Chapter Text
Here you come again. Just when I’d begun to get myself together. You waltz right in the door, just like you’ve done before, and wrap my heart ‘round your little finger. — Dolly Parton, Here You Come Again
Lyonel can feel every solitary beat of his heart pounding in his temples, and in his ears, and right behind his fucking eyeballs. It has been years since he’s had a hangover that laid him this low. Even the suggestion of sunlight behind his eyelids is a hot poker shoved betwixt his brows. And then, to keep piling on the miseries, a finger jabs him just there, in the same spot as the poker.
“Well, I think he must be dead, ser.”
The voice is high. Childlike, with a crisp noble accent that Lyonel is sure he could place if only his brain matter weren’t being prodded at and his blood would stop pumping quite so loudly.
“He’s not dead,” comes a secondary voice. “Oi, stop poking him. I already told you, he’s fine. He’s just resting.”
Deeper, that second voice. The accent is Flea Bottom brogue sanded down by a hundred different ports of call. Something about it makes a muscle in Lyonel’s jaw twitch. He reaches for a name. Familiar. Flows easily across his tongue. Only just as he’s about the grasp it, that little finger pokes him in the forehead again. It possesses a rough nail in need a trimming.
“Looks dead,” the child says. “His lips are a bit blue.”
“Will you just —” the second voice hisses, growing louder on approach.
“I say,” Lyonel’s voice comes out frail as a bit of moth-eaten velvet. His throat, when coaxed into action, feels raw and ill-used, but without the memory of any of the pleasure that generally accompanies such a sensation. “Could you stop jostling my head. It feels as though it’s been filled with wildfire.”
One spark might cause a truly spectacular conflagration. Lyonel feels quite proud of managing the whole of the pronouncement, despite the accompanying tendrils of pain all down his throat. Leastways, the offending finger does not immediately return, and a heavy, blessed silence settles around him. Very briefly
“Oh,” the child says, sounding a bit disappointed. “S’pose you were right, ser.”
“Lyonel?” the second voice goes hushed and a bit wobbly.
Lyonel blinks his eyes open, wincing at the sudden onslaught of light. The sky above him is a clear, peerless blue. A gentle wind rustles at something in the distance and dances through the curls at his forehead.
While he stares up at the sky, three heads protrude into his vision. One is a scowly child in an ugly straw hat. The owner of the uneven nail and the prodding finger, Lyonel suspects. The second is a sorrowful-looking donkey, chewing on a mouthful of hay. A few sodden straws flutter down onto Lyonel’s chest from the side of the creature’s mouth. The last is a vision — strong jaw, crooked nose, a jagged scar down one cheek that speaks of trouble, but eyes like the summer sea looking down at him ever so sweetly. His long, reddish-gold hair is pulled back from his face in an elaborate plait that has begun to unravel. A dotting of marigolds in a deep orange have been tucked into the weave.
“Lyonel,” the vision says. “Thank the gods.”
“Dunk?” he rasps in reply.
And that is when it all comes crashing back. Lyonel’s headache grows, improbably, worse.
The harvest festival at Casterly Rock had been the ideal opportunity. The Baratheons and the Lannisters were not such good friends that many opportunities are presented to wander about the castle at will and perhaps take a rifle through the family archives. Lyonel and his lord father had discussed it at length, going back and forth. The map room, or the warden’s solar. Those are the two places where what they need might be found, and he might only get a chance at one.
The discussions themselves had taken longer than Lyonel would have wished. Lord Orros’ lucid moments had grown fewer and further between with the fading of summer into autumn. The old man had never been the same since the spring sickness, since he spent that week abed with the fever burning through his body and his mind. But the slips at first had been harder to catch, easier to write off as an old man’s forgetfulness, or a penchant for nostalgia. The growing darkness, though, the storms battering the castle, it brought a sudden and unwelcome turn. Until the old man spent more hours wandering the twisting maze of his past than he did in the present.
Still, there had been good days. Or rather good hours. Sunny mornings that might be spent closeted away making hopeful plans for the future. Afternoon walks along the curtain wall so the old man might look upon the sparkling sea. Stolen moments until he was dragged back into that labyrinth. Until … Anyway, they had the plan in place. A ship designed for stealth —to cut through the waves of the Blackwater swift and silent as a hot knife through butter, blackened sails awaiting only a moonless night and a direction.
