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+A Game Of Thrones 
+Book One of A Song of Ice and Fire 
+By George R. R. Martin 
+PROLOGUE 
+"We should start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are 
+dead." 
+"Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile. 
+Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. 
+"Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with the dead." 
+"Are they dead?" Royce asked softly. "What proof have we?" 
+"Will saw them," Gared said. "If he says they are dead, that's proof enough for me." 
+Will had known they would drag him into the quarrel sooner or later. He wished it had been later rather 
+than sooner. "My mother told me that dead men sing no songs," he put in. 
+"My wet nurse said the same thing, Will," Royce replied. "Never believe anything you hear at a woman's 
+tit. There are things to be learned even from the dead." His voice echoed, too loud in the twilit forest. 
+Page 1
+
+"We have a long ride before us," Gared pointed out. "Eight days, maybe nine. And night is falling." 
+Ser Waymar Royce glanced at the sky with disinterest. "It does that every day about this time. Are you 
+unmanned by the dark, Gared?" 
+Will could see the tightness around Gared's mouth, the barely sup 
+pressed anger in his eyes under the thick black hood of his cloak. Gared had spent forty years in the 
+Night's Watch, man and boy, and he was not accustomed to being made light of. Yet it was more than 
+that. Under the wounded pride, Will could sense something else in the older man. You could taste it; a 
+nervous tension that came perilous close to fear. 
+Will shared his unease. He had been four years on the Wall. The first time he had been sent beyond, all 
+the old stories had come rushing back, and his bowels had turned to water. He had laughed about it 
+afterward. He was a veteran of a hundred rangings by now, and the endless dark wilderness that the 
+southron called the haunted forest had no more terrors for him. 
+Until tonight. Something was different tonight. There was an edge to this darkness that made his hackles 
+rise. Nine days they had been riding, north and northwest and then north again, farther and farther from 
+the Wall, hard on the track of a band of wildling raiders. Each day had been worse than the day that had 
+come before it. Today was the worst of all. A cold wind was blowing out of the north, and it made the 
+trees rustle like living things. All day, Will had felt as though something were watching him, something 
+cold and implacable that loved him not. Gared had felt it too. Will wanted nothing so much as to ride 
+hellbent for the safety of the Wall, but that was not a feeling to share with your commander. 
+Especially not a commander like this one. 
+Ser Waymar Royce was the youngest son of an ancient house with too many heirs. He was a handsome 
+youth of eighteen, grey-eyed and graceful and slender as a knife. Mounted on his huge black destrier, the 
+knight towered above Will and Gared on their smaller garrons. He wore black leather boots, black 
+woolen pants, black moleskin gloves, and a fine supple coat of gleaming black ringmail over layers of 
+black wool and boiled leather. Ser Waymar had been a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch for less than 
+half a year, but no one could say he had not prepared for his vocation. At least insofar as his wardrobe 
+was concerned. 
+His cloak was his crowning glory; sable, thick and black and soft as sin. "Bet he killed them all himself, 
+he did," Gared told the barracks over wine, "twisted their little heads off, our mighty warrior." They had 
+all shared the laugh. 
+It is hard to take orders from a man you laughed at in your cups, Will reflected as he sat shivering atop 
+his garron. Gared must have felt the same. 
+"Mormont said as we should track them, and we did," Gared said. 
+"They're dead. They shan't trouble us no more. There's hard riding before us. I don't like this weather. If 
+it snows, we could be a fortnight getting back, and snow's the best we can hope for. Ever seen an ice 
+storm, my lord?" 
+The lordling seemed not to hear him. He studied the deepening twilight in that half-bored, half-distracted 
+Page 2
+
+way he had. Will had ridden with the knight long enough to understand that it was best not to interrupt 
+him when he looked like that. "Tell me again what you saw, Will. All the details. Leave nothing out." 
+Will had been a hunter before he joined the Night's Watch. Well, a poacher in truth. Mallister freeriders 
+had caught him red-handed in the Mallisters' own woods, skinning one of the Mallisters' own bucks, and 
+it had been a choice of putting on the black or losing a hand. No one could move through the woods as 
+silent as Will, and it had not taken the black brothers long to discover his talent. 
+"The camp is two miles farther on, over that ridge, hard beside a stream," Will said. "I got close as I 
+dared. There's eight of them, men and women both. No children I could see. They put up a lean-to 
+against the rock. The snow's pretty well covered it now, but I could still make it out. No fire burning, but 
+the firepit was still plain as day. No one moving. I watched a long time. No living man ever lay so still." 
+"Did you see any blood?" 
+"Well, no," Will admitted. 
+"Did you see any weapons?" 
+"Some swords, a few bows. One man had an axe. Heavy-looking, double-bladed, a cruel piece of iron. 
+It was on the ground beside him, right by his hand." 
+"Did you make note of the position of the bodies?" 
+Will shrugged. "A couple are sitting up against the rock. Most of them on the ground. Fallen, like." 
+"Or sleeping," Royce suggested. 
+"Fallen," Will insisted. "There's one woman up an ironwood, halfhid in the branches. A far-eyes." He 
+smiled thinly. "I took care she never saw me. When I got closer, I saw that she wasn't moving neither." 
+Despite himself, he shivered. 
+"You have a chill?" Royce asked. 
+"Some," Will muttered. "The wind, m'lord." 
+The young knight turned back to his grizzled man-at-arms. Frostfallen leaves whispered past them, and 
+Royce's destrier moved restlessly. "What do you think might have killed these men, Gared?" Ser 
+Waymar asked casually. He adjusted the drape of his long sable cloak. 
+"It was the cold," Gared said with iron certainty. "I saw men freeze 
+last winter, and the one before, when I was half a boy. Everyone talks about snows forty foot deep, and 
+how the ice wind comes howling out of the north, but the real enemy is the cold. It steals up on you 
+quieter than Will, and at first you shiver and your teeth chatter and you stamp your feet and dream of 
+mulled wine and nice hot fires. It burns, it does. Nothing burns like the cold. But only for a while. Then it 
+gets inside you and starts to fill you up, and after a while you don't have the strength to fight it. It's easier 
+just to sit down or go to sleep. They say you don't feel any pain toward the end. First you go weak and 
+drowsy, and everything starts to fade, and then it's like sinking into a sea of warm milk. Peaceful, like." 
+"Such eloquence, Gared," Ser Waymar observed. "I never suspected you had it in you." 
+Page 3
+
+"I've had the cold in me too, lordling." Gared pulled back his hood, giving Ser Waymar a good long look 
+at the stumps where his ears had been. "Two ears, three toes, and the little finger off my left hand. I got 
+off light. We found my brother frozen at his watch, with a smile on his face." 
+Ser Waymar shrugged. "You ought dress more warmly, Gared." 
+Gared glared at the lordling, the scars around his ear holes flushed red with anger where Maester 
+Aemon had cut the ears away. "We'll see how warm you can dress when the winter comes." He pulled 
+up his hood and hunched over his garron, silent and sullen. 
+"If Gared said it was the cold . . ." Will began. 
+"Have you drawn any watches this past week, Will?" 
+"Yes, m'lord." There never was a week when he did not draw a dozen bloody watches. What was the 
+man driving at? 
+"And how did you find the Wall?" 
+"Weeping," Will said, frowning. He saw it clear enough, now that the lordling had pointed it out. "They 
+couldn't have froze. Not if the Wall was weeping. It wasn't cold enough." 
+Royce nodded. "Bright lad. We've had a few light frosts this past week, and a quick flurry of snow now 
+and then, but surely no cold fierce enough to kill eight grown men. Men clad in fur and leather, let me 
+remind you, with shelter near at hand, and the means of making fire." The knight's smile was cocksure. 
+"Will, lead us there. I would see these dead men for myself." 
+And then there was nothing to be done for it. The order had been given, and honor bound them to obey. 
+Will went in front, his shaggy little garron picking the way carefully through the undergrowth. A light 
+snow had fallen the night before, and there were stones and roots and hidden sinks lying just under its 
+crust, waiting for the careless and the unwary. Ser Waymar Royce came next, his great black destrier 
+snorting impatiently. The warhorse was the wrong mount for ranging, but try and tell that to the lordling. 
+Gared brought up the rear. The old man-at-arms muttered to himself as he rode. 
+Twilight deepened. The cloudless sky turned a deep purple, the color of an old bruise, then faded to 
+black. The stars began to come out. A half-moon rose. Will was grateful for the light. 
+"We can make a better pace than this, surely," Royce said when the moon was full risen. 
+"Not with this horse," Will said. Fear had made him insolent. "Perhaps my lord would care to take the 
+lead?" 
+Ser Waymar Royce did not deign to reply. 
+Somewhere off in the wood a wolf howled. 
+Will pulled his garron over beneath an ancient gnarled ironwood and dismounted. 
+Page 4
+
+"Why are you stopping?" Ser Waymar asked. 
+"Best go the rest of the way on foot, m'lord. It's just over that ridge." 
+Royce paused a moment, staring off into the distance, his face reflective. A cold wind whispered through 
+the trees. His great sable cloak stirred behind like something half-alive. 
+"There's something wrong here," Gared muttered. 
+The young knight gave him a disdainful smile. "Is there?" 
+"Can't you feel it?" Gared asked. "Listen to the darkness." 
+Will could feel it. Four years in the Night's Watch, and he had never been so afraid. What was it? 
+"Wind. Trees rustling. A wolf. Which sound is it that unmans you so, Gared?" When Gared did not 
+answer, Royce slid gracefully from his saddle. He tied the destrier securely to a low-hanging limb, well 
+away from the other horses, and drew his longsword from its sheath. Jewels glittered in its hilt, and the 
+moonlight ran down the shining steel. It was a splendid weapon, castle-forged, and new-made from the 
+look of it. Will doubted it had ever been swung in anger. 
+"The trees press close here," Will warned. "That sword will tangle you up, m1ord. Better a knife." 
+"If I need instruction, I will ask for it," the young lord said. "Gared, stay here. Guard the horses." 
+Gared dismounted. "We need a fire. I'll see to it." 
+"How big a fool are you, old man? If there are enemies in this wood, a fire is the last thing we want." 
+"There's some enemies a fire will keep away," Gared said. "Bears and direwolves and ... and other 
+things . . ." 
+Ser Waymar's mouth became a hard line. "No fire." 
+Gared's hood shadowed his face, but Will could see the hard glitter in his eyes as he stared at the knight. 
+For a moment he was afraid the older man would go for his sword. It was a short, ugly thing, its grip 
+discolored by sweat, its edge nicked from hard use, but Will would not have given an iron bob for the 
+lordling's life if Gared pulled it from its scabbard. 
+Finally Gared looked down. "No fire," he muttered, low under his breath. 
+Royce took it for acquiescence and turned away. "Lead on," he said to Will. 
+Will threaded their way through a thicket, then started up the slope to the low ridge where he had found 
+his vantage point under a sentinel tree. Under the thin crust of snow, the ground was damp and muddy, 
+slick footing, with rocks and hidden roots to trip you up. Will made no sound as he climbed. Behind him, 
+he heard the soft metallic slither of the lordling's ringmail, the rustle of leaves, and muttered curses as 
+reaching branches grabbed at his longsword and tugged on his splendid sable cloak. 
+The great sentinel was right there at the top of the ridge, where Will had known it would be, its lowest 
+branches a bare foot off the ground. Will slid in underneath, flat on his belly in the snow and the mud, and 
+Page 5
+
+looked down on the empty clearing below. 
+His heart stopped in his chest. For a moment he dared not breathe. Moonlight shone down on the 
+clearing, the ashes of the firepit, the snow-covered lean-to, the great rock, the little half-frozen stream. 
+Everything was just as it had been a few hours ago. 
+They were gone. All the bodies were gone. 
+"Gods!" he heard behind him. A sword slashed at a branch as Ser Waymar Royce gained the ridge. He 
+stood there beside the sentinel, longsword in hand, his cloak billowing behind him as the wind came up, 
+outlined nobly against the stars for all to see. 
+"Get down!" Will whispered urgently. "Something's wrong." 
+Royce did not move. He looked down at the empty clearing and laughed. "Your dead men seem to have 
+moved camp, Will." 
+Will's voice abandoned him. He groped for words that did not come. It was not possible. His eyes 
+swept back and forth over the abandoned campsite, stopped on the axe. A huge double-bladed 
+battle-axe, still lying where he had seen it last, untouched. A valuable weapon . . . 
+"On your feet, Will," Ser Waymar commanded. "There's no one here. I won't have you hiding under a 
+bush." 
+Reluctantly, Will obeyed. 
+Ser Waymar looked him over with open disapproval. "I am not going back to Castle Black a failure on 
+my first ranging. We will find these men." He glanced around. "Up the tree. Be quick about it. Look for a 
+fire." 
+Will turned away, wordless. There was no use to argue. The wind was moving. It cut right through him. 
+He went to the tree, a vaulting grey-green sentinel, and began to climb. Soon his hands were sticky with 
+sap, and he was lost among the needles. Fear filled his gut like a meal he could not digest. He whispered 
+a prayer to the nameless gods of the wood, and slipped his dirk free of its sheath. He put it between his 
+teeth to keep both hands free for climbing. The taste of cold iron in his mouth gave him comfort. 
+Down below, the lordling called out suddenly, "Who goes there?" Will heard uncertainty in the challenge. 
+He stopped climbing; he listened; he watched. 
+The woods gave answer: the rustle of leaves, the icy rush of the stream, a distant hoot of a snow owl. 
+The Others made no sound. 
+Will saw movement from the corner of his eye. Pale shapes gliding through the wood. He turned his 
+head, glimpsed a white shadow in the darkness. Then it was gone. Branches stirred gently in the wind, 
+scratching at one another with wooden fingers. Will opened his mouth to call down a warning, and the 
+words seemed to freeze in his throat. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps it had only been a bird, a reflection 
+on the snow, some trick of the moonlight. What had he seen, after all? 
+"Will, where are you?" Ser Waymar called up. "Can you see anything?" He was turning in a slow circle, 
+suddenly wary, his sword in hand. He must have felt them, as Will felt them. There was nothing to see. 
+Page 6
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+"Answer me! Why is it so cold?" 
+It was cold. Shivering, Will clung more tightly to his perch. His face pressed hard against the trunk of the 
+sentinel. He could feel the sweet, sticky sap on his cheek. 
+A shadow emerged from the dark of the wood. It stood in front of Royce. Tall, it was, and gaunt and 
+hard as old bones, with flesh pale as milk. Its armor seemed to change color as it moved; here it was 
+white as new-fallen snow, there black as shadow, everywhere dappled with the deep grey-green of the 
+trees. The patterns ran like moonlight on water with every step it took. 
+Will heard the breath go out of Ser Waymar Royce in a long hiss. 
+"Come no farther," the lordling warned. His voice cracked like a boy's. He threw the long sable cloak 
+back over his shoulders, to free his arms for battle, and took his sword in both hands. The wind had 
+stopped. It was very cold. 
+The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No 
+human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of 
+crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the 
+thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. 
+Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His 
+hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was 
+a boy no longer, but a man of the Night's Watch. 
+The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like 
+ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. 
+For a heartbeat he dared to hope. 
+They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . . . four . . . five . . . Ser 
+Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had 
+to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the 
+silence. 
+The pale sword came shivering through the air. 
+Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, 
+thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a 
+third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again. 
+Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting 
+patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to 
+interfere. 
+Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished 
+keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. 
+His blade was white with frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light. 
+Then Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The 
+young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets 
+seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser 
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+
+Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red. 
+The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on 
+a winter lake, and the words were mocking. 
+Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the 
+frost-covered longsword with both hands and swinging it around in a flat sidearm slash with all his weight 
+behind it. The Other's parry was almost lazy. 
+When the blades touched, the steel shattered. 
+A scream echoed through the forest night, and the longsword shivered into a hundred brittle pieces, the 
+shards scattering like a rain of needles. Royce went to his knees, shrieking, and covered his eyes. Blood 
+welled between his fingers. 
+The watchers moved forward together, as if some signal had been given. Swords rose and fell, all in a 
+deathly silence. It was cold butchery. The pale blades sliced through ringmail as if it were silk. Will closed 
+his eyes. Far beneath him, he heard their voices and laughter sharp as icicles. 
+When he found the courage to look again, a long time had passed, and the ridge below was empty. 
+He stayed in the tree, scarce daring to breathe, while the moon crept slowly across the black sky. 
+Finally, his muscles cramping and his fingers numb with cold, he climbed down. 
+Royce's body lay facedown in the snow, one arm outflung. The thick sable cloak had been slashed in a 
+dozen places. Lying dead like that, you saw how young he was. A boy. 
+He found what was left of the sword a few feet away, the end splintered and twisted like a tree struck 
+by lightning. Will knelt, looked around warily, and snatched it up. The broken sword would be his proof. 
+Gared would know what to make of it, and if not him, then surely that old bear Mormont or Maester 
+Aemon. Would Gared still be waiting with the horses? He had to hurry. 
+Will rose. Ser Waymar Royce stood over him. 
+His fine clothes were a tatter, his face a ruin. A shard from his sword transfixed the blind white pupil of 
+his left eye. 
+The right eye was open. The pupil burned blue. It saw. 
+The broken sword fell from nerveless fingers. Will closed his eyes to pray. Long, elegant hands brushed 
+his cheek, then tightened around his throat. They were gloved in the finest moleskin and sticky with 
+blood, yet the touch was icy cold. 
+BRAN 
+The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set 
+forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with 
+excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his 
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+
+brothers to see the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran's life. 
+The man had been taken outside a small holdfast in the hills. Robb thought he was a wildling, his sword 
+sworn to Mance Rayder, the Kingbeyond-the-Wall. It made Bran's skin prickle to think of it. He 
+remembered the hearth tales Old Nan told them. The wildlings were cruel men, she said, slavers and 
+slayers and thieves. They consorted with giants and ghouls, stole girl children in the dead of night, and 
+drank blood from polished horns. And their women lay with the Others in the Long Night to sire terrible 
+half-human children. 
+But the man they found bound hand and foot to the holdfast wall awaiting the king's justice was old and 
+scrawny, not much taller than Robb. He had lost both ears and a finger to frostbite, and he dressed all in 
+black, the same as a brother of the Night's Watch, except that his furs were ragged and greasy. 
+The breath of man and horse mingled, steaming, in the cold morning air as his lord father had the man cut 
+down from the wall and 
+dragged before them. Robb and Jon sat tall and still on their horses, with Bran between them on his 
+pony, trying to seem older than seven, trying to pretend that he'd seen all this before. A faint wind blew 
+through the holdfast gate. Over their heads flapped the banner of the Starks of Winterfell: a grey direwolf 
+racing across an ice-white field. 
+Bran's father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard 
+was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes 
+this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of 
+the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off Father's face, Bran thought, and 
+donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell. 
+There were questions asked and answers given there in the chill of morning, but afterward Bran could 
+not recall much of what had been said. Finally his lord father gave a command, and two of his guardsmen 
+dragged the ragged man to the ironwood stump in the center of the square. They forced his head down 
+onto the hard black wood. Lord Eddard Stark dismounted and his ward Theon Greyjoy brought forth 
+the sword. "Ice," that sword was called. It was as wide across as a man's hand, and taller even than 
+Robb. The blade was Valyrian steel, spell-forged and dark as smoke. Nothing held an edge like Valyrian 
+steel. 
+His father peeled off his gloves and handed them to Jory Cassel, the captain of his household guard. He 
+took hold of Ice with both hands and said, "In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of 
+his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and 
+Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of 
+the North, I do sentence you to die." He lifted the greatsword high above his head. 
+Bran's bastard brother Jon Snow moved closer. "Keep the pony well in hand," he whispered. "And 
+don't look away. Father will know if you do." 
+Bran kept his pony well in hand, and did not look away. 
+His father took off the man's head with a single sure stroke. Blood sprayed out across the snow, as red 
+as surnmerwine. One of the horses reared and had to be restrained to keep from bolting. Bran could not 
+take his eyes off the blood. The snows around the stump drank it eagerly, reddening as he watched. 
+The head bounced off a thick root and rolled. It came up near Greyjoy's feet. Theon was a lean, dark 
+Page 9
+
+youth of nineteen who found 
+everything amusing. He laughed, put his boot on the head, and kicked it away. 
+"Ass," Jon muttered, low enough so Greyjoy did not hear. He put a hand on Bran's shoulder, and Bran 
+looked over at his bastard brother. "You did well," Jon told him solemnly. Jon was fourteen, an old hand 
+at justice. 
+It seemed colder on the long ride back to Winterfell, though the wind had died by then and the sun was 
+higher in the sky. Bran rode with his brothers, well ahead of the main party, his pony struggling hard to 
+keep up with their horses. 
+"The deserter died bravely," Robb said. He was big and broad and growing every day, with his mother's 
+coloring, the fair skin, red-brown hair, and blue eyes of the Tullys of Riverrun. "He had courage, at the 
+least." 
+"No," Jon Snow said quietly. "It was not courage. This one was dead of fear. You could see it in his 
+eyes, Stark." Jon's eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not 
+see. He was of an age with Robb, but they did not look alike. Jon was slender where Robb was 
+muscular, dark where Robb was fair, graceful and quick where his half brother was strong and fast. 
+Robb was not impressed. "The Others take his eyes," he swore. "He died well. Race you to the bridge?" 
+"Done," Jon said, kicking his horse forward. Robb cursed and followed, and they galloped off down the 
+trail, Robb laughing and hooting, Jon silent and intent. The hooves of their horses kicked up showers of 
+snow as they went. 
+Bran did not try to follow. His pony could not keep up. He had seen the ragged man's eyes, and he was 
+thinking of them now. After a while, the sound of Robb's laughter receded, and the woods grew silent 
+again. 
+So deep in thought was he that he never heard the rest of the party until his father moved up to ride 
+beside him. "Are you well, Bran?" he asked, not unkindly. 
+"Yes, Father," Bran told him. He looked up. Wrapped in his furs and leathers, mounted on his great 
+warhorse, his lord father loomed over him like a giant. "Robb says the man died bravely, but Jon says he 
+was afraid." 
+"What do you think?" his father asked. 
+Bran thought about it. "Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" 
+"That is the only time a man can be brave," his father told him. "Do you understand why I did it?" 
+"He was a wildling," Bran said. "They carry off women and sell them to the Others." 
+His lord father smiled. "Old Nan has been telling you stories again. In truth, the man was an oathbreaker, 
+a deserter from the Night's Watch. No man is more dangerous. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if he 
+is taken, so he will not flinch from any crime, no matter how vile. But you mistake me. The question was 
+not why the man had to die, but why I must do it." 
+Page 10
+
+Bran had no answer for that. "King Robert has a headsman," he said, uncertainly. 
+"He does," his father admitted. "As did the Targaryen kings before him. Yet our way is the older way. 
+The blood of the First Men still flows in the veins of the Starks, and we hold to the belief that the man 
+who passes the sentence should swing the sword. If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to 
+look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot bear to do that, then perhaps the man does 
+not deserve to die. 
+"One day, Bran, you will be Robb's bannerman, holding a keep of your own for your brother and your 
+king, and justice will fall to you. When that day comes, you must take no pleasure in the task, but neither 
+must you look away. A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is." 
+That was when Jon reappeared on the crest of the hill before them. He waved and shouted down at 
+them. "Father, Bran, come quickly, see what Robb has found!" Then he was gone again. 
+Jory rode up beside them. "Trouble, my lord?" 
+"Beyond a doubt," his lord father said. "Come, let us see what mischief my sons have rooted out now." 
+He sent his horse into a trot. Jory and Bran and the rest came after. 
+They found Robb on the riverbank north of the bridge, with Jon still mounted beside him. The late 
+summer snows had been heavy this moonturn. Robb stood knee-deep in white, his hood pulled back so 
+the sun shone in his hair. He was cradling something in his arm, while the boys talked in hushed, excited 
+voices. 
+The riders picked their way carefully through the drifts, groping for solid footing on the hidden, uneven 
+ground. Jory Cassel and Theon Greyjoy were the first to reach the boys. Greyjoy was laughing and 
+joking as he rode. Bran heard the breath go out of him. "Gods!" he exclaimed, struggling to keep control 
+of his horse as he reached for his sword. 
+Jory's sword was already out. "Robb, get away from it!" he called as his horse reared under him. 
+Robb grinned and looked up from the bundle in his arms. "She can't hurt you," he said. "She's dead, 
+Jory." 
+Bran was afire with curiosity by then. He would have spurred the pony faster, but his father made them 
+dismount beside the bridge and approach on foot. Bran jumped off and ran. 
+By then Jon, Jory, and Theon Greyjoy had all dismounted as well. "What in the seven hells is it?" 
+Greyjoy was saying. 
+"A wolf," Robb told him. 
+"A freak," Greyjoy said. "Look at the size of it." 
+Bran's heart was thumping in his chest as he pushed through a waist-high drift to his brothers' side. 
+Half-buried in bloodstained snow, a huge dark shape slumped in death. Ice had formed in its shaggy 
+grey fur, and the faint smell of corruption clung to it like a woman's perfume. Bran glimpsed blind eyes 
+crawling with maggots, a wide mouth full of yellowed teeth. But it was the size of it that made him gasp. It 
+was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest hound in his father's kennel. 
+Page 11
+
+"It's no freak," Jon said calmly. "That's a direwolf. They grow larger than the other kind." 
+Theon Greyjoy said, "There's not been a direwolf sighted south of the Wall in two hundred years." 
+"I see one now," Jon replied. 
+Bran tore his eyes away from the monster. That was when he noticed the bundle in Robb's arms. He 
+gave a cry of delight and moved closer. The pup was a tiny ball of grey-black fur, its eyes still closed. It 
+nuzzled blindly against Robb's chest as he cradled it, searching for milk among his leathers, making a sad 
+little whimpery sound. Bran reached out hesitantly. "Go on," Robb told him. "You can touch him." 
+Bran gave the pup a quick nervous stroke, then turned as Jon said, "Here you go." His half brother put a 
+second pup into his arms. "There are five of them." Bran sat down in the snow and hugged the wolf pup 
+to his face. Its fur was soft and warm against his cheek. 
+"Direwolves loose in the realm, after so many years," muttered Hullen, the master of horse. "I like it not." 
+"It is a sign," Jory said. 
+Father frowned. "This is only a dead animal, Jory," he said. Yet he seemed troubled. Snow crunched 
+under his boots as he moved around the body. "Do we know what killed her?" 
+"There's something in the throat," Robb told him, proud to have found the answer before his father even 
+asked. "There, just under the jaw.,, 
+His father knelt and groped under the beast's head with his hand. 
+He gave a yank and held it up for all to see. A foot of shattered antler, tines snapped off, all wet with 
+blood. 
+A sudden silence descended over the party. The men looked at the antler uneasily, and no one dared to 
+speak. Even Bran could sense their fear, though he did not understand. 
+His father tossed the antler to the side and cleansed his hands in the snow. "I'm surprised she lived long 
+enough to whelp," he said. His voice broke the spell. 
+"Maybe she didn't," Jory said. "I've heard tales . . . maybe the bitch was already dead when the pups 
+came." 
+"Born with the dead," another man put in. "Worse luck." 
+"No matter," said Hullen. "They be dead soon enough too." 
+Bran gave a wordless cry of dismay. 
+"The sooner the better," Theon Greyjoy agreed. He drew his sword. "Give the beast here, Bran." 
+The little thing squirmed against him, as if it heard and understood. "No!" Bran cried out fiercely. "It's 
+mine." 
+Page 12
+
+"Put away your sword, Greyjoy," Robb said. For a moment he sounded as commanding as their father, 
+like the lord he would someday be. "We will keep these pups." 
+"You cannot do that, boy," said Harwin, who was Hullen's son. 
+"It be a mercy to kill them," Hullen said. 
+Bran looked to his lord father for rescue, but got only a frown, a furrowed brow. "Hullen speaks truly, 
+son. Better a swift death than a hard one from cold and starvation." 
+"No!" He could feel tears welling in his eyes, and he looked away. He did not want to cry in front of his 
+father. 
+Robb resisted stubbornly. "Ser Rodrik's red bitch whelped again last week," he said. "It was a small 
+litter, only two live pups. She'll have milk enough." 
+"She'll rip them apart when they try to nurse." 
+"Lord Stark," Jon said. It was strange to hear him call Father that, so formal. Bran looked at him with 
+desperate hope. "There are five pups," he told Father. "Three male, two female." 
+"What of it, Jon?" 
+"You have five trueborn children," Jon said. "Three sons, two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of your 
+House. Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord." 
+Bran saw his father's face change, saw the other men exchange glances. He loved Jon with all his heart 
+at that moment. Even at seven, Bran understood what his brother had done. The count had come right 
+only because Jon had omitted himself. He had included the girls, 
+included even Rickon, the baby, but not the bastard who bore the surname Snow, the name that custom 
+decreed be given to all those in the north unlucky enough to be born with no name of their own. 
+Their father understood as well. "You want no pup for yourself, Jon?" he asked softly. 
+"The direwolf graces the banners of House Stark," Jon pointed out. "I am no Stark, Father." 
+Their lord father regarded Jon thoughtfully. Robb rushed into the silence he left. "I will nurse him myself, 
+Father," he promised. "I will soak a towel with warm milk, and give him suck from that." 
+"Me too!" Bran echoed. 
+The lord weighed his sons long and carefully with his eyes. "Easy to say, and harder to do. I will not 
+have you wasting the servants' time with this. If you want these pups, you will feed them yourselves. Is 
+that understood?" 
+Bran nodded eagerly. The pup squirmed in his grasp, licked at his face with a warm tongue. 
+"You must train them as well," their father said. "You must train them. The kennelmaster will have nothing 
+to do with these monsters, I promise you that. And the gods help you if you neglect them, or brutalize 
+them, or train them badly. These are not dogs to beg for treats and slink off at a kick. A direwolf will rip 
+Page 13
+
+a man's arm off his shoulder as easily as a dog will kill a rat. Are you sure you want this?" 
+"Yes, Father," Bran said. 
+"Yes," Robb agreed. 
+"The pups may die anyway, despite all you do." 
+"They won't die," Robb said. "We won't let them die." 
+"Keep them, then. Jory, Desmond, gather up the other pups. It's time we were back to Winterfell." 
+It was not until they were mounted and on their way that Bran allowed himself to taste the sweet air of 
+victory. By then, his pup was snuggled inside his leathers, warm against him, safe for the long ride home. 
+Bran was wondering what to name him. 
+Halfway across the bridge, Jon pulled up suddenly. 
+"What is it, Jon?" their lord father asked. 
+"Can't you hear it?" 
+Bran could hear the wind in the trees, the clatter of their hooves on the ironwood planks, the whimpering 
+of his hungry pup, but Jon was listening to something else. 
+"There," Jon said. He swung his horse around and galloped back across the bridge. They watched him 
+dismount where the direwolf lay 
+dead in the snow, watched him kneel. A moment later he was riding back to them, smiling. 
+"He must have crawled away from the others," Jon said. 
+"Or been driven away," their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the 
+litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran 
+thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind. 
+"An albino," Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. "This one will die even faster than the others." 
+Jon Snow gave his father's ward a long, chilling look. "I think not, Greyjoy," he said. "This one belongs 
+to me." 
+CATELYN 
+Catelyn had never liked this godswood. 
+She had been born a Tully, at Riverrun far to the south, on the Red Fork of the Trident. The godswood 
+there was a garden, bright and airy, where tall redwoods spread dappled shadows across tinkling 
+streams, birds sang from hidden nests, and the air was spicy with the scent of flowers. 
+Page 14
+
+The gods of Winterfell kept a different sort of wood. It was a dark, primal place, three acres of old 
+forest untouched for ten thousand years as the gloomy castle rose around it. It smelled of moist earth and 
+decay. No redwoods grew here. This was a wood of stubborn sentinel trees armored in grey-green 
+needles, of mighty oaks, of ironwoods as old as the realm itself. Here thick black trunks crowded close 
+together while twisted branches wove a dense canopy overhead and misshappen roots wrestled beneath 
+the soil. This was a place of deep silence and brooding shadows, and the gods who lived here had no 
+names. 
+But she knew she would find her husband here tonight. Whenever he took a man's life, afterward he 
+would seek the quiet of the godswood. 
+Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of 
+Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father before him. Her gods had 
+names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. 
+Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices 
+raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk 
+or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept. 
+For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of 
+the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, 
+faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest. 
+At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black 
+and cold. "The heart tree," Ned called it. The weirwood's bark was white as bone, its leaves dark red, 
+like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features 
+long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those 
+eyes; older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were 
+true; they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the 
+forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men 
+across the narrow sea. 
+In the south the last weirwoods had been cut down or burned out a thousand years ago, except on the 
+Isle of Faces where the green men kept their silent watch. Up here it was different. Here every castle had 
+its godswood, and every godswood had its heart tree, and every heart tree its face. 
+Catelyn found her husband beneath the weirwood, seated on a moss-covered stone. The greatsword 
+Ice was across his lap, and he was cleaning the blade in those waters black as night. A thousand years of 
+humus lay thick upon the godswood floor, swallowing the sound of her feet, but the red eyes of the 
+weirwood seemed to follow her as she came. "Ned," she called softly. 
+He lifted his head to look at her. "Catelyn," he said. His voice was distant and formal. "Where are the 
+children?" 
+He would always ask her that. "In the kitchen, arguing about names for the wolf pups." She spread her 
+cloak on the forest floor and sat beside the pool, her back to the weirwood. She could feel the eyes 
+watching her, but she did her best to ignore them. "Arya is already in love, and Sansa is charmed and 
+gracious, but Rickon is not quite sure." 
+"Is he afraid?" Ned asked. 
+Page 15
+
+"A little," she admitted. "He is only three." 
+Ned frowned. "He must learn to face his fears. He will not be three forever. And winter is coming." 
+"Yes," Catelyn agreed. The words gave her a chill, as they always did. The Stark words. Every noble 
+house had its words. Family mottoes, touchstones, prayers of sorts, they boasted of honor and glory, 
+promised loyalty and truth, swore faith and courage. All but the Starks. Winter is coming, said the Stark 
+words. Not for the first time, she reflected on what a strange people these northerners; were. 
+"The man died well, I'll give him that," Ned said. He had a swatch of oiled leather in one hand. He ran it 
+lightly up the greatsword as he spoke, polishing the metal to a dark glow. "I was glad for Bran's sake. 
+You would have been proud of Bran." 
+"I am always proud of Bran," Catelyn replied, watching the sword as he stroked it. She could see the 
+rippling deep within the steel, where the metal had been folded back on itself a hundred times in the 
+forging. Catelyn had no love for swords, but she could not deny that Ice had its own beauty. It had been 
+forged in Valyria, before the Doom had come to the old Freehold, when the ironsmiths had worked their 
+metal with spells as well as hammers. Four hundred years old it was, and as sharp as the day it was 
+forged. The name it bore was older still, a legacy from the age of heroes, when the Starks were Kings in 
+the North. 
+"He was the fourth this year," Ned said grimly. "The poor man was half-mad. Something had put a fear 
+in him so deep that my words could not reach him." He sighed. "Ben writes that the strength of the 
+Night's Watch is down below a thousand. It's not only desertions. They are losing men on rangings as 
+well." 
+"Is it the wildlings?" she asked. 
+"Who else?" Ned lifted Ice, looked down the cool steel length of it. "And it will only grow worse. The 
+day may come when I will have no choice but to call the banners and ride north to deal with this 
+Kingbeyond-the-Wall for good and all." 
+"Beyond the Wall?" The thought made Catelyn shudder. 
+Ned saw the dread on her face. "Mance Rayder is nothing for us to fear." 
+"There are darker things beyond the Wall." She glanced behind her at the heart tree, the pale bark and 
+red eyes, watching, listening, thinking its long slow thoughts. 
+His smile was gentle. "You listen to too many of Old Nan's stories. The Others are as dead as the 
+children of the forest, gone eight thousand years. Maester Luwin will tell you they never lived at all. No 
+living man has ever seen one." 
+"Until this morning, no living man had ever seen a direwolf either," Catelyn reminded him. 
+"I ought to know better than to argue with a Tully," he said with a rueful smile. He slid Ice back into its 
+sheath. "You did not come here to tell me crib tales. I know how little you like this place. What is it, my 
+lady?" 
+Catelyn took her husband's hand. "There was grievous news today, my lord. I did not wish to trouble 
+you until you had cleansed yourself." There was no way to soften the blow, so she told him straight. "I am 
+Page 16
+
+so sorry, my love. Jon Arryn is dead." 
+His eyes found hers, and she could see how hard it took him, as she had known it would. In his youth, 
+Ned had fostered at the Eyrie, and the childless Lord Arryn had become a second father to him and his 
+fellow ward, Robert Baratheon. When the Mad King Aerys 11 Targaryen had demanded their heads, 
+the Lord of the Eyrie had raised his moon-and-falcon banners in revolt rather than give up those he had 
+pledged to protect. 
+And one day fifteen years ago, this second father had become a brother as well, as he and Ned stood 
+together in the sept at Riverrun to wed two sisters, the daughters of Lord Hoster Tully. 
+"Jon . . ." he said. "Is this news certain?" 
+"It was the king's seal, and the letter is in Robert's own hand. I saved it for you. He said Lord Arryn was 
+taken quickly. Even Maester Pycelle was helpless, but he brought the milk of the poppy, so Jon did not 
+linger long in pain." 
+"That is some small mercy, I suppose," he said. She could see the grief on his face, but even then he 
+thought first of her. "Your sister," he said. "And Jon's boy. What word of them?" 
+"The message said only that they were well, and had returned to the Eyrie," Catelyn said. "I wish they 
+had gone to Riverrun instead. The Eyrie is high and lonely, and it was ever her husband's place, not hers. 
+Lord Jon's memory will haunt each stone. I know my sister. She needs the comfort of family and friends 
+around her." 
+"Your uncle waits in the Vale, does he not? Jon named him Knight of the Gate, I'd heard." 
+Catelyn nodded. "Brynden will do what he can for her, and for the boy. That is some comfort, but still . . 
+." 
+"Go to her," Ned urged. "Take the children. Fill her halls with noise and shouts and laughter. That boy of 
+hers needs other children about him, and Lysa should not be alone in her grief." 
+"Would that I could," Catelyn said. "The letter had other tidings. The king is riding to Winterfell to seek 
+you out." 
+It took Ned a moment to comprehend her words, but when the 
+understanding came, the darkness left his eyes. "Robert is coming here?" When she nodded, a smile 
+broke across his face. 
+Catelyn wished she could share his joy. But she had heard the talk in the yards; a direwolf dead in the 
+snow, a broken antler in its throat. Dread coiled within her like a snake, but she forced herself to smile at 
+this man she loved, this man who put no faith in signs. "I knew that would please you," she said. "We 
+should send word to your brother on the Wall." 
+"Yes, of course," he agreed. "Ben will want to be here. I shall tell Maester Luwin to send his swiftest 
+bird." Ned rose and pulled her to her feet. "Damnation, how many years has it been? And he gives us no 
+more notice than this? How many in his party, did the message say?" 
+"I should think a hundred knights, at the least, with all their retainers, and half again as many freeriders. 
+Page 17
+
+Cersei and the children travel with them." 
+"Robert will keep an easy pace for their sakes," he said. "It is just as well. That will give us more time to 
+prepare." 
+"The queen's brothers are also in the party," she told him. 
+Ned grimaced at that. There was small love between him and the queen's family, Catelyn knew. The 
+Lannisters of Casterly Rock had come late to Robert's cause, when victory was all but certain, and he 
+had never forgiven them. "Well, if the price for Robert's company is an infestation of Lannisters, so be it. 
+It sounds as though Robert is bringing half his court." 
+"Where the king goes, the realm follows," she said. 
+"It will be good to see the children. The youngest was still sucking at the Lannister woman's teat the last 
+time I saw him. He must be, what, five by now?" 
+"Prince Tornmen is seven," she told him. "The same age as Bran. Please, Ned, guard your tongue. The 
+Lannister woman is our queen, and her pride is said to grow with every passing year." 
+Ned squeezed her hand. "There must be a feast, of course, with singers, and Robert will want to hunt. I 
+shall send Jory south with an honor guard to meet them on the kingsroad and escort them back. Gods, 
+how are we going to feed them all? On his way already, you said? Damn the man. Damn his royal hide." 
+DAENERYS 
+Her brother held the gown up for her inspection. "This is beauty. Touch it. Go on. Caress the fabric." 
+Dany touched it. The cloth was so smooth that it seemed to run through her fingers like water. She could 
+not remember ever wearing anything so soft. It frightened her. She pulled her hand away. "Is it really 
+mine?" 
+"A gift from the Magister Illyrio," Viserys said, smiling. Her brother was in a high mood tonight. "The 
+color will bring out the violet in your eyes. And you shall have gold as well, and jewels of all sorts. Illyrio 
+has promised. Tonight you must look like a princess." 
+A princess, Dany thought. She had forgotten what that was like. Perhaps she had never really known. 
+"Why does he give us so much?" she asked. "What does he want from us?" For nigh on half a year, they 
+had lived in the magister's house, eating his food, pampered by his servants. Dany was thirteen, old 
+enough to know that such gifts seldom come without their price, here in the free city of Pentos. 
+"Illyrio is no fool," Viserys said. He was a gaunt young man with nervous hands and a feverish look in his 
+pale lilac eyes. "The magister knows that I will not forget my friends when I come into my throne." 
+Dany said nothing. Magister Illyrio was a dealer in spices, gemstones, dragonbone, and other, less 
+savory things. He had friends in all of the Nine Free Cities, it was said, and even beyond, in Vaes 
+Dothrak 
+and the fabled lands beside the Jade Sea. It was also said that he'd never had a friend he wouldn't 
+Page 18
+
+cheerfully sell for the right price. Dany listened to the talk in the streets, and she heard these things, but 
+she knew better than to question her brother when he wove his webs of dream. His anger was a terrible 
+thing when roused. Viserys called it "waking the dragon." 
+Her brother hung the gown beside the door. "Illyrio will send the slaves to bathe you. Be sure you wash 
+off the stink of the stables. Khal Drogo has a thousand horses, tonight he looks for a different sort of 
+mount." He studied her critically. "You still slouch. Straighten yourself" He pushed back her shoulders 
+with his hands. "Let them see that you have a woman's shape now." His fingers brushed lightly over her 
+budding breasts and tightened on a nipple. "You will not fail me tonight. If you do, it will go hard for you. 
+You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" His fingers twisted her, the pinch cruelly hard through the 
+rough fabric of her tunic. "Do you?" he repeated. 
+"No," Dany said meekly. 
+Her brother smiled. "Good." He touched her hair, almost with affection. "When they write the history of 
+my reign, sweet sister, they will say that it began tonight." 
+When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The 
+square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the 
+singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games 
+beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and 
+breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo's 
+manse. 
+Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and 
+great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and 
+armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh 
+Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. 
+Her brother had a simpler name. "Our land," he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he 
+said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. "Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours 
+still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers." 
+And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother 
+said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the 
+Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. 
+Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King's Landing to escape the advancing armies of the 
+Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother's womb. 
+Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. 
+The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship's black sails. Her brother Rhaegar 
+battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of 
+King's Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper's dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess 
+Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar's heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her 
+eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room 
+while the Kingslayer opened Father's throat with a golden sword. 
+She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened 
+to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while 
+it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild 
+waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never 
+Page 19
+
+forgiven her. 
+She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper's brother set sail 
+with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of 
+the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been 
+prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into 
+the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the 
+safety of the Braavosian coast. 
+She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, halfblind, roaring and bellowing orders 
+from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called 
+her "Little Princess" and sometimes "My Lady," and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his 
+bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That 
+was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a 
+lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they 
+had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed 
+behind them forever. 
+They had wandered since then, from Braavos to Myr, from Myr to Tyrosh, and on to Qohor and 
+Volantis and Lys, never staying long in 
+any one place. Her brother would not allow it. The Usurper's hired knives were close behind them, he 
+insisted, though Dany had never seen one. 
+At first the magisters and archons and merchant princes were pleased to welcome the last Targaryens to 
+their homes and tables, but as the years passed and the Usurper continued to sit upon the Iron Throne, 
+doors closed and their lives grew meaner. Years past they had been forced to sell their last few treasures, 
+and now even the coin they had gotten from Mother's crown had gone. In the alleys and wine sinks of 
+Pentos, they called her brother "the beggar king." Dany did not want to know what they called her. 
+"We will have it all back someday, sweet sister," he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook 
+when he talked about it. "The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King's Landing, the Iron Throne and 
+the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back." Viserys lived for that day. All 
+that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the 
+childhood she had never known. 
+There came a soft knock on her door. "Come," Dany said, turning away from the window. Illyrio's 
+servants entered, bowed, and set about their business. They were slaves, a gift from one of the magister's 
+many Dothraki friends. There was no slavery in the free city of Pentos. Nonetheless, they were slaves. 
+The old woman, small and grey as a mouse, never said a word, but the girl made up for it. She was 
+Illyrio's favorite, a fair-haired, blue-eyed wench of sixteen who chattered constantly as she worked. 
+They filled her bath with hot water brought up from the kitchen and scented it with fragrant oils. The girl 
+pulled the rough cotton tunic over Dany's head and helped her into the tub. The water was scalding hot, 
+but Daenerys did not flinch or cry out. She liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Besides, her brother 
+had often told her that it was never too 
+hot for a Targaryen. "Ours is the house of the dragon," he would say. "The fire is in our blood." 
+The old woman washed her long, silver-pale hair and gently combed out the snags, all in silence. The girl 
+scrubbed her back and her feet and told her how lucky she was. "Drogo is so rich that even his slaves 
+Page 20
+
+wear golden collars. A hundred thousand men ride in his khalasar, and 
+his palace in Vaes Dothrak has two hundred rooms and doors of solid silver." There was more like that, 
+so much more, what a handsome 
+man the khal was, so tall and fierce, fearless in battle, the best rider ever to mount a horse, a demon 
+archer. Daenerys said nothing. She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of 
+age. 
+For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his 
+sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the 
+kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon. Dragons did not mate with the 
+beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men. Yet now Viserys 
+schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian. 
+When she was clean, the slaves helped her from the water and toweled her dry. The girl brushed her hair 
+until it shone like molten silver, while the old woman anointed her with the spiceflower perfume of the 
+Dothraki plains, a dab on each wrist, behind her ears, on the tips of her breasts, and one last one, cool 
+on her lips, down there between her legs. They dressed her in the wisps that Magister Illyrio had sent up, 
+and then the gown, a deep plum silk to bring out the violet in her eyes. The girl slid the gilded sandals 
+onto her feet, while the old woman fixed the tiara in her hair, and slid golden bracelets crusted with 
+amethysts around her wrists. Last of all came the collar, a heavy golden tore emblazoned with ancient 
+Valyrian glyphs. 
+"Now you look all a princess," the girl said breathlessly when they were done. Dany glanced at her 
+image in the silvered looking glass that Illyrio had so thoughtfully provided. A princess, she thought, but 
+she remembered what the girl had said, how Khal Drogo was so rich even his slaves wore golden collars. 
+She felt a sudden chill, and gooseflesh pimpled her bare arms. 
+Her brother was waiting in the cool of the entry hall, seated on the edge of the pool, his hand trailing in 
+the water. He rose when she appeared and looked her over critically. "Stand there," he told her. "Turn 
+around. Yes. Good. You look . . ." 
+"Regal," Magister Illyrio said, stepping through an archway. He moved with surprising delicacy for such 
+a massive man. Beneath loose garments of flame-colored silk, rolls of fat jiggled as he walked. 
+Gemstones glittered on every finger, and his man had oiled his forked yellow beard until it shone like real 
+gold. "May the Lord of Light shower you with blessings on this most fortunate day, Princess Daenerys," 
+the magister said as he took her hand. He bowed his head, showing a thin glimpse of crooked yellow 
+teeth through the gold of his beard. "She is a vision, Your Grace, a vision," he told her brother. "Drogo 
+will be enraptured." 
+"She's too skinny," Viserys said. His hair, the same silver-blond as hers, had been pulled back tightly 
+behind his head and fastened with a dragonbone brooch. It was a severe look that emphasized the hard, 
+gaunt lines of his face. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword that 
+Illyrio had lent him, and said, "Are you sure that Khal Drogo likes his women this young?" 
+"She has had her blood. She is old enough for the khal, " Illyrio told him, not for the first time. "Look at 
+her. That silvergold hair, those purple eyes . . . she is the blood of old Valyria, no doubt, no doubt . . . 
+and highborn, daughter of the old king, sister to the new, she cannot fail to entrance our Drogo." When 
+he released her hand, Daenerys found herself trembling. 
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+
+"I suppose," her brother said doubtfully. "The savages have queer tastes. Boys, horses, sheep . . ." 
+"Best not suggest this to Khal Drogo," Illyrio said. 
+Anger flashed in her brother's lilac eyes. "Do you take me for a fool?" 
+The magister bowed slightly. "I take you for a king. Kings lack the caution of common men. My 
+apologies if I have given offense." He turned away and clapped his hands for his bearers. 
+The streets of Pentos were pitch-dark when they set out in Illyrio's elaborately carved palanquin. Two 
+servants went ahead to light their way, carrying ornate oil lanterns with panes of pale blue glass, while a 
+dozen strong men hoisted the poles to their shoulders. It was warm and close inside behind the curtains. 
+Dany could smell the stench of Illyrio's pallid flesh through his heavy perfumes. 
+Her brother, sprawled out on his pillows beside her, never noticed. His mind was away across the 
+narrow sea. "We won't need his whole khalasar, " Viserys said. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his 
+borrowed blade, though Dany knew he had never used a sword in earnest. "Ten thousand, that would be 
+enough, I could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers. The realm will rise 
+for its rightful king. Tyrell, Redwyne, Darry, Greyjoy, they have no more love for the Usurper than I do. 
+The Dornishmen burn to avenge Elia and her children. And the smallfolk will be with us. They cry out for 
+their king." He looked at Illyrio anxiously. "They do, don't they?" 
+"They are your people, and they love you well," Magister Illyrio said amiably. "In holdfasts all across the 
+realm, men lift secret toasts to your health while women sew dragon banners and hide them against the 
+day of your return from across the water." He gave a massive shrug. "Or so my agents tell me." 
+Dany had no agents, no way of knowing what anyone was doing or thinking across the narrow sea, but 
+she mistrusted Illyrio's sweet words as she mistrusted everything about Illyrio. Her brother was nodding 
+eagerly, however. "I shall kill the Usurper myself," he promised, who 
+had never killed anyone, "as he killed my brother Rhaegar. And Lannister too, the Kingslayer, for what 
+he did to my father." 
+"That would be most fitting," Magister Illyrio said. Dany saw the smallest hint of a smile playing around 
+his full lips, but her brother did not notice. Nodding, he pushed back a curtain and stared off into the 
+night, and Dany knew he was fighting the Battle of the Trident once again. 
+The nine-towered manse of Khal Drogo sat beside the waters of the bay, its high brick walls overgrown 
+with pale ivy. It had been given to the khal by the magisters of Pentos, Illyrio told them. The Free Cities 
+were always generous with the horselords. "It is not that we fear these barbarians," Illyrio would explain 
+with a smile. "The Lord of Light would hold our city walls against a million Dothraki, or so the red priests 
+promise . . . yet why take chances, when their friendship comes so cheap?" 
+Their palanquin was stopped at the gate, the curtains pulled roughly back by one of the house guards. 
+He had the copper skin and dark almond eyes of a Dothraki, but his face was hairless and he wore the 
+spiked bronze cap of the Unsullied. He looked them over coldly. Magister Illyrio growled something to 
+him in the rough Dothraki tongue; the guardsman replied in the same voice and waved them through the 
+gates. 
+Dany noticed that her brother's hand was clenched tightly around the hilt of his borrowed sword. He 
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+
+looked almost as frightened as she felt. "Insolent eunuch," Viserys muttered as the palanquin lurched up 
+toward the manse. 
+Magister Illyrio's words were honey. "Many important men will be at the feast tonight. Such men have 
+enemies. The khal must protect his guests, yourself chief among them, Your Grace. No doubt the 
+Usurper would pay well for your head." 
+"Oh, yes," Viserys said darkly. "He has tried, Illyrio, I promise you that. His hired knives follow us 
+everywhere. I am the last dragon, and he will not sleep easy while I live." 
+The palanquin slowed and stopped. The curtains were thrown back, and a slave offered a hand to help 
+Daenerys out. His collar, she noted, was ordinary bronze. Her brother followed, one hand still clenched 
+hard around his sword hilt. It took two strong men to get Magister Illyrio back on his feet. 
+Inside the manse, the air was heavy with the scent of spices, pinchfire and sweet lemon and cinnamon. 
+They were escorted across the entry hall, where a mosaic of colored glass depicted the Doom of Valyria. 
+Oil burned in black iron lanterns all along the walls. Beneath 
+an arch of twining stone leaves, a eunuch sang their coming. "Viserys of the House Targaryen, the Third 
+of his Name," he called in a high, sweet voice, "King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, 
+Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm. His sister, Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of 
+Dragonstone. His honorable host, Illyrio Mopatis, Magister of the Free City of Pentos." 
+They stepped past the eunuch into a pillared courtyard overgrown in pale ivy. Moonlight painted the 
+leaves in shades of bone and silver as the guests drifted among them. Many were Dothraki horselords, 
+big men with red-brown skin, their drooping mustachios bound in metal rings, their black hair oiled and 
+braided and hung with bells. Yet among them moved bravos and sellswords from Pentos and Myr and 
+Tyrosh, a red priest even fatter than Illyrio, hairy men from the Port of Ibben, and lords from the Summer 
+Isles with skin as black as ebony. Daenerys looked at them all in wonder . . . and realized, with a sudden 
+start of fear, that she was the only woman there. 
+Illyrio whispered to them. "Those three are Drogo's bloodriders, there," he said. "By the pillar is Khal 
+Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the green beard is brother to the Archon of Tyrosh, and the 
+man behind him is Ser Jorah Mormont." 
+The last name caught Daenerys. "A knight?" 
+"No less." Illyrio smiled through his beard. "Anointed with the seven oils by the High Septon himself." 
+"What is he doing here?" she blurted. 
+"The Usurper wanted his head," Illyrio told them. "Some trifling affront. He sold some poachers to a 
+Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night's Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as 
+he likes with his own chattel." 
+"I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done," her brother said. Dany found herself 
+looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man, past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. 
+Instead of silks and cottons, he wore wool and leather. His tunic was a dark green, embroidered with the 
+likeness of a black bear standing on two legs. 
+She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never known when Magister Illyrio 
+Page 23
+
+placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder. "Over there, sweet princess," he whispered, "there is the khal 
+himself." 
+Dany wanted to run and hide, but her brother was looking at her, and if she displeased him she knew 
+she would wake the dragon. Anxiously, she turned and looked at the man Viserys hoped would ask to 
+wed her before the night was done. 
+The slave girl had not been far wrong, she thought. Khal Drogo was a head taller than the tallest man in 
+the room, yet somehow light on his feet, as graceful as the panther in Illyrio's menagerie. He was younger 
+than she'd thought, no more than thirty. His skin was the color of polished copper, his thick mustachios 
+bound with gold and bronze rings. 
+"I must go and make my submissions," Magister Illyrio said. "Wait here. I shall bring him to you." 
+Her brother took her by the arm as Illyrio waddled over to the khal, his fingers squeezing so hard that 
+they hurt. "Do you see his braid, sweet sister?" 
+Drogo's braid was black as midnight and heavy with scented oil, hung with tiny bells that rang softly as 
+he moved. It swung well past his belt, below even his buttocks, the end of it brushing against the back of 
+his thighs. 
+"You see how long it is?" Viserys said. "When Dothraki are defeated in combat, they cut off their braids 
+in disgrace, so the world will know their shame. Khal Drogo has never lost a fight. He is Aegon the 
+Dragonlord come again, and you will be his queen." 
+Dany looked at Khal Drogo. His face was hard and cruel, his eyes as cold and dark as onyx. Her 
+brother hurt her sometimes, when she woke the dragon, but he did not frighten her the way this man 
+frightened her. "I don't want to be his queen," she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. "Please, please, 
+Viserys, I don't want to, I want to go home." 
+"Home?" He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. "How are we to go home, sweet 
+sister? They took our home from us!" He drew her into the shadows, out of sight, his fingers digging into 
+her skin. "How are we to go home?" he repeated, meaning King's Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the 
+realm they had lost. 
+Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio's estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her 
+brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door 
+had not been home for him. His fingers dug hard into her arm, demanding an answer. "I don't know she 
+said at last, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes. 
+"I do," he said sharply. "We go home with an army, sweet sister. With Khal Drogo's army, that is how 
+we go home. And if you must wed him and bed him for that, you will." He smiled at her. "I'd let his whole 
+khalasar fuck you if need be, sweet sister, all forty thousand men, and their horses too if that was what it 
+took to get my army. Be grateful it is 
+only Drogo. In time you may even learn to like him. Now dry your eyes. Illyrio is bringing him over, and 
+he will not see you crying." 
+Dany turned and saw that it was true. Magister Illyrio, all smiles and bows, was escorting Khal Drogo 
+over to where they stood. She brushed away unfallen tears with the back of her hand. 
+Page 24
+
+"Smile," Viserys whispered nervously, his hand failing to the hilt of his sword. "And stand up straight. Let 
+him see that you have breasts. Gods know, you have little enough as is." 
+Daenerys smiled, and stood up straight. 
+EDDARD 
+The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and polished steel, three hundred 
+strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and freeriders. Over their heads a dozen 
+golden banners whipped back and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of 
+Baratheon. 
+Ned knew many of the riders. There came Ser Jaime Lannister with hair as bright as beaten gold, and 
+there Sandor Clegane with his terrible burned face. The tall boy beside him could only be the crown 
+prince, and that stunted little man behind them was surely the Imp, Tyrion Lannister. 
+Yet the huge man at the head of the column, flanked by two knights in the snow-white cloaks of the 
+Kingsguard, seemed almost a stranger to Ned . . . until he vaulted off the back of his warhorse with a 
+familiar roar, and crushed him in a bone-crunching hug. "Ned! Ah, but it is good to see that frozen face of 
+yours." The king looked him over top to bottom, and laughed. "You have not changed at all." 
+Would that Ned had been able to say the same. Fifteen years past, when they had ridden forth to win a 
+throne, the Lord of Storm's End had been clean-shaven, clear-eyed, and muscled like a maiden's fantasy. 
+Six and a half feet tall, he towered over lesser men, and when he donned his armor and the great antlered 
+helmet of his House, he became a veritable giant. He'd had a giant's strength too, his weapon 
+of choice a spiked iron warhammer that Ned could scarcely lift. In those days, the smell of leather and 
+blood had clung to him like perfume. 
+Now it was perfume that clung to him like perfume, and he had a girth to match his height. Ned had last 
+seen the king nine years before during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion, when the stag and the direwolf had 
+joined to end the pretensions of the self-proclaimed King of the Iron Islands. Since the night they had 
+stood side by side in Greyjoy's fallen stronghold, where Robert had accepted the rebel lord's surrender 
+and Ned had taken his son Theon as hostage and ward, the king had gained at least eight stone. A beard 
+as coarse and black as iron wire covered his jaw to hide his double chin and the sag of the royal jowls, 
+but nothing could hide his stomach or the dark circles under his eyes. 
+Yet Robert was Ned's king now, and not just a friend, so he said only, "Your Grace. Winterfell is 
+yours." 
+By then the others were dismounting as well, and grooms were coming forward for their mounts. 
+Robert's queen, Cersei Lannister, entered on foot with her younger children. The wheelhouse in which 
+they had ridden, a huge double-decked carriage of oiled oak and gilded metal pulled by forty heavy draft 
+horses, was too wide to pass through the castle gate. Ned knelt in the snow to kiss the queen's ring, 
+while Robert embraced Catelyn like a long-lost sister. Then the children had been brought forward, 
+introduced, and approved of by both sides. 
+No sooner had those formalities of greeting been completed than the king had said to his host, "Take me 
+down to your crypt, Eddard. I would pay my respects." 
+Page 25
+
+Ned loved him for that, for remembering her still after all these years. He called for a lantern. No other 
+words were needed. The queen had begun to protest. They had been riding since dawn, everyone was 
+tired and cold, surely they should refresh themselves first. The dead would wait. She had said no more 
+than that; Robert had looked at her, and her twin brother Jaime had taken her quietly by the arm, and she 
+had said no more. 
+They went down to the crypt together, Ned and this king he scarcely recognized. The winding stone 
+steps were narrow. Ned went first with the lantern. "I was starting to think we would never reach 
+Winterfell," Robert complained as they descended. "In the south, the way they talk about my Seven 
+Kingdoms, a man forgets that your part is as big as the other six combined." 
+"I trust you enjoyed the journey, Your Grace?" 
+Robert snorted. "Bogs and forests and fields, and scarcely a decent 
+inn north of the Neck. I've never seen such a vast emptiness. Where are all yourpeople?" 
+"Likely they were too shy to come out," Ned jested. He could feel the chill coming up the stairs, a cold 
+breath from deep within the earth. "Kings are a rare sight in the north." 
+Robert snorted. "More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!" The king put one hand on 
+the wall to steady himself as they descended. 
+"Late summer snows are common enough," Ned said. "I hope they did not trouble you. They are usually 
+mild." 
+"The Others take your mild snows," Robert swore. "What will this place be like in winter? I shudder to 
+think." 
+"The winters are hard," Ned admitted. "But the Starks will endure. We always have." 
+"You need to come south," Robert told him. "You need a taste of summer before it flees. In Highgarden 
+there are fields of golden roses that stretch away as far as the eye can see. The fruits are so ripe they 
+explode in your mouth-melons, peaches, fireplums, you've never tasted such sweetness. You'll see, I 
+brought you some. Even at Storm's End, with that good wind off the bay, the days are so hot you can 
+barely move. And you ought to see the towns, Ned! Flowers everywhere, the markets bursting with 
+food, the surnmerwines so cheap and so good that you can get drunk just breathing the air. Everyone is 
+fat and drunk and rich." He laughed and slapped his own ample stomach a thump. "And the girls, Ned!" 
+he exclaimed, his eyes sparkling. "I swear, women lose all modesty in the heat. They swim naked in the 
+river, right beneath the castle. Even in the streets, it's too damn hot for wool or fur, so they go around in 
+these short gowns, silk if they have the silver and cotton if not, but it's all the same when they start 
+sweating and the cloth sticks to their skin, they might as well be naked." The king laughed happily. 
+Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how to take his 
+pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of Eddard Stark. Yet Ned could not help 
+but notice that those pleasures were taking a toll on the king. Robert was breathing heavily by the time 
+they reached the bottom of the stairs, his face red in the lantern light as they stepped out into the darkness 
+of the crypt. 
+"Your Grace," Ned said respectfully. He swept the lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows moved and 
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+
+lurched. Flickering light touched the stones underfoot and brushed against a long procession of granite 
+pillars that marched ahead, two by two, into the dark. Between the 
+pillars, the dead sat on their stone thrones against the walls, backs against the sepulchres that contained 
+their mortal remains. "She is down at the end, with Father and Brandon." 
+He led the way between the pillars and Robert followed wordlessly, shivering in the subterranean chill. It 
+was always cold down here. Their footsteps rang off the stones and echoed in the vault overhead as they 
+walked among the dead of House Stark. The Lords of Winterfell watched them pass. Their likenesses 
+were carved into the stones that sealed the tombs. In long rows they sat, blind eyes staring out into 
+eternal darkness, while great stone direwolves curled round their feet. The shifting shadows made the 
+stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by. 
+By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of 
+Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago rusted away to nothing, 
+leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those 
+ghosts were free to roam the castle now. He hoped not. The first Lords of Winterfell had been men hard 
+as the land they ruled. In the centuries before the Dragonlords came over the sea, they had sworn 
+allegiance to no man, styling themselves the Kings in the North. 
+Ned stopped at last and lifted the oil lantern. The crypt continued on into darkness ahead of them, but 
+beyond this point the tombs were empty and unsealed; black holes waiting for their dead, waiting for him 
+and his children. Ned did not like to think on that. "Here," he told his king. 
+Robert nodded silently, knelt, and bowed his head. 
+There were three tombs, side by side. Lord Rickard Stark, Ned's father, had a long, stern face. The 
+stonemason had known him well. He sat with quiet dignity, stone fingers holding tight to the sword across 
+his lap, but in life all swords had failed him. In two smaller sepulchres on either side were his children. 
+Brandon had been twenty when he died, strangled by order of the Mad King Aerys Targaryen only a 
+few short days before he was to wed Catelyn Tully of Riverrun. His father had been forced to watch him 
+die. He was the true heir, the eldest, born to rule. 
+Lyanna had only been sixteen, a child-woman of surpassing loveliness. Ned had loved her with all his 
+heart. Robert had loved her even more. She was to have been his bride. 
+"She was more beautiful than that," the king said after a silence. His eyes lingered on Lyanna's face, as if 
+he could will her back to life. Finally he rose, made awkward by his weight. "Ah, damn it, Ned, did 
+you have to bury her in a place like this?" His voice was hoarse with remembered grief. "She deserved 
+more than darkness . . ." 
+"She was a Stark of Winterfell," Ned said quietly. "This is her place." 
+"She should be on a hill somewhere, under a fruit tree, with the sun and clouds above her and the rain to 
+wash her clean." 
+"I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside 
+Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled 
+of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a 
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+
+whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the 
+way she had smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose 
+petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still 
+holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. 
+Ned could recall none of it. "I bring her flowers when I can," he said. "Lyanna was . . . fond of flowers." 
+The king touched her cheek, his fingers brushing across the rough stone as gently as if it were living flesh. 
+"I vowed to kill Rhaegar for what he did to her." 
+"You did," Ned reminded him. 
+"Only once," Robert said bitterly. 
+They had come together at the ford of the Trident while the battle crashed around them, Robert with his 
+warhammer and his great antlered helm, the Targaryen prince armored all in black. On his breastplate 
+was the three-headed dragon of his House, wrought all in rubies that flashed like fire in the sunlight. The 
+waters of the Trident ran red around the hooves of their destriers as they circled and clashed, again and 
+again, until at last a crushing blow from Robert's hammer stove in the dragon and the chest beneath it. 
+When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies 
+scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor. 
+"In my dreams, I kill him every night," Robert admitted. "A thousand deaths will still be less than he 
+deserves." 
+There was nothing Ned could say to that. After a quiet, he said, "We should return, Your Grace. Your 
+wife will be waiting." 
+"The Others take my wife," Robert muttered sourly, but he started back the way they had come, his 
+footsteps falling heavily. "And if I hear 'Your Grace' once more, I'll have your head on a spike. We are 
+more to each other than that." 
+"I had not forgotten," Ned replied quietly. When the king did not answer, he said, "Tell me about Jon." 
+Robert shook his head. "I have never seen a man sicken so quickly. We gave a tourney on my son's 
+name day. If you had seen Jon then, you would have sworn he would live forever. A fortnight later he 
+was dead. The sickness was like a fire in his gut. It burned right through him." He paused beside a pillar, 
+before the tomb of a long-dead Stark. "I loved that old man." 
+"We both did." Ned paused a moment. "Catelyn fears for her sister. How does Lysa bear her grief?" 
+Robert's mouth gave a bitter twist. "Not well, in truth," he admitted. "I think losing Jon has driven the 
+woman mad, Ned. She has taken the boy back to the Eyrie. Against my wishes. I had hoped to foster 
+him with Tywin Lannister at Casterly Rock. Jon had no brothers, no other sons. Was I supposed to leave 
+him to be raised by women?" 
+Ned would sooner entrust a child to a pit viper than to Lord Tywin, but he left his doubts unspoken. 
+Some old wounds never truly heal, and bleed again at the slightest word. "The wife has lost the husband," 
+he said carefully. "Perhaps-the mother feared to lose the son. The boy is very young." 
+"Six, and sickly, and Lord of the Eyrie, gods have mercy," the king swore. "Lord Tywin had never taken 
+a ward before. Lysa ought to have been honored. The Lannisters are a great and noble House. She 
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+
+refused to even hear of it. Then she left in the dead of night, without so much as a by-your-leave. Cersei 
+was furious." He sighed deeply. "The boy is my namesake, did you know that? Robert Arryn. I am 
+sworn to protect him. How can I do that if his mother steals him away?" 
+"I will take him as ward, if you wish," Ned said. "Lysa should consent to that. She and Catelyn were 
+close as girls, and she would be welcome here as well." 
+"A generous offer, my friend," the king said, "but too late. Lord Tywin has already given his consent. 
+Fostering the boy elsewhere would be a grievous affront to him." 
+"I have more concern for my nephew's welfare than I do for Lannister pride," Ned declared. 
+"That is because you do not sleep with a Lannister." Robert laughed, the sound rattling among the tombs 
+and bouncing from the vaulted ceiling. His smile was a flash of white teeth in the thicket of the huge black 
+beard. "Ah, Ned," he said, "you are still too serious." He put a massive arm around Ned's shoulders. "I 
+had planned to wait a few days to speak to you, but I see now there's no need for it. Come, walk with 
+me." 
+They started back down between the pillars. Blind stone eyes seemed to follow them as they passed. 
+The king kept his arm around Ned's shoulder. "You must have wondered why I finally came north to 
+Winterfell, after so long." 
+Ned had his suspicions, but he did not give them voice. "For the joy of my company, surely," he said 
+lightly. "And there is the Wall. You need to see it, Your Grace, to walk along its battlements and talk to 
+those who man it. The Night's Watch is a shadow of what it once was. Benjen says-" 
+"No doubt I will hear what your brother says soon enough," Robert said. "The Wall has stood for what, 
+eight thousand years? It can keep a few days more. I have more pressing concerns. These are difficult 
+times. I need good men about me. Men like Jon Arryn. He served as Lord of the Eyrie, as Warden of 
+the East, as the Hand of the King. He will not be easy to replace." 
+"His son . . ." Ned began. 
+"His son will succeed to the Eyrie and all its incomes," Robert said brusquely. "No more." 
+That took Ned by surprise. He stopped, startled, and turned to look at his king. The words came 
+unbidden. "The Arryns have always been Wardens of the East. The title goes with the domain." 
+"Perhaps when he comes of age, the honor can be restored to him," Robert said. "I have this year to 
+think of, and next. A six-year-old boy is no war leader, Ned." 
+"In peace, the title is only an honor. Let the boy keep it. For his father's sake if not his own. Surely you 
+owe, Jon that much for his service." 
+The king was not pleased. He took his arm from around Ned's shoulders. "Jon's service was the duty he 
+owed his liege lord. I am not ungrateful, Ned. You of all men ought to know that. But the son is not the 
+father. A mere boy cannot hold the east." Then his tone softened. "Enough of this. There is a more 
+important office to discuss, and I would not argue with you." Robert grasped Ned by the elbow. "I have 
+need of you, Ned." 
+"I am yours to command, Your Grace. Always." They were words he had to say, and so he said them, 
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+
+apprehensive about what might come next. 
+Robert scarcely seemed to hear him. "Those years we spent in the Eyrie . . . gods, those were good 
+years. I want you at my side again, Ned. I want you down in King's Landing, not up here at the end of 
+the world where you are no damned use to anybody." Robert looked off into the darkness, for a moment 
+as melancholy as a Stark. "I swear to 
+you, sitting a throne is a thousand times harder than winning one. Laws are a tedious business and 
+counting coppers is worse. And the people . . . there is no end of them. I sit on that damnable iron chair 
+and listen to them complain until my mind is numb and my ass is raw. They all want something, money or 
+land or justice. The lies they tell . . . and my lords and ladies are no better. I am surrounded by flatterers 
+and fools. It can drive a man to madness, Ned. Half of them don't dare tell me the truth, and the other 
+half can't find it. There are nights I wish we had lost at the Trident. Ah, no, not truly, but 
+"I understand," Ned said softly. 
+Robert looked at him. "I think you do. If so, you are the only one, my old friend." He smiled. "Lord 
+Eddard Stark, I would name you the Hand of the King." 
+Ned dropped to one knee. The offer did not surprise him; what other reason could Robert have had for 
+coming so far? The Hand of the King was the second-most powerful man in the Seven Kingdoms. He 
+spoke with the king's voice, commanded the king's armies, drafted the king's laws. At times he even sat 
+upon the Iron Throne to dispense king's justice, when the king was absent, or sick, or otherwise 
+indisposed. Robert was offering him a responsibility as large as the realm itself. 
+It was the last thing in the world he wanted. 
+"Your Grace," he said. "I am not worthy of the honor." 
+Robert groaned with good-humored impatience. "If I wanted to honor you, I'd let you retire. I am 
+planning to make you run the kingdom and fight the wars while I eat and drink and wench myself into an 
+early grave." He slapped his gut and grinned. "You know the saying, about the king and his Hand?" 
+Ned knew the saying. "What the king dreams," he said, "the Hand builds." 
+"I bedded a fishmaid once who told me the lowborn have a choicer way to put it. The king eats, they 
+say, and the Hand takes the shit." He threw back his head and roared his laughter. The echoes rang 
+through the darkness, and all around them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and 
+disapproving eyes. 
+Finally the laughter dwindled and stopped. Ned was still on one knee, his eyes upraised. "Damn it, 
+Ned," the king complained. "You might at least humor me with a smile." 
+"They say it grows so cold up here in winter that a man's laughter freezes in his throat and chokes him to 
+death," Ned said evenly. "Perhaps that is why the Starks have so little humor." 
+"Come south with me, and I'll teach you how to laugh again," the 
+king promised. "You helped me win this damnable throne, now help me hold it. We were meant to rule 
+together. If Lyanna had lived, we should have been brothers, bound by blood as well as affection. Well, 
+it is not too late. I have a son. You have a daughter. My Joff and your Sansa shall join our houses, as 
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+
+Lyanna and I might once have done." 
+This offer did surprise him. "Sansa is only eleven." 
+Robert waved an impatient hand. "Old enough for betrothal. The marriage can wait a few years." The 
+king smiled. "Now stand up and say yes, curse you." 
+"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Your Grace," Ned answered. He hesitated. "These honors are 
+all so unexpected. May I have some time to consider? I need to tell my wife . . ." 
+"Yes, yes, of course, tell Catelyn, sleep on it if you must." The king reached down, clasped Ned by the 
+hand, and pulled him roughly to his feet. "Just don't keep me waiting too long. I am not the most patient 
+of men." 
+For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his place, here in the 
+north. He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He 
+could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming. 
+JON 
+There were times-not many, but a few-when Jon Snow was glad he was a bastard. As he filled his wine 
+cup once more from a passing flagon, it struck him that this might be one of them. 
+He settled back in his place on the bench among the younger squires and drank. The sweet, fruity taste 
+of surnmerwine filled his mouth and brought a smile to his lips. 
+The Great Hall of Winterfell was hazy with smoke and heavy with the smell of roasted meat and 
+fresh-baked bread. Its grey stone walls were draped with banners. White, gold, crimson: the direwolf of 
+Stark, Baratheon's crowned stag, the lion of Lannister. A singer was playing the high harp and reciting a 
+ballad, but down at this end of the hall his voice could scarcely be heard above the roar of the fire, the 
+clangor of pewter plates and cups, and the low mutter of a hundred drunken conversations. 
+It was the fourth hour of the welcoming feast laid for the king. Jon's brothers and sisters had been seated 
+with the royal children, beneath the raised platform where Lord and Lady Stark hosted the king and 
+queen. In honor of the occasion, his lord father would doubtless permit each child a glass of wine, but no 
+more than that. Down here on the benches, there was no one to stop Jon drinking as much as he had a 
+thirst for. 
+And he was finding that he had a man's thirst, to the raucous delight of the youths around him, who urged 
+him on every time he drained a glass. They were fine company, and Jon relished the stories they were 
+telling, tales of battle and bedding and the hunt. He was certain that his companions were more 
+entertaining than the king's offspring. He had sated his curiosity about the visitors when they made their 
+entrance. The procession had passed not a foot from the place he had been given on the bench, and Jon 
+had gotten a good long look at them all. 
+His lord father had come first, escorting the queen. She was as beautiful as men said. A jeweled tiara 
+gleamed amidst her long golden hair, its emeralds a perfect match for the green of her eyes. His father 
+helped her up the steps to the dais and led her to her seat, but the queen never so much as looked at him. 
+Even at fourteen, Jon could see through her smile. 
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+
+Next had come King Robert himself, with Lady Stark on his arm. The king was a great disappointment 
+to Jon. His father had talked of him often: the peerless Robert Baratheon, demon of the Trident, the 
+fiercest warrior of the realm, a giant among princes. Jon saw only a fat man, red-faced under his beard, 
+sweating through his silks. He walked like a man half in his cups. 
+After them came the children. Little Rickon first, managing the long walk with all the dignity a 
+three-year-old could muster. Jon had to urge him on when he stopped to visit. Close behind came Robb, 
+in grey wool trimmed with white, the Stark colors. He had the Princess Myrcella on his arm. She was a 
+wisp of a girl, not quite eight, her hair a cascade of golden curls under a jeweled net. Jon noticed the shy 
+looks she gave Robb as they passed between the tables and the timid way she smiled at him. He decided 
+she was insipid. Robb didn't even have the sense to realize how stupid she was; he was grinning like a 
+fool. 
+His half sisters escorted the royal princes. Arya was paired with plump young Tommen, whose 
+white-blond hair was longer than hers. Sansa, two years older, drew the crown prince, Joffrey 
+Baratheon. He was twelve, younger than Jon or Robb, but taller than either, to Jon's vast dismay. Prince 
+Joffrey had his sister's hair and his mother's deep green eyes. A thick tangle of blond curls dripped down 
+past his golden choker and high velvet collar. Sansa looked radiant as she walked beside him, but Jon 
+did not like Joffrey's pouty lips or the bored, disdainful way he looked at Winterfell's Great Hall. 
+He was more interested in the pair that came behind him: the queen's brothers, the Lannisters of Casterly 
+Rock. The Lion and the Imp; there was no mistaking which was which. Ser Jaime Lannister was 
+twin to Queen Cersei; tall and golden, with flashing green eyes and a smile that cut like a knife. He wore 
+crimson silk, high black boots, a black satin cloak. On the breast of his tunic, the lion of his House was 
+embroidered in gold thread, roaring its defiance. They called him the Lion of Lannister to his face and 
+whispered "Kingslayer" behind his back. 
+Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as 
+the man passed. 
+Then he saw the other one, waddling along half-hidden by his brother's side. Tyrion Lannister, the 
+youngest of Lord Tywin's brood and by far the ugliest. All that the gods had given to Cersei and Jaime, 
+they had denied Tyrion. He was a dwarf, half his brother's height, struggling to keep pace on stunted legs. 
+His head was too large for his body, with a brute's squashed-in face beneath a swollen shelf of brow. 
+One green eye and one black one peered out from under a lank fall of hair so blond it seemed white. Jon 
+watched him with fascination. 
+The last of the high lords to enter were his uncle, Benjen Stark of the Night's Watch, and his father's 
+ward, young Theon Greyjoy. Benjen gave Jon a warm smile as he went by. Theon ignored him utterly, 
+but there was nothing new in that. After all had been seated, toasts were made, thanks were given and 
+returned, and then the feasting began. 
+Jon had started drinking then, and he had not stopped. 
+Something rubbed against his leg beneath the table. Jon saw red eyes staring up at him. "Hungry again?" 
+he asked. There was still half a honeyed chicken in the center of the table. Jon reached out to tear off a 
+leg, then had a better idea. He knifed the bird whole and let the carcass slide to the floor between his 
+legs. Ghost ripped into it in savage silence. His brothers and sisters had not been permitted to bring their 
+wolves to the banquet, but there were more curs than Jon could count at this end of the hall, and no one 
+Page 32
+
+had said a word about his pup. He told himself he was fortunate in that too. 
+His eyes stung. Jon rubbed at them savagely, cursing the smoke. He swallowed another gulp of wine and 
+watched his direwolf devour the chicken. 
+Dogs moved between the tables, trailing after the serving girls. One of them, a black mongrel bitch with 
+long yellow eyes, caught a scent of the chicken. She stopped and edged under the bench to get a share. 
+Jon watched the confrontation. The bitch growled low in her throat and moved closer. Ghost looked up, 
+silent, and fixed the dog with those hot red eyes. The bitch snapped an angry challenge. She was three 
+times the size of the direwolf pup. Ghost did not move. He stood 
+over his prize and opened his mouth, baring his fangs. The bitch tensed, barked again, then thought 
+better of this fight. She turned and slunk away, with one last defiant snap to save her pride. Ghost went 
+back to his meal. 
+Jon grinned and reached under the table to ruffle the shaggy white fur. The direwolf looked up at him, 
+nipped gently at his hand, then went back to eating. 
+"Is this one of the direwolves I've heard so much of?" a familiar voice asked close at hand. 
+Jon looked up happily as his uncle Ben put a hand on his head and ruffled his hair much as Jon had 
+ruffled the wolf s. "Yes," he said. "His name is Ghost." 
+One of the squires interrupted the bawdy story he'd been telling to make room at the table for their lord's 
+brother. Benjen Stark straddled the bench with,long legs and took the wine cup out of Jon's hand. 
+"Summerwine," he said after a taste. "Nothing so sweet. How many cups have you had, Jon?" 
+Jon smiled. 
+Ben Stark laughed. "As I feared. Ah, well. I believe I was younger than you the first time I got truly and 
+sincerely drunk." He snagged a roasted onion, dripping brown with gravy, from a nearby trencher and bit 
+into it. It crunched. 
+His uncle was sharp-featured and gaunt as a mountain crag, but there was always a hint of laughter in his 
+blue-grey eyes. He dressed in black, as befitted a man of the Night's Watch. Tonight it was rich black 
+velvet, with high leather boots and a wide belt with a silver buckle. A heavy silver chain was looped 
+round his neck. Benjen watched Ghost with amusement as he ate his onion. "A very quiet wolf," he 
+observed. 
+"He's not like the others," Jon said. "He never makes a sound. That's why I named him Ghost. That, and 
+because he's white. The others are all dark, grey or black." 
+"There are still direwolves beyond the Wall. We hear them on our rangings." Benjen Stark gave Jon a 
+long look. "Don't you usually eat at table with your brothers?" 
+"Most times," Jon answered in a flat voice. "But tonight Lady Stark thought it might give insult to the 
+royal family to seat a bastard among them." 
+"I see." His uncle glanced over his shoulder at the raised table at the far end of the hall. "My brother 
+does not seem very festive tonight." 
+Page 33
+
+Jon had noticed that too. A bastard had to learn to notice things, to read the truth that people hid behind 
+their eyes. His father was observing 
+all the courtesies, but there was tightness in him that Jon had seldom seen before. He said little, 
+looking out over the hall with hooded eyes, seeing nothing. Two seats away, the king had been drinking 
+heavily all night. His broad face was flushed behind his great black beard. He made many a toast, 
+laughed loudly at every jest, and attacked each dish like a starving man, but beside him the queen seemed 
+as cold as an ice sculpture. "The queen is angry too," Jon told his uncle in a low, quiet voice. "Father took 
+the king down to the crypts this afternoon. The queen didn't want him to go." 
+Benjen gave Jon a careful, measuring look. "You don't miss much, do you, Jon? We could use a man 
+like you on the Wall." 
+Jon swelled with pride. "Robb is a stronger lance than I am, but I'm the better sword, and Hullen says I 
+sit a horse as well as anyone in the castle." 
+"Notable achievements." 
+"Take me with you when you go back to the Wall," Jon said in a sudden rush. "Father will give me leave 
+to go if you ask him, I know he will." 
+Uncle Benjen studied his face carefully. "The Wall is a hard place for a boy, Jon." 
+"I am almost a man grown," Jon protested. "I will turn fifteen on my next name day, and Maester Luwin 
+says bastards grow up faster than other children." 
+"That's true enough," Benjen said with a downward twist of his mouth. He took Jon's cup from the table, 
+filled it fresh from a nearby pitcher, and drank down a long swallow. 
+"Daeren Targaryen was only fourteen when he conquered Dorne," Jon said. The Young Dragon was 
+one of his heroes. 
+"A conquest that lasted a summer," his uncle pointed out. "Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking 
+the place, and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn't a game." He 
+took another sip of wine. "Also," he said, wiping his mouth, "Daeren Targaryen was only eighteen when 
+he died. Or have you forgotten that part?" 
+"I forget nothing," Jon boasted. The wine was making him bold. He tried to sit very straight, to make 
+himself seem taller. "I want to serve in the Night's Watch, Uncle." 
+He had thought on it long and hard, lying abed at night while his brothers slept around him. Robb would 
+someday inherit Winterfell, would command great armies as the Warden of the North. Bran and Rickon 
+would be Robb's bannermen and rule holdfasts in his name. His sisters Arya and Sansa would marry the 
+heirs of other great houses 
+and go south as mistress of castles of their own. But what place could a bastard hope to earn? 
+"You don't know what you're asking, Jon. The Night's Watch is a sworn brotherhood. We have no 
+families. None of us will ever father sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor." 
+"A bastard can have honor too," Jon said. "I am ready to swear your oath." 
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+
+"You are a boy of fourteen," Benjen said. "Not a man, not yet. Until you have known a woman, you 
+cannot understand what you would be giving up." 
+"I don't care about that!" Jon said hotly. 
+"You might, if you knew what it meant," Benjen said. "If you knew what the oath would cost you, you 
+might be less eager to pay the price, son." 
+Jon felt anger rise inside him. "I'm not your son!" 
+Benjen Stark stood up. "More's the pity." He put a hand on Jon's shoulder. "Come back to me after 
+you've fathered a few bastards of your own, and we'll see how you feel." 
+Jon trembled. "I will never father a bastard," he said carefully. "Never!" He spat it out like venom. 
+Suddenly he realized that the table had fallen silent, and they were all looking at him. He felt the tears 
+begin to well behind his eyes. He pushed himself to his feet. 
+"I must be excused," he said with the last of his dignity. He whirled and bolted before they could see him 
+cry. He must have drunk more wine than he had realized. His feet got tangled under him as he tried to 
+leave, and he lurched sideways into a serving girl and sent a flagon of spiced wine crashing to the floor. 
+Laughter boomed all around him, and Jon felt hot tears on his cheeks. Someone tried to steady him. He 
+wrenched free of their grip and ran, half-blind, for the door. Ghost followed close at his heels, out into the 
+night. 
+The yard was quiet and empty. A lone sentry stood high on the battlements of the inner wall, his cloak 
+pulled tight around him against the cold. He looked bored and miserable as he huddled there alone, but 
+Jon would have traded places with him in an instant. Otherwise the castle was dark and deserted. Jon 
+had seen an abandoned holdfast once, a drear place where nothing moved but the wind and the stones 
+kept silent about whatever people had lived there. Winterfell reminded him of that tonight. 
+The sounds of music and song spilled through the open windows behind him. They were the last things 
+Jon wanted to hear. He wiped 
+away his tears on the sleeve of his shirt, furious that he had let them fall, and turned to go. 
+"Boy," a voice called out to him. Jon turned. 
+Tyrion Lannister was sitting on the ledge above the door to the Great Hall, looking for all the world like 
+a gargoyle. The dwarf grinned down at him. "Is that animal a wolf?" 
+"A direwolf," Jon said. "His name is Ghost." He stared up at the little man, his disappointment suddenly 
+forgotten. "What are you doing up there? Why aren't you at the feast?" 
+"Too hot, too noisy, and I'd drunk too much wine," the dwarf told him. "I learned long ago that it is 
+considered rude to vomit on your brother. Might I have a closer look at your wolf?" 
+Jon hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Can you climb down, or shall I bring a ladder?" 
+"Oh, bleed that," the little man said. He pushed himself off the ledge into empty air. Jon gasped, then 
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+
+watched with awe as Tyrion Lannister spun around in a tight ball, landed lightly on his hands, then vaulted 
+backward onto his legs. 
+Ghost backed away from him uncertainly. 
+The dwarf dusted himself off and laughed. "I believe I've frightened your wolf. My apologies." 
+"He's not scared," Jon said. He knelt and called out. "Ghost, come here. Come on. That's it." 
+The wolf pup padded closer and nuzzled at Jon's face, but he kept a wary eye on Tyrion Lannister, and 
+when the dwarf reached out to pet him, he drew back and bared his fangs in a silent snarl. "Shy, isn't he?" 
