Chapter Text
The dragon blinks at them and a great shudder runs through Aegon. Dunk had not been prepared to care for a prince, albeit princes seemed to be much the same as other lads. Only fussier. Dunk had found that the trick was to leave silences for the complaining and to serve less hard salt beef. But now Dunk has care of a dragon. What do dragons even eat?
“D'you think it'll take hard salt beef?” Dunk finally asks.
“I think not,” Egg retorts, some of the colour returned to his voice. The boy walks over to the dragon, pressing a pale hand against its slim head. The dragon leans into it. “But perhaps she will take the remainder of the squirrel?”
Egg leans down to pick at the charred remains of the squirrel they’d had for dinner and emerges with a piece of blackened gristle pinched between his fingers. The dragon merely turns its head away from the offering. At the second attempt, she actually snaps her teeth in threat. From a creature that is only somewhat little than a cat, the threat is not severe, but it is clear.
“I think not,” Duncan echoes. The dragon's head tilts in the direction of their horses, nostrils flaring.
“No!” Aegon reprimands when he follows the dragon’s gaze. Duncan spares a moment to be grateful that Egg’s strangeness seems to have past with the hatching of the dragon.
“She seems hungry.” Duncan states.
“Is there nothing else? She is hungry,” Aegon says. “I know she is.”
“No. Nought safe the beef. Mayhap-” Dunk begins, loathe to even think of what he is about to suggest. He looks toward his horses. But he cannot have the first dragon hatched in this age die of starvation. His thought is scattered when he sees the dragon inch further along Aegon’s arm. The little creature bites at one of the open cuts there, tongue flickering out at the welling blood.
“Stop,” Dunk urges. “You’ve bled too much already.”
“But if it's the only food she’ll take-”
“No,” Dunk determines. Aegon already looks drawn and pale and far too small besides. “If suppose she can have mine. If she needs.”
It is an easy thing to draw a cut along the outside of his forearm, blood beading in it. It is less easy to watch Aegon’s face as he does it, the lad's face pinched and his dark eyes wide. Duncan crouches down and beckons at the dragon.
“Are you sure about this, Ser?” Aegon asks. The dragon also manages to look sceptical, glancing up at Duncan and back at Egg, head tilted.
“Go on then,” Duncan tells the dragon before wondering if it can even understand him. “It’s as good as any, is it not?”
That has Aegon looking sceptical.
“Perhaps not, Ser,” the lad replies, “you’re near all salt beef yourself.”
Eventually the dragon does inch forward and gives his arm a few tentative licks. It is a queer feeling, the tongue of it raspy and dry. At least the taste of it seems to brighten its enthusiasm. Dunk nearly sighs in relief at the knowledge they need not butcher the horses. Yet.
“Saddle the horses,” he tells Aegon. “We may ride through the night; we are unlike to find sleep.”
The horses appear unimpressed with this plan and unimpressed with the dragon in particular, but they eventually manage to coax them down the path again. Dunk had always thought of dragons as creatures of myth and fire and terror. He finds himself unsure how to deal with the creature as it appears now. It had been unsteady on its feet earlier, the way Duncan had seen in freshly born lambs, and at present it rests across Aegon’s lap and the saddle, dozing like a spoiled kitten. Occasionally it shifts and the claws make a soft clacking sound against the saddle’s hard leather.
“How soon is she going to need to eat again?” Duncan asks, focusing on the practical matters. “And what do they eat?”
Aegon looks up from where he’d been staring down at the dragon, face and hair shining pale in the moonlight. “Why do you think I know?”
“Well,” Duncan says. “You are the one she hatched for?”
“I’m not,” Aegon returns. “Wait, do you really think-?”
Duncan raises his eyebrows.
“I don’t believe she would hatch for me,” he says, patting Storms neck when the horse nickers. “ ‘less you believe Storm here has some Targaryen blood hidden in him-”
The first bout of laughter he’s heard from Egg in days breaks past his lips at that. The dragon wakes at the noise, her head lifting to look around. Egg pets along her back in an unthinking motion.
“I don’t know,” the lad eventually admits.
“Don’t know what?” Duncan asks.
“What they eat. Or how often. Or if they need ought else,” Egg says miserably. “Ser. What if she’s hurt because I don’t know?”