Lyonel was to provide the direction. Maegor the cruel had built the dungeons of the Red Keep as well as the tunnels that snaked beneath it, and killed every man who laid a stone within them. But he could not kill the kingdom’s bank. It was the Lannisters who financed the construction of the keep and its underbelly, always eager to curry favor with powerful men in need of coin. If any record of the construction existed outside of Targaryen control, any chink in the defenses, the Lannisters would have it. They were clever enough to keep insurance against reprisal.
It had not been hard, once welcomed into Casterly Rock as a guest, to wander away from the main feasting hall under the guise of drunkenness, to find the family wing and, from there, guess where the lord’s personal study might be. The door was locked, but Lyonel had been prepared for that. A tiny roll of parchment filled with black powder slipped into the keyhole. He had been just ready to add the necessary spark when he’d heard the heavy tread of unexpected boots behind him.
Ser Duncan the Tall stood at the end of the hall in his homespun tunic and stained cloak, eyebrows furrowed so tightly that they conjoined, mouth in a taut line of disappointment. Had he been following the whole time? Or had it been that something else that drew him to this hall at this moment. Seven self-important cunts, Lyonel thought. Fuck you all.
“What are you doing m’lord?” Dunk had asked, and the title from his lips — for all its new accuracy — had felt like a slap across Lyonel’s face. His flesh near rung with it.
“Nothing you want to know about, ser,” he sneered back at the man. “Walk away.”
Another intricate little grimace.
“I cannot,” Ser Duncan said. “How can you … There are eyes everywhere. Is once not enough?”
“I said walk. Away.”
He should have sensed it from the set of the big man’s shoulders, or the narrowing of his eyes, but Lyonel had not perceived the threat. He had been too overcome with anger. Anger at Dunk, and anger at fate, and anger at the gods. He turned back to the door. He reached for his flint.
If he had reached for sword instead of flint, it might have gone differently. He’s still pretty sure he can whip Dunk sword against sword. As it was, the hedge knight had been on him before he even thought to defend against it. At first just a massive hand wrapped around his wrist, but it had turned swiftly into the iron band of a muscled forearm against his chest pressing him back against stone, a giant palm against his mouth to keep him quiet.
Lyonel’s eyes had nearly popped out of his head at the audacity. He bit down hard on the meat of that palm, thinking it would force a retreat, but Dunk just took the pain, snarling silently at it but not removing hand or arm.
Lyonel thrashed then, but trying to overpower Dunk was a fool’s endeavor. He was well and truly pinned. The struggle, though, moved the forearm from his chest to his neck, knocking his skull forcefully agains the wall. A spray of stars sparkled across his vision.
“Will you not stop?” Dunk hissed, and Lyonel responded by biting again, tasting salt and copper burst across his tongue.
The forearm pressed down. Dunk’s eyes, so close to his, had glistened in a way that Lyonel chose to attribute to the knock against his skull. The darkness encroached, closing in on him. His lungs burned. He had the time to think that watching Ser Duncan the Tall throttle someone was much more alluring than experiencing it first-hand. And then the world around him went black.
“Ow,” Lyonel declares now, with feeling.
He pushes himself up on his elbows, or he tries. Before he can quite manage, though, a pair of big hands is intervening. One curves around his bicep and the other rests solid and warm on the small of his back, levering him up to sitting. Dunk smells of sweetgrass and sweat, and the familiarity of that scent is a fist to Lyonel’s gut.
“Easy, m’lord,” he says, hands lingering. “You were out for quite a while.”
Lyonel should have quite a lot to say about that, such as And whose fault is that then, you massive brute? And You mean after you choked the life out of me? Who could have predicted such an outcome?
But sitting up and keeping his eyes open is proving just a touch challenging.
“Crone’s wizened cunt,” he wheezes, then loses himself in a fit of coughing.
“Egg,” Dunk says, and the large hands holding him up are replaced by smaller ones, which Lyonel also has no breath to protest.
