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Dunk had thought he was a man grown by the time he entered the Ashford tourney.
By his estimation he had been twenty – or maybe more, or less – but he had thought to himself, well, he couldn’t possibly get any taller, nor broader, for he already towered over most men in most every room he entered. He hadn’t been keeping track of if he had grown, but he thought not, for he reckoned Thunder would have complained more if he had; he already could not ride him for longer than an hour or two before he could feel his discomfort, so long had he known the old stallion, and he would have to switch to Chestnut for a while, who bore him with less good humor, for she was older still.
Yet in the years following Ashford, as Egg sprouted up like a little weed, so too did Dunk keep growing, until Thunder was the only horse who could bear him at all. It felt that there wasn’t a lintel he hadn’t smacked his head into, nor a tree whose branches his hair hadn’t caught in, and men stopped talking when he walked into taverns, and looked at him askance. He misliked it, not only because too much attention was a poor thing to seek at the best of times, but because also he felt that he didn’t deserve it. Other men trained hard for years to maintain the body that Dunk had simply by dint of birth, and it seemed to him a shame, that a hedge knight from Flea Bottom ought be blessed with tallness when other men, greater men than he, came barely to his shoulder.
Yet he had once been commanded to be tall, and so tall he was. Gave his name as Ser Duncan the Tall, even, to the Dornishmen who would not let him bury Chestnut, and, later still, to the Lady Rohanne. The tallness was a part of him, even if, at the best of times, he thought it more a nuisance than anything else, and at the worst of times wished instead that he were far smaller, as lean and whipcord light as he had been when he was Egg’s age, for often in his mind he was still that scrappy little gutter rat from King’s Landing, thin as a post, willow-lean and fast as lightning.
There seemed to come a time, though, that he did stop growing, and he supposed that he must have misjudged his years, back at Ashford – perhaps he had only been seven and ten? – and so at night, when he lay in his bedroll with Egg curled against his side against the sharp autumn chill, he thought to himself, one and twenty? more? less? and could not answer his own troubled thoughts. He resolved not to think on it further, though, for winter, the little winter of the South, would come on soon, and Dorne, with its bright, hot sun and endless sands, was calling.
They were in the Stormlands, heading south to the Boneway, when the weather took a turn for the worse: not rain nor sleet, which Dunk thought they could have borne, but snow as thick and heavy as wet cotton. There was no shortage of trees to sleep beneath, but inns and kindly farmers were few and far between; the Stormlanders were well-known for their reticence, and as they tramped wearily through an increasingly thick layer of snow his heart grew heavier and heavier, for each homestead they found told them, in no uncertain terms, that there was no room for them, and certainly no room for Dunk, who was like to clear out their larders by his own self.
“I can feed myself,” he complained to Egg. The lad was shivering atop Rain, his palfrey, with his cloak pulled tight around himself. Dunk thought nothing of it to take off his own cloak and drape it around the boy’s narrow shoulders. The snow fell on and on. “I’m not so terrible a guest as all that.”
“It’s been a poor year for crops,” Egg said. His shivering eased, a little, and he pulled Dunk’s cloak up around his ears. Dunk could just barely see his eyes, that strange, dark blue, peeking out from the wool. “Haven’t you been listening? Everyone’s talking about it. Every tavern we’ve stopped at, from Haystack Hall to here.”
They had only stopped at a handful of taverns, them being short on coin, but Dunk trusted Egg’s ears more than he trusted his own. “That’s what I’ve got you for,” he said, and reached over and rubbed the lad’s head through the hood of his cloak. “S’a squire’s job to listen, when their ser is being thick.”
“You’re not thick, ser. You’re only tired.” He was. They both were. It had been long, lean months since they’d had a proper job, a lord or knight to pledge to, a hall to sleep in. Perhaps that ought have been his first clue, that winter would come on sooner rather than later, for two years ago it had seemed that there was no shortage of work for a knight of able body and his clever little squire. Now, though, every hall was closed fast to them – not always in unkindness, but polite apologies didn’t fill a hungry belly.
It was an hour later, when Dunk himself had begun to shiver, and the snow piled on his shoulders like it would on the eaves of a house (and he amused himself for a while, thinking of that – if the eaves were the shoulders, then the roof was the head, but what, then, was the neck?), when Egg spoke up again, and said, “We aren’t that far from Storm’s End, ser.”
“Oh, aye?” he said, and didn’t offer anything more.
It had only been last year that the elder Lord Baratheon had passed after a long illness; Dunk had not spoken to Ser Lyonel since Ashford. He had wanted to. He had even chivvied Egg to help him write a letter, of apology, of thanks, of regret and grief and a dozen other things that had spilled out of him like a sour wound suddenly lanced, and afterwards he had felt so wrung out and so ashamed that he had told his squire to put the thing into the fire and to forget about it.
Egg, because he thought he knew best even when he didn’t, had kept the letter and sent it off secretly, and hadn’t seen fit to tell Dunk until nearly a month later. That had been a mighty row! Dunk had never come so close to striking the boy as he had that night, looking into those defiant dragon’s eyes all lit up from the campfire, so it had seemed like the fire was in him. Egg had seemed every inch a little prince, and it had made him all the angrier, for he’d seen a shade of the Brightflame there, as he sometimes saw that monstrous helm bearing down on him in dreams. It was only when he had realized that the anger was a poor mask for fear that he had sat down on his arse right there by the fire, and he had wept a bit, and Egg had wept too, and then he’d held the boy and they had fallen asleep like that, all curled together like pups.
He never felt so young as he did around Egg. Young, and terrified, and stupid. So he had to be tall, for the both of them, even though sometimes what he wanted, more than anything else, was for someone bigger and stronger and kinder to pat him on the head and tell him it would all be fine.
They rode on a little while longer in silence, until Egg spoke again, “I do believe that Storm’s End is less than a few hours’ ride, even.”
“Could be so,” Dunk allowed. Bronzegate was well behind them, and when he thought of the kingdoms the way Ser Arlan had taught him to, all laid out in his head like a quilt, he judged that they would probably reach the coast within a day. He had meant for them to go on to Griffin’s Roost, and see if they could reach it before nightfall, but the snow was falling thick and fast now; even Thunder was having trouble lifting his poor feet, to say nothing of Maester, who was much smaller and heavier-laden.
“Surely Lord Baratheon wouldn’t begrudge us shelter for a night.” Or two, or three, or a few weeks, Egg’s expressive face seemed to say. He’d become narrower as he’d grown, his face long and lean; he had all his father’s coloring, but privately, Dunk thought that Egg must take mostly after his mam. “And there are plenty of fastnesses nearby, ser. Surely someone will have work for a knight there?”
Dunk sighed. His breath plumed out in front of him, a heavy, white shroud. “We didn’t part on good terms, Egg.”
“You apologized, though!”
“You apologized. I sat and jawed for thirty minutes. I don’t think I made any sense even to myself.”
“I only wrote down what you said,” Egg insisted, which was the first that Dunk had heard of this, and he groaned and cupped his cold face in his hands. His fingers were stiff and frozen; he thought of them sticking to his cheeks and his groan became a laugh.
