Martin, R.R. - A Dance with Dragons - A Song of Ice and Fire - Book Five

When the laughter began, the dream dissolved. He was no champion, just a dwarf on a pig clutching a stick, capering for the amusement of some restless rum-soaked sailors in hopes of sweetening their mood. Somewhere down in hell his father was seething and Joffrey was chuckling. Tyrion could feel their cold dead eyes watching this mummer’s face, as avid as the crew of the Selaesori Qhoran .

And now here came his foe. Penny rode her big grey dog, her striped lance waving drunkenly as the beast bounded across the deck. Her shield and armor had been painted red, though the paint was chipped and fading; his own armor was blue. Not mine. Groat’s. Never mine, I pray .

Tyrion kicked at Pretty’s haunches to speed her to a charge as the sailors urged him on with hoots and shouts. Whether they were shouting encouragement or mocking him he could not have said for certain, though he had a fair notion. Why did I ever allow myself to be talked into this farce?

He knew the answer, though. For twelve days now the ship had floated becalmed in the Gulf of Grief. The mood of the crew was ugly, and like to turn uglier when their daily rum ration went dry. There were only so many hours a man could devote to mending sails, caulking leaks, and fishing. Jorah Mormont had heard the muttering about how dwarf luck had failed them. Whilst the ship’s cook still gave Tyrion’s head a rub from time to time, in hopes that it might stir a wind, the rest had taken to giving him venomous looks whenever he crossed their paths. Penny’s lot was even worse, since the cook had put about the notion that squeezing a dwarf girl’s breast might be just the thing to win their luck back. He had also started referring to Pretty Pig as Bacon , a jape that had seemed much funnier when Tyrion had made it.

“We have to make them laugh,” Penny had said, pleading. “We have to make them like us. If we give them a show, it will help them forget. Please , m’lord.” And somehow, somewise, someway he had consented. It must have been the rum . The captain’s wine had been the first thing to run out. You could get drunk much quicker on rum than on wine, Tyrion Lannister had discovered.

So he found himself clad in Groat’s painted wooden armor, astride Groat’s sow, whilst Groat’s sister instructed him in the finer points of the mummer’s joust that had been their bread and salt. It had a certain delicious irony to it, considering that Tyrion had almost lost his head once by refusing to mount the dog for his nephew’s twisted amusement. Yet somehow he found it difficult to appreciate the humor of it all from sowback.

Penny’s lance descended just in time for its blunted point to brush his shoulder; his own lance wobbled as he brought it down and banged it noisily off a corner of her shield. She kept her seat. He lost his. But then, he was supposed to.

Easy as falling off a pig … though falling off this particular pig was harder than it looked. Tyrion curled into a ball as he dropped, remembering his lesson, but even so, he hit the deck with a solid thump and bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He felt as if he were twelve again, cartwheeling across the supper table in Casterly Rock’s great hall. Back then his uncle Gerion had been on hand to praise his efforts, in place of surly sailors. Their laughter seemed sparse and strained compared to the great gales that had greeted Groat’s and Penny’s antics at Joffrey’s wedding feast, and some hissed at him in anger. “No-Nose, you ride same way you look, ugly,” one man shouted from the sterncastle. “Must have no balls, let girl beat you.” He wagered coin on me , Tyrion decided. He let the insult wash right over him. He had heard worse in his time.

The wooden armor made rising awkward. He found himself flailing like a turtle on its back. That, at least, set a few of the sailors to laughing. A shame I did not break my leg, that would have left them howling. And if they had been in that privy when I shot my father through the bowels, they might have laughed hard enough to shit their breeches right along with him. But anything to keep the bloody bastards sweet .

Jorah Mormont finally took pity on Tyrion’s struggles and pulled him to his feet. “You looked a fool.”

That was the intent . “It is hard to look a hero when mounted on a pig.”

“That must be why I stay off pigs.”

Tyrion unbuckled his helm, twisted it off, and spat a gobbet of bloody pink phlegm over the side. “It feels as though I bit through half my tongue.”

“Next time bite harder.” Ser Jorah shrugged. “Truth be told, I’ve seen worse jousters.”

Was that praise? “I fell off the bloody pig and bit my tongue. What could possibly be worse than that?”

“Getting a splinter through your eye and dying.”

Penny had vaulted off her dog, a big grey brute called Crunch. “The thing is not to joust well, Hugor.” She was always careful to call him Hugor where anyone might hear. “The thing is to make them laugh and throw coins.”

Poor payment for the blood and bruises , Tyrion thought, but he kept that to himself as well. “We failed at that as well. No one threw coins.” Not a penny, not a groat .

“They will when we get better.” Penny pulled off her helm. Mouse-brown hair spilled down to her ears. Her eyes were brown too, beneath a heavy shelf of brow, her cheeks smooth and flushed. She pulled some acorns from a leather bag for Pretty Pig. The sow ate them from her hand, squealing happily. “When we perform for Queen Daenerys the silver will rain down, you’ll see.”

Some of the sailors were shouting at them and slamming their heels against the deck, demanding another tilt. The ship’s cook was the loudest, as always. Tyrion had learned to despise that man, even if he was the only half-decent cyvasse player on the cog. “You see, they liked us,” Penny said, with a hopeful little smile. “Shall we go again, Hugor?”

He was on the point of refusing when a shout from one of the mates spared him the necessity. It was midmorning, and the captain wanted the boats out again. The cog’s huge striped sail hung limply from her mast, as it had for days, but he was hopeful that they could find a wind somewhere to the north. That meant rowing. The boats were small, however, and the cog was large; towing it was hot, sweaty, exhausting work that left the hands blistered and the back aching, and accomplished nothing. The crew hated it. Tyrion could not blame them. “The widow should have put us on a galley,” he muttered sourly. “If someone could help me out of these bloody planks, I would be grateful. I think I may have a splinter through my crotch.”

Mormont did the duty, albeit with poor grace. Penny collected her dog and pig and led them both below. “You might want to tell your lady to keep her door closed and barred when she’s inside,” Ser Jorah said as he was undoing the buckles on the straps that joined the wooden breastplate to the backplate. “I’m hearing too much talk about ribs and hams and bacon.”

“That pig is half her livelihood.”

“A Ghiscari crew would eat the dog as well.” Mormont pulled the breastplate and backplate apart. “Just tell her.”

“As you wish.” His tunic was soaked with sweat and clinging to his chest. Tyrion plucked at it, wishing for a bit of breeze. The wooden armor was as hot and heavy as it was uncomfortable. Half of it looked to be old paint, layer on layer on layer of it, from a hundred past repaintings. At Joffrey’s wedding feast, he recalled, one rider had displayed the direwolf of Robb Stark, the other the arms and colors of Stannis Baratheon. “We will need both animals if we’re to tilt for Queen Daenerys,” he said. If the sailors took it in their heads to butcher Pretty Pig, neither he nor Penny could hope to stop them … but Ser Jorah’s longsword might give them pause, at least.