“If you want to scoot back, Ser Lyonel, there is some hay,” the squire prince says.
Lyonel accedes to this with a drooping nod, and with a little help he props himself up on a tall hillock of hay to take in his surroundings. They are in the middle of a recently scythed field, dotted all through with little hills of dried and gathered hay. In the middle distance, he can see a straw man with a burlap sack head, dressed in a bright red tunic and tied to a tall pole.
It is meant, no doubt, to scare off the crows. Instead, it seems to have attracted them as a likely perch. Three of the large black birds have gathered upon it — two upon its arms and one on top of its head. Lyonel feels, absurdly, that they are watching him. There are eyes everywhere, Dunk had said to him. The thought now sends a shiver down his spine.
“This’ll help with the pain.”
Lyonel’s attention is wrenched away from the scarecrow to the hulking hedge knight kneeling in front of him, holding a clay bowl out to him cupped in one bandaged palm.
Lyonel frowns at him, scoots a little further back. Not because he’s afraid, but because he knows deep down that it will make that already solemn face droop further. He takes a sharp pleasure in it when he is proved right.
“What is it?” Lyonel asks, eyeing the bowl suspiciously.
“Willow tea,” Dunk replies. “A bit of honey. To help with the bitterness.”
He stretches his arm out further, proffering it. Lyonel supposes if Dunk wanted to murder him, he might have accomplished it more easily while he was unconscious. He takes the bowl and does his best to ignore the tiny, imagined shocks that work their way down his fingertips as they brush against Dunk’s skin.
He buries his nose in the bowl. The steam smells earthy and green and, yes, bitter. Lyonel blows across the surface, then takes a large gulp. His head is still pounding, his throat still aching, but the honey soothes on the way down, and he knows the willow will do its work quickly enough.
“You look much worse than Daeron usually does, after one of his late nights. But then, I suppose you are a good deal older, ser.”
The unnecessary commentary comes from the hatchling. Prince Aegon Targaryen sits back on his heels next to Lyonel’s haystack, eyeing him haughtily while the donkey chews on the brim of his hat.
“Oh indeed,” Lyonel says, eyeing the boy right back. “Well I very much doubt that your lush of a brother ever —”
“Got into Lord Tybolt’s good brandy.”
Lyonel’s head snaps in Dunk’s direction so fast he hears his neck pop. He opens his mouth to call the man a liar, but the words stick in the back of his throat when he sees the expression on Dunk’s face. His eyes are pleading, his mouth a tight, pale line of worry.
Worry? He should be worried, Lyonel thinks, spitefully. He has laid hands upon a peer of the realm. Lyonel could have those hands off him, if he wanted. But it’s a pointless bit of internal meanness. He doesn’t want Dunk hurt. Well, not beyond taking a good whack at him in the yard to teach him a lesson.
But it isn’t Lyonel’s vengeance that Dunk is afraid of, that much is clear. It’s his boy. He doesn’t want Egg to know what happened between them at Casterly Rock. And Lyonel isn’t quite sure why yet.
“It’s alright, m’lord,” Dunk continues, speaking slow and low. “I already told the lad about how I found you up at the castle, though you might not remember it proper-like. You were quite impressively drunk, and you had sent your attendants away. I couldn’t think what else to do but take you with me. And I consider it my duty now to see you back to Storm’s End safely.”
There’s an undercurrent of steel to his voice when he talks about duty. There always is, with Dunk, but this feels different. It comes out sounding almost like a threat. There is surely some sense to be made of the whole situation, and if Lyonel's entire head didn’t feel like a bruise, he’s sure he could suss it out.
“He carried you into camp like you were a sack of flour,” Egg pipes in. “Over one shoulder, ser. And then you didn’t wake up for a whole night’s ride.”
“We’re … We are a whole night’s ride from the castle?”
Even Lyonel can hear the warble in his throat when he asks. The chance is well and truly gone, then. The Lannisters would think it bloody odd if he came trotting back to Casterly Rock now, asking to stay for a while. Watch him like a hawk, they would. Plus, by now someone would have discovered his failed attempt at lock-picking. It’s all a mess, top to bottom. Every time Ser Duncan the Tall involves himself in Lyonel’s business, it all goes to shite.