Dunk doesn’t know the words to relieve him; it’s much the same worry as Duncan has had himself.
“That is why we ride to King’s landing,” he answers instead, “your family will know.”
“The last dragons hatched by my family all died,” is Aegon’s reply to that. The dragon gives a protesting chirp at the pronunciation. Dunk shrugs.
“I hope that she won’t.”
“You were meant to say something reassuring, Ser!”
“I’m not much good at that,” Duncan admits.
“Really? I had not noticed.”
“You hadn’t?” Dunk finds that hard to believe.
“Of course I had!”
They ride along in silence for a while. Travelling the countryside in the dark always feels strange, trees and hedges and hills all washed out and painted silver by the moonlight. Their pace is slowed by necessity as the horses pick their way across the fields. Next to Duncan, Egg’s bright hair gleams in the moonlight like a spectre.
“How long is the ride, Ser?” Egg asks eventually. “Only I think she is getting hungry again.”
Dunk casts his eyes ahead, trying to place their location from the route they’d taken so far.
“A few hours still,” he answers. Then he looks across the hills. “But there’s sheep in those fields.”
“Are we going to steal a sheep, Ser?” Aegon asks. He sounds both appalled and excited.
“Of course not,” Duncan replies. He gestures to the farmhouse atop the next hill. “I’ll buy it.”
Aegon stays back with the horses, far enough that the dragon should not be visible in the low light. Dunk’s knock against the door is met by nothing but silence. Just as he goes to knock again, the door is pulled open and a frying pan is swung at him. It thuds rather ineffectively against Duncan’s upper arm.
“By the gods,” a woman’s voice sounds from inside. “A giant.”
“Mama, is it going to eat us?” a child cries inside. The soft light from a fireplace inside the house casts across the woman’s face.
“I am just a man,” he denies. “Ser Duncan. That is – Ser Duncan the Tall.”
“That you are. Ser?” the woman questions, tone shifting from fear to scepticism. “What do you mean by arriving at our step so late?”
“I don’t mean any harm,” Duncan insists. “I’m here on the King’s business.”
“The King’s business?” she asks, mustering Duncan – leather-clad, dirty, and likely smelling of horses – without lowering her frying pan. “What business of the King should bring you to my step at this time?”
“I need a sheep,” Duncan informs her. In return, the woman moves to slam the door on his outstretched hand.
“Pay! That is, I would of course – pay for the sheep. Which is what I meant to say from the beginning.” Duncan rustles through his purse. He holds out a golden coin to her. “Here.”
The frying pan is lowered slowly but the woman looks no less sceptical.
“You a thief?” she asks, plucking the golden coin from his hand and rolling it between her fingers. Duncan suddenly remembers that he had not seen a golden coin in his life until he was sixteen years old, and then only from afar.
“No,” he protests. “It is the King’s business.” Duncan feels like he is reaching for things that are beyond him with the statement – what claim does he hold to the king's doings – but if a dragon is anyone’s business, it is the king’s.
“What business does the King have with sheep?” asks one of the children from behind the door, followed by a hushing noise. The muttering from within the hut that follows is too quiet to understand. Eventually, the woman’s hand closes around the coin. “Very well, Ser. You may take one from the field.”
This time the door is slammed in his face, and Dunk is left staring at it.
“All right, then,” he mutters to himself. He walks back to the horses.
“Allowing yourself to be hit with a frying pan was not particularly dignified, Ser.”
“It was only that I didn’t expect it,” Dunk defends himself.
“You are a big target.”
The sheep are tame enough that it is an easy matter to simply lift one up from the field, albeit the animal starts bleating as soon as its hooves leave the ground, and it shits down the side of the saddle when Duncan tries to climb up the horse with it. As such, they only barely make it over the hill before Duncan sets the sheep back on the ground and cuts its throat.
The dragon wriggles off Egg’s lap then, drawn closer by the blood. She licks at the weeping cut eagerly. Egg gets off his horse to, standing next to Duncan and taking the knife to butcher the animal. The lad’s work is rough, but the dragon does not seem to mind. She snaps up the first slice of meat offered to her and continues to eat the pieces as fast as Egg can cut them.
“She’s eating, Ser!” Egg exclaims as the dragon knocks her snout against his fingers. “Oh, I hope that means-”
“Aye,” Dunk shrugs. “It seems a good sign? Not a bad one.”
