The Mystery Knight — Dunk I
Near Stoney Sept, Dunk and Egg pass gibbets heavy with hanged men — Lord Wyl's brigands, taken by the king's men. The realm is uneasy: Bloodraven hunts traitors, and rumor says the black dragon stirs. Dunk turns their road north, meaning to winter at Winterfell.
The chapter retold
The final completed novella opens in a realm holding its breath. Near Stoney Sept, Dunk and Egg ride past gibbets heavy with hanged brigands — Bloodraven's justice, displayed where every traveler can read it — and the talk on the road is all of traitors hunted and the black dragon stirring again across the narrow sea. Dunk, wanting no part of any of it, turns their road north, meaning to winter at Winterfell as far from Blackfyre plots as a hedge knight can get. The chapter sets a darker, warier tone than the earlier tales: the Seven Kingdoms of Aerys and Bloodraven is a suspicious place, and the road to a wedding is about to carry Dunk exactly where he means not to go.
This movement: The Road to the Wedding
- Gibbets by Stoney Sept: Bloodraven's justice hangs where all can see it, and rumor says the black dragon stirs across the sea.
- Dunk and Egg fall in with lords bound for Lord Butterwell's wedding at Whitewalls — Gormon Peake, Alyn Cockshaw, and the golden, laughing Ser John the Fiddler.
- The Milkhouse gleams over the Gods Eye, packed with every lord who ever drank to Daemon Blackfyre's memory.
- A dragon's egg is promised to the tourney champion, and the Fiddler tells Dunk of dreams: a dragon hatching at Whitewalls, and Dunk in a white cloak.