Egg nods at his question.
“Ser Duncan said the roads would become too crowded, if we waited for the party to break up. So we got a head start.”
There’s something in the way the boy says it that makes Lyonel’s ears prick up like a horse hearing the tell-tale buzz of a fly. A sly sort of quality. It’s a very thin lie, of a sort that only a small child might buy. The hatchling, though, is not your average child. He is an accomplished liar himself, if memory serves. What did he really understand of what happened at Whitewalls? It had all been such a blur, one disaster bleeding into another. And then Lyonel had slunk away nursing a bruised ego and a dodgy heart with little thought to what Dunk’s squire had made of the whole ordeal.
“What foresight,” Lyonel says, weakly. “To avoid the rush.”
He sits back a little into his haystack and takes in his surroundings beyond boy and donkey at his side and Dunk still crouched before him, begging with his eyes for Lyonel to back up his terrible deception. They are at the edge of a field dotted with hillocks of hay — a copse of trees behind them and beyond that, probably, the Goldroad.
A campfire crackles cheerily over Dunk’s shoulder, a heavy iron pot placed over its flames, a kettle of the same material tucked into its coals to keep it warm. The horses are tied up off to the side. Three horses. He recognizes Dunk’s warhorse, and the old chestnut stot, but his heart gives a little leap when he sees a graceful destrier the color of a storm cloud tacked up next to them. Oh, Elenei old girl, what have we been dragged into? He thinks.
Naturally, Dunk would remember to bring his horse. Lyonel immediately resents how soft it makes him feel. His hands go to his neck, feeling out the tender spots there, likely already purpling. He’s angry. Or, perhaps he only wants to be angry. He should be stamping and spitting curses. He should. His plans are ruined, his person violated, his squire abandoned back in a lion’s den. Poor Ormund. He’ll be very distraught.
Yet when he reaches for the rage, he finds it isn’t there. The coals of his ire are cool to the touch. Why? Perhaps he’s simply too old and hollowed out to hold it anymore — a rusted bucket with a hole in its bottom.
But there is also the last thing Dunk said. His duty. To see Lyonel back to Storm’s End safely. He certainly doesn’t mean it like Lyonel has wished he might mean it. He will never be persuaded to stay, and Lyonel has mostly made peace with that. Dunk no doubt means only to tuck him away in a spot where he’ll cause less trouble for everybody.
Still. It’s a long road to Storm’s End. Two moons at least.
For as much time as he has spent thinking on, and pining over and cursing the name of Ser Duncan the Tall, the two of them have only ever spent a handful of days in each other’s company. They have had only stolen moments — a dance in a crowded tent, the favor of a kiss before battle, a conversation by a stream that might have gone better.
Yes, Lyonel is old and hollow and freshly aware of the value of a thing as simple as time. There will be other days and other plans less easily foiled. But in the meantime, does he not deserve a respite? After everything? Ser Duncan on the open road. He can admit to being curious.
Lyonel takes another gulp of the bitter tea, hoping the honey will help his throat, lend his voice a little more authority.
“How lucky I was, Ser Duncan, that you happened upon me when you did,” he says, and watches Dunk’s cheeks flush pink. The worst liar in all the kingdoms.
Lyonel lets the uncertainty hang for longer than he ought, just because it’s pleasing to see the knight squirm.
“If you are offering me escort home, I shall gladly accept,” he continues at last. “But I must send a raven to Storm’s End to let my people know of my intentions. With some haste.”
And one to Ormund, he does not add. Lyonel had sent him off to enjoy the party, and then never returned. He’ll be very confused once he rouses. Though if Lyonel knows anything about squires left to their own devices, that won’t be for several hours yet. By the angle of the sun, the morning is still new. He can travel back with Manfred and his lot, no harm done, provided Lyonel can reach him before he raises a spectacular hue and cry over the whereabouts of a missing stormlord.
“As you say, m’lord,” and Lyonel does not miss the breathlessness of Dunk’s tone, the confused smile that spreads across his face. Almost as though he didn’t expect his little gambit to work at all.
Well, Ser Duncan, Lyonel thinks, Now you’ve got me, what do you intend to do with me?
