Even so, the old man would never have hoped for it. Ser Arlan had not ridden a tilt since the day he had been unhorsed by the Prince of Dragonstone in a tourney at Storm's End, many years before. "It is not every man who can boast that he broke seven lances against the finest knight in the Seven Kingdoms," he would say. "I could never hope to do better, so why should I try?"
Dunk had suspected that Ser Arlan's age had more to do with it than the Prince of Dragonstone did, but he never dared say as much. The old man had his pride, even at the last. I am quick and strong, he always said so, what was true for him need not be true for me, he told himself stubbornly.
He was moving through a patch of weed, chewing over his chances in his head, when he saw the flicker of firelight through the bushes. What is this? Dunk did not stop to think. Suddenly his sword was in his hand and he was crashing through the grass.
He burst out roaring and cursing, only to jerk to a sudden halt at the sight of the boy beside the campfire. "You!" He lowered the sword. "What are you doing here?"
"Cooking a fish," said the bald boy. "Do you want some?"
"I meant, how did you get here? Did you steal a horse?"
"I rode in the back of a cart, with a man who was bringing some lambs to the castle for my lord of Ashford's table."
"Well, you'd best see if he's gone yet, or find another cart. I won't have you here."
"You can't make me go," the boy said, impertinent. "I'd had enough of that inn."
"I'll have no more insolence from you," Dunk warned. "I should throw you over my horse right now and take you home."
"You'd need to ride all the way to King's Landing," said the boy. "You'd miss the tourney."
King's Landing. For a moment Dunk wondered if he was being mocked, but the boy had no way. of knowing that he had been born in King's Landing as well. Another wretch from Flea Bottom, like as not, and who can blame him for wanting out of that place?
He felt foolish standing there with sword in hand over an eight-year-old orphan. He sheathed it, glowering so the boy would see that he would suffer no nonsense. I ought to give him a good beating at the least, he thought, but the child looked so pitiful he could not bring himself to hit him. He glanced around the camp. The fire was burning merrily within a neat circle of rocks. The horses had been brushed, and clothes were hanging from the elm, drying above the flames. "What are those doing there?"
"I washed them," the boy said. "And I groomed the horses, made the fire, and caught this fish. I would have raised your pavilion, but I couldn't find one."
"There's my pavilion." Dunk swept a hand above his head, at the branches of the tall elm that loomed above them.
"That's a tree," the boy said, unimpressed.
"It's all the pavilion a true knight needs. I would sooner sleep under the stars than in some smoky tent."
"What if it rains?"
"The tree will shelter me."
"Trees leak."
Dunk laughed. "So they do. Well, if truth be told, I lack the coin for a pavilion. And you'd best turn that fish, or it will be burned on the bottom and raw on the top. You'd never make a kitchen boy."
"I would if I wanted," the boy said, but he turned the fish.
"What happened to your hair?" Dunk asked of him.
"The maesters shaved it off." Suddenly selfconscious, the boy pulled up the hood of his dark brown cloak, covering his head.
Dunk had heard that they did that sometimes, to treat lice or rootworms or certain sicknesses. "Are you ill?"
"No," said the boy. "What's your name?"
"Dunk," he said.
The wretched boy laughed aloud, as if that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Dunk?" he said. "Ser Dunk? That's no name for a knight. Is it short for Duncan?"
Was it? The old man had called him just Dunk for as long as he could recall, and he did not remember much of his life before. "Duncan, yes," he said. "Ser Duncan of . . ." Dunk had no other name, nor any house; Ser Arlan had found him living wild in the stews and alleys of Flea Bottom. He had never known his father or mother. What was he to say? "Ser Duncan of Flea Bottom" did not sound very knightly. He could take Pennytree, but what if they asked him where it was? Dunk had never been to Pennytree, nor had the old man talked much about it. He frowned for a moment, and then blurted out, "Ser Duncan the Tall." He was tall, no one could dispute that, and it sounded puissant.
Though the little sneak did not seem to think so. "I have never heard of any Ser Duncan the Tall."
"Do you know every knight in the Seven Kingdoms, then?"
The boy looked at him boldly. "The good ones."
"I'm as good as any. After the tourney, they'll all know that. Do you have a name, thief?"
The boy hesitated. "Egg," he said.
Dunk did not laugh. His head does look like an egg. Small boys can be cruel, and grown men as well. "Egg," he said, "I should beat you bloody and send you on your way, but the truth is, I have no pavilion and I have no squire either. If you'll swear to do as you're told, I'll let you serve me for the tourney. After that, well, we'll see. If I decide you're worth your keep, you'll have clothes on your back and food in your belly. The clothes might be roughspun and the food salt beef and salt fish, and maybe some venison from time to time where there are no foresters about, but you won't go hungry. And I promise not to beat you except when you deserve it."
Egg smiled. "Yes, my lord."
"Ser," Dunk corrected. "I am only a hedge knight." He wondered if the old man was looking down on him. I will teach him the arts of battle, the same as you taught me, ser. He seems a likely lad, might be one day he'll make a knight.
The fish was still a little raw on the inside when they ate it, and the boy had not removed all the bones, but it still tasted a world better than hard salt beef.
Egg soon fell asleep beside the dying fire. Dunk lay on his back nearby, his big hands behind his head, gazing up at the night sky. He could hear distant music from the tourney grounds, half a mile away. The stars were everywhere, thousands and thousands of them. One fell as he was watching, a bright green streak that flashed across the black and then was gone.
A falling star brings luck to him who sees it, Dunk thought. But the rest of them are all in their pavilions by now, staring up at silk instead of sky. So the luck is mine alone.
In the morning, he woke to the sound of a cock crowing. Egg was still there, curled up beneath the old man's second-best cloak. Well, the boy did not run off during the night, that's a start. He prodded him awake with his foot. "Up. There's work to do." The boy rose quick enough, rubbing his eyes. "Help me saddle Sweetfoot," Dunk told him.
"What about breakfast?"
"There's salt beef. After we're done."
"I'd sooner eat the horse," Egg said. "Ser."
"You'll eat my fist if you don't do as you're told. Get the brushes. They're in the saddle sack. Yes, that one."
Together they brushed out the palfrey's sorrel coat, hefted Ser Arlan's best saddle over her back, and cinched it tight. Egg was a good worker once he put his mind to it, Dunk saw.
"I expect I'll be gone most of the day," he told the boy as he mounted. "You're to stay here and put the camp in order. Make sure no other thieves come nosing about."
"Can I have a sword to run them off with?" Egg asked. He had blue eyes, Dunk saw, very dark, almost purple. His bald head made them seem huge, somehow.