“You truly are one of a kind when it comes to reassurances, Ser,” Egg answers.
“D’you want a clout in the ear for your cheek?”
The question has the dragon growling at him. Then, fed up with Aegon’s distraction, the dragon lunges head-first into the opened belly of the sheep. Dunk is showered in blood and viscera when she tears at the meat there.
Dunk looks down at himself. “Great.”
By the time the dragon withdraws from her meal, the horizon is the pale grey of pre-dawn. The sheep itself is torn into a bloody, woolly mess, the dragon looking almost round after her meal. She curls around Aegon’s feet and doesn’t move again, appearing asleep. Egg kneels down to wipe the blood from her face with his cloak. Aside from the a few splatters, the lad had managed to remain clean, whereas Dunk finds himself splattered with sheep innards. He sighs and bends down to the remainder of the meat, bundling it together so he may lift it onto the back of his horse.
Aegon looks over at him. “You can’t ride into the Red Keep carrying a gutted sheep.”
Duncan glances down at his hands. “We can’t waste it.”
“We are riding into the kings court,” Egg repeats. “No carrying around dead sheep. And perhaps you could - wash?”
“You are riding to court,” Duncan corrects. “I’m a landless knight. There’s no place for me in your halls. Your father made that clear enough when he allowed your squireship.”
In truth, Maekar had had far more words than that. He’d intercepted Aegon’s attempt to pay the ransom on Duncan’s armour after he’d lost. Instead, he’d given Duncan an offer. Egg as his squire and enough gold to care for him fittingly - so long as Duncan never crossed the prince’s sights again. If he did-
It was easy enough to accept. Until now. Egg looks at him, the first rays of the morning light shining violet in his eyes.
“You must stay with me, Ser,” he insists. Duncan looks at him, concern across the lad’s features clear as anything. “I will need your protection. When the news spreads.”
Court is not the place for him, Duncan knows. But he looks down into Egg’s earnest eyes. He agrees. “Of course.”
The dragon only squints at them sleepily when she is urged to move. Duncan ends up lifting her up toward Aegon once the lad has already gotten back onto the horse, where she settles back across the boy’s lap with minimal grumbling.
The morning sun breaks golden over the horizon as they ride forward.
“Does she need a name?” Duncan asks as they ride on. “Only, a dragon seems like the kind of creature to need one.”
“There was a dragon called Sheepstealer once,” Egg tells him. Dunk blinks at that. It does not seem like a particularly fearful name for a beast of fire and destruction. He says as much.
“And we did not steal this one,” Duncan adds, “we bought it.”
“Sheepbuyer is a nonsensical name,” Egg decides. “Sheepeater, perhaps? I suppose you would call her Salt Beef or the like."
The dragon belches out a smoky breath from its place on Egg’s saddle. King’s Landing comes into sight before the dragon can be named Sheepeater or Hard Salt Beef. By then the sun is already climbing high into the sky. There had not been a chance to wash - the smell of old blood, sheep shit and charred meat has soaked indelibly into Duncan’s clothes.
“We ought to hide her,” Duncan says, just before the gates come into sight. “Does she still fit the saddle bag, as the egg did?”
“You can’t stuff a dragon into a saddle bag,” Egg protests.
“You can’t ride a dragon through King’s Landing, either.”
The dragon huffs again. In the daylight, she appears to be the same deep green her egg had been, a dusting of golden yellow at the edge of her wings and along her spine. Egg looks down at her.
“Would you mind terribly?” he asks the dragon, which does not answer him one way or another. The lad looks over at him; Duncan can only shrug. He rides over and a moment later they lift the dragon together, carefully moving her to the saddle bag. It seems impossible that the dragon could have grown already – and yet it is a tight fit. Together, they look down at the leather bag. There is no sign of protest beyond some conspicuous wiggling, and they both huff out a breath of relief.
“Very undignified, Ser,” Egg repeats not for the first time that day. They ride for the gates. Duncan catches glances on the way through the city, likely for his height and his appearance both, but they are not stopped until they make it to the Red Keep’s gates.
“Halt!” one of the guards at the gates calls out. “What is your business here?”
“We’ve to see the king,” Duncan states. The pronouncement draws the attention of the remaining guards, two more stepping close.