+Lannister observed. 
+"Sit, Ghost," Jon commanded. "That's it. Keep still." He looked up at the dwarf. "You can touch him 
+now. He won't move until I tell him to. I've been training him." 
+"I see," Lannister said. He ruffled the snow-white fur between Ghost's ears and said, "Nice wolf." 
+"If I wasn't here, he'd tear out your throat," Jon said. It wasn't actually true yet, but it would be. 
+"In that case, you had best stay close," the dwarf said. He cocked his oversized head to one side and 
+looked Jon over with his mismatched eyes. "I am Tyrion Lannister." 
+"I know," Jon said. He rose. Standing, he was taller than the dwarf. It made him feel strange. 
+"You're Ned Stark's bastard, aren't you?" 
+Jon felt a coldness pass right through him. He pressed his lips together and said nothing. 
+"Did I offend you?" Lannister said. "Sorry. Dwarfs don't have to be tactful. Generations of capering fools 
+in motley have won me the right to dress badly and say any damn thing that comes into my head." He 
+grinned. "You are the bastard, though." 
+"Lord Eddard Stark is my father," Jon admitted stiffly. 
+Lannister studied his face. "Yes," he said. "I can see it. You have more of the north in you than your 
+brothers." 
+"Half brothers," Jon corrected. He was pleased by the dwarf s comment, but he tried not to let it show. 
+"Let me give you some counsel, bastard," Lannister said. "Never forget what you are, for surely the 
+world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it 
+will never be used to hurt you." 
+Jon was in no mood for anyone's counsel. "What do you know about being a bastard?" 
+"All dwarfs are bastards in their father's eyes." 
+"You are your mother's trueborn son of Lannister." 
+"Am I" the dwarf replied, sardonic. "Do tell my lord father. MY mother died birthing me, and he's never 
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+
+been sure." 
+"I don't even know who my mother was," Jon said. 
+"Some woman, no doubt. Most of them are." He favored Jon with a rueful grin. "Remember this, boy. 
+All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs." And with that he turned and sauntered 
+back into the feast, whistling a tune. When he opened the door, the light from within threw his shadow 
+clear across the yard, and for just a moment Tyrion Lannister stood tall as a king. 
+CATELYN 
+0f all the rooms in Winterfell's Great Keep, Catelyn's bedchambers were the hottest. She seldom had to 
+light a fire. The castle had been built over natural hot springs, and the scalding waters rushed through its 
+walls and chambers like blood through a man's body, driving the chill from the stone halls, filling the glass 
+gardens with a moist warmth, keeping the earth from freezing. Open pools smoked day and night in a 
+dozen small courtyards. That was a little thing, in summer; in winter, it was the difference between life and 
+death. 
+Catelyn's bath was always hot and steaming, and her walls warm to the touch. The warmth reminded her 
+of Riverrun, of days in the sun with Lysa and Edmure, but Ned could never abide the heat. The Starks 
+were made for the cold, he would tell her, and she would laugh and tell him in that case they had certainly 
+built their castle in the wrong place. 
+So when they had finished, Ned rolled off and climbed from her bed, as he had a thousand times before. 
+He crossed the room, pulled back the heavy tapestries, and threw open the high narrow windows one by 
+one, letting the night air into the chamber. 
+The wind swirled around him as he stood facing the dark, naked and empty-handed. Catelyn pulled the 
+furs to her chin and watched him. He looked somehow smaller and more vulnerable, like the youth she 
+had wed in the sept at Riverrun, fifteen long years gone. Her loins 
+still ached from the urgency of his lovernaking. It was a good ache. She could feel his seed within her. 
+She prayed that it might quicken there. It had been three years since Rickon. She was not too old. She 
+could give him another son. 
+"I will refuse him," Ned said as he turned back to her. His eyes were haunted, his voice thick with doubt. 
+Catelyn sat up in the bed. "You cannot. You must not." 
+"My duties are here in the north. I have no wish to be Robert's Hand." 
+"He will not understand that. He is a king now, and kings are not like other men. If you refuse to serve 
+him, he will wonder why, and sooner or later he will begin to suspect that you oppose him. Can't you see 
+the danger that would put us in?" 
+Ned shook his head, refusing to believe. "Robert would never harm me or any of mine. We were closer 
+than brothers. He loves me. If I refuse him, he will roar and curse and bluster, and in a week we will 
+laugh about it together. I know the man!" 
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+
+"You knew the man," she said. "The king is a stranger to you." Catelyn remembered the direwolf dead in 
+the snow, the broken antler lodged deep in her throat. She had to make him see. "Pride is everything to a 
+king, my lord. Robert came all this way to see you, to bring you these great honors, you cannot throw 
+them back in his face." 
+"Honors?" Ned laughed bitterly. 
+"In his eyes, yes," she said. 
+"And in yours?" 
+"And in mine," she blazed, angry now. Why couldn't he see? "He offers his own son in marriage to our 
+daughter, what else would you call that? Sansa might someday be queen. Her sons could rule from the 
+Wall to the mountains of Dorne. What is so wrong with that?" 
+"Gods, Catelyn, Sansa is only eleven," Ned said. "And Joffrey . . . Joffrey is . . ." 
+She finished for him. crown prince, and heir to the Iron Throne. And I was only twelve when my father 
+promised me to your brother Brandon." 
+That brought a bitter twist to Ned's mouth. "Brandon. Yes. Brandon would know what to do. He 
+always did. It was all meant for Brandon. You, Winterfell, everything. He was born to be a King's Hand 
+and a father to queens. I never asked for this cup to pass to me." 
+"Perhaps not," Catelyn said, "but Brandon is dead, and the cup has passed, and you must drink from it, 
+like it or not." 
+Ned turned away from her, back to the night. He stood staring out 
+in the darkness, watching the moon and the stars perhaps, or perhaps the sentries on the wall. 
+Catelyn softened then, to see his pain. Eddard Stark had married her in Brandon's place, as custom 
+decreed, but the shadow of his dead brother still lay between them, as did the other, the shadow of the 
+woman he would not name, the woman who had borne him his bastard son. 
+She was about to go to him when the knock came at the door, loud and unexpected. Ned turned, 
+frowning. "What is it?" 
+Desmond's voice came through the door. "My lord, Maester Luwin is without and begs urgent 
+audience." 
+"You told him I had left orders not to be disturbed?" 
+"Yes, my lord. He insists." 
+"Very well. Send him in." 
+Ned crossed to the wardrobe and slipped on a heavy robe. Catelyn realized suddenly how cold it had 
+become. She sat up in bed and pulled the furs to her chin. "Perhaps we should close the windows," she 
+suggested. 
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+
+Ned nodded absently. Maester Luwin was shown in. 
+The maester was a small grey man. His eyes were grey, and quick, and saw much. His hair was grey, 
+what little the years had left him. His robe was grey wool, trimmed with white fur, the Stark colors. Its 
+great floppy sleeves had pockets hidden inside. Luwin was always tucking things into those sleeves and 
+producing other things from them: books, messages, strange artifacts, toys for the children. With all he 
+kept hidden in his sleeves, Catelyn was surprised that Maester Luwin could lift his arms at all. 
+The maester waited until the door had closed behind him before he spoke. "My lord," he said to Ned, 
+"pardon for disturbing your rest. I have been left a message." 
+Ned looked irritated. "Been left? By whom? Has there been a rider? I was not told." 
+"There was no rider, my lord. Only a carved wooden box, left on a table in my observatory while I 
+napped. My servants saw no one, but it must have been brought by someone in the king's party. We 
+have had no other visitors from the south." 
+"A wooden box, you say?" Catelyn said. 
+"Inside was a fine new lens for the observatory, from Myr by the look of it. The lenscrafters of Myr are 
+without equal." 
+Ned frowned. He had little patience for this sort of thing, Catelyn knew. "A lens," he said. "What has 
+that to do with me?" 
+"I asked the same question," Maester Luwin said. "Clearly there was more to this than the seeming." 
+Under the heavy weight of her furs, Catelyn shivered. "A lens is an instrument to help us see." 
+"Indeed it is." He fingered the collar of his order; a heavy chain worn tight around the neck beneath his 
+robe, each link forged from a different metal. 
+Catelyn could feel dread stirring inside her once again. "What is it that they would have us see more 
+clearly?" 
+"The very thing I asked myself." Maester Luwin drew a tightly rolled paper out of his sleeve. "I found the 
+true message concealed within a false bottom when I dismantled the box the lens had come in, but it is 
+not for my eyes." 
+Ned held out his hand. "Let me have it, then." 
+Luwin did not stir. "Pardons, my lord. The message is not for you either. It is marked for the eyes of the 
+Lady Catelyn, and her alone. May I approach?" 
+Catelyn nodded, not trusting to speak. The maester placed the paper on the table beside the bed. It was 
+sealed with a small blob of blue wax. Luwin bowed and began to retreat. 
+"Stay," Ned commanded him. His voice was grave. He looked at Catelyn. "What is it? My lady, you're 
+shaking." 
+"I'm afraid," she admitted. She reached out and took the letter in trembling hands. The furs dropped 
+Page 39
+
+away from her nakedness, forgotten. In the blue wax was the moon-and-falcon seal of House Arryn. "It's 
+from Lysa." Catelyn looked at her husband. "It will not make us glad," she told him. "There is grief in this 
+message, Ned. I can feel it." 
+Ned frowned, his face darkening. "Open it." 
+Catelyn broke the seal. 
+Her eyes moved over the words. At first they made no sense to her. Then she remembered. "Lysa took 
+no chances. When we were girls together, we had a private language, she and L" 
+"Can you read it?" 
+"Yes," Catelyn admitted. 
+"Then tell us." 
+"Perhaps I should withdraw," Maester Luwin said. 
+"No," Catelyn said. "We will need your counsel." She threw back the furs and climbed from the bed. 
+The night air was as cold as the grave on her bare skin as she padded across the room. 
+Maester Luwin averted his eyes. Even Ned looked shocked. "What are you doing?" he asked. 
+"Lighting a fire," Catelyn told him. She found a dressing gown and shrugged into it, then knelt over the 
+cold hearth. 
+"Maester Luwin-" Ned began. 
+"Maester Luwin has delivered all my children," Catelyn said. "This is no time for false modesty." She slid 
+the paper in among the kindling and placed the heavier logs on top of it. 
+Ned crossed the room, took her by the arm, and pulled her to her feet. He held her there, his face inches 
+from her. "My lady, tell me! What was this message?" 
+Catelyn stiffened in his grasp. "A warning," she said softly. "If we have the wits to hear." 
+His eyes searched her face. "Go on." 
+"Lysa says Jon Arryn was murdered." 
+His fingers tightened on her arm. "By whom?" 
+"The Lannisters," she told him. "The queen." 
+Ned released his hold on her arm. There were deep red marks on her skin. "Gods," he whispered. His 
+voice was hoarse. "Your sister is sick with grief. She cannot know what she is saying." 
+"She knows," Catelyn said. "Lysa is impulsive, yes, but this message was carefully planned, cleverly 
+hidden. She knew it meant death if her letter fell into the wrong hands. To risk so much, she must have 
+had more than mere suspicion." Catelyn looked to her husband. "Now we truly have no choice. You 
+Page 40
+
+must be Robert's Hand. You must go south with him and learn the truth." 
+She saw at once that Ned had reached a very different conclusion. "The only truths I know are here. 
+The south is a nest of adders I would do better to avoid." 
+Luwin plucked at his chain collar where it had chafed the soft skin of his throat. "The Hand of the King 
+has great power, my lord. Power to find the truth of Lord Arryn's death, to bring his killers to the king's 
+justice. Power to protect Lady Arryn and her son, if the worst be true." 
+Ned glanced helplessly around the bedchamber. Catelyn's heart went out to him, but she knew she 
+could not take him in her arms just then. First the victory must be won, for her children's sake. "You say 
+you love Robert like a brother. Would you leave your brother surrounded by Lannisters?" 
+"The Others take both of you," Ned muttered darkly. He turned away from them and went to the 
+window. She did not speak, nor did the maester. They waited, quiet, while Eddard Stark said a silent 
+farewell to the home he loved. When he turned away from the window at last, his voice was tired and full 
+of melancholy, and moisture glittered 
+faintly in the corners of his eyes. "My father went south once, to answer the summons of a king. He 
+never came home again." 
+"A different time," Maester Luwin said. "A different king." 
+"Yes," Ned said dully. He seated himself in a chair by the hearth. "Catelyn, you shall stay here in 
+Winterfell." 
+His words were like an icy draft through her heart. "No," she said, suddenly afraid. Was this to be her 
+punishment? Never to see his face again, nor to feel his arms around her? 
+"Yes," Ned said, in words that would brook no argument. "You must govern the north in my stead, while 
+I run Robert's errands. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Robb is fourteen. Soon enough, he 
+will be a man grown. He must learn to rule, and I will not be here for him. Make him part of your 
+councils. He must be ready when his time comes." 
+"Gods will, not for many years," Maester Luwin murmured. 
+"Maester Luwin, I trust you as I would my own blood. Give my wife your voice in all things great and 
+small. Teach my son the things he needs to know. Winter is coming." 
+Maester Luwin nodded gravely. Then silence fell, until Catelyn found her courage and asked the 
+question whose answer she most dreaded. "What of the other children?" 
+Ned stood, and took her in his arms, and held her face close to his. "Rickon is very young," he said 
+gently. "He should stay here with you and Robb. The others I would take with me." 
+"I could not bear it," Catelyn said, trembling. 
+"You must," he said. "Sansa must wed Joffrey, that is clear now, we must give them no grounds to 
+suspect our devotion. And it is past time that Arya learned the ways of a southron court. In a few years 
+she will be of an age to marry too." 
+Page 41
+
+Sansa would shine in the south, Catelyn thought to herself, and the gods knew that Arya needed 
+refinement. Reluctantly, she let go of them in her heart. But not Bran. Never Bran. "Yes," she said, "but 
+please, Ned, for the love you bear me, let Bran remain here at Winterfell. He is only seven." 
+"I was eight when my father sent me to foster at the Eyrie," Ned said. "Ser Rodrik tells me there is bad 
+feeling between Robb and Prince Joffrey. That is not healthy. Bran can bridge that distance. He is a 
+sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love. Let him grow up with the young princes, let him become their 
+friend as Robert became mine. Our House will be the safer for it." 
+He was right; Catelyn knew it. It did not make the pain any easier to bear. She would lose all four of 
+them, then: Ned, and both girls, and 
+her sweet, loving Bran. Only Robb and little Rickon would be left to her. She felt lonely already. 
+Winterfell was such a vast place. "Keep him off the walls, then," she said bravely. "You know how Bran 
+loves to climb." 
+Ned kissed the tears from her eyes before they could fall. "Thank you, my lady," he whispered. "This is 
+hard, I know." 
+"What of Jon Snow, my lord?" Maester Luwin asked. 
+Catelyn tensed at the mention of the name. Ned felt the anger in her, and pulled away. 
+Many men fathered bastards. Catelyn had grown up with that knowledge. It came as no surprise to her, 
+in the first year of her marriage, to learn that Ned had fathered a child on some girl chance met on 
+campaign. He had a man's needs, after all, and they had spent that year apart, Ned off at war in the south 
+while she remained safe in her father's castle at Riverrun. Her thoughts were more of Robb, the infant at 
+her breast, than of the husband she scarcely knew. He was welcome to whatever solace he might find 
+between battles. And if his seed quickened, she expected he would see to the child's needs. 
+He did more than that. The Starks were not like other men. Ned brought his bastard home with him, and 
+called him "son" for all the north to see. When the wars were over at last, and Catelyn rode to Winterfell, 
+Jon and his wet nurse had already taken up residence. 
+That cut deep. Ned would not speak of the mother, not so much as a word, but a castle has no secrets, 
+and Catelyn heard her maids repeating tales they heard from the lips of her husband's soldiers. They 
+whispered of Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, deadliest of the seven knights of Aerys's 
+Kingsguard, and of how their young lord had slain him in single combat. And they told how afterward 
+Ned had carried Ser Arthur's sword back to the beautiful young sister who awaited him in a castle called 
+Starfall on the shores of the Summer Sea. The Lady Ashara Dayne, tall and fair, with haunting violet 
+eyes. It had taken her a fortnight to marshal her courage, but finally, in bed one night, Catelyn had asked 
+her husband the truth of it, asked him to his face. 
+That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he 
+said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you 
+heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering 
+had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again. 
+Whoever Jon's mother had been, Ned must have loved her fiercely, for nothing Catelyn said would 
+persuade him to send the boy away. It 
+Page 42
+
+was the one thing she could never forgive him. She had come to love her husband with all her heart, but 
+she had never found it in her to love Jon. She might have overlooked a dozen bastards for Ned's sake, 
+so long as they were out of sight. Jon was never out of sight, and as he grew, he looked more like Ned 
+than any of the trueborn sons she bore him. Somehow that made it worse. "Jon must go," she said now. 
+"He and Robb are close," Ned said. "I had hoped . . ." 
+"He cannot stay here," Catelyn said, cutting him off. "He is your son, not mine. I will not have him." It 
+was hard, she knew, but no less the truth. Ned would do the boy no kindness by leaving him here at 
+Winterfell. 
+The look Ned gave her was anguished. "You know I cannot take him south. There will be no place for 
+him at court. A boy with a bastard's name . . . you know what they will say of him. He will be shunned." 
+Catelyn armored her heart against the mute appeal in her husband's eyes. "They say your friend Robert 
+has fathered a dozen bastards himself." 
+"And none of them has ever been seen at court!" Ned blazed. "The Lann.ister woman has seen to that. 
+How can you be so damnably cruel, Catelyn? He is only a boy. He-" 
+His fury was on him. He might have said more, and worse, but Maester Luwin cut in. "Another solution 
+presents itself," he said, his voice quiet. "Your brother Benjen came to me about Jon a few days ago. It 
+seems the boy aspires to take the black." 
+Ned looked shocked. "He asked to join the Night's Watch?" 
+Catelyn said nothing. Let Ned work it out in his own mind; her voice would not be welcome now. Yet 
+gladly would she have kissed the maester just then. His was the perfect solution. Benjen Stark was a 
+Sworn Brother. Jon would be a son to him, the child he would never have. And in time the boy would 
+take the oath as well. He would father no sons who might someday contest with Catelyn's own 
+grandchildren for Winterfell. 
+Maester Luwin said, "There is great honor in service on the Wall, my lord." 
+"And even a bastard may rise high in the Night's Watch," Ned reflected. Still, his voice was troubled. 
+"Jon is so young. If he asked this when he was a man grown, that would be one thing, but a boy of 
+fourteen . . ." 
+"A hard sacrifice," Maester Luwin agreed. "Yet these are hard times, my lord. His road is no crueler 
+than yours or your lady's.11 
+Catelyn thought of the three children she must lose. It was not easy keeping silent then. 
+Ned turned away from them to gaze out the window, his long face silent and thoughtful. Finally he 
+sighed, and turned back. "Very well," he said to Maester Luwin. "I suppose it is for the best. I will speak 
+to Ben." 
+"When shall we tell Jon?" the maester asked. 
+"When I must. Preparations must be made. It will be a fortnight before we are ready to depart. I would 
+sooner let Jon enjoy these last few days. Summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well. When the 
+Page 43
+
+time comes, I will tell him myself." 
+ARYA 
+A rya's stitches were crooked again. 
+She frowned down at them with dismay and glanced over to where her sister Sansa sat among the other 
+girls. Sansa's needlework was exquisite. Everyone said so. "Sansa's work is as pretty as she is," Septa 
+Mordane told their lady mother once. "She has such fine, delicate hands." When Lady Catelyn had asked 
+about Arya, the septa had sniffed. "Arya has the hands of a blacksmith." 
+Arya glanced furtively across the room, worried that Septa Mordane might have read her thoughts, but 
+the septa was paying her no attention today. She was sitting with the Princess Myrcella, all smiles and 
+admiration. It was not often that the septa was privileged to instruct a royal princess in the womanly arts, 
+as she had said when the queen brought Myrcella to join them. Arya thought that Myrcella's stitches 
+looked a little crooked too, but you would never know it from the way Septa Mordane was cooing. 
+She studied her own work again, looking for some way to salvage it, then sighed and put down the 
+needle. She looked glumly at her sister. Sansa was chatting away happily as she worked. Beth Cassel, 
+Ser Rodrik's little girl, was sitting by her feet, listening to every word she said, and Jeyne Poole was 
+leaning over to whisper something in her ear. 
+"What are you talking about?" Arya asked suddenly. 
+Jeyne gave her a startled look, then giggled. Sansa looked abashed. Beth blushed. No one answered. 
+"Tell me," Arya said. 
+Jeyne glanced over to make certain that Septa Mordane was not listening. Myrcella said something then, 
+and the septa laughed along with the rest of the ladies. 
+"We were talking about the prince," Sansa said, her voice soft as a kiss. 
+Arya knew which prince she meant: Jofftey, of course. The tall, handsome one. Sansa got to sit with him 
+at the feast. Arya had to sit with the little fat one. Naturally. 
+"Joffrey likes your sister," Jeyne whispered, proud as if she had something to do with it. She was the 
+daughter of Winterfell's steward and Sansa's dearest friend. "He told her she was very beautiful." 
+"He's going to marry her," little Beth said dreamily, hugging herself. "Then Sansa will be queen of all the 
+realm." 
+Sansa had the grace to blush. She blushed prettily. She did everything prettily, Arya thought with dull 
+resentment. "Beth, you shouldn't make up stories," Sansa corrected the younger girl, gently stroking her 
+hair to take the harshness out of her words. She looked at Arya. "What did you think of Prince Joff, 
+sister? He's very gallant, don't you think?" 
+"Jon says he looks like a girl," Arya said. 
+Page 44
+
+Sansa sighed as she stitched. "Poor Jon," she said. "He gets jealous because he's a bastard." 
+"He's our brother," Arya said, much too loudly. Her voice cut through the afternoon quiet of the tower 
+room. 
+Septa Mordane raised her eyes. She had a bony face, sharp eyes, and a thin lipless mouth made for 
+frowning. It was frowning now. "What are you talking about, children?" 
+"Our half brother," Sansa corrected, soft and precise. She smiled for the septa. "Arya and I were 
+remarking on how pleased we were to have the princess with us today," she said. 
+Septa Mordane nodded. "Indeed. A great honor for us all." Princess Myrcella smiled uncertainly at the 
+compliment. "Arya, why aren't you at work?" the septa asked. She rose to her feet, starched skirts 
+rustling as she started across the room. "Let me see your stitches." 
+Arya wanted to scream. It was just like Sansa to go and attract the septa's attention. "Here," she said, 
+surrendering up her work. 
+The septa examined the fabric. "Arya, Arya, Arya," she said. "This will not do. This will not do at all." 
+Everyone was looking at her. It was too much. Sansa was too well bred to smile at her sister's disgrace, 
+but Jeyne was smirking on her 
+behalf. Even Princess Myrcella looked sorry for her. Arya felt tears filling her eyes. She pushed herself 
+out of her chair and bolted for the door. 
+Septa Mordane called after her. "Arya, come back here! Don't you take another step! Your lady mother 
+will hear of this. In front of our royal princess too! You'll shame us all!" 
+Arya stopped at the door and turned back, biting her lip. The tears were running down her cheeks now. 
+She managed a stiff little bow to Myrcella. "By your leave, my lady." 
+Myrcella blinked at her and looked to her ladies for guidance. But if she was uncertain, Septa Mordane 
+was not. "Just where do you think you are going, Arya?" the septa demanded. 
+Arya glared at her. "I have to go shoe a horse," she said sweetly, taking a brief satisfaction in the shock 
+on the septa's face. Then she whirled and made her exit, running down the steps as fast as her feet would 
+take her. 
+It wasn't fair. Sansa had everything. Sansa was two years older; maybe by the time Arya had been born, 
+there had been nothing left. Often it felt that way. Sansa could sew and dance and sing. She wrote 
+poetry. She knew how to dress. She played the high harp and the bells. Worse, she was beautiful. Sansa 
+had gotten their mother's fine high cheekbones and the thick auburn hair of the Tullys. Arya took after 
+their lord father. Her hair was a lusterless brown, and her face was long and solemn. Jeyne used to call 
+her Arya Horseface, and neigh whenever she came near. It hurt that the one thing Arya could do better 
+than her sister was ride a horse. Well, that and manage a household. Sansa had never had much of a 
+head for figures. If she did marry Prince Joff, Arya hoped for his sake that he had a good steward. 
+Nymeria was waiting for her in the guardroom at the base of the stairs. She bounded to her feet as soon 
+as she caught sight of Arya. Arya grinned. The wolf pup loved her, even if no one else did. They went 
+everywhere together, and Nymeria slept in her room, at the foot of her bed. If Mother had not forbidden 
+Page 45
+
+it, Arya would gladly have taken the wolf with her to needlework. Let Septa Mordane complain about 
+her stitches then. 
+Nymeria nipped eagerly at her hand as Arya untied her. She had yellow eyes. When they caught the 
+sunlight, they gleamed like two golden coins. Arya had named her after the warrior queen of the Rhoyne, 
+who had led her people across the narrow sea. That had been a great scandal too. Sansa, of course, had 
+named her pup "Lady." Arya made a face and hugged the wolfling tight. Nymeria licked her ear, and she 
+giggled. 
+By now Septa Mordane would certainly have sent word to her lady mother. If she went to her room, 
+they would find her. Arya did not care to be found. She had a better notion. The boys were at practice in 
+the yard. She wanted to see Robb put gallant Prince Joffrey flat on his back. "Come," she whispered to 
+Nymeria. She got up and ran, the wolf coming hard at her heels. 
+There was a window in the covered bridge between the armory and the Great Keep where you had a 
+view of the whole yard. That was where they headed. 
+They arrived, flushed and breathless, to find Jon seated on the sill, one leg drawn up languidly to his chin. 
+He was watching the action, so absorbed that he seemed unaware of her approach until his white wolf 
+moved to meet them. Nymeria stalked closer on wary feet. Ghost, already larger than his litter mates, 
+smelled her, gave her ear a careful nip, and settled back down. 
+Jon gave her a curious look. "Shouldn't you be working on your stitches, little sister?" 
+Arya made a face at him. "I wanted to see them fight." 
+He smiled. "Come here, then." 
+Arya climbed up on the window and sat beside him, to a chorus of thuds and grunts from the yard 
+below. 
+To her disappointment, it was the younger boys drilling. Bran was so heavily padded he looked as 
+though he had belted on a featherbed, and Prince Tommen, who was plump to begin with, seemed 
+positively round. They were huffing and puffing and hitting at each other with padded wooden swords 
+under the watchful eye of old Ser Rodrik Cassel, the master-at-arms, a great stout keg of a man with 
+magnificent white cheek whiskers. A dozen spectators, man and boy, were calling out encouragement, 
+Robb's voice the loudest among them. She spotted Theon Greyjoy beside him, his black doublet 
+emblazoned with the golden kraken of his House, a look of wry contempt on his face. Both of the 
+combatants were staggering. Arya judged that they had been at it awhile. 
+"A shade more exhausting than needlework," Jon observed. 
+"A shade more fun than needlework," Arya gave back at him. Jon grinned, reached over, and messed up 
+her hair. Arya flushed. They had always been close. Jon had their father's face, as she did. They were the 
+only ones. Robb and Sansa and Bran and even little Rickon all took after the Tullys, with easy smiles and 
+fire in their hair. When Arya had been little, she had been afraid that meant that she was a bastard too. It 
+been Jon she had gone to in her fear, and Jon who had reassured her. 
+64 GEORGL R.R. MARTIN 
+"Why aren't you down in the yard?" Arya asked him. 
+Page 46
+
+He gave her a half smile. "Bastards are not allowed to damage young princes," he said. "Any bruises 
+they take in the practice yard must come from trueborn swords." 
+"Oh." Arya felt abashed. She should have realized. For the second time today, Arya reflected that life 
+was not fair. 
+She watched her little brother whack at Tommen. "I could do just as good as Bran," she said. "He's only 
+seven. I'm nine." 
+Jon looked her over with all his fourteen-year-old wisdom. "You're too skinny," he said. He took her 
+arm to feel her muscle. Then he sighed and shook his head. "I doubt you could even lift a longsword, little 
+sister, never mind swing one." 
+Arya snatched back her arm and glared at him. Jon messed up her hair again. They watched Bran and 
+Tommen circle each other. 
+"You see Prince Joffrey?" Jon asked. 
+She hadn't, not at first glance, but when she looked again she found him to the back, under the shade of 
+the high stone wall. He was surrounded by men she did not recognize, young squires in the livery of 
+Lannister and Baratheon, strangers all. There were a few older men among them; knights, she surmised. 
+"Look at the arms on his surcoat," Jon suggested. 
+Arya looked. An ornate shield had been embroidered on the prince's padded surcoat. No doubt the 
+needlework was exquisite. The arms were divided down the middle; on one side was the crowned stag 
+of the royal House, on the other the lion of Lannister. 
+"The Lannisters are proud," Jon observed. "You'd think the royal sigil would be sufficient, but no. He 
+makes his mother's House equal in honor to the king's." 
+"The woman is important too!" Arya protested. 
+Jon chuckled. "Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms." 
+"A wolf with a fish in its mouth?" It made her laugh. "That would look silly. Besides, if a girl can't fight, 
+why should she have a coat of arms?" 
+Jon shrugged. "Girls get the arms but not the swords. Bastards get the swords but not the arms. I did not 
+make the rules, little sister." 
+There was a shout from the courtyard below. Prince Tommen was rolling in the dust, trying to get up and 
+failing. All the padding made him look like a turtle on its back. Bran was standing over him with upraised 
+wooden sword, ready to whack him again once he regained his feet. The men began to laugh. 
+"Enough!" Ser Rodrik called out. He gave the prince a hand and 
+yanked him back to his feet. "Well fought. Lew, Donnis, help them out of their armor." He looked 
+around. "Prince Joffrey, Robb, will you go another round?" 
+Page 47
+
+Robb, already sweaty from a previous bout, moved forward eagerly. "Gladly." 
+Joffrey moved into the sunlight in response to Rodrik's summons. His hair shone like spun gold. He 
+looked bored. "This is a game for children, Ser Rodrik." 
+Theon Greyjoy gave a sudden bark of laughter. "You are children," he said derisively. 
+"Robb may be a child," Joffrey said. "I am a prince. And I grow tired of swatting at Starks with a play 
+sword." 
+"You got more swats than you gave, Joff," Robb said. "Are you afraid?" 
+Prince Joffrey looked at him. "Oh, terrified," he said. "You're so much older." Some of the Lannister men 
+laughed. 
+Jon looked down on the scene with a frown. "Joffrey is truly a little shit," he told Arya. 
+Ser Rodrik tugged thoughtfully at his white whiskers. "What are you suggesting?" he asked the prince. 
+"Live steel." 
+"Done," Robb shot back. "You'll be sorry!" 
+The master-at-arms put a hand on Robb's shoulder to quiet him. "Live steel is too dangerous. I will 
+permit you tourney swords, with blunted edges." 
+Joffrey said nothing, but a man strange to Arya, a tall knight with black hair and burn scars on his face, 
+pushed forward in front of the prince. "This is your prince. Who are you to tell him he may not have an 
+edge on his sword, ser?" 
+"Master-at-arms of Winterfell, Clegane, and you would do well not to forget it." 
+"Are you training women here?" the burned man wanted to know. He was muscled like a bull. 
+"I am training knights," Ser Rodrik said pointedly. "They will have steel when they are ready. When they 
+are of an age." 
+The burned man looked at Robb. "How old are you, boy?" 
+"Fourteen," Robb said. 
+"I killed a man at twelve. You can be sure it was not with a blunt sword." 
+Arya could see Robb bristle. His pride was wounded. He turned on Ser Rodrik. "Let me do it. I can 
+beat him." 
+"Beat him with a tourney blade, then," Ser Rodrik said. 
+Joffrey shrugged. "Come and see me when you're older, Stark. If you're not too old." There was 
+laughter from the Lannister men. 
+Page 48
+
+Robb's curses rang through the yard. Arya covered her mouth in shock. Theon Greyjoy seized Robb's 
+arm to keep him away from the prince. Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers in dismay. 
+Joffrey feigned a yawn and turned to his younger brother. "Come, Tommen," he said. "The hour of play 
+is done. Leave the children to their frolics." 
+That brought more laughter from the Lannisters, more curses from Robb. Ser Rodrik's face was 
+beet-red with fury under the white of his whiskers. Theon kept Robb locked in an iron grip until the 
+princes and their party were safely away. 
+Jon watched them leave, and Arya watched Jon. His face had grown as still as the pool at the heart of 
+the godswood. Finally he climbed down off the window. "The show is done," he said. He bent to scratch 
+Ghost behind the ears. The white wolf rose and rubbed against him. "You had best run back to your 
+room, little sister. Septa Mordane will surely be lurking. The longer you hide, the sterner the penance. 
+You'll be sewing all through winter. When the spring thaw comes, they will find your body with a needle 
+still locked tight between your frozen fingers." 
+Arya didn't think it was funny. "I hate needlework!" she said with passion. "It's not fair!" 
+"Nothing is fair," Jon said. He messed up her hair again and walked away from her, Ghost moving 
+silently beside him. Nymeria started to follow too, then stopped and came back when she saw that Arya 
+was not coming. 
+Reluctantly she turned in the other direction. 
+It was worse than Jon had thought. It wasn't Septa Mordane waiting in her room. It was Septa Mordane 
+and her mother. 
+BRAN 
+The hunt left at dawn. The king wanted wild boar at the feast tonight. Prince Joffrey rode with his father, 
+so Robb had been allowed to join the hunters as well. Uncle Benjen, Jory, Theon Greyjoy, Ser Rodrik, 
+and even the queen's funny little brother had all ridden out with them. It was the last hunt, after all. On the 
+morrow they left for the south. 
+Bran had been left behind with Jon and the girls and Rickon. But Rickon was only a baby and the girls 
+were only girls and Jon and his wolf were nowhere to be found. Bran did not look for him very hard. He 
+thought Jon was angry at him. Jon seemed to be angry at everyone these days. Bran did not know why. 
+He was going with Uncle Ben to the Wall, to join the Night's Watch. That was almost as good as going 
+south with the king. Robb was the one they were leaving behind, not Jon. 
+For days, Bran could scarcely wait to be off. He was going to ride the kingsroad on a horse of his own, 
+not a pony but a real horse. His father would be the Hand of the King, and they were going to live in the 
+red castle at King's Landing, the castle the Dragonlords had built. Old Nan said there were ghosts there, 
+and dungeons where terrible things had been done, and dragon heads on the walls. It gave Bran a shiver 
+just to think of it, but he was not afraid. How could he be afraid? 
+His father would be with him, and the king with all his knights and sworn swords. 
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+Bran was going to be a knight himself someday, one of the Kingsguard. Old Nan said they were the 
+finest swords in all the realm. There were only seven of them, and they wore white armor and had no 
+wives or children, but lived only to serve the king. Bran knew all the stories. Their names were like music 
+to him. Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. Ser Ryam Redwyne. Prince Aemon the Dragonknight. The twins 
+Ser Erryk and Ser Arryk, who had died on one another's swords hundreds of years ago, when brother 
+fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. The White Bull, Gerold Hightower. 
+Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Barristan the Bold. 
+Two of the Kingsguard had come north with King Robert. Bran had watched them with fascination, 
+never quite daring to speak to them. Ser Boros was a bald man with a jowly face, and Ser Meryn had 
+droopy eyes and a beard the color of rust. Ser Jaime Lannister looked more like the knights in the 
+stories, and he was of the Kingsguard too, but Robb said he had killed the old mad king and shouldn't 
+count anymore. The greatest living knight was Ser Barristan Selmy, Barristan the Bold, the Lord 
+Commander of the Kingsguard. Father had promised that they would meet Ser Barristan when they 
+reached King's Landing, and Bran had been marking the days on his wall, eager to depart, to see a world 
+he had only dreamed of and begin a life he could scarcely imagine. 
+Yet now that the last day was at hand, suddenly Bran felt lost. Winterfell had been the only home he had 
+ever known. His father had told him that he ought to say his farewells today, and he had tried. After the 
+hunt had ridden out, he wandered through the castle with his wolf at his side, intending to visit the ones 
+who would be left behind, Old Nan and Gage the cook, Mikken in his smithy, Hodor the stableboy who 
+smiled so much and took care of his pony and never said anything but "Hodor," the man in the glass 
+gardens who gave him a blackberry when he came to visit . . . 
+But it was no good. He had gone to the stable first, and seen his pony there in its stall, except it wasn't 
+his pony anymore, he was getting a real horse and leaving the pony behind, and all of a sudden Bran just 
+wanted to sit down and cry. He turned and ran off before Hodor and the other stableboys could see the 
+tears in his eyes. That was the end of his farewells. Instead Bran spent the morning alone in the 
+godswood, trying to teach his wolf to fetch a stick, and failing. The wolfling was smarter than any of the 
+hounds in his father's kennel and Bran would 
+have sworn he understood every word that was said to him, but he showed very little interest in chasing 
+sticks. 
+He was still trying to decide on a name. Robb was calling his Grey Wind, because he ran so fast. Sansa 
+had named hers Lady, and Arya named hers after some old witch queen in the songs, and little Rickon 
+called his Shaggydog, which Bran thought was a pretty stupid name for a direwolf. Jon's wolf, the white 
+one, was Ghost. Bran wished he had thought of that first, even though his wolf wasn't white. He had tried 
+a hundred names in the last fortnight, but none of them sounded right. 
+Finally he got tired of the stick game and decided to go climbing. He hadn't been up to the broken tower 
+for weeks with everything that had happened, and this might be his last chance. 
+He raced across the godswood, taking the long way around to avoid the pool where the heart tree grew. 
+The heart tree had always frightened him; trees ought not have eyes, Bran thought, or leaves that looked 
+like hands. His wolf came sprinting at his heels. "You stay here," he told him at the base of the sentinel 
+tree near the armory wall. "Lie down. That's right. Now stay-" 
+The wolf did as he was told. Bran scratched him behind the ears, then turned away, jumped, grabbed a 
+low branch, and pulled himself up. He was halfway up the tree, moving easily from limb to limb, when the 
+wolf got to his feet and began to howl. 
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+
+Bran looked back down. His wolf fell silent, staring up at him through slitted yellow eyes. A strange chill 
+went through him. He began to climb again. Once more the wolf howled. "Quiet," he yelled. "Sit down. 
+Stay. You're worse than Mother." The howling chased him all the way up the tree, until finally he jumped 
+off onto the armory roof and out of sight. 
+The rooftops of Winterfell were Bran's second home. His mother often said that Bran could climb before 
+he could walk. Bran could not remember when he first learned to walk, but he could not remember when 
+he started to climb either, so he supposed it must be true. 
+To a boy, Winterfell was a grey stone labyrinth of walls and towers and courtyards and tunnels 
+spreading out in all directions. In the older parts of the castle, the halls slanted up and down so that you 
+couldn't even be sure what floor you were on. The place had grown over the centuries like some 
+monstrous stone tree, Maester Luwin told him once, and its branches were gnarled and thick and 
+twisted, its roots sunk deep into the earth. 
+When he got out from under it and scrambled up near the sky, Bran could see all of Winterfell in a 
+glance. He liked the way it looked, spread out beneath him, only birds wheeling over his head while all 
+the 
+life of the castle went on below. Bran could perch for hours among the shapeless, rain-worn gargoyles 
+that brooded over the First Keep, watching it all: the men drilling with wood and steel in the yard, the 
+cooks tending their vegetables in the glass garden, restless dogs running back and forth in the kennels, the 
+silence of the godswood, the girls gossiping beside the washing well. It made him feel like he was lord of 
+the castle, in a way even Robb would never know. 
+It taught him Winterfell's secrets too. The builders had not even leveled the earth; there were hills and 
+valleys behind the walls of Winterfell. There was a covered bridge that went from the fourth floor of the 
+bell tower across to the second floor of the rookery. Bran knew about that. And he knew you could get 
+inside the inner wall by the south gate, climb three floors and run all the way around Winterfell through a 
+narrow tunnel in the stone, and then come out on ground level at the north gate, with a hundred feet of 
+wall looming over you. Even Maester Luwin didn't know that, Bran was convinced. 
+His mother was terrified that one day Bran would slip off a wall and kill himself. He told her that he 
+wouldn't, but she never believed him. Once she made him promise that he would stay on the ground. He 
+had managed to keep that promise for almost a fortnight, miserable every day, until one night he had gone 
+out the window of his bedroom when his brothers were fast asleep. 
+He confessed his crime the next day in a fit of guilt. Lord Eddard ordered him to the godswood to 
+cleanse himself. Guards were posted to see that Bran remained there alone all night to reflect on his 
+disobedience. The next morning Bran was nowhere to be seen. They finally found him fast asleep in the 
+upper branches of the tallest sentinel in the grove. 
+As angry as he was, his father could not help but laugh. "You're not my son," he told Bran when they 
+fetched him down, "you're a squirrel. So be it. If you must climb, then climb, but try not to let your 
+mother see you." 
+Bran did his best, although he did not think he ever really footed her. Since his father would not forbid it, 
+she turned to others. Old Nan told him a story about a bad little boy who climbed too high and was 
+struck down by lightning, and how afterward the crows came to peck out his eyes. Bran was not 
+impressed. There were crows' nests atop the broken tower, where no one ever went but him, and 
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+
+sometimes he filled his pockets with corn before he climbed up there and the crows ate it right out of his 
+hand. None of them had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in pecking out his eyes. 
+Later, Maester Luwin built a little pottery boy and dressed him in 
+Bran's clothes and flung him off the wall into the yard below, to demonstrate what would happen to Bran 
+if he fell. That had been fun, but afterward Bran just looked at the maester and said, "I'm not made of 
+clay. And anyhow, I never fall." 
+Then for a while the guards would chase him whenever they saw him on the roofs, and try to haul him 
+down. That was the best time of all. It was like playing a game with his brothers, except that Bran always 
+won. None of the guards could climb half so well as Bran, not even Jory. Most of the time they never 
+saw him anyway. People never looked up. That was another thing he liked about climbing; it was almost 
+like being invisible. 
+He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the 
+small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him 
+feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. 
+He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the 
+crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient 
+owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all. 
+Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a 
+way that no one else ever saw it. It made the whole castle Bran's secret place. 
+His favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long 
+time ago, a hundred years before even his father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top 
+third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes his father 
+sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen 
+stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now 
+except for Bran and the crows. 
+He knew two ways to get there. You could climb straight up the side of the tower itself, but the stones 
+were loose, the mortar that held them together long gone to ash, and Bran never liked to put his full 
+weight on them. 
+The best way was to start from the godswood, shinny up the tall sentinel, and cross over the armory and 
+the guards hall, leaping roof to roof, barefoot so the guards wouldn't hear you overhead. That brought 
+you up to the blind side of the First Keep, the oldest part of the castle, a squat round fortress that was 
+taller than it looked. Only rats and spiders lived there now but the old stones still made for good climbing. 
+You could go straight up to where the gargoyles leaned out blindly 
+over empty space, and swing from gargoyle to gargoyle, hand over hand, around to the north side. From 
+there, if you really stretched, you could reach out and pull yourself over to the broken tower where it 
+leaned close. The last part was the scramble up the blackened stones to the eyrie, no more than ten feet, 
+and then the crows would come round to see if you'd brought any corn. 
+Bran was moving from gargoyle to gargoyle with the ease of long practice when he heard the voices. He 
+was so startled he almost lost his grip. The First Keep had been empty all his life. 
+"I do not like it," a woman was saying. There was a row of windows beneath him, and the voice was 
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+
+drifting out of the last window on this side. "You should be the Hand." 
+"Gods forbid," a man's voice replied lazily. "It's not an honor I'd want. There's far too much work 
+involved." 
+Bran hung, listening, suddenly afraid to go on. They might glimpse his feet if he tried to swing by. 
+"Don't you see the danger this puts us in?" the woman said. "Robert loves the man like a brother." 
+"Robert can barely stomach his brothers. Not that I blame him. Stannis would be enough to give anyone 
+indigestion." 
+"Don't play the fool. Stannis and Renly are one thing, and Eddard Stark is quite another. Robert will 
+listen to Stark. Damn them both. I should have insisted that he name you, but I was certain Stark would 
+refuse him." 
+"We ought to count ourselves fortunate," the man said. "The king might as easily have named one of his 
+brothers, or even Littlefinger, gods help us. Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and 
+I'll sleep more easily by night." 
+They were talking about Father, Bran realized. He wanted to hear more. A few more feet . . . but they 
+would see him if he swung out in front of the window. 
+"We will have to watch him carefully," the woman said. 
+"I would sooner watch you," the man said. He sounded bored. "Come back here." 
+"Lord Eddard has never taken any interest in anything that happened south of the Neck," the woman 
+said. "Never. I tell you, he means to move against us. Why else would he leave the seat of his power?" 
+"A hundred reasons. Duty. Honor. He yearns to write his name large across the book of history, to get 
+away from his wife, or both. Perhaps he just wants to be warm for once in his life." 
+"His wife is Lady Arryn's sister. It's a wonder Lysa was not here to greet us with her accusations." 
+Bran looked down. There was a narrow ledge beneath the window, only a few inches wide. He tried to 
+lower himself toward it. Too far. He would never reach. 
+"You fret too much. Lysa Arryn is a frightened cow." 
+"That frightened cow shared Jon Arryn's bed." 
+"If she knew anything, she would have gone to Robert before she fled King's Landing." 
+"When he had already agreed to foster that weakling son of hers at Casterly Rock? I think not. She 
+knew the boy's life would be hostage to her silence. She may grow bolder now that he's safe atop the 
+Eyrie." 
+"Mothers." The man made the word sound like a curse. "I think birthing does something to your minds. 
+You are all mad." He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "Let Lady Arryn grow as bold as she likes. 
+Whatever she knows, whatever she thinks she knows, she has no proof." He paused a moment. "Or 
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+
+does she?" 
+"Do you think the king will require proof?" the woman said. "I tell you, he loves me not." 
+"And whose fault is that, sweet sister?" 
+Bran studied the ledge. He could drop down. It was too narrow to land on, but if he could catch hold as 
+he fell past, pull himself up . . . except that might make a noise, draw them to the window. He was not 
+sure what he was hearing, but he knew it was not meant for his ears. 
+"You are as blind as Robert," the woman was saying. 
+"If you mean I see the same thing, yes," the man said. "I see a man who would sooner die than betray his 
+king." 
+"He betrayed one already, or have you forgotten?" the woman said. "Oh, I don't deny he's loyal to 
+Robert, that's obvious. What happens when Robert dies and Joff takes the throne? And the sooner that 
+comes to pass, the safer we'll all be. My husband grows more restless every day. Having Stark beside 
+him will only make him worse. He's still in love with the sister, the insipid little dead sixteen-year-old. 
+How long till he decides to put me aside for some new Lyanna?" 
+Bran was suddenly very frightened. He wanted nothing so much as to go back the way he had come, to 
+find his brothers. Only what would he tell them? He had to get closer, Bran realized. He had to see who 
+was talking. 
+The man sighed. "You should think less about the future and more about the pleasures at hand." 
+"Stop that!" the woman said. Bran heard the sudden slap of flesh on flesh, then the man's laughter. 
+Bran pulled himself up, climbed over the gargoyle, crawled out onto the roof. This was the easy way. He 
+moved across the roof to the next gargoyle, right above the window of the room where they were talking. 
+"All this talk is getting very tiresome, sister," the man said. "Come here and be quiet." 
+Bran sat astride the gargoyle, tightened his legs around it, and swung himself around, upside down. He 
+hung by his legs and slowly stretched his head down toward the window. The world looked strange 
+upside down. A courtyard swam dizzily below him, its stones still wet with melted snow. 
+Bran looked in the window. 
+Inside the room, a man and a woman were wrestling. They were both naked. Bran could not tell who 
+they were. The man's back was to him, and his body screened the woman from view as he pushed her 
+up against a wall. 
+There were soft, wet sounds. Bran realized they were kissing. He watched, wide-eyed and frightened, 
+his breath tight in his throat. The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been hurting 
+her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her throat. "Stop it," she said, "stop it, stop it. Oh, 
+please . . ." But her voice was low and weak, and she did not push him away. Her hands buried 
+themselves in his hair, his tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast. 
+Bran saw her face. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open, moaning. Her golden hair swung 
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+
+from side to side as her head moved back and forth, but still he recognized the queen. 
+He must have made a noise. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she was staring right at him. She screamed. 
+Everything happened at once then. ' The woman pushed the man 
+away wildly, shouting and pointing. Bran tried to pull himself up, 
+bending double as he reached for the gargoyle. He *as in too much of 
+a hurry. His hand scraped uselessly across smooth stone, and in his 
+panic his legs slipped, and suddenly he was failing. There was an 
+instant of vertigo, a sickening lurch as the window flashed past. He 
+shot out a hand, grabbed for the ledge, lost it, caught it again with his 
+other hand. He swung against the building, hard. The impact took the 
+breath out of him. Bran dangled, one-handed, panting. 
+Faces appeared in the window above him. 
+The queen. And now Bran recognized the man beside her. They looked as much alike as reflections in a 
+mirror. 
+"He saw us," the woman said shrilly. 
+"So he did," the man said. 
+Bran's fingers started to slip. He grabbed the ledge with his other hand. Fingernails dug into unyielding 
+stone. The man reached down. "Take my hand," he said. "Before you fall." 
+Bran seized his arm and held on tight with all his strength. The man yanked him up to the ledge. "What 
+are you doing?" the woman demanded. 
+The man ignored her. He was very strong. He stood Bran up on the sill. "How old are you, boy?" 
+"Seven," Bran said, shaking with relief. His fingers had dug deep gouges in the man's forearm. He let go 
+sheepishly. 
+The man looked over at the woman. "The things I do for love," he said with loathing. He gave Bran a 
+shove. 
+Screaming, Bran went backward out the window into empty air. There was nothing to grab on to. The 
+courtyard rushed up to meet him. 
+Somewhere off in the distance, a wolf was howling. Crows circled the broken tower, waiting for corn. 
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+
+TYRION 
+Somewhere in the great stone maze of Winterfell, a wolf howled. The sound hung over the castle like a 
+flag of mourning. 
+Tyrion Lannister looked up from his books and shivered, though the library was snug and warm. 
+Something about the howling of a wolf took a man right out of his here and now and left him in a dark 
+forest of the mind, running naked before the pack. 
+When the direwolf howled again, Tyrion shut the heavy leatherbound cover on the book he was reading, 
+a hundredyear-old discourse on the changing of the seasons by a long-dead maester. He covered a yawn 
+with the back of his hand. His reading lamp was flickering, its oil all but gone, as dawn light leaked 
+through the high windows. He had been at it all night, but that was nothing new. Tyrion Lannister was not 
+much a one for sleeping. 
+His legs were stiff and sore as he eased down off the bench. He massaged some life back into them and 
+limped heavily to the table where the septon was snoring softly, his head pillowed on an open book in 
+front of him. Tyrion glanced at the title. A life of the Grand Maester Aethelmure, no wonder. "Chayle," he 
+said softly. The young man jerked up, blinking, confused, the crystal of his order swinging wildly on its 
+silver chain. "I'm off to break my fast. See that you return the books to the shelves. Be gentle with the 
+Valyrian scrolls, the parchment is very dry. Ayrmidon's Engines of War is quite rare, and yours is 
+the only complete copy I've ever seen." Chayle gaped at him, still halfasleep. Patiently, Tyrion repeated 
+his instructions, then clapped the septon on the shoulder and left him to his tasks. 
+Outside, Tyrion swallowed a lungful of the cold morning air and began his laborious descent of the steep 
+stone steps that corkscrewed around the exterior of the library tower. It was slow going; the steps were 
+cut high and narrow, while his legs were short and twisted. The rising sun had not yet cleared the walls of 
+Winterfell, but the men were already hard at it in the yard below. Sandor Clegane's rasping voice drifted 
+up to him. "The boy is a long time dying. I wish he would be quicker about it." 
+Tyrion glanced down and saw the Hound standing with young Joffrey as squires swarmed around them. 
+"At least he dies quietly," the prince replied. "It's the wolf that makes the noise. I could scarce sleep last 
+night." 
+Clegane cast a long shadow across the hard-packed earth as his squire lowered the black helm over his 
+head. "I could silence the creature, if it please you," he said through his open visor. His boy placed a 
+longsword in his hand. He tested the weight of it, slicing at the cold morning air. Behind him, the yard 
+rang to the clangor of steel on steel. 
+The notion seemed to delight the prince. "Send a dog to kill a dog!" he exclaimed. "Winterfell is so 
+infested with wolves, the Starks would never miss one." 
+Tyrion hopped off the last step onto the yard. "I beg to differ, nephew," he said. "The Starks can count 
+past six. Unlike some princes I might name." 
+Joffrey had the grace at least to blush. 
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+
+"A voice from nowhere," Sandor said. He peered through his helm, looking this way and that. "Spirits of 
+the air!" 
+The prince laughed, as he always laughed when his bodyguard did this mummer's farce. Tyrion was used 
+to it. "Down here." 
+The tall man peered down at the ground, and pretended to notice him. "The little lord Tyrion," he said. 
+"My pardons. I did not see you standing there." 
+"I am in no mood for your insolence today." Tyrion turned to his nephew. "Joffrey, it is past time you 
+called on Lord Eddard and his lady, to offer them your comfort." 
+Joffrey looked as petulant as only a boy prince can look. "What good will my comfort do them?" 
+"None," Tyrion said. "Yet it is expected of you. Your absence has been noted." 
+"The Stark boy is nothing to me," Joffrey said. "I cannot abide the wailing of women." 
+Tyrion Lannister reached up and slapped his nephew hard across the face. The boy's cheek began to 
+redden. 
+"One word," Tyrion said, "and I will hit you again." 
+"I'm going to tell Mother!" Joffrey exclaimed. 
+Tyrion hit him again. Now both cheeks flamed. 
+"You tell your mother," Tyrion told him. "But first you get yourself to Lord and Lady Stark, and you fall 
+to your knees in front of them, and you tell them how very sorry you are, and that you are at their service 
+if there is the slightest thing you can do for them or theirs in this desperate hour, and that all your prayers 
+go with them. Do you understand? Do you?" 
+The boy looked as though he was going to cry. Instead, he managed a weak nod. Then he turned and 
+fled headlong from the yard, holding his cheek. Tyrion watched him run. 
+A shadow fell across his face. He turned to find Clegane looming overhead like a cliff. His soot-dark 
+armor seemed to blot out the sun. He had lowered the visor on his helm. It was fashioned in the likeness 
+of a snarling black hound, fearsome to behold, but Tyrion had always thought it a great improvement 
+over Clegane's hideously burned face. 
+"The prince will remember that, little lord," the Hound warned him. The helm turned his laugh into a 
+hollow rumble. 
+"I pray he does," Tyrion Lannister replied. "If he forgets, be a good dog and remind him." He glanced 
+around the courtyard. "Do you know where I might find my brother?" 
+"Breaking fast with the queen." 
+"Ah," Tyrion said. He gave Sandor Clegane a perfunctory nod and walked away as briskly as his 
+stunted legs would carry him, whistling. He pitied the first knight to try the Hound today. The man did 
+have a temper. 
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+
+A cold, cheerless meal had been laid out in the morning room of the Guest House. Jaime sat at table with 
+Cersei and the children, talking in low, hushed voices. 
+"Is Robert still abed?" Tyrion asked as he seated himself, uninvited, at the table. 
+His sister peered at him with the same expression of faint distaste she had worn since the day he was 
+born. "The king has not slept at all," she told him. "He is with Lord Eddard. He has taken their sorrow 
+deeply to heart." 
+"He has a large heart, our Robert," Jaime said with a lazy smile. There was very little that Jaime took 
+seriously. Tyrion knew that about 
+his brother, and forgave it. During all the terrible long years of his childhood, only Jaime had ever shown 
+him the smallest measure of affection or respect, and for that Tyrion was willing to forgive him most 
+anything. 
+A servant approached. "Bread," Tyrion told him, "and two of those little fish, and a mug of that good 
+dark beer to wash them down. Oh, and some bacon. Burn it until it turns black." The man bowed and 
+moved off. Tyrion turned back to his siblings. Twins, male and female. They looked very much the part 
+this morning. Both had chosen a deep green that matched their eyes. Their blond curls were all a 
+fashionable tumble, and gold ornaments shone at wrists and fingers and throats. 
+Tyrion wondered what it would be like to have a twin, and decided that he would rather not know. Bad 
+enough to face himself in a looking glass every day. Another him was a thought too dreadful to 
+contemplate. 
+Prince Tommen spoke up. "Do you have news of Bran, Uncle?" 
+"I stopped by the sickroom last night," Tyrion announced. "There was no change. The maester thought 
+that a hopeful sign." 
+"I don't want Brandon to die," Tommen said timorously. He was a sweet boy. Not like his brother, but 
+then Jaime and Tyrion were somewhat less than peas in a pod themselves. 
+"Lord Eddard had a brother named Brandon as well," Jaime mused. "One of the hostages murdered by 
+Targaryen. It seems to be an unlucky name." 
+"Oh, not so unlucky as all that, surely," Tyrion said. The servant brought his plate. He ripped off a chunk 
+of black bread. 
+Cersei was studying him warily. "What do you mean?" 
+Tyrion gave her a crooked smile. "Why, only that Tommen may get his wish. The maester thinks the boy 
+may yet live." He took a sip of beer. 
+Myrcella gave a happy gasp, and Tommen smiled nervously, but it was not the children Tyrion was 
+watching. The glance that passed between Jaime and Cersei lasted no more than a second, but he did not 
+miss it. Then his sister dropped her gaze to the table. "That is no mercy. These northern gods are cruel to 
+let the child linger in such pain." 
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+"What were the maester's words?" Jaime asked. 
+The bacon crunched when he bit into it. Tyrion chewed thoughtfully for a moment and said, "He thinks 
+that if the boy were going to die, he would have done so already. It has been four days with no change." 
+"Will Bran get better, Uncle?" little Myrcella asked. She had all of her mother's beauty, and none of her 
+nature. 
+"His back is broken, little one," Tyrion told her. "The fall shattered his legs as well. They keep him alive 
+with honey and water, or he would starve to death. Perhaps, if he wakes, he will be able to eat real food, 
+but he will never walk again." 
+"If he wakes," Cersei repeated. "Is that likely?" 
+"The gods alone know," Tyrion told her. "The maester only hopes." He chewed some more bread. "I 
+would swear that wolf of his is keeping the boy alive. The creature is outside his window day and night, 
+howling. Every time they chase it away, it returns. The maester said they closed the window once, to shut 
+out the noise, and Bran seemed to weaken. When they opened it again, his heart beat stronger." 
+The queen shuddered. "There is something unnatural about those animals," she said. "They are 
+dangerous. I will not have any of them coming south with us." 
+Jaime said, "You'll have a hard time stopping them, sister. They follow those girls everywhere." 
+Tyrion started on his fish. "Are you leaving soon, then?" 
+"Not near soon enough," Cersei said. Then she frowned. "Are we leaving?" she echoed. "What about 
+you? Gods, don't tell me you are staying here?" 
+Tyrion shrugged. "Benjen Stark is returning to the Night's Watch with his brother's bastard. I have a 
+mind to go with them and see this Wall we have all heard so much of." 
+Jaime smiled. "I hope you're not thinking of taking the black on us, sweet brother." 
+Tyrion laughed. "What, me, celibate? The whores would go begging from Dorne to Casterly Rock. No, 
+I just want to stand on top of the Wall and piss off the edge of the world." 
+Cersei stood abruptly. "The children don't need to hear this filth. Tommen, Myrcella, come." She strode 
+briskly from the morning room, her train and her pups trailing behind her. 
+Jaime Lannister regarded his brother thoughtfully with those cool green eyes. "Stark will never consent to 
+leave Winterfell with his son lingering in the shadow of death." 
+"He will if Robert commands it," Tyrion said. "And Robert will command it. There is nothing Lord 
+Eddard can do for the boy in any case." 
+"He could end his torment," Jaime said. "I would, if it were my son. It would be a mercy." 
+"I advise against putting that suggestion to Lord Eddard, sweet brother," Tyrion said. "He would not 
+take it kindly." 
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+
+"Even if the boy does live, he will be a cripple. Worse than a cripple. A grotesque. Give me a good 
+clean death." 
+Tyrion replied with a shrug that accentuated the twist of his shoulders. "Speaking for the grotesques," he 
+said, "I beg to differ. Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities." 
+Jaime smiled. "You are a perverse little imp, aren't you?" 
+"Oh, yes," Tyrion admitted. "I hope the boy does wake. I would be most interested to hear what he 
+might have to say." 
+His brother's smile curdled like sour milk. "Tyrion, my sweet brother," he said darkly, "there are times 
+when you give me cause to wonder whose side you are on." 
+Tyrion's mouth was full of bread and fish. He took a swallow of strong black beer to wash it all down, 
+and grinned up wolfishly at Jaime, "Why, Jaime, my sweet brother," he said, "you wound me. You know 
+how much I love my family." 
+JON 
+on climbed the steps slowly, trying not to think that this might be the last time ever. Ghost padded silently 
+beside him. Outside, snow swirled through the castle gates, and the yard was all noise and chaos, but 
+inside the thick stone walls it was still warm and quiet. Too quiet for Jon's liking. 
+He reached the landing and stood for a long moment, afraid. Ghost nuzzled at his hand. He took courage 
+from that. He straightened, and entered the room. 
+Lady Stark was there beside his bed. She had been there, day and night, for close on a fortnight. Not 
+for a moment had she left Bran's side. She had her meals brought to her there, and chamber pots as well, 
+and a small hard bed to sleep on, though it was said she had scarcely slept at all. She fed him herself, the 
+honey and water and herb mixture that sustained life. Not once did she leave the room. So Jon had 
+stayed away. 
+But now there was no more time. 
+He stood in the door for a moment, afraid to speak, afraid to come closer. The window was open. 
+Below, a wolf howled. Ghost heard and lifted his head. 
+Lady Stark looked over. For a moment she did not seem to recognize him. Finally she blinked. "What 
+areyou doing here?" she asked in a voice strangely flat and emotionless. 
+"I came to see Bran," Jon said. "To say good-bye." 
+Her face did not change. Her long auburn hair was dull and tangled. She looked as though she had aged 
+twenty years. "You've said it. Now go away." 
+Part of him wanted only to flee, but he knew that if he did he might never see Bran again. He took a 
+nervous step into the room. "Please," he said. 
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+
+Something cold moved in her eyes. "I told you to leave," she said. "We don't want you here." 
+Once that would have sent him running. Once that might even have made him cry. Now it only made him 
+angry. He would be a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch soon, and face worse dangers than Catelyn 
+Tully Stark. "He's my brother," he said. 
+"Shall I call the guards?" 
+"Call them," Jon said, defiant. "You can't stop me from seeing him." He crossed the room, keeping the 
+bed between them, and looked down on Bran where he lay. 
+She was holding one of his hands. It looked like a claw. This was not the Bran he remembered. The 
+flesh had all gone from him. His skin stretched tight over bones like sticks. Under the blanket, his legs 
+bent in ways that made Jon sick. His eyes were sunken deep into black pits; open, but they saw nothing. 
+The fall had shrunken him somehow. He looked half a leaf, as if the first strong wind would carry him off 
+to his grave. 
+Yet under the frail cage of those shattered ribs, his chest rose and fell with each shallow breath. 
+"Bran," he said, "I'm sorry I didn't come before. I was afraid." He could feel the tears rolling down his 
+cheeks. Jon no longer cared. "Don't die, Bran. Please. We're all waiting for you to wake up. Me and 
+Robb and the girls, everyone . . ." 
+Lady Stark was watching. She had not raised a cry. Jon took that for acceptance. Outside the window, 
+the direwolf howled again. The wolf that Bran had not had time to name. 
+"I have to go now," Jon said. "Uncle Benjen is waiting. I'm to go north to the Wall. We have to leave 
+today, before the snows come." He remembered how excited Bran had been at the prospect of the 
+journey. It was more than he could bear, the thought of leaving him behind like this. Jon brushed away his 
+tears, leaned over, and kissed his brother lightly on the lips. 
+"I wanted him to stay here with me," Lady Stark said softly. 
+Jon watched her, wary. She was not even looking at him. She was 
+84 GEORGE R.R. MARTM 
+talking to him, but for a part of her, it was as though he were not even in the room. 
+"I prayed for it," she said dully. "He was my special boy. I went to the sept and prayed seven times to 
+the seven faces of god that Ned would change his mind and leave him here with me. Sometimes prayers 
+are answered." 
+Jon did not know what to say. "It wasn't your fault," he managed after an awkward silence. 
+Her eyes found him. They were full of poison. "I need none of your absolution, bastard." 
+Jon lowered his eyes. She was cradling one of Bran's hands. He took the other, squeezed it. Fingers like 
+the bones of birds. "Good-bye," he said. 
+He was at the door when she called out to him. "Jon," she said. He should have kept going, but she had 
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+
+never called him by his name before. He turned to find her looking at his face, as if she were seeing it for 
+the first time. 
+"Yes?" he said. 
+"It should have been you," she told him. Then she turned back to Bran and began to weep, her whole 
+body shaking with the sobs. Jon had never seen her cry before. 
+It was a long walk down to the yard. 
+Outside, everything was noise and confusion. Wagons were being loaded, men were shouting, horses 
+were being harnessed and saddled and led from the stables. A light snow had begun to fall, and everyone 
+was in an uproar to be off. 
+Robb was in the middle of it, shouting commands with the best of them. He seemed to have grown of 
+late, as if Bran's fall and his mother's collapse had somehow made him stronger. Grey Wind was at his 
+side. 
+"Uncle Benjen is looking for you," he told Jon. "He wanted to be gone an hour ago." 
+"I know," Jon said. "Soon." He looked around at all the noise and confusion. "Leaving is harder than I 
+thought." 
+"For me too," Robb said. He had snow in his hair, melting from the heat of his body. "Did you see him?" 
+Jon nodded, not trusting himself to speak. 
+"He's not going to die," Robb said. "I know it." 
+"You Starks are hard to kill," Jon agreed. His voice was flat and tired. The visit had taken all the strength 
+from him. 
+Robb knew something was wrong. "My mother 
+"She was . . . very kind," Jon told him. 
+Robb looked relieved. "Good." He smiled. "The next time I see you, you'll be all in black." 
+Jon forced himself to smile back. "It was always my color. How long do you think it will be?" 
+"Soon enough," Robb promised. He pulled Jon to him and embraced him fiercely. "Farewell, Snow." 
+Jon hugged him back. "And you, Stark. Take care of Bran." 
+"I will." They broke apart and looked at each other awkwardly. "Uncle Benjen said to send you to the 
+stables if I saw you," Robb finally said. 
+"I have one more farewell to make," Jon told him. 
+"Then I haven't seen you," Robb replied. Jon left him standing there in the snow, surrounded by wagons 
+and wolves and horses. It was a short walk to the armory. He picked up his package and took the 
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+
+covered bridge across to the Keep. 
+Arya was in her room, packing a polished ironwood chest that was bigger than she was. Nymeria was 
+helping. Arya would only have to point, and the wolf would bound across the room, snatch up some wisp 
+of silk in her jaws, and fetch it back. But when she smelled Ghost, she sat down on her haunches and 
+yelped at them. 
+Arya glanced behind her, saw Jon, and jumped to her feet. She threw her skinny arms tight around his 
+neck. "I was afraid you were gone," she said, her breath catching in her throat. "They wouldn't let me out 
+to say good-bye." 
+"What did you do now?" Jon was amused. 
+Arya disentangled herself from him and made a face. "Nothing. I was all packed and everything." She 
+gestured at the huge chest, no more than a third full, and at the clothes that were scattered all over the 
+room. "Septa Mordane says I have to do it all over. My things weren't properly folded, she says. A 
+proper southron lady doesn't just throw her clothes inside her chest like old rags, she says." 
+"Is that what you did, little sister?" 
+"Well, they're going to get all messed up anyway," she said. "Who cares how they're folded?" 
+"Septa Mordane," Jon told her. "I don't think she'd like Nymeria helping, either." The she-wolf regarded 
+him silently with her dark golden eyes. "It's just as well. I have something for you to take with you, and it 
+has to be packed very carefully." 
+Her face lit up. "A present?" 
+"You could call it that. Close the door." 
+Wary but excited, Arya checked the hall. "Nymeria, here. Guard." She left the wolf out there to warn of 
+intruders and closed the door. By 
+then Jon had pulled off the rags he'd wrapped it in. He held it out to her. 
+Arya's eyes went wide. Dark eyes, like his. "A sword," she said in a small, hushed breath. 
+The scabbard was soft grey leather, supple as sin. Jon drew out the blade slowly, so she could see the 
+deep blue sheen of the steel. "This is no toy," he told her. "Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges 
+are sharp enough to shave with." 
+"Girls don't shave," Arya said. 
+"Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs?" 
+She giggled at him. "It's so skinny." 
+"So are you," Jon told her. "I had Mikken make this special. The bravos use swords like this in Pentos 
+and Myr and the other Free Cities. It won't hack a man's head off, but it can poke him full of holes if 
+you're fast enough." 
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+
+"I can be fast," Arya said. 
+"You'll have to work at it every day." He put the sword in her hands, showed her how to hold it, and 
+stepped back. "How does it feel? Do you like the balance?" 
+"I think so," Arya said. 
+"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end." 
+Arya gave him a whap on the arm with the flat of her blade. The blow stung, but Jon found himself 
+grinning like an idiot. "I know which end to use," Arya said. A doubtful look crossed her face. "Septa 
+Mordane will take it away from me." 
+"Not if she doesn't know you have it," Jon said. 
+"Who will I practice with?" 
+"You'll find someone," Jon promised her. "King's Landing is a true city, a thousand times the size of 
+Winterfell. Until you find a partner, watch how they fight in the yard. Run, and ride, make yourself strong. 
+And whatever you do . . ." 
+Arya knew what was coming next. They said it together. 
+11 * . . don't . . . tell . . . Sansa!" 
+Jon messed up her hair. "I will miss you, little sister." 
+Suddenly she looked like she was going to cry. "I wish you were coming with us." 
+"Different roads sometimes lead to the same castle. Who knows?" He was feeling better now. He was 
+not going to let himself be sad. "I better go. I'll spend my first year on the Wall emptying chamber pots if I 
+keep Uncle Ben waiting any longer." 
+Arya ran to him for a last hug. "Put down the sword first," Jon 
+warned her, laughing. She set it aside almost shyly and showered him with kisses. 
+When he turned back at the door, she was holding it again, trying it for balance. "I almost forgot," he told 
+her. "All the best swords have names." 
+"Like Ice," she said. She looked at the blade in her hand. "Does this have a name? Oh, tell me." 
+"Can't you guess?" Jon teased. "Your very favorite thing." 
+Arya seemed puzzled at first. Then it came to her. She was that quick. They said it together: 
+"Needle!" 
+The memory of her laughter warmed him on the long ride north. 
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+DAENERYS 
+Daenerys Targaryen wed Khal Drogo with fear and barbaric splendor in a field beyond the walls of 
+Pentos, for the Dothraki believed that all things of importance in a man's life must be done beneath the 
+open sky. 
+Drogo had called his khalasar to attend him and they had come, forty thousand Dothraki warriors and 
+uncounted numbers of women, children, and slaves. Outside the city walls they camped with their vast 
+herds, raising palaces of woven grass, eating everything in sight, and making the good folk of Pentos 
+more anxious with every passing day. 
+"My fellow magisters; have doubled the size of the city guard," Illyrio told them over platters of honey 
+duck and orange snap peppers one night at the manse that had been Drogo's. The khal had joined his 
+khalasar, his estate given over to Daenerys and her brother until the wedding. 
+"Best we get Princess Daenerys wedded quickly before they hand half the wealth of Pentos away to 
+sellswords and bravos," Ser Jorah Mormont jested. The exile had offered her brother his sword the night 
+Dany had been sold to Kbal Drogo; Viserys had accepted eagerly. Mormont had been their constant 
+companion ever since. 
+Magister Illyrio laughed lightly through his forked beard, but Viserys did not so much as smile. "He can 
+have her tomorrow, if he 
+likes," her brother said. He glanced over at Dany, and she lowered her eyes. "So long as he pays the 
+price." 
+Illyrio waved a languid hand in the air, rings glittering on his fat fingers. "I have told you, all is settled. 
+Trust me. The khal has promised you a crown, and you shall have it." 
+"Yes, but when?" 
+"When the khal chooses," Illyrio said. "He will have the girl first, and after they are wed he must make his 
+procession across the plains and present her to the dosh khaleen at Vaes Dolthrak. After that, perhaps. If 
+the omens favor war." 
+Viserys seethed with impatience. "I piss on Dothraki omens. The Usurper sits on my father's throne. 
+How long must I wait?" 
+Illyrio gave a massive shrug. "You have waited most of your life, great king. What is another few months, 
+another few years?" 
+Ser Jorah, who had traveled as far east as Vaes Dothrak, nodded in agreement. "I counsel you to be 
+patient, Your Grace. The Dothraki are true to their word, but they do things in their own time. A lesser 
+man may beg a favor from the khal, but must never presume to berate him." 
+Viserys bristled. "Guard your tongue, Mormont, or I'll have it out. I am no lesser man, I am the rightful 
+Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. The dragon does not beg." 
+Ser Jorah lowered his eyes respectfully. Illyrio smiled enigmatically and tore a wing from the duck. 
+Honey and grease ran over his fingers and dripped down into his beard as he nibbled at the tender meat. 
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+There are no more dragons, Dany thought, staring at her brother, though she did not dare say it aloud. 
+Yet that night she dreamt of one. Viserys was hitting her, hurting her. She was naked, clumsy with fear. 
+She ran from him, but her body seemed thick and ungainly. He struck her again. She stumbled and fell. 
+"You woke the dragon," he screamed as he kicked her. "You woke the dragon, you woke the dragon." 
+Her thighs were slick with blood. She closed her eyes and whimpered. As if in answer, there was a 
+hideous ripping sound and the crackling of some great fire. When she looked again, Viserys was gone, 
+great columns of flame rose all around, and in the midst of them was the dragon. It turned its great head 
+slowly. When its molten eyes found hers, she woke, shaking and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. She 
+had never been so afraid . . . 
+. . . until the day of her wedding came at last. 
+The ceremony began at dawn and continued until dusk, an endless day of drinking and feasting and 
+fighting. A mighty earthen ramp had been raised amid the grass palaces, and there Dany was seated 
+beside 
+Khal Drogo, above the seething sea of Dothraki. She had never seen so many people in one place, nor 
+people so strange and frightening. The horselords might put on rich fabrics and sweet perfumes when 
+they visited the Free Cities, but out under the open sky they kept the old ways. Men and women alike 
+wore painted leather vests over bare chests and horsehair leggings cinched by bronze medallion belts, 
+and the warriors greased their long braids with fat from the rendering pits. They gorged themselves on 
+horseflesh roasted with honey and peppers, drank themselves blind on fermented mare's milk and Illyrio's 
+fine wines, and spat jests at each other across the fires, their voices harsh and alien in Dany's ears. 
+Viserys was seated just below her, splendid in a new black wool tunic with a scarlet dragon on the 
+chest. Illyrio and Ser Jorah sat beside him. Theirs was a place of high honor, just below the khal's own 
+bloodriders, but Dany could see the anger in her brother's lilac eyes. He did not like sitting beneath her, 
+and he fumed when the slaves offered each dish first to the khal and his bride, and served him from the 
+portions they refused. He could do nothing but nurse his resentment, so nurse it he did, his mood growing 
+blacker by the hour at each insult to his person. 
+Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde. Her brother had told her 
+to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. She did her 
+best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal 
+Drogo might react. Food was brought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and 
+Dothraki blood pies, and later fruits and sweetgrass stews and delicate pastries from the kitchens of 
+Pentos, but she waved it all away. Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it 
+down. 
+There was no one to talk to. Khal Drogo shouted commands and jests down to his bloodriders, and 
+laughed at their replies, but he scarcely glanced at Dany beside him. They had no common language. 
+Dothraki was incomprehensible to her, and the khal knew only a few words of the bastard Valyrian of 
+the Free Cities, and none at all of the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She would even have 
+welcomed the conversation of Illyrio and her brother, but they were too far below to hear her. 
+So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat, talking silently to herself. I 
+am blood of the dragon, she told herself. I am Daenerys Stormborn, Princess of Dragonstone, of the 
+blood and seed of Aegon the Conqueror. 
+The sun was only a quarter of the way up the sky when she saw her 
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+first man die. Drums were beating as some of the women danced for the khal. Drogo watched without 
+expression, but his eyes followed their movements, and from time to time he would toss down a bronze 
+medallion for the women to fight over. 
+The warriors were watching too. One of them finally stepped into the circle, grabbed a dancer by the 
+arm, pushed her down to the ground, and mounted her right there, as a stallion mounts a mare. Illyrio had 
+told her that might happen. "The Dothraki mate like the animals in their herds. There is no privacy in a 
+khalasar, and they do not understand sin or shame as we do." 
+Dany looked away from the coupling, frightened when she realized what was happening, but a second 
+warrior stepped forward, and a third, and soon there was no way to avert her eyes. Then two men 
+seized the same woman. She heard a shout, saw a shove, and in the blink of an eye the arakhs were out, 
+long razor-sharp blades, half sword and half scythe. A dance of death began as the warriors circled and 
+slashed, leaping toward each other, whirling the blades around their heads, shrieking insults at each clash. 
+No one made a move to interfere. 
+It ended as quickly as it began. The arakhs shivered together faster than Dany could follow, one man 
+missed a step, the other swung his blade in a flat arc. Steel bit into flesh just above the Dothraki's waist, 
+and opened him from backbone to belly button, spilling his entrails into the dust. As the loser died, the 
+winner took hold of the nearest woman-not even the one they had been quarreling over-and had her 
+there and then. Slaves carried off the body, and the dancing resumed. 
+Magister Illyrio had warned Dany about this too. "A Dothraki wedding without at least three deaths is 
+deemed a dull affair," he had said. Her wedding must have been especially blessed; before the day was 
+over, a dozen men had died. 
+As the hours passed, the terror grew in Dany, until it was all she could do not to scream. She was afraid 
+of the Dothraki, whose ways seemed alien and monstrous, as if they were beasts in human skins and not 
+true men at all. She was afraid of her brother, of what he might do if she failed him. Most of all, she was 
+afraid of what would happen tonight under the stars, when her brother gave her up to the hulking giant 
+who sat drinking beside her with a face as still and cruel as a bronze mask. 
+I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself again. 
+When at last the sun was low in the sky, Khal Drogo clapped his hands together, and the drums and the 
+shouting and feasting came to a 
+sudden halt. Drogo stood and pulled Dany to her feet beside him. It was time for her bride gifts. 
+And after the gifts, she knew, after the sun had gone down, it would be time for the first ride and the 
+consummation of her marriage. Dany tried to put the thought aside, but it would not leave her. She 
+hugged herself to try to keep from shaking. 
+Her brother Viserys gifted her with three handmaids. Dany knew they had cost him nothing; Illyrio no 
+doubt had provided the girls. Irri and Jhiqui were copper-skinned Dothraki with black hair and 
+almondshaped eyes, Doreah a fair-haired, blue-eyed Lysene girl. "These are no common servants, sweet 
+sister," her brother told her as they were brought forward one by one. "Illyrio and I selected them 
+personally for you. Irri will teach you riding, Jhiqui the Dothraki tongue, and Doreah will instruct you in 
+the womanly arts of love." He smiled thinly. "She's very good, Illyrio and I can both swear to that." 
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+Ser Jorah Mormont apologized for his gift. "It is a small thing, my princess, but all a poor exile could 
+afford," he said as he laid a small stack of old books before her. They were histories and songs of the 
+Seven Kingdoms, she saw, written in the Common Tongue. She thanked him with all her heart. 
+Magister Illyrio murmured a command, and four burly slaves hurried forward, bearing between them a 
+great cedar chest bound in bronze. When she opened it, she found piles of the finest velvets and damasks 
+the Free Cities could produce . . . and resting on top, nestled in the soft cloth, three huge eggs. Dany 
+gasped. They were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, each different than the others, patterned 
+in such rich colors that at first she thought they were crusted with jewels, and so large it took both of her 
+hands to hold one. She lifted it delicately, expecting that it would be made of some fine porcelain or 
+delicate enamel, or even blown glass, but it was much heavier than that, as if it were all of solid stone. 
+The surface of the shell was covered with tiny scales, and as she turned the egg between her fingers, they 
+shimmered like polished metal in the light of the setting sun. One egg was a deep green, with burnished 
+bronze flecks that came and went depending on how Dany turned it. Another was pale cream streaked 
+with gold. The last was black, as black as a midnight sea, yet alive with scarlet ripples and swirls. "What 
+are they?" she asked, her voice hushed and full of wonder. 
+"Dragon's eggs, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai," said Magister Illyrio. "The eons have turned 
+them to stone, yet still they burn bright with beauty." 
+"I shall treasure them always." Dany had heard tales of such eggs, 
+but she had never seen one, nor thought to see one. It was a truly magnificent gift, though she knew that 
+Illyrio could afford to be lavish. He had collected a fortune in horses and slaves for his part in selling her 
+to Khal Drogo. 
+The khal's bloodriders offered her the traditional three weapons, and splendid weapons they were. 
+Haggo gave her a great leather whip with a silver handle, Cohollo a magnificent arakh chased in gold, and 
+Qotho a double-curved dragonbone bow taller than she was. Magister Illyrio and Ser Jorah had taught 
+her the traditional refusals for these offerings. "This is a gift worthy of a great warrior, 0 blood of my 
+blood, and I am but a woman. Let my lord husband bear these in my stead." And so Khal Drogo too 
+received his "bride gifts." 
+Other gifts she was given in plenty by other Dothraki: slippers and jewels and silver rings for her hair, 
+medallion belts and painted vests and soft furs, sandsilks and jars of scent, needles and feathers and tiny 
+bottles of purple glass, and a gown made from the skin of a thousand mice. "A handsome gift, Khaleesi," 
+Magister Illyrio said of the last, after he had told her what it was. "Most lucky." The gifts mounted up 
+around her in great piles, more gifts than she could possibly imagine, more gifts than she could want or 
+use. 
+And last of all, Khal Drogo brought forth his own bride gift to her. An expectant hush rippled out from 
+the center of the camp as he left her side, growing until it had swallowed the whole khalasar. When he 
+returned, the dense press of Dothraki gift-givers parted before him, and he led the horse to her. 
+She was a young filly, spirited and splendid. Dany knew just enough about horses to know that this was 
+no ordinary animal. There was something about her that took the breath away. She was grey as the 
+winter sea, with a mane like silver smoke. 
+Hesitantly she reached out and stroked the horse's neck, ran her fingers through the silver of her mane. 
+Khal Drogo said something in Dothraki and Magister Illyrio translated. "Silver for the silver of your hair, 
+the khal says." 
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+
+"She's beautiful," Dany murmured. 
+"She is the pride of the khalasar, " Illyrio said. "Custom decrees that the khaleesi must ride a mount 
+worthy of her place by the side of the khaL " 
+Drogo stepped forward and put his hands on her waist. He lifted her up as easily as if she were a child 
+and set her on the thin Dothraki saddle, so much smaller than the ones she was used to. Dany sat there 
+uncertain for a moment. No one had told her about this part. "What should I do?" she asked Illyrio. 
+It was Ser Jorah Mormont who answered. "Take the reins and ride. You need not go far." 
+Nervously Dany gathered the reins.in her hands and slid her feet into the short stirrups. She was only a 
+fair rider; she had spent far more time traveling by ship and wagon and palanquin than by horseback. 
+Praying that she would not fall off and disgrace herself, she gave the filly the lightest and most timid touch 
+with her knees. 
+And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time ever. 
+The silver-grey filly moved with a smooth and silken gait, and the crowd parted for her, every eye upon 
+them. Dany found herself moving faster than she had intended, yet somehow it was exciting rather than 
+terrifying. The horse broke into a trot, and she smiled. Dothraki scrambled to clear a path. The slightest 
+pressure with her legs, the lightest touch on the reins, and the filly responded. She sent it into a gallop, 
+and now the Dothraki were hooting and laughing and shouting at her as they jumped out of her way. As 
+she turned to ride back, a firepit loomed ahead, directly in her path. They were hemmed in on either side, 
+with no room to stop. A daring she had never known filled Daenerys then, and she gave the filly her 
+head. 
+The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings. 
+When she pulled up before Magister Illyrio, she said, "Tell Khal Drogo that he has given me the wind." 
+The fat Pentoshi stroked his yellow beard as he repeated her words in Dothraki, and Dany saw her new 
+husband smile for the first time. 
+The last sliver of sun vanished behind the high walls of Pentos to the west just then. Dany had lost all 
+track of time. Khal Drogo commanded his bloodriders to bring forth his own horse, a lean red stallion. 
+As the khal was saddling the horse, Viserys slid close to Dany on her silver, dug his fingers into her leg, 
+and said, "Please him, sweet sister, or I swear, you will see the dragon wake as it has never woken 
+before." 
+The fear came back to her then, with her brother's words. She felt like a child once more, only thirteen 
+and all alone, not ready for what was about to happen to her. 
+They rode out together as the stars came out, leaving the khalasar and the grass palaces behind. Khal 
+Drogo spoke no word to her, but drove his stallion at a hard trot through the gathering dusk. The tiny 
+silver bells in his long braid rang softly as he rode. "I am the blood of the dragon," she whispered aloud as 
+she followed, trying to keep her courage up. "I am the blood of the dragon. I am the blood of the 
+dragon." The dragon was never afraid. 
+Afterward she could not say how far or how long they had ridden, but it was full dark when they 
+stopped at a grassy place beside a small stream. Drogo swung off his horse and lifted her down from 
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+hers. She felt as fragile as glass in his hands, her limbs as weak as water. She stood there helpless and 
+trembling in her wedding silks while he secured the horses, and when he turned to look at her, she began 
+to cry. 
+Khal Drogo stared at her tears, his face strangely empty of expression. "No," he said. He lifted his hand 
+and rubbed away the tears roughly with a callused thumb. 
+"You speak the Common Tongue," Dany said in wonder. 
+"No," he said again. 
+Perhaps he had only that word, she thought, but it was one word more than she had known he had, and 
+somehow it made her feel a little better. Drogo touched her hair lightly, sliding the silver-blond strands 
+between his fingers and murmuring softly in Dothraki. Dany did not understand the words, yet there was 
+warmth in the tone, a tenderness she had never expected from this man. 
+He put his finger under her chin and lifted her head, so she was looking up into his eyes. Drogo towered 
+over her as he towered over everyone. Taking her lightly under the arms, he lifted her and seated her on 
+a rounded rock beside the stream. Then he sat on the ground facing her, legs crossed beneath him, their 
+faces finally at a height. "No," he said. 
+"Is that the only word you know?" she asked him. 
+Drogo did not reply. His long heavy braid was coiled in the dirt beside him. He pulled it over his right 
+shoulder and began to remove the bells from his hair, one by one. After a moment Dany leaned forward 
+to help. When they were done, Drogo gestured. She understood. Slowly, carefully, she began to undo 
+his braid. 
+It took a long time. All the while he sat there silently, watching her. When she was done, he shook his 
+head, and his hair spread out behind him like a river of darkness, oiled and gleaming. She had never seen 
+hair so long, so black, so thick. 
+Then it was his turn. He began to undress her. 
+His fingers were deft and strangely tender. He removed her silks one by one, carefully, while Dany sat 
+unmoving, silent, looking at his eyes. When he bared her small breasts, she could not help herself. She 
+averted her eyes and covered herself with her hands. "No," Drogo said. He pulled her hands away from 
+her breasts, gently but firmly, then lifted her face again to make her look at him. "No," he repeated. 
+"No," she echoed back at him. 
+He stood her up then and pulled her close to remove the last of her 
+silks. The night air was chilly on her bare skin. She shivered, and gooseflesh covered her arms and legs. 
+She was afraid of what would come next, but for a while nothing happened. Khal Drogo sat with his legs 
+crossed, looking at her, drinking in her body with his eyes. 
