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Dunk wakes to a vicious sound. His temples are pounding. It’s a dark night with a half moon hidden by clouds.
The sound splits the air. It isn’t an owl call but it’s as shrill as a white barn owl and it’s close. Dunk’s pulse starts to race.
On instinct he lays his sword across his abdomen.
And again the sound comes. His hair stands on end. There’s no other bird sounds. No dog or wolf howling. No wind even.
Duncan thinks of Baelor and his last rattling breath.
He grips the hilt of his sword when the grass rustles under something’s feet. It has a light step. He cranes his head around the tree. A little shape is moving through the grass.
The next cry makes Dunk draw his sword half out its scabbard. The scrape as it comes out of its sheikh seems too quiet and the cry feels like it’s echoing in his ears.
Terror makes his skin pebble.
“Hullo?” Dunk calls to the figure.
“Ser Duncan?” Is the reply. Then the awful, hellish call follows.
“No!” He hears Egg. “No! Shush!”
“Egg?!” Duncan kicks off his blanket. His thigh burns. The wound on his stomach is not much better. “Egg? What are you doing?”
Egg starts to run. The shriek forces Dunk onto his feet. His skin is pebbling. He limps from his bedroll.
“Egg, what’s chasing you? What is that?”
The boy comes to a stop in front of him. Dunk kneels, checking him over. He is warmly dressed and unharmed.
“She’s not chasing me.”
His hands appear from under his cloak. A cloud passes away from the moon. Dunk sees Egg is beaming.
“Then what are you running from?”
“I was running to see you,” Egg’s arms appear from inside his fine, black cloak.
“Ser,” And Egg holds out a small, pale creature to Dunk. “I need your help.”
“Where did you find a -“ But the creature lets out another terrible wail. This time it sounds closer to a hungry babe than a beast.
“No,” Dunk breathes. The frills around its head lift. They’re strung between bones like a veil on a lady’s headdress. “No that’s not -“
“She’s mine ser.”
“Seven hells,” Slowly Dunk kneels down.
“She’s a dragon,” Egg says helpfully.
“Yes. I can see that.”
“Where have you seen a dragon before?” Egg asks.
“There should be a ‘ser’ at the end of that question,” Dunk reminds him but he stares unabashedly at the dragon. In the moonlight her scales appear as green as spring pond moss.
“Where have you seen a dragon before, ser?” Egg asks.
“There was a dragon in the puppet show not two days past,” Dunk replies. Egg looks down at his - well, his dragon.
“She doesn’t resemble it,” Egg replies. The little dragon’s tail is curled around the boy’s wrist like a cat’s. “Look at her head and her wings.”
“Well, she’s alive,” Dunk says, awed. He scoots himself closer to the boy to study the dragon. “She’s…she’s real.”
“Do you want to hold her?”
“Hold her? Will she burn me?”
Egg shrugs. “She hasn’t burned me, ser.”
“You’re a Targaryen. I’m not.”
Egg touches his dragon’s head gently. “But you’re from Fleabottom and you haven’t a mother. You might be one of my grandfather’s bastards for all you know.”
“Do I look like one?” Egg cautiously starts to pet the dragon’s head. It lifts its chin to look up at him, dog-like.
“Not really. You look more like a half-giant but she hasn’t hurt me. She even ate out of my hand,” Egg replies excitedly. “I thought she’d be bigger.”
“Why’d you bring her out here?”
Out here, Dunk thinks, are the wrong words.
Egg has brought the dragon to him.
“Does your father know you’ve - well, you’ve got a dragon?” Dunk continues before the boy can speak.
A cloud passes over the moon hiding the boy’s face but Dunk knows he’s frowning. Egg keeps petting the dragon.
“I didn’t tell him, ser,” Egg admits softly. “I want to keep her safe. She’s mine. Father always travels with our dragon eggs. I put mine in the fire before I went to sleep and she woke me.”
“Why do you think your father will harm her?” Dunk knows very little about Prince Maekar and would rather know even less but he doubts the man would hurt a dragon.
“Aerion will want her,” Egg replies. “Or Valarr. He’s Prince of Dragonstone now. They’ll take her away from me.”
Dunk swallows. Aerion is not fit to be near rats or cats. Dunk has seen him kill a horse for pride and maim a girl in madness.
“If you come with me they’ll hunt for you,” Dunk says. With real dogs.
The dragon calls again, shrill, vicious and, Dunk thinks, beautiful. As terrible and beautiful as the Seven Hells must be.
“My father said I’m to serve you,” Aegon says. His voice wavers. “But won’t let me go if they know I hatched a dragon.”
Dunk reaches out towards her. She turns her head from her master to look at him. Her eyes glint like a cat’s. He thinks she’s baring her teeth. If dragons even do that. She has a mouth like a lizard and he’s never seen one snarl.
Dunk raises his hand and touches Egg’s cheek. His throat clicks as he swallows. Dunk the Lunk. This’ll earn him a hanging or worse, a sharp questioning before it.
“Alright,” Dunk says. “We need to leave now. Now. And we need a basket to put her in.”
“I already have her in a hawk’s jesses,” Egg replies.
“How fast will she outgrow those?”
“A long time, ser? Years?” Egg shrugs. Dunk pats the boy’s shoulder as he stands.
“She better come to a whistle by the time she does,” Dunk says. “And she needs a name by dawn.”
He limps away from the boy, intending to gather up his bedroll.
“She has a name!” Egg is at his heels.
“What is it? Something I can say I hope?”
“Wyrm.”
“Wyrm!” Egg yelps!
“Worm,” Dunk looks back to see the little dragon spreading her leathery wings out from her body. They’re a deeper shade of green than her body. Tree moss green. “Aye. It suits her.”