The Sworn Sword — 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 — 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 — 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 — 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.