The Sworn Sword ÔÇö Dunk II

Standfast: a towerhouse, three fields, a dry wood, and a lord with a thousand years of glories to recount. Ser Eustace tells of the Marshals of the Northmarch, of his dead sons ÔÇö and of Lady Rohanne Webber, who has buried four husbands and, men whisper, made some of the graves herself.

The chapter retold

Standfast is a towerhouse with three dry fields and a lord with a thousand years of lost glories to recite of an evening. Ser Eustace tells of the Marshals of the Northmarch, of the sons he buried, and of the Red Widow herself ÔÇö Lady Rohanne Webber, who has put four husbands in the ground and, the whispers run, dug some of the graves herself. The chapter is a study in how a house tells itself its own story long after the story has stopped being true, and it hands the reader a legend of a monstrous widow precisely so the next chapters can take it apart.

This movement: A Dry Summer

• Two years after Ashford: King Daeron and both of Baelor's sons are dead of the Great Spring Sickness; bookish Aerys wears the crown and the sorcerer Bloodraven rules from behind it.
• Drought bakes the Reach. Dunk and Egg serve old Ser Eustace Osgrey of Standfast, last of the chequy lions, for bed, board, and a knight's fee.
• The Chequy Water runs dry: the Red Widow of Coldmoat has dammed the stream ÔÇö and Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield opens a digger's cheek to answer it.
• Standfast arms its plowmen. Dunk counts real knights on the other side and likes the sum not at all.