+After a while he began to touch her. Lightly at first, then harder. She could sense the fierce strength in his 
+hands, but he never hurt her. He held her hand in his own and brushed her fingers, one by one. He ran a 
+hand gently down her leg. He stroked her face, tracing the curve of her ears, running a finger gently 
+around her mouth. He put both hands in her hair and combed it with his fingers. He turned her around, 
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+massaged her shoulders, slid a knuckle down the path of her spine. 
+It seemed as if hours passed before his hands finally went to her breasts. He stroked the soft skin 
+underneath until it tingled. He circled her nipples with his thumbs, pinched them between thumb and 
+forefinger, then began to pull at her, very lightly at first, then more insistently, until her nipples stiffened 
+and began to ache. 
+He stopped then, and drew her down onto his lap. Dany was flushed and breathless, her heart fluttering 
+in her chest. He cupped her face in his huge hands and looked into his eyes. "No?" he said, and she knew 
+it was a question. 
+She took his hand and moved it down to the wetness between her thighs. "Yes," she whispered as she 
+put his finger inside her. 
+EDDARD 
+The summons came in the hour before the dawn, when the world was still and grey. 
+Alyn shook him roughly from his dreams and Ned stumbled into the predawn chill, groggy from sleep, to 
+find his horse saddled and the king already mounted. Robert wore thick brown gloves and a heavy fur 
+cloak with a hood that covered his ears, and looked for all the world like a bear sitting a horse. "Up, 
+Stark!" he roared. "Up, up! We have matters of state to discuss." 
+"By all means," Ned said. "Come inside, Your Grace." Alyn lifted the flap of the tent. 
+"No, no, no," Robert said. His breath steamed with every word. "The camp is full of ears. Besides, I 
+want to ride out and taste this country of yours." Ser Boros and Ser Meryn waited behind him with a 
+dozen guardsmen, Ned saw. There was nothing to do but rub the sleep from his eyes, dress, and mount 
+up. 
+Robert set the pace, driving his huge black destrier hard as Ned galloped along beside him, trying to 
+keep up. He called out a question as they rode, but the wind blew his words away, and the king did not 
+hear him. After that Ned rode in silence. They soon left the kingsroad and took off across rolling plains 
+dark with mist. By then the guard had fallen back a small distance, safely out of earshot, but still Robert 
+would not slow. 
+Dawn broke as they crested a low ridge, and finally the king pulled up. By then they were miles south of 
+the main party. Robert was flushed and exhilarated as Ned reined up beside him. "Gods," he swore, 
+laughing, "it feels good to get out and tide the way a man was meant to ride! I swear, Ned, this creeping 
+along is enough to drive a man mad." He had never been a patient man, Robert Baratheon. "That 
+damnable wheelhouse, the way it creaks and groans, climbing every bump in the road as if it were a 
+mountain . . . I promise you, if that wretched thing breaks another axle, I'm going to burn it, and Cersei 
+can walk!" 
+Ned laughed. "I will gladly light the torch for you." 
+"Good man!" The king clapped him on the shoulder. "I've half a mind to leave them all behind and just 
+keep going." 
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+A smile touched Ned's lips. "I do believe you mean it." 
+"I do, I do," the king said. "What do you say, Ned? Just you and me, two vagabond knights on the 
+kingsroad, our swords at our sides and the gods know what in front of us, and maybe a farmer's 
+daughter or a tavern wench to warm our beds tonight." 
+"Would that we could," Ned said, "but we have duties now, my liege . . . to the realm, to our children, I 
+to my lady wife and you to your queen. We are not the boys we were." 
+"You were never the boy you were," Robert grumbled. "More's the pity. And yet there was that one 
+time . . . what was her name, that common girl of yours? Becca? No, she was one of mine, gods love 
+her, black hair and these sweet big eyes, you could drown in them. Yours was . . . Aleena? No. You told 
+me once. Was it Merryl? You know the one I mean, your bastard's mother?" 
+"Her name was Wylla," Ned replied with cool courtesy, "and I would sooner not speak of her." 
+"Wylla. Yes." The king grinned. "She must have been a rare wench if she could make Lord Eddard 
+Stark forget his honor, even for an hour. You never told me what she looked like . . ." 
+Ned's mouth tightened in anger. "Nor will 1. Leave it be, Robert, for the love you say you bear me. I 
+dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men." 
+"Gods have mercy, you scarcely knew Catelyn." 
+"I had taken her to wife. She was carrying my child." 
+"You are too hard on yourself, Ned. You always were. Damn it, no woman wants Baelor the Blessed in 
+her bed." He slapped a hand on his knee. "Well, I'll not press you if you feel so strong about it, though I 
+swear, at times you're so prickly you ought to take the hedgehog as your sigil." 
+The rising sun sent fingers of light through the pale white mists of dawn. A wide plain spread out beneath 
+them, bare and brown, its flatness here and there relieved by long, low hummocks. Ned pointed them out 
+to his king. "The barrows of the First Men." 
+Robert frowned. "Have we ridden onto a graveyard?" 
+"There are barrows everywhere in the north, Your Grace," Ned told him. "This land is old." 
+"And cold," Robert grumbled, pulling his cloak more tightly around himself. The guard had reined up well 
+behind them, at the bottom of the ridge. "Well, I did not bring you out here to talk of graves or bicker 
+about your bastard. There was a rider in the night, from Lord Varys in King's Landing. Here." The king 
+pulled a paper from his belt and handed it to Ned. 
+Varys the eunuch was the king's master of whisperers. He served Robert now as he had once served 
+Aerys Targaryen. Ned unrolled the paper with trepidation, thinking of Lysa and her terrible accusation, 
+but the message did not concern Lady Arryn. "What is the source for this information?" 
+"Do you remember Ser Jorah Mormont?" 
+"Would that I might forget him," Ned said bluntly. The Mormonts of Bear Island were an old house, 
+proud and honorable, but their lands were cold and distant and poor. Ser Jorah had tried to swell the 
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+family coffers by selling some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver. As the Mormonts were bannermen to the 
+Starks, his crime had dishonored the north. Ned had made the long journey west to Bear Island, only to 
+find when he arrived that Jorah had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king's justice. Five years 
+had passed since then. 
+"Ser Jorah is now in Pentos, anxious to earn a royal pardon that would allow him to return from exile," 
+Robert explained. "Lord Varys makes good use of him." 
+"So the slaver has become a spy," Ned said with distaste. He handed the letter back. "I would rather he 
+become a corpse." 
+"Varys tells me that spies are more useful than corpses," Robert said. "Jorah aside, what do you make of 
+his report?" 
+"Daenerys Targaryen has wed some Dothraki horselord. What of it? Shall we send her a wedding gift?" 
+The king frowned. "A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it." 
+Ned did not feign surprise; Robert's hatred of the Targaryens was a madness in him. He remembered 
+the angry words they had exchanged when Tywin Lannister had presented Robert with the corpses of 
+Rhaegar's wife and children as a token of fealty. Ned had named that 
+100 GLORGE R.R. MARTIN 
+murder; Robert called it war. When he had protested that the young prince and princess were no more 
+than babes, his new-made king had replied, "I see no babes. Only dragonspawn." Not even Jon Arryn 
+had been able to calm that storm. Eddard Stark had ridden out that very day in a cold rage, to fight the 
+last battles of the war alone in the south. It had taken another death to reconcile them; Lyanna's death, 
+and the grief they had shared over her passing. 
+This time, Ned resolved to keep his temper. "Your Grace, the girl is scarcely more than a child. You are 
+no Tywin Lannister, to slaughter innocents." It was said that Rhaegar's little girl had cried as they dragged 
+her from beneath her bed to face the swords. The boy had been no more than a babe in arms, yet Lord 
+Tywin's soldiers had torn him from his mother's breast and dashed his head against a wall. 
+"And how long will this one remain an innocent?" Robert's mouth grew hard. "This child will soon enough 
+spread her legs and start breeding more dragonspawn to plague me." 
+"Nonetheless," Ned said, "the murder of children . . . it would be vile . . . unspeakable . . ." 
+"Unspeakable?" the king roared. "What Aerys did to your brother Brandon was unspeakable. The way 
+your lord father died, that was unspeakable. And Rhaegar . . . how many times do you think he raped 
+your sister? How many hundreds of times?" His voice had grown so loud that his horse whinnied 
+nervously beneath him. The king jerked the reins hard, quieting the animal, and pointed an angry finger at 
+Ned. "I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I 
+will piss on their graves." 
+Ned knew better than to defy him when the wrath was on him. If the years had not quenched Robert's 
+thirst for revenge, no words of his would help. "You can't get your hands on this one, can you?" he said 
+quietly. 
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+The king's mouth twisted in a bitter grimace. "No, gods be cursed. Some pox-ridden Pentoshi 
+cheesemonger had her brother and her walled up on his estate with pointy-hatted eunuchs all around 
+them, and now he's handed them over to the Dothraki. I should have had them both killed years ago, 
+when it was easy to get at them, but Jon was as bad as you. More fool 1, 1 listened to him." 
+"Jon Arryn was a wise man and a good Hand." 
+Robert snorted. The anger was leaving him as suddenly as it had come. "This Khal Drogo is said to have 
+a hundred thousand men in his horde. What would Jon say to that?" 
+"He would say that even a million Dothraki are no threat to the realm, so long as they remain on the 
+other side of the narrow sea," 
+Ned replied calmly. "The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea." 
+The king shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. "Perhaps. There are ships to be had in the Free Cities, 
+though. I tell you, Ned, I do not like this marriage. There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call 
+me Usurper. Do you forget how many houses fought for Targaryen in the war? They bide their time for 
+now, but give them half a chance, they will murder me in my bed, and my sons with me. If the beggar 
+king crosses with a Dothraki horde at his back, the traitors will join him." 
+"He will not cross," Ned promised. "And if by some mischance he does, we will throw him back into the 
+sea. Once you choose a new Warden of the East-" 
+The king groaned. "For the last time, I will not name the Arryn boy Warden. I know the boy is your 
+nephew, but with Targaryens climbing in bed with Dothraki, I would be mad to rest one quarter of the 
+realm on the shoulders of a sickly child." 
+Ned was ready for that. "Yet we still must have a Warden of the East. If Robert Arryn will not do, name 
+one of your brothers. Stannis proved himself at the siege of Storm's End, surely." 
+He let the name hang there for a moment. The king frowned and said nothing. He looked uncomfortable. 
+"That is," Ned finished quietly, watching, "unless you have already promised the honor to another." 
+For a moment Robert had the grace to look startled. Just as quickly, the look became annoyance. 
+"What if I have?" 
+"It's Jaime Lannister, is it not?" 
+Robert kicked his horse back into motion and started down the ridge toward the barrows. Ned kept 
+pace with him. The king rode on, eyes straight ahead. "Yes," he said at last. A single hard word to end 
+the matter. 
+"Kingslayer," Ned said. The rumors were true, then. He rode on dangerous ground now, he knew. "An 
+able and courageous man, no doubt," he said carefully, "but his father is Warden of the West, Robert. In 
+time Ser Jaime will succeed to that honor. No one man should hold both East and West." He left unsaid 
+his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of Lannisters. 
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+"I will fight that battle when the enemy appears on the field," the king said stubbornly. "At the moment, 
+Lord Tywin looms eternal as Casterly Rock, so I doubt that Jaime will be succeeding anytime soon. 
+Don't vex me about this, Ned, the stone has been set." 
+"Your Grace, may I speak frankly?" 
+"I seem unable to stop you," Robert grumbled. They rode through tall brown grasses. 
+"Can you trust Jaime Lannister?" 
+"He is my wife's twin, a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, his life and fortune and honor all bound to 
+mine." 
+"As they were bound to Aerys Targaryen's," Ned pointed out. 
+"Why should I mistrust him? He has done everything I have ever asked of him. His sword helped win the 
+throne I sit on." 
+His sword helped taint the throne you sit on, Ned thought, but he did not permit the words to pass his 
+lips. "He swore a vow to protect his king's life with his own. Then he opened that king's throat with a 
+sword." 
+"Seven hells, someone had to kill Aerys!" Robert said, reining his mount to a sudden halt beside an 
+ancient barrow. "If Jaime hadn't done it, it would have been left for you or me." 
+"We were not Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard," Ned said. The time had come for Robert to hear the 
+whole truth, he decided then and there. "Do you remember the Trident, Your Grace?" 
+"I won my crown there. How should I forget it?" 
+"You took a wound from Rhaegar," Ned reminded him. "So when the Targaryen host broke and ran, 
+you gave the pursuit into my hands. The remnants of Rhaegar's army fled back to King's Landing. We 
+followed. Aerys was in the Red Keep with several thousand loyalists. I expected to find the gates closed 
+to us." 
+Robert gave an impatient shake of his head. "Instead you found that our men had already taken the city. 
+What of it?" 
+"Not our men," Ned said patiently. "Lannister men. The lion of Lannister flew over the ramparts, not the 
+crowned stag. And they had taken the city by treachery." 
+The war had raged for close to a year. Lords great and small had flocked to Robert's banners; others 
+had remained loyal to Targaryen. The mighty Lannisters of Casterly Rock, the Wardens of the West, had 
+remained aloof from the struggle, ignoring calls to arms from both rebels and royalists. Aerys Targaryen 
+must have thought that his gods had answered his prayers when Lord Tywin Lannister appeared before 
+the gates of King's Landing with an army twelve thousand strong, professing loyalty. So the mad king had 
+ordered his last mad act. He had opened his city to the lions at the gate. 
+"Treachery was a coin the Targaryens knew well," Robert said. The anger was building in him again. 
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+"Lannister paid them back in kind. It was no less than they deserved. I shall not trouble my sleep over it." 
+"You were not there," Ned said, bitterness in his voice. Troubled 
+sleep was no stranger to him. He had lived his lies for fourteen years, yet they still haunted him at night. 
+"There was no honor in that conquest." 
+"The Others take your honor!" Robert swore. "What did any Targaryen ever know of honor? Go down 
+into your crypt and ask Lyanna about the dragon's honor!" 
+"You avenged Lyanna at the Trident," Ned said, halting beside the king. Promise me, Ned, she had 
+whispered. 
+"That did not bring her back." Robert looked away, off into the grey distance. "The gods be damned. It 
+was a hollow victory they gave me. A crown . . . it was the girl I prayed them for. Your sister, safe . . . 
+and mine again, as she was meant to be. I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods 
+mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike." 
+"I cannot answer for the gods, Your Grace . . . only for what I found when I rode into the throne room 
+that day," Ned said. "Aerys was dead on the floor, drowned in his own blood. His dragon skulls stared 
+down from the walls. Lannister's men were everywhere. Jaime wore the white cloak of the Kingsguard 
+over his golden armor. I can see him still. Even his sword was gilded. He was seated on the Iron Throne, 
+high above his knights, wearing a helm fashioned in the shape of a lion's head. How he glittered!" 
+"This is well known," the king complained. 
+"I was still mounted. I rode the length of the hall in silence, between the long rows of dragon skulls. It felt 
+as though they were watching me, somehow. I stopped in front of the throne, looking up at him. His 
+golden sword was across his legs, its edge red with a king's blood. My men were filling the room behind 
+me. Lannister's men drew back. I never said a word. I looked at him seated there on the throne, and I 
+waited. At last Jaime laughed and got up. He took off his helm, and he said to me, 'Have no fear, Stark. I 
+was only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It's not a very comfortable seat, I'm afraid.' " 
+The king threw back his head and roared. His laughter startled a flight of crows from the tall brown 
+grass. They took to the air in a wild beating of wings. "You think I should mistrust Lannister because he 
+sat on my throne for a few moments?" He shook with laughter again. "Jaime was all of seventeen, Ned. 
+Scarce more than a boy." 
+"Boy or man, he had no right to that throne." 
+"Perhaps he was tired," Robert suggested. "Killing kings is weary work. Gods know, there's no place 
+else to rest your ass in that damnable room. And he spoke truly, it is a monstrous uncomfortable chair. In 
+more ways than one." The king shook his head. "Well, now I know 
+Jaime's dark sin, and the matter can be forgotten. I am heartily sick of secrets and squabbles and matters 
+of state, Ned. It's all as tedious as counting coppers. Come, let's ride, you used to know how. I want to 
+feel the wind in my hair again." He kicked his horse back into motion and galloped up over the barrow, 
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+raining earth down behind him. 
+For a moment Ned did not follow. He had run out of words, and he was filled with a vast sense of 
+helplessness. Not for the first time, he wondered what he was doing here and why he had come. He was 
+no Jon Arryn, to curb the wildness of his king and teach him wisdom. Robert would do what he pleased, 
+as he always had, and nothing Ned could say or do would change that. He belonged in Winterfell. He 
+belonged with Catelyn in her grief, and with Bran. 
+A man could not always be where he belonged, though. Resigned, Eddard Stark put his boots into his 
+horse and set off after the king. 
+TYRION 
+The north went on forever. 
+Tyrion Lannister knew the maps as well as anyone, but a fortnight on the wild track that passed for the 
+kingsroad up here had brought home the lesson that the map was one thing and the land quite another. 
+They had left Winterfell on the same day as the king, amidst all the commotion of the royal departure, 
+riding out to the sound of men shouting and horses snorting, to the rattle of wagons and the groaning of 
+the queen's huge wheelhouse, as a light snow flurried about them. The kingsroad was just beyond the 
+sprawl of castle and town. There the banners and the wagons and the columns of knights and freeriders 
+turned south, taking the tumult with them, while Tyrion turned north with Benjen Stark and his nephew. 
+It had grown colder after that, and far more quiet. 
+West of the road were flint hills, grey and rugged, with tall watchtowers on their stony summits. To the 
+east the land was lower, the ground flattening to a rolling plain that stretched away as far as the eye could 
+see. Stone bridges spanned swift, narrow rivers, while small farms spread in rings around holdfasts 
+walled in wood and stone. The road was well trafficked, and at night for their comfort there were rude 
+inns to be found. 
+Three days ride from Winterfell, however, the farmland gave way to 
+dense wood, and the kingsroad grew lonely. The flint hills rose higher and wilder with each passing mile, 
+until by the fifth day they had turned into mountains, cold blue-grey giants with jagged promontories and 
+snow on their shoulders. When the wind blew from the north, long plumes of ice crystals flew from the 
+high peaks like banners. 
+With the mountains a wall to the west, the road veered north by northeast through the wood, a forest of 
+oak and evergreen and black brier that seemed older and darker than any Tyrion had ever seen. "The 
+wolfswood," Benjen Stark called it, and indeed their nights came alive with the howls of distant packs, 
+and some not so distant. Jon Snow's albino direwolf pricked up his ears at the nightly howling, but never 
+raised his own voice in reply. There was something very unsettling about that animal, Tyrion thought. 
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+There were eight in the party by then, not counting the wolf. Tyrion traveled with two of his own men, as 
+befit a Lannister. Benjen Stark had only his bastard nephew and some fresh mounts for the Night's 
+Watch, but at the edge of the wolfswood they stayed a night behind the wooden walls of a forest 
+holdfast, and there joined up with another of the black brothers, one Yoren. Yoren was stooped and 
+sinister, his features hidden behind a beard as black as his clothing, but he seemed as tough as an old root 
+and as hard as stone. With him were a pair of ragged peasant boys from the Fingers. "Rapers," Yoren 
+said with a cold look at his charges. Tyrion understood. Life on the Wall was said to be hard, but no 
+doubt it was preferable to castration. 
+Five men, three boys, a direwolf, twenty horses, and a cage of ravens given over to Benjen Stark by 
+Maester Luwin. No doubt they made a curious fellowship for the kingsroad, or any road. 
+Tyrion noticed Jon Snow watching Yoren and his sullen companions, with an odd cast to his face that 
+looked uncomfortably like dismay. Yoren had a twisted shoulder and a sour smell, his hair and beard 
+were matted and greasy and full of lice, his clothing old, patched, and seldom washed. His two young 
+recruits smelled even worse, and seemed as stupid as they were cruel. 
+No doubt the boy had made the mistake of thinking that the Night's Watch was made up of men like his 
+uncle. If so, Yoren and his companions were a rude awakening. Tyrion felt sorry for the boy. He had 
+chosen a hard life . . . or perhaps he should say that a hard life had been chosen for him. 
+He had rather less sympathy for the uncle. Benjen Stark seemed to share his brother's distaste for 
+Lannisters, and he had not been pleased when Tyrion had told him of his intentions. "I warn you, 
+Lannister, you'll find no inns at the Wall," he had said, looking down on him. 
+"No doubt you'll find some place to put me," Tyrion had replied. "As you might have noticed, I'm small." 
+One did not say no to the queen's brother, of course, so that had settled the matter, but Stark had not 
+been happy. "You will not like the ride, I promise you that," he'd said curtly, and since the moment they 
+set out, he had done all he could to live up to that promise. 
+By the end of the first week, Tyrion's thighs were raw from hard riding, his legs were cramping badly, 
+and he was chilled to the bone. He did not complain. He was damned if he would give Benjen Stark that 
+satisfaction. 
+He took a small revenge in the matter of his riding fur, a tattered bearskin, old and musty-smelling. Stark 
+had offered it to him in an excess of Night's Watch gallantry, no doubt expecting him to graciously 
+decline. Tyrion had accepted with a smile. He had brought his warmest clothing with him when they rode 
+out of Winterfell, and soon discovered that it was nowhere near warm enough. It was cold up here, and 
+growing colder. The nights were well below freezing now, and when the wind blew it was like a knife 
+cutting right through his warmest woolens. By now Stark was no doubt regretting his chivalrous impulse. 
+Perhaps he had learned a lesson. The Lannisters never declined, graciously or otherwise. The Lannisters 
+took what was offered. 
+Farms and holdfasts grew scarcer and smaller as they pressed northward, ever deeper into the darkness 
+of the wolfswood, until finally there were no more roofs to shelter under, and they were thrown back on 
+their own resources. 
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+
+Tyrion was never much use in making a camp or breaking one. Too small, too hobbled, too in-the-way. 
+So while Stark and Yoren and the other men erected rude shelters, tended the horses, and built a fire, it 
+became his custom to take his fur and a wineskin and go off by himself to read. 
+On the eighteenth night of their journey, the wine was a rare sweet amber from the Summer Isles that he 
+had brought all the way north from Casterly Rock, and the book a rumination on the history and 
+properties of dragons. With Lord Eddard Stark's permission, Tyrion had borrowed a few rare volumes 
+from the Winterfell library and packed them for the ride north. 
+He found a comfortable spot just beyond the noise of the camp, beside a swift-running stream with 
+waters clear and cold as ice. A grotesquely ancient oak provided shelter from the biting wind. Tyrion 
+curled up in his fur with his back against the trunk, took a sip of the 
+wine, and began to read about the properties of dragonbone. Dragonbone is black because of its high 
+iron content, the book told him. It is strong as steel, yet lighter and far more flexible, and of course utterly 
+impervious to fire. Dragonbone bows are greatly prized by the Dothraki, and small wonder. An archer so 
+armed can outrange any wooden bow. 
+Tyrion had a morbid fascination with dragons. When he had first come to King's Landing for his sister's 
+wedding to Robert Baratheon, he had made it a point to seek out the dragon skulls that had hung on the 
+walls of Targaryen's throne room. King Robert had replaced them with banners and tapestries, but 
+Tyrion had persisted until he found the skulls in the dank cellar where they had been stored. 
+He had expected to find them impressive, perhaps even frightening. He had not thought to find them 
+beautiful. Yet they were. As black as onyx, polished smooth, so the bone seemed to shimmer in the light 
+of his torch. They liked the fire, he sensed. He'd thrust the torch into the mouth of one of the larger skulls 
+and made the shadows leap and dance on the wall behind him. The teeth were long, curving knives of 
+black diamond. The flame of the torch was nothing to them; they had bathed in the heat of far greater 
+fires. When he had moved away, Tyrion could have sworn that the beast's empty eye sockets had 
+watched him go. 
+There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the youngest a mere 
+century and a half. The most recent were also the smallest; a matched pair no bigger than mastiffs skulls, 
+and oddly misshapen, all that remained of the last two hatchlings born on Dragonstone. They were the 
+last of the Targaryen dragons, perhaps the last dragons anywhere, and they had not lived very long. 
+From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons 
+that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old. The singers had given 
+them the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes, Vhaghar. Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, 
+wordless and awed. You could have ridden a horse down Vhaghar's gullet, although you would not have 
+ridden it out again. Meraxes was even bigger. And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could 
+have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes 
+beyond the Port of Ibben. 
+Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at Balerion's huge, empty-eyed skull until his 
+torch burned low, trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine how it must have looked when it 
+spread its great black wings and swept across the skies, breathing fire. 
+A GAML OF THRONES 109 
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+
+His own remote ancestor, King Loren of the Rock, had tried to stand against the fire when he joined 
+with King Mern of the Reach to oppose the Targaryen conquest. That was close on three hundred years 
+ago, when the Seven Kingdoms were kingdoms, and not mere provinces of a greater realm. Between 
+them, the Two Kings had six hundred banners flying, five thousand mounted knights, and ten times as 
+many freeriders and men-at-arms. Aegon Dragonlord had perhaps a fifth that number, the chroniclers 
+said, and most of those were conscripts from the ranks of the last king he had slain, their loyalties 
+uncertain. 
+The hosts met on the broad plains of the Reach, amidst golden fields of wheat ripe for harvest. When the 
+Two Kings charged, the Targaryen army shivered and shattered and began to run. For a few moments, 
+the chroniclers wrote, the conquest was at an end . . . but only for those few moments, before Aegon 
+Targaryen and his sisters joined the battle. 
+It was the only time that Vhaghar, Meraxes, and Balerion were all unleashed at once. The singers called 
+it the Field of Fire. 
+Near four thousand men had burned that day, among them King Mern of the Reach. King Loren had 
+escaped, and lived long enough to surrender, pledge his fealty to the Targaryens, and beget a son, for 
+which Tyrion was duly grateful. 
+"Why do you read so much?" 
+Tyrion looked up at the sound of the voice. Jon Snow was standing a few feet away, regarding him 
+curiously. He closed the book on a finger and said, "Look at me and tell me what you see." 
+The boy looked at him suspiciously. "Is this some kind of trick? I see you. Tyrion Lannister." 
+Tyrion sighed. "You are remarkably polite for a bastard, Snow. What you see is a dwarf. You are what, 
+twelve?" 
+"Fourteen," the boy said. 
+"Fourteen, and you're taller than I will ever be. My legs are short and twisted, and I walk with difficulty. 
+I require a special saddle to keep from falling off my horse. A saddle of my own design, you may be 
+interested to know. It was either that or ride a pony. My arms are strong enough, but again, too short. I 
+will never make a swordsman. Had I been born a peasant, they might have left me out to die, or sold me 
+to some slaver's grotesquerie. Alas, I was born a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and the grotesqueries are 
+all the poorer. Things are expected of me. My father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My 
+brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of these little ironies. My sister 
+married the new king and my 
+repulsive nephew will be king after him. I must do my part for the honor of my House, wouldn't you 
+agree? Yet how? Well, my legs may be too small for my body, but my head is too large, although I prefer 
+to think it is just large enough for my mind. I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. 
+My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my 
+mind . . . and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge." Tyrion tapped 
+the leather cover of the book. "That's why I read so much, Jon Snow." 
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+
+The boy absorbed that all in silence. He had the Stark face if not the name: long, solemn, guarded, a face 
+that gave nothing away. Whoever his mother had been, she had left little of herself in her son. "What are 
+you reading about?" he asked. 
+"Dragons," Tyrion told him. 
+"What good is that? There are no more dragons," the boy said with the easy certainty of youth. 
+"So they say," Tyrion replied. "Sad, isn't it? When I was your age, used to dream of having a dragon of 
+my own." 
+"You did?" the boy said suspiciously. Perhaps he thought Tyrion was making fun of him. 
+"Oh, yes. Even a stunted, twisted, ugly little boy can look down over the world when he's seated on a 
+dragon's back." Tyrion pushed the bearskin aside and climbed to his feet. "I used to start fires in the 
+bowels of Casterly Rock and stare at the flames for hours, pretending they were dragonfire. Sometimes 
+I'd imagine my father burning. At other times, my sister." Jon Snow was staring at him, a look equal parts 
+horror and fascination. Tyrion guffawed. "Don't look at me that way, bastard. I know your secret. 
+You've dreamt the same kind of dreams." 
+"No," Jon Snow said, horrified. "I wouldn't . . ." 
+"No? Never?" Tyrion raised an eyebrow. "Well, no doubt the Starks have been terribly good to you. I'm 
+certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And your brother Robb, he's always been 
+kind, and why not? He gets Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father . . . he must have good 
+reasons for packing you off to the Night's Watch 
+"Stop it," Jon Snow said, his face dark with anger. "The Night's Watch is a noble calling!" 
+Tyrion laughed. "You're too smart to believe that. The Night's Watch is a midden heap for all the misfits 
+of the realm. I've seen you looking at Yoren and his boys. Those are your new brothers, Jon Snow, how 
+do you like them? Sullen peasants, debtors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind up 
+on the Wall, watching for 
+grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about. The good part is 
+there are no grumkins or snarks, so it's scarcely dangerous work. The bad part is you freeze your balls 
+off, but since you're not allowed to breed anyway, I don't suppose that matters." 
+"Stop it!" the boy screamed. He took a step forward, his hands coiling into fists, close to tears. 
+Suddenly, absurdly, Tyrion felt guilty. He took a step forward, intending to give the boy a reassuring pat 
+on the shoulder or mutter some word of apology. 
+He never saw the wolf, where it was or how it came at him. One moment he was walking toward Snow 
+and the next he was flat on his back on the hard rocky ground, the book spinning away from him as he 
+fell, the breath going out of him at the sudden impact, his mouth full of dirt and blood and rotting leaves. 
+As he tried to get up, his back spasmed painfully. He must have wrenched it in the fall. He ground his 
+teeth in frustration, grabbed a root, and pulled himself back to a sitting position. "Help me," he said to the 
+boy, reaching up a hand. 
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+
+And suddenly the wolf was between them. He did not growl. The damned thing never made a sound. He 
+only looked at him with those bright red eyes, and showed him his teeth, and that was more than enough. 
+Tyrion sagged back to the ground with a grunt. "Don't help me, then. I'll sit right here until you leave." 
+Jon Snow stroked Ghost's thick white fur, smiling now. "Ask me nicely." 
+Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a will. It was not the first time in 
+his life he had been humiliated, and it would not be the last. Perhaps he even deserved this. "I should be 
+very grateful for your kind assistance, Jon," he said mildly. 
+"Down, Ghost," the boy said. The direwolf sat on his haunches. Those red eyes never left Tyrion. Jon 
+came around behind him, slid his hands under his arms, and lifted him easily to his feet. Then he picked 
+up the book and handed it back. 
+"Why did he attack me'?" Tyrion asked with a sidelong glance at the direwolf. He wiped blood and dirt 
+from his mouth with the back of his hand. 
+"Maybe he thought you were a grumkin." 
+Tyrion glanced at him sharply. Then he laughed, a raw snort of amusement that came bursting out 
+through his nose entirely without his permission. "Oh, gods," he said, choking on his laughter and shaking 
+his head, "I suppose I do rather look like a grumkin. What does he do to snarks?" 
+"You don't want to know." Jon picked up the wineskin and handed it to Tyrion. 
+Tyrion pulled out the stopper, tilted his head, and squeezed a long stream into his mouth. The wine was 
+cool fire as it trickled down his throat and warmed his belly. He held out the skin to Jon Snow. "Want 
+some?" 
+The boy took the skin and tried a cautious swallow. "It's true, isn't it?" he said when he was done. "What 
+you said about the Night's Watch." 
+Tyrion nodded. 
+Jon Snow set his mouth in a grim line. "If that's what it is, that's what it is." 
+Tyrion grinned at him. "That's good, bastard. Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it." 
+"Most men," the boy said. "But not you." 
+"No," Tyrion admitted, "not me. I seldom even dream of dragons anymore. There are no dragons." He 
+scooped up the fallen bearskin. "Come, we had better return to camp before your uncle calls the 
+banners." 
+The walk was short, but the ground was rough underfoot and his legs were cramping badly by the time 
+they got back. Jon Snow offered a hand to help him over a thick tangle of roots, but Tyrion shook him 
+off. He would make his own way, as he had all his life. Still, the camp was a welcome sight. The shelters 
+had been thrown up against the tumbledown wall of a long-abandoned holdfast, a shield against the wind. 
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+
+The horses had been fed and a fire had been laid. Yoren sat on a stone, skinning a squirrel. The savory 
+smell of stew filled Tyrion's nostrils. He dragged himself over to where his man Morrec was tending the 
+stewpot. Wordlessly, Morrec handed him the ladle. Tyrion tasted and handed it back. "More pepper," 
+he said. 
+Benjen Stark emerged from the shelter he shared with his nephew. "There you are. Jon, damn it, don't 
+go off like that by yourself. I thought the Others had gotten you." 
+"It was the grumkins," Tyrion told him, laughing. Jon Snow smiled. Stark shot a baffled look at Yoren. 
+The old man grunted, shrugged, and went back to his bloody work. 
+The squirrel gave some body to the stew, and they ate it with black bread and hard cheese that night 
+around their fire. Tyrion shared around his skin of wine until even Yoren grew mellow. One by one the 
+company drifted off to their shelters and to sleep, all but Jon Snow, who had drawn the night's first 
+watch. 
+Tyrion was the last to retire, as always. As he stepped into the shelter his men had built for him, he 
+paused and looked back at Jon Snow. The boy stood near the fire, his face still and hard, looking deep 
+into the flames. 
+Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed. 
+CATELYN 
+Ned and the girls were eight days gone when Maester Luwin came to her one night in Bran's sickroom, 
+carrying a reading lamp and the books of account. "It is past time that we reviewed the figures, my lady," 
+he said. "You'll want to know how much this royal visit cost us." 
+Catelyn looked at Bran in his sickbed and brushed his hair back off his forehead. It had grown very 
+long, she realized. She would have to cut it soon. "I have no need to look at figures, Maester Luwin," she 
+told him, never taking her eyes from Bran. "I know what the visit cost us. Take the books away." 
+"My lady, the king's party had healthy appetites. We must replenish our stores before-" 
+She cut him off. "I said, take the books away. The steward will attend to our needs." 
+"We have no steward," Maester Luwin reminded her. Like a little grey rat, she thought, he would not let 
+go. "Poole went south to establish Lord Eddard's household at King's Landing." 
+Catelyn nodded absently. "Oh, yes. I remember." Bran looked so pale. She wondered whether they 
+might move his bed under the window, so he could get the morning sun. 
+Maester Luwin set the lamp in a niche by the door and fiddled with its wick. "There are several 
+appointments that require your immediate 
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+
+attention, my lady. Besides the steward, we need a captain of the guards to fill Jory's place, a new 
+master of horse-" 
+Her eyes snapped around and found him. "A master of horse?" Her voice was a whip. 
+The maester was shaken. "Yes, my lady. Hullen rode south with Lord Eddard, so-" 
+"My son lies here broken and dying, Luwin, and you wish to discuss a new master of horse? Do you 
+think I care what happens in the stables? Do you think it matters to me one whit? I would gladly butcher 
+every horse in Winterfell with my own hands if it would open Bran's eyes, do you understand that? Do 
+you?" 
+He bowed his head. "Yes, my lady, but the appointments-" 
+"I'll make the appointments," Robb said. 
+Catelyn had not heard him enter, but there he stood in the doorway, looking at her. She had been 
+shouting, she realized with a sudden flush of shame. What was happening to her? She was so tired, and 
+her head hurt all the time. 
+Maester Luwin looked from Catelyn to her son. "I have prepared a list of those we might wish to 
+consider for the vacant offices," he said, offering Robb a paper plucked from his sleeve. 
+Her son glanced at the names. He had come from outside, Catelyn saw; his cheeks were red from the 
+cold, his hair shaggy and windblown. "Good men," he said. "We'll talk about them tomorrow." He 
+handed back the list of names. 
+"Very good, my lord." The paper vanished into his sleeve. 
+"Leave us now," Robb said. Maester Luwin bowed and departed. Robb closed the door behind him 
+and turned to her. He was wearing a sword, she saw. "Mother, what are you doing?" 
+Catelyn had always thought Robb looked like her; like Bran and Rickon and Sansa, he had the Tully 
+coloring, the auburn hair, the blue eyes. Yet now for the first time she saw something of Eddard Stark in 
+his face, something as stern and hard as the north. "What am I doing?" she echoed, puzzled. "How can 
+you ask that? What do you imagine I'm doing? I am taking care of your brother. I am taking care of 
+Bran." 
+"Is that what you call it? You haven't left this room since Bran was hurt. You didn't even come to the 
+gate when Father and the girls went south." 
+"I said my farewells to them here, and watched them ride out from that window." She had begged Ned 
+not to go, not now, not after what had happened; everything had changed now, couldn't he see that? It 
+was no use. He had no choice, he had told her, and then he left, choosing. "I can't leave him, even for a 
+moment, not when any moment 
+could be his last. I have to be with him, if ... if ."She took her son's limp hand, sliding his fingers 
+through her own. He was so frail and thin, with no strength left in his hand, but she could still feel the 
+warmth of life through his skin. 
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+
+Robb's voice softened. "He's not going to die, Mother. Maester Luwin says the time of greatest danger 
+has passed." 
+"And what if Maester Luwin is wrong? What if Bran needs me and I'm not here?" 
+"Rickon needs you," Robb said sharply. "He's only three, he doesn't understand what's happening. He 
+thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don't 
+know what to do with him." He paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he'd done when he 
+was little. "Mother, I need you too. I'm trying but I can't . . . I can't do it all by myself." His voice broke 
+with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go 
+to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move. 
+Outside the tower, a wolf began to howl. Catelyn trembled, just for a second. 
+"Bran's." Robb opened the window and let the night air into the stuffy tower room. The howling grew 
+louder. It was a cold and lonely sound, full of melancholy and despair. 
+"Don't," she told him. "Bran needs to stay warm." 
+"He needs to hear them sing," Robb said. Somewhere out in Winterfell, a second wolf began to howl in 
+chorus with the first. Then a third, closer. "Shaggydog and Grey Wind," Robb said as their voices rose 
+and fell together. "You can tell them apart if you listen close." 
+Catelyn was shaking. It was the grief, the cold, the howling of the direwolves. Night after night, the 
+howling and the cold wind and the grey empty castle, on and on they went, never changing, and her boy 
+lying there broken, the sweetest of her children, the gentlest, Bran who loved to laugh and climb and 
+dreamt of knighthood, all gone now, she would never hear him laugh again. Sobbing, she pulled her hand 
+free of his and covered her ears against those terrible howls. "Make them stop!" she cried. "I can't stand 
+it, make them stop, make them stop, kill them all if you must, just make them stop!" 
+She didn't remember falling to the floor, but there she was, and Robb was lifting her, holding her in 
+strong arms. "Don't be afraid, Mother. They would never hurt him." He helped her to her narrow bed in 
+the corner of the sickroom. "Close your eyes," he said gently. "Rest. Maester Luwin tells me you've 
+hardly slept since Bran's fall." 
+"I can't," she wept. "Gods forgive me, Robb, I can't, what if he dies 
+while I'm asleep, what if he dies, what if he dies . . ." The wolves were still howling. She screamed and 
+held her ears again. "Oh, gods, close the window!" 
+"If you swear to me you'll sleep." Robb went to the window, but as he reached for the shutters another 
+sound was added to the mournful howling of the direwolves. "Dogs," he said, listening. "All the dogs are 
+barking. They've never done that before . . ." Catelyn heard his breath catch in his throat. When she 
+looked up, his face was pale in the lamplight. "Fire, " he whispered. 
+Fire, she thought, and then, Bran! "Help me," she said urgently, sitting up. "Help me with Bran." 
+Robb did not seem to hear her. "The library tower's on fire," he said. 
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+
+Catelyn could see the flickering reddish light through the open window now. She sagged with relief. Bran 
+was safe. The library was across the bailey, there was no way the fire would reach them here. "Thank the 
+gods," she whispered. 
+Robb looked at her as if she'd gone mad. "Mother, stay here. I'll come back as soon as the fire's out." 
+He ran then. She heard him shout to the guards outside the room, heard them descending together in a 
+wild rush, taking the stairs two and three at a time. 
+Outside, there were shouts of "Fire!" in the yard, screams, running footsteps, the whinny of frightened 
+horses, and the frantic barking of the castle dogs. The howling was gone, she realized as she listened to 
+the cacophony. The direwolves had fallen silent. 
+Catelyn said a silent prayer of thanks to the seven faces of god as she went to the window. Across the 
+bailey, long tongues of flame shot from the windows of the library. She watched the smoke rise into the 
+sky and thought sadly of all the books the Starks had gathered over the centuries. Then she closed the 
+shutters. 
+When she turned away from the window, the man was in the room with her. 
+"You weren't s'posed to be here," he muttered sourly. "No one was s'posed to be here." 
+He was a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses. Catelyn knew all the men who 
+worked in their stables, and he was none of them. He was gaunt, with limp blond hair and pale eyes 
+deep-sunk in a bony face, and there was a dagger in his hand. 
+Catelyn looked at the knife, then at Bran. "No," she said. The word stuck in her throat, the merest 
+whisper. 
+He must have heard her. "It's a mercy," he said. "He's dead already." 
+"No," Catelyn said, louder now as she found her voice again. "No, you can't." She spun back toward the 
+window to scream for help, but the man moved faster than she would have believed. One hand clamped 
+down over her mouth and yanked back her head, the other brought the dagger up to her windpipe. The 
+stench of him was overwhelming. 
+She reached up with both hands and grabbed the blade with all her strength, pulling it away from her 
+throat. She heard him cursing into her ear. Her fingers were slippery with blood, but she would not let go 
+of the dagger. The hand over her mouth clenched more tightly, shutting off her air. Catelyn twisted her 
+head to the side and managed to get a piece of his flesh between her teeth. She bit down hard into his 
+palm. The man grunted in pain. She ground her teeth together and tore at him, and all of a sudden he let 
+go. The taste of his blood filled her mouth. She sucked in air and screamed, and he grabbed her hair and 
+pulled her away from him, and she stumbled and went down, and then he was standing over her, 
+breathing hard, shaking. The dagger was still clutched tightly in his right hand, slick with blood. "You 
+weren't s'posed to be here," he repeated stupidly. 
+Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low rumble, less than a 
+snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but he must have heard something, because he started to turn just as 
+the wolf made its leap. They went down together, half sprawled over Catelyn where she'd fallen. The 
+Page 86
+
+wolf had him under the jaw. The man's shriek lasted less than a second before the beast wrenched back 
+its head, taking out half his throat. 
+His blood felt like warm rain as it sprayed across her face. 
+The wolf was looking at her. Its jaws were red and wet and its eyes glowed golden in the dark room. It 
+was Bran's wolf, she realized. Of course it was. "Thank you," Catelyn whispered, her voice faint and tiny. 
+She lifted her hand, trembling. The wolf padded closer, sniffed at her fingers, then licked at the blood 
+with a wet rough tongue. When it had cleaned all the blood off her hand, it turned away silently and 
+jumped up on Bran's bed and lay down beside him. Catelyn began to laugh hysterically. 
+That was the way they found them, when Robb and Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik burst in with half the 
+guards in Winterfell. When the laughter finally died in her throat, they wrapped her in warm blankets and 
+led her back to the Great Keep, to her own chambers. Old Nan undressed her and helped her into a 
+scalding hot bath and washed the blood off her with a soft cloth. 
+Afterward Maester Luwin arrived to dress her wounds. The cuts in 
+A CAME OF THRONES 119 
+her fingers went deep, almost to the bone, and her scalp was raw and bleeding where he'd pulled out a 
+handful of hair. The maester told her the pain was just starting now, and gave her milk of the poppy to 
+help her sleep. 
+Finally she closed her eyes. 
+When she opened them again, they told her that she had slept four days. Catelyn nodded and sat up in 
+bed. It all seemed like a nightmare to her now, everything since Bran's fall, a terrible dream of blood and 
+grief, but she had the pain in her hands to remind her that it was real. She felt weak and light-headed, yet 
+strangely resolute, as if a great weight had lifted from her. 
+"Bring me some bread and honey," she told her servants, "and take word to Maester Luwin that my 
+bandages want changing." They looked at her in surprise and ran to do her bidding. 
+Catelyn remembered the way she had been before, and she was ashamed. She had let them all down, 
+her children, her husband, her House. It would not happen again. She would show these northerners how 
+strong a Tully of Riverrun could be. 
+Robb arrived before her food. Rodrik Cassel came with him, and her husband's ward Theon Greyjoy, 
+and lastly Hallis Mollen, a muscular guardsman with a square brown beard. He was the new captain of 
+the guard, Robb said. Her son was dressed in boiled leather and ringmail, she saw, and a sword hung at 
+his waist. 
+"Who was he?" Catelyn asked them. 
+"No one knows his name," Hallis Mollen told her. "He was no man of Winterfell, m'lady, but some says 
+they seen him here and about the castle these past few weeks." 
+"One of the king's men, then," she said, "or one of the Lannisters'. He could have waited behind when 
+the others left." 
+Page 87
+
+"Maybe," Hal said. "With all these strangers filling up Winterfell of late, there's no way of saying who he 
+belonged to." 
+"He'd been biding in your stables," Greyjoy said. "You could smell it on him." 
+"And how could he go unnoticed?" she said sharply. 
+Hallis Mollen looked abashed. "Between the horses Lord Eddard took south and them we sent north to 
+the Night's Watch, the stalls were half-empty. It were no great trick to hide from the stableboys. Could 
+be Hodor saw him, the talk is that boy's been acting queer, but simple as he is . . ." Hal shook his head. 
+"We found where he'd been sleeping," Robb put in. "He had ninety silver stags in a leather bag buried 
+beneath the straw." 
+"It's good to know my son's life was not sold cheaply," Catelyn said bitterly. 
+Hallis Mollen looked at her, confused. "Begging your grace, m'lady, you saying he was out to kill your 
+boy?" 
+Greyjoy was doubtful. "That's madness." 
+"He came for Bran," Catelyn said. "He kept muttering how I wasn't supposed to be there. He set the 
+library fire thinking I would rush to put it out, taking any guards with me. If I hadn't been half-mad with 
+grief, it would have worked." 
+"Why would anyone want to kill Bran?" Robb said. "Gods, he's only a little boy, helpless, sleeping . . ." 
+Catelyn gave her firstborn a challenging look. "If you are to rule in the north, you must think these things 
+through, Robb. Answer your own question. Why would anyone want to kill a sleeping child?" 
+Before he could answer, the servants returned with a plate of food fresh from the kitchen. There was 
+much more than she'd asked for: hot bread, butter and honey and blackberry preserves, a rasher of 
+bacon and a soft-boiled egg, a wedge of cheese, a pot of mint tea. And with it came Maester Luwin. 
+"How is my son, Maester?" Catelyn looked at all the food and found she had no appetite. 
+Maester Luwin lowered his eyes. "Unchanged, my lady." 
+It was the reply she had expected, no more and no less. Her hands throbbed with pain, as if the blade 
+were still in her, cutting deep. She sent the servants away and looked back to Robb. "Do you have the 
+answer yet?" 
+"Someone is afraid Bran might wake up," Robb said, "afraid of what he might say or do, afraid of 
+something he knows." 
+Catelyn was proud of him. "Very good." She turned to the new captain of the guard. "We must keep 
+Bran safe. If there was one killer, there could be others." 
+"How many guards do you want, rn'lady?" Hal asked. 
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+
+"So long as Lord Eddard is away, my son is the master of Winterfell," she told him. 
+Robb stood a little taller. "Put one man in the sickroom, night and day, one outside the door, two at the 
+bottom of the stairs. No one sees Bran without my warrant or my mother's." 
+"As you say, m'lord." 
+"Do it now," Catelyn suggested. 
+"And let his wolf stay in the room with him," Robb added. 
+"Yes," Catelyn said. And then again: "Yes." 
+Hallis Mollen bowed and left the room. 
+"Lady Stark," Ser Rodrik said when the guardsman had gone, "did you chance to notice the dagger the 
+killer used?" 
+"The circumstances did not allow me to examine it closely, but I can vouch for its edge," Catelyn replied 
+with a dry smile. "Why do you ask?" 
+"We found the knife still in the villain's grasp. It seemed to me that it was altogether too fine a weapon 
+for such a man, so I looked at it long and hard. The blade is Valyrian steel, the hilt dragonbone. A 
+weapon like that has no business being in the hands of such as him. Someone gave it to him." 
+Catelyn nodded, thoughtful. "Robb, close the door." 
+He looked at her strangely, but did as she told him. 
+"What I am about to tell you must not leave this room," she told them. "I want your oaths on that. If even 
+part of what I suspect is true, Ned and my girls have ridden into deadly danger, and a word in the wrong 
+ears could mean their lives." 
+"Lord Eddard is a second father to me," said Theon Greyjoy. "I do so swear." 
+"You have my oath," Maester Luwin said. 
+"And mine, my lady," echoed Ser Rodrik. 
+She looked at her son. "And you, Robb?" 
+He nodded his consent. 
+"My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King," 
+Catelyn told them. "It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt the day Bran fell. He 
+remained here in the castle." The room was deathly quiet. "I do not think Bran fell from that tower," she 
+said into the stillness. "I think he was thrown." 
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+
+The shock was plain on their faces. "My lady, that is a monstrous suggestion," said Rodrik Cassel. "Even 
+the Kingslayer would flinch at the murder of an innocent child." 
+"Oh, would he?" Theon Greyjoy asked. "I wonder." 
+"There is no limit to Lannister pride or Lannister ambition," Catelyn said. 
+"The boy had always been surehanded in the past," Maester Luwin said thoughtfully. "He knew every 
+stone in Winterfell." 
+"Gods, " Robb swore, his young face dark with anger. "If this is true, he will pay for it." He drew his 
+sword and waved it in the air. "I'll kill him myself!" 
+Ser Rodrik bristled at him. "Put that away! The Lannisters are a hundred leagues away. Never draw 
+your sword unless you mean to use it. How many times must I tell you, foolish boy?" 
+122 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN 
+Abashed, Robb sheathed his sword, suddenly a child again. Catelyn said to Ser Rodrik, "I see my son is 
+wearing steel now." 
+The old master-at-arms said, "I thought it was time." 
+Robb was looking at her anxiously. "Past time," she said. "Winterfell may have need of all its swords 
+soon, and they had best not be made of wood." 
+Theon Greyjoy put a hand on the hilt of his blade and said, "My lady, if it comes to that, my House owes 
+yours a great debt." 
+Maester Luwin pulled at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. "All we have is conjecture. 
+This is the queen's beloved brother we mean to accuse. She will not take it kindly. We must have proof, 
+or forever keep silent." 
+"Your proof is in the dagger," Ser Rodrik said. "A fine blade like that will not have gone unnoticed." 
+There was only one place to find the truth of it, Catelyn realized. "Someone must go to King's Landing." 
+"I'll go," Robb said. 
+"No," she told him. "Your place is here. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell." She looked at Ser 
+Rodrik with his great white whiskers, at Maester Luwin in his grey robes, at young Greyjoy, lean and 
+dark and impetuous. Who to send? Who would be believed? Then she knew. Catelyn struggled to push 
+back the blankets, her bandaged fingers as stiff and unyielding as stone. She climbed out of bed. "I must 
+go myself." 
+"My lady," said Maester Luwin, "is that wise? Surely the Lannisters would greet your arrival with 
+suspicion." 
+"What about Bran?" Robb asked. The poor boy looked utterly confused now. "You can't mean to leave 
+him." 
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+
+"I have done everything I can for Bran," she said, laying a wounded hand on his arm. "His life is in the 
+hands of the gods and Maester Luwin. As you reminded me yourself, Robb, I have other children to 
+think of now." 
+"You will need a strong escort, my lady," Theon said. 
+"I'll send Hal with a squad of guardsmen," Robb said. 
+"No," Catelyn said. "A large party attracts unwelcome attention. I would not have the Lannisters know I 
+am coming." 
+Ser Rodrik protested. "My lady, let me accompany you at least. The kingsroad can be perilous for a 
+woman alone." 
+"I will not be taking the kingsroad," Catelyn replied. She thought for a moment, then nodded her 
+consent. "Two riders can move as fast as one, and a good deal faster than a long column burdened by 
+wagons 
+and wheelhouses. I will welcome your company, Ser Rodrik. We will follow the White Knife down to 
+the sea, and hire a ship at White Harbor. Strong horses and brisk winds should bring us to King's 
+Landing well ahead of Ned and the Lannisters." And then, she thought, we shall see what we shall see. 
+SANSA 
+Eddard Stark had left before dawn, Septa Mordane informed Sansa as they broke their fast. "The king 
+sent for him. Another hunt, I do believe. There are still wild aurochs in these lands, I am told." 
+"I've never seen an aurochs," Sansa said, feeding a piece of bacon to Lady under the table. The direwolf 
+took it from her hand, as delicate as a queen. 
+Septa Mordane sniffed in disapproval. "A noble lady does not feed dogs at her table," she said, breaking 
+off another piece of comb and letting the honey drip down onto her bread. 
+"She's not a dog, she's a direwolf," Sansa pointed out as Lady licked her fingers with a rough tongue. 
+"Anyway, Father said we could keep them with us if we want." 
+The septa was not appeased. "You're a good girl, Sansa, but I do vow, when it comes to that creature 
+you're as willful as your sister Arya." She scowled. "And where is Arya this morning?" 
+"She wasn't hungry," Sansa said, knowing full well that her sister had probably stolen down to the 
+kitchen hours ago and wheedled a breakfast out of some cook's boy. 
+"Do remind her to dress nicely today. The grey velvet, perhaps. We are all invited to ride with the queen 
+and Princess Myrcella in the royal wheelhouse, and we must look our best." 
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+
+Sansa already looked her best. She had brushed out her long auburn hair until it shone, and picked her 
+nicest blue silks. She had been looking forward to today for more than a week. It was a great honor to 
+ride with the queen, and besides, Prince Joffrey might be there. Her betrothed. Just thinking it made her 
+feel a strange fluttering inside, even though they were not to marry for years and years. Sansa did not 
+really know Joffrey yet, but she was already in love with him. He was all she ever dreamt her prince 
+should be, tall and handsome and strong, with hair like gold. She treasured every chance to spend time 
+with him, few as they were. The only thing that scared her about today was Arya. Arya had a way of 
+ruining everything. You never knew what she would do. "I'll tell her," Sansa said uncertainly, "but she'll 
+dress the way she always does." She hoped it wouldn't be too embarrassing. "May I be excused?" 
+"You may." Septa Mordane helped herself to more bread and honey, and Sansa slid from the bench. 
+Lady followed at her heels as she ran from the inn's common room. 
+Outside, she stood for a moment amidst the shouts and curses and the creak of wooden wheels as the 
+men broke down the tents and pavilions and loaded the wagons for another day's march. The inn was a 
+sprawling three-story structure of pale stone, the biggest that Sansa had ever seen, but even so, it had 
+accommodations for less than a third of the king's party, which had swollen to more than four hundred 
+with the addition of her father's household and the freeriders who had joined them on the road. 
+She found Arya on the banks of the Trident, trying to hold Nymeria still while she brushed dried mud 
+from her fur. The direwolf was not enjoying the process. Arya was wearing the same riding leathers she 
+had worn yesterday and the day before. 
+"You better put on something pretty," Sansa told her. "Septa Mordane said so. We're traveling in the 
+queen's wheelhouse with Princess Myrcella today." 
+"I'm not," Arya said, trying to brush a tangle out of Nymeria's matted grey fur. "Mycah and I are going to 
+ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford." 
+"Rubies," Sansa said, lost. "What rubies?" 
+Arya gave her a look like she was so stupid. "Rhaegar's rubies. This is where King Robert killed him and 
+won the crown." 
+Sansa regarded her scrawny little sister in disbelief. "You can't look for rubies, the princess is expecting 
+us. The queen invited us both." 
+"I don't care," Arya said. "The wheelhouse doesn't even have windows, you can't see a thing." 
+"What could you want to see?" Sansa said, annoyed. She had been thrilled by the invitation, and her 
+stupid sister was going to ruin everything, just as she'd feared. "It's all just fields and farms and holdfasts." 
+"It is not," Arya said stubbornly. "If you came with us sometimes, you'd see." 
+"I hate riding," Sansa said fervently. "All it does is get you soiled and dusty and sore." 
+Arya shrugged. "Hold still, " she snapped at Nymeria, "I'm not hurting you." Then to Sansa she said, 
+"When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed 
+me a lizard-lion." 
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+
+Sansa shuddered. They had been twelve days crossing the Neck, rumbling down a crooked causeway 
+through an endless black bog, and she had hated every moment of it. The air had been damp and 
+clammy, the causeway so narrow they could not even make proper camp at night, they had to stop right 
+on the kingsroad. Dense thickets of halfdrowned trees pressed close around them, branches dripping 
+with curtains of pale fungus. Huge flowers bloomed in the mud and floated on pools of stagnant water, 
+but if you were stupid enough to leave the causeway to pluck them, there were quicksands waiting to 
+suck you down, and snakes watching from the trees, and lizard-lions floating half-submerged in the 
+water, like black logs with eyes and teeth. 
+None of which stopped Arya, of course. One day she came back grinning her horsey grin, her hair all 
+tangled and her clothes covered in mud, clutching a raggedy bunch of purple and green flowers for 
+Father. Sansa kept hoping he would tell Arya to behave herself and act like the highborn lady she was 
+supposed to be, but he never did, he only hugged her and thanked her for the flowers. That just made her 
+worse. 
+Then it turned out the purple flowers were called poison kisses, and Arya got a rash on her arms. Sansa 
+would have thought that might have taught her a lesson, but Arya laughed about it, and the next day she 
+rubbed mud all over her arms like some ignorant bog woman just because her friend Mycah told her it 
+would stop the itching. She had bruises on her arms and shoulders too, dark purple welts and faded 
+green-and-yellow splotches, Sansa had seen them when her sister undressed for sleep. How she had 
+gotten those only the seven gods knew. 
+Arya was still going on, brushing out Nymeria's tangles and chattering about things she'd seen on the trek 
+south. "Last week we found this haunted watchtower, and the day before we chased a herd of wild 
+horses. You should have seen them run when they caught a scent of 
+Nymeria." The wolf wriggled in her grasp and Arya scolded her. "Stop that, I have to do the other side, 
+you're all muddy." 
+"You're not supposed to leave the column," Sansa reminded her. "Father said so." 
+Arya shrugged. "I didn't go far. Anyway, Nymeria was with me the whole time. I don't always go off, 
+either. Sometimes it's fun just to ride along with the wagons and talk to people." 
+Sansa knew all about the sorts of people Arya liked to talk to: squires and grooms and serving girls, old 
+men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth. Arya would make friends with 
+anybody. This Mycah was the worst; a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and 
+smelled of the slaughtering block. Just the sight of him was enough to make Sansa feel sick, but Arya 
+seemed to prefer his company to hers. 
+Sansa was running out of patience now. "You have to come with me," she told her sister firmly. "You 
+can't refuse the queen. Septa Mordane will expect you." 
+Arya ignored her. She gave a hard yank with the brush. Nymeria growled and spun away, affronted. 
+"Come back here!" 
+"There's going to be lemon cakes and tea," Sansa went on, all adult and reasonable. Lady brushed 
+against her leg. Sansa scratched her ears the way she liked, and Lady sat beside her on her haunches, 
+Page 93
+
+watching Arya chase Nymeria. "Why would you want to ride a smelly old horse and get all sore and 
+sweaty when you could recline on feather pillows and eat cakes with the queen?" 
+"I don't like the queen," Arya said casually. Sansa sucked in her breath, shocked that even Arya would 
+say such a thing, but her sister prattled on, heedless. "She won't even let me bring Nymeria." She thrust 
+the brush under her belt and stalked her wolf. Nymeria watched her approach warily. 
+"A royal wheelhouse is no place for a wolf," Sansa said. "And Princess Myrcella is afraid of them, you 
+know that." 
+"Myrcella is a little baby." Arya grabbed Nymeria around her neck, but the moment she pulled out the 
+brush again the direwolf wriggled free and bounded off. Frustrated, Arya threw down the brush. "Bad 
+wolf!" she shouted. 
+Sansa couldn't help but smile a little. The kennelmaster once told her that an animal takes after its master. 
+She gave Lady a quick little hug. Lady licked her cheek. Sansa giggled. Arya heard and whirled around, 
+glaring. "I don't care what you say, I'm going out riding." Her long horsey face got the stubborn look that 
+meant she was going to do something willful. 
+"Gods be true, Arya, sometimes you act like such a child," Sansa said. "I'll go by myself then. It will be 
+ever so much nicer that way. Lady and I will eat all the lemon cakes and just have the best time without 
+you." 
+She turned to walk off, but Arya shouted after her, "They won't let you bring Lady either." She was gone 
+before Sansa could think of a reply, chasing Nymeria along the river. 
+Alone and humiliated, Sansa took the long way back to the inn, where she knew Septa Mordane would 
+be waiting. Lady padded quietly by her side. She was almost in tears. All she wanted was for things to be 
+nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs. Why couldn't Arya be sweet and delicate and kind, like 
+Princess Myrcella? She would have liked a sister like that. 
+Sansa could never understand how two sisters, born only two years apart, could be so different. It 
+would have been easier if Arya had been a bastard, like their half brother Jon. She even looked like Jon, 
+with the long face and brown hair of the Starks, and nothing of their lady mother in her face or her 
+coloring. And Jon's mother had been common, or so people whispered. Once, when she was littler, 
+Sansa had even asked Mother if perhaps there hadn't been some mistake. Perhaps the grumkins had 
+stolen her real sister. But Mother had only laughed and said no, Arya was her daughter and Sansa's 
+trueborn sister, blood of their blood. Sansa could not think why Mother would want to lie about it, so she 
+supposed it had to be true. 
+As she neared the center of camp, her distress was quickly forgotten. A crowd had gathered around the 
+queen's wheelhouse. Sansa heard excited voices buzzing like a hive of bees. The doors had been thrown 
+open, she saw, and the queen stood at the top of the wooden steps, smiling down at someone. She heard 
+her saying, "The council does us great honor, my good lords." 
+"What's happening?" she asked a squire she knew. 
+"The council sent riders from King's Landing to escort us the rest of the way," he told her. "An honor 
+guard for the king." 
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+
+Anxious to see, Sansa let Lady clear a path through the crowd. People moved aside hastily for the 
+direwolf. When she got closer, she saw two knights kneeling before the queen, in armor so fine and 
+gorgeous that it made her blink. 
+One knight wore an intricate suit of white enameled scales, brilliant as a field of new-fallen snow, with 
+silver chasings and clasps that glittered in the sun. When he removed his helm, Sansa saw that he was an 
+old man with hair as pale as his armor, yet he seemed strong and 
+graceful for all that. From his shoulders hung the pure white cloak of the Kingsguard. 
+His companion was a man near twenty whose armor was steel plate of a deep forest-green. He was the 
+handsomest man Sansa had ever set eyes upon; tall and powerfully made, with jet-black hair that fell to 
+his shoulders and framed a clean-shaven face, and laughing green eyes to match his armor. Cradled 
+under one arm was an antlered helm, its magnificent rack shimmering in gold. 
+At first Sansa did not notice the third stranger. He did not kneel with the others. He stood to one side, 
+beside their horses, a gaunt grim man who watched the proceedings in silence. His face was pockmarked 
+and beardless, with deepset eyes and hollow cheeks. Though he was not an old man, only a few wisps of 
+hair remained to him, sprouting above his ears, but those he had grown long as a woman's. His armor 
+was iron-grey chainmail over layers of boiled leather, plain and unadorned, and it spoke of age and hard 
+use. Above his right shoulder the stained leather hilt of the blade strapped to his back was visible; a 
+two-handed greatsword, too long to be worn at his side. 
+"The king is gone hunting, but I know he will be pleased to see you when he returns," the queen was 
+saying to the two knights who knelt before her, but Sansa could not take her eyes off the third man. He 
+seemed to feel the weight of her gaze. Slowly he turned his head. Lady growled. A terror as 
+overwhelming as anything Sansa Stark had ever felt filled her suddenly. She stepped backward and 
+bumped into someone. 
+Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders, and for a moment Sansa thought it was her father, but when 
+she turned, it was the burned face of Sandor Clegane looking down at her, his mouth twisted in a terrible 
+mockery of a smile. "You are shaking, girl," he said, his voice rasping. "Do I frighten you so much?" 
+He did, and had since she had first laid eyes on the ruin that fire had made of his face, though it seemed 
+to her now that he was not half so terrifying as the other. Still, Sansa wrenched away from him, and the 
+Hound laughed, and Lady moved between them, rumbling a warning. Sansa dropped to her knees to 
+wrap her arms around the wolf. They were all gathered around gaping, she could feel their eyes on her, 
+and here and there she heard muttered comments and titters of laughter. 
+"A wolf," a man said, and someone else said, "Seven hells, that's a direwolf," and the first man said, 
+"What's it doing in camp?" and the Hound's rasping voice replied, "The Starks use them for wet nurses," 
+and Sansa realized that the two stranger knights were looking down on 
+her and Lady, swords in their hands, and then she was frightened again, and ashamed. Tears filled her 
+eyes. 
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+
+She heard the queen say, "Joffrey, go to her." 
+And her prince was there. 
+"Leave her alone," Joffrey said. He stood over her, beautiful in blue wool and black leather, his golden 
+curls shining in the sun like a crown. He gave her his hand, drew her to her feet. "What is it, sweet lady? 
+Why are you afraid? No one will hurt you. Put away your swords, all of you. The wolf is her little pet, 
+that's all." He looked at Sandor Clegane. "And you, dog, away with you, you're scaring my betrothed." 
+The Hound, ever faithful, bowed and slid away quietly through the press. Sansa struggled to steady 
+herself. She felt like such a fool. She was a Stark of Winterfell, a noble lady, and someday she would be 
+a queen. "It was not him, my sweet prince," she tried to explain. "It was the other one." 
+The two stranger knights exchanged a look. "Payne?" chuckled the young man in the green armor. 
+The older man in white spoke to Sansa gently. "Ofttimes Ser Ilyn frightens me as well, sweet lady. He 
+has a fearsome aspect." 
+"As well he should." The queen had descended from the wheelhouse. The spectators parted to make 
+way for her. "If the wicked do not fear the Mng's Justice, you have put the wrong man in the office." 
+Sansa finally found her words. "Then surely you have chosen the right one, Your Grace," she said, and a 
+gale of laughter erupted all around her. 
+"Well spoken, child," said the old man in white. "As befits the daughter of Eddard Stark. I am honored 
+to know you, however irregular the manner of our meeting. I am Ser Barristan Selmy, of the 
+Kingsguard." He bowed. 
+Sansa knew the name, and now the courtesies that Septa Mordane had taught her over the years came 
+back to her. "The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard," she said, "and councillor to Robert our king and 
+to Aerys Targaryen before him. The honor is mine, good knight. Even in the far north, the singers praise 
+the deeds of Barristan the Bold." 
+The green knight laughed again. "Barristan the Old, you mean. Don't flatter him too sweetly, child, he 
+thinks overmuch of himself already." He smiled at her. "Now, wolf girl, if you can put a name to me as 
+well, then I must concede that you are truly our Hand's daughter." 
+Joffrey stiffened beside her. "Have a care how you address my betrothed." 
+can answer," Sansa said quickly, to quell her prince's anger. She smiled at the green knight. "Your 
+helmet bears golden antlers, my lord. The stag is the sigil of the royal House. King Robert has two 
+brothers. By your extreme youth, you can only be Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End and councillor 
+to the king, and so I name you." 
+Ser Barristan chuckled. "By his extreme youth, he can only be a prancing jackanapes, and so I name 
+him." 
+There was general laughter, led by Lord Renly himself. The tension of a few moments ago was gone, 
+and Sansa was beginning to feel comfortable . . . until Ser Ilyn Payne shouldered two men aside, and 
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+
+stood before her, unsmiling. He did not say a word. Lady bared her teeth and began to growl, a low 
+rumble full of menace, but this time Sansa silenced the wolf with a gentle hand to the head. "I am sorry if I 
+offended you, Ser Ilyn," she said. 
+She waited for an answer, but none came. As the headsman looked at her, his pale colorless eyes 
+seemed to strip the clothes away from her, and then the skin, leaving her soul naked before him. Still 
+silent, he turned and walked away. 
+Sansa did not understand. She looked at her prince. "Did I say something wrong, Your Grace? Why will 
+he not speak to me?" 
+"Ser Ilyn has not been feeling talkative these past fourteen years," Lord Renly commented with a sly 
+smile. 
+Joffrey gave his uncle a look of pure loathing, then took Sansa's hands in his own. "Aerys Targaryen had 
+his tongue ripped out with hot pincers." 
+"He speaks most eloquently with his sword, however," the queen said, "and his devotion to our realm is 
+unquestioned." Then she smiled graciously and said, "Sansa, the good councillors and I must speak 
+together until the king returns with your father. I fear we shall have to postpone your day with Myrcella. 
+Please give your sweet sister my apologies. Joffrey, perhaps you would be so kind as to entertain our 
+guest today." 
+"It would be my pleasure, Mother," Joffrey said very formally. He took her by the arm and led her away 
+from the wheelhouse, and Sansa's spirits took flight. A whole day with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey 
+worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, 
+why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa 
+from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys's honor against evil Ser 
+Morgil's slanders. 
+The touch of Joffrey's hand on her sleeve made her heart beat faster. "What would you like to do?" 
+Be with you, Sansa thought, but she said, "Whatever you'd like to do, my prince." 
+Jofftey reflected a moment. "We could go riding." 
+"Oh, I love riding," Sansa said. 
+Joffrey glanced back at Lady, who was following at their heels. "Your wolf is liable to frighten the 
+horses, and my dog seems to frighten you. Let us leave them both behind and set off on our own, what 
+do you say?" 
+Sansa hesitated. "If you like," she said uncertainly. "I suppose I could tie Lady up." She did not quite 
+understand, though. "I didn't know you had a dog . . ." 
+Joffrey laughed. "He's my mother's dog, in truth. She has set him to guard me, and so he does." 
+"You mean the Hound," she said. She wanted to hit herself for being so slow. Her prince would never 
+love her if she seemed stupid. "Is it safe to leave him behind?" 
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+
+Prince Joffrey looked annoyed that she would even ask. "Have no fear, lady. I am almost a man grown, 
+and I don't fight with wood like your brothers. All I need is this." He drew his sword and showed it to 
+her; a longsword adroitly shrunken to suit a boy of twelve, gleaming blue steel, castle-forged and 
+double-edged, with a leather grip and a lion's-head pommel in gold. Sansa exclaimed over it admiringly, 
+and Joffrey looked pleased. "I call it Lion's Tooth," he said. 
+And so they left her direwolf and his bodyguard behind them, while they ranged east along the north 
+bank of the Trident with no company save Lion's Tooth. 
+It was a glorious day, a magical day. The air was warm and heavy with the scent of flowers, and the 
+woods here had a gentle beauty that Sansa had never seen in the north. Prince Joffrey's mount was a 
+blood bay courser, swift as the wind, and he rode it with reckless abandon, so fast that Sansa was 
+hard-pressed to keep up on her mare. It was a day for adventures. They explored the caves by the 
+riverbank, and tracked a shadowcat to its lair, and when they grew hungry, Joffrey found a holdfast by its 
+smoke and told them to fetch food and wine for their prince and his lady. They dined on trout fresh from 
+the river, and Sansa drank more wine than she had ever drunk before. "My father only lets us have one 
+cup, and only at feasts," she confessed to her prince. 
+"My betrothed can drink as much as she wants," Joffrey said, refilling her cup. 
+They went more slowly after they had eaten. Joffrey sang for her as 
+they rode, his voice high and sweet and pure. Sansa was a little dizzy from the wine. "Shouldn't we be 
+starting back?" she asked. 
+"Soon," Joffrey said. "The battleground is right up ahead, where the river bends. That was where my 
+father killed Rhaegar Targaryen, you know. He smashed in his chest, crunch, right through the armor." 
+Joffrey swung an imaginary warhammer to show her how it was done. "Then my uncle Jaime killed old 
+Aerys, and my father was king. What's that sound?" 
+Sansa heard it too, floating through the woods, a kind of wooden clattering, snack snack snack. "I don't 
+know," she said. It made her nervous, though. "Joffrey, let's go back." 
+"I want to see what it is." Joffrey turned his horse in the direction of the sounds, and Sansa had no choice 
+but to follow. The noises grew louder and more distinct, the clack of wood on wood, and as they grew 
+closer they heard heavy breathing as well, and now and then a grunt. 
+"Someone's there," Sansa said anxiously. She found herself thinking of Lady, wishing the direwolf was 
+with her. 
+"You're safe with me." Joffrey drew his Lion's Tooth from its sheath. The sound of steel on leather made 
+her tremble. "This way," he said, riding through a stand of trees. 
+Beyond, in a clearing overlooking the river, they came upon a boy and a girl playing at knights. Their 
+swords were wooden sticks, broom handles from the look of them, and they were rushing across the 
+grass, swinging at each other lustily. The boy was years older, a head taller, and much stronger, and he 
+was pressing the attack. The girl, a scrawny thing in soiled leathers, was dodging and managing to get her 
+stick in the way of most of the boy's blows, but not all. When she tried to lunge at him, he caught her 
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+stick with his own, swept it aside, and slid his wood down hard on her fingers. She cried out and lost her 
+weapon. 
+Prince Joffrey laughed. The boy looked around, wide-eyed and startled, and dropped his stick in the 
+grass. The girl glared at them, sucking on her knuckles to take the sting out, and Sansa was horrified. 
+'Arya?" she called out incredulously. 
+"Go away," Arya shouted back at them, angry tears in her eyes. "What are you doing here? Leave us 
+alone." 
+Joffrey glanced from Arya to Sansa and back again. "Your sister?" She nodded, blushing. Joffrey 
+examined the boy, an ungainly lad with a coarse, freckled face and thick red hair. "And who are you, 
+boy?" he asked in a commanding tone that took no notice of the fact that the other was a year his senior. 
+"Mycah," the boy muttered. He recognized the prince and averted his eyes. "M'Iord." 
+"He's the butcher's boy," Sansa said. 
+"He's my friend," Arya said sharply. "You leave him alone." 
+"A butcher's boy who wants to be a knight, is it?" Joffrey swung down from his mount, sword in hand. 
+"Pick up your sword, butcher's boy," he said, his eyes bright with amusement. "Let us see how good you 
+are." 
+Mycah stood there, frozen with fear. 
+Joffrey walked toward him. "Go on, pick it up. Or do you only fight little girls?" 
+"She ast me to, m'lord," Mycah said. "She ast me to." 
+Sansa had only to glance at Arya and see the flush on her sister's face to know the boy was telling the 
+truth, but Joffrey was in no mood to listen. The wine had made him wild. "Are you going to pick up your 
+sword?" 
+Mycah shook his head. "It's only a stick, m'lord. It's not no sword, it's only a stick." 
+"And you're only a butcher's boy, and no knight." Joffrey lifted Lion's Tooth and laid its point on 
+Mycah's cheek below the eye, as the butcher's boy stood trembling. "That was my lady's sister you were 
+hitting, do you know that?" A bright bud of blood blossomed where his sword pressed into Mycah's 
+flesh, and a slow red line trickled down the boy's cheek. 
+"Stop it!" Arya screamed. She grabbed up her fallen stick. 
+Sansa was afraid. "Arya, you stay out of this." 
+"I won't hurt him . . . much," Prince Joffrey told Arya, never taking his eyes off the butcher's boy. 
+Arya went for him. 
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+Sansa slid off her mare, but she was too slow. Arya swung with both hands. There was a loud crack as 
+the wood split against the back of the prince's head, and then everything happened at once before 
+Sansa's horrified eyes. Joffrey staggered and whirled around, roaring curses. Mycah ran for the trees as 
+fast as his legs would take him. Arya swung at the prince again, but this time Joffrey caught the blow on 
+Lion's Tooth and sent her broken stick flying from her hands. The back of his head was all bloody and 
+his eyes were on fire. Sansa was shrieking, "No, no, stop it, stop it, both of you, you're spoiling it," but no 
+one was listening. Arya scooped up a rock and hurled it at Joffrey's head. She hit his horse instead, and 
+the blood bay reared and went galloping off after Mycah. "Stop it, don't, stop it!" Sansa screamed. 
+Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy words. Arya darted 
+back, frightened now, but Joffrey followed, hounding 
+her toward the woods, backing her up against a tree. Sansa didn't know what to do. She watched 
+helplessly, almost blind from her tears. 
+Then a grey blur flashed past her, and suddenly Nymeria was there, leaping, jaws closing around 
+Jofftey's sword arm. The steel fell from his fingers as the wolf knocked him off his feet, and they rolled in 
+the grass, the wolf snarling and ripping at him, the prince shrieking in pain. "Get it off," he screamed. "Get 
+it off!" 
+Arya's voice cracked like a whip. "Nymefia!" 
+The direwolf let go of Joffrey and moved to Arya's side. The prince lay in the grass, whimpering, 
+cradling his mangled arm. His shirt was soaked in blood. Arya said, "She didn't hurt you . . . much." She 
+picked up Lion's Tooth where it had fallen, and stood over him, holding the sword with both hands. 
+Jofftey made a scared whimpery sound as he looked up at her. "No," he said, "don't hurt me. I'll tell my 
+mother." 
+"You leave him alone!" Sansa screamed at her sister. 
+Arya whirled and heaved the sword into the air, putting her whole body into the throw. The blue steel 
+flashed in the sun as the sword spun out over the river. It hit the water and vanished with a splash. Joffrey 
+moaned. Arya ran off to her horse, Nymeria loping at her heels. 
+After they had gone, Sansa went to Prince Joffrey. His eyes were closed in pain, his breath ragged. 
+Sansa knelt beside him. "Joffrey," she sobbed. "Oh, look what they did, look what they did. My poor 
+prince. Don't be afraid. I'll ride to the holdfast and bring help for you." Tenderly she reached out and 
+brushed back his soft blond hair. 
+His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the vilest 
+contempt. "Then go," he spit at her. "And don't touch me." 
+EDDARD 
+They've found her, my lord." 
+Ned rose quickly. "Our men or Lannister's?" 
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+"T"It was Jory," his steward Vayon Poole replied. "She's not been harmed." 
+"Thank the gods," Ned said. His men had been searching for Arya for four days now, but the queen's 
+men had been out hunting as well. "Where is she? Tell Jory to bring her here at once." 
+"I am sorry, my lord," Poole told him. "The guards on the gate were Lannister men, and they informed 
+the queen when Jory brought her in. She's being taken directly before the king . . ." 
+"Damn that woman!" Ned said, striding to the door. "Find Sansa and bring her to the audience chamber. 
+Her voice may be needed." He descended the tower steps in a red rage. He had led searches himself for 
+the first three days, and had scarcely slept an hour since Arya had disappeared. This morning he had 
+been so heartsick and weary he could scarcely stand, but now his fury was on him, filling him with 
+strength. 
+Men called out to him as he crossed the castle yard, but Ned ignored them in his haste. He would have 
+run, but he was still the King's Hand, and a Hand must keep his dignity. He was aware of the eyes that 
+followed him, of the muttered voices wondering what he would do. 
+The castle was a modest holding a half day's ride south of the Trident. The royal party had made 
+themselves the uninvited guests of its lord, Ser Raymun Darry, while the hunt for Arya and the butcher's 
+boy was conducted on both sides of the river. They were not welcome visitors. Ser Raymun lived under 
+the king's peace, but his family had fought beneath Rhaegar's dragon banners at the Trident, and his three 
+older brothers had died there, a truth neither Robert nor Ser Raymun had forgotten. With king's men, 
+Darry men, Lannister men, and Stark men all crammed into a castle far too small for them, tensions 
+burned hot and heavy. 
+The king had appropriated Ser Raymun's audience chamber, and that was where Ned found them. The 
+room was crowded when he burst in. Too crowded, he thought; left alone, he and Robert might have 
+been able to settle the matter amicably. 
+Robert was slumped in Darry's high seat at the far end of the room, his face closed and sullen. Cersei 
+Lannister and her son stood beside him. The queen had her hand on Joffrey's shoulder. Thick silken 
+bandages still covered the boy's arm. 
+Arya stood in the center of the room, alone but for Jory Cassel, every eye upon her. "Arya," Ned called 
+loudly. He went to her, his boots ringing on the stone floor. When she saw him, she cried out and began 
+to sob. 
+Ned went to one knee and took her in his arms. She was shaking. "I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I'm sorry, 
+I'm sorry." 
+"I know," he said. She felt so tiny in his arms, nothing but a scrawny little girl. It was hard to see how she 
+had caused so much trouble. "Are you hurt?" 
+"No." Her face was dirty, and her tears left pink tracks down her cheeks. "Hungry some. I ate some 
+berries, but there was nothing else." 
+"We'll feed you soon enough," Ned promised. He rose to face the king. "What is the meaning of this?" 
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+
+His eyes swept the room, searching for friendly faces. But for his own men, they were few enough. Ser 
+Raymun Darry guarded his look well. Lord Renly wore a half smile that might mean anything, and old Ser 
+Barristan was grave; the rest were Lannister men, and hostile. Their only good fortune was that both 
+Jaime Lannister and Sandor Clegane were missing, leading searches north of the Trident. "Why was I not 
+told that my daughter had been found?" Ned demanded, his voice ringing. "Why was she not brought to 
+me at once?" 
+He spoke to Robert, but it was Cersei Lannister who answered. "How dare you speak to your king in 
+that manner!" 
+At that, the king stirred. "Quiet, woman," he snapped. He straightened 
+in his seat. "I am sorry, Ned. I never meant to frighten the girl. It seemed best to bring her here and 
+get the business done with quickly." 
+"And what business is that?" Ned put ice in his voice. 
+The queen stepped forward. "You know full well, Stark. This girl of yours attacked my son. Her and her 
+butcher's boy. That animal of hers tried to tear his arm off." 
+"That's not true," Arya said loudly. "She just bit him a little. He was hurting Mycah." 
+"Joff told us what happened," the queen said. "You and the butcher boy beat him with clubs while you 
+set your wolf on him." 
+"That's not how it was," Arya said, close to tears again. Ned put a hand on her shoulder. 
+"Yes it is!" Prince Joffrey insisted. "They all attacked me, and she threw Lion's Tooth in the river!" Ned 
+noticed that he did not so much as glance at Arya as he spoke. 
+"Liar!" Arya yelled. 
+"Shut up!" the prince yelled back. 
+"Enough!" the king roared, rising from his seat, his voice thick with irritation. Silence fell. He glowered at 
+Arya through his thick beard. "Now, child, you will tell me what happened. Tell it all, and tell it true. It is 
+a great crime to lie to a king." Then he looked over at his son. "When she is done, you will have your 
+turn. Until then, hold your tongue." 
+As Arya began her story, Ned heard the door open behind him. He glanced back and saw Vayon Poole 
+enter with Sansa. They stood quietly at the back of the hall as Arya spoke. When she got to the part 
+where she threw Joffrey's sword into the middle of the Trident, Renly Baratheon began to laugh. The king 
+bristled. "Ser Barristan, escort my brother from the hall before he chokes." 
+Lord Renly stifled his laughter. "My brother is too kind. I can find the door myself." He bowed to 
+Joffrey. "Perchance later you'll tell me how a nine-year-old girl the size of a wet rat managed to disarm 
+you with a broom handle and throw your sword in the river." As the door swung shut behind him, Ned 
+heard him say, "Lion's Tooth," and guffaw once more. 
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+Prince Joffrey was pale as he began his very different version of events. When his son was done talking, 
+the king rose heavily from his seat, looking like a man who wanted to be anywhere but here. "What in all 
+the seven hells am I supposed to make of this? He says one thing, she says another." 
+"They were not the only ones present," Ned said. "Sansa, come 
+here." Ned had heard her version of the story the night Arya had vanished. He knew the truth. "Tell us 
+what happened." 
+His eldest daughter stepped forward hesitantly. She was dressed in blue velvets trimmed with white, a 
+silver chain around her neck. Her thick auburn hair had been brushed until it shone. She blinked at her 
+sister, then at the young prince. "I don't know," she said tearfully, looking as though she wanted to bolt. "I 
+don't remember. Everything happened so fast, I didn't see . . ." 
+"You rotten!" Arya shrieked. She flew at her sister like an arrow, knocking Sansa down to the ground, 
+pummeling her. "Liar, liar, liar, liar." 
+"Arya, stop it!" Ned shouted. Jory pulled her off her sister, kicking. Sansa was pale and shaking as Ned 
+lifted her back to her feet. "Are you hurt?" he asked, but she was staring at Arya, and she did not seem 
+to hear. 
+"The girl is as wild as that filthy animal of hers," Cersei Lannister said. "Robert, I want her punished." 
+"Seven hells," Robert swore. "Cersei, look at her. She's a child. What would you have me do, whip her 
+through the streets? Damn it, children fight. It's over. No lasting harm was done." 
+The queen was furious. "Joff will carry those scars for the rest of his life." 
+Robert Baratheon looked at his eldest son. "So he will. Perhaps they will teach him a lesson. Ned, see 
+that your daughter is disciplined. I will do the same with my son." 
+"Gladly, Your Grace," Ned said with vast relief. 
+Robert started to walk away, but the queen was not done. "And what of the direwolf?" she called after 
+him. "What of the beast that savaged your son?" 
+The king stopped, turned back, frowned. "I'd forgotten about the damned wolf." 
+Ned could see Arya tense in Jory's arms. Jory spoke up quickly. "We found no trace of the direwolf, 
+Your Grace." 
+Robert did not look unhappy. "No? So be it." 
+The queen raised her voice. "A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its skin!" 
+"A costly pelt," Robert grumbled. "I want no part of this, woman. You can damn well buy your furs with 
+Lannister gold." 
+The queen regarded him coolly. "I had not thought you so niggardly. The king I'd thought to wed would 
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+have laid a wolfskin across my bed before the sun went down." 
+Robert's face darkened with anger. "That would be a fine trick, without a wolf." 
+"We have a wolf," Cersei Lannister said. Her voice was very quiet, but her green eyes shone with 
+triumph. 
+It took them all a moment to comprehend her words, but when they did, the king shrugged irritably. "As 
+you will. Have Ser Ilyn see to it." 
+"Robert, you cannot mean this," Ned protested. 
+The king was in no mood for more argument. "Enough, Ned, I will hear no more. A direwolf is a savage 
+beast. Sooner or later it would have turned on your girl the same way the other did on my son. Get her a 
+dog, she'll be happier for it." 
+That was when Sansa finally seemed to comprehend. Her eyes were frightened as they went to her 
+father. "He doesn't mean Lady, does he?" She saw the truth on his face. "No," she said. "No, not Lady, 
+Lady didn't bite anybody, she's good . . ." 
+"Lady wasn't there," Arya shouted angrily. "You leave her alone!" 
+"Stop them," Sansa pleaded, "don't let them do it, please, please, it wasn't Lady, it was Nymeria, Arya 
+did it, you can't, it wasn't Lady, don't let them hurt Lady, I'll make her be good, I promise, I promise . . ." 
+She started to cry. 
+All Ned could do was take her in his arms and hold her while she wept. He looked across the room at 
+Robert. His old friend, closer than any brother. "Please, Robert. For the love you bear me. For the love 
+you bore my sister. Please." 
+The king looked at them for a long moment, then turned his eyes on his wife. "Damn you, Cersei," he 
+said with loathing. 
+Ned stood, gently disengaging himself from Sansa's grasp. All the weariness of the past four days had 
+returned to him. "Do it yourself then, Robert," he said in a voice cold and sharp as steel. "At least have 
+the courage to do it yourself." 
+Robert looked at Ned with flat, dead eyes and left without a word, his footsteps heavy as lead. Silence 
+filled the hall. 
+"Where is the direwolf?" Cersei Lannister asked when her husband was gone. Beside her, Prince Joffrey 
+was smiling. 
+"The beast is chained up outside the gatehouse, Your Grace," Ser Barristan Selmy answered reluctantly. 
+"Send for Ilyn Payne." 