“So he’ll think I’m an idiot and a madman,” he said. He couldn’t rightly remember everything he had said. There had been a lot of ‘I’m sorry’s, he thought. A lot of ‘this is something I have to do’s and ‘I would go with you if I could’s, and seemingly endless amounts of thoughtless praise for Ser Lyonel’s bravery and goodness and humor and skill. He hoped that Egg had not included any of that last, or at least, not too much of it, because he thought that might have been mostly what he talked about, after he had expressed his grief over the late Lord Paramount’s death.
“Ser,” Egg said softly, and Dunk peeked through his fingers at him. It always felt strange, seeing how much Egg had grown – not in height, for he was still small for his age, but in the weight of his gaze, the burden of experience he now carried. He had seen death, Egg had, not as a prince, but as one of the smallfolk did, down in the mud and the stink of it. It was more than his brothers had ever known, and Dunk thought that if he did naught else for the rest of his life but help people, just traveled over hill and dale lending his arm where he could, that this would still be the best thing he had ever done.
“Aye, Egg.”
Egg looked solemnly at him. “I’m cold, ser,” he said at last, and Dunk let out a long, slow breath. The air was chill enough that it stole the warmth from his lungs the second he exhaled; he couldn’t blow feeling into his fingers any longer, and it was the thought of Egg’s hands, which were still so slender and soft even after three years of squiring, that made him buckle.
“All right,” he said. “All right.” And when Egg smiled at him, brilliantly sunny in the midst of oncoming winter, Dunk could not find it within himself to feel regret.
Fear, though, he felt in plentitude, and the closer they got to Storm’s End, the worse his stomach twisted. It wasn’t until late in the evening that they reached the great castle, with its tall drum tower looming over the snow-capped curtain wall; torches were lit at even distances on either side of the portcullis, and the great door was closed and barred for the evening. There was only one man standing guard, which Dunk at first thought foolish – what if he fell asleep? – but then he looked at the massive walls, with their stones fitted so well together that he could not spot the seams, and he thought that perhaps the man posted at the gate was not there for protection, but merely to keep an eye out for travelers seeking entrance. Storm’s End had no need of the hands of mortal men; the castle defended itself.
He announced himself and Egg when they were still well back, wary of archers on the wall, though the snow was blowing so fast and fierce that he thought anyone would be foolish to try and take a shot through such a wind. Then, when he was close enough, he brushed the snow from his shoulders and his hair, longer now than it had ever been in his life, and sat up straight.
“We’ve come to beg shelter for the eve, ser,” he told the guard, who was looking up at him with a queer expression, like he couldn’t decide if he was worried or disdainful. “Ser…Lord Lyonel Baratheon, he knows me. Knew me. Ser Duncan the Tall, from…from Ashford. Could you tell him, please?”
“His lordship might be abed by now,” the guard said. Dunk remembered Ser Lyonel’s tent at the tourney, the warm spill of candlelight, whirling around each other late into the evening. It must have been past the hour of the owl by the time he left, and Ser Lyonel had still been awake, though drowsy and very drunk. He snorted.
“He’ll be awake still,” Dunk said, and if the guard took offense at how easily he said it, well. He thought that he had already done all the worst things he could, to offend the new Lord of Storm’s End, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it but present himself and hope for the best.
They waited, he and Egg, with the snow piling up around them while the guard hallooed past the gate, and when the portcullis was raised another four guards came out for the one that went in, and they stood tall and silent and ominous while Dunk rubbed his hands together.
“You should take your cloak back, ser,” Egg said, but he shook his head.
“You need it more than me.”
“You won’t be able to swing a sword if you lose your fingers to frostbite, ser.”
“Mind your mouth or I’ll mind it for you.”
They bickered good-naturedly, back and forth, as they waited, and Dunk stuck his hands under his armpits to try and warm them, and some ten or fifteen minutes later there was a great scuffling commotion, and the guard who had gone inside came running out again, and said, panting, “Lord Lyonel Baratheon!”, before he leaned heavily against the curtain wall. Not a few seconds later his haste made more sense, because a figure strode up and out of the flickering torchlight beyond the gate, and Dunk knew it immediately, and felt a shiver of gladness run through him even as his stomach clamped down in fear.
Three years had not changed Lord Lyonel very much. He was still tall, broad of shoulder and trim of waist, and his hair was still a riot of black and silver curls, longer than it had been at Ashford; his beard maybe had a bit more grey in it, and there were a few more lines around his eyes and mouth, but the Laughing Storm looked so familiar that Dunk’s heart ached with it, and he swung himself down from Thunder’s back and had taken two awkward steps forward before he could stop himself. With little grace, he managed to turn it into kneeling, and dropped to one knee there in the road; the snow soaked into his breeches immediately, and the ground beneath was soft, cold mud.
“M’lord,” he said, and thought that even if Lord Lyonel turned him away, even if he spoke to Dunk in anger, perhaps this whole venture was worth it just to see the man’s face again.
“You dare,” Lord Lyonel said, and Dunk shuddered, and kept his eyes on the ground, and waited for a blow. Then it didn’t come, and it kept not coming, and when he peeked up through the fall of his hair he saw that Lord Lyonel was not standing over him, as he had thought he would be, but was perfectly still and silent, like the towering black clouds of an oncoming storm, in front of the five guards who were assembled along the gate.
“You dare,” he said again, soft and silky, “allow a guest of my house to wait outside in the cold like a fucking animal?” Then he turned, as fast as he had ever been on the tourney field, or faster still, because he wore no armor – he was dressed in doeskin breeches and a fine linen shirt and a doublet all in black damask, and it was only when he stepped closer that Dunk could see there were designs on it, leaping stags embroidered in a thread so finely dark that he would not have marked them at all if it were not for how the torchlight shined.
He wore no cloak, Dunk noticed. No proper boots, but slippers that probably did little for keeping his feet dry or warm. Snow collected in his hair, on his shoulders, crowned him with diamonds. Dunk wanted to offer him his own cloak, but Egg was still wearing it. He thought vaguely of taking off his tunic and offering that, but that was stupid.
“You,” Lord Lyonel said, and then he was there, not even a step removed from Dunk, still kneeling in the snow. “A whole fucking year it’s been since I heard from you, and now you turn up on my doorstep half-frozen. Up, man! Get up, before your knees lock.” Dunk did, scrambling to his feet, and he felt a hand seize him around his arm and start to lift. Then it stilled, and he got up the rest of the way on his own. From the corner of his eye he could see Lord Lyonel staring up at him, a bright, merry light in his eyes. “Maid and Mother’s blessed cunts, ser, did you get taller?”
“I might have, m’lord,” he said. He didn’t measure such things, except to keep a wary eye on the heights of doors. The hand around his arm squeezed.
