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I don’t want to die, Dunk thinks, dying.
Somewhere, a horse screams, and he has only enough mind left to hope it isn’t Thunder. He’s a good horse. He was good to the old man, and he was good to me. Thunder deserves better than to die here for a knight who never even had a chance to be a knight.
Everywhere is the sound of steel on steel, men fighting, men in pain, men dying. It is not so difficult as he imagined. Dying is soft and dim and almost gentle, the way sleep used to be when he was small. Already, the pain is fading. A pale cool fog settles over him like a silent sister’s shawl, pressing him down into the dirt. Down where he belongs. Dunk closes his eyes and sinks.
The old man was never much for prayers, and neither has Dunk been as pious as a man ought. The gods are for septs, clean and glittering. The gods are names cried in the streets by godsworn in their grey raiment. Their good works are for the righteous poor. Not for the wicked and the broken and the gutter rats of Flea Bottom, the Seven’s grace; not for the squire of a hedge knight, the Seven’s blessings; not for Ser Duncan, the Seven’s favor. Pity drips through his cupped palms like so much water. If he had prayed – if he had lived more piously – the septons say a man should love his brothers, and a knight should love his lord. I tried, ser. I tried…
Ser Arlan’s face swims before his swollen eye. Up, comes a voice from no mortal man’s mouth, ringing in his helm like a thunderclap. Dunk pries his good eye open and finds Prince Baelor standing before him, hand outstretched. He wears a fine velvet mantle, and it weeps beads of garnet like bloody tears. Where is your plate? Dunk means to ask, head swimming, but somehow he is on his feet. The hand is gone, and the prince is gone with it.
In his place is a knight. His pauldrons are gilt stags; His gorget is enamelled with black-and-yellow chevronny; His chestplate is a field of diamonds red and white; His visor is a great oaken door upon a masoned helm. Then His armor bears no ornament at all, the mail beneath rusted and riven. Then it is brilliant blued steel, blue as a sapphire, blue as the sea, with a cloak of seven colors streaming from His shoulders. Dunk cannot see His face beneath the helm, but they are of a height.
You have no chance, the Warrior tells him, sad and certain. And no choice.
Tanselle stands beside Him, smiling sweetly in a gown of autumn leaves. They gather in her hair like a coronet, red and umber and gold. Dunk does not have a heartbeat to fear for her before another blow catches him full in the chest. The pain is sublime, a searing sunburst, and he falls.
Prince Aerion is a red wraith above, blotting out the sky. His wings unfurl before Dunk’s eyes, webbed with shimmering emerald silk. Aerion’s gauntlets have grown into claws, and his spiked tail whips like a flail. Dunk rolls as it takes another savage bite, striking the tourney field and spattering them both in mud.
Up, Tanselle laughs, up, up. A long red braid coils over Her shoulder, and there is a spray of freckles beneath Her lilac eyes, amethyst eyes, dragon eyes. A lock of inky black hair falls over one handsome cheek, white-gold over the other.
Up, lad, the Maiden teases with Ser Lyonel’s sly, toothsome smile. Up, Ser Fool.
Dunk obeys. Dunk rises. The blows fall like rain, like kisses, sweet and warm. Each gouge of tail and talon makes him bloom with the vigor of spring. His heart sings like the soil, rich and dark and full of life.
Every scratch to his armor, Steely Pate is there to hammer back to newness, every slash His to mend and strengthen. He is the smith, the smuggler, the soother of hurts, grasping at the leather pouch about His neck as if there is some magic held within. Dunk thinks there must be, for his mail gleams like quicksilver, like starlight, bright enough to blind him.
The Father lifts Dunk’s sword arm when his flesh forgets its strength. He is the Conqueror in a crown of rubies and ribboned dark steel, a prince with pox-scarred cheeks and a thunderous frown, a sad old man in sky-blue silks with moonglow upon His breast. He cradles a babe, but when Dunk looks, it is only a head, eyes grey and glassy and solemn.
Behind his shield arm is the Mother, kissing his brow after each blow. She has a thousand faces he has known and a thousand he has not: a new mother from a flyspeck village in the Reach, an old whore from Flea Bottom, Her lips painted red and Her smile kind. She is an innkeep’s wife, a stout ugly woman who let him sleep in the stables when he had no coin for a room. She holds out a heel of bread for him to eat, a newborn for him to kiss, a hand for him to hold.
Dunk takes it, and rises, again and again. The dragon tires, but the man, Dunk, feels more alive than he ever has, catching the strikes in his hands like falling stars. Only one of his eyes will open, but the Crone has one to spare. She watches him with a red eye, blue eyes, violet eyes, mismatched black and green beneath a brute’s swollen brow. She is a pale-haired queen with sorcery winking from the rings on Her clawed fingers; a white raven with a claret upon His cheek; a boy on a fur pallet with His legs crumpled beneath Him. Dunk’s own legs are stiff as wood beneath, but he feels as though he could fly.
The prince is on his back, and Dunk thinks he must have wings of his own. Not scaled as a Targaryen, but white and soft, billowing out to touch the clouds.
Kill him, the Mother rasps in his ear. Her face is lovely. Her face is horrible, pale as milk and cold as a corpse. Red, red tears run down Her cheeks, and he can feel Her hatred like it were his own.
Kill him! the Stranger screams in chorus. Death is only a skinny boy with fierce, sad eyes. They clutch a sword, a dead brother’s love, tears cutting tracks through the dirt on Their hollow cheeks. A war orphan, a street urchin, a motherless child. Dunk remembers the pang of that hunger, the ceaseless clawing agony in the pit of his belly. The Stranger is weeping, and he is weeping too.
Please, ser, Egg whispers. The Stranger's dark hood has fallen back, and Dunk’s squire looks at him with wet, beseeching eyes. Please.
The prince’s face swims before him, purple as a plum. Dunk hits him again, drunk on victory, drunk on hate, drunk on living. Skin splits and bone shatters under his fist. It is a familiar feeling to Dunk of Flea Bottom. When he hesitates, the Warrior is there, a young man with an old man’s voice. Kill him, He orders, crowned in iron and old runed bronze, in black wool and crimson silk. And let the man be born.
I’ve never killed anyone like this before, Dunk thinks. He can feel the dead air trapped in his chest like a stoppered bottle. Someone touches his shoulder; for a moment, Dunk thinks it is Ser Manfred. The forked lightning on His chestplate is cracked and broken, but Dunk can taste the fire in his mouth. Are you my mother? he wonders.
As Dunk staggers to his feet, he has the prince in his grasp. Aerion squirms, gasps, spits blood. Dunk holds him strangling-tight, as he once saw a man handle a viper. All around, hands are reaching for him, clutching his surcoat, caressing his battered head, bearing him up.
A girl with Aerion’s silver hair flashes in the corner of his eye, neither Maiden nor Mother. He is the Warrior, a wild, wide-eyed girl-child in a man’s plate. He is no dragon, the Warrior mourns. The last dragon died on the Trident. He is less than the shadow of a snake.
“Tell them,” Dunk booms, giving Aerion a shake. He slurs like Ser Arlan deep in his cups, but Ser Arlan is there, hale and sober, leaning on his war lance. The gods never gave him a new sword after all. The old man’s eyes crinkle when he smiles. Go on, he mouths.
“Tell them,” Dunk thunders again. The gods are waiting, and Lord Ashford as well.
Finally, the dragon’s mouth opens, but no flame comes out. The dragons are dead. There is only a thin, wheezing croak. Dunk's heart gives a final, stubborn throb; the gods exult.