+"No," Ned said. "Jory, take the girls back to their rooms and bring me Ice." The words tasted of bile in 
+his throat, but he forced them out. "If it must be done, I will do it." 
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+Cersei Lannister regarded him suspiciously. "You, Stark? Is this some trick? Why would you do such a 
+thing?" 
+They were all staring at him, but it was Sansa's look that cut. "She is of the north. She deserves better 
+than a butcher." 
+He left the room with his eyes burning and his daughter's wails echoing in his ears, and found the direwolf 
+pup where they chained her. Ned sat beside her for a while. "Lady," he said, tasting the name. He had 
+never paid much attention to the names the children had picked, but looking at her now, he knew that 
+Sansa had chosen well. She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She 
+looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur. 
+Shortly, Jory brought him Ice. 
+When it was over, he said, "Choose four men and have them take the body north. Bury her at 
+Winterfell." 
+"All that way?" Jory said, astonished. 
+"All that way," Ned affirmed. "The Lannister woman shall never have this skin." 
+He was walking back to the tower to give himself up to sleep at last when Sandor Clegane and his riders 
+came pounding through the castle gate, back from their hunt. 
+There was something slung over the back of his destrier, a heavy shape wrapped in a bloody cloak. "No 
+sign of your daughter, Hand," the Hound rasped down, "but the day was not wholly wasted. We got her 
+little pet." He reached back and shoved the burden off, and it fell with a thump in front of Ned. 
+Bending, Ned pulled back the cloak, dreading the words he would have to find for Arya, but it was not 
+Nymeria after all. It was the butcher's boy, Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut 
+almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above. 
+"You rode him down," Ned said. 
+The Hound's eyes seemed to glitter through the steel of that hideous dog's-head helm. "He ran." He 
+looked at Ned's face and laughed. "But not very fast." 
+BRAN 
+It seemed as though he had been falling for years. 
+Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness, but Bran did not know 'thow to fly, so all he could do was fall. 
+Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran's 
+clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered. "But I never fall," he said, 
+falling. 
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+The ground was so far below him he could barely make it out through the grey mists that whirled around 
+him, but he could feel how fast he was falling, and he knew what was waiting for him down there. Even in 
+dreams, you could not fall forever. He would wake up in the instant before he hit the ground, he knew. 
+You always woke up in the instant before you hit the ground. 
+And if you don't? the voice asked. 
+The ground was closer now, still far far away, a thousand miles away, but closer than it had been. It was 
+cold here in the darkness. There was no sun, no stars, only the ground below coming up to smash him, 
+and the grey mists, and the whispering voice. He wanted to cry. 
+Not cry. Fly. 
+"I can't fly," Bran said. "I can't, I can't 
+How do you know? Have you ever tried? 
+The voice was high and thin. Bran looked around to see where it 
+was coming from. A crow was spiraling down with him, just out of reach, following him as he fell. "Help 
+me," he said. 
+I'm trying, the crow replied. Say, got any corn? 
+Bran reached into his pocket as the darkness spun dizzily around him. When he pulled his hand out, 
+golden kernels slid from between his fingers into the air. They fell with him. 
+The crow landed on his hand and began to eat. 
+"Are you really a crow?" Bran asked. 
+Are you really falling? the crow asked back. 
+"It's just a dream," Bran said. 
+Is it? asked the crow. 
+"I'll wake up when I hit the ground," Bran told the bird. 
+You'll die when you hit the ground, the crow said. It went back to eating corn. 
+Bran looked down. He could see mountains now, their peaks white with snow, and the silver thread of 
+rivers in dark woods. He closed his eyes and began to cry. 
+That won't do any good, the crow said. I told you, the answer is flying, not crying. How hard can it be? 
+I'm doing it. The crow took to the air and flapped around Bran's hand. 
+"You have wings," Bran pointed out. 
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+Maybe you do too. 
+Bran felt along his shoulders, groping for feathers. 
+There are different kinds of wings, the crow said. 
+Bran was staring at his arms, his legs. He was so skinny, just skin stretched taut over bones. Had he 
+always been so thin? He tried to remember. A face swam up at him out of the grey mist, shining with 
+light, golden. "The things I do for love," it said. 
+Bran screamed. 
+The crow took to the air, cawing. Not that, it shrieked at him. Forget that, you do not need it now, put it 
+aside, put it away. It landed on Bran's shoulder, and pecked at him, and the shining golden face was 
+gone. 
+Bran was falling faster than ever. The grey mists howled around him as he plunged toward the earth 
+below. "What are you doing to me?" he asked the crow, tearful. 
+Teaching you how to fly. 
+"I can't fly!" 
+You're flying tight now. 
+,,Fm falling!" 
+Every flight begins with a fall, the crow said. Look down. 
+"I'm afraid . . ." 
+LOOKDOWN! 
+Bran looked down, and felt his insides turn to water. The ground was rushing up at him now. The whole 
+world was spread out below him, a tapestry of white and brown and green. He could see everything so 
+clearly that for a moment he forgot to be afraid. He could see the whole realm, and everyone in it. 
+He saw Winterfell as the eagles see it, the tall towers looking squat and stubby from above, the castle 
+walls just lines in the dirt. He saw Maester Luwin on his balcony, studying the sky through a polished 
+bronze tube and frowning as he made notes in a book. He saw his brother Robb, taller and stronger than 
+he remembered him, practicing swordplay in the yard with real steel in his hand. He saw Hodor, the 
+simple giant from the stables, carrying an anvil to Mikken's forge, hefting it onto his shoulder as easily as 
+another man might heft a bale of hay. At the heart of the godswood, the great white weirwood brooded 
+over its reflection in the black pool, its leaves rustling in a chill wind. When it felt Bran watching, it lifted 
+its eyes from the still waters and stared back at him knowingly. 
+He looked east, and saw a galley racing across the waters of the Bite. He saw his mother sitting alone in 
+a cabin, looking at a bloodstained knife on a table in front of her, as the rowers pulled at their oars and 
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+Ser Rodrik leaned across a rail, shaking and heaving. A storm was gathering ahead of them, a vast dark 
+roaring lashed by lightning, but somehow they could not see it. 
+He looked south, and saw the great blue-green rush of the Trident. He saw his father pleading with the 
+king, his face etched with grief. He saw Sansa crying herself to sleep at night, and he saw Arya watching 
+in silence and holding her secrets hard in her heart. There were shadows all around them. One shadow 
+was dark as ash, with the terrible face of a hound. Another was armored like the sun, golden and 
+beautiful. Over them both loomed a giant in armor made of stone, but when he opened his visor, there 
+was nothing inside but darkness and thick black blood. 
+He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea 
+and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the 
+Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. 
+Finally he looked north. He saw the Wall shining like blue crystal, and his bastard brother Jon sleeping 
+alone in a cold bed, his skin growing pale and hard as the memory of all warmth fled from him. And he 
+looked past the Wall, past endless forests cloaked in snow, past the frozen shore and the great 
+blue-white rivers of ice and the dead plains where nothing grew or lived. North and north and north he 
+looked, to the curtain of light at the end of the world, and then beyond that curtain. He looked deep into 
+the heart of winter, and then he cried out, afraid, and the heat of his tears burned on his cheeks. 
+Now you know, the crow whispered as it sat on his shoulder. Now you know why you must live. 
+"Why?" Bran said, not understanding, falling, falling. 
+Because winter is coming. 
+Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye 
+was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and 
+cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They 
+flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He 
+was desperately afraid. 
+"Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?" he heard his own voice saying, small and far away. 
+And his father's voice replied to him. "That is the only time a man can be brave." 
+Now, Bran, the crow urged. Choose. Fly or die. 
+Death reached for him, screaming. 
+Bran spread his arms and flew. 
+Wings unseen drank the wind and filled and pulled him upward. The terrible needles of ice receded 
+below him. The sky opened up above. Bran soared. It was better than climbing. It was better than 
+anything. The world grew small beneath him. 
+"I'm flying!" he cried out in delight. 
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+
+I've noticed, said the three-eyed crow. It took to the air, flapping its wings in his face, slowing him, 
+blinding him. He faltered in the air as its pinions beat against his cheeks. Its beak stabbed at him fiercely, 
+and Bran felt a sudden blinding pain in the middle of his forehead, between his eyes. 
+"What are you doing?" he shrieked. 
+The crow opened its beak and cawed at him, a shrill scream of fear, and the grey mists shuddered and 
+swirled around him and ripped away like a veil, and he saw that the crow was really a woman, a serving 
+woman with long black hair, and he knew her from somewhere, from Winterfell, yes, that was it, he 
+remembered her now, and then he realized that he was in Winterfell, in a bed- high in some chilly tower 
+room, and the black-haired woman dropped a basin of water to shatter on the floor and ran down the 
+steps, shouting, "He's awake, he's awake, he's awake." 
+Bran touched his forehead, between his eyes. The place where the 
+crow had pecked him was still burning, but there was nothing there, no blood, no wound. He felt weak 
+and dizzy. He tried to get out of bed, but nothing happened. 
+And then there was movement beside the bed, and something landed lightly on his legs. He felt nothing. 
+A pair of yellow eyes looked into his own, shining like the sun. The window was open and it was cold in 
+the room, but the warmth that came off the wolf enfolded him like a hot bath. His pup, Bran realized . . . 
+or was it? He was so big now. He reached out to pet him, his hand trembling like a leaf. 
+When his brother Robb burst into the room, breathless from his dash up the tower steps, the direwolf 
+was licking Bran's face. Bran looked up calmly. "His name is Summer," he said. 
+CATELYN 
+"We will make King's Landing within the hour." 
+Catelyn turned away from the rail and forced herself to smile. "Your oarmen have done well by us, 
+Captain. Each one of them shall have a silver stag, as a token of my gratitude." 
+Captain Moreo Turnitis favored her with a half bow. "You are far too generous, Lady Stark. The honor 
+of carrying a great lady like yourself is all the reward they need." 
+"But they'll take the silver anyway." 
+Moreo smiled. "As you say." He spoke the Common Tongue fluently, with only the slightest hint of a 
+Tyroshi accent. He'd been plying the narrow sea for thirty years, he'd told her, as oarman, quartermaster, 
+and finally captain of his own trading galleys. The Stonn Dancer was his fourth ship, and his fastest, a 
+two-masted galley of sixty oars. 
+She had certainly been the fastest of the ships available in White Harbor when Catelyn and Ser Rodrik 
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+Cassel had arrived after their headlong gallop downriver. The Tyroshi were notorious for their avarice, 
+and Ser Rodrik had argued for hiring a fishing sloop out of the Three Sisters, but Catelyn had insisted on 
+the galley. It was good that she had. The winds had been against them much of the voyage, and without 
+the galley's oars they'd still be beating their way past the 
+Fingers, instead of skimming toward King's Landing and journey's end. 
+So close, she thought. Beneath the linen bandages, her fingers still throbbed where the dagger had bitten. 
+The pain was her scourge, Catelyn felt, lest she forget. She could not bend the last two fingers on her left 
+hand, and the others would never again be dexterous. Yet that was a small enough price to pay for 
+Bran's life. 
+Ser Rodrik chose that moment to appear on deck. "My good friend," said Moreo through his forked 
+green beard. The Tyroshi loved bright colors, even in their facial hair. "It is so fine to see you looking 
+better." 
+"Yes," Ser Rodrik agreed. "I haven't wanted to die for almost two days now." He bowed to Catelyn. 
+"My lady." 
+He was looking better. A shade thinner than he had been when they set out from White Harbor, but 
+almost himself again. The strong winds in the Bite and the roughness of the narrow sea had not agreed 
+with him, and he'd almost gone over the side when the storm seized them unexpectedly off Dragonstone, 
+yet somehow he had clung to a rope until three of Moreo's men could rescue him and carry him safely 
+below decks. 
+"The captain was just telling me that our voyage is almost at an end," she said. 
+Ser Rodrik managed a wry smile. "So soon?" He looked odd without his great white side whiskers; 
+smaller somehow, less fierce, and ten years older. Yet back on the Bite it had seemed prudent to submit 
+to a crewman's razor, after his whiskers had become hopelessly befouled for the third time while he 
+leaned over the rail and retched into the swirling winds. 
+"I will leave you to discuss your business," Captain Moreo said. He bowed and took his leave of them. 
+The galley skimmed the water like a dragonfly, her oars rising and falling in perfect time. Ser Rodrik held 
+the rail and looked out over the passing shore. "I have not been the most valiant of protectors." 
+Catelyn touched his arm. "We are here, Ser Rodrik, and safely. That is all that truly matters." Her hand 
+groped beneath her cloak, her fingers stiff and fumbling. The dagger was still at her side. She found she 
+had to touch it now and then, to reassure herself. "Now we must reach the king's master-at-arms, and 
+pray that he can be trusted." 
+"Ser Aron Santagar is a vain man, but an honest one." Ser Rodrik's hand went to his face to stroke his 
+whiskers and discovered once again that they were gone. He looked nonplussed. "He may know the 
+blade, 
+yes ... but, my lady, the moment we go ashore we are at risk. And there are those at court who will 
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+know you on sight." 
+Catelyn's mouth grew tight. "Littlefinger," she murmured. His face swam up before her; a boy's face, 
+though he was a boy no longer. His father had died several years before, so he was Lord Baelish now, 
+yet still they called him Littlefinger. Her brother Edmure had given him that name, long ago at Riverrun. 
+His family's modest holdings were on the smallest of the Fingers, and Petyr had been slight and short for 
+his age. 
+Ser Rodrik cleared his throat. "Lord Baelish once, ah His 
+thought trailed off uncertainly in search of the polite word. 
+Catelyn was past delicacy. "He was my father's ward. We grew up together in Riverrun. I thought of him 
+as a brother, but his feelings for me were . . . more than brotherly. When it was announced that I was to 
+wed Brandon Stark, Petyr challenged for the right to my hand. It was madness. Brandon was twenty, 
+Petyr scarcely fifteen. I had to beg Brandon to spare Petyr's life. He let him off with a scar. Afterward my 
+father sent him away. I have not seen him since." She lifted her face to the spray, as if the brisk wind 
+could blow the memories away. "He wrote to me at Riverrun after Brandon was killed, but I burned the 
+letter unread. By then I knew that Ned would marry me in his brother's place." 
+Ser Rodrik's fingers fumbled once again for nonexistent whiskers. "Littlefinger sits on the small council 
+now." 
+"I knew he would rise high," Catelyn said. "He was always clever, even as a boy, but it is one thing to be 
+clever and another to be wise. I wonder what the years have done to him." 
+High overhead, the far-eyes sang out from the rigging. Captain Moreo came scrambling across the deck, 
+giving orders, and all around them the Stonn Dancer burst into frenetic activity as King's Landing slid into 
+view atop its three high hills. 
+Three hundred years ago, Catelyn knew, those heights had been covered with forest, and only a handful 
+of fisherfolk had lived on the north shore of the Blackwater Rush where that deep, swift river flowed into 
+the sea. Then Aegon the Conqueror had sailed from Dragonstone. It was here that his army had put 
+ashore, and there on the highest hill that he built his first crude redoubt of wood and earth. 
+Now the city covered the shore as far as Catelyn could see; manses and arbors and granaries, brick 
+storehouses and timbered inns and merchant's stalls, taverns and graveyards and brothels, all piled one 
+on another. She could hear the clamor of the fish market even at this distance. Between the buildings 
+were broad roads lined with trees, 
+wandering crookback streets, and alleys so narrow that two men could not walk abreast. Visenya's hill 
+was crowned by the Great Sept of Baelor with its seven crystal towers. Across the city on the hill of 
+Rhaenys stood the blackened walls of the Dragonpit, its huge dome collapsing into ruin, its bronze doors 
+closed now for a century. The Street of the Sisters ran between them, straight as an arrow. The city walls 
+rose in the distance, high and strong. 
+A hundred quays lined the waterfront, and the harbor was crowded with ships. Deepwater fishing boats 
+and river runners came and went, ferrymen poled back and forth across the Blackwater Rush, trading 
+galleys unloaded goods from Braavos and Pentos and Lys. Catelyn sp~ied the queen's ornate barge, tied 
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+up beside a fat-bellied whaler from the Port of Ibben, its hull black with tar, while upriver a dozen lean 
+golden warships rested in their cribs, sails furled and cruel iron rams lapping at the water. 
+And above it all, frowning down from Aegon's high hill, was the Red Keep; seven huge drum-towers 
+crowned with iron ramparts, an immense grim barbican, vaulted halls and covered bridges, barracks and 
+dungeons and granaries, massive curtain walls studded with archers' nests, all fashioned of pale red stone. 
+Aegon the Conqueror had commanded it built. His son Maegor the Cruel had seen it completed. 
+Afterward he had taken the heads of every stonemason, woodworker, and builder who had labored on 
+it. Only the blood of the dragon would ever know the secrets of the fortress the Dragonlords had built, he 
+vowed. 
+Yet now the banners that flew from its battlements were golden, not black, and where the three-headed 
+dragon had once breathed fire, now pranced the crowned stag of House Baratheon. 
+A high-masted swan ship from the Summer Isles was beating out from port, its white sails huge with 
+wind. The Stonn Dancer moved past it, pulling steadily for shore. 
+"My lady," Ser Rodrik said, "I have thought on how best to proceed while I lay abed. You must not 
+enter the castle. I will go in your stead and bring Ser Aron to you in some safe place." 
+She studied the old knight as the galley drew near to a pier. Moreo was shouting in the vulgar Valyrian 
+of the Free Cities. "You would be as much at risk as I would." 
+Ser Rodrik smiled. "I think not. I looked at my reflection in the water earlier and scarcely recognized 
+myself. My mother was the last person to see me without whiskers, and she is forty years dead. I believe 
+I am safe enough, my lady." 
+Moreo bellowed a command. As one, sixty oars lifted from the 
+river, then reversed and backed water. The galley slowed. Another shout. The oars slid back inside the 
+hull. As they thumped against the dock, Tyroshi seamen leapt down to tie up. Moreo came bustling up, 
+all smiles. "King's Landing, my lady, as you did command, and never has a ship made a swifter or surer 
+passage. Will you be needing assistance to carry your things to the castle?" 
+"We shall not be going to the castle. Perhaps you can suggest an inn, someplace clean and comfortable 
+and not too far from the river." 
+The Tyroshi fingered his forked green beard. "Just so. I know of several establishments that might suit 
+your needs. Yet first, if I may be so bold, there is the matter of the second half of the payment we agreed 
+upon. And of course the extra silver you were so kind as to promise. Sixty stags, I believe it was." 
+"For the oarmen," Catelyn reminded him. 
+"Oh, of a certainty," said Moreo. "Though perhaps I should hold it for them until we return to Tyrosh. 
+For the sake of their wives and children. If you give them the silver here, my lady, they will dice it away 
+or spend it all for a night's pleasure." 
+"There are worse things to spend money on," Ser Rodrik put in. "Winter is coming." 
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+"A man must make his own choices," Catelyn said. "They earned the silver. How they spend it is no 
+concern of mine." 
+"As you say, my lady," Moreo replied, bowing and smiling. 
+Just to be sure, Catelyn paid the oarmen herself, a stag to each man, and a copper to the two men who 
+carried their chests halfway up Visenya's hill to the inn that Moreo had suggested. It was a rambling old 
+place on Eel Alley. The woman who owned it was a sour crone with a wandering eye who looked them 
+over suspiciously and bit the coin that Catelyn offered her to make sure it was real. Her rooms were large 
+and airy, though, and Moreo swore that her fish stew was the most savory in all the Seven Kingdoms. 
+Best of all, she had no interest in their names. 
+"I think it best if you stay away from the common room," Ser Rodrik said, after they had settled in. 
+"Even in a place like this, one never knows who may be watching." He wore ringmail, dagger, and 
+longsword under a dark cloak with a hood he could pull up over his head. "I will be back before nightfall, 
+with Ser Aron," he promised. "Rest now, my lady." 
+Catelyn was tired. The voyage had been long and fatiguing, and she was no longer as young as she had 
+been. Her windows opened on the alley and rooftops, with a view of the Blackwater beyond. She 
+watched Ser Rodrik set off, striding briskly through the busy streets until he was 
+lost in the crowds, then decided to take his advice. The bedding was stuffed with straw instead of 
+feathers, but she had no trouble falling asleep. 
+She woke to a pounding on her door. 
+Catelyn sat up sharply. Outside the window, the rooftops of King's Landing were red in the light of the 
+setting sun. She had slept longer than she intended. A fist hammered at her door again, and a voice called 
+out, "Open, in the name of the king." 
+"A moment," she called out. She wrapped herself in her cloak. The dagger was on the bedside table. 
+She snatched it up before she unlatched the heavy wooden door. 
+The men who pushed into the room wore the black ringmail and golden cloaks of the City Watch. Their 
+leader smiled at the dagger in her hand and said, "No need for that, m1ady. We're to escort you to the 
+castle." 
+"By whose authority?" she said. 
+He showed her a ribbon. Catelyn felt her breath catch in her throat. The seal was a mockingbird, in grey 
+wax. "Petyr," she said. So soon. Something must have happened to Ser Rodrik. She looked at the head 
+guardsman. "Do you know who I am?" 
+"No, m'lady," he said. "M'lord Littlefinger said only to bring you to him, and see that you were not 
+mistreated." 
+Catelyn nodded. "You may wait outside while I dress." 
+She bathed her hands in the basin and wrapped them in clean linen. Her fingers were thick and awkward 
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+
+as she struggled to lace up her bodice and knot a drab brown cloak about her neck. How could 
+Littlefinger have known she was here? Ser Rodrik would never have told him. Old he might be, but he 
+was stubborn, and loyal to a fault. Were they too late, had the Lannisters reached King's Landing before 
+her? No, if that were true, Ned would be here too, and surely he would have come to her. How . . . ? 
+Then she thought, Moreo. The Tyroshi knew who they were and where they were, damn him. She 
+hoped he'd gotten a good price for the information. 
+They had brought a horse for her. The lamps were being lit along the streets as they set out, and Catelyn 
+felt the eyes of the city on her as she rode, surrounded by the guard in their golden cloaks. When they 
+reached the Red Keep, the portcullis was down and the great gates sealed for the night, but the castle 
+windows were alive with flickering lights. The guardsmen left their mounts outside the walls and escorted 
+her through a narrow postern door, then up endless steps to a tower. 
+He was alone in the room, seated at a heavy wooden table, an oil 
+lamp beside him as he wrote. When they ushered her inside, he set down his pen and looked at her. 
+"Cat," he said quietly. 
+"Why have I been brought here in this fashion?" 
+He rose and gestured brusquely to the guards. "Leave us." The men departed. "You were not 
+mistreated, I trust," he said after they had gone. "I gave firm instructions." He noticed her bandages. 
+"Your hands . . ." 
+Catelyn ignored the implied question. "I am not accustomed to being summoned like a serving wench," 
+she said icily. "As a boy, you still knew the meaning of courtesy." 
+"I've angered you, my lady. That was never my intent." He looked contrite. The look brought back vivid 
+memories for Catelyn. He had been a sly child, but after his mischiefs he always looked contrite; it was a 
+gift he had. The years had not changed him much. Petyr had been a small boy, and he had grown into a 
+small man, an inch or two shorter than Catelyn, slender and quick, with the sharp features she 
+remembered and the same laughing grey-green eyes. He had a little pointed chin beard now, and threads 
+of silver in his dark hair, though he was still shy of thirty. They went well with the silver mockingbird that 
+fastened his cloak. Even as a child, he had always loved his silver. 
+"How did you know I was in the city?" she asked him. 
+"Lord Varys knows all," Petyr said with a sly smile. "He will be joining us shortly, but I wanted to see 
+you alone first. It has been too long, Cat. How many years?" 
+Catelyn ignored his familiarity. There were more important questions. "So it was the King's Spider who 
+found me." 
+Littlefinger winced. "You don't want to call him that. He's very sensitive. Comes of being an eunuch, I 
+imagine. Nothing happens in this city without Varys knowing. Oftimes he knows about it before it 
+happens. He has informants everywhere. His little birds, he calls them. One of his little birds heard about 
+your visit. Thankfully, Varys came to me first." 
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+"Why you?" 
+He shrugged. "Why not me? I am master of coin, the king's own councillor. Selmy and Lord Renly rode 
+north to meet Robert, and Lord Stannis is gone to Dragonstone, leaving only Maester Pycelle and me. I 
+was the obvious choice. I was ever a friend to your sister Lysa, Varys knows that." 
+"Does Varys know about 
+"Lord Varys knows everything . . . except why you are here." He lifted an eyebrow. "Why are you 
+here?" 
+"A wife is allowed to yearn for her husband, and if a mother needs her daughters close, who can tell her 
+no?" 
+Littlefinger laughed. "Oh, very good, my lady, but please don't expect me to believe that. I know you too 
+well. What were the Tully words again?" 
+Her throat was dry. "Family, Duty, Honor, " she recited stiffly. He did know her too well. 
+"Family, Duty, Honor," he echoed. "All of which required you to remain in Winterfell, where our Hand 
+left you. No, my lady, something has happened. This sudden trip of yours bespeaks a certain urgency. I 
+beg of you, let me help. Old sweet friends should never hesitate to rely upon each other." There was a 
+soft knock on the door. "Enter," Littlefinger called out. 
+The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powdered, and as hairless as an egg. He 
+wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of purple silk, and on his feet were pointed slippers 
+of soft velvet. "Lady Stark," he said, taking her hand in both of his, "to see you again after so many years 
+is such a joy." His flesh was soft and moist, and his breath smelled of lilacs. "Oh, your poor hands. Have 
+you burned yourself, sweet lady? The fingers are so delicate . . . Our good Maester Pycelle makes a 
+marvelous salve, shall I send for a jar?" 
+Catelyn slid her fingers from his grasp. "I thank you, my lord, but my own Maester Luwin has already 
+seen to my hurts." 
+Varys bobbed his head. "I was grievous sad to hear about your son. And him so young. The gods are 
+cruel." 
+"On that we agree, Lord Varys," she said. The title was but a courtesy due him as a council member; 
+Varys was lord of nothing but the spiderweb, the master of none but his whisperers. 
+The eunuch spread his soft hands. "On more than that, I hope, sweet lady. I have great esteem for your 
+husband, our new Hand, and I know we do both love King Robert." 
+"Yes," she was forced to say. "For a certainty." 
+"Never has a king been so beloved as our Robert," quipped Littlefinger. He smiled slyly. "At least in 
+Lord Varys's hearing." 
+"Good lady," Varys said with great solicitude. "There are men in the Free Cities with wondrous healing 
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+powers. Say only the word, and I will send for one for your dear Bran." 
+"Maester Luwin is doing all that can be done for Bran," she told him. She would not speak of Bran, not 
+here, not with these men. She trusted Littlefinger only a little, and Varys not at all. She would not let 
+them see her grief. "Lord Baelish tells me that I have you to thank for bringing me here." 
+Varys giggled like a little girl. "Oh, yes. I suppose I am guilty. I hope you forgive me, kind lady." He 
+eased himself down into a seat and put his hands together. "I wonder if we might trouble you to show us 
+the dagger?" 
+Catelyn Stark stared at the eunuch in stunned disbelief. He was a spider, she thought wildly, an 
+enchanter or worse. He knew things no one could possibly know, unless "What have you done to Ser 
+Rodrik?" she demanded. 
+Littlefinger was lost. "I feel rather like the knight who arrives at the battle without his lance. What dagger 
+are we talking about? Who is Ser Rodrik?" 
+"Ser Rodrik Cassel is master-at-arms at Winterfell," Varys informed him. "I assure you, Lady Stark, 
+nothing at all has been done to the good knight. He did call here early this afternoon. He visited with Ser 
+Aron Santagar in the armory, and they talked of a certain dagger. About sunset, they left the castle 
+together and walked to that dreadful hovel where you were staying. They are still there, drinking in the 
+common room, waiting for your return. Ser Rodrik was very distressed to find you gone." 
+"How could you know all that?" 
+"The whisperings of little birds," Varys said, smiling. "I know things, sweet lady. That is the nature of my 
+service." He shrugged. "You do have the dagger with you, yes?" 
+Catelyn pulled it out from beneath her cloak and threw it down on the table in front of him. "Here. 
+Perhaps your little birds will whisper the name of the man it belongs to." 
+Varys lifted the knife with exaggerated delicacy and ran a thumb along its edge. Blood welled, and he let 
+out a squeal and dropped the dagger back on the table. 
+"Careful," Catelyn told him, "it's sharp." 
+"Nothing holds an edge like Valyrian steel," Littlefinger said as Varys sucked at his bleeding thumb and 
+looked at Catelyn with sullen admonition. Littlefinger hefted the knife lightly in his hand, testing the grip. 
+He flipped it in the air, caught it again with his other hand. "Such sweet balance. You want to find the 
+owner, is that the reason for this visit? You have no need of Ser Aron for that, my lady. You should have 
+come to me." 
+"And if I had," she said, "what would you have told me?" 
+"I would have told you that there was only one knife like this at King's Landing." He grasped the blade 
+between thumb and forefinger, 
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+drew it back over his shoulder, and threw it across the room with a practiced flick of his wrist. It struck 
+the door and buried itself deep in the oak, quivering. "It's mine." 
+"Yours?" It made no sense. Petyr had not been at Winterfell. 
+"Until the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day," he said, crossing the room to wrench the dagger from 
+the wood. "I backed Ser Jaime in the jousting, along with half the court." Petyr's sheepish grin made him 
+look half a boy again. "When Loras Tyrell unhorsed him, many of us became a trifle poorer. Ser Jaime 
+lost a hundred golden dragons, the queen lost an emerald pendant, and I lost my knife. Her Grace got the 
+emerald back, but the winner kept the rest." 
+"Who?" Catelyn demanded, her mouth dry with fear. Her fingers ached with remembered pain. 
+"The Imp," said Littlefinger as Lord Varys watched her face. "Tyrion Lannister." 
+JON 
+The courtyard rang to the song of swords. 
+Under black wool, boiled leather, and mail, sweat trickled icily down Jon's chest as he pressed the 
+attack. Grenn stumbled backward, defending himself clumsily. When he raised his sword, Jon went 
+underneath it with a sweeping blow that crunched against the back of the other boy's leg and sent him 
+staggering. Grenn's downcut was answered by an overhand that dented his helm. When he tried a 
+sideswing, Jon swept aside his blade and slammed a mailed forearm into his chest. Grenn lost his footing 
+and sat down hard in the snow. Jon knocked his sword from his fingers with a slash to his wrist that 
+brought a cry of pain. 
+"Enough!" Ser Alliser Thorne had a voice with an edge like Valyrian steel. 
+Grenn cradled his hand. "The bastard broke my wrist." 
+"The bastard hamstrung you, opened your empty skull, and cut off your hand. Or would have, if these 
+blades had an edge. It's fortunate for you that the Watch needs stableboys as well as rangers." Ser Alliser 
+gestured at Jeren and Toad. "Get the Aurochs on his feet, he has funeral arrangements to make." 
+Jon took off his helm as the other boys were pulling Grenn to his feet. The frosty morning air felt good on 
+his face. He leaned on his 
+sword, drew a deep breath, and allowed himself a moment to savor the victory. 
+"That is a longsword, not an old man's cane," Ser Alliser said sharply. "Are your legs hurting, Lord 
+Snow?" 
+Jon hated that name, a mockery that Ser Alliser had hung on him the first day he came to practice. The 
+boys had picked it up, and now he heard it everywhere. He slid the longsword back into its scabbard. 
+"No," he replied. 
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+Thorne strode toward him, crisp black leathers whispering faintly as he moved. He was a compact man 
+of fifty years, spare and hard, with grey in his black hair and eyes like chips of onyx. "The truth now," he 
+commanded. 
+"I'm tired," Jon admitted. His arm burned from the weight of the longsword, and he was starting to feel 
+his bruises now that the fight was done. 
+"What you are is weak." 
+"I won." 
+"No. The Aurochs lost." 
+One of the other boys sniggered. Jon knew better than to reply. He had beaten everyone that Ser Alliser 
+had sent against him, yet it gained him nothing. The master-at-arms served up only derision. Thorne hated 
+him, Jon had decided; of course, he hated the other boys even worse. 
+"That will be all," Thorne told them. "I can only stomach so much ineptitude in any one day. If the Others 
+ever come for us, I pray they have archers, because you lot are fit for nothing more than arrow fodder." 
+Jon followed the rest back to the armory, walking alone. He often walked alone here. There were 
+almost twenty in the group he trained with, yet not one he could call a friend. Most were two or three 
+years his senior, yet not one was half the fighter Robb had been at fourteen. Dareon was quick but afraid 
+of being hit. Pyp used his sword like a dagger, Jeren was weak as a girl, Grenn slow and clumsy. 
+Halder's blows were brutally hard but he ran right into your attacks. The more time he spent with them, 
+the more Jon despised them. 
+Inside, Jon hung sword and scabbard from a hook in the stone wall, ignoring the others around him. 
+Methodically, he began to strip off his mail, leather, and sweat-soaked woolens. Chunks of coal burned 
+in iron braziers at either end of the long room, but Jon found himself shivering. The chill was always with 
+him here. In a few years he would forget what it felt like to be warm. 
+The weariness came on him suddenly, as he donned the roughspun 
+blacks that were their everyday wear. He sat on a bench, his fingers fumbling with the fastenings on his 
+cloak. So cold, he thought, remembering the warm halls of Winterfell, where the hot waters ran through 
+the walls like blood through a man's body. There was scant warmth to be found in Castle Black; the 
+walls were cold here, and the people colder. 
+No one had told him the Night's Watch would be like this; no one except Tyrion Lannister. The dwarf 
+had given him the truth on the road north, but by then it had been too late. Jon wondered if his father had 
+known what the Wall would be like. He must have, he thought; that only made it hurt the worse. 
+Even his uncle had abandoned him in this cold place at the end of the world. Up here, the genial Benjen 
+Stark he had known became a different person. He was First Ranger, and he spent his days and nights 
+with Lord Commander Mormont and Maester Aemon and the other high officers, while Jon was given 
+over to the less than tender charge of Ser Alliser Thorne. 
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+Three days after their arrival, Jon had heard that Benjen Stark was to lead a half-dozen men on a 
+ranging into the haunted forest. That night he sought out his uncle in the great timbered common hall and 
+pleaded to go with him. Benjen refused him curtly. "This is not Winterfell," he told him as he cut his meat 
+with fork and dagger. "On the Wall, a man gets only what he earns. You're no ranger, Jon, only a green 
+boy with the smell of summer still on you." 
+Stupidly, Jon argued. "I'll be fifteen on my name day," he said. "Almost a man grown." 
+Benjen Stark frowned. "A boy you are, and a boy you'll remain until Ser Alliser says you are fit to be a 
+man of the Night's Watch. If you thought your Stark blood would win you easy favors, you were wrong. 
+We put aside our old families when we swear our vows. Your father will always have a place in my 
+heart, but these are my brothers now." He gestured with his dagger at the men around them, all the hard 
+cold men in black. 
+Jon rose at dawn the next day to watch his uncle leave. One of his rangers, a big ugly man, sang a 
+bawdy song as he saddled his garron, his breath steaming in the cold morning air. Ben Stark smiled at 
+that, but he had no smile for his nephew. "How often must I tell you no, Jon? We'll speak when I return." 
+As he watched his uncle lead his horse into the tunnel, Jon had remembered the things that Tyrion 
+Lannister told him on the kingsroad, and in his mind's eye he saw Ben Stark lying dead, his blood red on 
+the snow. The thought made him sick. What was he becoming? 
+Afterward he sought out Ghost in the loneliness of his cell, and buried his face in his thick white fur. 
+If he must be alone, he would make solitude his armor. Castle Black had no godswood, only a small 
+sept and a drunken septon, but Jon could not find it in him to pray to any gods, old or new. If they were 
+real, he thought, they were as cruel and implacable as winter. 
+He missed his true brothers: little Rickon, bright eyes shining as he begged for a sweet; Robb, his rival 
+and best friend and constant companion; Bran, stubborn and curious, always wanting to follow and join 
+in whatever Jon and Robb were doing. He missed the girls too, even Sansa, who never called him 
+anything but "my half brother" since she was old enough to understand what bastard meant. And Arya . . 
+. he missed her even more than Robb, skinny little thing that she was, all scraped knees and tangled hair 
+and torn clothes, so fierce and willful. Arya never seemed to fit, no more than he had . . . yet she could 
+always make Jon smile. He would give anything to be with her now, to muss up her hair once more and 
+watch her make a face, to hear her finish a sentence with him. 
+"You broke my wrist, bastard boy." 
+Jon lifted his eyes at the sullen voice. Grenn loomed over him, thick of neck and red of face, with three 
+of his friends behind him. He knew Todder, a short ugly boy with an unpleasant voice. The recruits all 
+called him Toad. The other two were the ones Yoren had brought north with them, Jon remembered, 
+rapers taken down in the Fingers. He'd forgotten their names. He hardly ever spoke ,to them, if he could 
+help it. They were brutes and bullies, without a thimble of honor between them. 
+Jon stood up. "I'll break the other one for you if you ask nicely." Grenn was sixteen and a head taller 
+than Jon. All four of them were bigger than he was, but they did not scare him. He'd beaten every one of 
+them in the yard. 
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+
+"Maybe we'll break you," one of the rapers said. 
+"Try." Jon reached back for his sword, but one of them grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back. 
+"You make us look bad," complained Toad. 
+"You looked bad before I ever met you," Jon told him. The boy who had his arm jerked upward on him, 
+hard. Pain lanced through him, but Jon would not cry out. 
+Toad stepped close. "The little lordling has a mouth on him," he said. He had pig eyes, small and shiny. 
+"Is that your mommy's mouth, bastard? What was she, some whore? Tell us her name. Maybe I had her 
+a time or two." He laughed. 
+Jon twisted like an eel and slammed a heel down across the instep of the boy holding him. There was a 
+sudden cry of pain, and he was free. He flew at Toad, knocked him backward over a bench, and landed 
+on his chest with both hands on his throat, slamming his head against the packed earth. 
+The two from the Fingers pulled him off, throwing him roughly to the ground. Grenn began to kick at 
+him. Jon was rolling away from the blows when a booming voice cut through the gloom of the armory. 
+"STOP THIS! NOW!" 
+Jon pulled himself to his feet. Donal Noye stood glowering at them. "The yard is for fighting," the 
+armorer said. "Keep your quarrels out of my armory, or I'll make them my quarrels. You won't like that." 
+Toad sat on the floor, gingerly feeling the back of his head. His fingers came away bloody. "He tried to 
+kill me." 
+" 'S true. I saw it," one of the rapers put in. 
+"He broke my wrist," Grenn said again, holding it out to Noye for inspection. 
+The armorer gave the offered wrist the briefest of glances. "A bruise. Perhaps a sprain. Maestor Aemon 
+will give you a salve. Go with him, Todder, that head wants looking after. The rest of you, return to your 
+cells. Not you, Snow. You stay." 
+Jon sat heavily on the long wooden bench as the others left, oblivious to the looks they gave him, the 
+silent promises of future retribution. His arm was throbbing. 
+"The Watch has need of every man it can get," Donal Noye said when they were alone. "Even men like 
+Toad. You won't win any honors killing him." 
+Jon's anger flared. "He said my mother was-" 
+11 
+-a whore. I heard him. What of it?" 
+"Lord Eddard Stark was not a man to sleep with whores," Jon said icily. "His honor-" 
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+"-did not prevent him from fathering a bastard. Did it?" 
+Jon was cold with rage. "Can I go?" 
+"You go when I tell you to go." 
+Jon stared sullenly at the smoke rising from the brazier, until Noye took him under the chin, thick fingers 
+twisting his head around. "Look at me when I'm talking to you, boy." 
+Jon looked. The armorer had a chest like a keg of ale and a gut to match. His nose was flat and broad, 
+and he always seemed in need of a shave. The left sleeve of his black wool tunic was fastened at the 
+shoulder with a silver pin in the shape of a longsword. "Words won't make your mother a whore. She 
+was what she was, and nothing Toad 
+says can change that. You know, we have men on the Wall whose mothers were whores." 
+Not my mother, Jon thought stubbornly. He knew nothing of his mother; Eddard Stark would not talk of 
+her. Yet he dreamed of her at times, so often that he could almost see her face. In his dreams, she was 
+beautiful, and highborn, and her eyes were kind. 
+"You think you had it hard, being a high lord's bastard?" the armorer went on. "That boy Jeren is a 
+septon's get, and Cotter Pyke is the baseborn son of a tavern wench. Now he commands Eastwatch by 
+the Sea." 
+"I don't care," Jon said. "I don't care about them and I don't care about you or Thorne or Benjen Stark 
+or any of it. I hate it here. It's too . . . it's cold." 
+"Yes. Cold and hard and mean, that's the Wall, and the men who walk it. Not like the stories your wet 
+nurse told you. Well, piss on the stories and piss on your wet nurse. This is the way it is, and you're here 
+for life, same as the rest of us." 
+"Life," Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He'd had one. He'd only taken the black 
+after he'd lost an arm at the siege of Storm's End. Before that he'd smithed for Stannis Baratheon, the 
+king's brother. He'd seen the Seven Kingdoms from one end to the other; he'd feasted and wenched and 
+fought in a hundred battles. They said it was Donal Noye who'd forged King Robert's warhammer, the 
+one that crushed the life from Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He'd done all the things that Jon would 
+never do, and then when he was old, well past thirty, he'd taken a glancing blow from an axe and the 
+wound had festered until the whole arm had to come off. Only then, crippled, had Donal Noye come to 
+the Wall, when his life was all but over. 
+"Yes, life," Noye said. "A long life or a short one, it's up to you, Snow. The road you're walking, one of 
+your brothers will slit your throat for you one night." 
+"They're not my brothers," Jon snapped. "They hate me because I'm better than they are." 
+"No. They hate you because you act like you're better than they are. They look at you and see a 
+castle-bred bastard who thinks he's a lordling." The armorer leaned close. "You're no lordling. 
+Remember that. You're a Snow, not a Stark. You're a bastard and a bully." 
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+"A bully?" Jon almost choked on the word. The accusation was so unjust it took his breath away. "They 
+were the ones who came after me. Four of them." 
+"Four that you've humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I've watched you fight. 
+It's not training with you. Put a 
+good edge on your sword, and they'd be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave 
+them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?" 
+Jon hesitated. He did feel proud when he won. Why shouldn't he? But the armorer was taking that away 
+too, making it sound as if he were doing something wrong. "They're all older than me," he said 
+defensively. 
+"Older and bigger and stronger, that's the truth. I'll wager your master-at-arms taught you how to fight 
+bigger men at Winterfell, though. Who was he, some old knight?" 
+"Ser Rodrik Cassel," Jon said warily. There was a trap here. He felt it closing around him. 
+Donal Noye leaned forward, into Jon's face. "Now think on this, boy. None of these others have ever 
+had a master-at-arms until Ser Alliser. Their fathers were farmers and wagonmen and poachers, smiths 
+and miners and oars on a trading galley. What they know of fighting they learned between decks, in the 
+alleys of Oldtown and Lannisport, in wayside brothels and taverns on the kingsroad. They may have 
+clacked a few sticks together before they came here, but I promise you, not one in twenty was ever rich 
+enough to own a real sword." His look was grim. "So how do you like the taste of your victories now, 
+Lord Snow?" 
+"Don't call me that!" Jon said sharply, but the force had gone out of his anger. Suddenly he felt ashamed 
+and guilty. "I never . . . I didn't think . . ." 
+"Best you start thinking," Noye warned him. "That, or sleep with a dagger by your bed. Now go." 
+By the time Jon left the armory, it was almost midday. The sun had broken through the clouds. He 
+turned his back on it and lifted his eyes to the Wall, blazing blue and crystalline in the sunlight. Even after 
+all these weeks, the sight of it still gave him the shivers. Centuries of windblown dirt had pocked and 
+scoured it, covering it like a film, and it often seemed a pale grey, the color of an overcast sky . . . but 
+when the sun caught it fair on a bright day, it shone, alive with light, a colossal blue-white cliff that filled up 
+half the sky. 
+The largest structure ever built by the hands of man, Benjen Stark had told Jon on the kingsroad when 
+they had first caught sight of the Wall in the distance. "And beyond a doubt the most useless," Tyrion 
+Lannister had added with a grin, but even the Imp grew silent as they rode closer. You could see it from 
+miles off, a pale blue line across the northern horizon, stretching away to the east and west and vanishing 
+in 
+the far distance, immense and unbroken. This is the end of the world, it seemed to say. 
+When they finally spied Castle Black, its timbered keeps and stone towers looked like nothing more than 
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+a handful of toy blocks scattered on the snow, beneath the vast wall of ice. The ancient stronghold of the 
+black brothers was no Winterfell, no true castle at all. Lacking walls, it could not be defended, not from 
+the south, or east, or west; but it was only the north that concerned the Night's Watch, and to the north 
+loomed the Wall. Almost seven hundred feet high it stood, three times the height of the tallest tower in the 
+stronghold it sheltered. His uncle said the top was wide enough for a dozen armored knights to ride 
+abreast. The gaunt outlines of huge catapults and monstrous wooden cranes stood sentry up there, like 
+the skeletons of great birds, and among them walked men in black as small as ants. 
+As he stood outside the armory looking up, Jon felt almost as overwhelmed as he had that day on the 
+kingsroad, when he'd seen it for the first time. The Wall was like that. Sometimes he could almost forget 
+that it was there, the way you forgot about the sky or the earth underfoot, but there were other times 
+when it seemed as if there was nothing else in the world. It was older than the Seven Kingdoms, and 
+when he stood beneath it and looked up, it made Jon dizzy. He could feel the great weight of all that ice 
+pressing down on him, as if it were about to topple, and somehow Jon knew that if it fell, the world fell 
+with it. 
+"Makes you wonder what lies beyond," a familiar voice said. 
+Jon looked around. "Lannister. I didn't see-I mean, I thought I was alone." 
+Tyrion Lannister was bundled in furs so thickly he looked like a very small bear. "There's much to be 
+said for taking people unawares. You never know what you might learn." 
+"You won't learn anything from me," Jon told him. He had seen little of the dwarf since their journey 
+ended. As the queen's own brother, Tyrion Lannister had been an honored guest of the Night's Watch. 
+The Lord Commander had given him rooms in the King's Tower-so-called, though no king had visited it 
+for a hundred yearsand Lannister dined at Mormont's own table and spent his days riding the Wall and 
+his nights dicing and drinking with Ser Alliser and Bowen Marsh and the other high officers. 
+"Oh, I learn things everywhere I go." The little man gestured up at the Wall with a gnarled black walking 
+stick. "As I was saying . . . why is it that when one man builds a wall, the next man immediately needs to 
+know what's on the other side?" He cocked his head and looked at 
+Jon with his curious mismatched eyes. "You do want to know what's on the other side, don't you?" 
+"It's nothing special," Jon said. He wanted to ride with Benjen Stark on his rangings, deep into the 
+mysteries of the haunted forest, wanted to fight Mance Rayder's wildlings and ward the realm against the 
+Others, but it was better not to speak of the things you wanted. "The rangers say it's just woods and 
+mountains and frozen lakes, with lots of snow and ice." 
+"And the grumkins and the snarks," Tyrion said. "Let us not forget them, Lord Snow, or else what's that 
+big thing for?" 
+"Don't call me Lord Snow." 
+The dwarf lifted an eyebrow. "Would you rather be called the Imp? Let them see that their words can 
+cut you, and you'll never be free of the mockery. If they want to give you a name, take it, make it your 
+own. Then they can't hurt you with it anymore." He gestured with his stick. "Come, walk with me. They'll 
+be serving some vile stew in the common hall by now, and I could do with a bowl of something hot." 
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+Jon was hungry too, so he fell in beside Lannister and slowed his pace to match the dwarf's awkward, 
+waddling steps. The wind was rising, and they could hear the old wooden buildings creaking around 
+them, and in the distance a heavy shutter banging, over and over, forgotten. Once there was a muffled 
+thump as a blanket of snow slid from a roof and landed near them. 
+"I don't see your wolf," Lannister said as they walked. 
+"I chain him up in the old stables when we're training. They board all the horses in the east stables now, 
+so no one bothers him. The rest of the time he stays with me. My sleeping cell is in Hardin's Tower." 
+"That's the one with the broken battlement, no? Shattered stone in the yard below, and a lean to it like 
+our noble king Robert after a long night's drinking? I thought all those buildings had been abandoned." 
+Jon shrugged. "No one cares where you sleep. Most of the old keeps are empty, you can pick any cell 
+you want." Once Castle Black had housed five thousand fighting men with all their horses and servants 
+and weapons. Now it was home to a tenth that number, and parts of it were falling into ruin. 
+Tyrion Lannister's laughter steamed in the cold air. "I'll be sure to tell your father to arrest more 
+stonemasons, before your tower collapses." 
+Jon could taste the mockery there, but there was no denying the truth. The Watch had built nineteen 
+great strongholds along the Wall, but only three were still occupied: Eastwatch on its grey windswept 
+shore, the Shadow Tower hard by the mountains where the Wall 
+ended, and Castle Black between them, at the end of the kingsroad. The other keeps, long deserted, 
+were lonely, haunted places, where cold winds whistled through black windows and the spirits of the 
+dead manned the parapets. 
+"It's better that I'm by myself," Jon said stubbornly. "The rest of them are scared of Ghost." 
+"Wise boys," Lannister said. Then he changed the subject. "The talk is, your uncle is too long away." 
+Jon remembered the wish he'd wished in his anger, the vision of Benjen Stark dead in the snow, and he 
+looked away quickly. The dwarf had a way of sensing things, and Jon did not want him to see the guilt in 
+his eyes. "He said he'd be back by my name day," he admitted. His name day had come and gone, 
+unremarked, a fortnight past. "They were looking for Ser Waymar Royce, his father is bannerman to 
+Lord Arryn. Uncle Benjen said they might search as far as the Shadow Tower. That's all the way up in 
+the mountains." 
+"I hear that a good many rangers have vanished of late," Lannister said as they mounted the steps to the 
+common hall. He grinned and pulled open the door. "Perhaps the grumkins are hungry this year." 
+Inside, the hall was immense and drafty, even with a fire roaring in its great hearth. Crows nested in the 
+timbers of its lofty ceiling. Jon heard their cries overhead as he accepted a bowl of stew and a heel of 
+black bread from the day's cooks. Grenn and Toad and some of the others were seated at the bench 
+nearest the warmth, laughing and cursing each other in rough voices. Jon eyed them thoughtfully for a 
+moment. Then he chose a spot at the far end of the hall, well away from the other diners. 
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+Tyrion Lannister sat across from him, sniffing at the stew suspiciously. "Barley, onion, carrot," he 
+muttered. "Someone should tell the cooks that turnip isn't a meat." 
+"It's mutton stew." Jon pulled off his gloves and warmed his hands in the steam rising from the bowl. The 
+smell made his mouth water. 
+"Snow." 
+Jon knew Alliser Thorne's voice, but there was a curious note in it that he had not heard before. He 
+turned. 
+"The Lord Commander wants to see you. Now." 
+For a moment Jon was too frightened to move. Why would the Lord Commander want to see him? 
+They had heard something about Benjen, he thought wildly, he was dead, the vision had come true. "Is it 
+my uncle?" he blurted. "Is he returned safe?" 
+"The Lord Commander is not accustomed to waiting," was Ser 
+Alliser's reply. "And I am not accustomed to having my commands questioned by bastards." 
+Tyrion Lannister swung off the bench and rose. "Stop it, Thorne. You're frightening the boy." 
+"Keep out of matters that don't concern you, Lannister. You have no place here." 
+"I have a place at court, though," the dwarf said, smiling. "A word in the right ear, and you'll die a sour 
+old man before you get another boy to train. Now tell Snow why the Old Bear needs to see him. Is there 
+news of his uncle?" 
+"No," Ser Alliser said. "This is another matter entirely. A bird arrived this morning from Winterfell, with a 
+message that concerns his brother." He corrected himself. "His half brother." 
+"Bran," Jon breathed, scrambling to his feet. "Something's happened to Bran." 
+Tyrion Lannister laid a hand on his arm. "Jon," he said. "I am truly sorry." 
+Jon scarcely heard him. He brushed off Tyrion's hand and strode across the hall. He was running by the 
+time he hit the doors. He raced to the Commander's Keep, dashing through drifts of old snow. When the 
+guards passed him, he took the tower steps two at a time. By the time he burst into the presence of the 
+Lord Commander, his boots were soaked and Jon was wild-eyed and panting. "Bran," he said. "What 
+does it say about Bran?" 
+Jeor Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, was a gruff old man with an immense bald head 
+and a shaggy grey beard. He had a raven on his arm, and he was feeding it kernels of corn. "I am told 
+you can read." He shook the raven off, and it flapped its wings and flew to the window, where it sat 
+watching as Mormont drew a roll of paper from his belt and handed it to Jon. "Com, " it muttered in a 
+raucous voice. "Com, com. " 
+Jon's finger traced the outline of the direwolf in the white wax of the broken seat. He recognized Robb's 
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+hand, but the letters seemed to blur and run as he tried to read them. He realized he was crying. And 
+then, through the tears, he found the sense in the words, and raised his head. "He woke up," he said. 
+"The gods gave him back." 
+"Crippled," Mormont said. "I'm sorry, boy. Read the rest of the letter." 
+He looked at the words, but they didn't matter. Nothing mattered. Bran was going to live. "My brother is 
+going to live," he told Mormont. The Lord Commander shook his head, gathered up a fistful of corn, and 
+whistled. The raven flew to his shoulder, crying, "Live! Live!" 
+Jon ran down the stairs, a smile on his face and Robb's letter in his hand. "My brother is going to live," 
+he told the guards. They exchanged a look. He ran back to the common hall, where he found Tyrion 
+Lannister just finishing his meal. He grabbed the little man under the arms, hoisted him up in the air, and 
+spun him around in a circle. "Bran is going to live!" he whooped. Lannister looked startled. Jon put him 
+down and thrust the paper into his hands. "Here, read it," he said. 
+Others were gathering around and looking at him curiously. Jon noticed Grenn a few feet away. A thick 
+woolen bandage was wrapped around one hand. He looked anxious and uncomfortable, not menacing at 
+all. Jon went to him. Grenn edged backward and put up his hands. "Stay away from me now, you 
+bastard." 
+Jon smiled at him. "I'm sorry about your wrist. Robb used the same move on me once, only with a 
+wooden blade. It hurt like seven hells, but yours must be worse. Look, if you want, I can show you how 
+to defend that." 
+Alliser Thorne overheard him. "Lord Snow wants to take my place now." He sneered. "I'd have an 
+easier time teaching a wolf to juggle than you will training this aurochs." 
+"I'll take that wager, Ser Alliser," Jon said. "I'd love to see Ghost juggle." 
+Jon heard Grenn suck in his breath, shocked. Silence fell. 
+Then Tyrion Lannister guffawed. Three of the black brothers joined in from a nearby table. The laughter 
+spread up and down the benches, until even the cooks joined in. The birds stirred in the rafters, and 
+finally even Grenn began to chuckle. 
+Ser Alliser never took his eyes from Jon. As the laughter rolled around him, his face darkened, and his 
+sword hand curled into a fist. "That was a grievous error, Lord Snow," he said at last in the acid tones of 
+an enemy. 
+EDDARD 
+Eddard Stark rode through the towering bronze doors of the Red Keep sore, tired, hungry, and irritable. 
+He was still a horse, dreaming of a long hot soak, a roast fowl, and a featherbed, when the king's 
+steward told him that Grand Maester Pycelle had convened an urgent meeting of the small council. The 
+honor of the Hand's presence was requested as soon as it was convenient. "It will be convenient on the 
+morrow," Ned snapped as he dismounted. 
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+The steward bowed very low. "I shall give the councillors your regrets, my lord." 
+"No, damn it," Ned said. It would not do to offend the council before he had even begun. "I will see 
+them. Pray give me a few moments to change into something more presentable." 
+"Yes, my lord," the steward said. "We have given you Lord Arryn's former chambers in the Tower of 
+the Hand, if it please you. I shall have your things taken there." 
+"My thanks," Ned said as he ripped off his riding gloves and tucked them into his belt. The rest of his 
+household was coming through the gate behind him. Ned saw Vayon Poole, his own steward, and called 
+out. "It seems the council has urgent need of me. See that my daughters find their bedchambers, and tell 
+Jory to keep them there. Arya is not to go exploring." Poole bowed. Ned turned back to the royal 
+steward. "My wagons are still straggling through the city. I shall need appropriate garments." 
+"It will be my great pleasure," the steward said. 
+And so Ned had come striding into the council chambers, bonetired and dressed in borrowed clothing, 
+to find four members of the small council waiting for him. 
+The chamber was richly furnished. Myrish carpets covered the floor instead of rushes, and in one corner 
+a hundred fabulous beasts cavorted in bright paints on a carved screen from the Summer Isles. The walls 
+were hung with tapestries from Norvos and Qohor and Lys, and a pair of Valyrian sphinxes flanked the 
+door, eyes of polished garnet smoldering in black marble faces. 
+The councillor Ned liked least, the eunuch Varys, accosted him the moment he entered. "Lord Stark, I 
+was grievous sad to hear about your troubles on the kingsroad. We have all been visiting the sept to light 
+candles for Prince Joffrey. I pray for his recovery." His hand left powder stains on Ned's sleeve, and he 
+smelled as foul and sweet as flowers on a grave. 
+"Your gods have heard you," Ned replied, cool yet polite. "The prince grows stronger every day." He 
+disentangled himself from the eunuch's grip and crossed the room to where Lord Renly stood by the 
+screen, talking quietly with a short man who could only be Littlefinger. Renly had been a boy of eight 
+when Robert won the throne, but he had grown into a man so like his brother that Ned found it 
+disconcerting. Whenever he saw him, it was as if the years had slipped away and Robert stood before 
+him, fresh from his victory on the Trident. 
+"I see you have arrived safely, Lord Stark," Renly said. 
+"And you as well," Ned replied. "You must forgive me, but sometimes you look the very image of your 
+brother Robert." 
+"A poor copy," Renly said with a shrug. 
+"Though much better dressed," Littlefinger quipped. "Lord Renly spends more on clothing than half the 
+ladies of the court." 
+It was true enough. Lord Renly was in dark green velvet, with a dozen golden stags embroidered on his 
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+doublet. A cloth-of-gold half cape was draped casually across one shoulder, fastened with an emerald 
+brooch. "There are worse crimes," Renly said with a laugh. "The wayyou dress, for one." 
+Littlefinger ignored the jibe. He eyed Ned with a smile on his lips that bordered on insolence. "I have 
+hoped to meet you for some years, Lord Stark. No doubt Lady Catelyn has mentioned me to you." 
+"She has," Ned replied with a chill in his voice. The sly arrogance of 
+the comment rankled him. "I understand you knew my brother Brandon as well." 
+Renly Baratheon laughed. Varys shuffled over to listen. 
+"Rather too well," Littlefinger said. "I still carry a token of his esteem. Did Brandon speak of me too?" 
+"Often, and with some heat," Ned said, hoping that would end it. He had no patience with this game they 
+played, this dueling with words. 
+"I should have thought that heat ill suits you Starks," Littlefinger said. "Here in the south, they say you are 
+all made of ice, and melt when you ride below the Neck." 
+"I do not plan on melting soon, Lord Baelish. You may count on it." Ned moved to the council table and 
+said, "Maester Pycelle, I trust you are well." 
+The Grand Maester smiled gently from his tall chair at the foot of the table. "Well enough for a man of 
+my years, my lord," he replied, "yet I do tire easily, I fear." Wispy strands of white hair fringed the broad 
+bald dome of his forehead above a kindly face. His maester's collar was no simple metal choker such as 
+Luwin wore, but two dozen heavy chains wound together into a ponderous metal necklace that covered 
+him from throat to breast. The links were forged of every metal known to man: black iron and red gold, 
+bright copper and dull lead, steel and tin and pale silver, brass and bronze and platinum. Garnets and 
+amethysts and black pearls adorned the metalwork, and here and there an emerald or ruby. "Perhaps we 
+might begin soon," the Grand Maester said, hands knitting together atop his broad stomach. "I fear I shall 
+fall asleep if we wait much longer." 
+"As you will." The king's seat sat empty at the head of the table, the crowned stag of Baratheon 
+embroidered in gold thread on its pillows. Ned took the chair beside it, as the right hand of his king. "My 
+lords," he said formally, "I am sorry to have kept you waiting." 
+"You are the King's Hand," Varys said. "We serve at your pleasure, Lord Stark." 
+As the others took their accustomed seats, it struck Eddard Stark forcefully that he did not belong here, 
+in this room, with these men. He remembered what Robert had told him in the crypts below Winterfell. I 
+am surrounded by flatterers andfools, the king had insisted. Ned looked down the council table and 
+wondered which were the flatterers and which the fools. He thought he knew already. "We are but five," 
+he pointed out. 
+"Lord Stannis took himself to Dragonstone not long after the king went north," Varys said, "and our 
+gallant Ser Barristan no doubt rides 
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+beside the king as he makes his way through the city, as befits the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard." 
+"Perhaps we had best wait for Ser Barristan and the king to join us," Ned suggested. 
+Renly Baratheon laughed aloud. "If we wait for my brother to grace us with his royal presence, it could 
+be a long sit." 
+"Our good King Robert has many cares," Varys said. "He entrusts some small matters to us, to lighten 
+his load." 
+"What Lord Varys means is that all this business of coin and crops and justice bores my royal brother to 
+tears," Lord Renly said, "so it falls to us to govern the realm. He does send us a command from time to 
+time." He drew a tightly rolled paper from his sleeve and laid it on the table. "This morning he 
+commanded me to ride ahead with all haste and ask Grand Maester Pycelle to convene this council at 
+once. He has an urgent task for us." 
+Littlefinger smiled and handed the paper to Ned. It bore the royal seal. Ned broke the wax with his 
+thumb and flattened the letter to consider the king's urgent command, reading the words with mounting 
+disbelief. Was there no end to Robert's folly? And to do this in his name, that was salt in the wound. 
+"Gods be good," he swore. 
+"What Lord Eddard means to say," Lord Renly announced, "is that His Grace instructs us to stage a 
+great tournament in honor of his appointment as the Hand of the King." 
+"How much?" asked Littlefinger, mildly. 
+Ned read the answer off the letter. "Forty thousand golden dragons to the champion. Twenty thousand 
+to the man who comes second, another twenty to the winner of the melee, and ten thousand to the victor 
+of the archery competition." 
+"Ninety thousand gold pieces," Littlefinger sighed. "And we must not neglect the other costs. Robert will 
+want a prodigious feast. That means cooks, carpenters, serving girls, singers, jugglers, fools 
+"Fools we have in plenty," Lord Renly said. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle looked to Littlefinger and asked, "Will the treasury bear the expense?" 
+"What treasury is that?" Littlefinger replied with a twist of his mouth. "Spare me the foolishness, Maester. 
+You know as well as I that the treasury has been empty for years. I shall have to borrow the money. No 
+doubt the Lannisters will be accommodating. We owe Lord Tywin some three million dragons at present, 
+what matter another hundred thousand?" 
+Ned was stunned. "Are you claiming that the Crown is three million gold pieces in debt?" 
+"The Crown is more than six million gold pieces in debt, Lord Stark. The Lannisters are the biggest part 
+of it, but we have also borrowed from Lord Tyrell, the Iron Bank of Braavos, and several Tyroshi trading 
+cartels. Of late I've had to turn to the Faith. The High Septon haggles worse than a Dornish fishmonger." 
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+Ned was aghast. "Aerys Targaryen left a treasury flowing with gold. How could you let this happen?" 
+Littlefinger gave a shrug. "The master of coin finds the money. The king and the Hand spend it." 
+"I will not believe that Jon Arryn allowed Robert to beggar the realm," Ned said hotly. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle shook his great bald head, his chains clinking softly. "Lord Arryn was a prudent 
+man, but I fear that His Grace does not always listen to wise counsel." 
+"My royal brother loves tournaments and feasts," Renly Baratheon said, "and he loathes what he calls 
+'counting coppers.' " 
+"I will speak with His Grace," Ned said. "This tourney is an extravagance the realm cannot afford." 
+"Speak to him as you will," Lord Renly said, "we had still best make our plans." 
+"Another day," Ned said. Perhaps too sharply, from the looks they gave him. He would have to 
+remember that he was no longer in Winterfell, where only the king stood higher; here, he was but first 
+among equals. "Forgive me, my lords," he said in a softer tone. "I am tired. Let us call a halt for today 
+and resume when we are fresher." He did not ask for their consent, but stood abruptly, nodded at them 
+all, and made for the door. 
+Outside, wagons and riders were still pouring through the castle gates, and the yard was a chaos of mud 
+and horseflesh and shouting men. The king had not yet arrived, he was told. Since the ugliness on the 
+Trident, the Starks and their household had ridden well ahead of the main column, the better to separate 
+themselves from the Lannisters and the growing tension. Robert had hardly been seen; the talk was he 
+was traveling in the huge wheelhouse, drunk as often as not. If so, he might be hours behind, but he 
+would still be here too soon for Ned's liking. He had only to look at Sansa's face to feel the rage twisting 
+inside him once again. The last fortnight of their journey had been a misery. Sansa blamed Arya and told 
+her that it should have been Nymeria who died. And Arya was lost after she heard what had happened 
+to her butcher's boy. Sansa cried herself to sleep, Arya brooded silently all day long, and Eddard Stark 
+dreamed of a frozen hell reserved for the Starks of Winterfell. 
+He crossed the outer yard, passed under a portcullis into the inner bailey, and was walking toward what 
+he thought was the Tower of the Hand when Littlefinger appeared in front of him. "You're going the 
+wrong way, Stark. Come with me." 
+Hesitantly, Ned followed. Littlefinger led him into a tower, down a stair, across a small sunken 
+courtyard, and along a deserted corridor where empty suits of armor stood sentinel along the walls. They 
+were relics of the Targaryens, black steel with dragon scales cresting their helms, now dusty and 
+forgotten. "This is not the way to my chambers," Ned said. 
+"Did I say it was? I'm leading you to the dungeons to slit your throat and seal your corpse up behind a 
+wall," Littlefinger replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "We have no time for this, Stark. Your wife 
+awaits." 
+"What game are you playing, Littlefinger? Catelyn is at Winterfell, hundreds of leagues from here." 
+"Oh?" Littlefinger's grey-green eyes glittered with amusement. "Then it appears someone has managed 
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+an astonishing impersonation. For the last time, come. Or don't come, and I'll keep her for myself." He 
+hurried down the steps. 
+Ned followed him warily, wondering if this day would ever end. He had no taste for these intrigues, but 
+he was beginning to realize that they were meat and mead to a man like Littlefinger. 
+At the foot of the steps was a heavy door of oak and iron. Petyr Baelish lifted the crossbar and gestured 
+Ned through. They stepped out into the ruddy glow of dusk, on a rocky bluff high above the river. 
+"We're outside the castle," Ned said. 
+"You are a hard man to fool, Stark," Littlefinger said with a smirk. "Was it the sun that gave it away, or 
+the sky? Follow me. There are niches cut in the rock. Try not to fall to your death, Catelyn would never 
+understand." With that, he was over the side of the cliff, descending as quick as a monkey. 
+Ned studied the rocky face of the bluff for a moment, then followed more slowly. The niches were there, 
+as Littlefinger had promised, shallow cuts that would be invisible from below, unless you knew just where 
+to look for them. The river was a long, dizzying distance below. Ned kept his face pressed to the rock 
+and tried not to look down any more often than he had to. 
+When at last he reached the bottom, a narrow, muddy trail along the water's edge, Littlefinger was lazing 
+against a rock and eating an apple. He was almost down to the core. "You are growing old and slow, 
+Stark," he said, flipping the apple casually into the rushing water. 
+A GAME, OF THRONLS 175 
+"No matter, we ride the rest of the way." He had two horses waiting. Ned mounted up and trotted 
+behind him, down the trail and into the city. 
+Finally Baelish drew rein in front of a ramshackle building, three stories, timbered, its windows bright 
+with lamplight in the gathering dusk. The sounds of music and raucous laughter drifted out and floated 
+over the water. Beside the door swung an ornate oil lamp on a heavy chain, with a globe of leaded red 
+glass. 
+Ned Stark dismounted in a fury. "A brothel," he said as he seized Littlefinger by the shoulder and spun 
+him around. "You've brought me all this way to take me to a brothel." 
+"Your wife is inside," Littlefinger said. 
+It was the final insult. "Brandon was too kind to you," Ned said as he slammed the small man back 
+against a wall and shoved his dagger up under the little pointed chin beard. 
+"My lord, no," an urgent voice called out. "He speaks the truth." There were footsteps behind him. 
+Ned spun, knife in hand, as an old white-haired man hurried toward them. He was dressed in brown 
+roughspun, and the soft flesh under his chin wobbled as he ran. "This is no business of yours," Ned 
+began; then, suddenly, the recognition came. He lowered the dagger, astonished. "Ser Rodfik?" 
+Rodrik Cassel nodded. "Your lady awaits you upstairs." 
+Ned was lost. "Catelyn is truly here? This is not some strange jape of Littlefinger's?" He sheathed his 
+blade. 
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+
+"Would that it were, Stark," Littlefinger said. "Follow me, and try to look a shade more lecherous and a 
+shade less like the King's Hand. It would not do to have you recognized. Perhaps you could fondle a 
+breast or two, just in passing." 
+They went inside, through a crowded common room where a fat woman was singing bawdy songs while 
+pretty young girls in linen shifts and wisps of colored silk pressed themselves against their lovers and 
+dandled on their laps. No one paid Ned the least bit of attention. Ser Rodrik waited below while 
+Littlefinger led him up to the third floor, along a corridor, and through a door. 
+Inside, Catelyn was waiting. She cried out when she saw him, ran to him, and embraced him fiercely. 
+"My lady," Ned whispered in wonderment. 
+"Oh, very good," said Littlefinger, closing the door. "You recognized her." 
+"I feared you'd never come, my lord," she whispered against his 
+chest. "Petyr has been bringing me reports. He told me of your troubles with Arya and the young prince. 
+How are my girls?" 
+"Both in mourning, and full of anger," he told her. "Cat, I do not understand. What are you doing in 
+King's Landing? What's happened?" Ned asked his wife. "Is it Bran? Is he . . ." Dead was the word that 
+came to his lips, but he could not say it. 
+"It is Bran, but not as you think," Catelyn said. 
+Ned was lost. "Then how? Why are you here, my love? What is this place?" 
+"Just what it appears," Littlefinger said, easing himself onto a window seat. "A brothel. Can you think of 
+a less likely place to find a Catelyn Tully?" He smiled. "As it chances, I own this particular establishment, 
+so arrangements were easily made. I am most anxious to keep the Lannisters from learning that Cat is 
+here in King's Landing." 
+"Why?" Ned asked. He saw her hands then, the awkward way she held them, the raw red scars, the 
+stiffness of the last two fingers on her left. "You've been hurt." He took her hands in his own, turned them 
+over. "Gods. Those are deep cuts . . . a gash from a sword or . . . how did this happen, my lady?" 
+Catelyn slid a dagger out from under her cloak and placed it in his hand. "This blade was sent to open 
+Bran's throat and spill his life's blood." 
+Ned's head jerked up. "But . . . who . . . why would 
+She put a finger to his lips. "Let me tell it all, my love. It will go faster that way. Listen." 
+So he listened, and she told it all, from the fire in the library tower to Varys and the guardsmen and 
+Littlefinger. And when she was done, Eddard Stark sat dazed beside the table, the dagger in his hand. 
+Bran's wolf had saved the boy's life, he thought dully. What was it that Jon had said when they found the 
+pups in the snow? Your children were meant to have these pups, my lord. And he had killed Sansa's, and 
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+for what? Was it guilt he was feeling? Or fear? If the gods had sent these wolves, what folly had he 
+done? 
+Painfully, Ned forced his thoughts back to the dagger and what it meant. "The Imp's dagger," he 
+repeated. It made no sense. His hand curled around the smooth dragonbone hilt, and he slammed the 
+blade into the table, felt it bite into the wood. It stood mocking him. "Why should Tyrion Lannister want 
+Bran dead? The boy has never done him harm." 
+"Do you Starks have nought but snow between your ears?" Littlefinger asked. "The Imp would never 
+have acted alone." 
+Ned rose and paced the length of the room. "If the queen had a role 
+in this or, gods forbid, the king himself ... no, I will not believe that." Yet even as he said the words, he 
+remembered that chill morning on the barrowlands, and Robert's talk of sending hired knives after the 
+Targaryen princess. He remembered Rhaegar's infant son, the red ruin of his skull, and the way the king 
+had turned away, as he had turned away in Darry's audience hall not so long ago. He could still hear 
+Sansa pleading, as Lyanna had pleaded once. 
+"Most likely the king did not know," Littlefinger said. "It would not be the first time. Our good Robert is 
+practiced at closing his eyes to things he would rather not see." 
+Ned had no reply for that. The face of the butcher's boy swam up before his eyes, cloven almost in two, 
+and afterward the king had said not a word. His head was pounding. 
+Littlefinger sauntered over to the table, wrenched the knife from the wood. "The accusation is treason 
+either way. Accuse the king and you will dance with Ilyn Payne before the words are out of your mouth. 
+The queen . . . if you can find proof, and if you can make Robert listen, then perhaps . . . 
+"We have proof," Ned said. "We have the dagger." 
+"This?" Littlefinger flipped the knife casually end over end. "A sweet piece of steel, but it cuts two ways, 
+my lord. The Imp will no doubt swear the blade was lost or stolen while he was at Winterfell, and with 
+his hireling dead, who is there to give him the lie?" He tossed the knife lightly to Ned. "My counsel is to 
+drop that in the river and forget that it was ever forged." 
+Ned regarded him coldly. "Lord Baelish, I am a Stark of Winterfell. My son lies crippled, perhaps dying. 
+He would be dead, and Catelyn with him, but for a wolf pup we found in the snow. If you truly believe I 
+could forget that, you are as big a fool now as when you took up sword against my brother." 
+"A fool I may be, Stark . . . yet I'm still here, while your brother has been moldering in his frozen grave 
+for some fourteen years now. If you are so eager to molder beside him, far be it from me to dissuade 
+you, but I would rather not be included in the party, thank you very much." 
+"You would be the last man I would willingly include in any party, Lord Baelish." 
+"You wound me deeply." Littlefinger placed a hand over his heart. "For my part, I always found you 
+Starks a tiresome lot, but Cat seems to have become attached to you, for reasons I cannot comprehend. 
+I shall try to keep you alive for her sake. A fool's task, admittedly, but I could never refuse your wife 
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+anything." 
+Littlefinger. "I should warn you, Stark, we usually charge for that sort of thing around here." 
+"A moment alone, that's all I ask," Catelyn said. 
+"Very well." Littlefinger strolled to the door. "Don't be too long. It is past time the Hand and I returned 
+to the castle, before our absence is noted." 
+Catelyn went to him and took his hands in her own. "I will not forget the help you gave me, Petyr. When 
+your men came for me, I did not know whether they were taking me to a friend or an enemy. I have 
+found you more than a friend. I have found a brother I'd thought lost." 
+Petyr Baelish smiled. "I am desperately sentimental, sweet lady. Best not tell anyone. I have spent years 
+convincing the court that I am wicked and cruel, and I should hate to see all that hard work go for 
+naught." 
+Ned believed not a word of that, but he kept his voice polite as he said, "You have my thanks as well, 
+Lord Baelish." 
+"Oh, now there's a treasure," Littlefinger said, exiting. 
+When the door had closed behind him, Ned turned back to his wife. "Once you are home, send word to 
+Helman Tallhart and Galbart Glover under my seal. They are to raise a hundred bowmen each and fortify 
+Moat Cailin. Two hundred determined archers can hold the Neck against an army. Instruct Lord 
+Manderly that he is to strengthen and repair all his defenses at White Harbor, and see that they are well 
+manned. And from this day on, I want a careful watch kept over Theon Greyjoy. If there is war, we shall 
+have sore need of his father's fleet." 
+"War?" The fear was plain on Catelyn's face. 
+"It will not come to that," Ned promised her, praying it was true. He took her in his arms again. "The 
+Lannisters are merciless in the face of weakness, as Aerys Targaryen learned to his sorrow, but they 
+would not dare attack the north without all the power of the realm behind them, and that they shall not 
+have. I must play out this fool's masquerade as if nothing is amiss. Remember why I came here, my love. 
+If I find proof that the Lannisters murdered Jon Arryn . . . 
+He felt Catelyn tremble in his arms. Her scarred hands clung to him. "If," she said, "what then, my love?" 
+That was the most dangerous part, Ned knew. "All justice flows from the king," he told her. "When I 
+know the truth, I must go to Robert." And pray that he is the man I think he is, he finished silently, and 
+not the man I fear he has become. 
+TYRION 
+Are you certain that you must leave us so soon?" the Lord Commander asked him. 
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+
+"Past certain, Lord Mormont," Tyrion replied. "My brother Jaime will be wondering what has become 
+of me. He may decide that you have convinced me to take the black." 
+"Would that I could." Mormont picked up a crab claw and cracked it in his fist. Old as he was, the Lord 
+Commander still had the strength of a bear. "You're a cunning man, Tyrion. We have need of men of 
+your sort on the Wall." 
+Tyrion grinned. "Then I shall scour the Seven Kingdoms for dwarfs and ship them all to you, Lord 
+Mormont." As they laughed, he sucked the meat from a crab leg and reached for another. The crabs had 
+arrived from Eastwatch only this morning, packed in a barrel of snow, and they were succulent. 
+Ser Alliser Thorne was the only man at table who did not so much as crack a smile. "Lannister mocks 
+us." 
+"Only you, Ser Alliser," Tyrion said. This time the laughter round the table had a nervous, uncertain 
+quality to it. 
+Thorne's black eyes fixed on Tyrion with loathing. "You have a bold tongue for someone who is less 
+than half a man. Perhaps you and I should visit the yard together." 
+"Why?" asked Tyrion. "The crabs are here." 
+The remark brought more guffaws from the others. Ser Alliser stood up, his mouth a tight line. "Come 
+and make your j apes with steel in your hand." 
+Tyrion looked pointedly at his right hand. "Why, I have steel in my hand, Ser Alliser, although it appears 
+to be a crab fork. Shall we duel?" He hopped up on his chair and began poking at Thorne's chest with 
+the tiny fork. Roars of laughter filled the tower room. Bits of crab flew from the Lord Commander's 
+mouth as he began to gasp and choke. Even his raven joined in, cawing loudly from above the window. 
+"Duel! Duel! Duel!" 
+Ser Alliser Thorne walked from the room so stiffly it looked as though he had a dagger up his butt. 
+Mormont was still gasping for breath. Tyrion pounded him on the back. "To the victor goes the spoils," 
+he called out. "I claim Thorne's share of the crabs." 
+Finally the Lord Commander recovered himself. "You are a wicked man, to provoke our Ser Alliser so," 
+he scolded. 
+Tyrion seated himself and took a sip of wine. "If a man paints a target on his chest, he should expect that 
+sooner or later someone will loose an arrow at him. I have seen dead men with more humor than your 
+Ser Alliser." 
+"Not so," objected the Lord Steward, Bowen Marsh, a man as round and red as a pomegranate. "You 
+ought to hear the droll names he gives the lads he trains." 
+Tyrion had heard a few of those droll names. "I'll wager the lads have a few names for him as well," he 
+said. "Chip the ice off your eyes, my good lords. Ser Alliser Thorne should be mucking out your stables, 
+not drilling your young warriors." 
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+"The Watch has no shortage of stableboys," Lord Mormont grumbled. "That seems to be all they send 
+us these days. Stableboys and sneak thieves and rapers. Ser Alliser is an anointed knight, one of the few 
+to take the black since I have been Lord Commander. He fought bravely at King's Landing." 
+"On the wrong side," Ser Jaremy Rykker commented dryly. "I ought to know, I was there on the 
+battlements beside him. Tywin Lannister gave us a splendid choice. Take the black, or see our heads on 
+spikes before evenfall. No offense intended, Tyrion." 
+"None taken, Ser Jaremy. My father is very fond of spiked heads, especially those of people who have 
+annoyed him in some fashion. And a face as noble as yours, well, no doubt he saw you decorating the 
+city wall above the King's Gate. I think you would have looked very striking up there." 
+"Thank you," Ser Jaremy replied with a sardonic smile. 
+Lord Commander Mormont cleared his throat. "Sometimes I fear Ser Alliser saw you true, Tyrion. You 
+do mock us and our noble purpose here." 
+Tyrion shrugged. "We all need to be mocked from time to time, Lord Mormont, lest we start to take 
+ourselves too seriously. More wine, please." He held out his cup. 
+As Rykker filled it for him, Bowen Marsh said, "You have a great thirst for a small man." 
+"Oh, I think that Lord Tyrion is quite a large man," Maester Aemon said from the far end of the table. 
+He spoke softly, yet the high officers of the Night's Watch all fell quiet, the better to hear what the ancient 
+had to say. "I think he is a giant come among us, here at the end of the world." 
+Tyrion answered gently, "I've been called many things, my lord, but giant is seldom one of them." 
+"Nonetheless," Maester Aemon said as his clouded, milk-white eyes moved to Tyrion's face, "I think it is 
+true." 
+For once, Tyrion Lannister found himself at a loss for words. He could only bow his head politely and 
+say, "You are too kind, Maester Aemon." 
+The blind man smiled. He was a tiny thing, wrinkled and hairless, shrunken beneath the weight of a 
+hundred years so his maester's collar with its links of many metals hung loose about his throat. "I have 
+been called many things, my lord," he said, "but kind is seldom one of them." This time Tyrion himself led 
+the laughter. 
+Much later, when the serious business of eating was done and the others had left, Mormont offered 
+Tyrion a chair beside the fire and a cup of mulled spirits so strong they brought tears to his eyes. "The 
+kingsroad can be perilous this far north," the Lord Commander told him as they drank. 
+"I have Jyck and Morrec," Tyrion said, "and Yoren is riding south again." 
+"Yoren is only one man. The Watch shall escort you as far as Winterfell," Mormont announced in a tone 
+that brooked no argument. "Three men should be sufficient." 
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+
+"If you insist, my lord," Tyrion said. "You might send young Snow. He would be glad for a chance to see 
+his brothers." 
+Mormont frowned through his thick grey beard. "Snow? Oh, the Stark bastard. I think not. The young 
+ones need to forget the lives they left behind them, the brothers and mothers and all that. A visit home 
+would only stir up feelings best left alone. I know these things. My own 
+blood kin ... my sister Maege rules Bear Island now, since my son's dishonor. I have nieces I have never 
+seen." He took a swallow. "Besides, Jon Snow is only a boy. You shall have three strong swords, to 
+keep you safe." 
+"I am touched by your concern, Lord Mormont." The strong drink was making Tyrion light-headed, but 
+not so drunk that he did not realize that the Old Bear wanted something from him. "I hope I can repay 
+your kindness." 
+"You can," Mormont said bluntly. "Your sister sits beside the king. Your brother is a great knight, and 
+your father the most powerful lord in the Seven Kingdoms. Speak to them for us. Tell them of our need 
+here. You have seen for yourself, my lord. The Night's Watch is dying. Our strength is less than a 
+thousand now. Six hundred here, two hundred in the Shadow Tower, even fewer at Eastwatch, and a 
+scant third of those fighting men. The Wall is a hundred leagues long. Think on that. Should an attack 
+come, I have three men to defend each mile of wall." 
+"Three and a third," Tyrion said with a yawn. 
+Mormont scarcely seemed to hear him. The old man warmed his hands before the fire. "I sent Benjen 
+Stark to search after Yohn Royce's son, lost on his first ranging. The Royce boy was green as summer 
+grass, yet he insisted on the honor of his own command, saying it was his due as a knight. I did not wish 
+to offend his lord father, so I yielded. I sent him out with two men I deemed as good as any in the Watch. 
+More fool U' 
+"Fool, " the raven agreed. Tyrion glanced up. The bird peered down at him with those beady black eyes, 
+ruffling its wings. "Fool, " it called again. Doubtless old Mormont would take it amiss if he throttled the 
+creature. A pity. 
+The Lord Commander took no notice of the irritating bird. "Gared was near as old as I am and longer 
+on the Wall," he went on, "yet it would seem he forswore himself and fled. I should never have believed 
+it, not of him, but Lord Eddard sent me his head from Winterfell. Of Royce, there is no word. One 
+deserter and two men lost, and now Ben Stark too has gone missing." He sighed deeply. "Who am I to 
+send searching after him? In two years I will be seventy. Too old and too weary for the burden I bear, 
+yet if I set it down, who will pick it up? Alliser Thorne? Bowen Marsh? I would have to be as blind as 
+Maester Aemon not to see what they are. The Night's Watch has become an army of sullen boys and 
+tired old men. Apart from the men at my table tonight, I have perhaps twenty who can read, and even 
+fewer who can think, or plan, or lead. Once the Watch spent its summers building, and 
+each Lord Commander raised the Wall higher than he found it. Now it is all we can do to stay alive." 
+He was in deadly earnest, Tyrion realized. He felt faintly embarrassed for the old man. Lord Mormont 
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+had spent a good part of his life on the Wall, and he needed to believe if those years were to have any 
+meaning. "I promise, the king will hear of your need," Tyrion said gravely, "and I will speak to my father 
+and my brother Jaime as well." And he would. Tyrion Lannister was as good as his word. He left the rest 
+unsaid; that King Robert would ignore him, Lord Tywin would ask if he had taken leave of his senses, 
+and Jaime would only laugh. 
+"You are a young man, Tyrion," Mormont said. "How many winters have you seen?" 
+He shrugged. "Eight, nine. I misremember." 
+"And all of them short." 
+"As you say, my lord." He had been born in the dead of winter, a terrible cruel one that the maesters 
+said had lasted near three years, but Tyrion's earliest memories were of spring. 
+"When I was a boy, it was said that a long summer always meant a long winter to come. This summer 
+has lasted nine years, Tyrion, and a tenth will soon be upon us. Think on that." 
+"When I was a boy," Tyrion replied, "my wet nurse told me that one day, if men were good, the gods 
+would give the world a summer without ending. Perhaps we've been better than we thought, and the 
+Great Summer is finally at hand." He grinned. 
+The Lord Commander did not seem amused. "You are not fool enough to believe that, my lord. Already 
+the days grow shorter. There can be no mistake, Aemon has had letters from the Citadel, findings in 
+accord with his own. The end of summer stares us in the face." Mormont reached out and clutched 
+Tyrion tightly by the hand. "You must make them understand. I tell you, my lord, the darkness is coming. 
+There are wild things in the woods, direwolves and mammoths and snow bears the size of aurochs, and I 
+have seen darker shapes in my dreams." 
+"In your dreams," Tyrion echoed, thinking how badly he needed another strong drink. 
+Mormont was deaf to the edge in his voice. "The fisherfolk near Eastwatch have glimpsed white walkers 
+on the shore." 
+This time Tyrion could not hold his tongue. "The fisherfolk of Lannisport often glimpse merlings." 
+"Denys Mallister writes that the mountain people are moving south, slipping past the Shadow Tower in 
+numbers greater than ever before. They are running, my lord . . . but running from what?" Lord 
+Mormont moved to the window and stared out into the night. "These are old bones, Lannister, but they 
+have never felt a chill like this. Tell the king what I say, I pray you. Winter is coming, and when the Long 
+Night falls, only the Night's Watch will stand between the realm and the darkness that sweeps from the 
+north. The gods help us all if we are not ready." 
+"The gods help me if I do not get some sleep tonight. Yoren is determined to ride at first light." Tyrion 
+got to his feet, sleepy from wine and tired of doom. "I thank you for all the courtesies you have done me, 
+Lord Mormont." 
+"Tell them, Tyrion. Tell them and make them believe. That is all the thanks I need." He whistled, and his 
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+raven flew to him and perched on his shoulder. Mormont smiled and gave the bird some corn from his 
+pocket, and that was how Tyrion left him. 
+It was bitter cold outside. Bundled thickly in his furs, Tyrion Lannister pulled on his gloves and nodded 
+to the poor frozen wretches standing sentry outside the Commander's Keep. He set off across the yard 
+for his own chambers in the King's Tower, walking as briskly as his legs could manage. Patches of snow 
+crunched beneath his feet as his boots broke the night's crust, and his breath steamed before him like a 
+banner. He shoved his hands into his armpits and walked faster, praying that Morrec had remembered to 
+warm his bed with hot bricks from the fire. 