“And broader,” Lord Lyonel said. “Ser Duncan. Ser Duncan the Tall. Gods be fucking good.” And then he seized Dunk by the chin and shook him a bit, like a dog with a rat, and made Dunk look at him. It was better than the brief glimpse of Lord Lyonel’s face had been, for now they were only a foot apart or less, and Dunk could see the white snow caught in Lord Lyonel’s fine, dark lashes, and he could see his smiling mouth through his beard. Lord Lyonel laughed, to see him looking, and he patted Dunk’s cheeks, once on the right and once on the left, and then curled one big, broad hand around the nape of Dunk’s neck and yanked him down so that their foreheads clonked together.
He smelled like licorice, Dunk thought. Licorice, and wine beneath, like he had hurried to cleanse his teeth before he had come outside.
Then he let Dunk go, and spun away, laughing, always laughing, and in between the laughter he berated the guards – “What the fuck are you waiting for? Go! Go, tell the servants, there’s guests that need feeding and hosting, seven hells, what do I pay you for? Sweet fuck all, apparently!” – and seized Thunder’s reins himself, and with his other hand took Dunk by the arm and dragged him into Storm’s End, with Egg trailing smugly behind.
It was immediately warmer just within the castle walls, for the stone was thick and high, and blocked the wind even if it did nothing for the snow. Dunk gently shook himself free of Lord Lyonel’s grasp so that he could help Egg down from Rain, who was a taller horse than Chestnut ever had been. He had gotten into the habit of it, and he knew very well that Egg could mount and dismount by himself – he had seen the lad do it hundreds of times – but when the ground was slick he could not stop himself from imagining his squire’s pale head dashed on the stone. He had never gotten over the habit of agonizing, and he caught Lord Lyonel looking at him as he did it, with an expression on his face that Dunk couldn’t decipher.
“See to the horses,” he said to Egg. “Might I ask where your stables are, m’lord?”
Lord Lyonel flapped his hands. “No, no,” he said. “None of that ‘m’lord’ piss. We fought together. Bled for each other. It is Lyonel to you, ser.”
Dunk didn’t know what to say to that, though it soothed the troubled knot in his gut. “Lyonel,” he tried at last, and was gifted such a brilliant grin that he resolved to say it as often as he could, if only in his mind, just so he could remember that shining look. “I…thank you. For your hospitality. We wouldn’t impose, ser, except…”
“Except the gods have seen fit to shit directly upon us, yes.” Lyonel looked down at Egg, then, frowning. “How old are you?” he asked, and Egg puffed up like a little bird.
“Thirteen, ser,” he said, and Lyonel laughed.
“Thirteen! Fine, fine. I’d heard worse, at your age. Go, boy. See to your ser’s horses. My own stablehands will help, and bring you in, after. There’ll be dinner waiting, and a bath.”
“A bath,” Egg said, eyes shining, and Dunk sensed that he would not be able to avail himself of his squire’s services, not for the rest of the evening, not if there was hot food and a bath and a warm hearth on the line. He could not find it in himself to care, not when Egg looked so sorely relieved, and he watched his squire and his horses be led off by a boy who looked to have been woken from a dead sleep, judging by the way he yawned and dragged his feet.
“Come,” Lyonel said, and once again took Dunk by the arm. He seemed to like that, Dunk thought – dragging him around, putting him places. In the past three years he’d not encountered a single man who made him feel small, and yet now he let Lyonel move him as easily as breathing.
As easily as a maid on her wedding night. The thought flashed through, hot and sudden, and Dunk was glad for the cold, for he could blame his red ears and cheeks on the weather.
They went inside, into the great drum tower, and Dunk had known it was large just from looking at it, but he was surprised all over again when Lyonel led him through hall after hall, in winding circles, like a labyrinth, chattering all the while. “The Round Hall,” he said, and gestured expansively over a large, central chamber, where a dais in the center held a huge chair made of white wood and decorated with red-stained antlers. “Up the stairs there, my chambers, the family chambers, the rookery, the witch’s lair – ha! – the maester’s chambers, I mean. Here.” He shoved Dunk into another room, and this, at least was familiar, for Dunk had supped in the halls of enough minor lords to know a dining table when he saw one. It was very long and, in deference to the tower itself, curved instead of straight, and at the very middle of it was another grand chair, though not half so grand as the one in the Round Hall.
“Come,” Lyonel said again, and drove Dunk determinedly onwards, like a dog herding sheep. He was plunked down into the seat beside the grand chair, and in short order – short enough that Dunk wondered if the fear of the gods hadn’t been put into those guards, who after all had only been doing their duty – there was wine and bread and cheese being brought out, and cold cuts of ham and beef, and a cook who appeared specifically to apologize that the kitchen fires had already been doused, but that they would soon be alight again.
“It’s fine,” Dunk said, but Lyonel waved his hand.
“You’ve a growing boy to feed,” he said, and Dunk could not deny that. He would cheerfully go without, for he’d done it plenty of times before, but Egg deserved to know life’s pleasures as well as its hardships. So he didn’t fuss, though he rather wanted to, and let a servant pile up a plate for him, and he was warm and comfortable and delightfully safe for the first time in, oh, ages. Bit by bit he felt his shoulders unhunching, his spine straightening, everything in him unclenching and loose. Even his damp tunic and gambeson and breeches didn’t matter.
“So,” Lyonel said, once wine was poured and the servants, having bent their heads to listen to their lord’s murmured orders, had skittered out of the big hall. He was looking at Dunk very keenly and closely, and Dunk shifted under the weight of it. “Two years you left me in the lurch, ser.”
“Dunk.” He gingerly tore a heel of bread into halves, and then piled cold cuts and dried fruit and cheese between them. Lyonel watched him as though he were the most fascinating thing in the room. “You’re right, that…you were right. About a lot of things.” He wanted to think he was at least smart enough to have realized soon after Ashford, but the truth was, it had taken Dunk until after the wedding at Whitewalls to truly learn what he ought have known all along: that honor was a thing in short supply, and that a man could be great without being good, and that at the end of the day it was the goodness that was important, and not how noble a man seemed or wanted to seem. “So you ought to call me Dunk.”
“Fucking ridiculous,” Lyonel said. He said it in a strange way, very quiet, like he spoke in a sept. Then he shook his head, and his curls flopped around his eyes, so that he had to push them away; Dunk watched the long fingers card back through the dark hair and ate his meal so that his mouth wouldn’t fall open and catch flies. “Dunk. All right. Dunk. Two fucking years. And then last year, what do I receive but the most insane letter I’ve ever read.”
Dunk choked. Lyonel obligingly thumped him once on the back.
“At first I thought it was a dream,” Lyonel said, as if Dunk hadn’t made any noise at all. “Or I was drunk. Or someone was having a laugh, and I was going to have to start cutting balls off to find out who. I didn’t know your handwriting –”
“I can’t,” Dunk said. He drank a good quaff of the wine, as much for fortitude as for thirst. “Egg wrote it for me, except he didn’t pretty it up, the way I…I thought we could do. I told him not to send it. I figured…I figured that you had better things to do, than listen to the ramblings of some hedge knight. I thought you would be angry at me.”
