The Mystery Knight — Dunk XI

Fireball's son unhorses Daemon Blackfyre in one course — and the dawn shows Bloodraven's army ringed round Whitewalls. At the gates Black Tom Heddle bars Dunk's way with steel, and dies of it.

The chapter retold

Fireball's son answers the wager in a single course: Ser Glendon Ball unhorses Daemon Blackfyre cleanly, and the pretender's cause loses its shine in the length of one tilt. Then the dawn shows the true shape of the trap — Bloodraven's army ringed silently around Whitewalls, the rebellion netted before it can ever march. At the gates Black Tom Heddle bars Dunk's way with drawn steel and dies of the choice, and the chapter delivers the saga's grim lesson about the man behind the throne: Bloodraven let the plot ripen precisely so he could close his hand on all of it at once.

This movement: The Black Dragon and the White

• The Fiddler unmasked: Daemon the Second of House Blackfyre, come to hatch a dragon and a rebellion in the same marble hall.
• Egg's boot yields Maekar's signet ring, and Dunk spends its weight to buy Glendon Ball a knight's answer: trial by joust against the pretender himself.
• Fireball's son puts the black dragon in the dirt in a single course — and dawn shows Bloodraven's host ringed around Whitewalls.
• The Second Blackfyre Rebellion ends without a battle: Daemon taken, the wedding lords fined to the bone, Black Tom Heddle dead on Dunk's sword, and Whitewalls condemned to come down stone by stone.

The fallen — spoilers

• Black Tom Heddle — Lord Butterwell's grim good-son, cut down by Dunk at the gates of Whitewalls with treason still on his sword.