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"George R. R. Martin

The Sworn Sword

A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms

***

The story offered here takes place about a hundred years prior to the events described in “A Game of Thrones”

In an iron cage at the crossroads, two dead men were rotting in the summer sun.

Egg stopped below to have a look at them. ""Who do you think they were, ser?"" His mule Maester, grateful for the respite, began to crop the dry brown devilgrass along the verges, heedless of the two huge wine casks on his back.

""Robbers"", Dunk said. Mounted atop Thunder, he was much closer to the dead men. ""Rapers. Murderers"". Dark circles stained his old green tunic under both arms. The sky was blue and the sun was blazing hot, and he had sweated gallons since breaking camp this morning.

Egg took off his wide-brimmed floppy straw hat. Beneath, his head was bald and shiny. He used the hat to fan away the flies. There were hundreds crawling on the dead men, and more drifting lazily through the still, hot air. ""It must have been something bad, for them to be left to die inside a crow cage"".

Sometimes Egg could be as wise as any maester, but other times he was still a boy of ten. ""There are lords and lords"", Dunk said. ""Some don't need much reason to put a man to death"".

The iron cage was barely big enough to hold one man, yet two had been forced inside it. They stood face to face, with their arms and legs in a tangle and their backs against the hot black iron of the bars. One had tried to eat the other, gnawing at his neck and shoulder. The crows had been at both of them. When Dunk and Egg had come around the hill, the birds had risen like a black cloud, so thick that Maester spooked.

""Whoever they were, they look half starved"", Dunk said. Skeletons in skin, and the skin is green and rotting. ""Might be they stole some bread, or poached a deer in some lord's wood"". With the drought entering its second year, most lords had become less tolerant of poaching, and they hadn't been very tolerant to begin with.

""It could be they were in some outlaw band"". At Dosk, they'd heard a harper sing ""The Day They Hanged Black Robin"". Ever since, Egg had been seeing gallant outlaws behind every bush.

Dunk had met a few outlaws while squiring for the old man. He was in no hurry to meet any more. None of the ones he'd known had been especially gallant. He remembered one outlaw Ser Arlan had helped hang, who'd been fond of stealing rings. He would cut off a man's fingers to get at them, but with women he preferred to bite. There were no songs about him that Dunk knew. Outlaws or poachers, makes no matter. Dead men make poor company. He walked Thunder slowly around the cage. The empty eyes seemed to follow him. One of the dead men had his head down and his mouth gaping open. He has no tongue, Dunk observed. He supposed the crows might have eaten it. Crows always pecked a corpse's eyes out first, he had heard, but maybe the tongue went second. Or maybe a lord had it torn out, for something that he said.

Dunk pushed his fingers through his mop of sun-streaked hair. The dead were beyond his help, and they had casks of wine to get to Standfast. ""Which way did we come?"" he asked, looking from one road to the other. ""I'm turned around"".

""Standfast is that way, ser"". Egg pointed.

""That's for us, then. We could be back by evenfall, but not if we sit here all day counting flies"". He touched Thunder with his heels and turned the big destrier toward the left-hand fork. Egg put his floppy hat back on and tugged sharply at Maester's lead. The mule left off cropping at the devilgrass and came along without an argument for once. He's hot as well, Dunk thought, and those wine casks must be heavy.

The summer sun had baked the road as hard as brick. Its ruts were deep enough to break a horse's leg, so Dunk was careful to keep Thunder to the higher ground between them. He had twisted his own ankle the day they left Dosk, walking in the black of night when it was cooler. A knight had to learn to live with aches and pains, the old man used to say. Aye, lad, and with broken bones and scars. They're as much a part of knighthood as your swords and shields. If Thunder was to break a leg, though… well, a knight without a horse was no knight at all."

"Egg followed five yards behind him, with Maester and the wine casks. The boy was walking with one bare foot in a rut and one out, so he rose and fell with every step. His dagger was sheathed on one hip, his boots slung over his backpack, his ragged brown tunic rolled up and knotted around his waist. Beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat, his face was smudged and dirty, his eyes large and dark. He was ten, not quite five feet tall. Of late he had been sprouting fast, though he had a long long way to grow before he'd be catching up to Dunk. He looked just like the stableboy he wasn't, and not at all like who he really was.