“Oh, I was,” Lyonel said. “For a little while. Pissing and moaning like a child, according to my lord father. I wanted to take a few good men and hunt you down. Wasn’t sure if I wanted to kill you or drag you back here by your ear. But that’s all…” Another airy gesture, and never mind that Dunk had broken out into such a cold sweat that he felt like he might start to weep. “In the past. Storms pass quickly, Dunk. You’d know that if you’d come with me.”
Perhaps it was the wine. Or the warmth, or how close Lyonel was, close enough to still smell the liquorice on his breath and the oil he must use in his hair. It could have been a dozen things, each one more dangerous than the last, but regardless of reason, Dunk swallowed down the pangs of uncertainty and said, “I wanted to. I truly did. Only…”
“Yes, you said as much. Your little dragon. Oh, don’t look so fucking frightened. The whole House has gone to pot since Aerys took the throne. Drought, infighting, the bloody Ironborn pissing all over the Arbor, I don’t owe them a single, solitary shit, and further–
“I know you wouldn’t,” Dunk said, when it seemed that Lyonel was getting ready to build himself into a snit. “You’re a good man, Lyonel.”
That seemed to take all the wind out of Lyonel’s sails at once, and the man slumped back into his chair, toying with the rings on his fingers. They were pretty, Dunk thought, the gold made burnished by the torchlight, the gems sparkling. Some of them were onyx, maybe, and some of them were amber, rich as honey. Lyonel looked at him. Watching Dunk, watching him. It was a strange moment, stretching out like hot sugar, until Dunk felt the heat at his ears and cheeks again, and looked away.
“You said as much, in your letter,” Lyonel said. “It was how I knew it was truly you. No man who knows me would say such a thing.”
“I don’t think there’s many men that know you, then.”
Lyonel stared at him. Then he tipped his head back, and laughed long and loudly, and Dunk watched the bob of his throat and the curve of his mouth and felt something that wasn’t shame and wasn’t nerves slowly flip his stomach over.
“You,” Lyonel gasped, “you are the only, fucking hells, my sides, oh, gods, you are the only man I know who I think I can actually trust. Do you know that? Everyone else…” He sighed, shoulders still shaking a bit with mirth, and listed to the side so that they were nearly leaning against each other. “Everyone else fucking wants something. You, though, you want for nothing, don’t you?”
“I want for a lot of things.”
“Supper,” Lyonel said, and Dunk grinned down at him, and that felt…oh, that felt good, and warm, the glow of something shared, a fond memory. He held up his meal, almost gone, and this time they both laughed. He realized with a start that he had finished the rest of his wine – he couldn’t remember drinking it, but then, he had been so focused on Lyonel that the Bloodraven himself could have walked through the hall and Dunk probably would not have minded him.
“Supper,” Dunk agreed, “fair weather, firewood, grain for the horses…”
“See?” Lyonel shoved him. His hand lingered on Dunk’s shoulder. “That’s all…that’s all nothing. You can just…find that. Whatever. But you don’t want power. You don’t want…wealth, or jewels, or fine clothes, or…” He trailed off. Cleared his throat. “You are, I think, the most honorable man I have ever met.”
Once again, his voice was strange – but Dunk thought he recognized it this time, because he’d heard it from himself once before, knelt in mud before a dead man who hadn’t yet known he was dead. It was awe in Lyonel’s voice, and a little bit of anger, like he had realized something that annoyed him. For some reason, it made Dunk want to soothe instead of laugh.
“It’s not that I don’t want things,” he said, trying to find his way through the words. He hadn’t ever needed to speak them before, and finding the right ones would have been challenging enough for a man who wasn’t still wearing a pint of snowmelt in his boots. “I want a lot of things. I want…” He paused, trying to collect the thoughts that spun around and around him like a dervish. Lyonel made an encouraging sound; he was leaning close again, leaning against Dunk’s arm. He could feel the savage warmth of him through his fine doublet, and Dunk closed his eyes and shivered.
“I want a fine horse,” he said. It felt like he was unearthing a corpse, so buried was the notion of wanting just for the sake of wanting. “I want…boots that don’t rub my feet raw, and I want to know what silk feels like, just once would be enough, and I want to kiss someone again–” Lyonel made a quiet sound, but Dunk barely heard. “I want a doublet with those fancy buttons all down the front, made of pearl or some such. Just to look at it. And I want to see the Free Cities before I die.” He opened his eyes. Lyonel was staring at him, a powerful, stricken look on his face. Dunk flushed, so hard and so quick that he felt it like someone had dumped a bucket of boiling water on his head.
“But it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I don’t need any of those things. I suppose a man might want what he doesn’t need, but it makes it easier not to have things if you don’t think of them.”
“Fucking hells,” Lyonel said. He sat back, his dark eyes wide. “What must you think of the rest of us greedy cunts?”
“You’re not greedy.”
“Ah, but here you display your ignorance ser, for I am the greediest fucking cunt you might ever have met. Go back far enough and the House of my forefathers coveted the gods themselves. Or. A god, at least.” Dunk blinked, and Lyonel let out another series of uproarious cackles. “But, this conversation grows dire – tell me about this kiss, man! What fair maidens have you been wooing? Three years is enough to have sown your seed far and wide, I should think…”
Which meant that he had to tell the story of Lady Rohanne, because it wasn’t like that at all, and once he’d done that he told Lyonel, too, about Whitewalls, even though Lord Rivers had told him not to mention it. But this was Lyonel, who watched him with his eyes glittering and his chin in his palm, fascinated and lively and asking questions, and before he knew it he had said everything there was to say about John the Fiddler and the whole debacle with the dragon’s egg, while Lyonel’s eyes got bigger and bigger, and finally he waved a hand and said, “Gods, man, how you can still think yourself some petty hedge knight is beyond me. Everywhere you turn, some momentous fucking thing happens. Young Daemon fucking Blackfyre. Maiden’s tits, Dunk.”
He pushed his hand back through his hair again, mussing it terribly so that a few curls fell like wisps of smoke over his eyes.
“You really don’t understand what a treasure you are,” he said, and Dunk froze, too stunned to speak, something red and pulsing curling out from the core of him, like he’d felt when he’d wrapped Lady Rohanne’s braid around his fist, like he could still bring up, sometimes, when he woke from fevered dreams and touched himself in the small hours of the morning, before Egg or the horses woke. It was something in the way that Lyonel said it, he thought – soft and wondering – and something in the word itself. Treasure. He had never been anything half so pretty as a treasure.
“I,” he said, “I don’t, I, Lyonel…”
Lyonel hummed, and then reached out and patted Dunk’s cheek.
“You’ve had a long day,” he said. Dunk could not dispute this. “How about I send for a bath for you, and you can take the rest of your meal in your chambers?”
“Thought I’d sleep in the stable,” Dunk said. He could still feel the imprint of each of Lyonel’s rings on his cheek, just slightly shy of the heat of his palm.
“Oh, fuck that. You’ll sleep upstairs, and your boy, too. Doubtless he’s already asleep, unless he’s off cavorting with one of the scullery girls. Yes. Yes, you’ll be next to mine own chambers, I think.” His voice lilted up at the end, so slight that Dunk wouldn’t have noted it, except at that moment he could not think of or look at anything except for Lyonel. It almost sounded like a question. Dunk wracked his brain for what felt like the right answer, but he didn’t know what was being asked. Still, it sounded…it sounded lovely. A soft bed, and clean sheets, and Lyonel nearby, so that Dunk could touch the wall and imagine him there on the other side. It sounded like heaven.
