Chapter Text
An autumn storm raged in the Crabbswoods. They had made their camp well into the treeline, perhaps a hundred yards from the steep bluff at their back, but the pine barren did not offer much protection from the storm rolling in off the Bay of Crabs. Rain was coming down in thick sheets, blown sideways by gales of wind, soaking the whole miserable host to their core even through their waxed canvas tents. A fat droplet of water fell from the roof of the tent and landed with a heavy plop on the map in front of Baelor. The ink started to bleed, removing half of “Crackclaw Point” and turning it into a watery splotch.
“Fuck me,” Baelor muttered. He blotted at the map with the sleeve of his tunic. Another droplet fell, and washed away “The Whispers.”
“I’d be happy to, Your Grace, only I don’t think that bed would hold the both of us,” Dunk said. He was sitting on his bedroll, leaned up against Baelor’s chair, resting his head on his Prince’s thigh.
He was right about the bed. It was a modest camp bed, hastily assembled by Baelor’s squires as they made camp for the night, and thoroughly abused from being packed and unpacked and toted halfway across Westeros on the back of a mule. It creaked viciously when Baelor rolled over in the night and was like to collapse into kindling if they attempted any more vigorous activities on it. Poor accommodations for a prince, but better than a bed roll on the floor of the tent, and better still than a spot under a tree with nothing but a traveling cloak; a fate which befell many men tonight.
Tis a good thing we are so remote, or else half my men would desert just to get out of this weather, Baelor thought, and wouldn’t that be the final blow, to lose this war on account of a rainstorm. It was a fools errand they were on, a campaign on Crackclaw Point at the break of Autumn. Baelor had spent enough years on Dragonstone to know what the turning of the seasons would do to the weather in this part of the realm. Already boggy in good weather the Point was virtually impassable in poor conditions. They had already lost several horses, and good men, to sinkholes.
“You are a fool, Ser Duncan,” Baelor said, with the tired fondness of someone who had heard that jape half a hundred times.
“Your fool,” Dunk said, turning his head to smile up at Baelor. It was a sweet thing, Dunk’s smile, though in truth not as beautiful as it once was. He had taken the granite pommel of a sword to his face in a skirmish two days past, leaving him with a brutally swollen split lip and missing a pointed incisor. He had taken the blow far better than he had the scolding Baelor gave him for removing his helm in the midst of battle.
“Should I have dressed you in motley instead of a white cloak then” Baelor said. He let his hand fall to rest on Dunk's head, idly running his fingers through his hair. Dunk's hair had grown long on the campaign, and his beard was thick and bushy. Baelor often told him that he looked like a northman. Dunk had told him, with all the disdain he could manage, that Northmen had dark hair, not fair, and Baelor had said even farther north then, a wildling. Dunk had laughed at that, and said that perhaps that might be his next great adventure when the war was finished, beyond the wall.
“Would that you did, it might’ve saved me a lot of trouble,” Dunk said. He had worn the white cloak for two years now, and while some brothers might serve their whole lives in peacetime, standing outside chamber doors and training in the yard of the keep, Dunk’s initiation to the kingsguard had been one by fire. Regional uprisings had begun the year he was sworn and half the realm was in open rebellion by the next. Baelor had ridden off to war with Dunk at his side, and had since taken part in nearly a score of battles. There will be a score more, before this war is done, Baelor thought bitterly.
The droplets had become a steady stream now, at risk of soaking the map entirely. Baelor cursed again.
“Here, just move the whole thing,” Dunk said. He rose, and he and Baelor moved the heavy wooden writing desk out from under the leak. Dunk was peering at the map, which now had several inky smudges where the names of towns and keeps had been. On the map were heavy stone set pieces, carved into the sigils of the houses they represented, denoting the position of their armies. Houses supporting Haegon Blackfyre had black pieces, Targaryen loyalists red. There was a disappointing amount of red pieces. The three headed dragon that represented Baelor’s host had tipped over when they moved the desk, and had rolled from Dyre Den to Rook’s Rest. Baelor set it back to rights and returned it to its original position.
“It doesn’t look good does it?” Dunk asked.
