The Mystery Knight by George R. R. Martin Read Free Book Online Page A

Maynard.
     
    “No, the old Grey Lion, the one
who died in the spring.” That was how men spoke of those who had perished
during the Great Spring Sickness. He died in the spring. Tens of
thousands had died in the spring, among them a king and two young princes.
     
    “Do not slight Ser Buford
Bulwer,” said Kyle the Cat. “The Old Ox slew forty men upon the Redgrass
Field.”
     
    “And every year his count grows
higher,” said Ser Maynard. “Bulwer’s day is done. Look at him. Past sixty, soft
and fat, and his right eye is good as blind.”
     
    “Do not trouble to search the
hall for the champion,” a voice behind Dunk said. “Here I stand, sers. Feast
your eyes.”
     
    Dunk turned to find Ser John the
Fiddler looming over him, a half smile on his lips. His white silk doublet had
lagged sleeves lined with red satin, so long their points drooped down past his
knees. A heavy silver chain looped across his chest, studded with huge dark
amethysts whose color matched his eyes. That chain is worth as much as
everything I own, Dunk thought.
     
    The wine had colored Ser
Glendon’s cheeks and inflamed his pimples. “Who are you, to make such boasts?”
     
    “They call me John the Fiddler.”
“Are you a musician or a warrior?”
     
    “I can make sweet song with
either lance or resined bow, as it happens. Every wedding needs a singer, and
every tourney needs a mystery knight. May I join you? Butterwell was good
enough to place me on the dais, but I prefer the company of my fellow hedge
knights to fat pink ladies and old men.” The Fiddler clapped Dunk upon the
shoulder. “Be a good fellow and shove over, Ser Duncan.”
     
    Dunk shoved over. “You are too
late for food, ser.”
     
    “No matter. I know where
Butterwell’s kitchens are. There is still some wine, I trust?” The Fiddler
smelled of oranges and limes, with a hint of some strange eastern spice beneath.
Nutmeg, perhaps. Dunk could not have said. What did he know of nutmeg?
     
    “Your boasting is unseemly,” Ser
Glendon told the Fiddler.
     
    “Truly? Then I must beg for your
forgiveness, ser. I would never wish to give offense to any son of Fireball.”
     
    That took the youth aback. “You
know who I am?” “Your father’s son, I hope.”
     
    “Look,” said Ser Kyle the Cat.
“The wedding pie.”
     
    Six kitchen boys were pushing it
through the doors, upon a wide wheeled cart. The pie was brown and crusty and
immense, and there were noises coming from inside it, squeaks and squawks and
thumps. Lord and Lady Butterwell descended from the dais to meet it, sword in
hand. When they cut it open, half a hundred birds burst forth to fly around the
hall. In other wedding feasts Dunk had attended, the pies had been filled with
doves or songbirds, but inside this one were bluejays and skylarks, pigeons and
doves, mockingbirds and nightingales, small brown sparrows and a great red
parrot. “One-and-twenty sorts of birds,” said Ser Kyle. “One-and-twenty sorts
of bird droppings,” said Ser Maynard.
     
    “You have no poetry in your
heart, ser.”
     
    “You have shit upon your
shoulder.”
     
    “This is the proper way to fill a
pie,” Ser Kyle sniffed, cleaning off his tunic. “The pie is meant to be the
marriage, and a true marriage has in it many sorts of things—joy and grief,
pain and pleasure, love and lust and loyalty. So it is fitting that there be
birds of many sorts. No man ever truly knows what a new wife will bring him.”
     
    “Her cunt,” said Plumm, “or what
would be the point?”
     
    Dunk shoved back from the table.
“I need a breath of air.” It was a piss he needed, truth be told, but in fine
company like this, it was more courteous to talk of air. “Pray excuse me.”
     
    “Flurry back, ser,” said the
Fiddler. “There are jugglers yet to come, and you do not want to miss the
bedding.”
     
    Outside, the night wind lapped at
Dunk like the tongue of some great beast. The hard-packed earth of the