The Dunk & Egg Novella (in between The Hedge Knight & The Sworn Sword)

GRRM has previously mentioned wanting to do a novella on the adventure in Dorne in between The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword. I thought it would be fun to look at the information we have available that this novella could be about.

Egg went to get the saddles. “Where are we going, ser?”

Dunk thought for a moment. “I have never been over the Red Mountains. Would you like to have a look at Dorne?”

Egg grinned. “I hear they have good puppet shows,” he said. -The Hedge Knight

Background

While not focus of the next novella (that is The She Wolves of Winterfell (working title)), GRRM has mentioned "maybe" he would write it (all jokes aside) and there is good framework for it:

If THE HEDGE KNIGHT turns out as well as we hope it will, our hope would be to go on and adapt THE SWORN SWORD and THE MYSTERY KNIGHT as well. That will take a few years. Then comes the hard part. Before we reach the end of the published stories, I will need to find time to write all the other Dunk & Egg novellas that I have planned. There are… gulp… more of them than I had once thought. There’s “The Village Hero” and the Winterfell story, the one with the She-Wolves, and maybe I need to write that Dornish adventure too to slip in between “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword,” and after that there are… ah… more. I just need to finish THE WINDS OF WINTER, and then do either A DREAM OF SPRING or volume two of FIRE & BLOOD, and slip in a new Dunk & Egg between each of those in my copious spare time… and that will keep me ahead of Ira and his merry crew… for a few more years. -SSM, A Knight & a Squire

If interested: Thoughts on the new GRRM Not A Blog: A Knight & a Squire & Speculating on Dunk & Egg

I think the biggest thing that this novella would have going for it is that it would allow the D&E "formula" to continue since it takes place further back in time (going forward most people will know who the giant knight in the realm is outside of extreme locations like the north).

The Journey

This quote from the Sworn Sword seems to show most of their journey:

Egg had served Dunk for a good year and a half, though some days it seemed like twenty. They had climbed the Prince’s Pass together and crossed the deep sands of Dorne, both red and white. A poleboat had taken them down the Greenblood to the Planky Town, where they took passage for Oldtown on the galleas White Lady. -The Sworn Sword

They spent about a year there:

“A tree and shooting star. I have never seen those arms before.” She touched his tunic, tracing a limb of his elm tree with two fingers. “And painted, not sewn. The Dornish paint their silks, I’ve heard, but you look too big to be a Dornishman.”

“Not all Dornishmen are small, m’lady.” Dunk could feel her fingers through the silk. Her hand was freckled too. I’ll bet she’s freckled all over. His mouth was oddly dry. “I spent a year in Dorne.”

where they experienced a good amount of Dorne:

They had slept in stables, inns, and ditches, broken bread with holy brothers, whores, and mummers, and chased down a hundred puppet shows. Egg had kept Dunk’s horse groomed, his longsword sharp, his mail free of rust.

Tanselle Too Tall

At the end of the Hedge Knight, Tanselle and the puppeteers vanish:

I should be dreaming of Tanselle. Tanselle Too-Tall, they called her, but she was not too tall for me. She had painted arms upon his shield and he had saved her from the Bright Prince, but she vanished even before the trial of seven.

and while Dunk/Egg look for her across Dorne:

They had slept in stables, inns, and ditches, roken bread with holy brothers, whores, and mummers, and chased down a hundred puppet shows. Egg had kept Dunk’s horse groomed, his longsword sharp, his mail free of rust

its likely they do not find her:

Tanselle smiled at me**, but we never held each other, never kissed, not even lips to cheek.**

The Great Spring Sickness

While they are in Dorne, a lot of people died "in the Spring" including a lot of Egg's extended family:

And where were you, ser?”

“In Dorne,” said Dunk.

