The Sworn Sword

He smiled, thinking how good that would feel, to jump right in and come up sopping wet and grinning, with water cascading down his cheeks and through his tangled hair and his tunic clinging sodden to his skin. Egg might want a soak as well, though the boy looked cool and dry, more dusty than sweaty. He never sweated much. He liked the heat. In Dorne he went about bare-chested, and turned brown as a Dornishman. It is his dragon blood, Dunk told himself. Whoever heard of a sweaty dragon? He would gladly have pulled his own tunic off, but it would not be fitting.

A hedge knight could ride bare naked if he chose; he had no one to shame but himself. It was different when your sword was sworn. When you accept a lord's meat and mead, all you do reflects on him, Ser Arlan used to say. Always do more than he expects of you, never less. Never flinch at any task or hardship. And above all, never shame the lord you serve. At Standfast, ""meat and mead"" meant chicken and ale, but Ser Eustace ate the same plain fare himself.

Dunk kept his tunic on, and sweltered.

Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield was waiting at the old plank bridge. ""So you come back"", he called out. ""You were gone so long I thought you run off with the old man's silver"". Bennis was sitting on his shaggy garron, chewing a wad of sourleaf that made it look as if his mouth were full of blood.

""We had to go all the way to Dosk to find some wine"", Dunk told him. ""The krakens raided Little Dosk. They carried off the wealth and women and burned half of what they did not take"".

"

"""That Dagon Greyjoy wants for hanging"", Bennis said. ""Aye, but who's to hang him? You see old Pinchbottom Pate?""

""They told us he was dead. The ironmen killed him when he tried to stop them taking off his daughter"".

""Seven bloody hells"". Bennis turned his head and spat. ""I seen that daughter once. Not worth dying for, you ask me. That fool Pate owed me half a silver"". The brown knight looked just as he had when they left; worse, he smelled the same as well.

He wore the same garb every day: brown breeches, a shapeless roughspun tunic, horsehide boots. When armored he donned a loose brown surcoat over a shirt of rusted mail. His swordbelt was a cord of boiled leather, and his seamed face might have been made of the same thing. His head looks like one of those shriveled melons that we passed. Even his teeth were brown, under the red stains left by the sourleaf he liked to chew.