A few green trees still stood where the west way crossed the Chequy Water. Their trunks were charred and blackened on one side. Just beyond, the water glimmered darkly. Blue and green, Dunk thought, but all the gold is gone. The smoke had veiled the sun.
Ser Eustace halted when he reached the water’s edge. “I took a holy vow. I will not cross that stream. Not so long as the land beyond is hers.” The old knight wore mail and plate beneath his yellowed surcoat. His sword was on his hip.
“What if she never comes, ser?” Egg asked.
With fire and sword, Dunk thought. “She’ll come.”
She did, and within the hour. They heard her horses first, and then the faint metallic sound of clinking armor, growing louder. The drifting smoke made it hard to tell how far off they were, until her banner bearer pushed through the ragged gray curtain. His staff was crowned by an iron spider painted white and red, with the black banner of the Webbers hanging listlessly beneath. When he saw them across the water, he halted on the bank. Ser Lucas Inchfield appeared half a heartbeat later, armored head to heel.
Only then did Lady Rohanne herself appear, astride a coal-black mare decked out in strands of silverly silk, like unto a spider’s web. The Widow’s cloak was made of the same stuff. It billowed from her shoulders and her wrists, as light as air. She was armored, too, in a suit of green enamel scale chased with gold and silver. It fit her figure like a glove, and made her look as if she were garbed in summer leaves. Her long red braid hung down behind her, bouncing as she rode. Septon Sefton rode red-faced at her side, atop a big gray gelding. On her other side was her young maester, Cerrick, mounted on a mule.
More knights came after, half a dozen of them, attended by as many esquires. A column of mounted crossbowmen brought up the rear, and fanned out to either side of the road when they reached the Chequy Water and saw Dunk waiting on the other side. There were three-and-thirty fighting men all told, excluding the septon, the maester, and the Widow herself. One of the knights caught Dunk’s eye; a squat bald keg of a man in mail and leather, with an angry face and an ugly goiter on his neck.
The Red Widow walked her mare to the edge of the water. “Ser Eustace, Ser Duncan,” she called across the stream, “we saw your fire burning in the night.”
“Saw it?” Ser Eustace shouted back. “Aye, you saw it… after you made it.”
“That is a vile accusation.”
“For a vile act.”
“I was asleep in my bed last night, with my ladies all around me. The shouts from the walls awoke me, as they did almost everyone. Old men climbed up steep tower steps to look, and babes at the breast saw the red light and wept in fear. And that is all I know of your fire, ser.”
“It was your fire, woman,” insisted Ser Eustace. “My wood is gone. Gone, I say!”
Septon Sefton cleared his throat. “Ser Eustace,” he boomed, “there are fires in the kingswood too, and even in the rainwood. The drought has turned all our woods to kindling.”
Lady Rohanne raised an arm and pointed. “Look at my fields, Osgrey. How dry they are. I would have been a fool to set a fire. Had the wind changed direction, the flames might well have leapt the stream, and burned out half my crops.”
“Might have?” Ser Eustace shouted. “It was my woods that burned, and you that burned them. Most like you cast some witch’s spell to drive the wind, just as you used your dark arts to slay your husbands and your brothers!”
Lady Rohanne’s face grew harder. Dunk had seen that look at Coldmoat, just before she slapped him. “Prattle,” she told the old man. “I will waste no more words on you, ser. Produce Bennis of the Brown Shield, or we will come and take him.”
“That you shall not do,” Ser Eustace declared in ringing tones. “That you shall never do.” His mustache twitched. “Come no farther. This side of the stream is mine, and you are not wanted here. You shall have no hospitality from me. No bread and salt, not even shade and water. You come as an intruder. I forbid you to set foot on Osgrey land.”
Lady Rohanne drew her braid over her shoulder. “Ser Lucas,” was all she said. The Longinch made a gesture, the crossbowmen dismounted, winched back their bowstrings with the help of hook and stirrup, and plucked quarrels from their quivers. “Now, ser,” her ladyship called out, when every bow was nocked and raised and ready, “what was it you forbade me?”
Dunk had heard enough. “If you cross the stream without leave, you are breaking the king’s peace.”
Septon Sefton urged his horse forward a step. “The king will neither know nor care,” he called. “We are all the Mother’s children, ser. For her sake, stand aside.”
Dunk frowned. “I don’t know much of gods, septon… but aren’t we the Warrior’s children, too?” He rubbed the back of his neck. “If you try to cross, I’ll stop you.”
Ser Lucas the Longinch laughed. “Here’s a hedge knight who yearns to be a hedgehog, my lady,” he said to the Red Widow. “Say the word, and we’ll put a dozen quarrels in him. At this distance they will punch through that armor like it was made of spit.”
“No. Not yet, ser.” Lady Rohanne studied him from across the stream. “You are two men and a boy. We are three-and-thirty. How do you propose to stop us crossing?”
“Well,” said Dunk, “I’ll tell you. But only you.”
“As you wish.” She pressed her heels into her horse and rode her out into the stream. When the water reached the mare’s belly, she halted, waiting. “Here I am. Come closer, ser. I promise not to sew you in a sack.”
Ser Eustace grasped Dunk by the arm before he could respond. “Go to her,” the old knight said, “but remember the Little Lion.”
“As you say, m’lord.” Dunk walked Thunder down into the water. He drew up beside her and said, “M’lady.”
“Ser Duncan.” She reached up and laid two fingers on his swollen lip. “Did I do this, ser?”
“No one else has slapped my face of late, m’lady.”
“That was bad of me. A breach of hospitality. The good septon has been scolding me.” She gazed across the water at Ser Eustace. “I scarce remember Addam any longer. It was more than half my life ago. I remember that I loved him, though. I have not loved any of the others.”
“His father put him in the blackberries, with his brothers,” Dunk said. “He was fond of blackberries.”
“I remember. He used to pick them for me, and we’d eat them in a bowl of cream.”
“The king pardoned the old man for Daemon,” said Dunk. “It is past time you pardoned him for Addam.”
“Give me Bennis, and I’ll consider that.”
“Bennis is not mine to give.”
She sighed. “I would as lief not have to kill you.”
“I would as lief not die.”
“Then give me Bennis. We’ll cut his nose off and hand him back, and that will be the end of that.”
“It won’t, though,” Dunk said. “There’s still the dam to deal with, and the fire. Will you give us the men who set it?”
“There were lantern bugs in that wood,” she said. “It may be they set the fire off, with their little lanterns.”
“No more teasing now, m’lady,” Dunk warned her. “This is no time for it. Tear down the dam, and let Ser Eustace have the water to make up for the wood. That’s fair, is it not?”
“It might be, if I had burned the wood. Which I did not. I was at Coldmoat, safe abed.” She looked down at the water. “What is there to prevent us from riding right across the stream? Have you scattered caltrops amongst the rocks? Hidden archers in the ashes? Tell me what you think is going to stop us.”