#serdunccanthetall

Chapter 1: A Knights Rest

The rain had stopped by the time Duncan the Tall finished digging.

He worked in silence, the only sounds the scrape of his shovel against wet earth and the distant call of a rook somewhere in the trees. Ser Arlan of Pennytree lay wrapped in his faded cloak on the grass beside the shallow grave, his face easier in death than Dunk had ever seen it in life.

The old knight had never been a grand man—more often tired, or drunk, or chasing coin where he could find it. But he had been a knight all the same. To Dunk, he had been the knight.

And that had been enough.

Dunk drove the shovel deep one last time, then leaned on it, breathing hard. His shoulders ached; his hands were blistered raw. He was used to that. What he wasn’t used to was the emptiness that sat in his chest like a stone. Ser Arlan had been the closest thing he had to a father since the streets of Flea Bottom. The man who had taught him how to hold a sword, how to sleep in the saddle, how to be more than the gutter rat everyone saw when they looked at his height and his scars.

“You were a good knight,” Dunk said quietly. The words felt too small. He cleared his throat and tried again, the way Ser Arlan had taught him. “Ser Arlan of Pennytree. You served your lords faithfully. You never bent the knee to traitors. You… you took in a boy who had nothing and made him something.”

He lowered the body into the grave with careful hands, the way one might lower a child into a cradle and began to fill the hole, each spadeful heavier than the last. When the mound was smooth, Dunk knelt and pressed a flat stone into the dirt. He had no chisel, so he scratched the words with the tip of his dagger, slow and clumsy.

SER ARLAN OF PENNYTREE

A TRUE KNIGHT

He stayed there a long time, rain dripping from his hair, until the rook flew off and the woods grew quiet again. Only then did the other grief rise.

It always did when he was alone.

Dunk closed his eyes and saw it without wanting to: the soft gold light of a spring afternoon, in a tucked-away corner of Summerhall, years ago. Bare feet in the mud by the Blackwater, a bent pin for a hook, the prince’s laughter bright as new coin when he pulled up a wriggling silverfish no bigger than his palm.

“My knightly oaf,” Aerion had called him that day, voice low and warm against Dunk’s ear as they lay tangled in the long grass. “My sweet, tall knightly oaf. Stay with me. The court can keep its tourneys and its silks. I only want this.”

Dunk had believed him. Gods help him, he had.

He still remembered the way Aerion’s hair smelled of woodsmoke and myrrh, the way his fingers traced idle patterns on Dunk’s wrist like he was mapping new lands. The prince had been glad then—bright, laughing, untouched by the fire that lived in every Targaryen vein. They had stolen afternoons together, hidden from prying eyes, barefoot and simple and secret. Aerion had kissed him like he was starving, like Dunk was the only real thing in a world of silk and lies. He gathered the old knight’s armor—breastplate, greaves, the dented helm with its chipped wings—and lashed it to the swaybacked palfrey. Thunder rumbled once, far off, but the rain held. Dunk swung into the saddle, the weight of the armor and the weight of memory settling on his shoulders like twin cloaks.

“Rest easy, ser,” he murmured toward the fresh grave. “I’ll make you proud. One way or another.”

The road stretched ahead, muddy and empty. Dunk rode on alone, the silver chalice on the shield at his back catching what little sun broke through the clouds. He did not look back.

But in his chest the old ache stirred, quiet and patient as it had been for years.

Ashford was waiting.