+Behind the King's Tower, the Wall glimmered in the light of the moon, immense and mysterious. Tyrion 
+stopped for a moment to look up at it. His legs ached of cold and haste. 
+Suddenly a strange madness took hold of him, a yearning to look once more off the end of the world. It 
+would be his last chance, he thought; tomorrow he would ride south, and he could not imagine why he 
+would ever want to return to this frozen desolation. The King's Tower was before him, with its promise 
+of warmth and a soft bed, yet Tyrion found himself walking past it, toward the vast pale palisade of the 
+Wall. 
+A wooden stair ascended the south face, anchored on huge roughhewn beams sunk deep into the ice 
+and frozen in place. Back and forth it switched, clawing its way upward as crooked as a bolt of lightning. 
+The black brothers assured him that it was much stronger than it looked, but Tyrion's legs were cramping 
+too badly for him to even contemplate the ascent. He went instead to the iron cage beside the well, 
+clambered inside, and yanked hard on the bell rope, three quick pulls. 
+He had to wait what seemed an eternity, standing there inside the bars with the Wall to his back. Long 
+enough for Tyrion to begin to wonder why he was doing this. He had just about decided to forget his 
+sudden whim and go to bed when the cage gave a jerk and began to ascend. 
+He moved upward slowly, by fits and starts at first, then more smoothly. The ground fell away beneath 
+him, the cage swung, and Tyrion wrapped his hands around the iron bars. He could feel the cold of the 
+metal even through his gloves. Morrec had a fire burning in his room, he noted with approval, but the 
+Lord Commander's tower was dark. The Old Bear had more sense than he did, it seemed. 
+Then he was above the towers, still inching his way upward. Castle Black lay below him, etched in 
+moonlight. You could see how stark and empty it was from up here; windowless keeps, crumbling walls, 
+courtyards choked with broken stone. Farther off, he could see the lights of Mole's Town, the little village 
+half a league south along the kingsroad, and here and there the bright glitter of moonlight on water where 
+icy streams descended from the mountain heights to cut across the plains. The rest of the world was a 
+bleak emptiness of windswept hills and rocky fields spotted with snow. 
+Finally a thick voice behind him said, "Seven hells, it's the dwarf," and the cage jerked to a sudden stop 
+and hung there, swinging slowly back and forth, the ropes creaking. 
+"Bring him in, damn it." There was a grunt and a loud groaning of wood as the cage slid sideways and 
+then the Wall was beneath him. Tyrion waited until the swinging had stopped before he pushed open the 
+cage door and hopped down onto the ice. A heavy figure in black was leaning on the winch, while a 
+second held the cage with a gloved hand. Their faces were muffled in woolen scarves so only their eyes 
+showed, and they were plump with layers of wool and leather, black on black. "And what will you be 
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+wanting, this time of night?" the one by the winch asked. 
+"A last look." 
+The men exchanged sour glances. "Look all you want," the other one said. "Just have a care you don't 
+fall off, little man. The Old Bear would have our hides." A small wooden shack stood under the great 
+crane, and Tyrion saw the dull glow of a brazier and felt a brief gust of warmth when the winch men 
+opened the door and went back inside. And then he was alone. 
+It was bitingly cold up here, and the wind pulled at his clothes like an insistent lover. The top of the Wall 
+was wider than the kingsroad 
+often was, so Tyrion had no fear of falling, although the footing was slicker than he would have liked. 
+The brothers spread crushed stone across the walkways, but the weight of countless footsteps would 
+melt the Wall beneath, so the ice would seem to grow around the gravel, swallowing it, until the path was 
+bare again and it was time to crush more stone. 
+Still, it was nothing that Tyrion could not manage. He looked off to the east and west, at the Wall 
+stretching before him, a vast white road with no beginning and no end and a dark abyss on either side. 
+West, he decided, for no special reason, and he began to walk that way, following the pathway nearest 
+the north edge, where the gravel looked freshest. 
+His bare cheeks were ruddy with the cold, and his legs complained more loudly with every step, but 
+Tyrion ignored them. The wind swirled around him, gravel crunched beneath his boots, while ahead the 
+white ribbon followed the lines of the hills, rising higher and higher, until it was lost beyond the western 
+horizon. He passed a massive catapult, as tall as a city wall, its base sunk deep into the Wall. The 
+throwing arm had been taken off for repairs and then forgotten; it lay there like a broken toy, 
+half-embedded in the ice. 
+On the far side of the catapult, a muffled voice called out a challenge. "Who goes there? Halt!" 
+Tyrion stopped. "If I halt too long I'll freeze in place, Jon," he said as a shaggy pale shape slid toward 
+him silently and sniffed at his furs. "Hello, Ghost." 
+Jon Snow moved closer. He looked bigger and heavier in his layers of fur and leather, the hood of his 
+cloak pulled down over his face. "Lannister," he said, yanking loose the scarf to uncover his mouth. "This 
+is the last place I would have expected to see you." He carried a heavy spear tipped in iron, taller than he 
+was, and a sword hung at his side in a leather sheath. Across his chest was a gleaming black warhorn, 
+banded with silver. 
+"This is the last place I would have expected to be seen," Tyrion admitted. "I was captured by a whim. If 
+I touch Ghost, will he chew my hand off?" 
+"Not with me here," Jon promised. 
+Tyrion scratched the white wolf behind the ears. The red eyes watched him impassively. The beast came 
+up as high as his chest now. Another year, and Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he'd be looking up at him. 
+"What are you doing up here tonight?" he asked. "Besides freezing your manhood off . . ." 
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+"I have drawn night guard," Jon said. "Again. Ser Alliser has kindly arranged for the watch commander 
+to take a special interest in me. He seems to think that if they keep me awake half the night, I'll fall asleep 
+during morning drill. So far I have disappointed him." 
+Tyrion grinned. "And has Ghost learned to juggle yet?" 
+"No," said Jon, smiling, "but Grenn held his own against Halder this morning, and Pyp is no longer 
+dropping his sword quite so often as he did." 
+"Pyp?" 
+"Pypar is his real name. The small boy with the large ears. He saw me working with Grenn and asked for 
+help. Thorne had never even shown him the proper way to grip a sword." He turned to look north. "I 
+have a mile of Wall to guard. Will you walk with me?" 
+"If you walk slowly," Tyrion said. 
+"The watch commander tells me I must walk, to keep my blood from freezing, but he never said how 
+fast." 
+They walked, with Ghost pacing along beside Jon like a white shadow. "I leave on the morrow," Tyrion 
+said. 
+"I know." Jon sounded strangely sad. 
+"I plan to stop at Winterfell on the way south. If there is any message that you would like me to deliver . 
+. ." 
+"Tell Robb that I'm going to command the Night's Watch and keep him safe, so he might as well take up 
+needlework with the girls and have Mikken melt down his sword for horseshoes." 
+"Your brother is bigger than me," Tyrion said with a laugh. "I decline to deliver any message that might 
+get me killed." 
+"Rickon will ask when I'm coming home. Try to explain where I've gone, if you can. Tell him he can have 
+all my things while I'm away, he'll like that." 
+People seemed to be asking a great deal of him today, Tyrion Lannister thought. "You could put all this 
+in a letter, you know." 
+"Rickon can't read yet. Bran . . ." He stopped suddenly. "I don't know what message to send to Bran. 
+Help him, Tyrion." 
+"What help could I give him? I am no maester, to ease his pain. I have no spells to give him back his 
+legs." 
+"You gave me help when I needed it," Jon Snow said. 
+"I gave you nothing," Tyrion said. "Words." 
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+"Then give your words to Bran too." 
+"You're asking a lame man to teach a cripple how to dance," Tyrion said. "However sincere the lesson, 
+the result is likely to be grotesque. Still, I know what it is to love a brother, Lord Snow. I will give Bran 
+whatever small help is in my power." 
+"Thank you, my lord of Lannister." He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand. "Friend." 
+Tyrion found himself oddly touched. "Most of my kin are bastards," he said with a wry smile, "but you're 
+the first I've had to friend." He pulled a glove off with his teeth and clasped Snow by the hand, flesh 
+against flesh. The boy's grip was firm and strong. 
+When he had donned his glove again, Jon Snow turned abruptly and walked to the low, icy northern 
+parapet. Beyond him the Wall fell away sharply; beyond him there was only the darkness and the wild. 
+Tyrion followed him, and side by side they stood upon the edge of the world. 
+The Night's Watch permitted the forest to come no closer than half a mile of the north face of the Wall. 
+The thickets of ironwood and sentinel and oak that had once grown there had been harvested centuries 
+ago, to create a broad swath of open ground through which no enemy could hope to pass unseen. Tyrion 
+had heard that elsewhere along the Wall, between the three fortresses, the wildwood had come creeping 
+back over the decades, that there were places where greygreen sentinels and pale white weirwoods had 
+taken root in the shadow of the Wall itself, but Castle Black had a prodigious appetite for firewood, and 
+here the forest was still kept at bay by the axes of the black brothers. 
+It was never far, though. From up here Tyrion could see it, the dark trees looming beyond the stretch of 
+open ground, like a second wall built parallel to the first, a wall of night. Few axes had ever swung in that 
+black wood, where even the moonlight could not penetrate the ancient tangle of root and thorn and 
+grasping limb. Out there the trees grew huge, and the rangers said they seemed to brood and knew not 
+men. It was small wonder the Night's Watch named it the haunted forest. 
+As he stood there and looked at all that darkness with no fires burning anywhere, with the wind blowing 
+and the cold like a spear in his guts, Tyrion Lannister felt as though he could almost believe the talk of the 
+Others, the enemy in the night. His jokes of grumkins and snarks no longer seemed quite so droll. 
+"My uncle is out there," Jon Snow said softly, leaning on his spear as he stared off into the darkness. 
+"The first night they sent me up here, I thought, Uncle Benjen will ride back tonight, and I'll see him first 
+and blow the horn. He never came, though. Not that night and not any night." 
+"Give him time," Tyrion said. 
+Far off to the north, a wolf began to howl. Another voice picked up 
+the call, then another. Ghost cocked his head and listened. "If he doesn't come back," Jon Snow 
+promised, "Ghost and I will go find him." He put his hand on the direwolf's head. 
+"I believe you," Tyrion said, but what he thought was, And who will go find you? He shivered. 
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+ARYA 
+Her father had been fighting with the council again. Arya could see it on his face when he came to table, 
+late again, as he had been so often. The first course, a thick sweet soup made with pumpkins, had 
+already been taken away when Ned Stark strode into the Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart 
+from the Great Hall, where the king could feast a thousand, but it was a long room with a high vaulted 
+ceiling and bench space for two hundred at its trestle tables. 
+"My lord," Jory said when Father entered. He rose to his feet, and the rest of the guard rose with him. 
+Each man wore a new cloak, heavy grey wool with a white satin border. A hand of beaten silver clutched 
+the woolen folds of each cloak and marked their wearers as men of the Hand's household guard. There 
+were only fifty of them, so most of the benches were empty. 
+"Be seated," Eddard Stark said. "I see you have started without me. I am pleased to know there are still 
+some men of sense in this city." He signaled for the meal to resume. The servants began bringing out 
+platters of ribs, roasted in a crust of garlic and herbs. 
+"The talk in the yard is we shall have a tourney, my lord," Jory said as he resumed his seat. "They say 
+that knights will come from all over the realm to joust and feast in honor of your appointment as Hand of 
+the King." 
+Arya could see that her father was not very happy about that. "Do they also say this is the last thing in 
+the world I would have wished?" 
+Sansa's eyes had grown wide as the plates. "A tourney," she breathed. She was seated between Septa 
+Mordane and Jeyne Poole, as far from Arya as she could get without drawing a reproach from Father. 
+"Will we be permitted to go, Father?" 
+"You know my feelings, Sansa. It seems I must arrange Robert's games and pretend to be honored for 
+his sake. That does not mean I must subject my daughters to this folly." 
+"Oh, please," Sansa said. "I want to see." 
+Septa Mordane spoke up. "Princess Myrcella will be there, my lord, and her younger than Lady Sansa. 
+All the ladies of the court will be expected at a grand event like this, and as the tourney is in your honor, it 
+would look queer if your family did not attend." 
+Father looked pained. "I suppose so. Very well, I shall arrange a place for you, Sansa." He saw Arya. 
+"For both of you." 
+"I don't care about their stupid tourney," Arya said. She knew Prince Jofftey would be there, and she 
+hated Prince Joffrey. 
+Sansa lifted her head. "It will be a splendid event. You shan't be wanted." 
+Anger flashed across Father's face. "Enough, Sansa. More of that and you will change my mind. I am 
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+weary unto death of this endless war you two are fighting. You are sisters. I expect you to behave like 
+sisters, is that understood?" 
+Sansa bit her lip and nodded. Arya lowered her face to stare sullenly at her plate. She could feel tears 
+stinging her eyes. She rubbed them away angrily, determined not to cry. 
+The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks. "Pray excuse me," her father announced to the table. 
+"I find I have small appetite tonight." He walked from the hall. 
+After he was gone, Sansa exchanged excited whispers with Jeyne Poole. Down the table Jory laughed at 
+a joke, and Hullen started in about horseflesh. "Your warhorse, now, he may not be the best one for the 
+joust. Not the same thing, oh, no, not the same at all." The men had heard it all before; Desmond, Jacks, 
+and Hullen's son Harwin shouted him down together, and Porther called for more wine. 
+No one talked to Arya. She didn't care. She liked it that way. She would have eaten her meals alone in 
+her bedchamber if they let her. Sometimes they did, when Father had to dine with the king or some lord 
+or the envoys from this place or that place. The rest of the time, they ate in his solar, just him and her and 
+Sansa. That was when Arya missed her brothers most. She wanted to tease Bran and play with 
+baby Rickon and have Robb smile at her. She wanted Jon to muss up her hair and call her "little sister" 
+and finish her sentences with her. But all of them were gone. She had no one left but Sansa, and Sansa 
+wouldn't even talk to her unless Father made her. 
+Back at Winterfell, they had eaten in the Great Hall almost half the time. Her father used to say that a 
+lord needed to eat with his men, if he hoped to keep them. "Know the men who follow you," she heard 
+him tell Robb once, "and let them know you. Don't ask your men to die for a stranger." At Winterfell, he 
+always had an extra seat set at his own table, and every day a different man would be asked to join him. 
+One night it would be Vayon Poole, and the talk would be coppers and bread stores and servants. The 
+next time it would be Mikken, and her father would listen to him go on about armor and swords and how 
+hot a forge should be and the best way to temper steel. Another day it might be Hullen with his endless 
+horse talk, or Septon Chayle from the library, or Jory, or Ser Rodrik, or even Old Nan with her stories. 
+Arya had loved nothing better than to sit at her father's table and listen to them talk. She had loved 
+listening to the men on the benches too; to freeriders tough as leather, courtly knights and bold young 
+squires, grizzled old men-at-arms. She used to throw snowballs at them and help them steal pies from the 
+kitchen. Their wives gave her scones and she invented names for their babies and played 
+monsters-andmaidens and hide-the-treasure and come-into-my-castle with their children. Fat Tom used 
+to call her "Arya Underfoot," because he said that was where she always was. She'd liked that a lot 
+better than "Arya Horseface." 
+Only that was Winterfell, a world away, and now everything was changed. This was the first time they 
+had supped with the men since arriving in King's Landing. Arya hated it. She hated the sounds of their 
+voices now, the way they laughed, the stories they told. They'd been her friends, she'd felt safe around 
+them, but now she knew that was a lie. They'd let the queen kill Lady, that was horrible enough, but then 
+the Hound found Mycah. Jeyne Poole had told Arya that he'd cut him up in so many pieces that they'd 
+given him back to the butcher in a bag, and at first the poor man had thought it was a pig they'd 
+slaughtered. And no one had raised a voice or drawn a blade or anything, not Harwin who always talked 
+so bold, or Alyn who was going to be a knight, or Jory who was captain of the guard. Not even her 
+father. 
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+"He was my ffiend," Arya whispered into her plate, so low that no one could hear. Her ribs sat there 
+untouched, grown cold now, a thin film of grease congealing beneath them on the plate. Arya looked at 
+them and felt ill. She pushed away from the table. 
+"Pray, where do you think you are going, young lady?" Septa Mordane asked. 
+"I'm not hungry." Arya found it an effort to remember her courtesies. "May I be excused, please?" she 
+recited stiffly. 
+"You may not," the septa said. "You have scarcely touched your food. You will sit down and clean your 
+plate." 
+"You clean it!" Before anyone could stop her, Arya bolted for the door as the men laughed and Septa 
+Mordane called loudly after her, her voice rising higher and higher. 
+Fat Tom was at his post, guarding the door to the Tower of the Hand. He blinked when he saw Arya 
+rushing toward him and heard the septa's shouts. "Here now, little one, hold on," he started to say, 
+reaching, but Arya slid between his legs and then she was running up the winding tower steps, her feet 
+hammering on the stone while Fat Tom huffed and puffed behind her. 
+Her bedchamber was the only place that Arya liked in all of King's Landing, and the thing she liked best 
+about it was the door, a massive slab of dark oak with black iron bands. When she slammed that door 
+and dropped the heavy crossbar, nobody could get into her room, not Septa Mordane or Fat Tom or 
+Sansa or Jory or the Hound, nobody! She slammed it now. 
+When the bar was down, Arya finally felt safe enough to cry. 
+She went to the window seat and sat there, sniffling, hating them all, and herself most of all. It was all her 
+fault, everything bad that had happened. Sansa said so, and Jeyne too. 
+Fat Tom was knocking on her door. "Arya girl, what's wrong?" he called out. "You in there?" 
+"No!" she shouted. The knocking stopped. A moment later she heard him going away. Fat Tom was 
+always easy to fool. 
+Arya went to the chest at the foot of her bed. She knelt, opened the lid, and began pulling her clothes 
+out with both hands, grabbing handfuls of silk and satin and velvet and wool and tossing them on the 
+floor. It was there at the bottom of the chest, where she'd hidden it. Arya lifted it out almost tenderly and 
+drew the slender blade from its sheath. 
+Needle. 
+She thought of Mycah again and her eyes filled with tears. Her fault, her fault, her fault. If she had never 
+asked him to play at swords with her . . . 
+There was a pounding at her door, louder than before. 'Arya Stark, you open this door at once, do you 
+hear me?" 
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+Arya spun around, with Needle in her hand. "You better not come in here!" she warned. She slashed at 
+the air savagely. 
+"The Hand will hear of this!" Septa Mordane raged. 
+"I don't care," Arya screamed. "Go away." 
+"You will rue this insolent behavior, young lady, I promise you that. 
+Arya listened at the door until she heard the sound of the septa's receding footsteps. 
+She went back to the window, Needle in hand, and looked down into the courtyard below. If only she 
+could climb like Bran, she thought; she would go out the window and down the tower, run away from 
+this horrible place, away from Sansa and Septa Mordane and Prince Joffrey, from all of them. Steal 
+some food from the kitchens, take Needle and her good boots and a warm cloak. She could find 
+Nymeria in the wild woods below the Trident, and together they'd return to Winterfell, or run to Jon on 
+the Wall. She found herself wishing that Jon was here with her now. Then maybe she wouldn't feel so 
+alone. 
+A soft knock at the door behind her turned Arya away from the window and her dreams of escape. 
+"Arya," her father's voice called out. "Open the door. We need to talk." 
+Arya crossed the room and lifted the crossbar. Father was alone. He seemed more sad than angry. That 
+made Arya feel even worse. "May I come in?" Arya nodded, then dropped her eyes, ashamed. Father 
+closed the door. "Whose sword is that?" 
+"Mine." Arya had almost forgotten Needle, in her hand. 
+"Give it to me." 
+Reluctantly Arya surrendered her sword, wondering if she would ever hold it again. Her father turned it 
+in the light, examining both sides of the blade. He tested the point with his thumb. "A bravo's blade," he 
+said. "Yet it seems to me that I know this maker's mark. This is Mikken's work." 
+Arya could not lie to him. She lowered her eyes. 
+Lord Eddard Stark sighed. "My nine-year-old daughter is being armed from my own forge, and I know 
+nothing of it. The Hand of the King is expected to rule the Seven Kingdoms, yet it seems I cannot even 
+rule my own household. How is it that you come to own a sword, Arya? Where did you get this?" 
+Arya chewed her lip and said nothing. She would not betray Jon, not even to their father. 
+After a while, Father said, "I don't suppose it matters, truly." He looked down gravely at the sword in his 
+hands. "This is no toy for children, least of all for a girl. What would Septa Mordane say if she knew you 
+were playing with swords?" 
+"I wasn't playing," Arya insisted. "I hate Septa Mordane." 
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+"That's enough." Her father's voice was curt and hard. "The septa is doing no more than is her duty, 
+though gods know you have made it a struggle for the poor woman. Your mother and I have charged her 
+with the impossible task of making you a lady." 
+"I don't want to be a lady!" Arya flared. 
+"I ought to snap this toy across my knee here and now, and put an end to this nonsense." 
+"Needle wouldn't break," Arya said defiantly, but her voice betrayed her words. 
+"It has a name, does it?" Her father sighed. "Ah, Arya. You have a wildness in you, child. 'The wolf 
+blood,' my father used to call it. Lyanna had a touch of it, and my brother Brandon more than a touch. It 
+brought them both to an early grave." Arya heard sadness in his voice; he did not often speak of his 
+father, or of the brother and sister who had died before she was born. "Lyanna might have carried a 
+sword, if my lord father had allowed it. You remind me of her sometimes. You even look like her." 
+"Lyanna was beautiful," Arya said, startled. Everybody said so. It was not a thing that was ever said of 
+Arya. 
+"She was," Eddard Stark agreed, "beautiful, and willful, and dead before her time." He lifted the sword, 
+held it out between them. "Arya, what did you think to do with this . . . Needle? Who did you hope to 
+skewer? Your sister? Septa Mordane? Do you know the first thing about sword fighting?" 
+All she could think of was the lesson Jon had given her. "Stick them with the pointy end," she blurted 
+out. 
+Her father snorted back laughter. "That is the essence of it, I suppose." 
+Arya desperately wanted to explain, to make him see. "I was trying to learn, but . . ." Her eyes filled with 
+tears. "I asked Mycah to practice with me." The grief came on her all at once. She turned away, shaking. 
+"I asked him," she cried. "It was my fault, it was me . . ." 
+Suddenly her father's arms were around her. He held her gently as she turned to him and sobbed against 
+his chest. "No, sweet one," he murmured. "Grieve for your friend, but never blame yourself. You did not 
+kill the butcher's boy. That murder lies at the Hound's door, him and the cruel woman he serves." 
+"I hate them," Arya confided, red-faced, sniffling. "The Hound and the queen and the king and Prince 
+Joffrey. I hate all of them. Joffrey lied, it wasn't the way he said. I hate Sansa too. She did remember, she 
+just lied so Joffrey would like her." 
+"We all lie," her father said. "Or did you truly think I'd believe that Nymeria ran off?" 
+Arya blushed guiltily. "Jory promised not to tell." 
+"Jory kept his word," her father said with a smile. "There are some things I do not need to be told. Even 
+a blind man could see that wolf would never have left you willingly." 
+"We had to throw rocks," she said miserably. "I told her to run, to go be free, that I didn't want her 
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+anymore. There were other wolves for her to play with, we heard them howling, and Jory said the woods 
+were full of game, so she'd have deer to hunt. Only she kept following, and finally we had to throw rocks. 
+I hit her twice. She whined and looked at me and I felt so 'shamed, but it was right, wasn't it? The queen 
+would have killed her." 
+"It was right," her father said. "And even the lie was . . . not without honor." He'd put Needle aside when 
+he went to Arya to embrace her. Now he took the blade up again and walked to the window, where he 
+stood for a moment, looking out across the courtyard. When he turned back, his eyes were thoughtful. 
+He seated himself on the window seat, Needle across his lap. "Arya, sit down. I need to try and explain 
+some things to you." 
+She perched anxiously on the edge of her bed. "You are too young to be burdened with all my cares," 
+he told her, "but you are also a Stark of Winterfell. You know our words." 
+"Winter is coming, " Arya whispered. 
+"The hard cruel times," her father said. "We tasted them on the Trident, child, and when Bran fell. You 
+were born in the long summer, sweet one, you've never known anything else, but now the winter is truly 
+coming. Remember the sigil of our House, Arya." 
+"The direwolf," she said, thinking of Nymeria. She hugged her knees against her chest, suddenly afraid. 
+"Let me tell you something about wolves, child. When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone 
+wolf dies, but the pack survives. Summer is the time for squabbles. In winter, we must protect one 
+another, keep each other warm, share our strengths. So if you must hate, Arya, hate those who would 
+truly do us harm. Septa Mordane is a good woman, and Sansa . . . Sansa is your sister. You may be as 
+different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as 
+she needs you . . . and I need both of you, gods help me." 
+He sounded so tired that it made Arya sad. "I don't hate Sansa," she told him. "Not truly." It was only 
+half a lie. 
+"I do not mean to frighten you, but neither will I lie to you. We have 
+come to a dark dangerous place, child. This is not Winterfell. We have enemies who mean us ill. We 
+cannot fight a war among ourselves. This willfulness of yours, the running off, the angry words, the 
+disobedience . . . at home, these were only the summer games of a child. Here and now, with winter 
+soon upon us, that is a different matter. It is time to begin growing up." 
+"I will," Arya vowed. She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant. "I can be strong too. I 
+can be as strong as Robb." 
+He held Needle out to her, hilt first. "Here.,, 
+She looked at the sword with wonder in her eyes. For a moment she was afraid to touch it, afraid that if 
+she reached for it it would be snatched away again, but then her father said, "Go on, it's yours," and she 
+took it in her hand. 
+"I can keep it?" she said. "For true?" 
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+"For true." He smiled. "If I took it away, no doubt I'd find a morningstar hidden under your pillow within 
+the fortnight. Try not to stab your sister, whatever the provocation." 
+"I won't. I promise." Arya clutched Needle tightly to her chest as her father took his leave. 
+The next morning, as they broke their fast, she apologized to Septa Mordane and asked for her pardon. 
+The septa peered at her suspiciously, but Father nodded. 
+Three days later, at midday, her father's steward Vayon Poole sent Arya to the Small Hall. The trestle 
+tables had been dismantled and the benches shoved against the walls. The hall seemed empty, until an 
+unfamiliar voice said, "You are late, boy." A slight man with a bald head and a great beak of a nose 
+stepped out of the shadows, holding a pair of slender wooden swords. "Tomorrow you will be here at 
+midday." He had an accent, the lilt of the Free Cities, Braavos perhaps, or Myr. 
+"Who are you?" Arya asked. 
+"I am your dancing master." He tossed her one of the wooden blades. She grabbed for it, missed, and 
+heard it clatter to the floor. "Tomorrow you will catch it. Now pick it up." 
+It was not just a stick, but a true wooden sword complete with grip and guard and pommel. Arya 
+picked it up and clutched it nervously with both hands, holding it out in front of her. It was heavier than it 
+looked, much heavier than Needle. 
+The bald man clicked his teeth together. "That is not the way, boy. This is not a greatsword that is 
+needing two hands to swing it. You will take the blade in one hand." 
+"It's too heavy," Arya said. 
+"It is heavy as it needs to be to make you strong, and for the balancing. A hollow inside is filled with 
+lead, just so. One hand now is all that is needing." 
+Arya took her right hand off the grip and wiped her sweaty palm on her pants. She held the sword in her 
+left hand. He seemed to approve. "The left is good. All is reversed, it will make your enemies more 
+awkward. Now you are standing wrong. Turn your body sideface, yes, so. You are skinny as the shaft of 
+a spear, do you know. That is good too, the target is smaller. Now the grip. Let me see." He moved 
+closer and peered at her hand, prying her fingers apart, rearranging them. "Just so, yes. Do not squeeze it 
+so tight, no, the grip must be deft, delicate." 
+"What if I drop it?" Arya said. 
+"The steel must be part of your arm," the bald man told her. "Can you drop part of your arm? No. Nine 
+years Syrio Forel was first sword to the Sealord of Braavos, he knows these things. Listen to him, boy." 
+It was the third time he had called her "boy." "I'm a girl," Arya objected. 
+"Boy, girl," Syrio Forel said. "You are a sword, that is all." He clicked his teeth together. "Just so, that is 
+the grip. You are not holding a battle-axe, you are holding a-" 
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+'~--needle, " Arya finished for him, fiercely. 
+"Just so. Now we will begin the dance. Remember, child, this is not the iron dance of Westeros we are 
+learning, the knight's dance, hacking and hammering, no. This is the bravo's dance, the water dance, swift 
+and sudden. All men are made of water, do you know this? When you pierce them, the water leaks out 
+and they die." He took a step backward, raised his own wooden blade. "Now you will try to strike me.,, 
+Arya tried to strike him. She tried for four hours, until every muscle in her body was sore and aching, 
+while Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together and told her what to do. 
+The next day their real work began. 
+DAENERYS 
+"The Dothraki sea," Ser Jorah Mormont said as he reined to a halt beside her on the top of the ridge. 
+beneath them, the plain stretched out immense and empty, a vast flat expanse that reached to the distant 
+horizon and beyond. It was a sea, Dany thought. Past here, there were no hills, no mountains, no trees 
+nor cities nor roads, only the endless grasses, the tall blades rippling like waves when the winds blew. 
+"It's so green," she said. 
+"Here and now," Ser Jorah agreed. "You ought to see it when it blooms, all dark red flowers from 
+horizon to horizon, like a sea of blood. Come the dry season, and the world turns the color of old 
+bronze. And this is only hranna, child. There are a hundred kinds of grass out there, grasses as yellow as 
+lemon and as dark as indigo, blue grasses and orange grasses and grasses like rainbows. Down in the 
+Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback 
+with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the 
+damned. The Dothraki claim that someday ghost grass will cover the entire world, and then all life will 
+end." 
+That thought gave Dany the shivers. "I don't want to talk about that now," she said. "It's so beautiful 
+here, I don't want to think about everything dying." 
+"As you will, Khaleesi," Ser Jorah said respectfully. 
+She heard the sound of voices and turned to look behind her. She and Mormont had outdistanced the 
+rest of their party, and now the others were climbing the ridge below them. Her handmaid Irri and the 
+young archers of her khas were fluid as centaurs, but Viserys still struggled with the short stirrups and the 
+flat saddle. Her brother was miserable out here. He ought never have come. Magister Illyrio had urged 
+him to wait in Pentos, had offered him the hospitality of his manse, but Viserys would have none of it. He 
+would stay with Drogo until the debt had been paid, until he had the crown he had been promised. "And 
+if he tries to cheat me, he will learn to his sorrow what it means to wake the dragon," Viserys had vowed, 
+laying a hand on his borrowed sword. Illyrio had blinked at that and wished him good fortune. 
+Dany realized that she did not want to listen to any of her brother's complaints right now. The day was 
+too perfect. The sky was a deep blue, and high above them a hunting hawk circled. The grass sea 
+swayed and sighed with each breath of wind, the air was warm on her face, and Dany felt at peace. She 
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+would not let Viserys spoil it. 
+"Wait here," Dany told Ser Jorah. "Tell them all to stay. Tell them I command it." 
+The knight smiled. Ser Jorah was not a handsome man. He had a neck and shoulders like a bull, and 
+coarse black hair covered his arms and chest so thickly that there was none left for his head. Yet his 
+smiles gave Dany comfort. "You are learning to talk like a queen, Daenerys." 
+"Not a queen," said Dany. "A khaleesi. " She wheeled her horse about and galloped down the ridge 
+alone. 
+The descent was steep and rocky, but Dany rode fearlessly, and the joy and the danger of it were a 
+song in her heart. All her life Viserys had told her she was a princess, but not until she rode her silver had 
+Daenerys Targaryen ever felt like one. 
+At first it had not come easy. The khalasar had broken camp the morning after her wedding, moving east 
+toward Vaes Dothrak, and by the third day Dany thought she was going to die. Saddle sores opened on 
+her bottom, hideous and bloody. Her thighs were chafed raw, her hands blistered from the reins, the 
+muscles of her legs and back so wracked with pain that she could scarcely sit. By the time dusk fell, her 
+handmaids would need to help her down from her mount. 
+Even the nights brought no relief. Khal Drogo ignored her when they rode, even as he had ignored her 
+during their wedding, and spent his evenings drinking with his warriors and bloodriders, racing his prize 
+horses, watching women dance and men die. Dany had no place 
+in these parts of his life. She was left to sup alone, or with Ser Jorah and her brother, and afterward to 
+cry herself to sleep. Yet every night, some time before the dawn, Drogo would come to her tent and 
+wake her in the dark, to ride her as relentlessly as he rode his stallion. He always took her from behind, 
+Dothraki fashion, for which Dany was grateful; that way her lord husband could not see the tears that wet 
+her face, and she could use her pillow to muffle her cries of pain. When he was done, he would close his 
+eyes and begin to snore softly and Dany would lie beside him, her body bruised and sore, hurting too 
+much for sleep. 
+Day followed day, and night followed night, until Dany knew she could not endure a moment longer. She 
+would kill herself rather than go on, she decided one night . . . 
+Yet when she slept that night, she dreamt the dragon dream again. Viserys was not in it this time. There 
+was only her and the dragon. Its scales were black as night, wet and slick with blood. Her blood, Dany 
+sensed. Its eyes were pools of molten magma, and when it opened its mouth, the flame came roaring out 
+in a hot jet. She could hear it singing to her, She opened her arms to the fire, embraced it, let it swallow 
+her whole, let it cleanse her and temper her and scour her clean. She could feel her flesh sear and 
+blacken and slough away, could feel her blood boil and turn to steam, and yet there was no pain. She felt 
+strong and new and fierce. 
+And the next day, strangely, she did not seem to hurt quite so much. It was as if the gods had heard her 
+and taken pity. Even her handmaids noticed the change. "Khaleesi, " Jhiqui said, "what is wrong? Are you 
+sick?" 
+"I was," she answered, standing over the dragon's eggs that Illyrio had given her when she wed. She 
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+touched one, the largest of the three, running her hand lightly over the shelf. Black-and-scarlet, she 
+thought, like the dragon in my dream. The stone felt strangely warm beneath her fingers . . . or was she 
+still dreaming? She pulled her hand back nervously. 
+From that hour onward, each day was easier than the one before it. Her legs grew stronger; her blisters 
+burst and her hands grew callused; her soft thighs toughened, supple as leather. 
+The khal had commanded the handmaid Irri to teach Dany to ride in the Dothraki fashion, but it was the 
+filly who was her real teacher. The horse seemed to know her moods, as if they shared a single mind. 
+With every passing day, Dany felt surer in her seat. The Dothraki were a hard and unsentimental people, 
+and it was not their custom to name 
+their animals, so Dany thought of her only as the silver. She had never loved anything so much. 
+As the riding became less an ordeal, Dany began to notice the beauties of the land around her. She rode 
+at the head of the khalasar with Drogo and his bloodriders, so she came to each country fresh and 
+unspoiled. Behind them the great horde might tear the earth and muddy the rivers and send up clouds of 
+choking dust, but the fields ahead of them were always green and verdant. 
+They crossed the rolling hills of Norvos, past terraced farms and small villages where the townsfolk 
+watched anxiously from atop white stucco walls. They forded three wide placid rivers and a fourth that 
+was swift and narrow and treacherous, camped beside a high blue waterfall, skirted the tumbled ruins of 
+a vast dead city where ghosts were said to moan among blackened marble columns. They raced down 
+Valyrian roads a thousand years old and straight as a Dothraki arrow. For half a moon, they rode 
+through the Forest of Qohor, where the leaves made a golden canopy high above them, and the trunks of 
+the trees were as wide as city gates. There were great elk in that wood, and spotted tigers, and lemurs 
+with silver fur and huge purple eyes, but all fled before the approach of the khalasar and Dany got no 
+glimpse of them. 
+By then her agony was a fading memory. She still ached after a long day's riding, yet somehow the pain 
+had a sweetness to it now, and each morning she came willingly to her saddle, eager to know what 
+wonders waited for her in the lands ahead. She began to find pleasure even in her nights, and if she still 
+cried out when Drogo took her, it was not always in pain. 
+At the bottom of the ridge, the grasses rose around her, tall and supple. Dany slowed to a trot and rode 
+out onto the plain, losing herself in the green, blessedly alone. In the khalasar she was never alone. Khal 
+Drogo came to her only after the sun went down, but her handmaids fed her and bathed her and slept by 
+the door of her tent, Drogo's bloodriders and the men of her khas were never far, and her brother was an 
+unwelcome shadow, day and night. Dany could hear him on the top of the ridge, his voice shrill with 
+anger as he shouted at Ser Jorah. She rode on, submerging herself deeper in the Dothraki sea. 
+The green swallowed her up. The air was rich with the scents of earth and grass, mixed with the smell of 
+horseflesh and Dany's sweat and the oil in her hair. Dothraki smells. They seemed to belong here. Dany 
+breathed it all in, laughing. She had a sudden urge to feel the ground beneath her, to curl her toes in that 
+thick black soil. Swinging 
+down from her saddle, she let the silver graze while she pulled off her high boots. 
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+Viserys came upon her as sudden as a summer storm, his horse rearing beneath him as he reined up too 
+hard. "You dare!" he screamed at her. "You give commands to me? To me?" He vaulted off the horse, 
+stumbling as he landed. His face was flushed as he struggled back to his feet. He grabbed her, shook her. 
+"Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!" 
+Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a 
+painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and 
+stained in city silks and ringmail. 
+He was still screaming. "You do not command the dragon. Do you understand? I am the Lord of the 
+Seven Kingdoms, I will not hear orders from some horselord's slut, do you hear me?" His hand went 
+under her vest, his fingers digging painfully into her breast. "Do you hear me?" 
+Dany shoved him away, hard. 
+Viserys stared at her, his lilac eyes incredulous. She had never defied him. Never fought back. Rage 
+twisted his features. He would hurt her now, and badly, she knew that. 
+Crack. 
+The whip made a sound like thunder. The coil took Viserys around the throat and yanked him 
+backward. He went sprawling in the grass, stunned and choking. The Dothraki riders hooted at him as he 
+struggled to free himself. The one with the whip, young Jhogo, rasped a question. Dany did not 
+understand his words, but by then Irri was there, and Ser Jorah, and the rest of her khas. "Jhogo asks if 
+you would have him dead, Khaleesi, " Irri said. 
+"No," Dany replied. "No." 
+Jhogo understood that. One of the others barked out a comment, and the Dothraki laughed. Irri told her, 
+"Quaro thinks you should take an ear to teach him respect." 
+Her brother was on his knees, his fingers digging under the leather coils, crying incoherently, struggling 
+for breath. The whip was tight around his windpipe. 
+"Tell them I do not wish him harmed," Dany said. 
+Irri repeated her words in Dothraki. Jhogo gave a pull on the whip, yanking Viserys around like a 
+puppet on a string. He went sprawling again, freed from the leather embrace, a thin line of blood under 
+his chin where the whip had cut deep. 
+"I warned him what would happen, my lady," Ser Jorah Mormont said. "I told him to stay on the ridge, 
+as you commanded." 
+"I know you did," Dany replied, watching Viserys. He lay on the ground, sucking in air noisily, red-faced 
+and sobbing. He was a pitiful thing. He had always been a pitiful thing. Why had she never seen that 
+before? There was a hollow place inside her where her fear had been. 
+"Take his horse," Dany commanded Ser Jorah. Viserys gaped at her. He could not believe what he was 
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+hearing; nor could Dany quite believe what she was saying. Yet the words came. "Let my brother walk 
+behind us back to the khalasar." Among the Dothraki, the man who does not ride was no man at all, the 
+lowest of the low, without honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is." 
+"No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the 
+horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these 
+Dothraki dogs and teach her." 
+The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her 
+hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he 
+said. He took her brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver. 
+Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes 
+were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him 
+anymore, Dany grew afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode. 
+"Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he replied. 
+"He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back." 
+Jorah laughed. "Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the khalasar will most surely 
+find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child." 
+Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. 
+Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while 
+outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come 
+from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now. 
+"I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that 
+she had dreamed. "Ser Jorah, do you think . . . he'll be so angry when he gets back She shivered. "I 
+woke the dragon, didn't IT' 
+Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he 
+died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake." 
+His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed were suddenly 
+called into question. "You . . . you swore him your sword . . ." 
+"That I did, girl," Ser Jorah said. "And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what does that make his 
+servants?" His voice was bitter. 
+"He is still the true king. He is . . ." 
+Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. "Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?" 
+Dany thought about that. "He would not be a very good king, would he?" 
+"There have been worse . . . but not many." The knight gave his heels to his mount and started off again. 
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+Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common people are waiting for him. Magister Illyrio 
+says they are sewing dragon banners and praying for Viserys to return from across the narrow sea to free 
+them." 
+"The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends," Ser Jorah told her. 
+"It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace." He 
+gave a shrug. "They never are." 
+Dany rode along quietly for a time, working his words like a puzzle box. It went against everything that 
+Viserys had ever told her to think that the people could care so little whether a true king or a usurper 
+reigned over them. Yet the more she thought on Jorah's words, the more they rang of truth. 
+"What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?" she asked him. 
+"Home," he said. His voice was thick with longing. 
+"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it. 
+Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi." 
+But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the 
+Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a 
+thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red. 
+"My brother will never take back the Seven Kingdoms," Dany said. She had known that for a long time, 
+she realized. She had known it all her life. Only she had never let herself say the words, even in a 
+whisper, but now she said them for Jorah Mormont and all the world to hear. 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 207 
+Ser Jorah gave her a measuring look. "You think not." 
+"He could not lead an army even if my lord husband gave him one," Dany said. "He has no coin and the 
+only knight who follows him reviles him as less than a snake. The Dothraki make mock of his weakness. 
+He will never take us home." 
+"Wise child." The knight smiled. 
+"I am no child," she told him fiercely. Her heels pressed into the sides of her mount, rousing the silver to 
+a gallop. Faster and faster she raced, leaving Jorah and Irri and the others far behind, the warm wind in 
+her hair and the setting sun red on her face. By the time she reached the khalasar, it was dusk. 
+The slaves had erected her tent by the shore of a spring-fed pool. She could hear rough voices from the 
+woven grass palace on the hill. Soon there would be laughter, when the men of her khas told the story of 
+what had happened in the grasses today. By the time Viserys came limping back among them, every 
+man, woman, and child in the camp would know him for a walker. There were no secrets in the khalasar. 
+Dany gave the silver over to the slaves for grooming and entered her tent. It was cool and dim beneath 
+the silk. As she let the door flap close behind her, Dany saw a finger of dusty red light reach out to touch 
+her dragon's eggs across the tent. For an instant a thousand droplets of scarlet flame swam before her 
+eyes. She blinked, and they were gone. 
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+Stone, she told herself. They are only stone, even Illyrio said so, the dragons are all dead. She put her 
+palm against the black egg, fingers spread gently across the curve of the shell. The stone was warm. 
+Almost hot. "The sun," Dany whispered. "The sun warmed them as they rode." 
+She commanded her handmaids to prepare her a bath. Doreah built a fire outside the tent, while Irri and 
+Jhiqui fetched the big copper tub-another bride gift-from the packhorses and carried water from the 
+pool. When the bath was steaming, Irri helped her into it and climbed in after her. 
+"Have you ever seen a dragon?" she asked as Irri scrubbed her back and Jhiqui sluiced sand from her 
+hair. She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond 
+Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea. Perhaps some were still living there, in realms strange and wild. 
+"Dragons are gone, Khaleesi," Irri said. 
+"Dead," agreed Jhiqui. "Long and long ago." 
+Viserys had told her that the last Targaryen dragons had died no more than a century and a half ago, 
+during the reign of Aegon 111, who 
+was called the Dragonbane. That did not seem so long ago to Dany. "Everywhere?" she said, 
+disappointed. "Even in the east?" Magic had died in the west when the Doom fell on Valyria and the 
+Lands of the Long Summer, and neither spell-forged steel nor stormsingers nor dragons could hold it 
+back, but Dany had always heard that the east was different. It was said that manticores prowled the 
+islands of the Jade Sea, that basilisks infested the jungles of Yi Ti, that spellsingers, warlocks, and 
+aeromancers practiced their arts openly in Asshai, while shadowbinders and bloodmages worked terrible 
+sorceries in the black of night. Why shouldn't there be dragons too? 
+"No dragon," Irri said. "Brave men kill them, for dragon terrible evil beasts. It is known." 
+"It is known," agreed Jhiqui. 
+"A trader from Qarth once told me that dragons came from the moon," blond Doreah said as she 
+warmed a towel over the fire. Jhiqui and Irri were of an age with Dany, Dothraki girls taken as slaves 
+when Drogo destroyed their father's khalasar. Doreah was older, almost twenty. Magister Illyrio had 
+found her in a pleasure house in Lys. 
+Silvery-wet hair tumbled across her eyes as Dany turned her head, curious. "The moon?" 
+"He told me the moon was an egg, Khaleesi," the Lysene girl said. "Once there were two moons in the 
+sky, but one wandered too close to the sun and cracked from the heat. A thousand thousand dragons 
+poured forth, and drank the fire of the sun. That is why dragons breathe flame. One day the other moon 
+will kiss the sun too, and then it will crack and the dragons will return." 
+The two Dothraki girls giggled and laughed. "You are foolish strawhead slave," Irri said. "Moon is no 
+egg. Moon is god, woman wife of sun. It is known." 
+"It is known," Jhiqui agreed. 
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+Dany's skin was flushed and pink when she climbed from the tub. Jhiqui laid her down to oil her body 
+and scrape the dirt from her pores. Afterward Irri sprinkled her with spiceflower and cinnamon. While 
+Doreah brushed her hair until it shone like spun silver, she thought about the moon, and eggs, and 
+dragons. 
+Her supper was a simple meal of fruit and cheese and fry bread, with a jug of honeyed wine to wash it 
+down. "Doreah, stay and eat with me," Dany commanded when she sent her other handmaids away. The 
+Lysene girl had hair the color of honey, and eyes like the summer sky. 
+She lowered those eyes when they were alone. "You honor me, Khaleesi, " she said, but it was no 
+honor, only service. Long after the moon had risen, they sat together, talking. 
+That night, when Khal Drogo came, Dany was waiting for him. He stood in the door of her tent and 
+looked at her with surprise. She rose slowly and opened her sleeping silks and let them fall to the ground. 
+"This night we must go outside, my lord," she told him, for the Dothraki believed that all things of 
+importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky. 
+Khal Drogo followed her out into the moonlight, the bells in his hair tinkling softly. A few yards from her 
+tent was a bed of soft grass, and it was there that Dany drew him down. When he tried to turn her over, 
+she put a hand on his chest. "No," she said. "This night I would look on your face." 
+There is no privacy in the heart of the khalasar. Dany felt the eyes on her as she undressed him, heard 
+the soft voices as she did the things that Doreah had told her to do. It was nothing to her. Was she not 
+khaleesi? His were the only eyes that mattered, and when she mounted him she saw something there that 
+she had never seen before. She rode him as fiercely as ever she had ridden her silver, and when the 
+moment of his pleasure came, Khal Drogo called out her name. 
+They were on the far side of the Dothraki sea when Jhiqui brushed the soft swell of Dany's stomach with 
+her fingers and said, "Khaleesi, you are with child." 
+"I know," Dany told her. 
+It was her fourteenth name day. 
+BRAN 
+In the yard below, Rickon ran with the wolves. 
+Bran watched from his window seat. Wherever the boy went, 
+Grey Wind was there first, loping ahead to cut him off, until Rickon saw him, screamed in delight, and 
+went pelting off in another direction. Shaggydog ran at his heels, spinning and snapping if the other wolves 
+came too close. His fur had darkened until he was all black, and his eyes were green fire. Bran's Summer 
+came last. He was silver and smoke, with eyes of yellow gold that saw all there was to see. Smaller than 
+Grey Wind, and more wary. Bran thought he was the smartest of the litter. He could hear his brother's 
+breathless laughter as Rickon dashed across the hardpacked earth on little baby legs. 
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+His eyes stung. He wanted to be down there, laughing and running. Angry at the thought, Bran knuckled 
+away the tears before they could fall. His eighth name day had come and gone. He was almost a man 
+grown now, too old to cry. 
+"It was just a lie," he said bitterly, remembering the crow from his dream. "I can't fly. I can't even run." 
+"Crows are all liars," Old Nan agreed, from the chair where she sat doing her needlework. "I know a 
+story about a crow." 
+"I don't want any more stories," Bran snapped, his voice petulant. He had liked Old Nan and her stories 
+once. Before. But it was different now. They left her with him all day now, to watch over him and 
+clean him and keep him from being lonely, but she just made it worse. "I hate your stupid stories." 
+The old woman smiled at him toothlessly. "My stories? No, my little lord, not mine. The stories are, 
+before me and after me, before you too." 
+She was a very ugly old woman, Bran thought spitefully; shrunken and wrinkled, almost blind, too weak 
+to climb stairs, with only a few wisps of white hair left to cover a mottled pink scalp. No one really knew 
+how old she was, but his father said she'd been called Old Nan even when he was a boy. She was the 
+oldest person in Winterfell for certain, maybe the oldest person in the Seven Kingdoms. Nan had come 
+to the castle as a wet nurse for a Brandon Stark whose mother had died birthing him. He had been an 
+older brother of Lord Rickard, Bran's grandfather, or perhaps a younger brother, or a brother to Lord 
+Rickard's father. Sometimes Old Nan told it one way and sometimes another. In all the stories the little 
+boy died at three of a summer chill, but Old Nan stayed on at Winterfell with her own children. She had 
+lost both her sons to the war when King Robert won the throne, and her grandson was killed on the walls 
+of Pyke during Balon Greyjoy's rebellion. Her daughters had long ago married and moved away and 
+died. All that was left of her own blood was Hodor, the simpleminded giant who worked in the stables, 
+but Old Nan just lived on and on, doing her needlework and telling her stories. 
+"I don't care whose stories they are," Bran told her, "I hate them." He didn't want stories and he didn't 
+want Old Nan. He wanted his mother and father. He wanted to go running with Summer loping beside 
+him. He wanted to climb the broken tower and feed corn to the crows. He wanted to ride his pony again 
+with his brothers. He wanted it to be the way it had been before. 
+"I know a story about a boy who hated stories," Old Nan said with her stupid little smile, her needles 
+moving all the while, click click click, until Bran was ready to scream at her. 
+It would never be the way it had been, he knew. The crow had tricked him into flying, but when he 
+woke up he was broken and the world was changed. They had all left him, his father and his mother and 
+his sisters and even his bastard brother Jon. His father had promised he would ride a real horse to King's 
+Landing, but they'd gone without him. Maester Luwin had sent a bird after Lord Eddard with a message, 
+and another to Mother and a third to Jon on the Wall, but there had been no answers. "Ofttimes the birds 
+are lost, child," the maester had told him. "There's many a mile and many a hawk between here and 
+King's Landing, the message may not have reached them." 
+Yet to Bran it felt as if they had all died while he had slept ... or perhaps Bran had died, and they had 
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+forgotten him. Jory and Ser Rodrik and Vayon Poole had gone too, and Hullen and Harwin and Fat Tom 
+and a quarter of the guard. 
+Only Robb and baby Rickon were still here, and Robb was changed. He was Robb the Lord now, or 
+trying to be. He wore a real sword and never smiled. His days were spent drilling the guard and 
+practicing his swordplay, making the yard ring with the sound of steel as Bran watched forlornly from his 
+window. At night he closeted himself with Maester Luwin, talking or going over account books. 
+Sometimes he would ride out with Hallis Mollen and be gone for days at a time, visiting distant holdfasts. 
+Whenever he was away more than a day, Rickon would cry and ask Bran if Robb was ever coming 
+back. Even when he was home at Winterfell, Robb the Lord seemed to have more time for Hallis Mollen 
+and Theon Greyjoy than he ever did for his brothers. 
+"I could tell you the story about Brandon the Builder," Old Nan said. "That was always your favorite." 
+Thousands and thousands of years ago, Brandon the Builder had raised Winterfell, and some said the 
+Wall. Bran knew the story, but it had never been his favorite. Maybe one of the other Brandons had 
+liked that story. Sometimes Nan would talk to him as if he were her Brandon, the baby she had nursed all 
+those years ago, and sometimes she confused him with his uncle Brandon, who was killed by the Mad 
+King before Bran was even born. She had lived so long, Mother had told him once, that all the Brandon 
+Starks had become one person in her head. 
+"That's not my favorite," he said. "My favorites were the scary ones." He heard some sort of commotion 
+outside and turned back to the window. Rickon was running across the yard toward the gatehouse, the 
+wolves following him, but the tower faced the wrong way for Bran to see what was happening. He 
+smashed a fist on his thigh in frustration and felt nothing. 
+"Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear? Fear is for the winter, 
+my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. 
+Fear is for the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and 
+live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move 
+through the woods." 
+"You mean the Others," Bran said querulously. 
+"The Others," Old Nan agreed. "Thousands and thousands of years 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 213 
+ago, a winter fell that was cold and hard and endless beyond all memory of man. There came a night that 
+lasted a generation, and kings shivered and died in their castles even as the swineherds in their hovels. 
+Women smothered their children rather than see them starve, and cried, and felt their tears freeze on their 
+cheeks." Her voice and her needles fell silent, and she glanced up at Bran with pale, filmy eyes and 
+asked, "So, child. This is the sort of story you like?" 
+"Well," Bran said reluctantly, "yes, only . . . 
+Old Nan nodded. "In that darkness, the Others came for the first time," she said as her needles went 
+click click click. "They were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun, 
+and every creature with hot blood in its veins. They swept over holdfasts and cities and kingdoms, felled 
+heroes and armies by the score, riding their pale dead horses and leading hosts of the slain. All the 
+swords of men could not stay their advance, and even maidens and suckling babes found no pity in them. 
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+They hunted the maids through frozen forests, and fed their dead servants on the flesh of human children." 
+Her voice had dropped very low, almost to a whisper, and Bran found himself leaning forward to listen. 
+"Now these were the days before the Andals came, and long before the women fled across the narrow 
+sea from the cities of the Rhoyne, and the hundred kingdoms of those times were the kingdoms of the 
+First Men, who had taken these lands from the children of the forest. Yet here and there in the fastness of 
+the woods the children still lived in their wooden cities and hollow hills, and the faces in the trees kept 
+watch. So as cold and death filled the earth, the last hero determined to seek out the children, in the 
+hopes that their ancient magics could win back what the armies of men had lost. He set out into the dead 
+lands with a sword, a horse, a dog, and a dozen companions. For years he searched, until he despaired 
+of ever finding the children of the forest in their secret cities. One by one his friends died, and his horse, 
+and finally even his dog, and his sword froze so hard the blade snapped when he tried to use it. And the 
+Others smelled the hot blood in him, and came silent on his trail, stalking him with packs of pale white 
+spiders big as hounds-" 
+The door opened with a bang, and Bran's heart leapt up into his mouth in sudden fear, but it was only 
+Maester Luwin, with Hodor looming in the stairway behind him. "Hodor!" the stableboy announced, as 
+was his custom, smiling hugely at them all. 
+Maester Luwin was not smiling. "We have visitors," he announced, "and your presence is required, 
+Bran." 
+"I'm listening to a story now," Bran complained. 
+"Stories wait, my little lord, and when you come back to them, why, there they are," Old Nan said. 
+"Visitors are not so patient, and ofttimes they bring stories of their own." 
+"Who is it?" Bran asked Maester Luwin. 
+"Tyrion Lannister, and some men of the Night's Watch, with word from your brother Jon. Robb is 
+meeting with them now. Hodor, will you help Bran down to the hall?" 
+"Hodor!" Hodor agreed happily. He ducked to get his great shaggy head under the door. Hodor was 
+nearly seven feet tall. It was hard to believe that he was the same blood as Old Nan. Bran wondered if 
+he would shrivel up as small as his great-grandmother when he was old. It did not seem likely, even if 
+Hodor lived to be a thousand. 
+Hodor lifted Bran as easy as if he were a bale of hay, and cradled him against his massive chest. He 
+always smelled faintly of horses, but it was not a bad smell. His arms were thick with muscle and matted 
+with brown hair. "Hodor," he said again. Theon Greyjoy had once commented that Hodor did not know 
+much, but no one could doubt that he knew his name. Old Nan had cackled like a hen when Bran told 
+her that, and confessed that Hodor's real name was Walder. No one knew where "Hodor" had come 
+from, she said, but when he started saying it, they started calling him by it. It was the only word he had. 
+They left Old Nan in the tower room with her needles and her memories. Hodor hummed tunelessly as 
+he carried Bran down the steps and through the gallery, with Maester Luwin following behind, hurrying to 
+keep up with the stableboy's long strides. 
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+Robb was seated in Father's high seat, wearing ringmail and boiled leather and the stern face of Robb 
+the Lord. Theon Greyjoy and Hallis Mollen stood behind him. A dozen guardsmen lined the grey stone 
+walls beneath tall narrow windows. In the center of the room the dwarf stood with his servants, and four 
+strangers in the black of the Night's Watch. Bran could sense the anger in the hall the moment that Hodor 
+carried him through the doors. 
+"Any man of the Night's Watch is welcome here at Winterfell for as long as he wishes to stay," Robb 
+was saying with the voice of Robb the Lord. His sword was across his knees, the steel bare for all the 
+world to see. Even Bran knew what it meant to greet a guest with an unsheathed sword. 
+"Any man of the Night's Watch," the dwarf repeated, "but not me, do I take your meaning, boy?" 
+Robb stood and pointed at the little man with his sword. "I am the 
+lord here while my mother and father are away, Lannister. I am not your boy." 
+"If you are a lord, you might learn a lord's courtesy," the little man replied, ignoring the sword point in his 
+face. "Your bastard brother has all your father's graces, it would seem." 
+"Jon, " Bran gasped out from Hodor's arms. 
+The dwarf turned to look at him. "So it is true, the boy lives. I could scarce believe it. You Starks are 
+hard to kill." 
+"You Lannisters had best remember that," Robb said, lowering his sword. "Hodor, bring my brother 
+here." 
+"Hodor," Hodor said, and he trotted forward smiling and set Bran in the high seat of the Starks, where 
+the Lords of Winterfell had sat since the days when they called themselves the Kings in the North. The 
+seat was cold stone, polished smooth by countless bottoms; the carved heads of direwolves snarled on 
+the ends of its massive arms. Bran clasped them as he sat, his useless legs dangling. The great seat made 
+him feel half a baby. 
+Robb put a hand on his shoulder. "You said you had business with Bran. Well, here he is, Lannister." 
+Bran was uncomfortably aware of Tyrion Lannister's eyes. One was black and one was green, and both 
+were looking at him, studying him, weighing him. "I am told you were quite the climber, Bran," the little 
+man said at last. "Tell me, how is it you happened to fall that day?" 
+"I never," Bran insisted. He never fell, never never never. 
+"The child does not remember anything of the fall, or the climb that came before it," said Maester Luwin 
+gently. 
+"Curious," said Tyrion Lannister. 
+"My brother is not here to answer questions, Lannister," Robb said curtly. "Do your business and be on 
+your way." 
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+"I have a gift for you," the dwarf said to Bran. "Do you like to ride, boy?" 
+Maester Luwin came forward. "My lord, the child has lost the use of his legs. He cannot sit a horse." 
+"Nonsense," said Lannister. "With the right horse and the right saddle, even a cripple can ride." 
+The word was a knife through Bran's heart. He felt tears come unbidden to his eyes. "I'm not a cripple!" 
+"Then I am not a dwarf," the dwarf said with a twist of his mouth. "My father will rejoice to hear it." 
+Greyjoy laughed. 
+"What sort of horse and saddle are you suggesting?" Maester Luwin asked. 
+"A smart horse," Lannister replied. "The boy cannot use his legs to 
+command the animal, so you must shape the horse to the rider, teach it to respond to the reins, to the 
+voice. I would begin with an unbroken yearling, with no old training to be unlearned." He drew a rolled 
+paper from his belt. "Give this to your saddler. He will provide the rest." 
+Maester Luwin took the paper from the dwarfs hand, curious as a small grey squirrel. He unrolled it, 
+studied it. "I see. You draw nicely, my lord. Yes, this ought to work. I should have thought of this 
+myself." 
+"It came easier to me, Maester. It is not terribly unlike my own saddles." 
+"Will I truly be able to ride?" Bran asked. He wanted to believe them, but he was afraid. Perhaps it was 
+just another lie. The crow had promised him that he could fly. 
+"You will," the dwarf told him. "And I swear to you, boy, on horseback you will be as tall as any of 
+them." 
+Robb Stark seemed puzzled. "Is this some trap, Lannister? What's Bran to you? Why should you want 
+to help him?" 
+"Your brother Jon asked it of me. And I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples and bastards and 
+broken things." Tyrion Lannister placed a hand over his heart and grinned. 
+The door to the yard flew open. Sunlight came streaming across the hall as Rickon burst in, breathless. 
+The direwolves were with him. The boy stopped by the door, wide-eyed, but the wolves came on. Their 
+eyes found Lannister, or perhaps they caught his scent. Summer began to growl first. Grey Wind picked 
+it up. They padded toward the little man, one from the right and one from the left. 
+"The wolves do not like your smell, Lannister," Theon Greyioy commented. 
+"Perhaps it's time I took my leave," Tyrion said. He took a step backward . . . and Shaggydog came out 
+of the shadows behind him, snarling. Lannister recoiled, and Summer lunged at him from the other side. 
+He reeled away, unsteady on his feet, and Grey Wind snapped at his arm, teeth ripping at his sleeve and 
+tearing loose a scrap of cloth. 
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+"No!" Bran shouted from the high seat as Lannister's men reached for their steel. "Summer, here. 
+Summer, to me!" 
+The direwolf heard the voice, glanced at Bran, and again at Lannister. He crept backward, away from 
+the little man, and settled down below Bran's dangling feet. 
+Robb had been holding his breath. He let it out with a sigh and called, "Grey Wind." His direwolf moved 
+to him, swift and silent. Now there was only Shaggydog, rumbling at the small man, his eyes burning like 
+green fire. 
+"Rickon, call him," Bran shouted to his baby brother, and Rickon remembered himself and screamed, 
+"Home, Shaggy, home now." The black wolf gave Lannister one final snarl and bounded off to Rickon, 
+who hugged him tightly around the neck. 
+Tyrion Lannister undid his scarf, mopped at his brow, and said in a flat voice, "How interesting." 
+"Are you well, my lord?" asked one of his men, his sword in hand. He glanced nervously at the 
+direwolves as he spoke. 
+"My sleeve is torn and my breeches are unaccountably damp, but nothing was harmed save my dignity." 
+Even Robb looked shaken. "The wolves . . . I don't know why they did that . . ." 
+"No doubt they mistook me for dinner." Lannister bowed stiffly to Bran. "I thank you for calling them off, 
+young ser. I promise you, they would have found me quite indigestible. And now I will be leaving, truly." 
+"A moment, my lord," Maester Luwin said. He moved to Robb and they huddled close together, 
+whispering. Bran tried to hear what they were saying, but their voices were too low. 
+Robb Stark finally sheathed his sword. "I . . . I may have been hasty with you," he said. "You've done 
+Bran a kindness, and, well . . ." Robb composed himself with an effort. "The hospitality of Winterfell is 
+yours if you wish it, Lannister." 
+"Spare me your false courtesies, boy. You do not love me and you do not want me here. I saw an inn 
+outside your walls, in the winter town. I'll find a bed there, and both of us will sleep easier. For a few 
+coppers I may even find a comely wench to warm the sheets for me." He spoke to one of the black 
+brothers, an old man with a twisted back and a tangled beard. "Yoren, we go south at daybreak. You 
+will find me on the road, no doubt." With that he made his exit, struggling across the hall on his short legs, 
+past Rickon and out the door. His men followed. 
+The four of the Night's Watch remained. Robb turned to them uncertainly. "I have had rooms prepared, 
+and you'll find no lack of hot water to wash off the dust of the road. I hope you will honor us at table 
+tonight." He spoke the words so awkwardly that even Bran took note; it was a speech he had learned, 
+not words from the heart, but the black brothers thanked him all the same. 
+Summer followed them up the tower steps as Hodor carried Bran back to his bed. Old Nan was asleep 
+in her chair. Hodor said "Hodor," gathered up his great-grandmother, and carried her off, snoring softly, 
+while Bran lay thinking. Robb had promised that he could feast with 
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+the Night's Watch in the Great Hall. "Summer," he called. The wolf bounded up on the bed. Bran 
+hugged him so hard he could feel the hot breath on his cheek. "I can ride now," he whispered to his 
+friend. "We can go hunting in the woods soon, wait and see." After a time he slept. 
+In his dream he was climbing again, pulling himself up an ancient windowless tower, his fingers forcing 
+themselves between blackened stones, his feet scrabbling for purchase. Higher and higher he climbed, 
+through the clouds and into the night sky, and still the tower rose before him. When he paused to look 
+down, his head swam dizzily and he felt his fingers slipping. Bran cried out and clung for dear life. The 
+earth was a thousand miles beneath him and he could not fly. He could not fly. He waited until his heart 
+had stopped pounding, until he could breathe, and he began to climb again. There was no way to go but 
+up. Far above him, outlined against a vast pale moon, he thought he could see the shapes of gargoyles. 
+His arms were sore and aching, but he dared not rest. He forced himself to climb faster. The gargoyles 
+watched him ascend. Their eyes glowed red as hot coals in a brazier. Perhaps once they had been lions, 
+but now they were twisted and grotesque. Bran could hear them whispering to each other in soft stone 
+voices terrible to hear. He must not listen, he told himself, he must not hear, so long as he did not hear 
+them he was safe. But when the gargoyles pulled themselves loose from the stone and padded down the 
+side of the tower to where Bran clung, he knew he was not safe after all. "I didn't hear," he wept as they 
+came closer and closer, "I didn't, I didn't." 
+He woke gasping, lost in darkness, and saw a vast shadow looming over him. "I didn't hear," he 
+whispered, trembling in fear, but then the shadow said "Hodor," and lit the candle by the bedside, and 
+Bran sighed with relief. 
+Hodor washed the sweat from him with a warm, damp cloth and dressed him with deft and gentle hands. 
+When it was time, he carried him down to the Great Hall, where a long trestle table had been set up near 
+the fire. The lord's seat at the head of the table had been left empty, but Robb sat to the right of it, with 
+Bran across from him. They ate suckling pig that night, and pigeon pie, and turnips soaking in butter, and 
+afterward the cook had promised honeycombs. Summer snatched table scraps from Bran's hand, while 
+Grey Wind and Shaggydog fought over a bone in the corner. Winterfell's dogs would not come near the 
+hall now. Bran had found that strange at first, but he was growing used to it. 
+Yoren was senior among the black brothers, so the steward had seated him between Robb and Maester 
+Luwin. The old man had a sour 
+smell, as if he had not washed in a long time. He ripped at the meat with his teeth, cracked the ribs to 
+suck out the marrow from the bones, and shrugged at the mention of Jon Snow. "Ser Alliser's bane," he 
+grunted, and two of his companions shared a laugh that Bran did not understand. But when Robb asked 
+for news of their uncle Benjen, the black brothers grew ominously quiet. 
+"What is it?" Bran asked. 
+Yoren wiped his fingers on his vest. "There's hard news, m'lords, and a cruel way to pay you for your 
+meat and mead, but the man as asks the question must bear the answer. Stark's gone." 
+One of the other men said, "The Old Bear sent him out to look for Waymar Royce, and he's late 
+returning, my lord." 
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+"Too long," Yoren said. "Most like he's dead." 
+"My uncle is not dead," Robb Stark said loudly, anger in his tones. He rose from the bench and laid his 
+hand on the hilt of his sword. "Do you hear me? My uncle is not dead!" His voice rang against the stone 
+walls, and Bran was suddenly afraid. 
+Old sour-smelling Yoren looked up at Robb, unimpressed. "Whatever you say, m'lord," he said. He 
+sucked at a piece of meat between his teeth. 
+The youngest of the black brothers shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "There's not a man on the Wall 
+knows the haunted forest better than Benjen Stark. He'll find his way back." 
+"Well," said Yoren, "maybe he will and maybe he won't. Good men have gone into those woods before, 
+and never come out." 
+All Bran could think of was Old Nan's story of the Others and the last hero, hounded through the white 
+woods by dead men and spiders big as hounds. He was afraid for a moment, until he remembered how 
+that story ended. "The children will help him," he blurted, "the children of the forest!" 
+Theon Greyjoy sniggered, and Maester Luwin said, "Bran, the children of the forest have been dead and 
+gone for thousands of years. All that is left of them are the faces in the trees." 
+"Down here, might be that's true, Maester," Yoren said, "but up past the Wall, who's to say? Up there, a 
+man can't always tell what's alive and what's dead." 
+That night, after the plates had been cleared, Robb carried Bran up to bed himself. Grey Wind led the 
+way, and Summer came close behind. His brother was strong for his age, and Bran was as light as a 
+bundle of rags, but the stairs were steep and dark, and Robb was breathing hard by the time they 
+reached the top. 
+He put Bran into bed, covered him with blankets, and blew out the 
+candle. For a time Robb sat beside him in the dark. Bran wanted to talk to him, but he did not know 
+what to say. "We'll find a horse for you, I promise," Robb whispered at last. 
+"Are they ever coming back?" Bran asked him. 
+"Yes," Robb said with such hope in his voice that Bran knew he was hearing his brother and not just 
+Robb the Lord. "Mother will be home soon. Maybe we can ride out to meet her when she comes. 
+Wouldn't that surprise her, to see you ahorse?" Even in the dark room, Bran could feel his brother's 
+smile. "And afterward, we'll ride north to see the Wall. We won't even tell Jon we're coming, we'll just be 
+there one day, you and me. It will be an adventure." 
+"An adventure," Bran repeated wistfully. He heard his brother sob. The room was so dark he could not 
+see the tears on Robb's face, so he reached out and found his hand. Their fingers twined together. 
+EDDARD 
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+"Lord Arryn's death was a great sadness for all of us, my lord," Grand Maester Pycelle said. "I would be 
+more than happy to tell you what I can of the manner of his passing. Do be seated. Would you care for 
+refreshments? Some dates, perhaps? I have some very fine persimmons as well. Wine no longer agrees 
+with my digestion, I fear, but I can offer you a cup of iced milk, sweetened with honey. I find it most 
+refreshing in this heat." 
+There was no denying the heat; Ned could feel the silk tunic clinging to his chest. Thick, moist air 
+covered the city like a damp woolen blanket, and the riverside had grown unruly as the poor fled their 
+hot, airless warrens to jostle for sleeping places near the water, where the only breath of wind was to be 
+found. "That would be most kind," Ned said, seating himself. 
+Pycelle lifted a tiny silver bell with thumb and forefinger and tinkled it gently. A slender young serving girl 
+hurried into the solar. "Iced milk for the King's Hand and myself, if you would be so kind, child. Well 
+sweetened." 
+As the girl went to fetch their drinks, the Grand Maester knotted his fingers together and rested his 
+hands on his stomach. "The smallfolk say that the last year of summer is always the hottest. It is not so, 
+yet ofttimes it feels that way, does it not? On days like this, I envy you northerners your summer snows." 
+The heavy jeweled chain 
+around the old man's neck chinked softly as he shifted in his seat. "To be sure, King Maekar's summer 
+was hotter than this one, and near as long. There were fools, even in the Citadel, who took that to mean 
+that the Great Summer had come at last, the summer that never ends, but in the seventh year it broke 
+suddenly, and we had a short autumn and a terrible long winter. Still, the heat was fierce while it lasted. 
+Oldtown steamed and sweltered by day and came alive only by night. We would walk in the gardens by 
+the river and argue about the gods. I remember the smells of those nights, my lord-perfume and sweat, 
+melons ripe to bursting, peaches and pomegranates, nightshade and moonbloom. I was a young man 
+then, still forging my chain. The heat did not exhaust me as it does now." Pycelle's eyes were so heavily 
+lidded he looked half-asleep. "My pardons, Lord Eddard. You did not come to hear foolish meanderings 
+of a summer forgotten before your father was born. Forgive an old man his wanderings, if you would. 
+Minds are like swords, I do fear. The old ones go to rust. Ah, and here is our milk." The serving girl 
+placed the tray between them, and Pycelle gave her a smile. "Sweet child." He lifted a cup, tasted, 
+nodded. "Thank you. You may go." 
+When the girl had taken her leave, Pycelle peered at Ned through pale, rheumy eyes. "Now where were 
+we? Oh, yes. You asked about Lord Arryn . . ." 
+"I did." Ned sipped politely at the iced milk. It was pleasantly cold, but oversweet to his taste. 
+"If truth be told, the Hand had not seemed quite himself for some time," Pycelle said. "We had sat 
+together on council many a year, he and 1, and the signs were there to read, but I put them down to the 
+great burdens he had borne so faithfully for so long. Those broad shoulders were weighed down by all 
+the cares of the realm, and more besides. His son was ever sickly, and his lady wife so anxious that she 
+would scarcely let the boy out of her sight. It was enough to weary even a strong man, and the Lord Jon 
+was not young. Small wonder if he seemed melancholy and tired. Or so I thought at the time. Yet now I 
+am less certain." He gave a ponderous shake of his head. 
+"What can you tell me of his final illness?" 
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+The Grand Maester spread his hands in a gesture of helpless sorrow. "He came to me one day asking 
+after a certain book, as hale and healthy as ever, though it did seem to me that something was troubling 
+him deeply. The next morning he was twisted over in pain, too sick to rise from bed. Maester Colemon 
+thought it was a chill on the stomach. The weather had been hot, and the Hand often iced his wine, which 
+can upset the digestion. When Lord Jon continued to weaken, I went to him myself, but the gods did not 
+grant me the power to save him." 
+"I have heard that you sent Maester Colemon away." 
+The Grand Maester's nod was as slow and deliberate as a glacier. "I did, and I fear the Lady Lysa will 
+never forgive me that. Maybe I was wrong, but at the time I thought it best. Maester Colemon is like a 
+son to me, and I yield to none in my esteem for his abilities, but he is young, and the young ofttimes do 
+not comprehend the frailty of an older body. He was purging Lord Arryn with wasting potions and 
+pepper juice, and I feared he might kill him." 
+"Did Lord Arryn say anything to you during his final hours?" 
+Pycelle wrinkled his brow. "In the last stage of his fever, the Hand called out the name Robert several 
+times, but whether he was asking for his son or for the king I could not say. Lady Lysa would not permit 
+the boy to enter the sickroom, for fear that he too might be taken ill. The king did come, and he sat 
+beside the bed for hours, talking and joking of times long past in hopes of raising Lord Jon's spirits. His 
+love was fierce to see." 
+"Was there nothing else? No final words?" 
+"When I saw that all hope had fled, I gave the Hand the milk of the poppy, so he should not suffer. Just 
+before he closed his eyes for the last time, he whispered something to the king and his lady wife, a 
+blessing for his son. The seed is strong, he said. At the end, his speech was too slurred to comprehend. 
+Death did not come until the next morning, but Lord Jon was at peace after that. He never spoke again." 
+Ned took another swallow of milk, trying not to gag on the sweetness of it. "Did it seem to you that there 
+was anything unnatural about Lord Arryn's death?" 
+"Unnatural?" The aged maester's voice was thin as a whisper. "No, I could not say so. Sad, for a 
+certainty. Yet in its own way, death is the most natural thing of all, Lord Eddard. Jon Arryn rests easy 
+now, his burdens lifted at last." 
+"This illness that took him," said Ned. "Had you ever seen its like before, in other men?" 
+"Near forty years I have been Grand Maester of the Seven Kingdoms," Pycelle replied. "Under our 
+good King Robert, and Aerys Targaryen before him, and his father Jaehaerys the Second before him, 
+and even for a few short months under Jaehaerys's father, Aegon the Fortunate, the Fifth of His Name. I 
+have seen more of illness than I care to remember, my lord. I will tell you this: Every case is different, and 
+every case is alike. Lord Jon's death was no stranger than any other." 
+224 GEORGE RA. MARTIN 
+Page 167
+
+"His wife thought otherwise." 
+The Grand Maester nodded. "I recall now, the widow is sister to your own noble wife. If an old man 
+may be forgiven his blunt speech, let me say that grief can derange even the strongest and most 
+disciplined of minds, and the Lady Lysa was never that. Since her last stillbirth, she has seen enemies in 
+every shadow, and the death of her lord husband left her shattered and lost." 
+"So you are quite certain that Jon Arryn died of a sudden illness?" 
+"I am," Pycelle replied gravely. "If not illness, my good lord, what else could it be?" 
+"Poison," Ned suggested quietly. 
+Pycelle's sleepy eyes flicked open. The aged maester shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "A disturbing 
+thought. We are not the Free Cities, where such things are common. Grand Maester Aethelmure wrote 
+that all men carry murder in their hearts, yet even so, the poisoner is beneath contempt." He fell silent for 
+a moment, his eyes lost in thought. "What you suggest is possible, my lord, yet I do not think it likely. 
+Every hedge maester knows the common poisons, and Lord Arryn displayed none of the signs. And the 
+Hand was loved by all. What sort of monster in man's flesh would dare to murder such a noble lord?" 
+"I have heard it said that poison is a woman's weapon." 
+Pycelle stroked his beard thoughtfully. "It is said. Women, cravens . . . and eunuchs." He cleared his 
+throat and spat a thick glob of phelm onto the rushes. Above them, a raven cawed loudly in the rookery. 
+"The Lord Varys was born a slave in Lys, did you know? Put not your trust in spiders, my lord." 
+That was scarcely anything Ned needed to be told; there was something about Varys that made his flesh 
+crawl. "I will remember that, Maester. And I thank you for your help. I have taken enough of your time." 
+He stood. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle pushed himself up from his chair slowly and escorted Ned to the door. "I hope I 
+have helped in some small way to put your mind at ease. If there is any other service I might perform, you 
+need only ask." 
+"One thing," Ned told him. "I should be curious to examine the book that you lent Jon the day before he 
+fell ill." 
+"I fear you would find it of little interest," Pycelle said. "It was a ponderous tome by Grand Maester 
+Malleon on the lineages of the great houses." 
+"Still, I should like to see it." 
+The old man opened the door. "As you wish. I have it here some- 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 225 
+where. When I find it, I shall have it sent to your chambers straightaway.,, 
+"You have been most courteous," Ned told him. Then, almost as an afterthought, he said, "One last 
+question, if you would be so kind. You mentioned that the king was at Lord Arryn's bedside when he 
+died. I wonder, was the queen with him?" 
+Page 168
+
+"Why, no," Pycelle said. "She and the children were making the journey to Casterly Rock, in company 
+with her father. Lord Tywin had brought a retinue to the city for the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name 
+day, no doubt hoping to see his son Jaime win the champion's crown. In that he was sadly disappointed. 
+It fell to me to send the queen word of Lord Arryn's sudden death. Never have I sent off a bird with a 
+heavier heart." 
+"Dark wings, dark words," Ned murmured. It was a proverb Old Nan had taught him as a boy. 
+"So the fishwives say," Grand Maester Pycelle agreed, "but we know it is not always so. When Maester 
+Luwin's bird brought the word about your Bran, the message lifted every true heart in the castle, did it 
+not?" 
+"As you say, Maester." 
+"The gods are merciful." Pycelle bowed his head. "Come to me as often as you like, Lord Eddard. I am 
+here to serve." 
+Yes, Ned thought as the door swung shut, but whom? 
+On the way back to his chambers, he came upon his daughter Arya on the winding steps of the Tower 
+of the Hand, windmilling her arms as she struggled to balance on one leg. The rough stone had scuffed 
+her bare feet. Ned stopped and looked at her. "Arya, what are you doing?" 
+"Syrio says a water dancer can stand on one toe for hours." Her hands flailed at the air to steady herself. 
+Ned had to smile. "Which toe?" he teased. 
+"Any toe," Arya said, exasperated with the question. She hopped from her right leg to her left, swaying 
+dangerously before she regained her balance. 
+"Must you do your standing here?" he asked. "It's a long hard fall down these steps." 
+"Syrio says a water dancer never falls." She lowered her leg to stand on two feet. "Father, will Bran 
+come and live with us now?" 
+"Not for a long time, sweet one," he told her. "He needs to win his strength back." 
+Arya bit her lip. "What will Bran do when he's of age?" 
+Ned knelt beside her. "He has years to find that answer, Arya. For 
+now, it is enough to know that he will live." The night the bird had come from Winterfell, Eddard Stark 
+had taken the girls to the castle godswood, an acre of elm and alder and black cottonwood overlooking 
+the river. The heart tree there was a great oak, its ancient limbs overgrown with smokeberry vines; they 
+knelt before it to offer their thanksgiving, as if it had been a weirwood. Sansa drifted to sleep as the moon 
+rose, Arya several hours later, curling up in the grass under Ned's cloak. All through the dark hours he 
+kept his vigil alone. When dawn broke over the city, the dark red blooms of dragon's breath surrounded 
+the girls where they lay. "I dreamed of Bran," Sansa had whispered to him. "I saw him smiling." 
+Page 169
+
+"He was going to be a knight," Arya was saying now. "A knight of the Kingsguard. Can he still be a 
+knight?" 
+"No," Ned said. He saw no use in lying to her. "Yet someday he may be the lord of a great holdfast and 
+sit on the king's council. He might raise castles like Brandon the Builder, or sail a ship across the Sunset 
+Sea, or enter your mother's Faith and become the High Septon." But he will never run beside his wolf 
+again, he thought with a sadness too deep for words, or lie with a woman, or hold his own son in his 
+arms. 
+Arya cocked her head to one side. "Can I be a king's councillor and build castles and become the High 
+Septon?" 
+"You," Ned said, kissing her lightly on the brow, "will marry a king and rule his castle, and your sons will 
+be knights and princes and lords and, yes, perhaps even a High Septon." 
+Arya screwed up her face. "No," she said, "that's Sansa." She folded up her right leg and resumed her 
+balancing. Ned sighed and left her there. 
+Inside his chambers, he stripped off his sweat-stained silks and sluiced cold water over his head from the 
+basin beside the bed. Alyn entered as he was drying his face. "My lord," he said, "Lord Baelish is without 
+and begs audience." 
+"Escort him to my solar," Ned said, reaching for a fresh tunic, the lightest linen he could find. "I'll see him 
+at once." 
+Littlefinger was perched on the window seat when Ned entered, watching the knights of the Kingsguard 
+practice at swords in the yard below. "If only old Selmy's mind were as nimble as his blade," he said 
+wistfully, "our council meetings would be a good deal livelier." 
+"Ser Barristan is as valiant and honorable as any man in King's Landing." Ned had come to have a deep 
+respect for the aged, whitehaired Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. 
+"And as tiresome," Littlefinger added, "though I daresay he should 
+do well in the tourney. Last year he unhorsed the Hound, and it was only four years ago that he was 
+champion." 
+The question of who might win the tourney interested Eddard Stark not in the least. "Is there a reason for 
+this visit, Lord Petyr, or are you here simply to enjoy the view from my window?" 
+Littlefinger smiled. "I promised Cat I would help you in your inquiries, and so I have." 
+That took Ned aback. Promise or no promise, he could not find it in him to trust Lord Petyr Baelish, 
+who struck him as too clever by half. "You have something for me?" 
+"Someone," Littlefinger corrected. "Four someones, if truth be told. Had you thought to question the 
+Hand's servants?" 
+Page 170
+
+Ned frowned. "Would that I could. Lady Arryn took her household back to the Eyrie." Lysa had done 
+him no favor in that regard. All those who had stood closest to her husband had gone with her when she 
+fled: Jon's maester, his steward, the captain of his guard, his knights and retainers. 
+"Most of her household," Littlefinger said, "not all. A few remain. A pregnant kitchen girl hastily wed to 
+one of Lord Renly's grooms, a stablehand who joined the City Watch, a potboy discharged from service 
+for theft, and Lord Arryn's squire." 
+"His squire?" Ned was pleasantly surprised. A man's squire often knew a great deal of his comings and 
+goings. 
+"Ser Hugh of the Vale," Littlefinger named him. "The king knighted the boy after Lord Arryn's death." 
+"I shall send for him," Ned said. "And the others." 
+Littlefinger winced. "My lord, step over here to the window, if you would be so kind." 
+"Why?" 
+"Come, and I'll show you, my lord." 
+Frowning, Ned crossed to the window. Petyr Baelish made a casual gesture. "There, across the yard, at 
+the door of the armory, do you see the boy squatting by the steps honing a sword with an oilstone?" 
+"What of him?" 
+"He reports to Varys. The Spider has taken a great interest in you and all your doings." He shifted in the 
+window seat. "Now glance at the wall. Farther west, above the stables. The guardsman leaning on the 
+ramparts?" 
+Ned saw the man. "Another of the eunuch's whisperers?" 
+"No, this one belongs to the queen. Notice that he enjoys a fine view of the door to this tower, the better 
+to note who calls on you. 
+There are others, many unknown even to me. The Red Keep is full of eyes. Why do you think I hid Cat 
+in a brothel?" 
+Eddard Stark had no taste for these intrigues. "Seven hells," he swore. It did seem as though the man on 
+the wahs was watching him. Suddenly uncomfortable, Ned moved away from the window. "Is everyone 
+someone's informer in this cursed city?" 
+"Scarcely," said Littlefinger. He counted on the fingers on his hand. "Why, there's me, you, the king . . . 
+although, come to think on it, the king tells the queen much too much, and I'm less than certain about 
+you." He stood up. "Is there a man in your service that you trust utterly and completely?" 
+"Yes," said Ned. 
+"In that case, I have a delightful palace in Valyria that I would dearly love to sell you," Littlefinger said 
+Page 171
+
+with a mocking smile. "The wiser answer was no, my lord, but be that as it may. Send this paragon of 
+yours to Ser Hugh and the others. Your own comings and goings will be noted, but even Varys the 
+Spider cannot watch every man in your service every hour of the day." He started for the door. 
+"Lord Petyr," Ned called after him. "I . . . am grateful for your help. Perhaps I was wrong to distrust 
+you." 
+Littlefinger fingered his small pointed beard. "You are slow to learn, Lord Eddard. Distrusting me was 
+the wisest thing you've done since you climbed down off your horse." 
+JON 
+Jon was showing Dareon how best to deliver a sidestroke when the new recruit entered the practice 
+yard. "Your feet should be farther apart," he urged. "You don't want to lose your balance. That's good. 
+Now pivot as you deliver the stroke, get all your weight behind the blade." 
+Dareon broke off and lifted his visor. "Seven gods," he murmured. "Would you look at this, Jon." 
+Jon turned. Through the eye slit of his helm, he beheld the fattest boy he had ever seen standing in the 
+door of the armory. By the look of him, he must have weighed twenty stone. The fur collar of his 
+embroidered surcoat was lost beneath his chins. Pale eyes moved nervously in a great round moon of a 
+face, and plump sweaty fingers wiped themselves on the velvet of his doublet. "They . . . they told me I 
+was to come here for . . . for training," he said to no one in particular. 
+"A lordling," Pyp observed to Jon. "Southron, most like near Highgarden." Pyp had traveled the Seven 
+Kingdoms with a mummers' troupe, and bragged that he could tell what you were and where you'd been 
+born just from the sound of your voice. 
+A striding huntsman had been worked in scarlet thread upon the breast of the fat boy's fur-trimmed 
+surcoat. Jon did not recognize the sigil. Ser Alliser Thorne looked over his new charge and said, "It 
+would seem they have run short of poachers and thieves down south. 
+Now they send us pigs to man the Wall. Is fur and velvet your notion of armor, my Lord of Ham?" 
+It was soon revealed that the new recruit had brought his own armor with him; padded doublet, boiled 
+leather, mail and plate and helm, even a great wood-and-leather shield blazoned with the same striding 
+huntsman he wore on his surcoat. As none of it was black, however, Ser Alliser insisted that he reequip 
+himself from the armory. That took half the morning. His girth required Donal Noye to take apart a mail 
+hauberk and refit it with leather panels at the sides. To get a helm over his head the armorer had to 
+detach the visor. His leathers bound so tightly around his legs and under his arms that he could scarcely 
+move. Dressed for battle, the new boy looked like an overcooked sausage about to burst its skin. "Let us 
+hope you are not as inept as you look," Ser Alliser said. "Halder, see what Ser Piggy can do." 
