The Mystery Knight — Dunk V

The tourney opens with the lists full of old Blackfyre men. Ser Glendon Ball — the Knight of the Pussywillows, Fireball's angry son — unhorses all comers; Dunk falls to the craft of Ser Uthor Underleaf, the Snail, and wakes with a dented head and a ransom owed.

The chapter retold

The tourney opens with the lists full of old Blackfyre men, and two knights cut against the grain of it. Ser Glendon Ball — the Knight of the Pussywillows, Fireball's angry, baseborn son — unhorses all comers with a fury that has something to prove; and Dunk, meaning to win the egg to keep it out of worse hands, falls instead to the craft of Ser Uthor Underleaf, the Snail, and wakes with a dented helm and a ransom he cannot pay. The chapter is a lesson in the tilt as a trade rather than a sport, and it strands Dunk in a hostile castle owing money he does not have.

This movement: The Mystery Knight

• The wedding tourney opens: Ser Glendon Ball, Fireball's furious son, unhorses all comers, while Dunk falls to the Snail's craft and a ransom he cannot pay.
• Ser Maynard Plumm drifts through the feast knowing more than any hedge knight should — including whose head is under Egg's hood.
• The dragon's egg vanishes in the night; the castle is sealed; and Glendon Ball is seized for the theft on no evidence but his father's name.
• Ser Alyn Cockshaw lures Dunk to a quiet well with hired steel — and goes down it himself, with Plumm's blade to help him.