Three of the younger knights had started it, he told her: Ambrose, Bushy, and Hyle Hunt, of his own household. As word spread through the camp, however, others had joined the game. Each man was required to buy into the contest with a golden dragon, the whole sum to go to whoever claimed her maidenhead.
“I have put an end to their sport,” Tarly told her. “Some of these. challengers. are less honorable than others, and the stakes were growing larger every day. It was only a matter of time before one of them decided to claim the prize by force.”
“They were knights,” she said, stunned, “anointed knights.”
“And honorable men. The blame is yours.”
The accusation made her flinch. “I would never. my lord, I did nought to encourage them.”
“Your being here encouraged them. If a woman will behave like a camp follower, she cannot object to being treated like one. A war host is no place for a maiden. If you have any regard for your virtue or the honor of your House, you will take off that mail, return home, and beg your father to find a husband for you.”
“I came to fight,” she insisted. “To be a knight.”
“The gods made men to fight, and women to bear children,” said Randyll Tarly. “A woman’s war is in the birthing bed.”
Someone was coming down the cellar steps. Brienne pushed her wine aside as a ragged, scrawny, sharp-faced man with dirty brown hair stepped into the Goose. He gave the Tyroshi sailors a quick look and Brienne a longer one, then went up to the plank. “Wine,” he said, “and none o’ your horse piss in it, thank’e.”
The woman gave Brienne a look and nodded.
“I’ll buy your wine,” she called out, “for a word.”
The man looked her over, his eyes wary. “A word? I know a lot o’ words.” He sat down on the stool across from her. “Tell me which m’lady wants t’ hear, and Nimble Dick will say it.”
“I heard you fooled a fool.”
The ragged man sipped his wine, thinking. “Mighten be I did. Or not.” He wore a faded, torn doublet from which some lord’s badge had been ripped. “Who is it wants t’ know?”
“King Robert.” She put a silver stag on the barrel between them. Robert’s head was on one side, the stag on the other.
“Does he now?” The man took the coin and spun it, smiling. “I like to see a king dance, hey-nonny hey-nonny hey-nonny-ho. Mighten be I saw this fool of yours.”
“Was there a girl with him?”
“Two girls,” he said at once.
“
“Well,” the man said, “I never seen the little sweets, mind you, but he was wanting passage for three.”
“Passage where?”
“T’other side o’ the sea, as I recall.”
“Do you remember what he looked like?”
“A fool.” He snatched the spinning coin off the table as it began to slow, and made it vanish. “A frightened fool.”
“Frightened why?”
He shrugged. “He never said, but old Nimble Dick knows the smell o’ fear. He come here most every night, buying drinks for sailors, making japes, singing little songs. Only one night some men come in with that hunter on their teats, and your fool went white as milk and got quiet till they left.” He edged his stool closer to hers. “That Tarly’s got soldiers crawling over the docks, watching every ship that comes or goes. Man wants a deer, he goes t’ the woods. He wants a ship, he goes t’ the docks. Your fool didn’t dare. So I offered him some help.”
“What sort of help?”
“The sort that costs more than one silver stag.”
“Tell me, and you’ll have another.”
“Let’s see it,” he said. She put another stag on the barrel. He spun it, smiled, scooped it up. “A man who can’t go t’ the ships need for the ships t’ come t’ him. I told him I knew a place where that might happen. A hidden place, like.”
Gooseprickles rose along Brienne’s arms. “A smugglers’ cove. You sent the fool to smugglers.”
“Him and them two girls.” He chuckled. “Only thing, well, the place I sent them, been no ships there for a while. Thirty years, say.” He scratched his nose. “What’s this fool to you?”
“Those two girls are my sisters.”
“Are they, now? Poor little things. Had a sister once meself. Skinny girl with knobby knees, but then she grew a pair o’ teats and a knight’s son got between her legs. Last I saw her she was off for King’s Landing t’ make a living on her back.”
“Where did you send them?”
Another shrug. “As t’ that, I can’t recall.”
He flicked the coin back at her with his forefinger. “Someplace no stag ever found. though a dragon might.”
Silver would not get the truth from him, she sensed.
The ragged man snatched up the coin and bit it. “Sweet. Puts me in mind o’ Crackclaw Point. Up north o’ here, ’tis a wild land o’ hills and bogs, but it happens I was born and bred there. Dick Crabb, I’m named, though most call me Nimble Dick.”
