"George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 0.2 - The Sworn Sword" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

own. The children of the forest dwindled and disappeared, while the
First Men intermarried with their conquerors.

The Rhoynar arrived some thousands of years after the Andals, and came
not as invaders but as refugees, crossing the seas in ten thousand ships
to escape the growing might of the Freehold of Valyria. The lords
freeholder of Valyria ruled the greater part of the known world; they
were sorcerers, great in lore, and alone of all the races of man they
had learned to breed dragons and bend them to their will. Four hundred
years before the opening of/A Song of Ice and Fire/ , however, the Doom
descended on Valyria, destroying the city in a single night. Thereafter
the great Valyrian empire disintegrated into dissension, barbarism, and war.

Westeros, across the narrow sea, was spared the worst of the chaos that
followed. By that time only seven kingdoms remained where once there had
been hundreds?but they would not stand for much longer. A scion of lost
Valyria named Aegon Targaryen landed at the mouth of the Blackwater with
a small army, his two sisters (who were also his wives), and three great
dragons. Riding on dragonback, Aegon and his sisters won battle after
battle, and subdued six of the seven Westerosi kingdoms by fire, sword,
and treaty. The conqueror collected the melted, twisted blades of his
fallen foes, and used them to make a monstrous, towering barbed seat:
the Iron Throne, from which he ruled henceforth as Aegon, the First of
His Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, and Lord
of the Seven Kingdoms.

The dynasty founded by Aegon and his sisters endured for most of three
hundred years. Another Targaryen king, Daeron the Second, later brought
Dorne into the realm, uniting all of Westeros under a single ruler. He
did so by marriage, not conquest, for the last of the dragons had died
half a century before./The Hedge Knight,/ published in the
first/Legends/ , takes place in the last days of Good King Daeron?s
reign, about a hundred years before the opening of the first of the/Ice
and Fire/ novels, with the realm at peace and the Targaryen dynasty at
its height. It tells the story of the first meeting between Dunk, a
hedge knight?s squire, and Egg, a boy who is rather more than he seems,
and of the great tourney at Ashford Meadow./The Sworn Sword,/ the tale
that follows, picks up their story a year or so later.



THE SWORN SWORD

/A Tale of the Seven Kingdoms/

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN



In an iron cage at the crossroads, two dead men were rotting in the