“Thank the Mother for her mercy, then.” The Great Spring Sickness had never come to Dorne, perhaps because the Dornish had closed their borders and their ports, as had the Arryns of the Vale, who had also been spared.

and:

You are dead, Dunk wanted to scream, you are all three dead, why won’t you leave me be? Ser Arlan had died of a chill, Prince Baelor of the blow his brother dealt him during Dunk’s trial of seven, his son Valarr during the Great Spring Sickness. I am not to blame for that. We were in Dorne, we never even knew.

Dunk's Dream/Death of Chestnut

Dunk has a dream in which he remembers events that didn't happen in Dorne (burying Chestnut):

Dunk was weeping as he dug, to the amusement of the Dornish knights. “Water is precious in the waste,” one said, “you ought not to waste it, ser.” The other chuckled and said, “Why do you weep? It was only a horse, and a poor one.”

as it seems like Chestnut died en route to Vaith (below)

Chestnut had died on the long dry ride to Vaith, that part was true. He and Egg rode double until Egg’s brother gave them Maester. The rest of it, though…

I never wept. I might have wanted to, but I never did. He had wanted to bury the horse as well, but the Dornishmen would not wait. “Sand dogs must eat and feed their pups,” one of the Dornish knights told him as he helped Dunk strip the stot of saddle and bridle. “His flesh will feed the dogs or feed the sands. In a year, his bones will be scoured clean. This is Dorne, my friend.”

Mad Lady Vaith

Back in 159AC (before the Unworthy was king), after the submission of Sunspear, Cassella was one of the hostages sent to King's Laning:

Aegon escorted the hostages that the king had gathered from the lords of Dorne back to King's Landing. Among them was Cassella Vaith, a willowy maid with green eyes and pale white-blond hair, whom Aegon ended up keeping "hostage" in his own chambers. When the Dornishmen revolted and murdered King Daeron, all the hostages were to be killed, and Aegon—by then bored of her—returned Cassella to her place with the other prisoners. However, the new king, Baelor, pardoned all the hostages and personally took them back to Dorne. Cassella never wed, and in her old age she was consumed by the delusion that she had been Aegon's one true love and that he would soon send for her. Children by Cassella Vaith: None.

If interested: Aegon IV: A Timeline of Unworthiness

We don't get official confirmation that Cassella is the Lady Vaith who is referenced in D&E (~211AC), but it fits (~50 years after she was returned to Dorne):

Dunk had doubts. "She's outlived four husbands, she must be as old as Lady Vaith. If I say she's fair and beautiful when she's old and warty, she will take me for a liar." -The Sworn Sword

and if we keep in mind what was referenced earlier (became delusional in her old age about Aegon IV), this passage makes more sense:

Dunk woke upon his back, staring up at the arches of a barrel-vaulted ceiling. For a moment he did not know where he was, or how he had arrived there. Voices echoed in his head, and faces drifted past him—old Ser Arlan, Tanselle Too-Tall, Bennis of the Brown Shield, the Red Widow, Baelor Breakspear, Aerion the Bright Prince, mad sad Lady Vaith. -The Mystery Knight

Also note our "ladies' man" Dunk seems to have messed up talking to old/mad Lady Vaith:

"I don't know how to talk with highborn ladies," he confessed as they were pouring. "We both might have been killed in Dorne, on account of what I said to Lady Vaith."
"Lady Vaith was mad," Egg reminded him, "but you could have been more gallant. Ladies like it when you're gallant. If you were to rescue the Red Widow the way you rescued that puppet girl from Aerion . . ." -The Sworn Sword

Ship to Oldtown

After they leave Vaith, it seems like they take a ship to Oldtown where Dunk fights some Ironborn:

the prospect of fighting ironmen at sea was not one that Dunk relished. He’d had a taste of that on the White Lady, sailing from Dorne to Oldtown, when he’d donned his armor to help the crew repel some raiders. The battle had been desperate and bloody, and once he’d almost fallen in the water. That would have been the end of him.

TLDR: Just a list of some of the events that could shape Dunk & Egg's visit to Dorne if GRRM does indeed decide to write a novella about their visit.