+Jon Snow winced. Halder had been born in a quarry and apprenticed as a stonemason. He was sixteen, 
+tall and muscular, and his blows were as hard as any Jon had ever felt. "This will be uglier than a whore's 
+ass," Pyp muttered, and it was. 
+Page 172
+
+The fight lasted less than a minute before the fat boy was on the ground, his whole body shaking as 
+blood leaked through his shattered helm and between his pudgy fingers. "I yield," he shrilled. "No more, I 
+yield, don't hit me." Rast and some of the other boys were laughing. 
+Even then, Ser Alliser would not call an end. "On your feet, Ser Piggy," he called. "Pick up your sword." 
+When the boy continued to cling to the ground, Thorne gestured to Halder. "Hit him with the flat of your 
+blade until he finds his feet." Halder delivered a tentative smack to his foe's upraised cheeks. "You can hit 
+harder than that," Thorne taunted. Halder took hold of his longsword with both hands and brought it 
+down so hard the blow split leather, even on the flat. The new boy screeched in pain. 
+Jon Snow took a step forward. Pyp laid a mailed hand on his arm. "Jon, no," the small boy whispered 
+with an anxious glance at Ser Alliser Thorne. 
+"On your feet," Thorne repeated. The fat boy struggled to rise, slipped, and fell heavily again. "Ser Piggy 
+is starting to grasp the notion," Ser Alliser observed. "Again." 
+Halder lifted the sword for another blow. "Cut us off a ham!" Rast urged, laughing. 
+Jon shook off Pyp's hand. "Halder, enough." 
+Halder looked to Ser Alliser. 
+"The Bastard speaks and the peasants tremble," the master-at-arms 
+said in that sharp, cold voice of his. "I remind you that I am the master-at-arms here, Lord Snow." 
+"Look at him, Haider," Jon urged, ignoring Thorne as best he could. "There's no honor in beating a fallen 
+foe. He yielded." He knelt beside the fat boy. 
+Haider lowered his sword. "He yielded," he echoed. 
+Ser Alliser's onyx eyes were fixed on Jon Snow. "It would seem our Bastard is in love," he said as Jon 
+helped the fat boy to his feet. "Show me your steel, Lord Snow." 
+Jon drew his longsword. He dared defy Ser Alliser only to a point, and he feared he was well beyond it 
+now. 
+Thorne smiled. "The Bastard wishes to defend his lady love, so we shall make an exercise of it. Rat, 
+Pimple, help our Stone Head here." Rast and Albett moved to join Haider. "Three of you ought to be 
+sufficient to make Lady Piggy squeal. All you need do is get past the Bastard." 
+"Stay behind me," Jon said to the fat boy. Ser Alliser had often sent two foes against him, but never 
+three. He knew he would likely go to sleep bruised and bloody tonight. He braced himself for the assault. 
+Suddenly Pyp was beside him. "Three to two will make for better sport," the small boy said cheerfully. 
+He dropped his visor and slid out his sword. Before Jon could even think to protest, Grenn had stepped 
+up to make a third. 
+The yard had grown deathly quiet. Jon could feel Ser Alliser's eyes. "Why are you waiting?" he asked 
+Page 173
+
+Rast and the others in a voice gone deceptively soft, but it was Jon who moved first. Haider barely got 
+his sword up in time. 
+Jon drove him backward, attacking with every blow, keeping the older boy on the heels. Know your 
+foe, Ser Rodrik had taught him once; Jon knew Haider, brutally strong but short of patience, with no 
+taste for defense. Frustrate him, and he would leave himself open, as certain as sunset. 
+The clang of steel echoed through the yard as the others joined battle around him. Jon blocked a savage 
+cut at his head, the shock of impact running up his arm as the swords crashed together. He slammed a 
+sidestroke into Haider's ribs, and was rewarded with a muffled grunt of pain. The counterstroke caught 
+Jon on the shoulder. Chainmail crunched, and pain flared up his neck, but for an instant Haider was 
+unbalanced. Jon cut his left leg from under him, and he fell with a curse and a crash. 
+Grenn was standing his ground as Jon had taught him, giving Albett more than he cared for, but Pyp was 
+hard-pressed. Rast had two years 
+232 
+GEORGE R.R. MARTIN 
+and forty pounds on him. Jon stepped up behind him and rang the raper's helm like a bell. As Rast went 
+reeling, Pyp slid in under his guard, knocked him down, and leveled a blade at his throat. By then Jon 
+had moved on. Facing two swords, Albett backed away. "I yield," he shouted. 
+Ser Alliser Thorne surveyed the scene with disgust. "The mummer's farce has gone on long enough for 
+today." He walked away. The session was at an end. 
+Dareon helped Halder to his feet. The quarryman's son wrenched off his helm and threw it across the 
+yard. "For an instant, I thought I finally had you, Snow." 
+"For an instant, you did," Jon replied. Under his mail and leather, his shoulder was throbbing. He 
+sheathed his sword and tried to remove his helm, but when he raised his arm, the pain made him grit his 
+teeth. 
+"Let me," a voice said. Thick-fingered hands unfastened helm from gorget and lifted it off gently. "Did he 
+hurt you?" 
+"I've been bruised before." He touched his shoulder and winced. The yard was emptying around them. 
+Blood matted the fat boy's hair where Halder had split his helm asunder. "My name is Samwell Tarly, of 
+Horn . . ." He stopped and licked his lips. "I mean, I was of Horn Hill, until I . . . left. I've come to take 
+the black. My father is Lord Randyll, a bannerman to the 
+Tyrells of Highgarden. I used to be his heir, only His voice 
+trailed off. 
+"I'm Jon Snow, Ned Stark's bastard, of Winterfell." 
+Samwell Tarly nodded. "I 
+Page 174
+
+My mother calls me Sam." 
+"You can call him Lord Snow," Pyp said as he came up to join them. "You don't want to know what his 
+mother calls him." 
+"These two are Grenn and Pypar," Jon said. 
+"Grenn's the ugly one," Pyp said. 
+Grenn scowled. "You're uglier than me. At least I don't have ears like a bat." 
+"My thanks to all of you," the fat boy said gravely. 
+"Why didn't you get up and fight?" Grenn demanded. 
+"I wanted to, truly. I just . . . I couldn't. I didn't want him to hit me anymore." He looked at the ground. 
+"I 
+My lord father always said so." 
+Grenn looked thunderstruck. Even Pyp had no words to say to that, and Pyp had words for everything. 
+What sort of man would proclaim himself a coward? 
+Samwell Tarly must have read their thoughts on their faces. His eyes 
+. if you want, you can call me Sam. 
+I fear I'm a coward. 
+met Jon's and darted away, quick as frightened animals. "I ... I'm sorry," he said. "I don't mean to . . . to 
+be like I am." He walked heavily toward the armory. 
+Jon called after him. "You were hurt," he said. "Tomorrow you'll do better." 
+Sam looked mournfully back over one shoulder. "No I won't," he said, blinking back tears. "I never do 
+better." 
+When he was gone, Grenn frowned. "Nobody likes cravens," he said uncomfortably. "I wish we hadn't 
+helped him. What if they think we're craven too?" 
+"You're too stupid to be craven," Pyp told him. 
+"I am not," Grenn said. 
+"Yes you are. If a bear attacked you in the woods, you'd be too stupid to run away." 
+"I would not," Grenn insisted. "I'd run away faster than you." He stopped suddenly, scowling when he 
+saw Pyp's grin and realized what he'd just said. His thick neck flushed a dark red. Jon left them there 
+arguing as he returned to the armory, hung up his sword, and stripped off his battered armor. 
+Page 175
+
+Life at Castle Black followed certain patterns; the mornings were for swordplay, the afternoons for 
+work. The black brothers set new recruits to many different tasks, to learn where their skills lay. Jon 
+cherished the rare afternoons when he was sent out with Ghost ranging at his side to bring back game for 
+the Lord Commander's table, but for every day spent hunting, he gave a dozen to Donal Noye in the 
+armory, spinning the whetstone while the one-armed smith sharpened axes grown dull from use, or 
+pumping the bellows as Noye hammered out a new sword. Other times he ran messages, stood at guard, 
+mucked out stables, fletched arrows, assisted Maester Aemon with his birds or Bowen Marsh with his 
+counts and inventories. 
+That afternoon, the watch commander sent him to the winch cage with four barrels of fresh-crushed 
+stone, to scatter gravel over the icy footpaths atop the Wall. It was lonely and boring work, even with 
+Ghost along for company, but Jon found he did not mind. On a clear day you could see half the world 
+from the top of the Wall, and the air was always cold and bracing. He could think here, and he found 
+himself thinking of Samwell Tarly . . . and, oddly, of Tyrion Lannister. He wondered what Tyrion would 
+have made of the fat boy. Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it, the dwarf had told him, 
+grinning. The world was full of cravens who pretended to be heroes; it took a queer sort of courage to 
+admit to cowardice as Samwell Tarly had. 
+His sore shoulder made the work go slowly. It was late afternoon before Jon finished graveling the 
+paths. He lingered on high to watch the sun go down, turning the western sky the color of blood. Finally, 
+as dusk was settling over the north, Jon rolled the empty barrels back into the cage and signaled the 
+winch men to lower him. 
+The evening meal was almost done by the time he and Ghost reached the common hall. A group of the 
+black brothers were dicing over mulled wine near the fire. His friends were at the bench nearest the west 
+wall, laughing. Pyp was in the middle of a story. The mummer's boy with the big ears was a born liar with 
+a hundred different voices, and he did not tell his tales so much as live them, playing all the parts as 
+needed, a king one moment and a swineherd the next. When he turned into an alehouse girl or a virgin 
+princess, he used a high falsetto voice that reduced them all to tears of helpless laughter, and his eunuchs 
+were always eerily accurate caricatures of Ser Alliser. Jon took as much pleasure from Pyp's antics as 
+anyone . . . yet that night he turned away and went instead to the end of the bench, where Samwell Tarly 
+sat alone, as far from the others as he could get. 
+He was finishing the last of the pork pie the cooks had served up for supper when Jon sat down across 
+from him. The fat boy's eyes widened at the sight of Ghost. "Is that a wolf?" 
+"A direwolf," Jon said. "His name is Ghost. The direwolf is the sigil of my father's House." 
+"Ours is a striding huntsman," Samwell Tarly said. 
+"Do you like to hunt?" 
+The fat boy shuddered. "I hate it." He looked as though he was going to cry again. 
+"What's wrong now?" Jon asked him. "Why are you always so frightened?" 
+Sam stared at the last of his pork pie and gave a feeble shake of his head, too scared even to talk. A 
+burst of laughter filled the hall. Jon heard Pyp squeaking in a high voice. He stood. "Let's go outside." 
+Page 176
+
+The round fat face looked up at him, suspicious. "Why? What will we do outside?" 
+"Talk," Jon said. "Have you seen the Wall?" 
+"I'm fat, not blind," Samwell Tarly said. "Of course I saw it, it's seven hundred feet high." Yet he stood 
+up all the same, wrapped a furlined cloak over his shoulders, and followed Jon from the common hall, still 
+wary, as if he suspected some cruel trick was waiting for him in the night. Ghost padded along beside 
+them. "I never thought it would be like this," Sam said as they walked, his words steaming in the 
+A GAML OF THRONFS 235 
+cold air. Already he was huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up. "All the buildings are falling down, 
+and it's so . . . so . . ." 
+"Cold?" A hard frost was settling over the castle, and Jon could hear the soft crunch of grey weeds 
+beneath his boots. 
+Sam nodded miserably. "I hate the cold," he said. "Last night I woke up in the dark and the fire had gone 
+out and I was certain I was going to freeze to death by morning." 
+"It must have been warmer where you come from." 
+"I never saw snow until last month. We were crossing the barrowlands, me and the men my father sent 
+to see me north, and this white stuff began to fall, like a soft rain. At first I thought it was so beautiful, like 
+feathers drifting from the sky, but it kept on and on, until I was frozen to the bone. The men had crusts of 
+snow in their beards and more on their shoulders, and still it kept coming. I was afraid it would never 
+end." 
+Jon smiled. 
+The Wall loomed before them, glimmering palely in the light of the half moon. In the sky above, the stars 
+burned clear and sharp. "Are they going to make me go up there?" Sam asked. His face curdled like old 
+milk as he looked at the great wooden stairs. "I'll die if I have to climb that." 
+"There's a winch," Jon said, pointing. "They can draw you up in a cage." 
+Samwell Tarly sniffled. "I don't like high places." 
+It was too much. Jon frowned, incredulous. "Are you afraid of everything?" he asked. "I don't 
+understand. If you are truly so craven, why are you here? Why would a coward want to join the Night's 
+Watch?" 
+Samwell Tarly looked at him for a long moment, and his round face seemed to cave in on itself. He sat 
+down on the frost-covered ground and began to cry, huge choking sobs that made his whole body 
+shake. Jon Snow could only stand and watch. Like the snowfall on the barrowlands, it seemed the tears 
+would never end. 
+It was Ghost who knew what to do. Silent as shadow, the pale direwolf moved closer and began to lick 
+the warm tears off Samwell Tarly's face. The fat boy cried out, startled . . . and somehow, in a heartbeat, 
+his sobs turned to laughter. 
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+
+Jon Snow laughed with him. Afterward they sat on the frozen ground, huddled in their cloaks with Ghost 
+between them. Jon told the story of how he and Robb had found the pups newborn in the late summer 
+snows. It seemed a thousand years ago now. Before long he found himself talking of Winterfell. 
+"Sometimes I dream about it," he said. "I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all 
+around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm 
+looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my 
+uncle." The thought of Benjen Stark saddened him; his uncle was still missing. The Old Bear had sent out 
+rangers in search of him. Ser Jaremy Rykker had led two sweeps, and Quorin Halfhand had gone forth 
+from the Shadow Tower, but they'd found nothing aside from a few blazes in the trees that his uncle had 
+left to mark his way. In the stony highlands to the northwest, the marks stopped abruptly and all trace of 
+Ben Stark vanished. 
+"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked. 
+Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and 
+he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the 
+ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run 
+then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. 
+And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling 
+down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be 
+waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their 
+feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that 
+this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, 
+with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, 
+embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." His skin cold and clammy, shivering in the darkness of his 
+cell. Ghost would leap up beside him, his warmth as comforting as daybreak. He would go back to sleep 
+with his face pressed into the direwolf s shaggy white fur. "Do you dream of Horn Hill?" Jon asked. 
+"No." Sam's mouth grew tight and hard. "I hated it there." He scratched Ghost behind the ear, brooding, 
+and Jon let the silence breathe. After a long while Samwell Tarly began to talk, and Jon Snow listened 
+quietly, and learned how it was that a self-confessed coward found himself on the Wall. 
+The Tarlys were a family old in honor, bannermen to Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Warden of 
+the South. The eldest son of Lord Randyll Tarly, Samwell was born heir to rich lands, a strong keep, and 
+a storied two-handed greatsword named Heartsbane, forged of 
+Valyrian steel and passed down from father to son near five hundred years. 
+Whatever pride his lord father might have felt at Samwell's birth vanished as the boy grew up plump, 
+soft, and awkward. Sam loved to listen to music and make his own songs, to wear soft velvets, to play in 
+the castle kitchen beside the cooks, drinking in the rich smells as he snitched lemon cakes and blueberry 
+tarts. His passions were books and kittens and dancing, clumsy as he was. But he grew ill at the sight of 
+blood, and wept to see even a chicken slaughtered. A dozen mastersat-arms came and went at Horn 
+Hill, trying to turn Samwell into the knight his father wanted. The boy was cursed and caned, slapped and 
+starved. One man had him sleep in his chainmail to make him more martial. Another dressed him in his 
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+mother's clothing and paraded him through the bailey to shame him into valor. He only grew fatter and 
+more frightened, until Lord Randyll's disappointment turned to anger and then to loathing. "One time," 
+Sam confided, his voice dropping from a whisper, "two men came to the castle, warlocks from Qarth 
+with white skin and blue lips. They slaughtered a bull aurochs and made me bathe in the hot blood, but it 
+didn't make me brave as they'd promised. I got sick and retched. Father had them scourged." 
+Finally, after three girls in as many years, Lady Tarly gave her lord husband a second son. From that 
+day, Lord Randyll ignored Sam, devoting all his time to the younger boy, a fierce, robust child more to 
+his liking. Samwell had known several years of sweet peace with his music and his books. 
+Until The dawn of his fifteenth name day, when he had been awakened to find his horse saddled and 
+ready. Three men-at-arms had escorted him into a wood near Horn Hill, where his father was skinning a 
+deer. "You are almost a man grown now, and my heir," Lord Randyll Tarly had told his eldest son, his 
+long knife laying bare the carcass as he spoke. "You have given me no cause to disown you, but neither 
+will I allow you to inherit the land and title that should be Dickon's. Heartsbane must go to a man strong 
+enough to wield her, and you are not worthy to touch her hilt. So I have decided that you shall this day 
+announce that you wish to take the black. You will forsake all claim to your brother's inheritance and 
+start north before evenfall. 
+"If you do not, then on the morrow we shall have a hunt, and somewhere in these woods your horse will 
+stumble, and you will be thrown from the saddle to die . . . or so I will tell your mother. She has a 
+woman's heart and finds it in her to cherish even you, and I have no wish to cause her pain. Please do not 
+imagine that it will truly be 
+that easy, should you think to defy me. Nothing would please me more than to hunt you down like the 
+pig you are." His arms were red to the elbow as he laid the skinning knife aside. "So. There is your 
+choice. The Night's Watch"-he reached inside the deer, ripped out its heart, and held it in his fist, red and 
+dripping-"or this." 
+Sam told the tale in a calm, dead voice, as if it were something that had happened to someone else, not 
+to him. And strangely, Jon thought, he did not weep, not even once. When he was done, they sat 
+together and listened to the wind for a time. There was no other sound in all the world. 
+Finally Jon said, "We should go back to the common hall." 
+"Why?" Sam asked. 
+Jon shrugged. "There's hot cider to drink, or mulled wine if you prefer. Some nights Dareon sings for us, 
+if the mood is on him. He was a singer, before . . . well, not truly, but almost, an apprentice singer." 
+"How did he come here?" Sam asked. 
+"Lord Rowan of Goldengrove found him in bed with his daughter. The girl was two years older, and 
+Dareon swears she helped him through her window, but under her father's eye she named it rape, so here 
+he is. When Maester Aemon heard him sing, he said his voice was honey poured over thunder." Jon 
+smiled. "Toad sometimes sings too, if you call it singing. Drinking songs he learned in his father's winesink. 
+Pyp says his voice is piss poured over a fart." They laughed at that together. 
+"I should like to hear them both," Sam admitted, "but they would not want me there." His face was 
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+troubled. "He's going to make me fight again on the morrow, isn't he?" 
+"He is," Jon was forced to say. 
+Sam got awkwardly to his feet. "I had better try to sleep." He huddled down in his cloak and plodded 
+off. 
+The others were still in the common room when Jon returned, alone but for Ghost. "Where haveyou 
+been?" Pyp asked. 
+"Talking with Sam," he said. 
+"He truly is craven," said Grenn. "At supper, there were still places on the bench when he got his pie, but 
+he was too scared to come sit with us." 
+"The Lord of Ham thinks he's too good to eat with the likes of us," suggested Jeren. 
+"I saw him eat a pork pie," Toad said, smirking. "Do you think it was a brother?" He began to make 
+oinking noises. 
+"Stop it!" Jon snapped angrily. 
+The other boys fell silent, taken aback by his sudden fury. "Listen to 
+me," Jon said into the quiet, and he told them how it was going to be. Pyp backed him, as he'd known 
+he would, but when Halder spoke up, it was a pleasant surprise. Grenn was anxious at the first, but Jon 
+knew the words to move him. One by one the rest fell in line. Jon persuaded some, cajoled some, 
+shamed the others, made threats where threats were required. At the end they had all agreed . . . all but 
+Rast. 
+"You girls do as you please," Rast said, "but if Thorne sends me against Lady Piggy, I'm going to slice 
+me off a rasher of bacon." He laughed in Jon's face and left them there. 
+Hours later, as the castle slept, three of them paid a call on his cell. Grenn held his arms while Pyp sat on 
+his legs. Jon could hear Rast's rapid breathing as Ghost leapt onto his chest. The direwolf's eyes burned 
+red as embers as his teeth nipped lightly at the soft skin of the boy's throat, just enough to draw blood. 
+"Remember, we know where you sleep," Jon said softly. 
+The next morning Jon heard Rast tell Albett and Toad how his razor had slipped while he shaved. 
+From that day forth, neither Rast nor any of the others would hurt Samwell Tarly. When Ser Alliser 
+matched them against him, they would stand their ground and swat aside his slow, clumsy strokes. If the 
+master-at-arms screamed for an attack, they would dance in and tap Sam lightly on breastplate or helm 
+or leg. Ser Alliser raged and threatened and called them all cravens and women and worse, yet Sam 
+remained unhurt. A few nights later, at Jon's urging, he joined them for the evening meal, taking a place 
+on the bench beside Halder. It was another fortnight before he found the nerve to join their talk, but in 
+time he was laughing at Pyp's faces and teasing Grenn with the best of them. 
+Fat and awkward and frightened he might be, but Samwell Tarly was no fool. One night he visited Jon in 
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+his cell. "I don't know what you did," he said, "but I know you did it." He looked away shyly. "I've never 
+had a friend before." 
+"We're not friends," Jon said. He put a hand on Sam's broad shoulder. "We're brothers." 
+And so they were, he thought to himself after Sam had taken his leave. Robb and Bran and Rickon were 
+his father's sons, and he loved them still, yet Jon knew that he had never truly been one of them. Catelyn 
+Stark had seen to that. The grey walls of Winterfell might still haunt his dreams, but Castle Black was his 
+life now, and his brothers were Sam and Grenn and Halder and Pyp and the other cast-outs who wore 
+the black of the Night's Watch. 
+"My uncle spoke truly," he whispered to Ghost. He wondered if he would ever see Benjen Stark again, 
+to tell him. 
+EDDARD 
+"'It's the Hand's tourney that's the cause of all the trouble, my lords," the Commander of the City Watch 
+complained to the king's council. 
+"The king's tourney," Ned corrected, wincing. "I assure you, the Hand wants no part of it." 
+"Call it what you will, my lord. Knights have been arriving from all over the realm, and for every knight 
+we get two freeriders, three craftsmen, six men-at-arms, a dozen merchants, two dozen whores, and 
+more thieves than I dare guess. This cursed heat had half the city in a fever to start, and now with all 
+these visitors . . . last night we had a drowning, a tavern riot, three knife fights, a rape, two fires, 
+robberies beyond count, and a drunken horse race down the Street of the Sisters. The night before a 
+woman's head was found in the Great Sept, floating in the rainbow pool. No one seems to know how it 
+got there or who it belongs to." 
+"How dreadful," Varys said with a shudder. 
+Lord Renly Baratheon was less sympathetic. "If you cannot keep the king's peace, Janos, perhaps the 
+City Watch should be commanded by someone who can." 
+Stout, jowly Janos Slynt puffed himself up like an angry frog, his bald pate reddening. "Aegon the 
+Dragon himself could not keep the peace, Lord Renly. I need more men." 
+"How many?" Ned asked, leaning forward. As ever, Robert had not troubled himself to attend the 
+council session, so it fell to his Hand to speak for him. 
+"As many as can be gotten, Lord Hand." 
+"Hire fifty new men," Ned told him. "Lord Baelish will see that you get the coin." 
+"I will?" Littlefinger said. 
+"You will. You found forty thousand golden dragons for a champion's purse, surely you can scrape 
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+together a few coppers to keep the king's peace." Ned turned back to Janos Slynt. "I will also give you 
+twenty good swords from my own household guard, to serve with the Watch until the crowds have left." 
+"All thanks, Lord Hand," Slynt said, bowing. "I promise you, they shall be put to good use." 
+When the Commander had taken his leave, Eddard Stark turned to the rest of the council. "The sooner 
+this folly is done with, the better I shall like it." As if the expense and trouble were not irksome enough, all 
+and sundry insisted on salting Ned's wound by calling it "the Hand's tourney," as if he were the cause of 
+it. And Robert honestly seemed to think he should feel honored! 
+"The realm prospers from such events, my lord," Grand Maester Pycelle said. "They bring the great the 
+chance of glory, and the lowly a respite from their woes." 
+"And put coins in many a pocket," Littlefinger added. "Every inn in the city is full, and the whores are 
+walking bowlegged and jingling with each step." 
+Lord Renly laughed. "We're fortunate my brother Stannis is not with us. Remember the time he 
+proposed to outlaw brothels? The king asked him if perhaps he'd like to outlaw eating, shitting, and 
+breathing while he was at it. If truth be told, I ofttimes wonder how Stannis ever got that ugly daughter of 
+his. He goes to his marriage bed like a man marching to a battlefield, with a grim look in his eyes and a 
+determination to do his duty." 
+Ned had not joined the laughter. "I wonder about your brother Stannis as well. I wonder when he 
+intends to end his visit to Dragonstone and resume his seat on this council." 
+"No doubt as soon as we've scourged all those whores into the sea," Littlefinger replied, provoking more 
+laughter. 
+"I have heard quite enough about whores for one day," Ned said, rising. "Until the morrow." 
+Harwin had the door when Ned returned to the Tower of the Hand. 
+"Summon Jory to my chambers and tell your father to saddle my horse," Ned told him, too brusquely. 
+"As you say, my lord." 
+The Red Keep and the "Hand's tourney" were chafing him raw, Ned reflected as he climbed. He 
+yearned for the comfort of Catelyn's arms, for the sounds of Robb and Jon crossing swords in the 
+practice yard, for the cool days and cold nights of the north. 
+In his chambers he stripped off his council silks and sat for a moment with the book while he waited for 
+Jory to arrive. The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With 
+Descliptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children, by Grand Maester Malleon. 
+Pycelle had spoken truly; it made for ponderous reading. Yet Jon Arryn had asked for it, and Ned felt 
+certain he had reasons. There was something here, some truth buried in these brittle yellow pages, if only 
+he could see it. But what? The tome was over a century old. Scarcely a man now alive had yet been born 
+when Malleon had compiled his dusty lists of weddings, births, and deaths. 
+He opened to the section on House Lannister once more, and turned the pages slowly, hoping against 
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+hope that something would leap out at him. The Lannisters were an old family, tracing their descent back 
+to Lann the Clever, a trickster from the Age of Heroes who was no doubt as legendary as Bran the 
+Builder, though far more beloved of singers and taletellers. In the songs, Lann was the fellow who 
+winkled the Casterlys out of Casterly Rock with no weapon but his wits, and stole gold from the sun to 
+brighten his curly hair. Ned wished he were here now, to winkle the truth out of this damnable book. 
+A sharp rap on the door heralded Jory Cassel. Ned closed Malleon's tome and bid him enter. "I've 
+promised the City Watch twenty of my guard until the tourney is done," he told him. "I rely on you to 
+make the choice. Give Alyn the command, and make certain the men understand that they are needed to 
+stop fights, not start them." Rising, Ned opened a cedar chest and removed a light linen undertunic. "Did 
+you find the stableboy?" 
+"The watchman, my lord," Jory said. "He vows he'll never touch another horse." 
+"What did he have to say?" 
+"He claims he knew Lord Arryn well. Fast friends, they were." Jory snorted. "The Hand always gave the 
+lads a copper on their name days, he says. Had a way with horses. Never rode his mounts too hard, and 
+brought them carrots and apples, so they were always pleased to see him." 
+"Carrots and apples," Ned repeated. It sounded as if this boy would 
+be even less use than the others. And he was the last of the four Littlefinger had turned up. Jory had 
+spoken to each of them in turn. Ser Hugh had been brusque and uninformative, and arrogant as only a 
+new-made knight can be. If the Hand wished to talk to him, he should be pleased to receive him, but he 
+would not be questioned by a mere captain of guards . . . even if said captain was ten years older and a 
+hundred times the swordsman. The serving girl had at least been pleasant. She said Lord Jon had been 
+reading more than was good for him, that he was troubled and melancholy over his young son's frailty, 
+and gruff with his lady wife. The potboy, now cordwainer, had never exchanged so much as a word with 
+Lord Jon, but he was full of oddments of kitchen gossip: the lord had been quarreling with the king, the 
+lord only picked at his food, the lord was sending his boy to be fostered on Dragonstone, the lord had 
+taken a great interest in the breeding of hunting hounds, the lord had visited a master armorer to 
+commission a new suit of plate, wrought all in pale silver with a blue jasper falcon and a mother-of-pearl 
+moon on the breast. The king's own brother had gone with him to help choose the design, the potboy 
+said. No, not Lord Renly, the other one, Lord Stannis. 
+"Did our watchman recall anything else of note?" 
+"The lad swears Lord Jon was as strong as a man half his age. Often went riding with Lord Stannis, he 
+says." 
+Stannis again, Ned thought. He found that curious. Jon Arryn and he had been cordial, but never 
+friendly. And while Robert had been riding north to Winterfell, Stannis had removed himself to 
+Dragonstone, the Targaryen island fastness he had conquered in his brother's name. He had given no 
+word as to when he might return. "Where did they go on these rides?" Ned asked. 
+"The boy says that they visited a brothel." 
+"A brothel?" Ned said. "The Lord of the Eyrie and Hand of the King visited a brothel with Stannis 
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+Baratheon?" He shook his head, incredulous, wondering what Lord Renly would make of this tidbit. 
+Robert's lusts were the subject of ribald drinking songs throughout the realm, but Stannis was a different 
+sort of man; a bare year younger than the king, yet utterly unlike him, stern, humorless, unforgiving, grim 
+in his sense of duty. 
+"The boy insists it's true. The Hand took three guardsmen with him, and the boy says they were joking of 
+it when he took their horses afterward." 
+"Which brothel?" Ned asked. 
+"The boy did not know. The guards would." 
+"A pity Lysa carried them off to the Vale," Ned said dryly. "The 
+gods are doing their best to vex us. Lady Lysa, Maester Colemon, Lord Stannis ... everyone who might 
+actually know the truth of what happened to Jon Arryn is a thousand leagues away." 
+"Will you summon Lord Stannis back from Dragonstone?" 
+"Not yet," Ned said. "Not until I have a better notion of what this is all about and where he stands." The 
+matter nagged at him. Why did Stannis leave? Had he played some part in Jon Arryn's murder? Or was 
+he afraid? Ned found it hard to imagine what could frighten Stannis Baratheon, who had once held 
+Storm's End through a year of siege, surviving on rats and boot leather while the Lords Tyrell and 
+Redwyne sat outside with their hosts, banqueting in sight of his walls. 
+"Bring me my doublet, if you would. The grey, with the direwolf sigil. I want this armorer to know who I 
+am. It might make him more forthcoming." 
+Jory went to the wardrobe. "Lord Renly is brother to Lord Stannis as well as the king." 
+"Yet it seems that he was not invited on these rides." Ned was not sure what to make of Renly, with all 
+his friendly ways and easy smiles. A few days past, he had taken Ned aside to show him an exquisite 
+rose gold locklet. Inside was a miniature painted in the vivid Myrish style, of a lovely young girl with doe's 
+eyes and a cascade of soft brown hair. Renly had seemed anxious to know if the girl reminded him of 
+anyone, and when Ned had no answer but a shrug, he had seemed disappointed. The maid was Loras 
+Tyrell's sister Margaery, he'd confessed, but there were those who said she looked like Lyanna. "No," 
+Ned had told him, bemused. Could it be that Lord Renly, who looked so like a young Robert, had 
+conceived a passion for a girl he fancied to be a young Lyanna? That struck him as more than passing 
+queer. 
+Jory held out the doublet, and Ned slid his hands through the armholes. "Perhaps Lord Stannis will 
+return for Robert's tourney," he said as Jory laced the garment up the back. 
+"That would be a stroke of fortune, my lord," Jory said. 
+Ned buckled on a longsword. "In other words, not bloody likely." His smile was grim. 
+Jory draped Ned's cloak across his shoulders and clasped it at the throat with the Hand's badge of 
+office. "The armorer lives above his shop, in a large house at the top of the Street of Steel. Alyn knows 
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+the way, my lord." 
+Ned nodded. "The gods help this potboy if he's sent me off haring after shadows." It was a slim enough 
+staff to lean on, but the Jon Arryn that Ned Stark had known was not one to wear jeweled and silvered 
+plate. Steel was steel; it was meant for protection, not ornament. He 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 245 
+might have changed his views, to be sure. He would scarcely have been the first man who came to look 
+on things differently after a few years at court . . . but the change was marked enough to make Ned 
+wonder. 
+"Is there any other service I might perform?" 
+"I suppose you'd best begin visiting whorehouses." 
+"Hard duty, my lord." Jory grinned. "The men will be glad to help. Porther has made a fair start already." 
+Ned's favorite horse was saddled and waiting in the yard. Varly and Jacks fell in beside him as he rode 
+through the yard. Their steel caps and shirts of mail must have been sweltering, yet they said no word of 
+complaint. As Lord Eddard passed beneath the King's Gate into the stink of the city, his grey and white 
+cloak streaming from his shoulders, he saw eyes everywhere and kicked his mount into a trot. His guard 
+followed. 
+He looked behind him frequently as they made their way through the crowded city streets. Tomard and 
+Desmond had left the castle early this morning to take up positions on the route they must take, and 
+watch for anyone following them, but even so, Ned was uncertain. The shadow of the King's Spider and 
+his little birds had him fretting like a maiden on her wedding night. 
+The Street of Steel began at the market square beside the River Gate, as it was named on maps, or the 
+Mud Gate, as it was commonly called. A mummer on stilts was striding through the throngs like some 
+great insect, with a horde of barefoot children trailing behind him, hooting. Elsewhere, two ragged boys 
+no older than Bran were dueling with sticks, to the loud encouragement of some and the furious curses of 
+others. An old woman ended the contest by leaning out of her window and emptying a bucket of slops 
+on the heads of the combatants. In the shadow of the wall, farmers stood beside their wagons, bellowing 
+out, "Apples, the best apples, cheap at twice the price," and "Blood melons, sweet as honey," and 
+"Turnips, onions, roots, here you go here, here you go, turnips, onions, roots, here you go here." 
+The Mud Gate was open, and a squad of City Watchmen stood under the portcullis in their golden 
+cloaks, leaning on spears. When a column of riders appeared from the west, the guardsmen sprang into 
+action, shouting commands and moving the carts and foot traffic aside to let the knight enter with his 
+escort. The first rider through the gate carried a long black banner. The silk rippled in the wind like a 
+living thing; across the fabric was blazoned a night sky slashed with purple lightning. "Make way for Lord 
+Beric!" the rider shouted. "Make wayfor Lord Befic!" And close behind came the young lord himself, a 
+dashing 
+I 
+figure on a black courser, with red-gold hair and a black satin cloak dusted with stars. "Here to fight in 
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+the Hand's tourney, my lord?" a guardsman called out to him. "Here to win the Hand's tourney," Lord 
+Beric shouted back as the crowd cheered. 
+Ned turned off the square where the Street of Steel began and 
+followed its winding path up a long hill, past blacksmiths working at open forges, freeriders haggling over 
+mail shirts, and grizzled ironmongers selling old blades and razors from their wagons. The farther they 
+climbed, the larger the buildings grew. The man they wanted was all the way at the top of the hill, in a 
+huge house of timber and plaster whose upper stories loomed over the narrow street. The double doors 
+showed a hunting scene carved in ebony and weirwood. A pair of stone knights stood sentry at the 
+entrance, armored in fanciful suits of polished red steel that transformed them into griffin and unicorn. 
+Ned left his horse with Jacks and shouldered his way inside. 
+The slim young serving girl took quick note of Ned's badge and the sigil on his doublet, and the master 
+came hurrying out, all smiles and bows. "Wine for the King's Hand," he told the girl, gesturing Ned to a 
+couch. "I am Tobho Mott, my lord, please, please, put yourself at ease." He wore a black velvet coat 
+with hammers embroidered on the sleeves in silver thread, Around his neck was a heavy silver chain and 
+a sapphire as large as a pigeon's egg. "If you are in need of new arms for the Hand's tourney, you have 
+come to the right shop." Ned did not bother to correct him. "My work is costly, and I make no apologies 
+for 
+that, my lord," he said as he filled two matching silver goblets. "You will not find craftsmanship equal to 
+mine anywhere in the Seven Kingdoms, I promise you. Visit every forge in King's Landing if you like, and 
+compare for yourself. Any village smith can hammer out a shift of mail; my work is art." 
+Ned sipped his wine and let the man go on. The Knight of Flowers bought all his armor here, Tobho 
+boasted, and many high lords, the ones who knew fine steel, and even Lord Renly, the king's own 
+brother. Perhaps the Hand had seen Lord Renly's new armor, the green plate with the golden antlers? 
+No other armorer in the city could 
+get that deep a green; he knew the secret of putting color in the steel itself, paint and enamel were the 
+crutches of a journeyman. Or mayhaps the Hand wanted a blade? Tobho had learned to work Valyrian 
+steel at the forges of Oohor as a boy. Only a man who knew 
+the spells could take old weapons and forge them anew. "The direwolf was the sigil of House Stark, is it 
+not? I could fashion a direwolf helm so real that children will run from you in the street," he vowed. 
+Ned smiled. "Did you make a falcon helm for Lord Arryn?" 
+Tobho Mott paused a long moment and set aside his wine. "The Hand did call upon me, with Lord 
+Stannis, the king's brother. I regret to say, they did not honor me with their patronage." 
+Ned looked at the man evenly, saying nothing, waiting. He had found over the years that silence 
+sometimes yielded more than questions. And so it was this time. 
+"They asked to see the boy," the armorer said, "so I took them back to the forge." 
+"The boy," Ned echoed. He had no notion who the boy might be. "I should like to see the boy as well." 
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+Tobho Mott gave him a cool, careful look. "As you wish, my lord," he said with no trace of his former 
+friendliness. He led Ned out a rear door and across a narrow yard, back to the cavernous stone barn 
+where the work was done. When the armorer opened the door, the blast of hot air that came through 
+made Ned feel as though he were walking into a dragon's mouth. Inside, a forge blazed in each corner, 
+and the air stank of smoke and sulfur. Journeymen armorers glanced up from their hammers and tongs 
+just long enough to wipe the sweat from their brows, while bare-chested apprentice boys worked the 
+bellows. 
+The master called over a tall lad about Robb's age, his arms and chest corded with muscle. "This is Lord 
+Stark, the new Hand of the King," he told him as the boy looked at Ned through sullen blue eyes and 
+pushed back sweat-soaked hair with his fingers. Thick hair, shaggy and unkempt and black as ink. The 
+shadow of a new beard darkened his jaw. "This is Gendry. Strong for his age, and he works hard. Show 
+the Hand that helmet you made, lad." Almost shyly, the boy led them to his bench, and a steel helm 
+shaped like a bull's head, with two great curving horns. 
+Ned turned the helm over in his hands. It was raw steel, unpolished but expertly shaped. "This is fine 
+work. I would be pleased if you would let me buy it." 
+The boy snatched it out of his hands. "It's not for sale." 
+Tobho Mott looked horror-struck. "Boy, this is the King's Hand. If his lordship wants this helm, make 
+him a gift of it. He honors you by asking." 
+"I made it for me," the boy said stubbornly. 
+"A hundred pardons, my lord," his master said hurriedly to Ned. "The boy is crude as new steel, and like 
+new steel would profit from some beating. That helm is journeyman's work at best. Forgive him and I 
+promise I will craft you a helm like none you have ever seen." 
+"He's done nothing that requires my forgiveness. Gendry, when Lord Arryn came to see you, what did 
+you talk about?" 
+"He asked me questions is all, m'lord." 
+"What sort of questions?" 
+The boy shrugged. "How was 1, and was I well treated, and if I liked the work, and stuff about my 
+mother. Who she was and what she looked like and all." 
+"What did you tell him?" Ned asked. 
+The boy shoved a fresh fall of black hair off his forehead. "She died when I was little. She had yellow 
+hair, and sometimes she used to sing to me, I remember. She worked in an alehouse." 
+"Did Lord Stannis question you as well?" 
+"The bald one? No, not him. He never said no word, just glared at me, like I was some raper who done 
+for his daughter." 
+Page 187
+
+"Mind your filthy tongue," the master said. "This is the King's own Hand." The boy lowered his eyes. "A 
+smart boy, but stubborn. That helm . . . the others call him bullheaded, so he threw it in their teeth." 
+Ned touched the boy's head, fingering the thick black hair. "Look at me, Gendry." The apprentice lifted 
+his face. Ned studied the shape of his jaw, the eyes like blue ice. Yes, he thought, I see it. "Go back to 
+your work, lad. I'm sorry to have bothered you." He walked back to the house with the master. "Who 
+paid the boy's apprentice fee?" he asked lightly. 
+Mott looked fretful. "You saw the boy. Such a strong boy. Those hands of his, those hands were made 
+for hammers. He had such promise, I took him on without a fee." 
+"The truth now," Ned urged. "The streets are full of strong boys. The day you take on an apprentice 
+without a fee will be the day the Wall comes down. Who paid for him?" 
+"A lord," the master said reluctantly. "He gave no name, and wore no sigil on his coat. He paid in gold, 
+twice the customary sum, and said he was paying once for the boy, and once for my silence." 
+"Describe him." 
+"He was stout, round of shoulder, not so tall as you. Brown beard, but there was a bit of red in it, I'll 
+swear. He wore a rich cloak, that I do remember, heavy purple velvet worked with silver threads, but the 
+hood shadowed his face and I never did see him clear." He hesitated a moment. "My lord, I want no 
+trouble." 
+"None of us wants trouble, but I fear these are troubled times, Master Mott," Ned said. "You know who 
+the boy is." 
+"I am only an armorer, my lord. I know what I'm told." 
+"You know who the boy is," Ned repeated patiently. "That is not a question." 
+"The boy is my apprentice," the master said. He looked Ned in the eye, stubborn as old iron. "Who he 
+was before he came to me, that's none of my concern." 
+Ned nodded. He decided that he liked Tobho Mott, master armorer. "If the day ever comes when 
+Gendry would rather wield a sword than forge one, send him to me. He has the look of a warrior. Until 
+then, you have my thanks, Master Mott, and my promise. Should I ever want a helm to frighten children, 
+this will be the first place I visit." 
+His guard was waiting outside with the horses. "Did you find anything, my lord?" Jacks asked as Ned 
+mounted up. 
+"I did," Ned told him, wondering. What had Jon Arryn wanted with a king's bastard, and why was it 
+worth his life? 
+CATELYN 
+Page 188
+
+My lady, you ought cover your head," Ser Rodrik told her as their horses plodded north. "You will take 
+a chill." 
+"It is only water, Ser Rodrik," Catelyn replied. Her hair hung wet and heavy, a loose strand stuck to her 
+forehead, and she could imagine how ragged and wild she must look, but for once she did not care. The 
+southern rain was soft and warm. Catelyn liked the feel of it on her face, gentle as a mother's kisses. It 
+took her back to her childhood, to long grey days at Riverrun. She remembered the godswood, drooping 
+branches heavy with moisture, and the sound of her brother's laughter as he chased her through piles of 
+damp leaves. She remembered making mud pies with Lysa, the weight of them, the mud slick and brown 
+between her fingers. They had served them to Littlefinger, giggling, and he'd eaten so much mud he was 
+sick for a week. How young they all had been. 
+Catelyn had almost forgotten. In the north, the rain fell cold and hard, and sometimes at night it turned to 
+ice. It was as likely to kill a crop as nurture it, and it sent grown men running for the nearest shelter. That 
+was no rain for little girls to play in. 
+"I am soaked through," Ser Rodrik complained. "Even my bones are wet." The woods pressed close 
+around them, and the steady pattering of rain on leaves was accompanied by the small sucking sounds 
+their horses made as their hooves pulled free of the mud. "We will want a fire tonight, my lady, and a hot 
+meal would serve us both." 
+"There is an inn at the crossroads up ahead," Catelyn told him. She had slept many a night there in her 
+youth, traveling with her father. Lord Hoster Tully had been a restless man in his prime, always riding 
+somewhere. She still remembered the innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf 
+night and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet cakes for the children. The 
+sweet cakes had been soaked with honey, rich and heavy on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded 
+those smiles. The sourleaf had stained Masha's teeth a dark red, and made her smile a bloody horror. 
+"An inn," Ser Rodrik repeated wistfully. "If only . . . but we dare not risk it. If we wish to remain 
+unknown, I think it best we seek out some small holdfast . . ." He broke off as they heard sounds up the 
+road; splashing water, the clink of mail, a horse's whinny. "Riders," he warned, his hand dropping to the 
+hilt of his sword. Even on the kingsroad, it never hurt to be wary. 
+They followed the sounds around a lazy bend of the road and saw them; a column of armed men noisily 
+fording a swollen stream. Catelyn reined up to let them pass. The banner in the hand of the foremost rider 
+hung sodden and limp, but the guardsmen wore indigo cloaks and on their shoulders flew the silver eagle 
+of Seagard. "Mallisters," Ser Rodrik whispered to her, as if she had not known. "My lady, best pull up 
+your hood." 
+Catelyn made no move. Lord Jason Mallister himself rode with them, surrounded by his knights, his son 
+Patrek by his side and their squires close behind. They were riding for King's Landing and the Hand's 
+tourney, she knew. For the past week, the travelers had been thick as flies upon the kingsroad; knights 
+and freeriders, singers with their harps and drums, heavy wagons laden with hops or corn or casks of 
+honey, traders and craftsmen and whores, and all of them moving south. 
+She studied Lord Jason boldly. The last time she had seen him he had been jesting with her uncle at her 
+wedding feast; the Mallisters stood bannermen to the Tullys, and his gifts had been lavish. His brown hair 
+Page 189
+
+was salted with white now, his face chiseled gaunt by time, yet the years had not touched his pride. He 
+rode like a man who feared nothing. Catelyn envied him that; she had come to fear so much. As the 
+riders passed, Lord Jason nodded a curt greeting, but it was only a high lord's courtesy to strangers 
+chance met on the road. There was no recognition in those fierce eyes, and his son did not even waste a 
+look. 
+"He did not know you," Ser Rodrik said after, wondering. 
+"He saw a pair of mud-spattered travelers by the side of the road, wet and tired. It would never occur to 
+him to suspect that one of them was the daughter of his liege lord. I think we shall be safe enough at the 
+inn, Ser Rodrik." 
+It was near dark when they reached it, at the crossroads north of the great confluence of the Trident. 
+Masha Heddle was fatter and greyer than Catelyn remembered, still chewing her sourleaf, but she gave 
+them only the most cursory of looks, with nary a hint of her ghastly red smile. "Two rooms at the top of 
+the stair, that's all there is," she said, chewing all the while. "They're under the bell tower, you won't be 
+missing meals, though there's some thinks it too noisy. Can't be helped. We're full up, or near as makes 
+no matter. It's those rooms or the road." 
+It was those rooms, low, dusty garrets at the top of a cramped narrow staircase. "Leave your boots 
+down here," Masha told them after she'd taken their coin. "The boy will clean them. I won't have you 
+tracking mud up my stairs. Mind the bell. Those who come late to meals don't eat." There were no 
+smiles, and no mention of sweet cakes. 
+When the supper bell rang, the sound was deafening. Catelyn had changed into dry clothes. She sat by 
+the window, watching rain run down the pane. The glass was milky and full of bubbles, and a wet dusk 
+was falling outside. Catelyn could just make out the muddy crossing where the two great roads met. 
+The crossroads gave her pause. If they turned west from here, it was an easy ride down to Riverrun. 
+Her father had always given her wise counsel when she needed it most, and she yearned to talk to him, to 
+warn him of the gathering storm. If Winterfell needed to brace for war, how much more so Riverrun, so 
+much closer to King's Landing, with the power of Casterly Rock looming to the west like a shadow. If 
+only her father had been stronger, she might have chanced it, but Hoster Tully had been bedridden these 
+past two years, and Catelyn was loath to tax him now. 
+The eastern road was wilder and more dangerous, climbing through rocky foothills and thick forests into 
+the Mountains of the Moon, past high passes and deep chasms to the Vale of Arryn and the stony 
+Fingers beyond. Above the Vale, the Eyrie stood high and impregnable, its towers reaching for the sky. 
+There she would find her sister . . . and, perhaps, some of the answers Ned sought. Surely Lysa knew 
+more than she had dared to put in her letter. She might have the very proof that Ned needed to bring the 
+Lannisters to ruin, and if it came to 
+war, they would need the Arryns and the eastern lords who owed them service. 
+Yet the mountain road was perilous. Shadowcats prowled those passes, rock slides were common, and 
+the mountain clans were lawless brigands, descending from the heights to rob and kill and melting away 
+like snow whenever the knights rode out from the Vale in search of them. Even Jon Arryn, as great a lord 
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+
+as any the Eyrie had ever known, had always traveled in strength when he crossed the mountains. 
+Catelyn's only strength was one elderly knight, armored in loyalty. 
+No, she thought, Riverrun and the Eyrie would have to wait. Her path ran north to Winterfell, where her 
+sons and her duty were waiting for her. As soon as they were safely past the Neck, she could declare 
+herself to one of Ned's bannermen, and send riders racing ahead with orders to mount a watch on the 
+kingsroad. 
+The rain obscured the fields beyond the crossroads, but Catelyn saw the land clear enough in her 
+memory. The marketplace was just across the way, and the village a mile farther on, half a hundred white 
+cottages surrounding a small stone sept. There would be more now; the summer had been long and 
+peaceful. North of here the kingsroad ran along the Green Fork of the Trident, through fertile valleys and 
+green woodlands, past thriving towns and stout holdfasts and the castles of the river lords. 
+Catelyn knew them all: the Blackwoods and the Brackens, ever enemies, whose quarrels her father was 
+obliged to settle; Lady Whent, last of her line, who dwelt with her ghosts in the cavernous vaults of 
+Harrenhal; irascible Lord Frey, who had outlived seven wives and filled his twin castles with children, 
+grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and bastards and grandbastards as well. All of them were 
+bannermen to the Tullys, their swords sworn to the service of Riverrun. Catelyn wondered if that would 
+be enough, if it came to war. Her father was the staunchest man who'd ever lived, and she had no doubt 
+that he would call his banners . . . but would the banners come? The Darrys and Rygers and Mootons 
+had sworn oaths to Riverrun as well, yet they had fought with Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident, while 
+Lord Frey had arrived with his levies well after the battle was over, leaving some doubt as to which army 
+he had planned to join (theirs, he had assured the victors solemnly in the aftermath, but ever after her 
+father had called him the Late Lord Frey). It must not come to war, Catelyn thought fervently. They must 
+not let it. 
+Ser Rodrik came for her just as the bell ceased its clangor. "We had best make haste if we hope to eat 
+tonight, my lady." 
+"It might be safer if we were not knight and lady until we pass the 
+Neck," she told him. "Common travelers attract less notice. A father and daughter taken to the road on 
+some family business, say." 
+"As you say, my lady," Ser Rodrik agreed. It was only when she laughed that he realized what he'd 
+done. "The old courtesies die hard, my-my daughter." He tried to tug on his missing whiskers, and sighed 
+with exasperation. 
+Catelyn took his arm. "Come, Father," she said. "You'll find that Masha Heddle sets a good table, I 
+think, but try not to praise her. You truly don't want to see her smile." 
+The common room was long and drafty, with a row of huge wooden kegs at one end and a fireplace at 
+the other. A serving boy ran back and forth with skewers of meat while Masha drew beer from the kegs, 
+chewing her sourleaf all the while. 
+The benches were crowded, townsfolk and farmers mingling freely with all manner of travelers. The 
+crossroads made for odd companions; dyers with black and purple hands shared a bench with rivermen 
+reeking of fish, an ironsmith thick with muscle squeezed in beside a wizened old septon, hard-bitten 
+Page 191
+
+sellswords and soft plump merchants swapped news like boon companions. 
+The company included more swords than Catelyn would have liked. Three by the fire wore the red 
+stallion badge of the Brackens, and there was a large party in blue steel ringmail and capes of a silvery 
+grey. On their shoulder was another familiar sigil, the twin towers of House Frey. She studied their faces, 
+but they were all too young to have known her. The senior among them would have been no older than 
+Bran when she went north. 
+Ser Rodrik found them an empty place on the bench near the kitchen. Across the table a handsome 
+youth was fingering a woodharp. "Seven blessings to you, goodfolk," he said as they sat. An empty wine 
+cup stood on the table before him. 
+"And to you, singer," Catelyn returned. Ser Rodrik called for bread and meat and beer in a tone that 
+meant now. The singer, a youth of some eighteen years, eyed them boldly and asked where they were 
+going, and from whence they had come, and what news they had, letting the questions fly as quick as 
+arrows and never pausing for an answer. "We left King's Landing a fortnight ago," Catelyn replied, 
+answering the safest of his questions. 
+"That's where I'm bound," the youth said. As she had suspected, he was more interested in telling his 
+own story than in hearing theirs. Singers loved nothing half so well as the sound of their own voices. "The 
+Hand's tourney means rich lords with fat purses. The last time I 
+came away with more silver than I could carry ... or would have, if I hadn't lost it all betting on the 
+Kingslayer to win the day." 
+"The gods frown on the gambler," Ser Rodrik said sternly. He was of the north, and shared the Stark 
+views on tournaments. 
+"They frowned on me, for certain," the singer said. "Your cruel gods and the Knight of Flowers 
+altogether did me in." 
+"No doubt that was a lesson for you," Ser Rodrik said. 
+"It was. This time my coin will champion Ser Loras." 
+Ser Rodrik tried to tug at whiskers that were not there, but before he could frame a rebuke the serving 
+boy came scurrying up. He laid trenchers of bread before them and filled them with chunks of browned 
+meat off a skewer, dripping with hot juice. Another skewer held tiny onions, fire peppers, and fat 
+mushrooms. Ser Rodrik set to lustily as the lad ran back to fetch them beer. 
+"My name is Marillion," the singer said, plucking a string on his woodharp. "Doubtless you've heard me 
+play somewhere?" 
+His manner made Catelyn smile. Few wandering singers ever ventured as far north as Winterfell, but she 
+knew his like from her girlhood in Riverrun. "I fear not," she told him. 
+He drew a plaintive chord from the woodharp. "That is your loss," he said. "Who was the finest singer 
+you've ever heard?" 
+Page 192
+
+"Alia of Braavos," Ser Rodrik answered at once. 
+"Oh, I'm much better than that old stick," Marillion said. "If you have the silver for a song, I'll gladly 
+show you." 
+"I might have a copper or two, but I'd sooner toss it down a well than pay for your howling," Ser Rodrik 
+groused. His opinion of singers was well known; music was a lovely thing for girls, but he could not 
+comprehend why any healthy boy would fill his hand with a harp when he might have had a sword. 
+"Your grandfather has a sour nature," Marillion said to Catelyn. "I meant to do you honor. An homage to 
+your beauty. In truth, I was made to sing for kings and high lords." 
+"Oh, I can see that," Catelyn said. "Lord Tully is fond of song, I hear. No doubt you've been to 
+Riverrun." 
+"A hundred times," the singer said airily. "They keep a chamber for me, and the young lord is like a 
+brother." 
+Catelyn smiled, wondering what Edmure would think of that. Another singer had once bedded a girl her 
+brother fancied; he had hated the breed ever since. "And Winterfell?" she asked him. "Have you traveled 
+north?" 
+"Why would IT' Marillion asked. "It's all blizzards and bearskins up there, and the Starks know no music 
+but the howling of wolves." 
+Distantly, she was aware of the door banging open at the far end of the room. 
+"Innkeep," a servant's voice called out behind her, "we have horses that want stabling, and my lord of 
+Lannister requires a room and a hot bath." 
+"Oh, gods," Ser Rodrik said before Catelyn reached out to silence him, her fingers tightening hard 
+around his forearm. 
+Masha Heddle was bowing and smiling her hideous red smile. "I'm sorry, m'lord, truly, we're full up, 
+every room." 
+There were four of them, Catelyn saw. An old man in the black of the Night's Watch, two servants . . . 
+and him, standing there small and bold as life. "My men will steep in your stable, and as for myself, well, I 
+do not require a large room, as you can plainly see." He flashed a mocking grin. "So long as the fire's 
+warm and the straw reasonably free of fleas, I am a happy man." 
+Masha Heddle was beside herself. "M'lord, there's nothing, it's the tourney, there's no help for it, oh . . ." 
+Tyrion Lannister pulled a coin from his purse and flicked it up over his head, caught it, tossed it again. 
+Even across the room, where Catelyn sat, the wink of gold was unmistakable. 
+A freerider in a faded blue cloak lurched to his feet. "You're welcome to my room, m'lord." 
+"Now there's a clever man," Lannister said as he sent the coin spinning across the room. The freerider 
+Page 193
+
+snatched it from the air. "And a nimble one to boot." The dwarf turned back to Masha Heddle. "You will 
+be able to manage food, I trust?" 
+"Anything you like, m1ord, anything at all," the innkeep promised. And may he choke on it, Catelyn 
+thought, but it was Bran she saw choking, drowning on his own blood. 
+Lannister glanced at the nearest tables. "My men will have whatever you're serving these people. Double 
+portions, we've had a long hard ride. I'll take a roast fowl-chicken, duck, pigeon, it makes no matter. 
+And send up a flagon of your best wine. Yoren, will you sup with me?" 
+"Aye, m1ord, I will," the black brother replied. 
+The dwarf had not so much as glanced toward the far end of the room, and Catelyn was thinking how 
+grateful she was for the crowded benches between them when suddenly Marillion bounded to his feet. 
+"My lord of Lannister!" he called out. "I would be pleased to entertain you while you eat. Let me sing you 
+the lay of your father's great victory at King's Landing!" 
+"Nothing would be more likely to ruin my supper," the dwarf said 
+dryly. His mismatched eyes considered the singer briefly, started to move away . . . and found Catelyn. 
+He looked at her for a moment, puzzled. She turned her face away, but too late. The dwarf was smiling. 
+"Lady Stark, what an unexpected pleasure," he said. "I was sorry to miss you at Winterfell." 
+Marillion gaped at her, confusion giving way to chagrin as Catelyn rose slowly to her feet. She heaTd 
+SeT Rodrik curse. If only the man had lingered at the Wall, she thought, if only . . . 
+"Lady . . . Stark?" Masha Heddle said thickly. 
+"I was still Catelyn Tully the last time I bedded here," she told the innkeep. She could hear the muttering, 
+feel the eyes upon her. Catelyn glanced around the room, at the faces of the knights and sworn swords, 
+and took a deep breath to slow the frantic beating of her heart. Did she dare take the risk? There was no 
+time to think it through, only the moment and the sound of her own voice ringing in her ears. "You in the 
+corner," she said to an older man she had not noticed until now. "Is that the black bat of Harrenhal I see 
+embroidered on your surcoat, ser?" 
+The man got to his feet. "It is, my lady." 
+"And is Lady Whent a true and honest friend to my father, Lord Hoster Tully of Riverrun?" 
+"She is," the man replied stoutly. 
+Ser Rodrik rose quietly and loosened his sword in its scabbard. The dwarf was blinking at them, 
+blank-faced, with puzzlement in his mismatched eyes. 
+"The red stallion was ever a welcome sight in Riverrun," she said to the trio by the fire. "My father counts 
+Jonos Bracken among his oldest and most loyal bannermen." 
+The three men-at-arms exchanged uncertain looks. "Our lord is honored by his trust," one of them said 
+hesitantly. 
+Page 194
+
+"I envy your father all these fine friends," Lannister quipped, "but I do not quite see the purpose of this, 
+Lady Stark." 
+She ignored him, turning to the large party in blue and grey. They were the heart of the matter; there 
+were more than twenty of them. "I know your sigil as well: the twin towers of Frey. How fares your good 
+lord, sers?" 
+Their captain rose. "Lord Walder is well, my lady. He plans to take a new wife on his ninetieth name 
+day, and has asked your lord father to honor the wedding with his presence." 
+Tyrion Lannister sniggered. That was when Catelyn knew he was hers. "This man came a guest into my 
+house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven," she proclaimed to the room at large, 
+I 
+pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand. "In the name of King Robert and the good 
+lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the king's 
+justice." 
+She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen swords drawn as one or the look on 
+Tyrion Lannister's face. 
+SANSA 
+Sansa rode to the Hand's tourney with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, in a litter with curtains of 
+yellow silk so fine she could see right through them. They turned the whole world gold. Beyond the city 
+walls, a hundred pavilions had been raised beside the river, and the common folk came out in the 
+thousands to watch the games. The splendor of it all took Sansa's breath away; the shining armor, the 
+great chargers caparisoned in silver and gold, the shouts of the crowd, the banners snapping in the wind . 
+. . and the knights themselves, the knights most of all. 
+"It is better than the songs," she whispered when they found the places that her father had promised her, 
+among the high lords and ladies. Sansa was dressed beautifully that day, in a green gown that brought out 
+the auburn of her hair, and she knew they were looking at her and smiling. 
+They watched the heroes of a hundred songs ride forth, each more fabulous than the last. The seven 
+knights of the Kingsguard took the field, all but Jaime Lannister in scaled armor the color of milk, their 
+cloaks as white as freshfallen snow. Ser Jaime wore the white cloak as well, but beneath it he was shining 
+gold from head to foot, with a lion'shead helm and a golden sword. Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain 
+That Rides, thundered past them like an avalanche. Sansa remembered Lord Yohn Royce, who had 
+guested at Winterfell two years 
+260 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN 
+before. "His armor is bronze, thousands and thousands of years old, engraved with magic runes that 
+ward him against harm," she whispered to Jeyne. Septa Mordane pointed out Lord Jason Mallister, in 
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+
+indigo chased with silver, the wings of an eagle on his helm. He had cut down three of Rhaegar's 
+bannermen on the Trident. The girls giggled over the warrior priest Thoros of Myr, with his flapping red 
+robes and shaven head, until the septa told them that he had once scaled the walls of Pyke with a flaming 
+sword in hand. 
+Other riders Sansa did not know; hedge knights from the Fingers and Highgarden and the mountains of 
+Dorne, unsung freeriders and new-made squires, the younger sons of high lords and the heirs of lesser 
+houses. Younger men, most had done no great deeds as yet, but Sansa and Jeyne agreed that one day 
+the Seven Kingdoms would resound to the sound of their names. Ser Balon Swann. Lord Bryce Caron 
+of the Marches. Bronze Yohn's heir, Ser Andar Royce, and his younger brother Ser Robar, their silvered 
+steel plate filigreed in bronze with the same ancient runes that warded their father. The twins Ser Horas 
+and Ser Hobber, whose shields displayed the grape cluster sigil of the Redwynes, burgundy on blue. 
+Patrek Mallister, Lord Jason's son. Six Freys of the Crossing: Ser Jared, Ser Hosteen, Ser Danwell, Ser 
+Emmon, Ser Theo, Ser Perwyn, sons and grandsons of old Lord Walder Frey, and his bastard son 
+Martyn Rivers as well. 
+Jeyne Poole confessed herself frightened by the look of Jalabhar Xho, an exile prince from the Summer 
+Isles who wore a cape of green and scarlet feathers over skin as dark as night, but when she saw young 
+Lord Beric Dondarrion, with his hair like red gold and his black shield slashed by lightning, she 
+pronounced herself willing to marry him on the instant. 
+The Hound entered the lists as well, and so too the king's brother, handsome Lord Renly of Storm's 
+End. Jory, Alyn, and Harwin rode for Winterfell and the north. "Jory looks a beggar among these others," 
+Septa Mordane sniffed when he appeared. Sansa could only agree. Jory's armor was blue-grey plate 
+without device or ornament, and a thin grey cloak hung from his shoulders like a soiled rag. Yet he 
+acquitted himself well, unhorsing Horas Redwyne in his first joust and one of the Freys in his second. In 
+his third match, he rode three passes at a freerider named Lothor Brune whose armor was as drab as his 
+own. Neither man lost his seat, but Brune's lance was steadier and his blows better placed, and the king 
+gave him the victory. Alyn and Harwin fared less well; Harwin was unhorsed in his first tilt by Ser Meryn 
+of the Kingsguard, while Alyn fell to Ser Balon Swann. 
+The jousting went all day and into the dusk, the hooves of the great 
+warhorses pounding down the lists until the field was a ragged wasteland of torn earth. A dozen times 
+Jeyne and Sansa cried out in unison as riders crashed together, lances exploding into splinters while the 
+commons screamed for their favorites. Jeyne covered her eyes whenever a man fell, like a frightened little 
+girl, but Sansa was made of sterner stuff. A great lady knew how to behave at tournaments. Even Septa 
+Mordane noted her composure and nodded in approval. 
+The Kingslayer rode brilliantly. He overthrew Ser Andar Royce and the Marcher Lord Bryce Caron as 
+easily as if he were riding at rings, and then took a hard-fought match from white-haired Barristan Selmy, 
+who had won his first two tilts against men thirty and forty years his junior. 
+Sandor Clegane and his immense brother, Ser Gregor the Mountain, seemed unstoppable as well, riding 
+down one foe after the next in ferocious style. The most terrifying moment of the day came during Ser 
+Gregor's second joust, when his lance rode up and struck a young knight from the Vale under the gorget 
+with such force that it drove through his throat, killing him instantly. The youth fell not ten feet from where 
+Sansa was seated. The point of Ser Gregor's lance had snapped off in his neck, and his life's blood 
+flowed out in slow pulses, each weaker than the one before. His armor was shiny new; a bright streak of 
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+
+fire ran down his outstretched arm, as the steel caught the light. Then the sun went behind a cloud, and it 
+was gone. His cloak was blue, the color of the sky on a clear summer's day, trimmed with a border of 
+crescent moons, but as his blood seeped into it, the cloth darkened and the moons turned red, one by 
+one. 
+Jeyne Poole wept so hysterically that Septa Mordane finally took her off to regain her composure, but 
+Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man 
+die before. She ought to be crying too, she thought, but the tears would not come. Perhaps she had used 
+up all her tears for Lady and Bran. It would be different if it had been Jory or Ser Rodrik or Father, she 
+told herself. The young knight in the blue cloak was nothing to her, some stranger from the Vale of Arryn 
+whose name she had forgotten as soon as she heard it. And now the world would forget his name too, 
+Sansa realized; there would be no songs sung for him. That was sad. 
+After they carried off the body, a boy with a spade ran onto the field and shoveled dirt over the spot 
+where he had fallen, to cover up the blood. Then the jousts resumed. 
+Ser Balon Swann also fell to Gregor, and Lord Renly to the Hound. Renly was unhorsed so violently 
+that he seemed to fly backward off his charger, legs in the air. His head hit the ground with an audible 
+crack 
+that made the crowd gasp, but it was just the golden antler on his helm. One of the tines had snapped off 
+beneath him. When Lord Renly climbed to his feet, the commons cheered wildly, for King Robert's 
+handsome young brother was a great favorite. He handed the broken tine to his conqueror with a 
+gracious bow. The Hound snorted and tossed the broken antler into the crowd, where the commons 
+began to punch and claw over the little bit of gold, until Lord Renly walked out among them and restored 
+the peace. By then Septa Mordane had returned, alone. Jeyne had been feeling ill, she explained; she had 
+helped her back to the castle. Sansa had almost forgotten about Jeyne. 
+Later a hedge knight in a checkered cloak disgraced himself by killing Beric Dondarrion's horse, and 
+was declared forfeit. Lord Beric shifted his saddle to a new mount, only to be knocked right off it by 
+Thoros of Myr. Ser Aron Santagar and Lothor Brune tilted thrice without result; Ser Aron fell afterward 
+to Lord Jason Mallister, and Brune to Yohn Royce's younger son, Robar. 
+In the end it came down to four; the Hound and his monstrous brother Gregor, Jaime Lannister the 
+Kingslayer, and Ser Loras Tyrell, the youth they called the Knight of Flowers. 
+Ser Loras was the youngest son of Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden and Warden of the South. At 
+sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field, yet he had unhorsed three knights of the Kingsguard that 
+morning in his first three jousts. Sansa had never seen anyone so beautiful. His plate was intricately 
+fashioned and enameled as a bouquet of a thousand different flowers, and his snow-white stallion was 
+draped in a blanket of red and white roses. After each victory, Ser Loras would remove his helm and 
+ride slowly round the fence, and finally pluck a single white rose from the blanket and toss it to some fair 
+maiden in the crowd. 
+His last match of the day was against the younger Royce. Ser Robar's ancestral runes proved small 
+protection as Ser Loras split his shield and drove him from his saddle to crash with an awful clangor in 
+the dirt. Robar lay moaning as the victor made his circuit of the field. Finally they called for a litter and 
+carried him off to his tent, dazed and unmoving. Sansa never saw it. Her eyes were only for Ser Loras. 
+When the white horse stopped in front of her, she thought her heart would burst. 
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+To the other maidens he had given white roses, but the one he plucked for her was red. "Sweet lady," he 
+said, "no victory is half so beautiful as you." Sansa took the flower timidly, struck dumb by his gallantry. 
+His hair was a mass of lazy brown curls, his eyes like liquid 
+gold. She inhaled the sweet fragrance of the rose and sat clutching it long after Ser Loras had ridden off. 
+When Sansa finally looked up, a man was standing over her, staring. He was short, with a pointed beard 
+and a silver streak in his hair, almost as old as her father. "You must be one of her daughters," he said to 
+her. He had grey-green eyes that did not smile when his mouth did. "You have the Tully look." 
+"I'm Sansa Stark," she said, ill at ease. The man wore a heavy cloak with a fur collar, fastened with a 
+silver mockingbird, and he had the effortless manner of a high lord, but she did not know him. "I have not 
+had the honor, my lord." 
+Septa Mordane quickly took a hand. "Sweet child, this is Lord Petyr Baelish, of the king's small 
+council." 
+"Your mother was my queen of beauty once," the man said quietly. His breath smelled of mint. "You 
+have her hair." His fingers brushed against her cheek as he stroked one auburn lock. Quite abruptly he 
+turned and walked away. 
+By then, the moon was well up and the crowd was tired, so the king decreed that the last three matches 
+would be fought the next morning, before the melee. While the commons began their walk home, talking 
+of the day's jousts and the matches to come on the morrow, the court moved to the riverside to begin the 
+feast. Six monstrous huge aurochs had been roasting for hours, turning slowly on wooden spits while 
+kitchen boys basted them with butter and herbs until the meat crackled and spit. Tables and benches had 
+been raised outside the pavilions, piled high with sweetgrass and strawberries and fresh-baked bread. 
+Sansa and Septa Mordane were given places of high honor, to the left of the raised dais where the king 
+himself sat beside his queen. When Prince Joffrey seated himself to her right, she felt her throat tighten. 
+He had not spoken a word to her since the awful thing had happened, and she had not dared to speak to 
+him. At first she thought she hated him for what they'd done to Lady, but after Sansa had wept her eyes 
+dry, she told herself that it had not been Joffrey's doing, not truly. The queen had done it; she was the one 
+to hate, her and Arya. Nothing bad would have happened except for Arya. 
+She could not hate Joffrey tonight. He was too beautiful to hate. He wore a deep blue doublet studded 
+with a double row of golden lion's heads, and around his brow a slim coronet made of gold and 
+sapphires. His hair was as bright as the metal. Sansa looked at him and trembled, afraid that he might 
+ignore her or, worse, turn hateful again and send her weeping from the table. 
+Instead Joffrey smiled and kissed her hand, handsome and gallant 
+as any prince in the songs, and said, "Ser Loras has a keen eye for beauty, sweet lady." 
+"He was too kind," she demurred, trying to remain modest and calm, though her heart was singing. "Ser 
+Loras is a true knight. Do you think he will win tomorrow, my lord?" 
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+"No," Jofftey said. "My dog will do for him, or perhaps my uncle Jaime. And in a few years, when I am 
+old enough to enter the lists, I shall do for them all." He raised his hand to summon a servant with a flagon 
+of iced surnmerwine, and poured her a cup. She looked anxiously at Septa Mordane, until Jofftey leaned 
+over and filled the septa's cup as well, so she nodded and thanked him graciously and said not another 
+word. 
+The servants kept the cups filled all night, yet afterward Sansa could not recall ever tasting the wine. She 
+needed no wine. She was drunk on the magic of the night, giddy with glamour, swept away by beauties 
+she had dreamt of all her life and never dared hope to know. Singers sat before the king's pavilion, filling 
+the dusk with music. A juggler kept a cascade of burning clubs spinning through the air. The king's own 
+fool, the pie-faced simpleton called Moon Boy, danced about on stilts, all in motley, making mock of 
+everyone with such deft cruelty that Sansa wondered if he was simple after all. Even Septa Mordane was 
+helpless before him; when he sang his little song about the High Septon, she laughed so hard she spilled 
+wine on herself. 
+And Joffrey was the soul of courtesy. He talked to Sansa all night, showering her with compliments, 
+making her laugh, sharing little bits of court gossip, explaining Moon Boy's japes. Sansa was so 
+captivated that she quite forgot all her courtesies and ignored Septa Mordane, seated to her left. 
+All the while the courses came and went. A thick soup of barley and venison. Salads of sweetgrass and 
+spinach and plums, sprinkled with crushed nuts. Snails in honey and garlic. Sansa had never eaten snails 
+before; Jofftey showed her how to get the snail out of the shell, and fed her the first sweet morsel himself. 
+Then came trout fresh from the river, baked in clay; her prince helped her crack open the hard casing to 
+expose the flaky white flesh within. And when the meat course was brought out, he served her himself, 
+slicing a queen's portion from the joint, smiling as he laid it on her plate. She could see from the way he 
+moved that his right arm was still troubling him, yet he uttered not a word of complaint. 
+Later came sweetbreads and pigeon pie and baked apples fragrant with cinnamon and lemon cakes 
+frosted in sugar, but by then Sansa was so stuffed that she could not manage more than two little lemon 
+cakes, as much as she loved them. She was wondering whether she might attempt a third when the king 
+began to shout. 
+King Robert had grown louder with each course. From time to time Sansa could hear him laughing or 
+roaring a command over the music and the clangor of plates and cutlery, but they were too far away for 
+her to make out his words. 
+Now everybody heard him. "No, " he thundered in a voice that drowned out all other speech. Sansa 
+was shocked to see the king on his feet, red of face, reeling. He had a goblet of wine in one hand, and he 
+was drunk as a man could be. "You do not tell me what to do, woman," he screamed at Queen Cersei. "I 
+am king here, do you understand? I rule here, and if I say that I will fight tomorrow, I will fight!" 
+Everyone was staring. Sansa saw Ser Barristan, and the king's brother Renly, and the short man who 
+had talked to her so oddly and touched her hair, but no one made a move to interfere. The queen's face 
+was a mask, so bloodless that it might have been sculpted from snow. She rose from the table, gathered 
+her skirts around her, and stormed off in silence, servants trailing behind. 
+Jaime Lannister put a hand on the king's shoulder, but the king shoved him away hard. Lannister 
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+stumbled and fell. The king guffawed. "The great knight. I can still knock you in the dirt. Remember that, 
+Kingslayer." He slapped his chest with the jeweled goblet, splashing wine all over his satin tunic. "Give 
+me my hammer and not a man in the realm can stand before me!" 
+Jaime Lannister rose and brushed himself off. "As you say, Your Grace." His voice was stiff. 
+Lord Renly came forward, smiling. "You've spilled your wine, Robert. Let me bring you a fresh goblet." 
+Sansa started as Joffrey laid his hand on her arm. "It grows late," the prince said. He had a queer look 
+on his face, as if he were not seeing her at all. "Do you need an escort back to the castle?" 
+"No," Sansa began. She looked for Septa Mordane, and was startled to find her with her head on the 
+table, snoring soft and ladylike snores. "I mean to say . . . yes, thank you, that would be most kind. I am 
+tired, and the way is so dark. I should be glad for some protection." 
+Joffrey called out, "Dog!" 
+Sandor Clegane seemed to take form out of the night, so quickly did he appear. He had exchanged his 
+armor for a red woolen tunic with a leather dog's head sewn on the front. The light of the torches made 
+his burned face shine a dull red. "Yes, Your Grace?" he said. 
+"Take my betrothed back to the castle, and see that no harm befalls 
+her," the prince told him brusquely. And without even a word of farewell, Joffrey strode off, leaving her 
+there. 
+Sansa could feel the Hound watching her. "Did you think Joff was going to take you himself?" He 
+laughed. He had a laugh like the snarling of dogs in a pit. "Small chance of that." He pulled her unresisting 
+to her feet. "Come, you're not the only one needs sleep. I've drunk too much, and I may need to kill my 
+brother tomorrow." He laughed again. 
+Suddenly terrified, Sansa pushed at Septa Mordane's shoulder, hoping to wake her, but she only snored 
+the louder. King Robert had stumbled off and half the benches were suddenly empty. The feast was over, 
+and the beautiful dream had ended with it. 
+The Hound snatched up a torch to light their way. Sansa followed close beside him. The ground was 
+rocky and uneven; the flickering light made it seem to shift and move beneath her. She kept her eyes 
+lowered, watching where she placed her feet. They walked among the pavilions, each with its banner and 
+its armor hung outside, the silence weighing heavier with every step. Sansa could not bear the sight of 
+him, he frightened her so, yet she had been raised in all the ways of courtesy. A true lady would not 
+notice his face, she told herself. "You rode gallantly today, Ser Sandor," she made herself say. 
+Sandor Clegane snarled at her. "Spare me your empty little compliments, girl . . . and your ser's. I am no 
+knight. I spit on them and their vows. My brother is a knight. Did you see him ride today?" 
+"Yes," Sansa whispered, trembling. "He was 
+"Gallant?" the Hound finished. 
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+He was mocking her, she realized. "No one could withstand him," she managed at last, proud of herself. 
+It was no lie. 
+Sandor Clegane stopped suddenly in the middle of a dark and empty field. She had no choice but to 
+stop beside him. "Some septa trained you well. You're like one of those birds from the Summer Isles, 
+aren't you? A pretty little talking -bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite." 
+"That's unkind." Sansa could feel her heart fluttering in her chest. "You're frightening me. I want to go 
+now." 
+"No one could withstand him, " the Hound rasped. "That's truth enough. No one could ever withstand 
+Gregor. That boy today, his second joust, oh, that was a pretty bit of business. You saw that, did you? 
+Fool boy, he had no business riding in this company. No money, no squire, no one to help him with that 
+armor. That gorget wasn't fastened proper. You think Gregor didn't notice that? You think Ser Gregor's 
+lance rode up by chance, do you? Pretty little talking girl, you 
+believe that, you're empty-headed as a bird for true. Gregor's lance goes where Gregor wants it to go. 
+Look at me. Look at me!" Sandor Clegane put a huge hand under her chin and forced her face up. He 
+squatted in front of her, and moved the torch close. "There's a pretty for you. Take a good long stare. 
+You know you want to. I've watched you turning away all the way down the kingsroad. Piss on that. 
+Take your look." 
+His fingers held her jaw as hard as an iron trap. His eyes watched hers. Drunken eyes, sullen with anger. 
+She had to look. 
+The right side of his face was gaunt, with sharp cheekbones and a grey eye beneath a heavy brow. His 
+nose was large and hooked, his hair thin, dark. He wore it long and brushed it sideways, because no hair 
+grew on the other side of that face. 
+The left side of his face was a ruin. His ear had been burned away; there was nothing left but a hole. His 
+eye was still good, but all around it was a twisted mass of scar, slick black flesh hard as leather, pocked 
+with craters and fissured by deep cracks that gleamed red and wet when he moved. Down by his jaw, 
+you could see a hint of bone where the flesh had been seared away. 
+Sansa began to cry. He let go of her then, and snuffed out the torch in the dirt. "No pretty words for 
+that, girl? No little compliment the septa taught you?" When there was no answer, he continued. "Most of 
+them, they think it was some battle. A siege, a burning tower, an enemy with a torch. One fool asked if it 
+was dragonsbreath." His laugh was softer this time, but just as bitter. "I'll tell you what it was, girl," he 
+said, a voice from the night, a shadow leaning so close now that she could smell the sour stench of wine 
+on his breath. "I was younger than you, six, maybe seven. A woodcarver set up shop in the village under 
+my father's keep, and to buy favor he sent us gifts. The old man made marvelous toys. I don't remember 
+what I got, but it was Gregor's gift I wanted. A wooden knight, all painted up, every joint pegged 
+separate and fixed with strings, so you could make him fight. Gregor is five years older than me, the toy 
+was nothing to him, he was already a squire, near six foot tall and muscled like an ox. So I took his 
+knight, but there was no joy to it, I tell you. I was scared all the while, and true enough, he found me. 
+There was a brazier in the room. Gregor never said a word, just picked me up under his arm and shoved 
+the side of my face down in the burning coals and held me there while I screamed and screamed. You 
+saw how strong he is. Even then, it took three grown men to drag him off me. The septons preach about 
+the seven hells. What do they know? Only a man who's been burned knows what hell is truly like. 
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+268 
+GEORGE R.R. MARTIN 
+"My father told everyone my bedding had caught fire, and our maester gave me ointments. Ointments! 
+Gregor got his ointments too. Four years later, they anointed him with the seven oils and he recited his 
+knightly vows and Rhaegar Targaryen tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Arise, Ser Gregor.' " 
+The rasping voice trailed off. He squatted silently before her, a hulking black shape shrouded in the night, 
+hidden from her eyes. Sansa could hear his ragged breathing. She was sad for him, she realized. 
+Somehow, the fear had gone away. 
+The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him 
+now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. "He was no true knight," she 
+whispered to him. 
+The Hound threw back his head and roared. Sansa stumbled back, away from him, but he caught her 
+arm. "No," he growled at her, "no, little bird, he was no true knight." 
+The rest of the way into the city, Sandor Clegane said not a word. He led her to where the carts were 
+waiting, told a driver to take them back to the Red Keep, and climbed in after her. They rode in silence 
+through the King's Gate and up torchlit city streets. He opened the postern door and led her into the 
+castle, his burned face twitching and his eyes brooding, and he was one step behind her as they climbed 
+the tower stairs. He took her safe all the way to the corridor outside her bedchamber. 
+"Thank you, my lord," Sansa said meekly. 
+The Hound caught her by the arm and leaned close. "The things I told you tonight," he said, his voice 
+sounding even rougher than usual. "If you ever tell Joffrey.... your sister, your father. . . any of them . . ." 
+"I won't," Sansa whispered. "I promise." 
+It was not enough. "If you ever tell anyone," he finished, "I'll kill you." 
+EDDARD 
+"I stood last vigil for him myself," Ser Barristan Selmy said as they looked down at the body in the back 
+of the cart. "He had no one else. A mother in the Vale, I am told." 
+In the pale dawn light, the young knight looked as though he were sleeping. He had not been handsome, 
+but death had smoothed his rough-hewn features and the silent sisters had dressed him in his best velvet 
+tunic, with a high collar to cover the ruin the lance had made of his throat. Eddard Stark looked at his 
+face, and wondered if it had been for his sake that the boy had died. Slain by a Lannister bannerman 
+before Ned could speak to him; could that be mere happenstance? He supposed he would never know. 
+"Hugh was Jon Arryn's squire for four years," Selmy went on. "The king knighted him before he rode 
+north, in Jon's memory. The lad wanted it desperately, yet I fear he was not ready." 
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+Ned had slept badly last night and he felt tired beyond his years. "None of us is ever ready," he said. 
+"For knighthood?" 
+"For death." Gently Ned covered the boy with his cloak, a bloodstained bit of blue bordered in crescent 
+moons. When his mother asked why her son was dead, he reflected bitterly, they would tell her he had 
+fought to honor the King's Hand, Eddard Stark. "This was needless. War should not be a game." Ned 
+turned to the woman beside 
+the cart, shrouded in grey, face hidden but for her eyes. The silent sisters prepared men for the grave, 
+and it was ill fortune to look on the face of death. "Send his armor home to the Vale. The mother will 
+want to have it." 
+"It is worth a fair piece of silver," Ser Barristan said. "The boy had it forged special for the tourney. Plain 
+work, but good. I do not know if he had finished paying the smith." 
+"He paid yesterday, my lord, and he paid dearly," Ned replied. And to the silent sister he said, "Send the 
+mother the armor. I will deal with this smith." She bowed her head. 
+Afterward Ser Barristan walked with Ned to the king's pavilion. The camp was beginning to stir. Fat 
+sausages sizzled and spit over firepits, spicing the air with the scents of garlic and pepper. Young squires 
+hurried about on errands as their masters woke, yawning and stretching, to meet the day. A serving man 
+with a goose under his arm bent his knee when he caught sight of them. "NI'lords," he muttered as the 
+goose honked and pecked at his fingers. The shields displayed outside each tent heralded its occupant: 
+the silver eagle of Seagard, Bryce Caron's field of nightingales, a cluster of grapes for the Redwynes, 
+brindled boar, red ox, burning tree, white ram, triple spiral, purple unicorn, dancing maiden, blackadder, 
+twin towers, horned owl, and last the pure white blazons of the Kingsguard, shining like the dawn. 
+"The king means to fight in the melee today," Ser Barristan said as they were passing Ser Meryn's shield, 
+its paint sullied by a deep gash where Loras Tyrell's lance had scarred the wood as he drove him from his 
+saddle. 
+"Yes," Ned said grimly. Jory had woken him last night to bring him that news. Small wonder he had slept 
+so badly. 
+Ser Barristan's look was troubled. "They say night's beauties fade at dawn, and the children of wine are 
+oft disowned in the morning light." 
+"They say so," Ned agreed, "but not of Robert." Other men might reconsider words spoken in drunken 
+bravado, but Robert Baratheon would remember and, remembering, would never back down. 
+The king's pavilion was close by the water, and the morning mists off the river had wreathed it in wisps 
+of grey. It was all of golden silk, the largest and grandest structure in the camp. Outside the entrance, 
+Robert's warhammer was displayed beside an immense iron shield blazoned with the crowned stag of 
+House Baratheon. 
+Ned had hoped to discover the king still abed in a wine-soaked sleep, but luck was not with him. They 
+found Robert drinking beer from a polished horn and roaring his displeasure at two young squires who 
+were trying to buckle him into his armor. "Your Grace," one was 
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+saying, almost in tears, "it's made too small, it won't go." He fumbled, and the gorget he was trying to fit 
+around Robert's thick neck tumbled to the ground. 
+"Seven hells!" Robert swore. "Do I have to do it myself? Piss on the both of you. Pick it up. Don't just 
+stand there gaping, Lance], pick it up!" The lad jumped, and the king noticed his company. "Look at 
+these oafs, Ned. My wife insisted I take these two to squire for me, and they're worse than useless. Can't 
+even put a man's armor on him properly. Squires, they say. I say they're swineherds dressed up in silk." 
+Ned only needed a glance to understand the difficulty. "The boys are not at fault," he told the king. 
+"You're too fat for your armor, Robert." 
+Robert Baratheon took a long swallow of beer, tossed the empty horn onto his sleeping furs, wiped his 
+mouth with the back of his hand, and said darkly, "Fat? Fat, is it? Is that how you speak to your king?" 
+He let go his laughter, sudden as a storm. "Ah, damn you, Ned, why are you always right?" 
+The squires smiled nervously until the king turned on them. "You. Yes, both of you. You heard the 
+Hand. The king is too fat for his armor. Go find Ser Aron Santagar. Tell him I need the breastplate 
+stretcher. Now! What are you waiting for?" 
+The boys tripped over each other in their haste to be quit of the tent. Robert managed to keep a stern 
+face until they were gone. Then he dropped back into a chair, shaking with laughter. 
+Ser Barristan Selmy chuckled with him. Even Eddard Stark managed a smile. Always, though, the 
+graver thoughts crept in. He could not help taking note of the two squires: handsome boys, fair and well 
+made. One was Sansa's age, with long golden curls; the other perhaps fifteen, sandy-haired, with a wisp 
+of a mustache and the emerald-green eyes of the queen. 
+"Ah, I wish I could be there to see Santagar's face," Robert said. "I hope he'll have the wit to send them 
+to someone else. We ought to keep them running all day!" 
+"Those boys," Ned asked him. "Lannisters?" 
