “Allow me this tribute in recompense for the great service you rendered me.”
A bowl of steaming pottage, thick slices of ham swimming in the creamy oats alongside chunks of swede and carrot, was handed into Dunk’s narrow field of vision. He looked up. “My lord…?”
“You haven’t eaten yet, have you? You can’t have, with all you’ve had to do this morning.” Lord Lyonel smiled at him. “It’s good food at that inn, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Dunk didn’t. Whatever food he ate, he got it from Rowan’s kitchen in exchange for whatever work she needed a strong man to do. It was a good arrangement the two of them had gotten into; both of them alone in the world, and both of them sharing what little they had to help each other get by.
He took the bowl with a grateful nod. “Thank you, milord.” The smell was mouth-watering and he wanted to start eating immediately, though even one as low as Dunk knew not to move a muscle until he had been dismissed by his lord. And so he just stood there, holding the bowl in his hand, feeling its warmth seeping into his fingers.
“Yes, well…” This was the first time in the hour they had known each other that Lord Lyonel sounded even slightly hesitant. Dunk chanced a glance up from the ground and found the other man staring at him, his eyes dropping from the top of his head before lingering over the breadth of his shoulders.
“Come on, Lyonel,” one of the other men called out, already seated on his horse. “We have to get going if we want to reach Storm’s End before nightfall.”
Lord Lyonel leaned in close to him, his curls falling forward and kissing Dunk’s temple. “You’d think they’d speak to me more sweetly, considering they left me to die of exposure in the middle of nowhere. Thank the gods you were there.” His murmured voice was low, for Dunk’s ears alone. Something tickled at the back of his neck, almost making him shudder.
“It was a fine spring evening last night, milord,” Dunk managed to reply, “and this village is still a little above nowhere. You would have woken up with dew sitting in your beard and a knotted back from sleeping on your horse. I’m sure milord has survived worse than that.”
“Ah, but life is not only about survival, is it, my dear Dunk? It’s about pleasure, laughter, and all manner of good things. Speaking of which,” he untied the pouch at his belt and rummaged around in it until he pulled out four coins and placed them in Dunk’s other hand. “For the care you took with our horses.”
Dunk had never seen one before, but the three-headed dragon and their yellow colour could only denote the coins as one thing: A golden dragon, the highest value of coin in the realm and Dunk was now holding four of them in his hand. He could buy a horse with this, two horses if they were untrained. He could afford the rent of a small cottage for several years, big enough to keep both him and Rowan in more comfort than they had ever known. “This is too much, milord.” He looked up at Lord Lyonel, blue eyes wide and helpless. “People will think I came by this in a dishonest way.”
Lord Lyonel tilted his head as he studied Dunk, a small smile playing around his lips. “I doubt that anyone will ever think you dishonest. Or if they do, they must be the very greatest of fools.” He folded Dunk’s fingers around the coins. “Keep your reward. You’ve more than earned it.”
He could still feel the touch of that hand as he watched Lord Lyonel find his seat on his horse and lead his small party towards the path heading to the main road. Those fingers had been even hotter than the bowl of pottage in his other hand.
As they disappeared from sight, Dunk was quick to return to his alcove, hurrying past the remaining horses in the stable without another look. The bowl was carefully placed next to the mattress, but before he could even start to consider where to hide his newly won bounty, Dunk noticed something different about his bed. It was darker, somehow, and finer to look at. Instead of the undyed rough-spun that made up the outer covering of his mattress, a brocade the colour of ground-up mustard seeds was spread widely across it, almost double the breadth of Dunk’s bed. Rampant stags and forest leaves made up its pattern, the thread a rich gold. This must be Lord Lyonel’s cloak, the one that had marked him as a Baratheon the night before. Odd that neither he nor Dunk had noticed it missing as they parted company this morning. As he gathered it up, folding it carefully like it was the finest wedding veil, he was surprised by the weight of it. If Dunk placed all the clothes he had to his name in a pile, its combined weight would still be outpaced by a lord’s single cloak. At the top where it would be secured by the neck, a cord of knitted gold stretched from corner to corner. It was a fine piece of work, the sort only a master of his trade could produce.
What am I to do with this, Dunk thought. He couldn’t very well take to wearing it about - people would think him mad if he strutted the streets of Drizzlewood, dressed like some unacknowledged Baratheon bastard. But it was too fine a thing to be pulled apart into rags, and he couldn’t sell it either. Nobody around here had the coin to pay what this was worth. Before he stowed the cloak away, his fingers found a bit of irregularity near the top of it. A pin secured to the fabric, a miniature version of a fine set of antlers knocked against the palm of Dunk’s hand. The body of the thing was gold with little gemstones adorning every prong. He frowned at it. It was impossible that something like this wouldn’t be missed. A lord surely owned several cloaks but this…? It would have been a present from a mother or a wife, something not easily replaced.
Dunk knew then what he would have to do. He’d find some way to get to Storm’s End and return both the cloak and the pin to one of Lord Lyonel’s household. It was the right thing to do, and Dunk had always strived to do what was right.