“There’s barley porridge with plums for breakfast, if you’re hungry,” Dunk says, rising. “It would be good for you to eat.”
Their positions give him an excellent view of thickly muscled thighs, and Lyonel does not attempt to disguise that he is looking. He leans back into his pile of hay and lets his eyes wander up, up, up at a leisurely pace. One might as well make the best of a situation.
“What, no hard salt beef?” he asks, tilting his head to the side to adopt a more enticing position, like the coquette he is in his heart, and immediately regretting the choice when a flash of pain blooms behind his eyes. He pushes through, though: “Am I not to get the full hedge knight experience?”
“We’ve plenty, if you really want it,” Dunk says, hiding the rising color of his cheeks by moving to attend the cook pot. “But we helped a few farmers with the harvest along the way to Casterly Rock, so we’re eating a bit better just now.”
“I’ll have yours if you don’t want it, ser,” Egg pipes in. The donkey is still attempting to eat his hat.
“By no means,” Lyonel says. “I need my nourishment. I’m recovering from an illness.”
“From a self-imposed illness,” the boy mutters under his breath. It’s loud enough, though, for Lyonel to hear.
“What was that?” he asks.
“The septons say that dissolution is an affront to the Mother and should not be rewarded,” the bald little swot says, louder this time.
“And are you terribly concerned with the will of Seven, my little hatchling?” Lyonel sneers. “Here I thought your family were all —”
“Breakfast,” Dunk interrupts, shoving a bowl into Lyonel’s hands before depositing another atop the prince’s crossed legs. “And enough of all that. Leave Ser Lyonel alone, Egg. He’s poorly. I don’t go prodding at you when you’re poorly, now do I?”
“Last time I was ill you made me drink salt beef broth and wear cold compresses in my boots,” Aegon grumbles. “That hardly feels like coddling.”
He stuffs an enormous spoonful of porridge in his mouth, cheeks puffing out like an avaricious chipmunk. Lyonel takes advantage of an unprepared enemy and sticks his tongue out at the boy while Dunk’s back is turned. Aegon’s face flushes a gratifying shade of crimson, but his mouth is full and there’s nothing he can do to retaliate.
Momentarily satisfied, Lyonel turns to his breakfast, which is much more appealing fare than he’d been expecting out on the road — a thick barley porridge, stirred through with deep purple plums stewed to a jammy consistency and drizzled with honey overtop.
His stomach gives an unexpected gurgle a the nutty-sweet scent that drifts up from the bowl. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was, having not had the stomach for much last night. He digs in.
Dunk settles himself next to Egg with his own bowl.
“Next town’s about five miles up the road,” he says between bites. “Toynton. Should have a rookery so you can send a message.”
His face is pointed down at his bowl, but Lyonel can feel the weight of Dunk’s eyes on him, disguised by the golden fan of his lashes. It’s a very small peace offering, but not so small that Lyonel can fail to recognize it. He bites down hard on his bottom lip to keep his smile at bay. He’s not quite ready to forget so easily, nor forgive. At least not until he’s got a little of his own back.
“Very well,” he says. “As soon as possible, then.”
“As you say,” Dunk replies softly.
“I can help you draft a message, ser,” Egg says, scraping the bottom of his bowl. “If you want to send a letter as well. To your sweetheart up at Winterfell, maybe?”
Lyonel chokes on his porridge.
“She wasn’t …” Dunk is saying. “She’s not … That is.”
“She was very pretty, Ser. And very fond of you.”
Even through watery eyes, Lyonel can see the expression on the little prince’s face. Smug. Entirely too canny, that one. And Lyonel mislikes having his soft spots exposed. He takes a moment to compose himself.
“I’m sure she was,” he says, once he feels confident of his own breath. “And you shouldn’t leave the poor girl without word from you. Don’t want to get a reputation for breaking hearts. Or perhaps you’ve already got a string of pining maidens strewn along your path.”
Dunk’s shoulders are up by his ears again.
“Haven’t broken any hearts,” he mumbles.
“Oh,” Lyonel says, hardly able to restrain his own bitter laughter. “Ser Duncan. I know that cannot be true.”