THE BLOODS OF BOLTON | GAME OF THRONES

CHAPTER 11

Drucilla glanced over her shoulder for a second time, expecting to find him standing there. Instead, she saw a young man, tall and lean, with messy brown hair. Astride a chestnut horse, he was casually weaving his way through the crowd, tipping his head to knights and noblemen and smiling at all the young maidens, fair or not. He wore a cream-colored arming doublet that had been splashed with muddy brown water but bore no visible coat of arms. A penniless hedge knight, Drucilla guessed, and likely from the South. He seemed much too soft to be a Northerner.

Beside the knight walked his plump squire, bald but for a few wisps of black hair on the sides of his head. He muttered something that made his master laugh, and Drucilla couldn't help but wonder what he'd said.

"Come, child," Hilda kept saying, but Drucilla assumed she was talking to one of her cousins, who'd likely stopped to gawk at a boy. It was all they ever did.

She didn't realize that she'd stopped walking herself, not until Tally suddenly smacked into her. Drucilla dropped her gaze for a moment, long enough to watch Tally's face flush with embarrassment, and when she looked back, the young hedge knight was staring right at her and smiling.

Gasping, Drucilla immediately turned away and resumed her stride. "Do you think Ser Kyle will win?" she asked her cousins, hoping their voices might distract her.

"Oh, I'm sure he will," Tally answered. "When he was young, he often participated in the Southern tourneys, you know, and those are real tourneys with real knights ..."

Her cousin's voice faded as Drucilla heard a horse approaching. On the ground beside her she could see the shadowed silhouette of the rider as he walked alongside them. She granted him not even the briefest glance, but still he spoke.

"Your name, fair lady," he said with a fine poetic air, as if quoting a passage from a romantic ballad, "I must have it."

Drucilla maintained a steady pace and kept her eyes forward. Her cousins were giggling behind her. Then Hilda came to her side, as if to shield the young maiden's virtue from this mysterious and untrustworthy stranger. "You are speaking to Lady Drucilla of House Bolton, ser, the daughter of Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort. You have the honor of jousting in his son's tourney."

"And honored I am," the knight replied, leaning forward to see past the old woman, but she kept blocking his view with her big head. "Does the lady not possess a voice of her own?"

Drucilla stopped suddenly, making her cousins stumble. The knight stopped too. Although her governess had advised her not to address this man directly, Drucilla brushed the old woman aside and stepped forward. "And what is your name, ser?" she asked, looking directly into his dark blue eyes. He seemed to shudder beneath her piercing gaze.

"Ser Eric," he finally answered, "of Heart Hill."

"Heart Hill?" She pursed her lips. "There is no such place."

"You must be well traveled then, my lady, to have visited every place in the world."

"No," she said, "but I have studied maps."

"Every map?"

"The ones that matter."

"You mean the ones that matter only to you."

"Yes—" The knight cocked his head to one side and smiled as the young lady's cheeks turned the lightest shade of pink. "I mean, no." Drucilla glared at her snickering cousin and went on with a frustrated huff. "What is it you want, ser?"

"Your favor, my lady. I wish to ride in your honor."

Drucilla nodded. "And if you should lose? What is to become of my honor then?"