“All right,” he said, and Lyonel smiled, the pale flash of his eyeteeth brief and startling as a shooting star.
He finished the rest of what had been on his plate, and then a young man, not much older than Egg, came down from the grand staircase to fetch him, not dressed in homespun or even the nicer linen doublets that he’d seen some servants in wealthier households wearing, but a proper doublet, though not so fine as Lyonel’s, and good, clean breeches and his own pair of slippers. And when Dunk asked him his name he said, “Harrolt, ser, Harrolt Caron. I’m my lord’s foster. I’ll show you to your chambers.”
It was like being in a different world, Dunk thought. Like being in a dream. He tried to pinch himself, discreetly, but he was big enough that doing anything with secrecy was a chore, and the young man – ser? lord? – smiled a little as they ascended the winding stairs into the heart of the drum tower.
“He’s a lot,” Harrolt said. “But it’s good to see him so cheerful again. The last year has been trying, what with Lord Symeon’s death.”
The lad took Dunk to a room that had already been made up, with a fire laid in the hearth and a big, copper tub placed in front of it, keeping the water within warm. He wondered when Lyonel had ordered all of this done, and then decided it wasn’t worth thinking about. It was…oddly touching that it had been done at all, when he could have made do with so much less.
“He didn’t have to wake you,” Dunk said. Young Harrolt just looked at him, face scrunched in puzzlement. “You’re…you aren’t just some servant. You’ll be a lord someday.”
“Only if both my brothers die,” the lad said, and wrinkled his nose. “It’s only polite, ser. You’re a guest.”
“I’m just a hedge knight.”
“Well. You’re a very well-liked hedge knight, then.” He inclined his head, in the way that young men everywhere had, where Dunk wasn’t sure if he was being made fun of or not. “If there’s anything you require, ser, let me know. I’m only down the hall. And I think your boy is right next to me, if you have need.”
Then he left, and not long after that, while Dunk was peeling off his sodden boots from his road-sore feet, two girls came and brought with them another platter of food: roasted leeks and neeps, and a whole partridge stuffed with fruits and nuts, and a carafe of wine, and for the first time in weeks Dunk ate enough to feel full, and sat in a tub that was too small for him but still allowed for him to wash the dirt from behind his ears and the sweat from under his arms and at the crease of his thighs. And it was big enough, just barely, for him to sit in the water until it grew cool, and even then he was warm, warm all through, with the fire on his back and a roof over his head and, somewhere else in the tower, a friend who had called him a treasure.
Beneath the surface of the water his prick stirred, and Dunk thought seriously, for only a moment, of touching himself. It wasn’t often that he did, if only because most days he was too tired, and there was too much to do – wood to gather, game to hunt if it were available, the horses to tend. Perhaps he ought have been making Egg do all of it, but it was a heavy burden for a single boy, and Ser Arlan had always tended Thunder himself.
In the end, he decided not to. He hadn’t any wish to make the servants’ jobs harder for them than it already was.
Maybe an hour had passed, not much more than that, and Dunk dried himself and then put his smallclothes back on. He was looking wistfully at the bed, knowing that he ought to oil and clean his sword before he slept, when there was a knock at the door; he made a questioning sort of sound, without thinking, and the door swung open, and Dunk scrambled to grab at the first thing he could which would cover him, which was his own tunic.
“I’ve had a thought,” Lyonel said, because of course it was Lyonel, he reckoned there was no one else in the tower who would just stride into a man’s room without first being invited. Yet this was Lyonel’s castle, his tower, his bedsheets and his food that he had offered to Dunk, his hospitality that he had extended, and so maybe that gave him the right to go wherever he wanted, except Dunk thought it didn’t give him the right to also stare so.
“Could you close the door?” Dunk asked, and Lyonel tilted his head. He was looking at how Dunk was holding the tunic in front of him, trying to cover his groin and his thighs, and then he dragged his eyes up, and up, and lingered on Dunk’s chest, where the skin was goosepricked from the chill. Heat crawled across his face, and rose in splotchy patches on his throat and collarbones, and then Lyonel’s eyes flicked up, and they were wide and dark, so dark that they put to shame the night outside, where the thick velvet of the sky seemed so close as to have a texture, or a sound.
“I’ve brought you something,” Lyonel said, and with one foot he kicked the door shut behind him. He wasn’t wearing his doublet any longer, or his slippers – his bare feet on the fur rug before the hearth seemed like an intimacy that Dunk ought not be seeing. “Sit, sit, I want to…”
He trailed off, muttering, and Dunk realized that he was holding a chest under his arm, a little wooden thing with drawers on the front.
“Lyonel,” Dunk said, unsure, feeling hot and dizzy, and even more so when Lyonel looked at him again, and sighed longingly, and said, “Gods be praised, but I wasn’t expecting you to have such a fantastic pair of tits.”
Dunk sat down on the edge of the bed, so heavily that it creaked. He looked but did not see as Lyonel set the little chest down on a table near the window, which faced out into a darkness through which Dunk could see nothing, hear nothing. There wasn’t any sound except the crackle of the fire and his own harsh breathing.
“You blush like a maid,” Lyonel said. He was watching Dunk, a heavy, thoughtful crease between his brows. He took a step towards the bed, and Dunk twisted his hands into his tunic, over and over, until the hemp was damp with sweat. “Do you know, ser, you’ve been blushing the whole evening through? Every time I so much as looked at you, you’d turn pink as a rose.”
“Lyonel,” Dunk said again. There was a pleading note to it that he couldn’t control, nor could he control how the heat of his cheeks and his chest descended through him like wax dripping down a wick, plumping his prick against his bidding. He’d had a dream, once, about the Lady Rohanne, stripped bare, her strong arms bracing against a bow as she had shot him full of arrows. He’d thought there would be pain, but there had only been a sweet, deep ache, like pressing on a nearly-healed bruise. He felt that same ache now, almost bare himself, as Lyonel took a step towards him, and then another. His head was still tilted, like he was trying to puzzle something out.
“You can tell me to fuck off,” he said. “Call it, oh, the drink, a dream, whatever you want. I’ll not look differently at you in the light of day, and you’re honorable enough to do me the same mercy. Not that I deserve it, the things I want to do to you. Look at you. Pretty as a picture.”
Dunk shuddered. I want, he thought, but he could not bring himself to think what he wanted. It was so far outside of what he knew that he didn’t have the words. He wasn’t so shamefully stupid that he didn’t know men could lie with men, and women with women – he’d known, in a vague sort of way, what Young Daemon had been offering him – but it had never seemed the sort of thing that he was allowed to desire, in the same way that kissing Lady Rohanne hadn’t been allowed, right up until he’d done it.