+Robert nodded, wiping tears from his eyes. "Cousins. Sons of Lord Tywin's brother. One of the dead 
+ones. Or perhaps the live one, now that I come to think on it. I don't recall. My wife comes from a very 
+large family, Ned." 
+A very ambitious family, Ned thought. He had nothing against the squires, but it troubled him to see 
+Robert surrounded by the queen's kin, waking and sleeping. The Lannister appetite for offices and honors 
+seemed to know no bounds. "The talk is you and the queen had angry words last night." 
+The mirth curdled on Robert's face. "The woman tried to forbid me to fight in the melee. She's sulking in 
+the castle now, damn her. Your sister would never have shamed me like that." 
+"You never knew Lyanna as I did, Robert," Ned told him. "You saw her beauty, but not the iron 
+underneath. She would have told you that you have no business in the melee." 
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+"You too?" The king frowned. "You are a sour man, Stark. Too long in the north, all the juices have 
+frozen inside you. Well, mine are still running." He slapped his chest to prove it. 
+"You are the king," Ned reminded him. 
+"I sit on the damn iron seat when I must. Does that mean I don't have the same hungers as other men? A 
+bit of wine now and again, a girl squealing in bed, the feel of a horse between my legs? Seven hells, Ned, 
+I want to hit someone." 
+Ser Barristan Selmy spoke up. "Your Grace," he said, "it is not seemly that the king should ride into the 
+melee. It would not be a fair contest. Who would dare strike you?" 
+Robert seemed honestly taken aback. "Why, all of them, damn it. If they can. And the last man left 
+standing . . ." 
+". . . will be you," Ned finished. He saw at once that Selmy had hit the mark. The dangers of the melee 
+were only a savor to Robert, but this touched on his pride. "Ser Barristan is right. There's not a man in 
+the Seven Kingdoms who would dare risk your displeasure by hurting 
+YOU." 
+The king rose to his feet, his face flushed. "Are you telling me those prancing cravens will let me win?" 
+"For a certainty," Ned said, and Ser Barristan Selmy bowed his head in silent accord. 
+For a moment Robert was so angry he could not speak. He strode across the tent, whirled, strode back, 
+his face dark and angry. He snatched up his breastplate from the ground and threw it at Barristan Selmy 
+in a wordless fury. Selmy dodged. "Get out," the king said then, coldly. "Get out before I kill you." 
+Ser Barristan left quickly. Ned was about to follow when the king called out again. "Not you, Ned." 
+Ned turned back. Robert took up his horn again, filled it with beer from a barrel in the corner, and thrust 
+it at Ned. "Drink," he said brusquely. 
+"I've no thirst-" 
+"Diink. Your king commands it." 
+Ned took the horn and drank. The beer was black and thick, so strong it stung the eyes. 
+Robert sat down again. "Damn you, Ned Stark. You and Jon Arryn, I loved you both. What have you 
+done to me? You were the one should have been king, you or Jon." 
+"You had the better claim, Your Grace." 
+"I told you to drink, not to argue. You made me king, you could at least have the courtesy to listen when 
+I talk, damn you. Look at me, Ned. Look at what kinging has done to me. Gods, too fat for my armor, 
+how did it ever come to this?" 
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+"Robert . . ." 
+"Drink and stay quiet, the king is talking. I swear to you, I was never so alive as when I was winning this 
+throne, or so dead as now that I've won it. And Cersei . . . I have Jon Arryn to thank for her. I had no 
+wish to marry after Lyanna was taken from me, but Jon said the realm needed an heir. Cersei Lannister 
+would be a good match, he told me, she would bind Lord Tywin to me should Viserys Targaryen ever 
+try to win back his father's throne." The king shook his head. "I loved that old man, I swear it, but now I 
+think he was a bigger fool than Moon Boy. Oh, Cersei is lovely to look at, truly, but cold . . . the way she 
+guards her cunt, you'd think she had all the gold of Casterly Rock between her legs. Here, give me that 
+beer if you won't drink it." He took the horn, upended it, belched, wiped his mouth. "I am sorry for your 
+girl, Ned. Truly. About the wolf, I mean. My son was lying, I'd stake my soul on it. My son . . . you love 
+your children, don't you?" 
+"With all my heart," Ned said. 
+"Let me tell you a secret, Ned. More than once, I have dreamed of giving up the crown. Take ship for 
+the Free Cities with my horse and my hammer, spend my time warring and whoring, that's what I was 
+made for. The sellsword king, how the singers would love me. You know what stops me? The thought of 
+Joffrey on the throne, with Cersei standing behind him whispering in his ear. My son. How could I have 
+made a son like that, Ned?" 
+"He's only a boy," Ned said awkwardly. He had small liking for Prince Joffrey, but he could hear the 
+pain in Robert's voice. "Have you forgotten how wild you were at his age?" 
+"It would not trouble me if the boy was wild, Ned. You don't know him as I do." He sighed and shook 
+his head. "Ah, perhaps you are right. Jon despaired of me often enough, yet I grew into a good king." 
+Robert looked at Ned and scowled at his silence. "You might speak up and agree now, you know." 
+"Your Grace . . ." Ned began, carefully. 
+Robert slapped Ned on the back. "Ah, say that I'm a better king than Aerys and be done with it. You 
+never could lie for love nor honor, Ned Stark. I'm still young, and now that you're here with me, things 
+will be different. We'll make this a reign to sing of, and damn the Lannisters to seven hells. I smell bacon. 
+Who do you think our champion will be today? Have you seen Mace Tyrell's boy? The Knight of 
+Flowers, they call him. Now there's a son any man would be proud to own to. Last tourney, he dumped 
+the Kingslayer on his golden rump, you ought to have seen the look on Cersei's face. I laughed till my 
+sides hurt. Renly says he has this sister, a maid of fourteen, lovely as a dawn . . ." 
+They broke their fast on black bread and boiled goose eggs and fish fried up with onions and bacon, at a 
+trestle table by the river's edge. The king's melancholy melted away with the morning mist, and before 
+long Robert was eating an orange and waxing fond about a morning at the Eyrie when they had been 
+boys. ". . . had given Jon a barrel of oranges, remember? Only the things had gone rotten, so I flung mine 
+across the table and hit Dacks right in the nose. You remember, Redfort's pock-faced squire? He tossed 
+one back at me, and before Jon could so much as fart, there were oranges flying across the High Hall in 
+every direction." He laughed uproariously, and even Ned smiled, remembering. 
+This was the boy he had grown up with, he thought; this was the Robert Baratheon he'd known and 
+loved. If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had 
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+murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if 
+Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on 
+the Trident. He could see it all so clearly. 
+That breakfast tasted better than anything Eddard Stark had eaten in a long time, and afterward his 
+smiles came easier and more often, until it was time for the tournament to resume. 
+Ned walked with the king to the jousting field. He had promised to watch the final tilts with Sansa; Septa 
+Mordane was ill today, and his daughter was determined not to miss the end of the jousting. As he saw 
+Robert to his place, he noted that Cersei Lannister had chosen not to appear; the place beside the king 
+was empty. That too gave Ned cause to hope. 
+He shouldered his way to where his daughter was seated and found her as the horns blew for the day's 
+first joust. Sansa was so engrossed she scarcely seemed to notice his arrival. 
+Sandor Clegane was the first rider to appear. He wore an olivegreen 
+cloak over his soot-grey armor. That, and his hound's-head helm, were his only concession to 
+ornament. 
+"A hundred golden dragons on the Kingslayer," Littlefinger announced loudly as Jaime Lannister entered 
+the lists, riding an elegant blood bay destrier. The horse wore a blanket of gilded ringmail, and Jaime 
+glittered from head to heel. Even his lance was fashioned from the golden wood of the Summer Isles. 
+"Done," Lord Renly shouted back. "The Hound has a hungry look about him this morning." 
+"Even hungry dogs know better than to bite the hand that feeds them," Littlefinger called dryly. 
+Sandor Clegane dropped his visor with an audible clang and took up his position. Ser Jaime tossed a 
+kiss to some woman in the commons, gently lowered his visor, and rode to the end of the lists. Both men 
+couched their lances. 
+Ned Stark would have loved nothing so well as to see them both lose, but Sansa was watching it all 
+moist-eyed and eager. The hastily erected gallery trembled as the horses broke into a gallop. The Hound 
+leaned forward as he rode, his lance rock steady, but Jaime shifted his seat deftly in the instant before 
+impact. Clegane's point was turned harmlessly against the golden shield with the lion blazon, while his 
+own hit square. Wood shattered, and the Hound reeled, fighting to keep his seat. Sansa gasped. A 
+ragged cheer went up from the commons. 
+"I wonder how I ought spend your money," Littlefinger called down to Lord Renly. 
+The Hound just managed to stay in his saddle. He jerked his mount around hard and rode back to the 
+lists for the second pass. Jaime Lannister tossed down his broken lance and snatched up a fresh one, 
+jesting with his squire. The Hound spurred forward at a hard gallop. Lannister rode to meet him. This 
+time, when Jaime shifted his seat, Sandor Clegane shifted with him. Both lances exploded, and by the 
+time the splinters had settled, a riderless blood bay was trotting off in search of grass while Ser Jaime 
+Lannister rolled in the dirt, golden and dented. 
+Sansa said, "I knew the Hound would win." 
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+Littlefinger overheard. "If you know who's going to win the second match, speak up now before Lord 
+Renly plucks me clean," he called to her. Ned smiled. 
+"A pity the Imp is not here with us," Lord Renly said. "I should have won twice as much." 
+Jaime Lannister was back on his feet, but his ornate lion helmet had been twisted around and dented in 
+his fall, and now he could not get it 
+off. The commons were hooting and pointing, the lords and ladies were trying to stifle their chuckles, and 
+failing, and over it all Ned could hear King Robert laughing, louder than anyone. Finally they had to lead 
+the Lion of Lannister off to a blacksmith, blind and stumbling. 
+By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the biggest man that 
+Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, 
+and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the 
+knight they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven 
+feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier 
+seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handle. 
+Unlike his brother, Ser Gregor did not live at court. He was a solitary man who seldom left his own 
+lands, but for wars and tourneys. He had been with Lord Tywin when King's Landing fell, a new-made 
+knight of seventeen years, even then distinguished by his size and his implacable ferocity. Some said it 
+had been Gregor who'd dashed the skull of the infant prince Aegon Targaryen against a wall, and 
+whispered that afterward he had raped the mother, the Dornish princess Elia, before putting her to the 
+sword. These things were not said in Gregor's hearing. 
+Ned Stark could not recall ever speaking to the man, though Gregor had ridden with them during Balon 
+Greyjoy's rebellion, one knight among thousands. He watched him with disquiet. Ned seldom put much 
+stock in gossip, but the things said of Ser Gregor were more than ominous. He was soon to be married 
+for the third time, and one heard dark whisperings about the deaths of his first two wives. It was said that 
+his keep was a grim place where servants disappeared unaccountably and even the dogs were afraid to 
+enter the hall. And there had been a sister who had died young under queer circumstances, and the fire 
+that had disfigured his brother, and the hunting accident that had killed their father. Gregor had inherited 
+the keep, the gold, and the family estates. His younger brother Sandor had left the same day to take 
+service with the Lannisters as a sworn sword, and it was said that he had never returned, not even to 
+visit. 
+When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa's 
+fervent whisper, "Oh, he's so beautifuC Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of 
+fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue 
+forget-me-nots. The commons realized 
+in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a 
+thousand throats. Across the boy's shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real 
+ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape. 
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+His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor's huge stallion 
+trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse 
+pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. "Father, don't let Ser Gregor hurt him," 
+she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him 
+about that as well. 
+"These are tourney lances," he told his daughter. "They make them to splinter on impact, so no one is 
+hurt." Yet he remembered the dead boy in the cart with his cloak of crescent moons, and the words were 
+raw in his throat. 
+Ser Gregor was having trouble controlling his horse. The stallion was screaming and pawing the ground, 
+shaking his head. The Mountain kicked at the animal savagely with an armored boot. The horse reared 
+and almost threw him. 
+The Knight of Flowers saluted the king, rode to the far end of the list, and couched his lance, ready. Ser 
+Gregor brought his animal to the line, fighting with the reins. And suddenly it began. The Mountain's 
+stallion broke in a hard gallop, plunging forward wildly, while the mare charged as smooth as a flow of 
+silk. Ser Gregor wrenched his shield into position, juggled with his lance, and all the while fought to hold 
+his unruly mount on a straight line, and suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his lance 
+just there, and in an eye blink the Mountain was failing. He was so huge that he took his horse down with 
+him in a tangle of steel and flesh. 
+Ned heard applause, cheers, whistles, shocked gasps, excited muttering, and over it all the rasping, 
+raucous laughter of the Hound. The Knight of Flowers reined up at the end of the lists. His lance was not 
+even broken. His sapphires winked in the sun as he raised his visor, smiling. The commons went mad for 
+him. 
+In the middle of the field, Ser Gregor Clegane disentangled himself and came boiling to his feet. He 
+wrenched off his helm and slammed it down onto the ground. His face was dark with fury and his hair fell 
+down into his eyes. "My sword," he shouted to his squire, and the boy ran it out to him. By then his 
+stallion was back on its feet as well. 
+Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the animal's neck. 
+Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The stallion went to its knees, screaming as it died. By then 
+Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword clutched in his fist. "Stop 
+him!" Ned shouted, but his words were lost in the roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was 
+crying. 
+It all happened so fast. The Knight of Flowers was shouting for his own sword as Ser Gregor knocked 
+his squire aside and made a grab for the reins of his horse. The mare scented blood and reared. Loras 
+Tyrell kept his seat, but barely. Ser Gregor swung his sword, a savage twohanded blow that took the 
+boy in the chest and knocked him from the saddle. The courser dashed away in panic as Ser Loras lay 
+stunned in the dirt. But as Gregor lifted his sword for the killing blow, a rasping voice warned, "Leave him 
+be, " and a steel-clad hand wrenched him away from the boy. 
+The Mountain pivoted in wordless fury, swinging his longsword in a killing arc with all his massive 
+strength behind it, but the Hound caught the blow and turned it, and for what seemed an eternity the two 
+brothers stood hammering at each other as a dazed Loras Tyrell was helped to safety. Thrice Ned saw 
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+Ser Gregor aim savage blows at the hound's-head helmet, yet not once did Sandor send a cut at his 
+brother's unprotected face. 
+It was the king's voice that put an end to it . . . the king's voice and twenty swords. Jon Arryn had told 
+them that a commander needs a good battlefield voice, and Robert had proved the truth of that on the 
+Trident. He used that voice now. "STOP THIS MADNESS, " he boomed, "IN THE NAME OF 
+YOUR KING!" 
+The Hound went to one knee. Ser Gregor's blow cut air, and at last he came to his senses. He dropped 
+his sword and glared at Robert, surrounded by his Kingsguard and a dozen other knights and guardsmen. 
+Wordlessly, he turned and strode off, shoving past Barristan Selmy. "Let him go," Robert said, and as 
+quickly as that, it was over. 
+"Is the Hound the champion now?" Sansa asked Ned. 
+"No," he told her. "There will be one final joust, between the Hound and the Knight of Flowers." 
+But Sansa had the right of it after all. A few moments later Ser Loras Tyrell walked back onto the field in 
+a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor Clegane, "I owe you my life. The day is yours, ser." 
+"I am no ser," the Hound replied, but he took the victory, and the champion's purse, and, for perhaps the 
+first time in his life, the love of the commons. They cheered him as he left the lists to return to his pavilion. 
+As Ned walked with Sansa to the archery field, Littlefinger and Lord Renly and some of the others fell in 
+with them. "Tyrell had to 
+know the mare was in heat," Littlefinger was saying. "I swear the boy planned the whole thing. Gregor 
+has always favored huge, ill-tempered stallions with more spirit than sense." The notion seemed to amuse 
+him. 
+It did not amuse Ser Barristan Selmy. "There is small honor in tricks," the old man said stiffly. 
+"Small honor and twenty thousand golds." Lord Renly smiled. 
+That afternoon a boy named Anguy, an unheralded commoner from the Dornish Marches, won the 
+archery competition, outshooting Ser Balon Swann and Jalabhar Xho at a hundred paces after all the 
+other bowmen had been eliminated at the shorter distances. Ned sent Alyn to seek him out and offer him 
+a position with the Hand's guard, but the boy was flush with wine and victory and riches undreamed of, 
+and he refused. 
+The melee went on for three hours. Near forty men took part, freeriders and hedge knights and 
+new-made squires in search of a reputation. They fought with blunted weapons in a chaos of mud and 
+blood, small troops fighting together and then turning on each other as alliances formed and fractured, 
+until only one man was left standing. The victor was the red priest, Thoros of Myr, a madman who 
+shaved his head and fought with a flaming sword. He had won melees before; the fire sword frightened 
+the mounts of the other riders, and nothing frightened Thoros. The final tally was three broken limbs, a 
+shattered collarbone, a dozen smashed fingers, two horses that had to be put down, and more cuts, 
+sprains, and bruises than anyone cared to count. Ned was desperately pleased that Robert had not taken 
+part. 
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+That night at the feast, Eddard Stark was more hopeful than he had been in a great while. Robert was in 
+high good humor, the Lannisters were nowhere to be seen, and even his daughters were behaving. Jory 
+brought Arya down to join them, and Sansa spoke to her sister pleasantly. "The tournament was 
+magnificent," she sighed. "You should have come. How was your dancing?" 
+"I'm sore all over," Arya reported happily, proudly displaying a huge purple bruise on her leg. 
+"You must be a terrible dancer," Sansa said doubtfully. 
+Later, while Sansa was off listening to a troupe of singers perform the complex round of interwoven 
+ballads called the "Dance of the Dragons," Ned inspected the bruise himself. "I hope Forel is not being 
+too hard on you," he said. 
+Arya stood on one leg. She was getting much better at that of late. "Syrio says that every hurt is a lesson, 
+and every lesson makes you better." 
+Ned frowned. The man Syrio Forel had come with an excellent reputation, and his flamboyant Braavosi 
+style was well suited to Arya's slender blade, yet still . . . a few days ago, she had been wandering 
+around with a swatch of black silk tied over her eyes. Syrio was teaching her to see with her ears and her 
+nose and her skin, she told him. Before that, he had her doing spins and back flips. "Arya, are you certain 
+you want to persist in this?" 
+She nodded. "Tomorrow we're going to catch cats." 
+"Cats." Ned sighed. "Perhaps it was a mistake to hire this Braavosi. If you like, I will ask Jory to take 
+over your lessons. Or I might have a quiet word with Ser Barristan. He was the finest sword in the Seven 
+Kingdoms in his youth." 
+"I don't want them," Arya said. "I want Syrio." 
+Ned ran his fingers through his hair. Any decent master-at-arms could give Arya the rudiments of 
+slash-and-parry without this nonsense of blindfolds, cartwheels, and hopping about on one leg, but he 
+knew his youngest daughter well enough to know there was no arguing with that stubborn jut of jaw. "As 
+you wish," he said. Surely she would grow tired of this soon. "Try to be careful." 
+"I will," she promised solemnly as she hopped smoothly from her right leg to her left. 
+Much later, after he had taken the girls back through the city and seen them both safe in bed, Sansa with 
+her dreams and Arya with her bruises, Ned ascended to his own chambers atop the Tower of the Hand. 
+The day had been warm and the room was close and stuffy. Ned went to the window and unfastened the 
+heavy shutters to let in the cool night air. Across the Great Yard, he noticed the flickering glow of 
+candlelight from Littlefinger's windows. The hour was well past midnight. Down by the river, the revels 
+were only now beginning to dwindle and die. 
+He took out the dagger and studied it. Littlefinger's blade, won by Tyrion Lannister in a tourney wager, 
+sent to slay Bran in his sleep. Why? Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? Why would anyone want 
+Bran dead? 
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+The dagger, Bran's fall, all of it was linked somehow to the murder of Jon Arryn, he could feel it in his 
+gut, but the truth of Jon's death remained as clouded to him as when he had started. Lord Stannis had not 
+returned to King's Landing for the tourney. Lysa Arryn held her silence behind the high walls of the Eyrie. 
+The squire was dead, and Jory was still searching the whorehouses. What did he have but Robert's 
+bastard? 
+That the armorer's sullen apprentice was the king's son, Ned had no 
+doubt. The Baratheon look was stamped on his face, in his jaw, his eyes, that black hair. Renly was too 
+young to have fathered a boy of that age, Stannis too cold and proud in his honor. Gendry had to be 
+Robert's. 
+Yet knowing all that, what had he learned? The king had other baseborn children scattered throughout 
+the Seven Kingdoms. He had openly acknowledged one of his bastards, a boy of Bran's age whose 
+mother was highborn. The lad was being fostered by Lord Renly's castellan at Storm's End. 
+Ned remembered Robert's first child as well, a daughter born in the Vale when Robert was scarcely 
+more than a boy himself. A sweet little girl; the young lord of Storm's End had doted on her. He used to 
+make daily visits to play with the babe, long after he had lost interest in the mother. Ned was often 
+dragged along for company, whether he willed it or not. The girl would be seventeen or eighteen now, he 
+realized; older than Robert had been when he fathered her. A strange thought. 
+Cersei could not have been pleased by her lord husband's by-blows, yet in the end it mattered little 
+whether the king had one bastard or a hundred. Law and custom gave the baseborn few rights. Gendry, 
+the girl in the Vale, the boy at Storm's End, none of them could threaten Robert's trueborn children . . . 
+His musings were ended by a soft rap on his door. "A man to see you, my lord," Harwin called. "He will 
+not give his name." 
+"Send him in," Ned said, wondering. 
+The visitor was a stout man in cracked, mud-caked boots and a heavy brown robe of the coarsest 
+roughspun, his features hidden by a cowl, his hands drawn up into voluminous sleeves. 
+"Who are you?" Ned asked. 
+"A friend," the cowled man said in a strange, low voice. "We must speak alone, Lord Stark." 
+Curiosity was stronger than caution. "Harwin, leave us," he commanded. Not until they were alone 
+behind closed doors did his visitor draw back his cowl. 
+"Lord Varys?" Ned said in astonishment. 
+"Lord Stark," Varys said politely, seating himself. "I wonder if I might trouble you for a drink?" 
+Ned filled two cups with surnmerwine and handed one to Varys. "I might have passed within a foot of 
+you and never recognized you," he said, incredulous. He had never seen the eunuch dress in anything but 
+silk and velvet and the richest damasks, and this man smelled of sweat instead of lilacs. 
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+"That was my dearest hope," Varys said. "It would not do if certain people learned that we had spoken 
+in private. The queen watches you closely. This wine is very choice. Thank you." 
+"How did you get past my other guards?" Ned asked. Porther and Cayn had been posted outside the 
+tower, and Alyn on the stairs. 
+"The Red Keep has ways known only to ghosts and spiders." Varys smiled apologetically. "I will not 
+keep you long, my lord. There are things you must know. You are the King's Hand, and the king is a 
+fool." The eunuch's cloying tones were gone; now his voice was thin and sharp as a whip. "Your friend, I 
+know, yet a fool nonetheless . . . and doomed, unless you save him. Today was a near thing. They had 
+hoped to kill him during the melee." 
+For a moment Ned was speechless with shock. "Who?" 
+Varys sipped his wine. "If I truly need to tell you that, you are a bigger fool than Robert and I am on the 
+wrong side." 
+"The Lannisters," Ned said. "The queen . . . no, I will not believe that, not even of Cersei. She asked him 
+not to fight!" 
+"She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the court. Tell me truly, do you 
+know any surer way to force King Robert into the melee? I ask you." 
+Ned had a sick feeling in his gut. The eunuch had hit upon a truth; tell Robert Baratheon he could not, 
+should not, or must not do a thing, and it was as good as done. "Even if he'd fought, who would have 
+dared to strike the king?" 
+Varys shrugged. "There were forty riders in the melee. The Lannisters have many friends. Amidst all that 
+chaos, with horses screaming and bones breaking and Thoros of Myr waving that absurd firesword of 
+his, who could name it murder if some chance blow felled His Grace?" He went to the flagon and refilled 
+his cup. "After the deed was done, the slayer would be beside himself with grief. I can almost hear him 
+weeping. So sad. Yet no doubt the gracious and compassionate widow would take pity, lift the poor 
+unfortunate to his feet, and bless him with a gentle kiss of forgiveness. Good King Joffrey would have no 
+choice but to pardon him." The eunuch stroked his cheek. "Or perhaps Cersei would let Ser Ilyn strike 
+off his head. Less risk for the Lannisters that way, though quite an unpleasant surprise for their little 
+friend." 
+Ned felt his anger rise. "You knew of this plot, and yet you did nothing." 
+"I command whisperers, not warriors." 
+"You might have come to me earlier." 
+"Oh, yes, I confess it. And you would have rushed straight to the king, yes? And when Robert heard of 
+his peril, what would he have done? I wonder." 
+Ned considered that. "He would have damned them all, and fought anyway, to show he did not fear 
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+them." 
+Varys spread his hands. "I will make another confession, Lord Eddard. I was curious to see what you 
+would do. Why not come to me? you ask, and I must answer, Why, because I did not trust you, my lord. 
+"You did not trust me?" Ned was frankly astonished. 
+"The Red Keep shelters two sorts of people, Lord Eddard," Varys said. "Those who are loyal to the 
+realm, and those who are loyal only to themselves. Until this morning, I could not say which you might be 
+. . . so I waited to see . . . and now I know, for a certainty." He smiled a plump tight little smile, and for a 
+moment his private face and public mask were one. "I begin to comprehend why the queen fears you so 
+much. Oh, yes I do." 
+"You are the one she ought to fear," Ned said. 
+"No. I am what I am. The king makes use of me, but it shames him. A most puissant warrior is our 
+Robert, and such a manly man has little love for sneaks and spies and eunuchs. If a day should come 
+when Cersei whispers, 'Kill that man,' Ilyn Payne will snick my head off in a twinkling, and who will 
+mourn poor Varys then? North or south, they sing no songs for spiders." He reached out and touched 
+Ned with a soft hand. "But you, Lord Stark . . . I think . . . no, I know . . . he would not kill you, not 
+even for his queen, and there may lie our salvation." 
+It was all too much. For a moment Eddard Stark wanted nothing so much as to return to Winterfell, to 
+the clean simplicity of the north, where the enemies were winter and the wildlings beyond the Wall. 
+"Surely Robert has other loyal friends," he protested. "His brothers, his-" 
+,,-wife?" Varys finished, with a smile that cut. "His brothers hate the Lannisters, true enough, but hating 
+the queen and loving the king are not quite the same thing, are they? Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand 
+Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger." 
+"The Kingsguard-" 
+"A paper shield," the eunuch said. "Try not to look so shocked, Lord Stark. Jaime Lannister is himself a 
+Sworn Brother of the White Swords, and we all know what his oath is worth. The days when men like 
+Ryam Redwyne and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight wore the 
+white cloak are gone to dust and song. Of these seven, only Ser Barristan Selmy is made of the true 
+steel, and Selmy is old. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn are the queen's creatures to the bone, and I have deep 
+suspicions of the others. No, my lord, when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true 
+friend Robert Baratheon will have." 
+"Robert must be told," Ned said. "If what you say is true, if even a part of it is true, the king must hear it 
+for himself." 
+"And what proof shall we lay before him? My words against theirs? My little birds against the queen and 
+the Kingslayer, against his brothers and his council, against the Wardens of East and West, against all the 
+might of Casterly Rock? Pray, send for Ser Ilyn directly, it will save us all some time. I know where that 
+road ends." 
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+"Yet if what you say is true, they will only bide their time and make another attempt." 
+"Indeed they will," said Varys, "and sooner rather than later, I do fear. You are making them most 
+anxious, Lord Eddard. But my little birds will be listening, and together we may be able to forestall them, 
+you and U' He rose and pulled up his cowl so his face was hidden once more. "Thank you for the wine. 
+We will speak again. When you see me next at council, be certain to treat me with your accustomed 
+contempt. You should not find it difficult." 
+He was at the door when Ned called, "Varys. " The eunuch turned back. "How did Jon Arryn die?" 
+"I wondered when you would get around to that." 
+"Tell me." 
+"The tears of Lys, they call it. A rare and costly thing, clear and sweet as water, and it leaves no trace. I 
+begged Lord Arryn to use a taster, in this very room I begged him, but he would not hear of it. Only one 
+who was less than a man would even think of such a thing, he told me." 
+Ned had to know the rest. "Who gave him the poison?" 
+"Some dear sweet friend who often shared meat and mead with him, no doubt. Oh, but which one? 
+There were many such. Lord Arryn was a kindly, trusting man." The eunuch sighed. "There was one boy. 
+All he was, he owed Jon Arryn, but when the widow fled to the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in 
+King's Landing and prospered. It always gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the world." The whip 
+was in his voice again, every word a stroke. "He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his 
+bright new armor, with those crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before you could 
+talk to him . . ." 
+Ned felt half-poisoned himself. "The squire," he said. "Ser Hugh." Wheels within wheels within wheels. 
+Ned's head was pounding. ""y? Why now? Jon Arryn had been Hand for fourteen years. What was he 
+doing that they had to kill him?" 
+"Asking questions," Varys said, slipping out the door. 
+TYRION 
+As he stood in the predawn chill watching Chiggen butcher his horse, Tyrion Lannister chalked up one 
+more debt owed the Starks. Steam rose from inside the carcass when the squat sellsword opened the 
+belly with his skinning knife. His hands moved deftly, with never a wasted cut; the work had to be done 
+quickly, before the stink of blood brought shadowcats down from the heights. 
+"None of us will go hungry tonight," Bronn said. He was near a shadow himself; bone thin and bone 
+hard, with black eyes and black hair and a stubble of beard. 
+"Some of us may," Tyrion told him. "I am not fond of eating horse. Particularly my horse." 
+"Meat is meat," Bronn said with a shrug. "The Dothraki like horse more than beef or pork." 
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+"Do you take me for a Dothraki?" Tyrion asked sourly. The Dothraki ate horse, in truth; they also left 
+deformed children out for the feral dogs who ran behind their khalasars. Dothraki customs had scant 
+appeal for him. 
+Chiggen sliced a thin strip of bloody meat off the carcass and held it up for inspection. "Want a taste, 
+dwarf?" 
+"My brother Jaime gave me that mare for my twenty-third name day," Tyrion said in a flat voice. 
+"Thank him for us, then. If you ever see him again." Chiggen grinned, showing yellow teeth, and 
+swallowed the raw meat in two bites. "Tastes well bred." 
+"Better if you fry it up with onions," Bronn put in. 
+Wordlessly, Tyrion limped away. The cold had settled deep in his bones, and his legs were so sore he 
+could scarcely walk. Perhaps his dead mare was the lucky one. He had hours more riding ahead of him, 
+followed by a few mouthfuls of food and a short, cold sleep on hard ground, and then another night of the 
+same, and another, and another, and the gods only knew how it would end. "Damn her," he muttered as 
+he struggled up the road to rejoin his captors, remembering, "damn her and all the Starks." 
+The memory was still bitter. One moment he'd been ordering supper, and an eye blink later he was 
+facing a room of armed men, with Jyck reaching for a sword and the fat innkeep shrieking, "No swords, 
+not here, please, m'lords." 
+Tyrion wrenched down Jyck's arm hurriedly, before he got them both hacked to pieces. "Where are 
+your courtesies, Jyck? Our good hostess said no swords. Do as she asks." He forced a smile that must 
+have looked as queasy as it felt. "You're making a sad mistake, Lady Stark. I had no part in any attack 
+on your son. On my honor-" 
+"Lannister honor," was all she said. She held up her hands for all the room to see. "His dagger left these 
+scars. The blade he sent to open my son's throat." 
+Tyrion felt the anger all around him, thick and smoky, fed by the deep cuts in the Stark woman's hands. 
+"Kill him," hissed some drunken slattern from the back, and other voices took up the call, faster than he 
+would have believed. Strangers all, friendly enough only a moment ago, and yet now they cried for his 
+blood like hounds on a trail. 
+Tyrion spoke up loudly, trying to keep the quaver from his voice. "If Lady Stark believes I have some 
+crime to answer for, I will go with her and answer for it." 
+It was the only possible course. Trying to cut their way out of this was a sure invitation to an early grave. 
+A good dozen swords had responded to the Stark woman's plea for help: the Harrenhal man, the three 
+Brackens, a pair of unsavory sellswords who looked as though they'd kill him as soon as spit, and some 
+fool field hands who doubtless had no idea what they were doing. Against that, what did Tyrion have? A 
+dagger at his belt, and two men. Jyck swung a fair enough sword, but Morrec scarcely counted; he was 
+part groom, part cook, part body servant, and no soldier. As for Yoren, whatever his feelings might have 
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+been, the black brothers were sworn to take no part in the quarrels of the realm. Yoren would do 
+nothing. 
+And indeed, the black brother stepped aside silently when the old knight by Catelyn Stark's side said, 
+"Take their weapons," and the sellsword Bronn stepped forward to pull the sword from Jyck's fingers 
+and relieve them all of their daggers. "Good," the old man said as the tension in the common room ebbed 
+palpably, "excellent." Tyrion recognized the gruff voice; Winterfell's master-at-arms, shorn of his 
+whiskers. 
+Scarlet-tinged spittle flew from the fat innkeep's mouth as she begged of Catelyn Stark, "Don't kill him 
+here!" 
+"Don't kill him anywhere," Tyrion urged. 
+"Take him somewheres else, no blood here, m1ady, I wants no high lordlin's quarrels." 
+"We are taking him back to Winterfell," she said, and Tyrion thought, Well, perhaps . . . By then he'd 
+had a moment to glance over the room and get a better idea of the situation. He was not altogether 
+displeased by what he saw. Oh, the Stark woman had been clever, no doubt of it. Force them to make a 
+public affirmation of the oaths sworn her father by the lords they served, and then call on them for succor, 
+and her a woman, yes, that was sweet. Yet her success was not as complete as she might have liked. 
+There were close to fifty in the common room by his rough count. Catelyn Stark's plea had roused a bare 
+dozen; the others looked confused, or frightened, or sullen. Only two of the Freys had stirred, Tyrion 
+noted, and they'd sat back down quick enough when their captain failed to move. He might have smiled if 
+he'd dared. 
+"Winterfell it is, then," he said instead. That was a long ride, as he could well attest, having just ridden it 
+the other way. So many things could happen along the way. "My father will wonder what has become of 
+me," he added, catching the eye of the swordsman who'd offered to yield up his room. "He'll pay a 
+handsome reward to any man who brings him word of what happened here today." Lord Tywin would 
+do no such thing, of course, but Tyrion would make up for it if he won free. 
+Ser Rodrik glanced at his lady, his look worried, as well it might be. "His men come with him," the old 
+knight announced. "And we'll thank the rest of you to stay quiet about what you've seen here." 
+It was all Tyrion could do not to laugh. Quiet? The old fool. Unless he took the whole inn, the word 
+would begin to spread the instant they were gone. The freerider with the gold coin in his pocket would fly 
+to Casterly Rock like an arrow. If not him, then someone else. Yoren 
+would carry the story south. That fool singer might make a lay of it. The Freys would report back to 
+their lord, and the gods only knew what he might do. Lord Walder Frey might be sworn to Riverrun, but 
+he was a cautious man who had lived a long time by making certain he was always on the winning side. 
+At the very least he would send his birds winging south to King's Landing, and he might well dare more 
+than that. 
+Catelyn Stark wasted no time. "We must ride at once. We'll want fresh mounts, and provisions for the 
+road. You men, know that you have the eternal gratitude of House Stark. If any of you choose to help us 
+guard our captives and get them safe to Winterfell, I promise you shall be well rewarded." That was all it 
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+took; the fools came rushing forward. Tyrion studied their faces; they would indeed be well rewarded, he 
+vowed to himself, but perhaps not quite as they imagined. 
+Yet even as they were bundling him outside, saddling the horses in the rain, and tying his hands with a 
+length of coarse rope, Tyrion Lannister was not truly afraid. They would never get him to Winterfell, he 
+would have given odds on that. Riders would be after them within the day, birds would take wing, and 
+surely one of the river lords would want to curry favor with his father enough to take a hand. Tyrion was 
+congratulating himself on his subtlety when someone pulled a hood down over his eyes and lifted him up 
+onto a saddle. 
+They set out through the rain at a hard gallop, and before long Tyrion's thighs were cramped and aching 
+and his butt throbbed with pain. Even when they were safely away from the inn, and Catelyn Stark 
+slowed them to a trot, it was a miserable pounding journey over rough ground, made worse by his 
+blindness. Every twist and turn put him in danger of falling off his horse. The hood muffled sound, so he 
+could not make out what was being said around him, and the rain soaked through the cloth and made it 
+cling to his face, until even breathing was a struggle. The rope chafed his wrists raw and seemed to grow 
+tighter as the night wore on. I was about to settle down to a warm fire and a roast fowl, and that 
+wretched singer had to open his mouth, he thought mournfully. The wretched singer had come along with 
+them. "There is a great song to be made from this, and I'm the one to make it," he told Catelyn Stark 
+when he announced his intention of riding with them to see how the "splendid adventure" turned out. 
+Tyrion wondered whether the boy would think the adventure quite so splendid once the Lannister riders 
+caught up with them. 
+The rain had finally stopped and dawn light was seeping through the wet cloth over his eyes when 
+Catelyn Stark gave the command to dismount. Rough hands pulled him down from his horse, untied his 
+wrists, and yanked the hood off his head. When he saw the narrow stony road, the foothills rising high 
+and wild all around them, and the jagged snowcapped peaks on the distant horizon, all the hope went out 
+of him in a rush. "This is the high road," he gasped, looking at Lady Stark with accusation. "The eastem 
+road. You said we were riding for Winterfell!" 
+Catelyn Stark favored him with the faintest of smiles. "Often and loudly," she agreed. "No doubt your 
+friends will ride that way when they come after us. I wish them good speed." 
+Even now, long days later, the memory filled him with a bitter rage. All his life Tyrion had prided himself 
+on his cunning, the only gift the gods had seen fit to give him, and yet this seven-times-damned shewolf 
+Catelyn Stark had outwitted him at every turn. The knowledge was more galling than the bare fact of his 
+abduction. 
+They stopped only as long as it took to feed and water the horses, and then they were off again. This 
+time Tyrion was spared the hood. After the second night they no longer bound his hands, and once they 
+had gained the heights they scarcely bothered to guard him at all. It seemed they did not fear his escape. 
+And why should they? Up here the land was harsh and wild, and the high road little more than a stony 
+track. If he did run, how far could he hope to go, alone and without provisions? The shadowcats would 
+make a morsel of him, and the clans that dwelt in the mountain fastnesses were brigands and murderers 
+who bowed to no law but the sword. 
+Yet still the Stark woman drove them forward relentlessly. He knew where they were bound. He had 
+known it since the moment they pulled off his hood. These mountains were the domain of House Arryn, 
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+and the late Hand's widow was a Tully, Catelyn Stark's sister . . . and no friend to the Lannisters. Tyrion 
+had known the Lady Lysa slightly during her years at King's Landing, and did not look forward to 
+renewing the acquaintance. 
+His captors were clustered around a stream a short ways down the high road. The horses had drunk 
+their fill of the icy cold water, and were grazing on clumps of brown grass that grew from clefts in the 
+rock. Jyck and Morrec huddled close, sullen and miserable. Mohor stood over them, leaning on his 
+spear and wearing a rounded iron cap that made him look as if he had a bowl on his head. Nearby, 
+Marillion the singer sat oiling his woodharp, complaining of what the damp was doing to his strings. 
+"We must have some rest, my lady," the hedge knight Ser Willis Wode was saying to Catelyn Stark as 
+Tyrion approached. He was Lady 
+Whent's man, stiff-necked and stolid, and the first to rise to aid Catelyn Stark back at the inn. 
+"Ser Willis speaks truly, my lady," Ser Rodrik said. "This is the third horse we have lost-" 
+"We will lose more than horses if we're overtaken by the Lannisters," she reminded them. Her face was 
+windburnt and gaunt, but it had lost none of its determination. 
+"Small chance of that here," Tyrion put in. 
+"The lady did not ask your views, dwarf," snapped Kurleket, a great fat oaf with short-cropped hair and 
+a pig's face. He was one of the Brackens, a man-at-arms in the service of Lord Jonos. Tyrion had made 
+a special effort to learn all their names, so he might thank them later for their tender treatment of him. A 
+Lannister always paid his debts. Kurleket would learn that someday, as would his friends Lharys and 
+Mohor, and the good Ser Willis, and the sellswords Bronn and Chiggen. He planned an especially sharp 
+lesson for Marillion, him of the woodharp and the sweet tenor voice, who was struggling so manfully to 
+rhyme imp with gimp and limp so he could make a song of this outrage. 
+"Let him speak," Lady Stark commanded. 
+Tyrion Lannister seated himself on a rock. "By now our pursuit is likely racing across the Neck, chasing 
+your lie up the kingsroad . . . assuming there is a pursuit, which is by no means certain. Oh, no doubt the 
+word has reached my father . . . but my father does not love me overmuch, and I am not at all sure that 
+he will bother to bestir himself." It was only half a lie; Lord Tywin Lannister cared not a fig for his 
+deformed son, but he tolerated no slights on the honor of his House. "This is a cruel land, Lady Stark. 
+You'll find no succor until you reach the Vale, and each mount you lose burdens the others all the more. 
+Worse, you risk losing me. I am small, and not strong, and if I die, then what's the point?" That was no lie 
+at all; Tyrion did not know how much longer he could endure this pace. 
+"It might be said that your death is the point, Lannister," Catelyn Stark replied. 
+"I think not," Tyrion said. "If you wanted me dead, you had only to say the word, and one of these 
+staunch friends of yours would gladly have given me a red smile." He looked at Kurleket, but the man 
+was too dim to taste the mockery. 
+"The Starks do not murder men in their beds." 
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+"Nor do I," he said.-I tell you again, I had no part in the attempt to kill your son." 
+"The assassin was armed with your dagger." 
+Tyrion felt the heat rise in him. "It was not my dagger," he insisted. "How many times must I swear to 
+that? Lady Stark, whatever you may believe of me, I am not a stupid man. Only a fool would arm a 
+common footpad with his own blade." 
+Just for a moment, he thought he saw a flicker of doubt in her eyes, but what she said was, "Why would 
+Petyr lie to me?" 
+"Why does a bear shit in the woods?" he demanded. "Because it is his nature. Lying comes as easily as 
+breathing to a man like Littlefinger. You ought to know that, you of all people." 
+She took a step toward him, her face tight. "And what does that mean, Lannister?" 
+Tyrion cocked his head. "Why, every man at court has heard him tell how he took your maidenhead, my 
+lady." 
+"That is a lie!" Catelyn Stark said. 
+"Oh, wicked little imp," Marillion said, shocked. 
+Kurleket drew his dirk, a vicious piece of black iron. "At your word, m'lady, I'll toss his lying tongue at 
+your feet." His pig eyes were wet with excitement at the prospect. 
+Catelyn Stark stared at Tyrion with a coldness on her face such as he had never seen. "Petyr Baelish 
+loved me once. He was only a boy. His passion was a tragedy for all of us, but it was real, and pure, and 
+nothing to be made mock of. He wanted my hand. That is the truth of the matter. You are truly an evil 
+man, Lannister." 
+"And you are truly a fool, Lady Stark. Littlefinger has never loved anyone but Littlefinger, and I promise 
+you that it is not your hand that he boasts of, it's those ripe breasts of yours, and that sweet mouth, and 
+the heat between your legs." 
+Kurleket grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head back in a hard jerk, baring his throat. Tyrion felt 
+the cold kiss of steel beneath his chin. "Shall I bleed him, my lady?" 
+"Kill me and the truth dies with me," Tyrion gasped. 
+"Let him talk," Catelyn Stark commanded. 
+Kurleket let go of Tyrion's hair, reluctantly. 
+Tyrion took a deep breath. "How did Littlefinger tell you I came by this dagger of his? Answer me that." 
+"You won it from him in a wager, during the tourney on Prince Joffrey's name day." 
+"When my brother Jaime was unhorsed by the Knight of Flowers, that was his story, no?" 
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+"It was," she admitted. A line creased her brow. 
+"Riders!" 
+The shriek came from the wind-carved ridge above them. Ser 
+Rodrik had sent Lharys scrambling up the rock face to watch the road while they took their rest. 
+For a long second, no one moved. Catelyn Stark was the first to react. "Ser Rodrik, Ser Willis, to 
+horse," she shouted. "Get the other mounts behind us. Mohor, guard the prisoners-" 
+"Arm us!" Tyrion sprang to his feet and seized her by the arm. "You will need every sword." 
+She knew he was right, Tyrion could see it. The mountain clans cared nothing for the enmities of the 
+great houses; they would slaughter Stark and Lannister with equal fervor, as they slaughtered each other. 
+They might spare Catelyn herself; she was still young enough to bear sons. Still, she hesitated. 
+"I hear them!" Ser Rodrik called out. Tyrion turned his head to listen, and there it was: hoofbeats, a 
+dozen horses or more, coming nearer. Suddenly everyone was moving, reaching for weapons, running to 
+their mounts. 
+Pebbles rained down around them as Lharys came springing and sliding down the ridge. He landed 
+breathless in front of Catelyn Stark, an ungainly-looking man with wild tufts of rust-colored hair sticking 
+out from under a conical steel cap. "Twenty men, maybe twenty-five," he said, breathless. "Milk Snakes 
+or Moon Brothers, by my guess. They must have eyes out, m1ady . . . hidden watchers . . . they know 
+we're here." 
+Ser Rodrik Cassel was already ahorse, a longsword in hand. Mohor crouched behind a boulder, both 
+hands on his iron-tipped spear, a dagger between his teeth. "You, singer," Ser Willis Wode called out. 
+"Help me with this breastplate." Marillion sat frozen, clutching his woodharp, his face as pale as milk, but 
+Tyrion's man Morrec bounded quickly to his feet and moved to help the knight with his armor. 
+Tyrion kept his grip on Catelyn Stark. "You have no choice," he told her. "Three of us, and a fourth man 
+wasted guarding us . . . four men can be the difference between life and death up here." 
+"Give me your word that you will put down your swords again after the fight is done." 
+"My word?" The hoofbeats were louder now. Tyrion grinned crookedly. "Oh, that you have, my lady . . 
+. on my honor as a Lannister." 
+For a moment he thought she would spit at him, but instead she snapped, "Arm them," and as quick as 
+that she was pulling away. Ser Rodrik tossed Jyck his sword and scabbard, and wheeled to meet the 
+foe. Morrec helped himself to a bow and quiver, and went to one knee beside the road. He was a better 
+archer than swordsman. And Bronn rode up to offer Tyrion a double-bladed axe. 
+"I have never fought with an axe." The weapon felt awkward and unfamiliar in his hands. It had a short 
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+haft, a heavy head, a nasty spike on top. 
+"Pretend you're splitting logs," Bronn said, drawing his longsword from the scabbard across his back. 
+He spat, and trotted off to form up beside Chiggen and Ser Rodrik. Ser Willis mounted up to join them, 
+fumbling with his helmet, a metal pot with a thin slit for his eyes and a long black silk plume. 
+"Logs don't bleed," Tyrion said to no one in particular. He felt naked without armor. He looked around 
+for a rock and ran over to where Marillion was hiding. "Move over." 
+"Go away!" the boy screamed back at him. "I'm a singer, I want no part of this fight!" 
+"What, lost your taste for adventure?" Tyrion kicked at the youth until he slid over, and not a moment 
+too soon. A heartbeat later, the riders were on them. 
+There were no heralds, no banners, no horns nor drums, only the twang of bowstrings as Morrec and 
+Lharys let fly, and suddenly the clansmen came thundering out of the dawn, lean dark men in boiled 
+leather and mismatched armor, faces hidden behind barred halffielms. In gloved hands were clutched all 
+manner of weapons: longswords and lances and sharpened scythes, spiked clubs and daggers and heavy 
+iron mauls. At their head rode a big man in a striped shadowskin cloak, armed with a two-handed 
+greatsword. 
+Ser Rodrik shouted "Winterfell!" and rode to meet him, with Bronn and Chiggen beside him, screaming 
+some wordless battle cry. Ser Willis Wode followed, swinging a spiked morningstar around his head. 
+"Harrenhal! Harrenhal!" he sang. Tyrion felt a sudden urge to leap up, brandish his axe, and boom out, 
+"Casterly Rock!" but the insanity passed quickly and he crouched down lower. 
+He heard the screams of frightened horses and the crash of metal on metal. Chiggen's sword raked 
+across the naked face of a mailed rider, and Bronn plunged through the clansmen like a whirlwind, cutting 
+down foes right and left. Ser Rodrik hammered at the big man in the shadowskin cloak, their horses 
+dancing round each other as they traded blow for blow. Jyck vaulted onto a horse and galloped 
+bareback into the fray. Tyrion saw an arrow sprout from the throat of the man in the shadowskin cloak. 
+When he opened his mouth to scream, only blood came out. By the time he fell, Ser Rodrik was fighting 
+someone else. 
+Suddenly Marillion shrieked, covering his head with his woodharp as a horse leapt over their rock. 
+Tyrion scrambled to his feet as the 
+rider turned to come back at them, hefting a spiked maul. Tyrion swung his axe with both hands. The 
+blade caught the charging horse in the throat with a meaty thunk, angling upward, and Tyrion almost lost 
+his grip as the animal screamed and collapsed. He managed to wrench the axe free and lurch clumsily out 
+of the way. Marillion was less fortunate. Horse and rider crashed to the ground in a tangle on top of the 
+singer. Tyrion danced back in while the brigand's leg was still pinned beneath his fallen mount, and buried 
+the axe in the man's neck, just above the shoulder blades. 
+As he struggled to yank the blade loose, he heard Marillion moaning under the bodies. "Someone help 
+me," the singer gasped. "Gods have mercy, I'm bleeding." 
+"I believe that's horse blood," Tyrion said. The singer's hand came crawling out from beneath the dead 
+animal, scrabbling in the dirt like a spider with five legs. Tyrion put his heel on the grasping fingers and felt 
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+a satisfying crunch. "Close your eyes and pretend you're dead," he advised the singer before he hefted 
+the axe and turned away. 
+After that, things ran together. The dawn was full of shouts and screams and heavy with the scent of 
+blood, and the world had turned to chaos. Arrows hissed past his ear and clattered off the rocks. He 
+saw Bronn unhorsed, fighting with a sword in each hand. Tyrion kept on the fringes of the fight, sliding 
+from rock to rock and darting out of the shadows to hew at the legs of passing horses. He found a 
+wounded clansman and left him dead, helping himself to the man's halfhelm. It fit too snugly, but Tyrion 
+was glad of any protection at all. Jyck was cut down from behind while he sliced at a man in front of him, 
+and later Tyrion stumbled over Kurleket's body. The pig face had been smashed in with a mace, but 
+Tyrion recognized the dirk as he plucked it from the man's dead fingers. He was sliding it through his belt 
+when he heard a woman's scream. 
+Catelyn Stark was trapped against the stone face of the mountain with three men around her, one still 
+mounted and the other two on foot. She had a dagger clutched awkwardly in her maimed hands, but her 
+back was to the rock now and they had penned her on three sides. Let them have the bitch, Tyrion 
+thought, and welcome to her, yet somehow he was moving. He caught the first man in the back of the 
+knee before they even knew he was there, and the heavy axehead split flesh and bone like rotten wood. 
+Logs that bleed, Tyrion thought inanely as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword, 
+lashed out with the axe, the man reeled backward . . . and Catelyn Stark stepped up behind him and 
+opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere and galloped off 
+suddenly. 
+Tyrion looked around. The enemy were all vanquished or vanished. Somehow the fighting had ended 
+when he wasn't looking. Dying horses and wounded men lay all around, screaming or moaning. To his 
+vast astonishment, he was not one of them. He opened his fingers and let the axe thunk to the ground. His 
+hands were sticky with blood. He could have sworn they had been fighting for half a day, but the sun 
+seemed scarcely to have moved at all. 
+"Your first battle?" Bronn asked later as he bent over Jyck's body, pulling off his boots. They were good 
+boots, as befit one of Lord Tywin's men; heavy leather, oiled and supple, much finer than what Bronn 
+was wearing. 
+Tyrion nodded. "My father will be so proud," he said. His legs were cramping so badly he could 
+scarcely stand. Odd, he had never once noticed the pain during the battle. 
+"You need a woman now," Bronn said with a glint in his black eyes. He shoved the boots into his 
+saddlebag. "Nothing like a woman after a man's been blooded, take my word." 
+Chiggen stopped looting the corpses of the brigands long enough to snort and lick his lips. 
+Tyrion glanced over to where Lady Stark was dressing Ser Rodrik's wounds. "I'm willing if she is," he 
+said. The freeriders broke into laughter, and Tyrion grinned and thought, There's a start. 
+Afterward he knelt by the stream and washed the blood off his face in water cold as ice. As he limped 
+back to the others, he glanced again at the slain. The dead clansmen were thin, ragged men, their horses 
+scrawny and undersized, with every rib showing. What weapons Bronn and Chiggen had left them were 
+none too impressive. Mauls, clubs, a scythe . . . He remembered the big man in the shadowskin cloak 
+who had dueled Ser Rodrik with a two-handed greatsword, but when he found his corpse sprawled on 
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+the stony ground, the man was not so big after all, the cloak was gone, and Tyrion saw that the blade 
+was badly notched, its cheap steel spotted with rust. Small wonder the clansmen had left nine bodies on 
+the ground. 
+They had only three dead; two of Lord Bracken's men-at-arms, Kurleket and Mohor, and his own man 
+Jyck, who had made such a bold show with his bareback charge. A fool to the end, Tyrion thought. 
+"Lady Stark, I urge you to press on, with all haste," Ser Willis Wode said, his eyes scanning the 
+ridgetops warily through the slit in his helm. "We drove them off for the moment, but they will not have 
+gone far." 
+"We must bury our dead, Ser Willis," she said. "These were brave men. I will not leave them to the 
+crows and shadowcats." 
+"This soil is too stony for digging," Ser Willis said. 
+"Then we shall gather stones for cairns." 
+"Gather all the stones you want," Bronn told her, "but do it without me or Chiggen. I've better things to 
+do than pile rocks on dead men . . . breathing, for one." He looked over the rest of the survivors. "Any of 
+you who hope to be alive come nightfall, ride with us." 
+"My lady, I fear he speaks the truth," Ser Rodrik said wearily. The old knight had been wounded in the 
+fight, a deep gash in his left arm and a spear thrust that grazed his neck, and he sounded his age. "If we 
+linger here, they will be on us again for a certainty, and we may not live through a second attack." 
+Tyrion could see the anger in Catelyn's face, but she had no choice. "May the gods forgive us, then. We 
+will ride at once." 
+There was no shortage of horses now. Tyrion moved his saddle to Jyck's spotted gelding, who looked 
+strong enough to last another three or four days at least. He was about to mount when Lharys stepped up 
+and said, "I'll take that dirk now, dwarf." 
+"Let him keep it." Catelyn Stark looked down from her horse. "And see that he has his axe back as well. 
+We may have need of it if we are attacked again." 
+"You have my thanks, lady," Tyrion said, mounting up. 
+"Save them," she said curtly. "I trust you no more than I did before." She was gone before he could 
+frame a reply. 
+Tyrion adjusted his stolen helm and took the axe from Bronn. He remembered how he had begun the 
+journey, with his wrists bound and a hood pulled down over his head, and decided that this was a definite 
+improvement. Lady Stark could keep her trust; so long as he could keep the axe, he would count himself 
+ahead in the game. 
+Ser Willis Wode led them out. Bronn took the rear, with Lady Stark safely in the middle, Ser Rodrik a 
+shadow beside her. Marillion kept throwing sullen looks back at Tyrion as they rode. The singer had 
+broken several ribs, his woodharp, and all four fingers on his playing hand, yet the day had not been an 
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+utter loss to him; somewhere he had acquired a magnificent shadowskin cloak, thick black fur slashed by 
+stripes of white. He huddled beneath its folds silently, and for once had nothing to say. 
+They heard the deep growls of shadowcats behind them before they had gone half a mile, and later the 
+wild snarling of the beasts fighting over the corpses they had left behind. Marillion grew visibly pale. 
+Tyrion trotted up beside him. "Craven, " he said, "rhymes nicely with raven." He kicked his horse and 
+moved past the singer, up to Ser Rodrik and Catelyn Stark. 
+She looked at him, lips pressed tightly together. 
+"As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted," Tyrion began, "there is a serious flaw in 
+Littlefinger's fable. Whatever you may believe of me, Lady Stark, I promise you this-1 never bet against 
+my family." 
+ARYA 
+The one-eared black tom arched his back and hissed at her. 
+Arya padded down the alley, balanced lightly on the balls of her bare feet, listening to the flutter of her 
+heart, breathing slow deep breaths. Quiet as a shadow, she told herself, light as a feather. The tomcat 
+watched her come, his eyes wary. 
+Catching cats was hard. Her hands were covered with half-healed scratches, and both knees were 
+scabbed over where she had scraped them raw in tumbles. At first even the cook's huge fat kitchen cat 
+had been able to elude her, but Syrio had kept her at it day and night. When she'd run to him with her 
+hands bleeding, he had said, "So slow? Be quicker, girl. Your enemies will give you more than 
+scratches." He had dabbed her wounds with Myrish fire, which burned so bad she had had to bite her lip 
+to keep from screaming. Then he sent her out after more cats. 
+The Red Keep was full of cats: lazy old cats dozing in the sun, coldeyed mousers twitching their tails, 
+quick little kittens with claws like needles, ladies' cats all combed and trusting, ragged shadows prowling 
+the midden heaps. One by one Arya had chased them down and snatched them up and brought them 
+proudly to Syrio Forel . . . all but this one, this one-eared black devil of a tomcat. "That's the real king of 
+this castle right there," one of the gold cloaks had told her. "Older than sin and twice as mean. One time, 
+the king was feasting the 
+queen's father, and that black bastard hopped up on the table and snatched a roast quail right out of 
+Lord Tywin's fingers. Robert laughed so hard he like to burst. You stay away from that one, child." 
+He had run her halfway across the castle; twice around the Tower of the Hand, across the inner bailey, 
+through the stables, down the serpentine steps, past the small kitchen and the pig yard and the barracks 
+of the gold cloaks, along the base of the river wall and up more steps and back and forth over Traitor's 
+Walk, and then down again and through a gate and around a well and in and out of strange buildings until 
+Arya didn't know where she was. 
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+
+Now at last she had him. High walls pressed close on either side, and ahead was a blank windowless 
+mass of stone. Quiet as a shadow, she repeated, sliding forward, light as a feather. 
+When she was three steps away from him, the tomcat bolted. Left, then right, he went; and right, then 
+left, went Arya, cutting off his escape. He hissed again and tried to dart between her legs. Quick as a 
+snake, she thought. Her hands closed around him. She hugged him to her chest, whirling and laughing 
+aloud as his claws raked at the front of her leather jerkin. Ever so fast, she kissed him right between the 
+eyes, and jerked her head back an instant before his claws would have found her face. The tomcat 
+yowled and spit. 
+"What's he doing to that cat?" 
+Startled, Arya dropped the cat and whirled toward the voice. The torn bounded off in the blink of an 
+eye. At the end of the alley stood a girl with a mass of golden curls, dressed as pretty as a doll in blue 
+satin. Beside her was a plump little blond boy with a prancing stag sewn in pearls across the front of his 
+doublet and a miniature sword at his belt. Princess Myrcella and Prince Tommen, Arya thought. A septa 
+as large as a draft horse hovered over them, and behind her two big men in crimson cloaks, Lannister 
+house guards. 
+"What were you doing to that cat, boy?" Myrcella asked again, sternly. To her brother she said, "He's a 
+ragged boy, isn't he? Look at him." She giggled. 
+"A ragged dirty smelly boy," Tommen agreed. 
+They don't know me, Arya realized. They don't even know I'm a girl. Small wonder; she was barefoot 
+and dirty, her hair tangled from the long run through the castle, clad in a jerkin ripped by cat claws and 
+brown roughspun pants hacked off above her scabby knees. You don't wear skirts and silks when you're 
+catching cats. Quickly she lowered her head and dropped to one knee. Maybe they wouldn't recognize 
+her. If they did, she would never hear the end of it. Septa Mordane 
+would be mortified, and Sansa would never speak to her again from the shame. 
+The old fat septa moved forward. "Boy, how did you come here? You have no business in this part of 
+the castle." 
+"You can't keep this sort out," one of the red cloaks said. "Like trying to keep out rats." 
+"Who do you belong to, boy?" the septa demanded. "Answer me. What's wrong with you, are you 
+mute?" 
+Arya's voice caught in her throat. If she answered, Tommen and Myrcella would know her for certain. 
+"Godwyn, bring him here," the septa said. The taller of the guardsmen started down the alley. 
+Panic gripped her throat like a giant's hand. Arya could not have spoken if her life had hung on it. Calm 
+as still water, she mouthed silently. 
+As Godwyn reached for her, Arya moved. Quick as a snake. She leaned to her left, letting his fingers 
+brush her arm, spinning around him, Smooth as summer silk. By the time he got himself turned, she was 
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+sprinting down the alley. Swift as a deer. The septa was screeching at her. Arya slid between legs as 
+thick and white as marble columns, bounded to her feet, bowled into Prince Tommen and hopped over 
+him when he sat down hard and said "Oof, " spun away from the second guard, and then she was past 
+them all, running full out. 
+She heard shouts, then pounding footsteps, closing behind her. She dropped and rolled. The red cloak 
+went careening past her, stumbling. Arya sprang back to her feet. She saw a window above her, high and 
+narrow, scarcely more than an arrow slit. Arya leapt, caught the sill, pulled herself up. She held her 
+breath as she wriggled through. Slippery as an eel. Dropping to the floor in front of a startled 
+scrubwoman, she hopped up, brushed the rushes off her clothes, and was off again, out the door and 
+along a long hall, down a stair, across a hidden courtyard, around a corner and over a wall and through a 
+low narrow window into a pitch-dark cellar. The sounds grew more and more distant behind her. 
+Arya was out of breath and quite thoroughly lost. She was in for it now if they had recognized her, but 
+she didn't think they had. She'd moved too fast. Swift as a deer. 
+She hunkered down in the dark against a damp stone wall and listened for the pursuit, but the only sound 
+was the beating of her own heart and a distant drip of water. Quiet as a shadow, she told herself. She 
+wondered where she was. When they had first come to King's Landing, she used to have bad dreams 
+about getting lost in the castle. 
+Father said the Red Keep was smaller than Winterfell, but in her dreams it had been immense, an 
+endless stone maze with walls that seemed to shift and change behind her. She would find herself 
+wandering down gloomy halls past faded tapestries, descending endless circular stairs, darting through 
+courtyards or over bridges, her shouts echoing unanswered. In some of the rooms the red stone walls 
+would seem to drip blood, and nowhere could she find a window. Sometimes she would hear her father's 
+voice, but always from a long way off, and no matter how hard she ran after it, it would grow fainter and 
+fainter, until it faded to nothing and Arya was alone in the dark. 
+It was very dark right now, she realized. She hugged her bare knees tight against her chest and shivered. 
+She would wait quietly and count to ten thousand. By then it would be safe for her to come creeping 
+back out and find her way home. 
+By the time she had reached eighty-seven, the room had begun to lighten as her eyes adjusted to the 
+blackness. Slowly the shapes around her took on form. Huge empty eyes stared at her hungrily through 
+the gloom, and dimly she saw the jagged shadows of long teeth. She had lost the count. She closed her 
+eyes and bit her lip and sent the fear away. When she looked again, the monsters would be gone. Would 
+never have been. She pretended that Syrio was beside her in the dark, whispering in her ear. Calm as still 
+water, she told herself. Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. She opened her eyes again. 
+The monsters were still there, but the fear was gone. 
+Arya got to her feet, moving warily. The heads were all around her. She touched one, curious, 
+wondering if it was real. Her fingertips brushed a massive jaw. It felt real enough. The bone was smooth 
+beneath her hand, cold and hard to the touch. She ran her fingers down a tooth, black and sharp, a 
+dagger made of darkness. It made her shiver. 
+"It's dead," she said aloud. "It's just a skull, it can't hurt me." Yet somehow the monster seemed to know 
+she was there. She could feel its empty eyes watching her through the gloom, and there was something in 
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+
+that dim, cavernous room that did not love her. She edged away from the skull and backed into a 
+second, larger than the first. For an instant she could feel its teeth digging into her shoulder, as if it wanted 
+a bite of her flesh. Arya whirled, felt leather catch and tear as a huge fang nipped at her jerkin, and then 
+she was running. Another skull loomed ahead, the biggest monster of all, but Arya did not even slow. She 
+leapt over a ridge of black teeth as tall as swords, dashed through hungry jaws, and threw herself against 
+the door. 
+Her hands found a heavy iron ring set in the wood, and she yanked at it. The door resisted a moment, 
+before it slowly began to swing 
+inward, with a creak so loud Arya was certain it could be heard all through the city. She opened the 
+door just far enough to slip through, into the hallway beyond. 
+If the room with the monsters had been dark, the hall was the blackest pit in the seven hells. Calm as still 
+water, Arya told herself, but even when she gave her eyes a moment to adjust, there was nothing to see 
+but the vague grey outline of the door she had come through. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, 
+felt the air move, saw nothing. She was blind. A water dancer sees with all her senses, she reminded 
+herself. She closed her eyes and steadied her breathing one two three, drank in the quiet, reached out 
+with her hands. 
+Her fingers brushed against rough unfinished stone to her left. She followed the wall, her hand skimming 
+along the surface, taking small gliding steps through the darkness. All halls lead somewhere. "ere there is 
+a way in, there is a way out. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Arya would not be afraid. It seemed as if she 
+had been walking a long ways when the wall ended abruptly and a draft of cold air blew past her cheek. 
+Loose hairs stirred faintly against her skin. 
+From somewhere far below her, she heard noises. The scrape of boots, the distant sound of voices. A 
+flickering light brushed the wall ever so faintly, and she saw that she stood at the top of a great black 
+well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth. Huge stones had been set into the curving 
+walls as steps, circling down and down, dark as the steps to hell that Old Nan used to tell them of. And 
+something was coming up out of the darkness, out of the bowels of the earth . . . 
+Arya peered over the edge and felt the cold black breath on her face. Far below, she saw the light of a 
+single torch, small as the flame of a candle. Two men, she made out. Their shadows writhed against the 
+sides of the well, tall as giants. She could hear their voices, echoing up the shaft. 
+"...found one bastard," one said. "The rest will come soon. A day, two days, a fortnight . . ." 
+"And when he learns the truth, what will he do?" a second voice asked in the liquid accents of the Free 
+Cities. 
+"The gods alone know," the first voice said. Arya could see a wisp of grey smoke drifting up off the 
+torch, writhing like a snake as it rose. "The fools tried to kill his son, and what's worse, they made a 
+mummer's farce of it. He's not a man to put that aside. I warn you, the wolf and lion will soon be at each 
+other's throats, whether we will it or no." 
+"Too soon, too soon," the voice with the accent complained. "What good is war now? We are not 
+ready. Delay." 
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+
+"As well bid me stop time. Do you take me for a wizard?" 
+The other chuckled. "No less." Flames licked at the cold air. The tall shadows were almost on top of 
+her. An instant later the man holding the torch climbed into her sight, his companion beside him. Arya 
+crept back away from the well, dropped to her stomach, and flattened herself against the wall. She held 
+her breath as the men reached the top of the steps. 
+"What would you have me do?" asked the torchbearer, a stout man in a leather half cape. Even in heavy 
+boots, his feet seemed to glide soundlessly over the ground. A round scarred face and a stubble of dark 
+beard showed under his steel cap, and he wore mail over boiled leather, and a dirk and shortsword at his 
+belt. It seemed to Arya there was something oddly familiar about him. 
+"If one Hand can die, why not a second?" replied the man with the accent and the forked yellow beard. 
+"You have danced the dance before, my friend." He was no one Arya had ever seen before, she was 
+certain of it. Grossly fat, yet he seemed to walk lightly, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet as a 
+water dancer might. His rings glimmered in the torchlight, red-gold and pale silver, crusted with rubies, 
+sapphires, slitted yellow tiger eyes. Every finger wore a ring; some had two. 
+"Before is not now, and this Hand is not the other," the scarred man said as they stepped out into the 
+hall. Still as stone, Arya told herself, quiet as a shadow. Blinded by the blaze of their own torch, they did 
+not see her pressed flat against the stone, only a few feet away. 
+"Perhaps so," the forked beard replied, pausing to catch his breath after the long climb. "Nonetheless, 
+we must have time. The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born. You 
+know how they are, these savages." 
+The man with the torch pushed at something. Arya heard a deep rumbling. A huge slab of rock, red in 
+the torchlight, slid down out of the ceiling with a resounding crash that almost made her cry out. Where 
+the entry to the well had been was nothing but stone, solid and unbroken. 
+"If he does not bestir himself soon, it may be too late," the stout man in the steel cap said. "This is no 
+longer a game for two players, if ever it was. Stannis Baratheon and Lysa Arryn have fled beyond my 
+reach, and the whispers say they are gathering swords around them. The Knight of Flowers writes 
+Highgarden, urging his lord father to send his sister to court. The girl is a maid of fourteen, sweet and 
+beautiful and tractable, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras intend that Robert should bed her, wed her, and 
+make a new queen. Littlefinger 
+... the gods only know what game Littlefinger is playing. Yet Lord Stark's the one who troubles my 
+sleep. He has the bastard, he has the book, and soon enough he'll have the truth. And now his wife has 
+abducted Tyrion Lannister, thanks to Littlefinger's meddling. Lord Tywin will take that for an outrage, 
+and Jaime has a queer affection for the Imp. If the Lannisters move north, that will bring the Tullys in as 
+well. Delay, you say. Make haste, I reply. Even the finest of jugglers cannot keep a hundred balls in the 
+air forever." 
+"You are more than a juggler, old friend. You are a true sorcerer. All I ask is that you work your magic 
+awhile longer." They started down the hall in the direction Arya had come, past the room with the 
+monsters. 
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+
+"What I can do, I will," the one with the torch said softly. "I must have gold, and another fifty birds." 
+She let them get a long way ahead, then went creeping after them. Quiet as a shadow. 
+"So many?" The voices were fainter as the light dwindled ahead of her. "The ones you need are hard to 
+find . . . so young, to know their letters . . . perhaps older . . . not die so easy . . ." 
+"No. The younger are safer . . . treat them gently if they kept their tongues the risk . . ." 
+Long after their voices had faded away, Arya could still see the light of the torch, a smoking star that bid 
+her follow. Twice it seemed to disappear, but she kept on straight, and both times she found herself at the 
+top of steep, narrow stairs, the torch glimmering far below her. She hurried after it, down and down. 
+Once she stumbled over a rock and fell against the wall, and her hand found raw earth supported by 
+timbers, whereas before the tunnel had been dressed stone. 
+She must have crept after them for miles. Finally they were gone, but there was no place to go but 
+forward. She found the wall again and followed, blind and lost, pretending that Nymeria was padding 
+along beside her in the darkness. At the end she was knee-deep in foulsmelling water, wishing she could 
+dance upon it as Syrio might have, and wondering if she'd ever see light again. It was full dark when 
+finally Arya emerged into the night air. 
+She found herself standing at the mouth of a sewer where it emptied into the river. She stank so badly 
+that she stripped right there, dropping her soiled clothing on the riverbank as she dove into the deep 
+black waters. She swam until she felt clean, and crawled out shivering. Some riders went past along the 
+river road as Arya was 
+washing her clothes, but if they saw the scrawny naked girl scrubbing her rags in the moonlight, they 
+took no notice. 
+She was miles from the castle, but from anywhere in King's Landing you needed only to look up to see 
+the Red Keep high on Aegon's Hill, so there was no danger of losing her way. Her clothes were almost 
+dry by the time she reached the gatehouse. The portcullis was down and the gates barred, so she turned 
+aside to a postern door. The gold cloaks who had the watch sneered when she told them to let her in. 
+"Off with you," one said. "The kitchen scraps are gone, and we'll have no begging after dark." 
+:, I'm not a beggar," she said. "I live here." 
+'I said, off with you. Do you need a clout on the ear to help your hearing?" 
+"I want to see my father." 
+The guards exchanged a glance. "I want to fuck the queen myself, for all the good it does me," the 
+younger one said. 
+The older scowled. "Who's this father of yours, boy, the city ratcatcher?" 
+"The Hand of the King," Arya told him. 
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+Both men laughed, but then the older one swung his fist at her, casually, as a man would swat a dog. 
+Arya saw the blow coming even before it began. She danced back out of the way, untouched. "I'm not a 
+boy," she spat at them. "I'm Arya Stark of Winterfell, and if you lay a hand on me my lord father will have 
+both your heads on spikes. If you don't believe me, fetch Jory Cassel or Vayon Poole from the Tower of 
+the Hand." She put her hands on her hips. "Now are you going to open the gate, or do you need a clout 
+on the ear to help your hearing?" 
+Her father was alone in the solar when Harwin and Fat Tom marched her in, an oil lamp glowing softly at 
+his elbow. He was bent over the biggest book Arya had ever seen, a great thick tome with cracked 
+yellow pages of crabbed script, bound between faded leather covers, but he closed it to listen to 
+Harwin's report. His face was stern as he sent the men away with thanks. 
+"You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. 
+"Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you 
+know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave." 
+"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they 
+turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. 
+I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing 
+you! Not the monsters, the two men. 
+They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you 
+had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the 
+bastard, I bet." 
+"Jon? Arya, what are you talking about? Who said this?" 
+"They did," she told him. "There was a fat one with rings and a forked yellow beard, and another in mail 
+and a steel cap, and the fat one said they had to delay but the other one told him he couldn't keep 
+juggling and the wolf and the lion were going to eat each other and it was a mummer's farce." She tried to 
+remember the rest. She hadn't quite understood everything she'd heard, and now it was all mixed up in 
+her head. "The fat one said the princess was with child. The one in the steel cap, he had the torch, he said 
+that they had to hurry. I think he was a wizard." 
+"A wizard," said Ned, unsmiling. "Did he have a long white beard and tall pointed hat speckled with 
+stars?" 
+"No! It wasn't like Old Nan's stories. He didn't look like a wizard, but the fat one said he was." 
+"I warn you, Arya, if you're spinning this thread of air-" 
+"No, I told you, it was in the dungeons, by the place with the secret wall. I was chasing cats, and well . . 
+." She screwed up her face. If she admitted knocking over Prince Tommen, he would be really angry 
+with her. ". . . well, I went in this window. That's where I found the monsters." 
+"Monsters and wizards," her father said. "It would seem you've had quite an adventure. These men you 
+heard, you say they spoke of juggling and mummery?" 
+"Yes," Arya admitted, "only-" 
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+"Arya, they were mummers," her father told her. "There must be a dozen troupes in King's Landing right 
+now, come to make some coin off the tourney crowds. I'm not certain what these two were doing in the 
+castle, but perhaps the king has asked for a show." 
+"No." She shook her head stubbornly. "They weren't-" 
+"You shouldn't be following people about and spying on them in any case. Nor do I cherish the notion of 
+my daughter climbing in strange windows after stray cats. Look at you, sweetling. Your arms are covered 
+with scratches. This has gone on long enough. Tell Syrio Forel that I want a word with hirn-" 
+He was interrupted by a short, sudden knock. "Lord Eddard, pardons," Desmond called out, opening 
+the door a crack, "but there's a black brother here begging audience. He says the matter is urgent. I 
+thought you would want to know." 
+"My door is always open to the Night's Watch," Father said. 
+Desmond ushered the man inside. He was stooped and ugly, with an unkempt beard and unwashed 
+clothes, yet Father greeted him pleasantly and asked his name. 
+"Yoren, as it please m1ord. My pardons for the hour." He bowed to Arya. "And this must be your son. 
+He has your look." 
+"I'm a girl," Arya said, exasperated. If the old man was down from the Wall, he must have come by way 
+of Winterfell. "Do you know my brothers?" she asked excitedly. "Robb and Bran are at Winterfell, and 
+Jon's on the Wall. Jon Snow, he's in the Night's Watch too, you must know him, he has a direwolf, a 
+white one with red eyes. Is Jon a ranger yet? I'm Arya Stark." The old man in his smelly black clothes 
+was looking at her oddly, but Arya could not seem to stop talking. "When you ride back to the Wall, 
+would you bring Jon a letter if I wrote one?" She wished Jon were here right now. He'd believe her about 
+the dungeons and the fat man with the forked beard and the wizard in the steel cap. 
+"My daughter often forgets her courtesies," Eddard Stark said with a faint smile that softened his words. 
+"I beg your forgiveness, Yoren. Did my brother Benjen send you?" 
+"No one sent me, m1ord, saving old Mormont. I'm here to find men for the Wall, and when Robert next 
+holds court, I'll bend the knee and cry our need, see if the king and his Hand have some scum in the 
+dungeons they'd be well rid of. You might say as Benjen Stark is why we're talking, though. His blood 
+ran black. Made him my brother as much as yours. It's for his sake I'm come. Rode hard, I did, near 
+killed my horse the way I drove her, but I left the others well behind." 
+"The others?" 
+Yoren spat. "Sellswords and freeriders and like trash. That inn was full o' them, and I saw them take the 
+scent. The scent of blood or the scent of gold, they smell the same in the end. Not all o' them made for 
+King's Landing, either. Some went galloping for Casterly Rock, and the Rock lies closer. Lord Tywin will 
+have gotten the word by now, you can count on it." 
+Father frowned. "What word is this?" 
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+Yoren eyed Arya. "One best spoken in private, m1ord, begging your pardons." 
+"As you say. Desmond, see my daughter to her chambers." He kissed her on the brow. "We'll finish our 
+talk on the morrow." 
+Arya stood rooted to the spot. "Nothing bad's happened to Jon, has it?" she asked Yoren. "Or Uncle 
+Benjen?" 
+"Well, as to Stark, I can't say. The Snow boy was well enough when I left the Wall. It's not them as 
+concerns me." 
+Desmond took her hand. "Come along, milady. You heard your lord father." 
+Arya had no choice but to go with him, wishing it had been Fat Tom. With Tom, she might have been 
+able to linger at the door on some excuse and hear what Yoren was saying, but Desmond was too 
+singleminded to trick. "How many guards does my father have?" she asked him as they descended to her 
+bedchamber. 
+"Here at King's Landing? Fifty." 
+"You wouldn't let anyone kill him, would you?" she asked. 
+Desmond laughed. "No fear on that count, little lady. Lord Eddard's guarded night and day. He'll come 
+to no harm." 
+"The Lannisters have more than fifty men," Arya pointed out. 
+"So they do, but every northerner is worth ten of these southron swords, so you can sleep easy." 
+"What if a wizard was sent to kill him?" 
+"Well, as to that," Desmond replied, drawing his longsword, "wizards die the same as other men, once 
+you cut their heads off." 
+EDDARD 
+"Robert, I beg of you," Ned pleaded, "hear what you are saying. You are talking of murdering a child." 
+"The whore is pregnant!" The king's fist slammed down on the council table loud as a thunderclap. "I 
+warned you this would happen, Ned. Back in the barrowlands, I warned you, but you did not care to 
+hear it. Well, you'll hear it now. I want them dead, mother and child both, and that fool Viserys as well. Is 
+that plain enough for you? I want them dead." 
+The other councillors were all doing their best to pretend that they were somewhere else. No doubt they 
+were wiser than he was. Eddard Stark had seldom felt quite so alone. "You will dishonor yourself forever 
+if you do this." 
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+"Then let it be on my head, so long as it is done. I am not so blind that I cannot see the shadow of the 
+axe when it is hanging over my own neck." 
+"There is no axe," Ned told his king. "Only the shadow of a shadow, twenty years removed . . . if it 
+exists at all." 
+"If?" Varys asked softly, wringing powdered hands together. "My lord, you wrong me. Would I bring 
+ties to king and council?" 
+Ned looked at the eunuch coldly. "You would bring us the whisperings of a traitor half a world away, my 
+lord. Perhaps Mormont is wrong. Perhaps he is lying." 
+"Ser Jorah would not dare deceive me," Varys said with a sly smile. "Rely on it, my lord. The princess is 
+with child." 
+"So you say. If you are wrong, we need not fear. If the girl miscarries, we need not fear. If she births a 
+daughter in place of a son, we need not fear. If the babe dies in infancy, we need not fear." 
+"But if it is a boy?" Robert insisted. "If he lives?" 
+"The narrow sea would still lie between us. I shall fear the Dothraki the day they teach their horses to run 
+on water." 
+The king took a swallow of wine and glowered at Ned across the council table. "So you would counsel 
+me to do nothing until the dragonspawn has landed his army on my shores, is that it?" 
+"This 'dragonspawn' is in his mother's belly," Ned said. "Even Aegon did no conquering until after he was 
+weaned." 
+"Gods! You are stubborn as an aurochs, Stark." The king looked around the council table. "Have the 
+rest of you mislaid your tongues? Will no one talk sense to this frozen-faced fool?" 
+Varys gave the king an unctuous smile and laid a soft hand on Ned's sleeve. "I understand your qualms, 
+Lord Eddard, truly I do. It gave me no joy to bring this grievous news to council. It is a terrible thing we 
+contemplate, a vile thing. Yet we who presume to rule must do vile things for the good of the realm, 
+howevermuch it pains us." 
+Lord Renly shrugged. "The matter seems simple enough to me. We ought to have had Viserys and his 
+sister killed years ago, but His Grace my brother made the mistake of listening to Jon Arryn." 
+"Mercy is never a mistake, Lord Renly," Ned replied. "On the Trident, Ser Barristan here cut down a 
+dozen good men, Robert's friends and mine. When they brought him to us, grievously wounded and near 
+death, Roose Bolton urged us to cut his throat, but your brother said, 'I will not kill a man for loyalty, nor 
+for fighting well,' and sent his own maester to tend Ser Barristan's wounds." He gave the king a long cool 
+look. "Would that man were here today." 
+Robert had shame enough to blush. "It was not the same," he complained. "Ser Barristan was a knight of 
+the Kingsguard." 
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+"Whereas Daenerys is a fourteen-year-old girl." Ned knew he was pushing this well past the point of 
+wisdom, yet he could not keep silent. "Robert, I ask you, what did we rise against Aerys Targaryen for, if 
+not to put an end to the murder of children?" 
+"To put an end to Targaryens!" the king growled. 
+"Your Grace, I never knew you to fear Rhaegar." Ned fought to keep the scorn out of his voice, and 
+failed. "Have the years so unmanned you that you tremble at the shadow of an unborn child?" 
+Robert purpled. "No more, Ned," he warned, pointing. "Not another word. Have you forgotten who is 
+king here?" 
+"No, Your Grace," Ned replied. "Have you?" 
+"Enough!" the king bellowed. "I am sick of talk. I'll be done with this, or be damned. What say you all?" 
+"She must be killed," Lord Renly declared. 
+"We have no choice," murmured Varys. "Sadly, sadly 
+Ser Barristan Selmy raised his pale blue eyes from the table and said, "Your Grace, there is honor in 
+facing an enemy on the battlefield, but none in killing him in his mother's womb. Forgive me, but I must 
+stand with Lord Eddard." 
+Grand Maester Pycelle cleared his throat, a process that seemed to take some minutes. "My order 
+serves the realm, not the ruler. Once I counseled King Aerys as loyally as I counsel King Robert now, so 
+I bear this girl child of his no ill will. Yet I ask you this-should war come again, how many soldiers will 
+die? How many towns will burn? How many children will be ripped from their mothers to perish on the 
+end of a spear?" He stroked his luxuriant white beard, infinitely sad, infinitely weary. "Is it not wiser, even 
+kinder, that Daenerys Targaryen should die now so that tens of thousands might live?" 
+"Kinder," Varys said. "Oh, well and truly spoken, Grand Maester. It is so true. Should the gods in their 
+caprice grant Daenerys Targaryen a son, the realm must bleed." 
+Littlefinger was the last. As Ned looked to him, Lord Petyr stifled a yawn. "When you find yourself in 
+bed with an ugly woman, the best thing to do is close your eyes and get on with it," he declared. "Waiting 
+won't make the maid any prettier. Kiss her and be done with it." 
+"Kiss her?" Ser Barristan repeated, aghast. 
+"A steel kiss," said Littlefinger. 
+Robert turned to face his Hand. "Well, there it is, Ned. You and Selmy stand alone on this matter. The 
+only question that remains is, who can we find to kill her?" 
+"Mormont craves a royal pardon," Lord Renly reminded them. 
+"Desperately," Varys said, "yet he craves life even more. By now, the princess nears Vaes Dothrak, 
+where it is death to draw a blade. If I told you what the Dothraki would do to the poor man who used 
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+one on a khaleesi, none of you would sleep tonight." He stroked a powdered cheek. "Now, poison . . . 
+the tears of Lys, let us say. Khal Drogo need never know it was not a natural death." 
+Grand Maester Pycelle's sleepy eyes flicked open. He squinted suspiciously at the eunuch. 
+"Poison is a coward's weapon," the king complained. 
+Ned had heard enough. "You send hired knives to kill a fourteenyear-old girl and still quibble about 
+honor?" He pushed back his chair and stood. "Do it yourself, Robert. The man who passes the sentence 
+should swing the sword. Look her in the eyes before you kill her. See her tears, hear her last words. You 
+owe her that much at least." 
+"Gods," the king swore, the word exploding out of him as if he could barely contain his fury. "You mean 
+it, damn you." He reached for the flagon of wine at his elbow, found it empty, and flung it away to shatter 
+against the wall. "I am out of wine and out of patience. Enough of this. Just have it done." 
+"I will not be part of murder, Robert. Do as you will, but do not ask me to fix my seal to it." 
+For a moment Robert did not seem to understand what Ned was saying. Defiance was not a dish he 
+tasted often. Slowly his face changed as comprehension came. His eyes narrowed and a flush crept up 
+his neck past the velvet collar. He pointed an angry finger at Ned. "You are the King's Hand, Lord Stark. 
+You will do as I command you, or I'll find me a Hand who will." 
+"I wish him every success." Ned unfastened the heavy clasp that clutched at the folds of his cloak, the 
+ornate silver hand that was his badge of office. He laid it on the table in front of the king, saddened by the 
+memory of the man who had pinned it on him, the friend he had loved. "I thought you a better man than 
+this, Robert. I thought we had made a nobler king." 
+Robert's face was purple. "Out, " he croaked, choking on his rage. "Out, damn you, I'm done with you. 
+What are you waiting for? Go, run back to Winterfell. And make certain I never look on your face again, 
+or I swear, I'll have your head on a spike!" 
+Ned bowed, and turned on his heel without another word. He could feel Robert's eyes on his back. As 
+he strode from the council chambers, the discussion resumed with scarcely a pause. "On Braavos there is 
+a society called the Faceless Men," Grand Maester Pycelle offered. 
+"Do you have any idea how costly they are?" Littlefinger complained. "You could hire an army of 
+common sellswords for half the price, and that's for a merchant. I don't dare think what they might ask 
+for a princess." 
+The closing of the door behind him silenced the voices. Ser Boros Blount was stationed outside the 
+chamber, wearing the long white cloak and armor of the Kingsguard. He gave Ned a quick, curious 
+glance from the corner of his eye, but asked no questions. 
+The day felt heavy and oppressive as he crossed the bailey back to the Tower of the Hand. He could 
+feel the threat of rain in the air. Ned 
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+would have welcomed it. It might have made him feel a trifle less unclean. When he reached his solar, he 
+summoned Vayon Poole. The steward came at once. "You sent for me, my lord Hand?" 
+"Hand no longer," Ned told him. "The king and I have quarreled. We shall be returning to Winterfell." 
+"I shall begin making arrangements at once, my lord. We will need a fortnight to ready everything for the 
+journey." 
+"We may not have a fortnight. We may not have a day. The king mentioned something about seeing my 
+head on a spike." Ned frowned. He did not truly believe the king would harm him, not Robert. He was 
+angry now, but once Ned was safely out of sight, his rage would cool as it always did. 
+Always? Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen. Fifteen years dead, 
+yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing notion . . . and there was the other matter, the 
+business with Catelyn and the dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night. That would come to light 
+soon, as sure as sunrise, and with the king in such a black fury . . . Robert might not care a fig for Tyrion 
+Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen might do. 
