The Sworn Sword

He wants to get those wine casks off his back. Dunk could not blame him.

The stream flowed north and east when it was flowing, so he turned Thunder south and west. He had not ridden a dozen yards before Bennis caught him. ""I best come see you don't get hanged"". He pushed a fresh sourleaf into his mouth. ""Past that clump o' sandwillows, the whole right bank is spider land"".

""I'll stay on our side"". Dunk wanted no trouble with the Lady of the Coldmoat. At Standfast you heard ill things of her. The Red Widow, she was called, for the husbands she had put into the ground. Old Sam Stoops said she was a witch, a poisoner, and worse. Two years ago she had sent her knights across the stream to seize an Osgrey man for stealing sheep. ""When m'lord rode to Coldmoat to demand him back, he was told to look for him at the bottom of the moat"", Sam had said. ""She'd sewn poor Dake in a bag o' rocks and sunk him. 'Twas after that Ser Eustace took Ser Bennis into service, to keep them spiders off his lands"".

Thunder kept a slow, steady pace beneath the broiling sun. The sky was blue and hard, with no hint of cloud anywhere to be seen. The course of the stream meandered around rocky knolls and forlorn willows, through bare brown hills and fields of dead and dying grain. An hour upstream from the bridge, they found themselves riding on the edge of the small Osgrey forest called Wat's Wood. The greenery looked inviting from afar, and filled Dunk's head with thoughts of shady glens and chuckling brooks, but when they reached the trees they found them thin and scraggly, with drooping limbs. Some of the great oaks were shedding leaves, and half the pines had turned as brown as Ser Bennis, with rings of dead needles girdling their trunks. Worse and worse, thought Dunk. One spark, and this will all go up like tinder.

For the moment, though, the tangled underbrush along the Chequy Water was still thick with thorny vines, nettles, and tangles of briarwhite and young willow. Rather than fight through it, they crossed the dry streambed to the Coldmoat side, where the trees had been cleared away for pasture. Amongst the parched brown grasses and faded wildflowers, a few black-nosed sheep were grazing. ""Never knew an animal stupid as a sheep"", Ser Bennis commented. ""Think they're kin to you, lunk?"" When Dunk did not reply, he laughed his chicken laugh again.

Half a league farther south, they came upon the dam."

"It was not large as such things went, but it looked strong. Two stout wooden barricades had been thrown across the stream from bank to bank, made from the trunks of trees with the bark still on. The space between them was filled with rocks and earth and packed down hard. Behind the dam the flow was creeping up the banks and spilling off into a ditch that had been cut through Lady Webber's fields. Dunk stood in his stirrups for a better look. The glint of sun on water betrayed a score of lesser channels, running off in all directions like a spider's web. They are stealing our stream. The sight filled him with indignation, especially when it dawned on him that the trees must surely have been taken from Wat's Wood.

""See what you went and did, lunk"", said Bennis. ""Couldn't have it that the stream dried up, no. Might be this starts with water, but it'll end with blood. Yours and mine, most like"". The brown knight drew his sword. ""Well, no help for it now. There's your thrice-damned diggers. Best we put some fear in them"". He raked his garron with his spurs and galloped through the grass.

Dunk had no choice but to follow. Ser Arlan's longsword rode his hip, a good straight piece of steel. If these ditchdiggers have a lick of sense, they'll run. Thunder's hooves kicked up clods of dirt.

One man dropped his shovel at the sight of the oncoming knights, but that was all. There were a score of the diggers, short and tall, old and young, all baked brown by the sun. They formed a ragged line as Bennis slowed, clutching their spades and picks. ""This is Coldmoat land"", one shouted.

""And that's an Osgrey stream"". Bennis pointed with his longsword. ""Who put that damned dam up?""

""Maester Cerrick made it"", said one young digger.

""No"", an older man insisted. ""The gray pup pointed some and said do this and do that, but it were us who made it"".

""Then you can bloody well unmake it"".

The diggers' eyes were sullen and defiant. One wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. No one spoke.

""You lot don't hear so good"", said Bennis. ""Do I need to lop me off an ear or two? Who's first?""

""This is Webber land"". The old digger was a scrawny fellow, stooped and stubborn. ""You got no right to be here. Lop off any ears and m'lady will drown you in a sack"".

Bennis rode closer. ""Don't see no ladies here, just some mouthy peasant"". He poked the digger's bare brown chest with the point of his sword, just hard enough to draw a bead of blood.

He goes too far. ""Put up your steel"", Dunk warned him.