They had found her by chance, or so Ser Arlan had said. Dunk was never certain he believed in chance.

The farm lay a mile off the kingsroad, fields gone to weed and barley bent low from neglect. The air smelled of turned earth and fever both. Dunk remembered the sound first—the scrape of iron biting stubborn soil, then a sharp breath, half sob, half curse.

She was small for the task, boots sunk ankle-deep in mud, sleeves rolled to elbows too thin for such labor. Her pa lay wrapped in a roughspun sheet beside the half-dug grave, the shape of him narrow and still.

“Best put your back into it, lad,” Ser Arlan had told Dunk quietly, pressing the shovel into his hands. “The dead won’t bury themselves.”

Dunk had not needed asking twice.

He stepped into the grave with a grunt, driving the spade deep. The soil was heavy with spring rain. It clung. It resisted. He worked until sweat soaked his tunic and his shoulders burned, saying little, glancing now and again at the gi.rl. She did not weep as he had expected. She dug beside him, jaw set hard as oak.

When the grave was deep enough, Dunk lifted the body as gently as he might lift a chi.ld.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he’d said, voice thick and awkward. “We’ll see him laid proper.”

They spoke the words they knew. The Seven heard, if they cared to.

For kindness paid in labor, she fed them what little she had—coarse bread, a heel of cheese, thin stew stretched too far. Dunk ate with quiet gratitude. Ser Arlan drank with louder appreciation.

“It’s a cruel world for a gi.rl alone,” the old knight had muttered into his cup, cheeks ruddy with ale. “Crueler still without coin. If you were a b.oy now—eh!—might take you on. Teach you steel and saddle. But gi.rls…” He shook his head. “Gi.rls can’t be knights.”

Dunk remembered the way she had gone still at that.

He’d frowned into his bowl. “Ser,” he’d ventured softly, “she’s strong enough.”

“Aye, strong,” Arlan had allowed, then drained the cup and asked for more.

In the morning, they found her waiting in the yard.

Her hair lay in uneven locks at her feet, hacked short with a kitchen knife. She wore her father’s breeches, cinched tight with rope, and a tunic belted clumsily to fit her narrower frame. The clothes hung wrong upon her, but she stood straight within them, chin high.

“I’ll ride,” she said.

Ser Arlan stared at her long and hard. “You’ll do no such thing.”

“I will,” she answered. “You said if I were a b.oy—”

“I said ale-soaked foolishness.” Arlan’s voice was sharp as flint. “A gi.rl cannot be a knight. Not in this realm.”

Arlan rubbed at his brow. “And when your secret’s found? When some lord takes offense? You’d hang for the lie, gi.rl.”

“Then I’ll not be found out.”

There had been something in her eyes then—a steadiness Dunk recognized. The same look he’d seen in polished steel before a charge.

In the end, it was not her pleading that swayed Ser Arlan, but her silence. She stood there, slight as a reed and twice as unbending, and did not yield.

“Thunder can bear two in a pinch,” Arlan grumbled at last. “But there’s a third mount. Chestnut’s steady. You’ll ride him. You’ll answer to no name but the one I give you. You’ll mind your tongue. And if this folly brings ruin—”

“It won’t,” she said.

Dunk had grinned then, wide as sunrise.

“Welcome to the road,” he told her.

Years passed swift as a gallop.

She learned to saddle and spar, to pitch tents and read the look of men before they spoke. She grew taller, stronger, though never near Dunk’s height. Her hands hardened. Her stride lengthened. She wore her disguise like armor, and few questioned it. Those who did found Dunk’s shadow falling long between them and her.

When Ser Arlan died beneath a hedge of withered thorn, it was she who closed his eyes.

“I’ll see his name honored,” Dunk had sworn into the wind. “Both of us will.”

Now Ashford Meadow spread before them.

“You ever regret it?” Dunk asked after a time, laid with her beneath the elm tree, their eyes on the stars. “Leaving that farm. Taking the road with us.”