“I…Lyonel, I want…” This way, him sitting and Lyonel standing over him, he had to tilt his head a little back to meet the man’s eyes. He thought of Lyonel’s hand on his arm, squeezing, on the back of his neck, pulling him down. Moving him around like he was something delicate and small. He licked his lips. “Please,” he said, and Lyonel fell upon him, not like a loosed arrow but like a crashing wave, huge and all around him. He pushed his way between Dunk’s knees until his legs were spread, and he took the tunic from Dunk’s unresisting hands and flung it away with a snarl.
Then they were kissing, and he supposed he had thought that kisses would all be more or less the same, once you’d got the first one done with, but that wasn’t the case at all. Lyonel’s kisses were a storm, fierce, intense, demanding: he sucked Dunk’s bottom lip into his mouth, and when Dunk moaned he pushed his tongue inside with easy confidence. One hand was in Dunk’s hair, moving his head the way Lyonel wanted, and the other was bracketing his neck, a thumb stroking Dunk’s collarbone.
“Perfect,” Lyonel murmured, “fucking perfect, the sight of you, gods. Never was there a maiden half so sweet.”
Dunk shuddered again, a strange, high sound rattling in his chest, and Lyonel leaned back to look at him. That searching look again.
“You like that,” he said, and Dunk didn’t know how to answer. His belly was a hot twist of shame and want, and maybe it showed on his face, because Lyonel cupped his cheek, and rubbed his thumb against Dunk’s lip, where he had sucked the blood up to the surface. “Shh, don’t fret, Dunk, there’s a dove. You do like that, don’t you? My little dove.” Dunk made another sound, and another curl of disquiet looped around his insides as he felt the heat in his cheeks and his chest and his belly reach up into his eyes, and draw forth the sudden sting of tears. Lyonel’s fingers swept them away, and then pushed back into Dunk’s hair, still damp and curling around his ears. It was long enough now for Lyonel to wind his fingers through, like he was, oh, like he was combing a lady’s hair.
“Beautiful,” he whispered. “More beautiful now than you were at Ashford, and I’d have had you then, too. You’ve no idea how fucking angry it makes me, that someone else kissed you before me. Was there anyone else? No, I can see it in your face – you blush like a maid because you are a maid.”
Dunk squeezed his eyes shut. With a monumental effort he said, “You, you said…” Lyonel’s hands petted his face, carding through his hair, a finger stroking the soft shell of his ear. “You said there was something…”
“Hm?” Lyonel said, and then he laughed, and Dunk felt the shape of him lean down again, felt the press of his lips, wet and open, and tasted liquorice faint on his tongue. “You’re right. Of course you are. Wait there, don’t move.”
He didn’t think he could move even if he wanted to. He was a statue – no, he was a maid on her wedding night, trembling and waiting for her lord husband to come to bed, waiting to be told what to do, and how to please. The thought made him moan, and he dug his fingers into his own thigh, feeling as if he might fly apart if he didn’t hold on to something, anything.
“Keep your eyes shut,” Lyonel said. Things clinked together, wood and metal, something opening, a different thing shutting. The little chest that Lyonel had brought, mayhaps. When he felt Lyonel step back between his legs he shifted, widening, welcoming, and heard his friend’s breath come out in a hushed curse.
“If I had it to hand, I would cover you in gold,” Lyonel murmured. Something cool and heavy slipped around his neck, hung dangling over his pounding heart. “Gold, and sapphires. Do you know, in Myr they make a cloth of gold so fine that it drapes like silk.” His hand was lifted, so gently, and heavy, cool weights slid on to each finger except his thumb. The same treatment was given to his other hand, and to his wrist, where a smooth metal band clicked shut. Dunk kept his eyes shut as he’d been told, and on every third breath a shiver rattled through him “I would buy that for you. A lovely shawl, maybe, to wear over these.” Lyonel’s hands palmed at his chest, and Dunk whined. “Open your eyes now. There’s a good lad. Can’t give you a doublet with pearl buttons unless you let my seamstress take your measurements, but here’s the next best thing, at least for now. Gods, how pretty you are. Like ripe fucking fruit.”
Dunk blinked until vision swam back; Lyonel was so close that for a moment all Dunk could see was the silver in his beard, and the thin ring of amber around his pupils. But he felt the heaviness around his neck and his arms, and when he leaned back to look he heard the clinking before he saw them, the bangles around his wrists, and the handful of thin, gold chains hung ‘round his neck. They were too thin to be a man’s, and studded with gemstones – diamonds, beads of jade, rubies like fat drops of blood and opals that flashed like caught lightning – and the rings on his fingers were of every style, some thin, some thick, all of it polished gold, so that the fire in the hearth turned his hand into a pool of rippling sunshine.
And Lyonel was smiling at him. A smile that was sharp about the mouth and softened as it reached his eyes. “You look good in my things,” he said, and Dunk swallowed, hard, thinking of a time long past when that offer had been made to him before. “Better still in finery, but that’s to be expected. A maid ought to look her best on her wedding night.”
It was one thing to call him a maid because he blushed, but there was something about the way Lyonel said it now that turned his blood to steam. He was going to catch aflame; he was going to simply float away. “I’m not,” he tried to say, but Lyonel tilted his head back and kissed the side of his neck, scraping his teeth there against the tendon until another deep, lovely ache bloomed.
“You can be whatever you want to be,” he said against Dunk’s skin. “A knight, a maid, fuck. I wanted you when you were a green lad wearing a rope for a belt and I wanted you more when you walked away from me. And now I have you. Let me have you. Please.”
It was the ‘please’ that cut him to the quick, as if Dunk really were some treasure, something precious that Lyonel oughtn’t have, yet wanted anyway. For the longest time Dunk had felt as such about being a knight, and though it still wasn’t for true he lived it best he could, and the thought of denying someone even that scrap of comfort, let alone someone who was his friend, was too much to bear.
He brought his own hand up, all heavy with gold, and pressed it to the back of Lyonel’s skull. “Yes,” he said, and he couldn’t say the rest of it, couldn’t say wed me, bed me, I’ll be a maid for you and couldn’t say call me a treasure again, please, please, but he could press a messy, desperate kiss to the corner of Lyonel’s mouth, and he could lay back when the lord fell upon him, hands kneading restlessly at Dunk’s chest where the jeweled chains dangled and sparkled.
“Gods,” Lyonel said, and took one of Dunk’s nipples between his finger and his thumb, rolling it until hot, bright sparks raced up and down Dunk’s spine. “I said it before and I’ll say it again. A more perfect set of tits I have never seen.” He pushed his hands together, so that the muscles of Dunk’s chest bunched, and his strong fingers kneaded into the flesh like a nursing kitten. Lyonel’s eyes were dark and heavy-lidded, watching Dunk squirm and arch his back from the bed, and each time Lyonel’s fingertips made little indents into his skin his breath hitched. He hadn’t known that his chest could be so sensitive – hadn’t known that any part of him other than his cock could feel so good, nor so sweetly tender.
"Look at you." Lyonel's voice had gone hushed – reverent, almost. "No one's ever touched you like this?" No one had ever touched him at all, but for blows and hurts and, only more recently, the moments he had with Egg, when they were almost like brothers, or mam and child. He hadn't known a touch could be a blessing until Lady Rohanne, and that had been so brief, and still nothing, nothing at all like this. He shook his head, hot-stinging tears still sticking on his lashes, and Lyonel made a noise as though Dunk had punched him.
