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Here is my report to the A Song of Ice and Fire board on George's read last night at Bubonicon:
Disclaimer: I guess I expected George to read more stuff from AFFC so was caught off guard when he decided to read the first twenty pages from "The Sworn Sword". The second Hedge Knight Story about to be released in the UK in the Legends 2 collection. I have not read The Hedge Knight, so I can barely make sense of half of what is going on. bpassey was the only other "boarder" that I found there and he has read it so perhaps when he gets back to Utah he can help you make better sense of this...Please forgive my ignorance and spelling mistakes.
I can't recall, exactly, where Dunk and Egg are coming from (though they do make mention a Ser Arliss Hilltange (?)) but they seem to be traveling in a westerly direction towards Standfast and Watt's Wood. This takes place, roughly, one and one half years to two years after the first story. A horrible drought has sticken Westeros and they are on their way to deliver two casks of wine to a fumbling old Lord, Ser Osgrave, that they have served before. Something is mentioned, quickly about the Kinslayer and Dunk recalls a time that he was at Aerys' court and that his Hand the one-eyed sorcerer "The Blood Raven" (a living corpse) looked right through him and gave him the utter creeps.
Anyway, the drought has shortened the Lord's tempers so frequent skirmishes are occuring and crime is running rampant. Even the Blackwater Rush and the Mander are losing water quickly and crops are dying everywhere. Intitially Dunk and Egg encounter two "criminals" thrown together in a crow's cage, their bodies are rotting and it appears that one had been trying to eat the other. They continue on and meet a Ser Bennis of the Brownshield at Black Plank Bridge that spans The Checky Creek, or what was left of it-Osgrave's main water supply.
Bennis is serving Ser Ustest Osgrave (who he refers to as Ser Useless), though his leige-Lord is Ser Rohan (?). He has worked with Dunk before and generally tortures Egg-who utterly hates him. (Dunk jokes with Egg, at one point, that Bennis would literally @#%$ his breeches if he knew Egg's origins) Bennis is a disgusting unkept man who laughs like a chicken or brays like Egg's mule, Maester, spitting his sourleaf all over the place. They talk about the Creek and Osgrave's dying crops and Bennis goes on to tell them about the Kraken raid at Dos (?), their destruction of major arbors and Ironman pirating.
(I get the feeling this takes place northwest of Bitterbridge because of frequent references to Dorne and The Arbor itself, and the connections you'll soon see...)
Dunk begins to notice odd things about the Checky's banks and walks into the creek bed against Bennis' orders. He overturns a stone and discovers that water was recently present. He rides Thunder around an upper bend where the three of them find a dam being constructed by Lady's Webber's men. The "Black Widow" (the Webbers are refered to as: the spiders) is clearly stealing Osgrave's water. Bennis knew about this but doesn't want Dunk to know. (perhaps he has his own agenda in undermining Osgrave...). Against Dunk's advice Bennis has a suddenly attack of bravado and trys to run off all twelve laborers, but most of them won't run. So he cuts an old man, Jorgen, from ear to jaw and the group eventually leaves but warns him that The Black Widow, who "killed three of her husband and two of her sons and buried them in the moat", will not take kindly to this action.
When they finally make it to the small hill-tower of Standfast they find Ser Osgrave recently returned from visiting his dead sons; Ser Edwin, Ser Harold and young squire Adam who were killed in the Blackfire Rebellion. Osgrave recieves this news and visions of his old glories come rushing back to him. He is polishing a broken Lionshield and it appears that the Osgraves are offshoot bannermen to the Lannisters. Their sigil is the CheckyLion (or Checkered ?) in green and gold. Osgrave goes into one of his old stories about how his forebear, Ser Wilbur (or perhaps Woodward) Osgrave, fought for the King of the Rock against King Lancel IV in the days of the seven kingdoms. He somehow succeeds in killing Lancel with his dagger as he is being sliced in two by Valerian steel...(also mentioning Giles the Third, The King of the Reach and The Storm King)
The read ended up with Bennis and Dunk having to scour the three tiny villages on Osgrave's lands to recruit "soldiers". Not only do they need extra men and donkeys to pull down the dam but also to stand up against Webber's knights and archers. The story kind of turns into a comical farce at that point as, aside from two older men, the assembled company of "able bodied" men have absoluetly no fighting experience. They start with fifteen and end up with eight as two are too old, two are too young and one is really a girl...
So Bennis and Dunk begin task of trying to train this lackwitted crew of sheepholers and pig farmers, they all almost kill each other and Lem falls down a well. As they begin training with spears somebody mentions that Pate is good at throwing rocks, to which Bennis says, "...oh that's what we need! A bloody trebuchet!!!" So from then on Pate is called "Treb". There follows a series of silly antics and fustration...and there the read ended.
Sorry about mistakes, but I did my best! And now Danlo looked in that direction, too. He remembered that snowy owls mate in the darkest part of deep winter, and so along with this beautiful white bird perched in a tree a hundred feet away, he turned to face the sea as he watched and waited.
Ahira, Ahira, he called out silently to the sky. Ahira, Ahira<i>Edited by: danlo60 at: 9/25/03 10:06 pm
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