“What is your name, Ser?” the guard asks. Dunk cannot see the man’s face, but he sounds sceptical.
“My name is Ser Duncan the Tall,” he tries. “We must see the king.”
“There’s no more petitioners accepted for the day,” the guard states. “And you are not expected. You must leave.”
The dragon chooses this moment to chirp inside Aegon’s saddle bag. The guard raises his lance in alarm.
“What was that?” he demands.
“Nought for you to concern yourself with.” Aegon rides forward and lowers the hood covering his silver hair. “I am Prince Aegon Targaryen. And my Ser is correct – we must see the King.”
“Claiming to be a prince, yet squired to him?” the guard gestures at Duncan’s blood-encrusted form. “What mummery are you intending?”
“He is one of the princes,” the other guard calls out. “I’ve seen him before. Let them through.”
In the courtyard, Duncan helps Egg unhook the saddle bag. A moment passes before a courtier walks towards them, eyes flicking between the hedge knight and the prince. At last he says, “I am to bring you to your audience with the king, my prince. Perhaps the Ser Knight may wait here for a bath to be made ready?”
Aegon looks between them. When Duncan attempts to pass him the saddlebag, however, the lad near staggers underneath the weight. He winces.
“Ser Duncan must come with me,” he decides. The courtier bows, his richly embroidered tunic without a speck of dirt.
“As you say, my prince. Follow me.”
It turns out they are led not to a small audience chamber as Dunk had hoped, but to the throne room itself. The grand doors stand open. Made of heavy oak and iron, Duncan thinks it must take a half score of men just to move them closed. Just beyond them is a wide stone hall, filled with brightly clothed courtiers and guards ringing the walls.
The iron throne is larger than Dunk had ever expected.
“Prince Aegon Targaryen,” the courtier announces, “son of Prince Maekar Targaryen. And the Ser-?”
“Duncan the Tall,” Dunk says. The courtier repeats it with a pinched look upon his face. After a moment, he nods at them. “You may approach the throne.”
From up close the iron throne looks, impossibly, even larger. The tales speak of a thousand enemy swords that were melted into it. Dunk believes them – the twisted mass of black metal presides over the hall, imposing and large and speaking of nothing but power. Dragonflame did that. The saddlebag rests heavy against his side. Still the throne suits King Baelor, Duncan thinks nonsensically. The man looks well – more grey in his beard since Duncan saw him and his expression more drawn, but he still radiates strength.
“Uncle,” Aegon says, kneeling down.
Duncan follows him. “My king.”
“Nephew,” the king greets. “I will send a message to your father. Last I heard you were missing from Summerhall. I am glad to see you here, and well.” Baelor musters them. “You are well?”
“Very well,” Aegon hastily assures. “The blood is – not ours.”
“But there is blood.” Baelor’s eyes linger over Duncan, who is rather covered in the stuff. Dunk finds himself glad for the distance that the stairs to the iron throne create, because at least King Baelor will not be forced to smell him too.
“There was some confusion in the ravens from Summerhall,” Baelor allows. The King looks at Duncan. “Talk of a thief. Were you set upon?”
“Your grace. We were-” Dunk breaks off and looks over at Egg uncertainly. Duncan had quite fumbled through the first and only conversation he’d held with King Baelor, and the number of eyes around him don’t help with finding the words.
“Perhaps it is better to show you,” Egg concludes. He nods at Duncan. “Please?”
Duncan nods and pulls at the strings holding the saddle bag closed. With a bit of nudging and more shoving at the leather than is likely dignified, the dragon crawls out of it. Her claws clack against the stone floor. For a short moment the hall is perfectly silent.
Then, it falls into a roar of noise.
“How could it be?”
“By the gods.”
“Is that truly-”
“Enough.” The king’s voice cuts through the din, silence following the command. “Everyone leave,” King Baelor orders, a note of steel in his voice. The dragon huffs out a breath of smoke which rises into the air. Behind them, the courtiers move around, but Baelor turns to look at Aegon instead.
“Nephew – you will tell me everything.”
Duncan rises as well, following the command to leave. Somewhere in this keep there must be enough water to wash with, he thinks. Before he makes it more than a step, the king’s voice calls him back.
“Not you, Ser Duncan. Stay.”