"Shame," he said, and sounded almost angry. "Such a fucking shame. A maid as beautiful as you are and no one's ever seen fit to treat you properly. Their loss, hm? No, lie back, keep–just there. Yes." His hand spread, heavy and warm, across the center of Dunk's chest. Lyonel wasn't a small man, and with him reclining, and Lyonel over him, it almost seemed as though the difference in their heights wasn't there at all. "I wonder," Lyonel said, and then he cupped Dunk's chest, pushed it together like a pair of teats. "Delicate beauty like you, you'd turn red as a poppy if I put my mouth on you. Would you like that? My mouth on you?"
It seemed impossible to him that speaking was expected. All he could do was nod, eyes wide, nothing in his head but the smell of Lyonel, fragrant oil and the good smells of sweat and musk and skin, and the sound of his voice, rumbling as a storm, and the feel of his big palms cupping Dunk's teats and rolling them, sword-callused fingers plucking at his nipples, like he were a lute, and each string strummed was a line of pleasure directly to his prick.
Lyonel hummed. An absent, thoughtful noise. "Perfect," he said, and bent his head down, so that Dunk couldn't see anything through the fall of his curls, but he could feel – the scrape of Lyonel's beard across his chest, a hot, wet mouth pressing smeared kisses up the center of his body. Lyonel made a brief detour to the hollow of his throat, sucking there until warmth bloomed and Dunk squirmed under him, gasping, his breath thunder in his lungs, and then he moved down again, and Dunk's hands flew to bury themselves in Lyonel's hair. He needed something, something to hold on to, as those clever lips closed around his nipple and sucked.
"Ha," Lyonel said, a laugh or a moan, Dunk couldn't tell, but there was a smile in it all the same. "Oh, I knew it. Sensitive. I'll bet you bruise like a summer peach, too." He sucked again, and applied his teeth in a light scrape that made Dunk's toes curl. He ached, everywhere, between his legs, in his belly, a heavy, hot pressure like a spring stormhead. He couldn't keep himself still, and writhed and moaned and sighed when Lyonel moved between his teats, pressing the flat of his tongue to Dunk's nipples, pinching and rolling the other while his mouth was occupied with the first. He kept at it until Dunk felt sore, but the soreness itself was good, and he tried to clutch Lyonel's head to him when the man pulled away with a wet pop of suction. "Shh," he said, hushing and petting and gentling, until Dunk dazedly looked down at him and saw that, in between his crooning, he was fumbling with the ties of his breeches.
He'd seen men bare before – what lad hadn't? – but he'd never been so close to a man in the throes of passion. Drunken cocks he'd seen aplenty, but Lyonel was hard when he shoved down his smallclothes and took himself in hand, hard and big, his fingers curled around the flushed shaft, the crown of it a blushed crimson like a sunset. Spit flooded Dunk's mouth, and he swallowed, swallowed again when Lyonel peered at him, a slow, pleased smile spreading.
"Much as I would like to see your lovely lips wrapped 'round my cock, I think tonight I should like to savor you. I'm your lord husband for the night, aren't I?" A sound rattled in Dunk's throat, high and thin. "Yes, I am, and you my maiden bride. It's a husband's duty to see to his lady's pleasure, you know. And I think..." He slotted himself again between Dunk's spread thighs, pulling his palms down Dunk's sides like he were stroking a horse. When his fingers caught the fabric of Dunk's smallclothes he made a considering noise. "Lift up, my dove," he said, and Dunk did, and Lyonel made a noise himself, gutteral, his fingers twitching over the ripple of Dunk's sides, the muscles flexing. "Gods, so fucking strong, my lovely maid. Better to have a strong bride, you know, better hips for birthing–" Dunk's breath caught. He couldn't, he didn't..."That pleases you? Of course, of course it does. Because it means I'd fuck you for ages, my sweet. To make sure my seed would catch."
Lyonel peeled his smallclothes down, and Dunk felt as though he was peeling skin with it, the muscle and the tallness and the breadth of his shoulders, and underneath he felt small and delicate as a rabbit; the golden chains around his neck had warmed to his body, but each time his chest heaved he felt them brush his skin, so dainty that they felt like a breath more than a touch. The firelight caught the gold of the bangle on his wrist, the rings on his finger, made them sparkle in the jet and silver of Lyonel's hair.
"Look at this lovely pearl," Lyonel said, and reached for Dunk's cock, holding it with easy confidence. He's done this before, Dunk thought, and he didn't know how he felt about it, too conflicted to be able to separate out everything that notion inspired. But he could not deny that he benefited from it, as Lyonel stroked him once from root to tip, and rubbed his thumb over the head of Dunk's prick so that he gathered the wetness beading there and spread it all 'round. "And so wet for me. I've teased you too much, haven't I? Left you wanting."
"Lyonel," Dunk said. It didn't sound like his voice at all – it was mewling and soft and whispery; it made Lyonel grin at him, the flash of his eyeteeth and his pink soft tongue like a knife clipping against bone. "Please, I don't...I don't know what..."
"I think," Lyonel interrupted him, "that you should let me take care of you. The night is young, Dunk, and I have been waiting three fucking years to have you. If I let you out of this bed before a sennight's passed, that's my own fault. Now, I think...yes. I think a maid with such a lovely pearl ought to have an equally lovely cunt, yes?"
There was a high whine in his ears, and it took Dunk several seconds to realize that it was not in his head, but a sound coming from him. Lyonel looked well-pleased with himself, and gave Dunk's prick another stroke, then trailed his fingers down to Dunk's stones and cupped them, and pressed the knuckle of his smallest finger just behind. "You're young still," he said, "this should be easy enough. Lift your legs up, there's a pet. Back, back, just like that." He pushed at Dunk's thighs and calves until he was crunched up, his knees nearly around his ears, and...and spread, wide and open. Displayed like a mare, maybe, a thought that made his ears hot and his belly tighten with confused pleasure. It was unseemly, being positioned like this, with Lyonel's covetous gaze lingering on all the most sensitive and hidden parts of him, parts he'd never even seen himself.
"Just as I thought." Lyonel stroked a hand over the curve of Dunk's thigh, brushing through the coarse hairs there, and around the base of his cock, ruffling them so that Dunk shivered. "A beautiful little cunny, soft and pink for me." His fingers ghosted between Dunk's legs, the pad of a thumb pressing against the furled muscle of his hole – it was strange, but not unpleasant, and Lyonel petted him so softly. "But I think we could get you wetter, don't you, dove? Never had a tongue up your cunt, I imagine."
Surely he didn't mean to... "No," Dunk said, "no, you don't...you shouldn't, Lyonel, it's..." Dirty, he meant to say, sordid, except Lyonel was grinning at him again.