Dunk could not read a map, Baelor knew, for all that he could tell you how to get from Starfall to the Neck and back, and how long the journey would take, he would not be able to point to either of them on a map. The sheer number of black pieces would make it obvious enough that they were outnumbered, and surrounded to boot, but the finer details would be lost on him.
“No, I cannot say it does, and,” Baelor took Dunk’s hand in his and placed it on one of the black pieces, “Lord Boggs,” he guided the piece, a carving of a snipe, towards the three headed dragon, “is closing in from the south”, he moved Dunk’s hand to a carving of a huntsman and dragged that toward the dragon as well, “and Lord Hardy from the east. They will push us all the way to The Whispers, if we are not careful.”
Dunk frowned. Baelor watched his eyes dart back and forth across the map. Finally, he sighed and said, “I suppose we should pray one of your dragon’s egg hatches then.” He turned away from the map, his patience for such things apparently worn through.
Baelor didn’t want to say that at the current rate, they’d need two dragons to win the war. He engaged in the hypothetical instead. “If we had a dragon, what's to stop Haegon from having one as well?” he said.
“Do bastards get dragons?” Dunk asked. His voice took on a hard edge. It often did, when there was talk of bastardry, and birthrights, and inheritances.
“They could, it's a matter of blood, not birth. Dragons know nothing of wedlock” Baelor said
“It makes little sense to me. You say the Gods gave the Targaryens dragons, but the Gods hate bastards, yet bastards can have dragons.”
“Gods and dragons are not the same”
“They are close enough in my mind,” Dunk said.
“That is blasphemous,” Baelor chided.
Dunk pulled an unhappy face, “Fuck the gods” he muttered under his breath. Dunk had never been a pious man. He might light a candle for the warrior, before a battle or tourney and would pray with Baelor, if it were asked of him. Baelor tried not to ask. He found himself looking to the gods for answers more and more as of late. Perhaps it was arrogance, but he rarely prayed to the warrior. He knew his own strength in battle, had been tested again and again and again, and emerged victorious, so he left the Warrior to the other men. The Mother was a new favorite, to protect Matarys. The Crone, to guide him out of this madness he had found himself in. The Stranger, for a quick end when his time came. The Father, each morning, and each night, and sometimes in between depending on how heretical Dunk was being on the day, to judge Dunk justly, to see that he was a good man, to beg that for all Dunk would not ask forgiveness from the Gods for his sins might be be forgiven anyways. The closer they came to the end of this war, an end that would almost certainly not favor them, the more Baelor found himself lingering on the after. He had made his peace with the thought of his own end, he might see Valarr again, he might see Aerys and Rhaegel, wherever souls went when men died. Dunk though, he worried for. So he prayed for the two of them, and hoped what they said about Targaryens being closer to Gods than men was true, and that it would be enough.
Dunk did not make it easy for him though, saying things like that.
It was Baelor’s turn to frown, “Enough of that” he said sternly.
Dunk, who was bolder now than he had been years ago, was not cowed. “Or what? Will the Stranger take me here and now?” He snorted dismissively, “Let him”.
Bolder, and angrier. And whose fault is that, Baelor thought.
“I said enough,” Baelor said. It was not said harshly, but there was weight behind the words. Dunk looked like Baelor had slapped him.
“Beg pardon, Your Grace,” Dunk said, spitting the title like an insult.
“Dunk” Gods Baelor was tired. Not ten minutes past they had been making japes about breaking the camp bed.
“What? You wish to command me as a prince, be a prince then Your Grace.”
There was a huge clap of thunder and a flash of lighting illuminated the tent for a heartbeat. The rain was still beating down outside. Baelor wondered if that was the only thing keeping Dunk from storming out. Ser Donnel was the brother assigned to Baelor this night, Dunk was only here to sleep, he could leave if he wished. I could send him away, Baelor thought cruelly. Something twisted in his stomach at the thought.
“I would not fight with you, Ser Duncan.” Baelor said, it was as close to an apology as either of them would offer.
Dunk sighed heavily, the fight gone out of him as well. “We best retire for the night, I think.”
“Quite.”
They did not speak as they both stripped down to their smallclothes. Dunk settled on to his bedroll, and Baelor doused the oil lamp, pitching the tent into blackness, then got into his own bed.
A few minutes passed, then quietly from the floor, “Your Grace?” Dunk’s voice was hesitant.
“Yes?” Baelor answered too quickly, he did not like the uneasy truce that had settled between them, was eager to fix it.
“Might I-,” Dunk started, paused, then tried again, “I don’t mean to presume, but could-” he stopped again, and Baelor realized what he was trying to ask.
“Of course,” Baelor said, and moved over to make room. No amount of arguing could make him deny Dunk this.
Dunk climbed into the bed, and while the wood frame groaned loudly, it supported the weight. Baelor rolled over and pulled Dunk close to him, Dunk’s head resting on his chest. After a moment, Baelor felt something wet and for a second thought the tent was leaking even more, then realized it was not rain at all. Dunk was crying silently, fat tears running down his face. “Oh Duncan,” he said softly. Dunk made a small choked sound, like he was holding back a sob. He gently wiped away the tears, but they kept coming.
Dunk tried to pull away, embarrassed, “Fuck. Sorry,” he sniffed, “I'm being a maid.”
Baelor would not let him go, holding him tightly. “There is no shame in it,” he said. He had seen many strong men cry during war, men older and more seasoned than Dunk.
It was a grand thing to march off to war, before the first test, when spirits were still high and the men told stories of battles past, raucous and rowdy, ready to prove their strength against any foe. How quickly it changed when losses started piling up; when men lay dying on muddy fields, calling for their mothers, begging the Gods for mercy; when the clash of steel rang in their ears as they lay awake at night, exhausted but unable to sleep. And then how quickly they would all forget again, when they returned home victorious. In the stories men told of war no one sobbed over the death of their destrier, soiled themselves from fear, snuck off and deserted in the night. Yet Baelor had seen it all, and would see worse still he was sure.
Once during the first Blackfyre rebellion, when that too had turned against them, some time before the Redgrass Field, Baelor had sat in a tent much like this one, poring over a map that showed dismal odds, and was hit by the realization that they might lose. He had never considered it previously, they were dragons fighting mere pretenders, how could they possibly lose? He had sobbed then, alone in his tent, quietly as he could so none of his men might wander by and hear. When he had cried all that he could, he prayed to the Warrior, as he was wont in those days, and begged for the strength to leave his tent the next morning, and lead good men to their deaths.
Dunk would not pray to the Warrior though, he would take no comfort in that. I must give him strength, he will continue for me, if I ask it of him, Baelor thought. The thought recalled an old memory to him, something he had not thought of in years.
Daeron had taken Baelor with him on a royal progress shortly after his coronation. Aegon IV had been despised by the small folk, and Daeron had sought to rehabilitate the Targaryen image. They would be just rulers; fair, generous. It was to be a show of good will. Good will, but also power. We will treat you fairly, and you will submit. They had been traveling on the Kingsroad well away from any city, surrounded by nothing but farmland and villages. It was a hot day, the sun beating down on them, Baelor was sweating through his shirt from riding at a walk. His palfrey, a fine chestnut thing, young and spirited, was sedate, made quiet by the heat. Out in one of the fields was an old plow horse. Fleabitten grey, swaybacked and skinny. It was making slow progress on the field, a farmer trudging beside it with a whip. The horse stumbled and went to its knees. The farmer cracked the whip threateningly, and the horse stood again, and went on. It only made it a few lumbering steps before it tripped again, falling once more to its knees. The farmer gave the horse a lash on its hindquarters, and with a grunt it stood, and went on. The process repeated twice more. The old horse never once lashed out at the whip, or deviated from its path. Each time, it got to its feet, and dutifully returned to its work. The final time, the horse could not get up. It collapsed to the ground in a tangle of wood and leather, breaking parts of its harness as it went down. He thought the farmer might strike the horse again, but instead the man dropped the whip and knelt beside the horse, stroking its neck. The farmer had cried, whether for the loss of his horse or for what would result in lost crops, Baelor never knew. But the horse died there in the field, and the royal progress continued by.
It will kill him, and yet I ask him to continue anyways.
Dunk had stopped crying. Baelor stroked a hand along his side soothingly and said, “Sleep, Ser Duncan, I will need you strong on the morrow.”