"I pray it doesn't disappoint you, Dunk, but I confess that I am no maid myself. Yours won't be the first arse I've had on my face, but gods willing, perhaps it will be the last. Keep your legs up. There, that's it. Fuck. I can picture how you'd look speared on my cock, you know. How you'd stretch around me. Big lass like yourself, you've still got the tightest cunt I've ever seen." His finger kept petting, stroking, and then his thumb pressed in, just a bit, and Dunk's muscles clenched all at once. "I shall have to relax you thoroughly, I see. I've no desire for a broken finger. Can you imagine explaining that to the maester?"
"Sorry," Dunk said, unsure if he should actually be sorry or not, for Lyonel just seemed amused, and he had his other hand on his prick, occasionally giving it a slow, leisurely pump.
"Mm, don't be. I relish a challenge." Lyonel licked his lips, and Dunk saw his dark head bow down and down, and then all he could see was the crown of curls all threaded through with silver. He was kneeling on the floor, Dunk realized, with his hands braced on Dunk's thighs, and he could feel the brush of the necklaces against his chest and the rasp of Lyonel's beard on his skin as a soft, surprisingly soft, kiss was pressed to the inside of his knee, and he heard the fire crackling and something softly whispered, "Beautiful," like Lyonel was taking an oath. And then he felt the first warm, wet touch of a tongue to his hole, and everything else – the fire, the jewelry, the darkness outside and the light within – ceased to matter at all.
It was odd, at first. His body couldn't seem to decide if it wanted to squirm closer or away, but his cock had no such qualms, and it drooled a thin stream of wetness across his belly as Lyonel lapped at him, slow and deliberate, with broad strokes of his tongue. It seemed so much bigger than it had when it was in Dunk's mouth, a flag of soft, damp velvet; flat, it laved over him again and again until he felt almost too sensitive, and then it pointed, and traced in meandering patterns over the clenching muscle until it loosened, and wriggled its way a little inside. It was hot, almost too much so, but Lyonel pressed his mouth in hard and he sucked, and that felt so wonderfully different that Dunk could not stop the cry that left him. Was this how it felt for women? The slow spill of pleasure, unhurried, the muscles of his belly tensing, releasing, tensing again, like a wave rocking him. He felt Lyonel lean back, the puff of breath across wet skin; heard the sound of him spitting, and felt the wetness drip down the crack of his arse as two thumbs pried him apart, and Lyonel's tongue pressed in and in and in.
"Please," Dunk said, "please, please," and he tried to rock down, tried to get, oh, more, more of the pressure, the sparking loveliness of Lyonel's fingers peeling him back, skin to muscle to bone.
"Oh," Lyonel sighed, and then he leaned back, and Dunk got a glimpse of his face – his beard spit-wet and his eyes huge and dark – before he stood, and took his heavy, hard prick in hand. "Stay there," he said, "just, just for a moment, fuck, I can't..." His brows furrowed in concentration, and the slick sound of his fist moving over his cock seemed so terribly loud in the still room. Lyonel kept looking up at him, at the gold around his neck, the rings glittering on his fingers, the raw red soreness of his chest – and then their eyes met, and Lyonel made a soft, wounded sound. His mouth fell open, and a spurt of seed hit high up on Dunk's thigh as Lyonel trembled, and another striped between his legs, across, oh, across his soft, open cunt, sticky and hot. It dripped down into his crack and onto the sheets beneath him, and he was shaking, shaking, he thought he had never wanted anything so badly as he wanted to come right then.
"Gods," Lyonel said, and then he fell to his knees again, and with one hand he gripped Dunk's thigh, and with the other he wrapped his fingers 'round Dunk's prick, stroking it in counterpoint to the slick, messy rub of his tongue over Dunk's cunny. The sound of Lyonel lapping up his own seed was filthy and shameful, the noises he made, of desperate, aching hunger, like he could think of no better place for himself than on his knees with his mouth buried between Dunk's legs.
It was that thought – of Lyonel's pleasure, the sincerity in his voice as he had said beautiful and dove and treasure – that finally drove Dunk onwards, and the tight, clenched feel in his belly loosed, suddenly, all at once. Normally when he reached his peak the feeling only lasted a few seconds, but this went on and on, wrenching keening moans from his throat, his chest heaving, and still Lyonel knelt between his legs, stroking Dunk's prick gently one one hand, nibbling and sucking the rim of his hole, pointed tongue pushed into him as he sobbed.
When it ended it did not end all at once, but let him down in increments, like he were being lowered by a rope. Dunk became aware of his breathing, and then the creaking ache in his legs from being folded up for so long, and then the scratch of Lyonel's beard on him. When he looked down between his legs he saw his friend there, cheek pillowed on Dunk's thigh, gazing up at him with his eyes half-closed and the light from the hearth limning him all in gold. He looked smug as a cat with cream, and there was a gob of his own spend in his mustache, which for some reason struck Dunk as riotously funny. He blinked, and blinked again, but the sight didn't change, except that Lyonel's smug look became a smug grin, and that was enough to set Dunk off. He started laughing, nervous giggles at first – did I just do that? really? all of that? – and then Lyonel joined in with his big, rolling chuckles, and they were laughing together, and it was...it was good. It was wonderfully good.
"Ah, cunt," Lyonel said, levering himself up from the floor with a wince. Dunk let his legs down, which put them almost around Lyonel's waist. He thought briefly of Lyonel saying how...how Dunk would look speared on him, and a shiver of heat went all through him, like an aftershock. Lyonel was staring down at him with his glittering, laughing eyes, and he said, "Seven fucking stars, I'd forgotten what young bucks are like. You'll need to give me a few hours, at least. Unless you'd like to make do with my mouth again."
"Again?" Dunk said, and Lyonel pushed and bullied at him until he was lying on the bed properly, and not just hanging off the edge. Then he draped himself over Dunk's body; his hands went to the necklaces still laid on Dunk's chest, like beautiful, gilded serpents, and he let them run through his fingers like water, the metal chiming softly against his rings.
"Yes, again. And again, and again. Unless that's a problem. In which case don't tell me, just...disappear, the way you do. I'd rather not see your back again, if it's all the same."
"I can't stay." Lyonel grunted. Cautiously, Dunk touched his fingers to the back of his head, winding a curl around his finger, letting it fall loose again. He couldn't stay, was the thing. He had Egg to think of, and there was still so much of the world that they hadn't seen. He'd been thinking, of late, that it might even be a good idea to go North.
Sometime in the spring, maybe.
"Winter's almost here," he said softly. Lyonel grunted again. "It'll be cold. Too cold to travel, maybe."
Lyonel turned his head so that one eye was peering up at Dunk. It blinked, slowly.
"And Egg could stand to be trained by someone else for a bit," Dunk continued.
"Broaden his horizons," Lyonel said.
"Aye, that. And he's of an age now where he'd do well to have another lad to spend time with. Your foster looked about the same age."
"Mm. I was thirteen when I snuck my first kiss from the stableboy. It's an important milestone, that." Lyonel's fingers drummed against Dunk's chest. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Until spring, then," he said, and Dunk leaned down and pressed his nose to the top of Lyonel's head, breathing in the good, honest smell of him.
“All right,” he said. “Until spring.”