+"It might be safest if I went on ahead," he told Poole. "I will take my daughters and a few guardsmen. 
+The rest of you can follow when you are ready. Inform Jory, but tell no one else, and do nothing until the 
+girls and I have gone. The castle is full of eyes and ears, and I would rather my plans were not known." 
+"As you command, my lord." 
+When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left him no choice 
+that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have 
+left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he 
+returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep 
+quiet of the wolfswood at night. 
+And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert and his council of 
+cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked . . . or, worse, sell it to the Lannisters in 
+payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn's death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a few 
+pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that was no more than the spoor 
+of an animal on the forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there, 
+lurking, hidden, treacherous. 
+It struck him suddenly that he might return to Winterfell by sea. 
+Ned was no sailor, and ordinarily would have preferred the kingsroad, but if he took ship he could stop 
+at Dragonstone and speak with Stannis Baratheon. Pycelle had sent a raven off across the water, with a 
+polite letter from Ned requesting Lord Stannis to return to his seat on the small council. As yet, there had 
+been no reply, but the silence only deepened his suspicions. Lord Stannis shared the secret Jon Arryn 
+had died for, he was certain of it. The truth he sought might very well be waiting for him on the ancient 
+island fortress of House Targaryen. 
+And when you have it, what then? Some secrets are safer kept hidden. Some secrets are too dangerous 
+to share, even with those you love and trust. Ned slid the dagger that Catelyn had brought him out of the 
+sheath on his belt. The Imp's knife. Why would the dwarf want Bran dead? To silence him, surely. 
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+Another secret, or only a different strand of the same web? 
+Could Robert be part of it? He would not have thought so, but once he would not have thought Robert 
+could command the murder of women and children either. Catelyn had tried to warn him. You knew the 
+man, she had said. The king is a stranger to you. The sooner he was quit of King's Landing, the better. If 
+there was a ship sailing north on the morrow, it would be well to be on it. 
+He summoned Vayon Poole again and sent him to the docks to make inquiries, quietly but quickly. "Find 
+me a fast ship with a skilled captain," he told the steward. "I care nothing for the size of its cabins or the 
+quality of its appointments, so long as it is swift and safe. I wish to leave at once." 
+Poole had no sooner taken his leave than Tomard announced a visitor. "Lord Baelish to see you, 
+m'lord." 
+Ned was half-tempted to turn him away, but thought better of it. He was not free yet; until he was, he 
+must play their games. "Show him in, Tom." 
+Lord Petyr sauntered into the solar as if nothing had gone amiss that morning. He wore a slashed velvet 
+doublet in cream-and-silver, a grey silk cloak trimmed with black fox, and his customary mocking smile. 
+Ned greeted him coldly. "Might I ask the reason for this visit, Lord Baelish?" 
+"I won't detain you long, I'm on my way to dine with Lady Tanda. Lamprey pie and roast suckling pig. 
+She has some thought to wed me to her younger daughter, so her table is always astonishing. If truth be 
+told, I'd sooner marry the pig, but don't tell her. I do love lamprey pie." 
+"Don't let me keep you from your eels, my lord," Ned said with icy disdain. "At the moment, I cannot 
+think of anyone whose company I desire less than yours." 
+"Oh, I'm certain if you put your mind to it, you could come up with a few names. Varys, say. Cersei. Or 
+Robert. His Grace is most wroth with you. He went on about you at some length after you took your 
+leave of us this morning. The words insolence and ingratitude came into it frequently, I seem to recall." 
+Ned did not honor that with a reply. Nor did he offer his guest a seat, but Littlefinger took one anyway. 
+"After you stormed out, it was left to me to convince them not to hire the Faceless Men," he continued 
+blithely. "Instead Varys will quietly let it be known that we'll make a lord of whoever does in the 
+Targaryen girl." 
+Ned was disgusted. "So now we grant titles to assassins." 
+Littlefinger shrugged. "Titles are cheap. The Faceless Men are expensive. If truth be told, I did the 
+Targaryen girl more good than you with all your talk of honor. Let some sellsword drunk on visions of 
+lordship try to kill her. Likely he'll make a botch of it, and afterward the Dothraki will be on their guard. If 
+we'd sent a Faceless Man after her, she'd be as good as buried." 
+Ned frowned. "You sit in council and talk of ugly women and steel kisses, and now you expect me to 
+believe that you tried to protect the girl? How big a fool do you take me for?" 
+"Well, quite an enormous one, actually," said Littlefinger, laughing. 
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+"Do you always find murder so amusing, Lord Baelish?" 
+"It's not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it's you. You rule like a man dancing on rotten ice. I daresay 
+you will make a noble splash. I believe I heard the first crack this morning." 
+"The first and last," said Ned. "I've had my fill." 
+"When do you mean to return to Winterfell, my lord?" 
+"As soon as I can. What concern is that of yours?" 
+"None . . . but if perchance you're still here come evenfall, I'd be pleased to take you to this brothel your 
+man Jory has been searching for so ineffectually." Littlefinger smiled. "And I won't even tell the Lady 
+Catelyn." 
+CATELYN 
+"My lady, you should have sent word of your coming," Ser Donnel Waynwood told her as their horses 
+climbed the pass. "We would have sent an escort. The high road is not as safe as it once was, for a party 
+as small as yours." 
+"We learned that to our sorrow, Ser Donnel," Catelyn said. Sometimes she felt as though her heart had 
+turned to stone; six brave men had died to bring her this far, and she could not even find it in her to weep 
+for them. Even their names were fading. "The clansmen harried us day and night. We lost three men in the 
+first attack, and two more in the second, and Lannister's serving man died of a fever when his wounds 
+festered. When we heard your men approaching, I thought us doomed for certain." They had drawn up 
+for a last desperate fight, blades in hand and backs to the rock. The dwarf had been whetting the edge of 
+his axe and making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the riders carried before them, the 
+moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue and white. Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight. 
+"The clans have grown bolder since Lord Jon died," Ser Donnel said. He was a stocky youth of twenty 
+years, earnest and homely, with a wide nose and a shock of thick brown hair. "If it were up to me, I 
+would take a hundred men into the mountains, root them out of their fastnesses, and teach them some 
+sharp lessons, but your sister has 
+forbidden it. She would not even permit her knights to fight in the Hand's tourney. She wants all our 
+swords kept close to home, to defend the Vale . . . against what, no one is certain. Shadows, some say." 
+He looked at her anxiously, as if he had suddenly remembered who she was. "I hope I have not spoken 
+out of turn, my lady. I meant no offense." 
+"Frank talk does not offend me, Ser Donnel." Catelyn knew what her sister feared. Not shadows, 
+Lannisters, she thought to herself, glancing back to where the dwarf rode beside Bronn. The two of them 
+had grown thick as thieves since Chiggen had died. The little man was more cunning than she liked. 
+When they had entered the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless. What was he now? 
+Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk through his belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing 
+the shadowskin cloak he'd won dicing with the singer and the chainmail hauberk he'd taken off Chiggen's 
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+corpse. Two score men flanked the dwarf and the rest of her ragged band, knights and men-at-arms in 
+service to her sister Lysa and Jon Arryn's young son, and yet Tyrion betrayed no hint of fear. Could I be 
+wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the first time. Could he be innocent after all, of Bran and Jon Arryn 
+and all the rest? And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had died to bring him here. 
+Resolute, she pushed her doubts away. "When we reach your keep, I would take it kindly if you could 
+send for Maester Colemon at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds." More than once she had 
+feared the gallant old knight would not survive the journey. Toward the end he could scarcely sit his 
+horse, and Bronn had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not hear of it. They had tied 
+him in the saddle instead, and she had commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him. 
+Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. "The Lady Lysa has commanded the maester to remain at the 
+Eyrie at all times, to care for Lord Robert," he said. "We have a septon at the gate who tends to our 
+wounded. He can see to your man's hurts." 
+Catelyn had more faith in a maester's learning than a septon's prayers. She was about to say as much 
+when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of the mountains on either 
+side of them. Where the pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride abreast, 
+twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge of weathered grey stone that 
+arched above the road. Silent faces watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When 
+they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and his armor were 
+grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish, wrought in gold and 
+obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. "Who would pass the Bloody Gate?" he called. 
+"Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her companions," the young knight answered. 
+The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. "I thought the lady looked familiar. You are far from home, little 
+Cat." 
+"And you, Uncle," she said, smiling despite all she had been through. Hearing that hoarse, smoky voice 
+again took her back twenty years, to the days of her childhood. 
+"My home is at my back," he said gruffly. 
+"Your home is in my heart," Catelyn told him. "Take off your helm. I would look on your face again." 
+"The years have not improved it, I fear," Brynden Tully said, but when he lifted off the helm, Catelyn saw 
+that he lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had stolen the auburn from his hair and left 
+him only grey, but the smile was the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars, and the laughter in 
+his deep blue eyes. "Did Lysa know you were coming?" 
+"There was no time to send word ahead," Catelyn told him. The others were coming up behind her. "I 
+fear we ride before the storm, Uncle." 
+"May we enter the Vale?" Ser Donnel asked. The Waynwoods were ever ones for ceremony. 
+"In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, True Warden of the East, I bid 
+you enter freely, and charge you to keep his peace," Ser Brynden replied. "Come." 
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+And so she rode behind him, beneath the shadow of the Bloody Gate where a dozen armies had dashed 
+themselves to pieces in the Age of Heroes. On the far side of the stoneworks, the mountains opened up 
+suddenly upon a vista of green fields, blue sky, and snowcapped mountains that took her breath away. 
+The Vale of Arryn bathed in the morning light. 
+It stretched before them to the misty cast, a tranquil land of rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and 
+hundreds of small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by its sheltering peaks. 
+Wheat and corn and barley grew high in its fields, and even in Highgarden the pumpkins were no larger 
+nor the fruit any sweeter than here. They stood at the western end of the valley, where the high road 
+crested the last pass and began its winding descent to the bottomlands two miles below. The Vale was 
+narrow here, no more than a half day's ride across, and the northern mountains seemed so close that 
+Catelyn could almost reach out and touch them. Looming over them all was the jagged peak called the 
+Giant's Lance, a mountain that even mountains looked up to, its head lost in icy mists three and a half 
+miles above the valley floor. Over its massive western shoulder flowed the ghost torrent of Alyssa's 
+Tears. Even from this distance, Catelyn could make out the shining silver thread, bright against the dark 
+stone. 
+When her uncle saw that she had stopped, he moved his horse closer and pointed. "It's there, beside 
+Alyssa's Tears. All you can see from here is a flash of white every now and then, if you look hard and the 
+sun hits the walls just right." 
+Seven towers, Ned had told her, like white daggers thrust into the belly of the sky, so high you can stand 
+on the parapets and look down on the clouds. "How long a ride?" she asked. 
+"We can be at the mountain by evenfall," Uncle Brynden said, "but the climb will take another day." 
+Ser Rodrik Cassel spoke up from behind. "My lady," he said, "I fear I can go no farther today." His face 
+sagged beneath his ragged, newgrown whiskers, and he looked so weary Catelyn feared he might fall off 
+his horse. 
+"Nor should you," she said. "You have done all I could have asked of you, and a hundred times more. 
+My uncle will see me the rest of the way to the Eyrie. Lannister must come with me, but there is no 
+reason that you and the others should not rest here and recover your strength." 
+"We should be honored to have them to guest," Ser Donnel said with the grave courtesy of the young. 
+Beside Ser Rodrik, only Bronn, Ser Willis Wode, and Marillion the singer remained of the party that had 
+ridden with her from the inn by the crossroads. 
+"My lady," Marillion said, riding forward. "I beg you allow me to accompany you to the Eyrie, to see the 
+end of the tale as I saw its beginnings." The boy sounded haggard, yet strangely determined; he had a 
+fevered shine to his eyes. 
+Catelyn had never asked the singer to ride with them; that choice he had made himself, and how he had 
+come to survive the journey when so many braver men lay dead and unburied behind them, she could 
+never say. Yet here he was, with a scruff of beard that made him look almost a man. Perhaps she owed 
+him something for having come this far. "Very well," she told him. 
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+"I'll come as well," Bronn announced. 
+She liked that less well. Without Bronn she would never have reached the Vale, she knew; the sellsword 
+was as fierce a fighter as she had ever seen, and his sword had helped cut them through to safety. 
+Yet for all that, Catelyn misliked the man. Courage he had, and strength, but there was no kindness in 
+him, and little loyalty. And she had seen him riding beside Lannister far too often, talking in low voices 
+and laughing at some private joke. She would have preferred to separate him from the dwarf here and 
+now, but having agreed that Marillion might continue to the Eyrie, she could see no gracious way to deny 
+that same right to Bronn. "As you wish," she said, although she noted that he had not actually asked her 
+permission. 
+Ser Willis Wode remained with Ser Rodrik, a soft-spoken septon fussing over their wounds. Their 
+horses were left behind as well, poor ragged things. Ser Donnel promised to send birds ahead to the 
+Eyrie and the Gates of the Moon with the word of their coming. Fresh mounts were brought forth from 
+the stables, surefooted mountain stock with shaggy coats, and within the hour they set forth once again. 
+Catelyn rode beside her uncle as they began the descent to the valley floor. Behind came Bronn, Tyrion 
+Lannister, Marillion, and six of Brynden's men. 
+Not until they were a third of the way down the mountain path, well out of earshot of the others, did 
+Brynden Tully turn to her and say, "So, child. Tell me about this storm of yours." 
+"I have not been a child in many years, Uncle," Catelyn said, but she told him nonetheless. It took longer 
+than she would have believed to tell it all, Lysa's letter and Bran's fall, the assassin's dagger and 
+Littlefinger and her chance meeting with Tyrion Lannister in the crossroadsinn. 
+Her uncle listened silently, heavy brows shadowing his eyes as his frown grew deeper. Brynden Tully 
+had always known how to listen . . . to anyone but her father. He was Lord Hoster's brother, younger by 
+five years, but the two of them had been at war as far back as Catelyn could remember. During one of 
+their louder quarrels, when Catelyn was eight, Lord Hoster had called Brynden "the black goat of the 
+Tully flock." Laughing, Brynden had pointed out that the sigil of their house was a leaping trout, so he 
+ought to be a black fish rather than a black goat, and from that day forward he had taken it as his 
+personal emblem. 
+The war had not ended until the day she and Lysa had been wed. It was at their wedding feast that 
+Brynden told his brother he was leaving Riverrun to serve Lysa and her new husband, the Lord of the 
+Eyrie. Lord Hoster had not spoken his brother's name since, from what Edmure told her in his infrequent 
+letters. 
+Nonetheless, during all those years of Catelyn's girlhood, it had been Brynden the Blackfish to whom 
+Lord Hoster's children had run 
+with their tears and their tales, when Father was too busy and Mother too ill. Catelyn, Lysa, Edmure . . . 
+and yes, even Petyr Baelish, their father's ward . . . he had listened to them all patiently, as he listened 
+now, laughing at their triumphs and sympathizing with their childish misfortunes. 
+When she was done, her uncle remained silent for a long time, as his horse negotiated the steep, rocky 
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+trail. "Your father must be told," he said at last. "If the Lannisters should march, Winterfell is remote and 
+the Vale walled up behind its mountains, but Riverrun lies right in their path." 
+"I'd had the same fear," Catelyn admitted. "I shall ask Maester Colemon to send a bird when we reach 
+the Eyrie." She had other messages to send as well; the commands that Ned had given her for his 
+bannermen, to ready the defenses of the north. "What is the mood in the Vale?" she asked. 
+"Angry," Brynden Tully admitted. "Lord Jon was much loved, and the insult was keenly felt when the 
+king named Jaime Lannister to an office the Arryns had held for near three hundred years. Lysa has 
+commanded us to call her son the True Warden of the East, but no one is fooled. Nor is your sister alone 
+in wondering at the manner of the Hand's death. None dare say Jon was murdered, not openly, but 
+suspicion casts a long shadow." He gave Catelyn a look, his mouth tight. "And there is the boy." 
+"The boy? What of him?" She ducked her head as they passed under a low overhang of rock, and 
+around a sharp turn. 
+Her uncle's voice was troubled. "Lord Robert," he sighed. "Six years old, sickly, and prone to weep if 
+you take his dolls away. Jon Arryn's trueborn heir, by all the gods, yet there are some who say he is too 
+weak to sit his father's seat, Nestor Royce has been high steward these past fourteen years, while Lord 
+Jon served in King's Landing, and many whisper that he should rule until the boy comes of age. Others 
+believe that Lysa must marry again, and soon. Already the suitors gather like crows on a battlefield. The 
+Eyrie is full of them." 
+"I might have expected that," Catelyn said. Small wonder there; Lysa was still young, and the kingdom of 
+Mountain and Vale made a handsome wedding gift. "Will Lysa take another husband?" 
+"She says yes, provided she finds a man who suits her," Brynden Tully said, "but she has already 
+rejected Lord Nestor and a dozen other suitable men. She swears that this time she will choose her lord 
+husband." 
+"You of all people can scarce fault her for that." 
+Ser Brynden snorted. "Nor do 1, but . . . it seems to me Lysa is 
+only playing at courtship. She enjoys the sport, but I believe your sister intends to rule herself until her 
+boy is old enough to be Lord of the Eyrie in truth as well as name." 
+"A woman can rule as wisely as a man," Catelyn said. 
+"The tight woman can," her uncle said with a sideways glance. "Make no mistake, Cat. Lysa is not you." 
+He hesitated a moment. "If truth be told, I fear you may not find your sister as helpful as you would like." 
+She was puzzled. "What do you mean?" 
+"The Lysa who came back from King's Landing is not the same girl who went south when her husband 
+was named Hand. Those years were hard for her. You must know. Lord Arryn was a dutiful husband, 
+but their marriage was made from politics, not passion." 
+"As was my own." 
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+"They began the same, but your ending has been happier than your sister's. Two babes stillborn, twice as 
+many miscarriages, Lord Arryn's death . . . Catelyn, the gods gave Lysa only the one child, and he is all 
+your sister lives for now, poor boy. Small wonder she fled rather than see him handed over to the 
+Lannisters. Your sister is afraid, child, and the Lannisters are what she fears most. She ran to the Vale, 
+stealing away from the Red Keep like a thief in the night, and all to snatch her son out of the lion's mouth . 
+. . and now you have brought the lion to her door." 
+"In chains," Catelyn said. A crevasse yawned on her right, falling away into darkness. She reined up her 
+horse and picked her way along step by careful step. 
+"Oh?" Her uncle glanced back, to where Tyrion Lannister was making his slow descent behind them. "I 
+see an axe on his saddle, a dirk at his belt, and a sellsword that trails after him like a hungry shadow. 
+Where are the chains, sweet one?" 
+Catelyn shifted uneasily in her seat. "The dwarf is here, and not by choice. Chains or no, he is my 
+prisoner. Lysa will want him to answer for his crimes no less than 1. It was her own lord husband the 
+Lannisters murdered, and her own letter that first warned us against them." 
+Brynden Blackfish gave her a weary smile. "I hope you are right, child," he sighed, in tones that said she 
+was wrong. 
+The sun was well to the west by the time the slope began to flatten beneath the hooves of their horses. 
+The road widened and grew straight, and for the first time Catelyn noticed wildflowers and grasses 
+growing. Once they reached the valley floor, the going was faster and they made good time, cantering 
+through verdant greenwoods and sleepy little hamlets, past orchards and golden wheat fields, splashing 
+324 GEORGL R.R. MARTIN 
+across a dozen sunlit streams. Her uncle sent a standard-bearer ahead of them, a double banner flying 
+from his staff; the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn on high, and below it his own black fish. Farm 
+wagons and merchants' carts and riders from lesser houses moved aside to let them pass. 
+Even so, it was full dark before they reached the stout castle that stood at the foot of the Giant's Lance. 
+Torches flickered atop its ramparts, and the horned moon danced upon the dark waters of its moat. The 
+drawbridge was up and the portcullis down, but Catelyn saw lights burning in the gatehouse and spilling 
+from the windows of the square towers beyond. 
+"The Gates of the Moon," her uncle said as the party drew rein. His standard-bearer rode to the edge of 
+the moat to hail the men in the gatehouse. "Lord Nestor's seat. He should be expecting us. Look up." 
+Catelyn raised her eyes, up and up and up. At first all she saw was stone and trees, the looming mass of 
+the great mountain shrouded in night, as black as a starless sky. Then she noticed the glow of distant fires 
+well above them; a tower keep, built upon the steep side of the mountain, its lights like orange eyes 
+staring down from above. Above that was another, higher and more distant, and still higher a third, no 
+more than a flickering spark in the sky. And finally, up where the falcons soared, a flash of white in the 
+moonlight. Vertigo washed over her as she stared upward at the pale towers, so far above. 
+"The Eyrie," she heard Marillion murmur, awed. 
+The sharp voice of Tyrion Lannister broke in. "The Arryns must not be overfond of company. If you're 
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+planning to make us climb that mountain in the dark, I'd rather you kill me here." 
+"We'll spend the night here and make the ascent on the morrow," Brynden told him. 
+"I can scarcely wait," the dwarf replied. "How do we get up there? I've no experience at riding goats." 
+"Mules," Brynden said, smiling. 
+"There are steps carved into the mountain," Catelyn said. Ned had told her about them when he talked 
+of his youth here with Robert Baratheon and Jon Arryn. 
+Her uncle nodded. "It is too dark to see them, but the steps are there. Too steep and narrow for horses, 
+but mules can manage them most of the way. The path is guarded by three waycastles, Stone and Snow 
+and Sky. The mules will take us as far up as Sky." 
+Tyrion Lannister glanced up doubtfully. "And beyond that?" 
+Brynden smiled. "Beyond that, the path is too steep even for mules. We ascend on foot the rest of the 
+way. Or perchance you'd prefer to 
+ride a basket. The Eyrie clings to the mountain directly above Sky, and in its cellars are six great winches 
+with long iron chains to draw supplies up from below. If you prefer, my lord of Lannister, I can arrange 
+for you to ride up with the bread and beer and apples." 
+The dwarf gave a bark of laughter. "Would that I were a pumpkin," he said. "Alas, my lord father would 
+no doubt be most chagrined if his son of Lannister went to his fate like a load of turnips. If you ascend on 
+foot, I fear I must do the same. We Lannisters do have a certain pride." 
+"Pride?" Catelyn snapped. His mocking tone and easy manner made her angry. "Arrogance, some might 
+call it. Arrogance and avarice and lust for power." 
+"My brother is undoubtedly arrogant," Tyrion Lannister replied. "My father is the soul of avarice, and my 
+sweet sister Cersei lusts for power with every waking breath. 1, however, am innocent as a little lamb. 
+Shall I bleat for you?" He grinned. 
+The drawbridge came creaking down before she could reply, and they heard the sound of oiled chains 
+as the portcullis was drawn up. Men-at-arms carried burning brands out to light their way, and her uncle 
+led them across the moat. Lord Nestor Royce, High Steward of the Vale and Keeper of the Gates of the 
+Moon, was waiting in the yard to greet them, surrounded by his knights. "Lady Stark," he said, bowing. 
+He was a massive, barrel-chested man, and his bow was clumsy. 
+Catelyn dismounted to stand before him. "Lord Nestor," she said. She knew the man only by reputation; 
+Bronze Yohn's cousin, from a lesser branch of House Royce, yet still a formidable lord in his own right. 
+"We have had a long and tiring journey. I would beg the hospitality of your roof tonight, if I might." 
+"My roof is yours, my lady," Lord Nestor returned gruffly, "but your sister the Lady Lysa has sent down 
+word from the Eyrie. She wishes to see you at once. The rest of your party will be housed here and sent 
+up at first light." 
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+Her uncle swung off his horse. "What madness is this?" he said bluntly. Brynden Tully had never been a 
+man to blunt the edge of his words. "A night ascent, with the moon not even full? Even Lysa should know 
+that's an invitation to a broken neck." 
+"The mules know the way, Ser Brynden." A wiry girl of seventeen or eighteen years stepped up beside 
+Lord Nestor. Her dark hair was cropped short and straight around her head, and she wore riding 
+leathers and a light shirt of silvered ringmail. She bowed to Catelyn, more gracefully than her lord. "I 
+promise you, my lady, no harm will 
+come to you. It would be my honor to take you up. I've made the dark climb a hundred times. Mychel 
+says my father must have been a goat." 
+She sounded so cocky that Catelyn had to smile. "Do you have a name, child?" 
+"Mya Stone, if it please you, my lady," the girl said. 
+It did not please her; it was an effort for Catelyn to keep the smile on her face. Stone was a bastard's 
+name in the Vale, as Snow was in the north, and Flowers in Highgarden; in each of the Seven Kingdoms, 
+custom had fashioned a surname for children born with no names of their own. Catelyn had nothing 
+against this girl, but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned's bastard on the Wall, and the thought 
+made her angry and guilty, both at once. She struggled to find words for a reply. 
+Lord Nestor filled the silence. "Mya's a clever girl, and if she vows she will bring you safely to the Lady 
+Lysa, I believe her. She has not failed me yet." 
+"Then I put myself in your hands, Mya Stone," Catelyn said. "Lord Nestor, I charge you to keep a close 
+guard on my prisoner." 
+"And I charge you to bring the prisoner a cup of wine and a nicely crisped capon, before he dies of 
+hunger," Lannister said. "A girl would be pleasant as well, but I suppose that's too much to ask of you." 
+The sellsword Bronn laughed aloud. 
+Lord Nestor ignored the banter. "As you say, my lady, so it will be done." Only then did he look at the 
+dwarf. "See our lord of Lannister to a tower cell, and bring him meat and mead." 
+Catelyn took her leave of her uncle and the others as Tyrion Lannister was led off, then followed the 
+bastard girl through the castle. Two mules were waiting in the upper bailey, saddled and ready. Mya 
+helped her mount one while a guardsman in a sky-blue cloak opened the narrow postern gate. Beyond 
+was dense forest of pine and spruce, and the mountain like a black wall, but the steps were there, 
+chiseled deep into the rock, ascending into the sky. "Some people find it easier if they close their eyes," 
+Mya said as she led the mules through the gate into the dark wood. "When they get frightened or dizzy, 
+sometimes they hold on to the mule too tight. They don't like that." 
+"I was born a Tully and wed to a Stark," Catelyn said. "I do not frighten easily. Do you plan to light a 
+torch?" The steps were black as pitch. 
+The girl made a face. "Torches just blind you. On a clear night like this, the moon and the stars are 
+enough. Mychel says I have the eyes of the owl." She mounted and urged her mule up the first step. 
+Catelyn's animal followed of its own accord. 
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+A GAN4E OF THRONES 327 
+"You mentioned Mychel before," Catelyn said. The mules set the pace, slow but steady. She was 
+perfectly content with that. 
+"Mychel's my love," Mya explained. "Mychel Redfort. He's squire to Ser Lyn Corbray. We're to wed as 
+soon as he becomes a knight, next year or the year after." 
+She sounded so like Sansa, so happy and innocent with her dreams. Catelyn smiled, but the smile was 
+tinged with sadness. The Redforts were an old name in the Vale, she knew, with the blood of the First 
+Men in their veins. His love she might be, but no Redfort would ever wed a bastard. His family would 
+arrange a more suitable match for him, to a Corbray or a Waynwood or a Royce, or perhaps a daughter 
+of some greater house outside the Vale. If Mychel Redfort laid with this girl at all, it would be on the 
+wrong side of the sheet. 
+The ascent was easier than Catelyn had dared hope. The trees pressed close, leaning over the path to 
+make a rustling green roof that shut out even the moon, so it seemed as though they were moving up a 
+long black tunnel. But the mules were surefooted and tireless, and Mya Stone did indeed seem blessed 
+with night-eyes. They plodded upward, winding their way back and forth across the face of the mountain 
+as the steps twisted and turned. A thick layer of fallen needles carpeted the path, so the shoes of their 
+mules made only the softest sound on the rock. The quiet soothed her, and the gentle rocking motion set 
+Catelyn to swaying in her saddle. Before long she was fighting sleep. 
+Perhaps she did doze for a moment, for suddenly a massive ironbound gate was looming before them. 
+"Stone," Mya announced cheerily, dismounting. Iron spikes were set along the tops of formidable stone 
+walls, and two fat round towers overtopped the keep. The gate swung open at Mya's shout. Inside, the 
+portly knight who commanded the waycastle greeted Mya by name and offered them skewers of charred 
+meat and onions still hot from the spit. Catelyn had not realized how hungry she was. She ate standing in 
+the yard, as stablehands moved their saddles to fresh mules. The hot juices ran down her chin and 
+dripped onto her cloak, but she was too famished to care. 
+Then it was up onto a new mule and out again into the starlight. The second part of the ascent seemed 
+more treacherous to Catelyn. The trail was steeper, the steps more worn, and here and there littered with 
+pebbles and broken stone. Mya had to dismount a half-dozen times to move fallen rocks from their path. 
+"You don't want your mule to break a leg up here," she said. Catelyn was forced to agree. She could feel 
+the altitude more now. The trees were sparser up here, and the wind blew more vigorously, sharp gusts 
+that tugged at her clothing 
+and pushed her hair into her eyes. From time to time the steps doubled back on themselves, and she 
+could see Stone below them, and the Gates of the Moon farther down, its torches no brighter than 
+candles. 
+Snow was smaller than Stone, a single fortified tower and a timber keep and stable hidden behind a low 
+wall of unmortared rock. Yet it nestled against the Giant's Lance in such a way as to command the entire 
+stone stair above the lower waycastle. An enemy intent on the Eyrie would have to fight his way from 
+Stone step by step, while rocks and arrows rained down from Snow above. The commander, an anxious 
+young knight with a pockmarked face, offered bread and cheese and the chance to warm themselves 
+before his fire, but Mya declined. "We ought to keep going, my lady," she said. "If it please you." Catelyn 
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+nodded. 
+Again they were given fresh mules. Hers was white. Mya smiled when she saw him. "Whitey's a good 
+one, my lady. Sure of foot, even on ice, but you need to be careful. He'll kick if he doesn't like you." 
+The white mule seemed to like Catelyn; there was no kicking, thank the gods. There was no ice either, 
+and she was grateful for that as well. "My mother says that hundreds of years ago, this was where the 
+snow began," Mya told her. "It was always white above here, and the ice never melted." She shrugged. "I 
+can't remember ever seeing snow this far down the mountain, but maybe it was that way once, in the 
+olden times." 
+So young, Catelyn thought, trying to remember if she had ever been like that. The girl had lived half her 
+life in summer, and that was all she knew. Winter is coming, child, she wanted to tell her. The words 
+were on her lips; she almost said them. Perhaps she was becoming a Stark at last. 
+Above Snow, the wind was a living thing, howling around them like a wolf in the waste, then falling off to 
+nothing as if to lure them into complacency. The stars seemed brighter up here, so close that she could 
+almost touch them, and the horned moon was huge in the clear black sky. As they climbed, Catelyn 
+found it was better to look up than down. The steps were cracked and broken from centuries of freeze 
+and thaw and the tread of countless mules, and even in the dark the heights put her heart in her throat. 
+When they came to a high saddle between two spires of rock, Mya dismounted. "It's best to lead the 
+mules over," she said. "The wind can be a little scary here, my lady." 
+Catelyn climbed stiffly from the shadows and looked at the path ahead; twenty feet long and close to 
+three feet wide, but with a precipitous drop to either side. She could hear the wind shrieking. Mya 
+stepped lightly out, her mule following as calmly as if they were crossing 
+a bailey. It was her turn. Yet no sooner had she taken her first step than fear caught Catelyn in its 
+jaws. She could feel the emptiness, the vast black gulfs of air that yawned around her. She stopped, 
+trembling, afraid to move. The wind screamed at her and wrenched at her cloak, trying to pull her over 
+the edge. Catelyn edged her foot backward, the most timid of steps, but the mule was behind her, and 
+she could not retreat. I am going to die here, she thought. She could feel cold sweat trickling down her 
+back. 
+"Lady Stark," Mya called across the gulf. The girl sounded a thousand leagues away. "Are you well?" 
+Catelyn Tully Stark swallowed what remained of her pride. "I . . . I cannot do this, child," she called out. 
+"Yes you can," the bastard girl said. "I know you can. Look how wide the path is." 
+"I don't want to look." The world seemed to be spinning around her, mountain and sky and mules, 
+whirling like a child's top. Catelyn closed her eyes to steady her ragged breathing. 
+"I'll come back for you," Mya said. "Don't move, my lady." 
+Moving was about the last thing Catelyn was about to do. She listened to the skirling of the wind and the 
+scuffling sound of leather on stone. Then Mya was there, taking her gently by the arm. "Keep your eyes 
+closed if you like. Let go of the rope now, Whitey will take care of himself. Very good, my lady. I'll lead 
+you over, it's easy, you'll see. Give me a step now. That's it, move your foot, just slide it forward. See. 
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+Now another. Easy. You could run across. Another one, go on. Yes." And so, foot by foot, step by 
+step, the bastard girl led Catelyn across, blind and trembling, while the white mule followed placidly 
+behind them. 
+The waycastle called Sky was no more than a high, crescent-shaped wall of unmortared stone raised 
+against the side of the mountain, but even the topless towers of Valyria could not have looked more 
+beautiful to Catelyn Stark. Here at last the snow crown began; Sky's weathered stones were rimed with 
+frost, and long spears of ice hung from the slopes above. 
+Dawn was breaking in the east as Mya Stone hallooed for the guards, and the gates opened before 
+them. Inside the walls there was only a series of ramps and a great tumble of boulders and stones of all 
+sizes. No doubt it would be the easiest thing in the world to begin an avalanche from here. A mouth 
+yawned in the rock face in front of them. "The stables and barracks are in there," Mya said. "The last part 
+is inside the mountain. It can be a little dark, but at least you're out of the wind. This is as far as the mules 
+can go. Past here, well, it's a sort of 
+chimney, more like a stone ladder than proper steps, but it's not too bad. Another hour and we'll be 
+there." 
+Catelyn looked up. Directly overhead, pale in the dawn light, she could see the foundations of the Eyrie. 
+It could not be more than six hundred feet above them. From below it looked like a small white 
+honeycomb. She remembered what her uncle had said of baskets and winches. "The Lannisters may 
+have their pride," she told Mya, "but the Tullys are born with better sense. I have ridden all day and the 
+best part of a night. Tell them to lower a basket. I shall ride with the turnips." 
+The sun was well above the mountains by the time Catelyn Stark finally reached the Eyrie. A stocky, 
+silver-haired man in a sky-blue cloak and hammered moon-and-falcon breastplate helped her from the 
+basket; Ser Vardis Egen, captain of Jon Arryn's household guard. Beside him stood Maester Colemon, 
+thin and nervous, with too little hair and too much neck. "Lady Stark," Ser Vardis said, "the pleasure is as 
+great as it is unanticipated." Maester Colemon bobbed his head in agreement. "Indeed it is, my lady, 
+indeed it is. I have sent word to your sister. She left orders to be awakened the instant you arrived." 
+"I hope she had a good night's rest," Catelyn said with a certain bite in her tone that seemed to go 
+unnoticed. 
+The men escorted her from the winch room up a spiral stair. The Eyrie was a small castle by the 
+standards of the great houses; seven slender white towers bunched as tightly as arrows in a quiver on a 
+shoulder of the great mountain. It had no need of stables nor smithys nor kennels, but Ned said its 
+granary was as large as Winterfell's, and its towers could house five hundred men. Yet it seemed 
+strangely deserted to Catelyn as she passed through it, its pale stone halls echoing and empty. 
+Lysa was waiting alone in her solar, still clad in her bed robes. Her long auburn hair tumbled unbound 
+across bare white shoulders and down her back. A maid stood behind her, brushing out the night's 
+tangles, but when Catelyn entered, her sister rose to her feet, smiling. "Cat," she said. "Oh, Cat, how 
+good it is to see you. My sweet sister." She ran across the chamber and wrapped her sister in her arms. 
+"How long it has been," Lysa murmured against her. "Oh, how very very long." 
+It had been five years, in truth; five cruel years, for Lysa. They had taken their toll. Her sister was two 
+years the younger, yet she looked older now. Shorter than Catelyn, Lysa had grown thick of body, pale 
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+and puffy of face. She had the blue eyes of the Tullys, but hers were pale and watery, never still. Her 
+small mouth had turned petulant. As 
+Catelyn held her, she remembered the slender, high-breasted girl who'd waited beside her that day in the 
+sept at Riverrun. How lovely and full of hope she had been. All that remained of her sister's beauty was 
+the great fall of thick auburn hair that cascaded to her waist. 
+"You look well," Catelyn lied, "but . . . tired." 
+Her sister broke the embrace. "Tired. Yes. Oh, yes." She seemed to notice the others then; her maid, 
+Maester Colemon, Ser Vardis. "Leave us," she told them. "I wish to speak to my sister alone." She held 
+Catelyn's hand as they withdrew . . . 
+. . . and dropped it the instant the door closed. Catelyn saw her face change. It was as if the sun had 
+gone behind a cloud. "Have you taken leave of your senses?" Lysa snapped at her. "To bring him here, 
+without a word of permission, without so much as a warning, to drag us into your quarrels with the 
+Lannisters . . ." 
+"My quarrels?" Catelyn could scarce believe what she was hearing. A great fire burned in the hearth, but 
+there was no trace of warmth in Lysa's voice. "They were your quarrels first, sister. It was you who sent 
+me that cursed letter, you who wrote that the Lannisters had murdered your husband." 
+"To warn you, so you could stay away from them! I never meant to fight them! Gods, Cat, do you know 
+what you've done?" 
+"Mother?" a small voice said. Lysa whirled, her heavy robe swirling around her. Robert Arryn, Lord of 
+the Eyrie, stood in the doorway, clutching a ragged cloth doll and looking at them with large eyes. He 
+was a painfully thin child, small for his age and sickly all his days, and from time to time he trembled. The 
+shaking sickness, the maesters called it. "I heard voices." 
+Small wonder, Catelyn thought; Lysa had almost been shouting. Still, her sister looked daggers at her. 
+"This is your aunt Catelyn, baby. My sister, Lady Stark. Do you remember?" 
+The boy glanced at her blankly. "I think so," he said, blinking, though he had been less than a year old 
+the last time Catelyn had seen him. 
+Lysa seated herself near the fire and said, "Come to Mother, my sweet one." She straightened his 
+bedclothes and fussed with his fine brown hair. "Isn't he beautiful? And strong too, don't you believe the 
+things you hear. Jon knew. The seed is strong, he told me. His last words. He kept saying Robert's name, 
+and he grabbed my arm so hard he left marks. Tell them, the seed is strong. His seed. He wanted 
+everyone to know what a good strong boy my baby was going to be." 
+"Lysa," Catelyn said, "if you're right about the Lannisters, all the more reason we must act quickly. We-" 
+"Not in front of the baby," Lysa said. "He has a delicate temper, don't you, sweet one?" 
+"The boy is Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale," Catelyn reminded her, "and these are no times 
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+for delicacy. Ned thinks it may come to war." 
+"Quiet!" Lysa snapped at her. "You're scaring the boy." Little Robert took a quick peek over his 
+shoulder at Catelyn and began to tremble. His doll fell to the rushes, and he pressed himself against his 
+mother. "Don't be afraid, my sweet baby," Lysa whispered. "Mother's here, nothing will hurt you." She 
+opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy breast, tipped with red. The boy grabbed for it eagerly, 
+buried his face against her chest, and began to suck. Lysa stroked his hair. 
+Catelyn was at a loss for words. Jon Anyn's son, she thought incredulously. She remembered her own 
+baby, three-year-old Rickon, half the age of this boy and five times as fierce. Small wonder the lords of 
+the Vale were restive. For the first time she understood why the king had tried to take the child away 
+from his mother to foster with the Lannisters . . . 
+"We're safe here," Lysa was saying. Whether to her or to the boy, Catelyn was not sure. 
+"Don't be a fool," Catelyn said, the anger rising in her. "No one is safe. If you think hiding here will make 
+the Lannisters forget you, you are sadly mistaken." 
+Lysa covered her boy's ear with her hand. "Even if they could bring an army through the mountains and 
+past the Bloody Gate, the Eyrie is impregnable. You saw for yourself. No enemy could ever reach us up 
+here." 
+Catelyn wanted to slap her. Uncle Brynden had tried to warn her, she realized. "No castle is 
+impregnable." 
+"This one is," Lysa insisted. "Everyone says so. The only thing is, what am I to do with this Imp you have 
+brought me?" 
+"Is he a bad man?" the Lord of the Eyrie asked, his mother's breast popping from his mouth, the nipple 
+wet and red. 
+"A very bad man," Lysa told him as she covered herself, "but Mother won't let him harm my little baby." 
+"Make him fly," Robert said eagerly. 
+Lysa stroked her son's hair. "Perhaps we will," she murmured. "Perhaps that is just what we will do." 
+EDDARD 
+He found Littlefinger in the brothel's common room, chatting amiably with a tall, elegant woman who 
+wore a feathered gown over skin as black as ink. By the hearth, Heward and a buxom wench were 
+playing at forfeits. From the look of it, he'd lost his belt, his cloak, his mail shirt, and his right boot so far, 
+while the girl had been forced to unbutton her shift to the waist. Jory Cassel stood beside a rain-streaked 
+window with a wry smile on his face, watching Heward turn over tiles and enjoying the view. 
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+Ned paused at the foot of the stair and pulled on his gloves. "It's time we took our leave. My business 
+here is done." 
+Heward lurched to his feet, hurriedly gathering up his things. "As you will, my lord," Jory said. "I'll help 
+Wyl bring round the horses." He strode to the door. 
+Littlefinger took his time saying his farewells. He kissed the black woman's hand, whispered some joke 
+that made her laugh aloud, and sauntered over to Ned. "Your business," he said lightly, "or Robert's? 
+They say the Hand dreams the king's dreams, speaks with the king's voice, and rules with the king's 
+sword. Does that also mean you fuck with the king's-" 
+"Lord Baelish," Ned interrupted, "you presume too much. I am not ungrateful for your help. It might have 
+taken us years to find this 
+brothel without you. That does not mean I intend to endure your mockery. And I am no longer the 
+King's Hand." 
+"The direwolf must be a prickly beast," said Littlefinger with a sharp twist of his mouth. 
+A warm rain was pelting down from a starless black sky as they walked to the stables. Ned drew up the 
+hood of his cloak. Jory brought out his horse. Young Wyl came right behind him, leading Littlefinger's 
+mare with one hand while the other fumbled with his belt and the lacings of his trousers. A barefoot 
+whore leaned out of the stable door, giggling at him. 
+"Will we be going back to the castle now, my lord?" Jory asked. Ned nodded and swung into the 
+saddle. Littlefinger mounted up beside him. Jory and the others followed. 
+"Chataya runs a choice establishment," Littlefinger said as they rode. "I've half a mind to buy it. Brothels 
+are a much sounder investment than ships, I've found. Whores seldom sink, and when they are boarded 
+by pirates, why, the pirates pay good coin like everyone else." Lord Petyr chuckled at his own wit. 
+Ned let him prattle on. After a time, he quieted and they rode in silence. The streets of King's Landing 
+were dark and deserted. The rain had driven everyone under their roofs. It beat down on Ned's head, 
+warm as blood and relentless as old guilts. Fat drops of water ran down his face. 
+"Robert will never keep to one bed," Lyanna had told him at Winterfell, on the night long ago when their 
+father had promised her hand to the young Lord of Storm's End. "I hear he has gotten a child on some 
+girl in the Vale." Ned had held the babe in his arms; he could scarcely deny her, nor would he lie to his 
+sister, but he had assured her that what Robert did before their betrothal was of no matter, that he was a 
+good man and true who would love her with all his heart. Lyanna had only smiled. "Love is sweet, 
+dearest Ned, but it cannot change a man's nature." 
+The girl had been so young Ned had not dared to ask her age. No doubt she'd been a virgin; the better 
+brothels could always find a virgin, if the purse was fat enough. She had light red hair and a powdering of 
+freckles across the bridge of her nose, and when she slipped free a breast to give her nipple to the babe, 
+he saw that her bosom was freckled as well. "I named her Barra," she said as the child nursed. "She 
+looks so like him, does she not, milord? She has his nose, and his hair . . ." 
+"She does." Eddard Stark had touched the baby's fine, dark hair. It 
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+flowed through his fingers like black silk. Robert's firstborn had had the same fine hair, he seemed to 
+recall. 
+"Tell him that when you see him, milord, as it ... as it please you. Tell him how beautiful she is." 
+"I will," Ned had promised her. That was his curse. Robert would swear undying love and forget them 
+before evenfall, but Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of the promises he'd made Lyanna as she lay 
+dying, and the price he'd paid to keep them. 
+"And tell him I've not been with no one else. I swear it, milord, by the old gods and new. Chataya said I 
+could have half a year, for the baby, and for hoping he'd come back. So you'll tell him I'm waiting, won't 
+you? I don't want no jewels or nothing, just him. He was always good to me, truly." 
+Good to you, Ned thought hollowly. "I will tell him, child, and I promise you, Barra shall not go 
+wanting." 
+She had smiled then, a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him. Riding through the 
+rainy night, Ned saw Jon Snow's face in front of him, so like a younger version of his own. If the gods 
+frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts? "Lord Baelish, what do 
+you know of Robert's bastards?" 
+"Well, he has more than you, for a start." 
+"How many?" 
+Littlefinger shrugged. Rivulets of moisture twisted down the back of his cloak. "Does it matter? If you 
+bed enough women, some will give you presents, and His Grace has never been shy on that count. I 
+know he's acknowledged that boy at Storm's End, the one he fathered the night Lord Stannis wed. He 
+could hardly do otherwise. The mother was a Florent, niece to the Lady Selyse, one of her bedmaids. 
+Renly says that Robert carried the girl upstairs during the feast, and broke in the wedding bed while 
+Stannis and his bride were still dancing. Lord Stannis seemed to think that was a blot on the honor of his 
+wife's House, so when the boy was born, he shipped him off to Renly." He gave Ned a sideways glance. 
+"I've also heard whispers that Robert got a pair of twins on a serving wench at Casterly Rock, three 
+years ago when he went west for Lord Tywin's tourney. Cersei had the babes killed, and sold the mother 
+to a passing slaver. Too much an affront to Lannister pride, that close to home." 
+Ned Stark grimaced. Ugly tales like that were told of every great lord in the realm. He could believe it of 
+Cersei Lannister readily enough . . . but would the king stand by and let it happen? The Robert he had 
+known would not have, but the Robert he had known had never been so practiced at shutting his eyes to 
+things he did not 
+wish to see. "Why would Jon Arryn take a sudden interest in the king's baseborn children?" 
+The short man gave a sodden shrug. "He was the King's Hand. Doubtless Robert asked him to see that 
+they were provided for." 
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+Ned was soaked through to the bone, and his soul had grown cold. "It had to be more than that, or why 
+kill him?" 
+Littlefinger shook the rain from his hair and laughed. "Now I see. Lord Arryn learned that His Grace had 
+filled the bellies of some whores and fishwives, and for that he had to be silenced. Small wonder. Allow a 
+man like that to live, and next he's like to blurt out that the sun rises in the east." 
+There was no answer Ned Stark could give to that but a frown. For the first time in years, he found 
+himself remembering Rhaegar Targaryen. He wondered if Rhaegar had frequented brothels; somehow he 
+thought not. 
+The rain was falling harder now, stinging the eyes and drumming against the ground. Rivers of black 
+water were running down the hill when Jory called out, "My lord, " his voice hoarse with alarm. And in an 
+instant, the street was full of soldiers. 
+Ned glimpsed ringmail over leather, gauntlets and greaves, steel helms with golden lions on the crests. 
+Their cloaks clung to their backs, sodden with rain. He had no time to count, but there were ten at least, 
+a line of them, on foot, blocking the street, with longswords and irontipped spears. "Behind!" he heard 
+Wyl cry, and when he turned his horse, there were more in back of them, cutting off their retreat. Jory's 
+sword came singing from its scabbard. "Make way or die!" 
+"The wolves are howling," their leader said. Ned could see rain running down his face. "Such a small 
+pack, though." 
+Littlefinger walked his horse forward, step by careful step. "What is the meaning of this? This is the Hand 
+of the King." 
+"He was the Hand of the King." The mud muffled the hooves of the blood bay stallion. The line parted 
+before him. On a golden breastplate, the lion of Lannister roared its defiance. "Now, if truth be told, I'm 
+not sure what he is." 
+"Lannister, this is madness," Littlefinger said. "Let us pass. We are expected back at the castle. What do 
+you think you're doing?" 
+"He knows what he's doing," Ned said calmly. 
+Jaime Lannister smiled. "Quite true. I'm looking for my brother. You remember my brother, don't you, 
+Lord Stark? He was with us at Winterfell. Fair-haired, mismatched eyes, sharp of tongue. A short man." 
+"I remember him well," Ned replied. 
+"It would seem he has met some trouble on the road. My lord father is quite vexed. You would not 
+perchance have any notion of who might have wished my brother ill, would you?" 
+"Your brother has been taken at my command, to answer for his crimes," Ned Stark said. 
+Littlefinger groaned in dismay. "My lords-" 
+Ser Jaime ripped his longsword from its sheath and urged his stallion forward. "Show me your steel, 
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+Lord Eddard. I'll butcher you like Aerys if I must, but I'd sooner you died with a blade in your hand." He 
+gave Littlefinger a cool, contemptuous glance. "Lord Baelish, I'd leave here in some haste if I did not care 
+to get bloodstains on my costly clothing." 
+Littlefinger did not need to be urged. "I will bring the City Watch," he promised Ned. The Lannister line 
+parted to let him through, and closed behind him. Littlefinger put his heels to his mare and vanished 
+around a corner. 
+Ned's men had drawn their swords, but they were three against twenty. Eyes watched from nearby 
+windows and doors, but no one was about to intervene. His party was mounted, the Lannisters on foot 
+save for Jaime himself. A charge might win them free, but it seemed to Eddard Stark that they had a 
+surer, safer tactic. "Kill me," he warned the Kingslayer, "and Catelyn will most certainly slay Tyrion." 
+Jaime Lannister poked at Ned's chest with the gilded sword that had sipped the blood of the last of the 
+Dragonkings. "Would she? The noble Catelyn Tully of Riverrun murder a hostage? I think . . . not." He 
+sighed. "But I am not willing to chance my brother's life on a woman's honor." Jaime slid the golden 
+sword into its sheath. "So I suppose I'll let you run back to Robert to tell him how I frightened you. I 
+wonder if he'll care." Jaime pushed his wet hair back with his fingers and wheeled his horse around. 
+When he was beyond the line of swordsmen, he glanced back at his captain. "Tregar, see that no harm 
+comes to Lord Stark." 
+"As you say, m'lord." 
+"Still . . . we wouldn't want him to leave here entirely unchastened, so"-through the night and the rain, he 
+glimpsed the white of Jaime's smile-"kill his men." 
+"No!" Ned Stark screamed, clawing for his sword. Jaime was already cantering off down the street as 
+he heard Wyl shout. Men closed from both sides. Ned rode one down, cutting at phantoms in red cloaks 
+who gave way before him. Jory Cassel put his heels into his mount and charged. A steel-shod hoof 
+caught a Lannister guardsman in the face with a sickening crunch. A second man reeled away and for an 
+instant 
+Jory was free. Wyl cursed as they pulled him off his dying horse, swords slashing in the rain. Ned 
+galloped to him, bringing his longsword down on Tregar's helm. The jolt of impact made him grit his 
+teeth. Tregar stumbled to his knees, his lion crest sheared in half, blood running down his face. Heward 
+was hacking at the hands that had seized his bridle when a spear caught him in the belly. Suddenly Jory 
+was back among them, a red rain flying from his sword. "No!" Ned shouted. "Jory, away!" Ned's horse 
+slipped under him and came crashing down in the mud. There was a moment of blinding pain and the 
+taste of blood in his mouth. 
+He saw them cut the legs from Jory's mount and drag him to the earth, swords rising and failing as they 
+closed in around him. When Ned's horse lurched back to its feet, he tried to rise, only to fall again, 
+choking on his scream. He could see the splintered bone poking through his calf. It was the last thing he 
+saw for a time. The rain came down and down and down. 
+When he opened his eyes again, Lord Eddard Stark was alone with his dead. His horse moved closer, 
+caught the rank scent of blood, and galloped away. Ned began to drag himself through the mud, gritting 
+his teeth at the agony in his leg. It seemed to take years. Faces watched from candlelit windows, and 
+people began to emerge from alleys and doors, but no one moved to help. 
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+Littlefinger and the City Watch found him there in the street, cradling Jory Cassel's body in his arms. 
+Somewhere the gold cloaks found a litter, but the trip back to the castle was a blur of agony, and Ned 
+lost consciousness more than once. He remembered seeing the Red Keep looming ahead of him in the 
+first grey light of dawn. The rain had darkened the pale pink stone of the massive walls to the color of 
+blood. 
+Then Grand Maester Pycelle was looming over him, holding a cup, whispering, "Drink, my lord. Here. 
+The milk of the poppy, for your pain." He remembered swallowing, and Pycelle was telling someone to 
+heat the wine to boiling and fetch him clean silk, and that was the last he knew. 
+DAENERYS 
+The Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak was made of two gigantic bronze stallions, rearing, their hooves 
+meeting a hundred feet above the roadway to form a pointed arch. 
+Dany could not have said why the city needed a gate when it had no walls . . . and no buildings that she 
+could see. Yet there it stood, immense and beautiful, the great horses framing the distant purple mountain 
+beyond. The bronze stallions threw long shadows across the waving grasses as Khal Drogo led the 
+khalasar under their hooves and down the godsway, his bloodriders beside him. 
+Dany followed on her silver, escorted by Ser Jorah Mormont and her brother Viserys, mounted once 
+more. After the day in the grass when she had left him to walk back to the khalasar, the Dothraki had 
+laughingly called him Khal Rhae Mhar, the Sorefoot King. Khal Drogo had offered him a place in a cart 
+the next day, and Viserys had accepted. In his stubborn ignorance, he had not even known he was being 
+mocked; the carts were for eunuchs, cripples, women giving birth, the very young and the very old. That 
+won him yet another name: Khal Rhaggat, the Cart King. Her brother had thought it was the khal's way 
+of apologizing for the wrong Dany had done him. She had begged Ser Jorah not to tell him the truth, lest 
+he be shamed. The knight had replied that the king could well do with a bit of shame . . . yet he had done 
+as she bid. It had taken much pleading, and all the 
+pillow tricks Doreah had taught her, before Dany had been able to make Drogo relent and allow Viserys 
+to rejoin them at the head of the column. 
+"Where is the city?" she asked as they passed beneath the bronze arch. There were no buildings to be 
+seen, no people, only the grass and the road, lined with ancient monuments from all the lands the 
+Dothraki had sacked over the centuries. 
+"Ahead," Ser Jorah answered. "Under the mountain." 
+Beyond the horse gate, plundered gods and stolen heroes loomed to either side of them. The forgotten 
+deities of dead cities brandished their broken thunderbolts at the sky as Dany rode her silver past their 
+feet. Stone kings looked down on her from their thrones, their faces chipped and stained, even their 
+names lost in the mists of time. Lithe young maidens danced on marble plinths, draped only in flowers, or 
+poured air from shattered jars. Monsters stood in the grass beside the road; black iron dragons with 
+jewels for eyes, roaring griffins, manticores with their barbed tails poised to strike, and other beasts she 
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+could not name. Some of the statues were so lovely they took her breath away, others so misshapen and 
+terrible that Dany could scarcely bear to look at them. Those, Ser Jorah said, had likely come from the 
+Shadow Lands beyond Asshai. 
+"So many," she said as her silver stepped slowly onward, "and from so many lands." 
+Viserys was less impressed. "The trash of dead cities," he sneered. He was careful to speak in the 
+Common Tongue, which few Dothraki could understand, yet even so Dany found herself glancing back 
+at the men of her khas, to make certain he had not been overheard. He went on blithely. "All these 
+savages know how to do is steal the things better men have built . . . and kill." He laughed. "They do 
+know how to kill. Otherwise I'd have no use for them at all." 
+"They are my people now," Dany said. "You should not call them savages, brother." 
+"The dragon speaks as he likes," Viserys said . . . in the Common Tongue. He glanced over his shoulder 
+at Aggo and Rakharo, riding behind them, and favored them with a mocking smile. "See, the savages 
+lack the wit to understand the speech of civilized men." A mosseaten stone monolith loomed over the 
+road, fifty feet tall. Viserys gazed at it with boredom in his eyes. "How long must we linger amidst these 
+ruins before Drogo gives me my army? I grow tired of waiting." 
+"The princess must be presented to the dosh khaleen . . ." 
+"The crones, yes," her brother interrupted, "and there's to be some mummer's show of a prophecy for 
+the whelp in her belly, you told me. 
+What is that to me? I'm tired of eating horsemeat and I'm sick of the stink of these savages." He sniffed 
+at the wide, floppy sleeve of his tunic, where it was his custom to keep a sachet. It could not have helped 
+much. The tunic was filthy. All the silk and heavy wools that Viserys had worn out of Pentos were stained 
+by hard travel and rotted from sweat. 
+Ser Jorah Mormont said, "The Western Market will have food more to your taste, Your Grace. The 
+traders from the Free Cities come there to sell their wares. The khal will honor his promise in his own 
+time." 
+"He had better," Viserys said grimly. "I was promised a crown, and I mean to have it. The dragon is not 
+mocked." Spying an obscene likeness of a woman with six breasts and a ferret's head, he rode off to 
+inspect it more closely. 
+Dany was relieved, yet no less anxious. "I pray that my sun-andstars will not keep him waiting too long," 
+she told Ser Jorah when her brother was out of earshot. 
+The knight looked after Viserys doubtfully. "Your brother should have bided his time in Pentos. There is 
+no place for him in a khalasar. Illyrio tried to warn him." 
+"He will go as soon as he has his ten thousand. My lord husband promised a golden crown." 
+Ser Jorah grunted. "Yes, Khaleesi, but . . . the Dothraki look on these things differently than we do in the 
+west. I have told him as much, as Illyrio told him, but your brother does not listen. The horselords are no 
+traders. Viserys thinks he sold you, and now he wants his price. Yet Khal Drogo would say he had you 
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+as a gift. He will give Viserys a gift in return, yes . . . in his own time. You do not demand a gift, not of a 
+khaL You do not demand anything of a khal." 
+"It is not right to make him wait." Dany did not know why she was defending her brother, yet she was. 
+"Viserys says he could sweep the Seven Kingdoms with ten thousand Dothraki screamers." 
+Ser Jorah snorted. "Viserys could not sweep a stable with ten thousand brooms." 
+Dany could not pretend to surprise at the disdain in his tone. "What . . . what if it were not Viserys?" she 
+asked. "If it were someone else who led them? Someone stronger? Could the Dothraki truly conquer the 
+Seven Kingdoms?" 
+Ser Jorah's face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. "When I first went into 
+exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked 
+me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good 
+knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki." 
+"But if I asked you now?" 
+"Now," the knight said, "I am less certain. They are better riders than any knight, utterly fearless, and 
+their bows outrange ours. In the Seven Kingdoms, most archers fight on foot, from behind a shieldwall or 
+a barricade of sharpened stakes. The Dothraki fire from horseback, charging or retreating, it makes no 
+matter, they are full as deadly . . . and there are so many of them, my lady. Your lord husband alone 
+counts forty thousand mounted warriors in his khalasar." 
+"Is that truly so many?" 
+"Your brother Rhaegar brought as many men to the Trident," Ser Jorah admitted, "but of that number, 
+no more than a tenth were knights. The rest were archers, freeriders, and foot soldiers armed with spears 
+and pikes. When Rhaegar fell, many threw down their weapons and fled the field. How long do you 
+imagine such a rabble would stand against the charge of forty thousand screamers howling for blood? 
+How well would boiled leather jerkins and mailed shirts protect them when the arrows fall like rain?" 
+"Not long," she said, "not well." 
+He nodded. "Mind you, Princess, if the lords of the Seven Kingdoms have the wit the gods gave a 
+goose, it will never come to that. The riders have no taste for siegecraft. I doubt they could take even the 
+weakest castle in the Seven Kingdoms, but if Robert Baratheon were fool enough to give them battle . . 
+." 
+"Is he?" Dany asked. "A fool, I mean?" 
+Ser Jorah considered that for a moment. "Robert should have been born Dothraki," he said at last. 
+"Your khal would tell you that only a coward hides behind stone walls instead of facing his enemy with a 
+blade in hand. The Usurper would agree. He is a strong man, brave . . . and rash enough to meet a 
+Dothraki horde in the open field. But the men around him, well, their pipers play a different tune. His 
+brother Stannis, Lord Tywin Lannister, Eddard Stark He spat. 
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+"You hate this Lord Stark," Dany said. 
+"He took from me all I loved, for the sake of a few lice-ridden poachers and his precious honor," Ser 
+Jorah said bitterly. From his tone, she could tell the loss still pained him. He changed the subject quickly. 
+"There," he announced, pointing. "Vaes Dothrak. The city of the horselords." 
+Khal Drogo and his bloodriders led them through the great bazaar of the Western Market, down the 
+broad ways beyond. Dany followed close on her silver, staring at the strangeness about her. Vaes 
+Dothrak 
+was at once the largest city and the smallest that she had ever known. She tho ' ught it must be ten times 
+as large as Pentos, a vastness without walls or limits, its broad windswept streets paved in grass and mud 
+and carpeted with wildflowers. In the Free Cities of the west, towers and manses and hovels and bridges 
+and shops and halls all crowded in on one another, but Vaes Dothrak sprawled languorously, baking in 
+the warm sun, ancient, arrogant, and empty. 
+Even the buildings were so queer to her eyes. She saw carved stone pavilions, manses of woven grass 
+as large as castles, rickety wooden towers, stepped pyramids faced with marble, log halls open to the 
+sky. In place of walls, some palaces were surrounded by thorny hedges. "None of them are alike," she 
+said. 
+"Your brother had part of the truth," Ser Jorah admitted. "The Dothraki do not build. A thousand years 
+ago, to make a house, they would dig a hole in the earth and cover it with a woven grass roof. The 
+buildings you see were made by slaves brought here from lands they've plundered, and they built each 
+after the fashion of their own peoples." 
+Most of the halls, even the largest, seemed deserted. "Where are the people who live here?" Dany 
+asked. The bazaar had been full of running children and men shouting, but elsewhere she had seen only a 
+few eunuchs going about their business. 
+"Only the crones of the dosh khaleen dwell permanently in the sacred city, them and their slaves and 
+servants," Ser Jorah replied, "yet Vaes Dothrak is large enough to house every man of every khalasar, 
+should all the khals return to the Mother at once. The crones have prophesied that one day that will come 
+to pass, and so Vaes Dothrak must be ready to embrace all its children." 
+Khal Drogo finally called a halt near the Eastern Market where the caravans from Yi Ti and Asshai and 
+the Shadow Lands came to trade, with the Mother of Mountains looming overhead. Dany smiled as she 
+recalled Magister Illyrio's slave girl and her talk of a palace with two hundred rooms and doors of solid 
+silver. The "palace" was a cavernous wooden feasting hall, its rough-hewn timbered walls rising forty feet, 
+its roof sewn silk, a vast billowing tent that could be raised to keep out the rare rains, or lowered to admit 
+the endless sky. Around the hall were broad grassy horse yards fenced with high hedges, firepits, and 
+hundreds of round earthen houses that bulged from the ground like miniature hills, covered with grass. 
+A small army of slaves had gone ahead to prepare for Khal Drogo's arrival. As each rider swung down 
+from his saddle, he unbelted his arakh and handed it to a waiting slave, and any other weapons he carried 
+as well. Even Khal Drogo himself was not exempt. Ser Jorah 
+344 GEORGE R.R. MARUN 
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+had explained that it was forbidden to carry a blade in Vaes Dothrak, or to shed a free man's blood. 
+Even warring khalasars put aside their feuds and shared meat and mead together when they were in sight 
+of the Mother of Mountains. In this place, the crones of the dosh khaleen had decreed, all Dothraki were 
+one blood, one khalasar, one herd. 
+Cohollo came to Dany as Irri and Jhiqui were helping her down off her silver. He was the oldest of 
+Drogo's three bloodriders, a squat bald man with a crooked nose and a mouth full of broken teeth, 
+shattered by a mace twenty years before when he saved the young khalakka from sellswords who hoped 
+to sell him to his father's enemies. His life had been bound to Drogo's the day her lord husband was born. 
+Every khal had his bloodriders. At first Dany had thought of them as a kind of Dothraki Kingsguard, 
+sworn to protect their lord, but it went further than that. Jhiqui had taught her that a bloodrider was more 
+than a guard; they were the khal's brothers, his shadows, his fiercest friends. "Blood of my blood," Drogo 
+called them, and so it was; they shared a single life. The ancient traditions of the horselords demanded 
+that when the khal died, his bloodriders died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died 
+at the hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then followed him joyfully 
+into the grave. In some khalasars, Jhiqui said, the bloodriders shared the khal's wine, his tent, and even 
+his wives, though never his horses. A man's mount was his own. 
+Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways. She should not have liked being 
+shared. And while old Cohollo treated her kindly enough, the others frightened her; Haggo, huge and 
+silent, often glowered as if he had forgotten who she was, and Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that 
+liked to hurt. He left bruises on Doreah's soft white skin whenever he touched her, and sometimes made 
+Irri sob in the night. Even his horses seemed to fear him. 
+Yet they were bound to Drogo for life and death, so Daenerys had no choice but to accept them. And 
+sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such men. In the songs, the white 
+knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by 
+one of them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, 
+had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her 
+son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against 
+treachery in his Kingsguard. 
+"Khaleesi, " Cohollo said to her, in Dothraki. "Drogo, who is blood 
+of my blood, commands me to tell you that he must ascend the Mother of Mountains this night, to 
+sacrifice to the gods for his safe return." 
+Only men were allowed to set foot on the Mother, Dany knew. The khal's bloodriders would go with 
+him, and return at dawn. "Tell my sun-and-stars that I dream of him, and wait anxious for his return," she 
+replied, thankful. Dany tired more easily as the child grew within her; in truth, a night of rest would be 
+most welcome. Her pregnancy only seemed to have inflamed Drogo's desire for her, and of late his 
+embraces left her exhausted. 
+Doreah led her to the hollow hill that had been prepared for her and her khaL It was cool and dim 
+within, like a tent made of earth. "Jhiqui, a bath, please," she commanded, to wash the dust of travel from 
+her skin and soak her weary bones. It was pleasant to know that they would linger here for a while, that 
+she would not need to climb back on her silver on the morrow. 
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+The water was scalding hot, as she liked it. "I will give my brother his gifts tonight," she decided as Jhiqui 
+was washing her hair. "He should look a king in the sacred city. Doreah, run and find him and invite him 
+to sup with me." Viserys was nicer to the Lysene girl than to her Dothraki handmaids, perhaps because 
+Magister Illyrio had let him bed her back in Pentos. "Irri, go to the bazaar and buy fruit and meat. 
+Anything but horseflesh." 
+"Horse is best," Irri said. "Horse makes a man strong." 
+"Viserys hates horsemeat." 
+"As you say, Khaleesi. " 
+She brought back a haunch of goat and a basket of fruits and vegetables. Jhiqui roasted the meat with 
+sweetgrass and firepods, basting it with honey as it cooked, and there were melons and pomegranates 
+and plums and some queer eastern fruit Dany did not know. While her handmaids prepared the meal, 
+Dany laid out the clothing she'd had made to her brother's measure: a tunic and leggings of crisp white 
+linen, leather sandals that laced up to the knee, a bronze medallion belt, a leather vest painted with 
+fire-breathing dragons. The Dothraki would respect him more if he looked less a beggar, she hoped, and 
+perhaps he would forgive her for shaming him that day in the grass. He was still her king, after all, and her 
+brother. They were both blood of the dragon. 
+She was arranging the last of his gifts-a sandsilk cloak, green as grass, with a pale grey border that 
+would bring out the silver in his hair-when Viserys arrived, dragging Doreah by the arm. Her eye was red 
+where he'd hit her. "How dare you send this whore to give me commands," he said. He shoved the 
+handmaid roughly to the carpet. 
+The anger took Dany utterly by surprise. "I only wanted ... Doreah, what did you say?" 
+"Khaleesi, pardons, forgive me. I went to him, as you bid, and told him you commanded him to join you 
+for supper." 
+"No one commands the dragon," Viserys snarled. "I am your king! I should have sent you back her 
+head!" 
+The Lysene girl quailed, but Dany calmed her with a touch. "Don't be afraid, he won't hurt you. Sweet 
+brother, please, forgive her, the girl misspoke herself, I told her to ask you to sup with me, if it pleases 
+Your Grace." She took him by the hand and drew him across the room. "Look. These are for you." 
+Viserys frowned suspiciously. "What is all this?" 
+"New raiment. I had it made for you." Dany smiled shyly. 
+He looked at her and sneered. "Dothraki rags. Do you presume to dress me now?" 
+"Please . . . you'll be cooler and more comfortable, and I thought . . . maybe if you dressed like them, 
+the Dothraki Dany did not know how to say it without waking his dragon. 
+"Next you'll want to braid my hair." 
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+"I'd never . . ." Why was he always so cruel? She had only wanted to help. "You have no right to a 
+braid, you have won no victories yet." 
+It was the wrong thing to say. Fury shone from his lilac eyes, yet he dared not strike her, not with her 
+handmaids watching and the warriors of her khas outside. Viserys picked up the cloak and sniffed at it. 
+"This stinks of manure. Perhaps I shall use it as a horse blanket." 
+"I had Doreah sew it specially for you," she told him, wounded. "These are garments fit for a khaL " 
+"I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair," Viserys 
+spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. "You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect 
+you if you wake the dragon?" 
+His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of 
+his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she'd 
+hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength. 
+It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of 
+the medallions had sliced it open. "You are the one who forgets himself," Dany said to him. "Didn't you 
+learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray 
+that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails." 
+Viserys scrambled back to his feet. "When I come into my kingdom, you will rue this day, slut." He 
+walked off, holding his torn face, leaving her gifts behind him. 
+Drops Of his blood had spattered the beautiful sandsilk cloak. Dany clutched the soft cloth to her cheek 
+and sat cross-legged on her sleeping mats. 
+"Your supper is ready, Khaleesi," Jhiqui announced. 
+"I'm not hungry," Dany said sadly. She was suddenly very tired. "Share the food among yourselves, and 
+send some to Ser Jorah, if you would." After a moment she added, "Please, bring me one of the dragon's 
+eggs." 
+Irri fetched the egg with the deep green shell, bronze flecks shining amid its scales as she turned it in her 
+small hands. Dany curled up on her side, pulling the sandsilk cloak across her and cradling the egg in the 
+hollow between her swollen belly and small, tender breasts. She liked to hold them. They were so 
+beautiful, and sometimes just being close to them made her feel stronger, braver, as if somehow she were 
+drawing strength from the stone dragons locked inside. 
+She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her . . . as if he were reaching 
+out, brother to brother, blood to blood. "You are the dragon," Dany whispered to him, "the true dragon. 
+I know it. I know it." And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home. 
+BRAN 
+A light snow was falling. Bran could feel the flakes on his face, melting as they touched his skin like the 
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+gentlest of rains. He sat straight atop his horse, watching as the iron portcullis was winched upward. Try 
+as he might to keep calm, his heart was fluttering in his chest. 
+"Are you ready?" Robb asked. 
+Bran nodded, trying not to let his fear show. He had not been outside Winterfell since his fall, but he was 
+determined to ride out as proud as any knight. 
+"Let's ride, then." Robb put his heels into his big grey-and-white gelding, and the horse walked under the 
+portcullis. 
+"Go," Bran whispered to his own horse. He touched her neck lightly, and the small chestnut filly started 
+forward. Bran had named her Dancer. She was two years old, and Joseth said she was smarter than any 
+horse had a right to be. They had trained her special, to respond to rein and voice and touch. Up to now, 
+Bran had only ridden her around the yard. At first Joseth or Hodor would lead her, while Bran sat 
+strapped to her back in the oversize saddle the Imp had drawn up for him, but for the past fortnight he 
+had been riding her on his own, trotting her round and round, and growing bolder with every circuit. 
+They passed beneath the gatehouse, over the drawbridge, through 
+the outer walls. Summer and Grey Wind came loping beside them, sniffing at the wind. Close behind 
+came Theon Greyjoy, with his longbow and a quiver of broadheads; he had a mind to take a deer, he 
+had told them. He was followed by four guardsmen in mailed shirts and coifs, and Joseth, a stick-thin 
+stableman whom Robb had named master of horse while Hullen was away. Maester Luwin brought up 
+the rear, riding on a donkey. Bran would have liked it better if he and Robb had gone off alone, just the 
+two of them, but Hal Mollen would not hear of it, and Maester Luwin backed him. If Bran fell off his 
+horse or injured himself, the maester was determined to be with him. 
+Beyond the castle lay the market square, its wooden stalls deserted now. They rode down the muddy 
+streets of the village, past rows of small neat houses of log and undressed stone. Less than one in five 
+were occupied, thin tendrils of woodsmoke curling up from their chimneys. The rest would fill up one by 
+one as it grew colder. When the snow fell and the ice winds howled down out of the north, Old Nan 
+said, farmers left their frozen fields and distant holdfasts, loaded up their wagons, and then the winter 
+town came alive. Bran had never seen it happen, but Maester Luwin said the day was looming closer. 
+The end of the long summer was near at hand. Winter is coming. 
+A few villagers eyed the direwolves anxiously as the riders went past, and one man dropped the wood 
+he was carrying as he shrank away in fear, but most of the townfolk had grown used to the sight. They 
+bent the knee when they saw the boys, and Robb greeted each of them with a lordly nod. 
+With his legs unable to grip, the swaying motion of the horse made Bran feel unsteady at first, but the 
+huge saddle with its thick horn and high back cradled him comfortingly, and the straps around his chest 
+and thighs would not allow him to fall. After a time the rhythm began to feel almost natural. His anxiety 
+faded, and a tremulous smile crept across his face. 
+Two serving wenches stood beneath the sign of the Smoking Log, the local alehouse. When Theon 
+Greyjoy called out to them, the younger girl turned red and covered her face. Theon spurred his mount to 
+move up beside Robb. "Sweet Kyra," he said with a laugh. "She squirms like a weasel in bed, but say a 
+word to her on the street, and she blushes pink as a maid. Did I ever tell you about the night that she and 
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+Bessa-" 
+"Not where my brother can hear, Theon," Robb warned him with a glance at Bran. 
+Bran looked away and pretended not to have heard, but he could feel Greyjoy's eyes on him. No doubt 
+he was smiling. He smiled a lot, 
+as if the world were a secret joke that only he was clever enough to understand. Robb seemed to 
+admire Theon and enjoy his company, but Bran had never warmed to his father's ward. 
+Robb rode closer. "You are doing well, Bran." 
+"I want to go faster," Bran replied. 
+Robb smiled. "As you will." He sent his gelding into a trot. The wolves raced after him. Bran snapped 
+the reins sharply, and Dancer picked up her pace. He heard a shout from Theon Greyjoy, and the 
+hoofbeats of the other horses behind him. 
+Bran's cloak billowed out, rippling in the wind, and the snow seemed to rush at his face. Robb was well 
+ahead, glancing back over his shoulder from time to time to make sure Bran and the others were 
+following. He snapped the reins again. Smooth as silk, Dancer slid into a gallop. The distance closed. By 
+the time he caught Robb on the edge of the wolfswood, two miles beyond the winter town, they had left 
+the others well behind. "I can tide!" Bran shouted, grinning. It felt almost as good as flying. 
+"I'd race you, but I fear you'd win." Robb's tone was light and joking, yet Bran could tell that something 
+was troubling his brother underneath the smile. 
+"I don't want to race." Bran looked around for the direwolves. Both had vanished into the wood. "Did 
+you hear Summer howling last night?" 
+"Grey Wind was restless too," Robb said. His auburn hair had grown shaggy and unkempt, and a 
+reddish stubble covered his jaw, making him look older than his fifteen years. "Sometimes I think they 
+know things . . . sense things . . ." Robb sighed. "I never know how much to tell you, Bran. I wish you 
+were older." 
+"I'm eight now!" Bran said. "Eight isn't so much younger than fifteen, and I'm the heir to Winterfell, after 
+you." 
+"So you are." Robb sounded sad, and even a little scared. "Bran, I need to tell you something. There 
+was a bird last night. From King's Landing. Maester Luwin woke me." 
+Bran felt a sudden dread. Dark wings, dark words, Old Nan always said, and of late the messenger 
+ravens had been proving the truth of the proverb. When Robb wrote to the Lord Commander of the 
+Night's Watch, the bird that came back brought word that Uncle Benjen was still missing. Then a 
+message had arrived from the Eyrie, from Mother, but that had not been good news either. She did not 
+say when she meant to return, only that she had taken the Imp as prisoner. Bran had sort of liked the little 
+man, yet the name Lannister sent cold fingers creeping up his spine. There was something about the 
+Lannisters, 
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+something he ought to remember, but when he tried to think what, he felt dizzy and his stomach clenched 
+hard as a stone. Robb spent most of that day locked behind closed doors with Maester Luwin, Theon 
+Greyjoy, and Hallis Mollen. Afterward, riders were sent out on fast horses, carrying Robb's commands 
+throughout the north. Bran heard talk of Moat Cailin, the ancient stronghold the First Men had built at the 
+top of the Neck. No one ever told him what was happening, yet he knew it was not good. 
+And now another raven, another message. Bran clung to hope. "Was the bird from Mother? Is she 
+coming home?" 
+"The message was from Alyn in King's Landing. Jory Cassel is dead. And Wyl and Heward as well. 
+Murdered by the Kingslayer." Robb lifted his face to the snow, and the flakes melted on his cheeks. 
+"May the gods give them rest." 
+Bran did not know what to say. He felt as if he'd been punched. Jory had been captain of the household 
+guard at Winterfell since before Bran was born. "They killed Jory?" He remembered all the times Jory 
+had chased him over the roofs. He could picture him striding across the yard in mail and plate, or sitting 
+at his accustomed place on the bench in the Great Hall, joking as he ate. "Why would anyone kill Jory?" 
+Robb shook his head numbly, the pain plain in his eyes. "I don't know, and . . . Bran, that's not the worst 
+of it. Father was caught beneath a falling horse in the fight. Alyn says his leg was shattered, and . . . 
+Maester Pycelle has given him the milk of the poppy, but they aren't sure when . . . when he . . ." The 
+sound of hoofbeats made him glance down the road, to where Theon and the others were coming up. 
+"When he will wake," Robb finished. He laid his hand on the pommel of his sword then, and went on in 
+the solemn voice of Robb the Lord. "Bran, I promise you, whatever might happen, I will not let this be 
+forgotten." 
+Something in his tone made Bran even more fearful. "What will you do?" he asked as Theon Greyjoy 
+reined in beside them. 
+"Theon thinks I should call the banners," Robb said. 
+"Blood for blood." For once Greyjoy did not smile. His lean, dark face had a hungry look to it, and 
+black hair fell down across his eyes. 
+"Only the lord can call the banners," Bran said as the snow drifted down around them. 
+"If your father dies," Theon said, "Robb will be Lord of Winterfell." 
+"He won't die!" Bran screamed at him. 
+Robb took his hand. "He won't die, not Father," he said calmly. 
+"Still ... the honor of the north is in my hands now. When our lord father took his leave of us, he told me 
+to be strong for you and for Rickon. I'm almost a man grown, Bran." 
+Bran shivered. "I wish Mother was back," he said miserably. He looked around for Maester Luwin; his 
+donkey was visible in the far distance, trotting over a rise. "Does Maester Luwin say to call the banners 
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+too?" 
+"The maester is timid as an old woman," said Theon. 
+"Father always listened to his counsel," Bran reminded his brother. "Mother too." 
+"I listen to him," Robb insisted. "I listen to everyone." 
+The joy Bran had felt at the ride was gone, melted away like the snowflakes on his face. Not so long 
+ago, the thought of Robb calling the banners and riding off to war would have filled him with excitement, 
+but now he felt only dread. "Can we go back now?" he asked. "I'm cold." 
+Robb glanced around. "We need to find the wolves. Can you stand to go a bit longer?" 
+"I can go as long as you can." Maester Luwin had warned him to keep the ride short, for fear of saddle 
+sores, but Bran would not admit to weakness in front of his brother. He was sick of the way everyone 
+was always fussing over him and asking how he was. 
+"Let's hunt down the hunters, then," Robb said. Side by side, they urged their mounts off the kingsroad 
+and struck out into the wolfswood. Theon dropped back and followed well behind them, talking and 
+joking with the guardsmen. 
+It was nice under the trees. Bran kept Dancer to a walk, holding the reins lightly and looking all around 
+him as they went. He knew this wood, but he had been so long confined to Winterfell that he felt as 
+though he were seeing it for the first time. The smells filled his nostrils; the sharp fresh tang of pine 
+needles, the earthy odor of wet rotting leaves, the hints of animal musk and distant cooking fires. He 
+caught a glimpse of a black squirrel moving through the snow-covered branches of an oak, and paused 
+to study the silvery web of an empress spider. 
+Theon and the others fell farther and farther behind, until Bran could no longer hear their voices. From 
+ahead came the faint sound of rushing waters. It grew louder until they reached the stream. Tears stung 
+his eyes. 
+"Bran?" Robb asked. "What's wrong?" 
+Bran shook his head. "I was just remembering," he said. "Jory brought us here once, to fish for trout. 
+You and me and Jon. Do you remember?" 
+"I remember," Robb said, his voice quiet and sad. 
+"I didn't catch anything," Bran said, "but Jon gave me his fish on the way back to Winterfell. Will we ever 
+see Jon again?" 
+"We saw Uncle Benjen when the king came to visit," Robb pointed out. "Jon will visit too, you'll see." 
+The stream was running high and fast. Robb dismounted and led his gelding across the ford. In the 
+deepest part of the crossing, the water came up to midthigh. He tied his horse to a tree on the far side, 
+and waded back across for Bran and Dancer. The current foamed around rock and root, and Bran could 
+feel the spray on his face as Robb led him over. It made him smile. For a moment he felt strong again, 
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+and whole. He looked up at the trees and dreamed of climbing them, right up to the very top, with the 
+whole forest spread out beneath him. 
+They were on the far side when they heard the howl, a long rising wail that moved through the trees like 
+a cold wind. Bran raised his head to listen. "Summer," he said. No sooner had he spoken than a second 
+voice joined the first. 
+"They've made a kill," Robb said as he remounted. "I'd best go and bring them back. Wait here, Theon 
+and the others should be along shortly." 
+"I want to go with you," Bran said. 
+"I'll find them faster by myself." Robb spurred his gelding and vanished into the trees. 
+Once he was gone, the woods seemed to close in around Bran. The snow was falling more heavily now. 
+Where it touched the ground it melted, but all about him rock and root and branch wore a thin blanket of 
+white. As he waited, he was conscious of how uncomfortable he felt. He could not feel his legs, hanging 
+useless in the stirrups, but the strap around his chest was tight and chafing, and the melting snow had 
+soaked through his gloves to chill his hands. He wondered what was keeping Theon and Maester Luwin 
+and Joseth and the rest. 
+When he heard the rustle of leaves, Bran used the reins to make Dancer turn, expecting to see his 
+friends, but the ragged men who stepped out onto the bank of the stream were strangers. 
+"Good day to you," he said nervously. One look, and Bran knew they were neither foresters nor 
+farmers. He was suddenly conscious of how richly he was dressed. His surcoat was new, dark grey wool 
+with silver buttons, and a heavy silver pin fastened his fur-trimmed cloak at the shoulders. His boots and 
+gloves were lined with fur as well. 
+"All alone, are you?" said the biggest of them, a bald man with a raw windburnt face. "Lost in the 
+wolfswood, poor lad." 
+"I'm not lost." Bran did not like the way the strangers were looking 
+at him. He counted four, but when he turned his head, he saw two others behind him. "My brother rode 
+off just a moment ago, and my guard will be here shortly." 
+"Your guard, is it?" a second man said. Grey stubble covered his gaunt face. "And what would they be 
+guarding, my little lord? Is that a silver pin I see there on your cloak?" 
+"Pretty," said a woman's voice. She scarcely looked like a woman; tall and lean, with the same hard face 
+as the others, her hair hidden beneath a bowl-shaped halfhelm. The spear she held was eight feet of black 
+oak, tipped in rusted steel. 
+"Let's have a look," said the big bald man. 
+Bran watched him anxiously. The man's clothes were filthy, fallen almost to pieces, patched here with 
+brown and here with blue and there with a dark green, and faded everywhere to grey, but once that 
+cloak might have been black. The grey stubbly man wore black rags too, he saw with a sudden start. 
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+Suddenly Bran remembered the oathbreaker his father had beheaded, the day they had found the wolf 
+pups; that man had worn black as well, and Father said he had been a deserter from the Night's Watch. 
+No man is more dangerous, he remembered Lord Eddard saying. The deserter knows his life is forfeit if 
+he is taken, so he will notflinch from any crime, no matter how vile or crueL 
+"The pin, lad," the big man said. He held out his hand. 
+"We'll take the horse too," said another of them, a woman shorter than Robb, with a broad fiat face and 
+lank yellow hair. "Get down, and be quick about it." A knife slid from her sleeve into her hand, its edge 
+jagged as a saw. 
+"No," Bran blurted. "I can't 
+The big man grabbed his reins before Bran could think to wheel Dancer around and gallop off. "You 
+can, lordling . . . and will, if you know what's good for you." 
+"Stiv, look how he's strapped on." The tall woman pointed with her spear. "Might be it's the truth he's 
+telling." 
+"Straps, is it?" Stiv said. He drew a dagger from a sheath at his belt. "There's ways to deal with straps." 
+"You some kind of cripple?" asked the short woman. 
+Bran flared. "I'm Brandon Stark of Winterfell, and you better let go of my horse, or I'll see you all dead." 
+The gaunt man with the grey stubbled face laughed. "The boy's a Stark, true enough. Only a Stark would 
+be fool enough to threaten where smarter men would beg." 
+"Cut his little cock off and stuff it in his mouth," suggested the short woman. "That should shut him up." 
+"You're as stupid as you are ugly, Hali," said the tall woman. "The boy's worth nothing dead, but alive . . 
+. gods be damned, think what Mance would give to have Benjen Stark's own blood to hostage!" 
+"Mance be damned," the big man cursed. "You want to go back there, Osha? More fool you. Think the 
+white walkers will care if you have a hostage?" He turned back to Bran and slashed at the strap around 
+his thigh. The leather parted with a sigh. 
+The stroke had been quick and careless, biting deep. Looking down, Bran glimpsed pale flesh where the 
+wool of his leggings had parted. Then the blood began to flow. He watched the red stain spread, feeling 
+light-headed, curiously apart; there had been no pain, not even a hint of feeling. The big man grunted in 
+surprise. 
+"Put down your steel now, and I promise you shall have a quick and painless death," Robb called out. 
+Bran looked up in desperate hope, and there he was. The strength of the words were undercut by the 
+way his voice cracked with strain. He was mounted, the bloody carcass of an elk slung across the back 
+of his horse, his sword in a gloved hand. 
+"The brother," said the man with the grey stubbly face. 
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+"He's a fierce one, he is," mocked the short woman. Hali, they called her. "You mean to fight us, boy?" 
+"Don't be a fool, lad. You're one against six." The tall woman, Osha, leveled her spear. "Off the horse, 
+and throw down the sword. We'll thank you kindly for the mount and for the venison, and you and your 
+brother can be on your way." 
+Robb whistled. They heard the faint sound of soft feet on wet leaves. The undergrowth parted, 
+low-hanging branches giving up their accumulation of snow, and Grey Wind and Summer emerged from 
+the green. Summer sniffed the air and growled. 
+"Wolves," gasped Hali. 
+"Direwolves," Bran said. Still half-grown, they were as large as any wolf he had ever seen, but the 
+differences were easy to spot, if you knew what to look for. Maester Luwin and Farlen the kennelmaster 
+had taught him. A direwolf had a bigger head and longer legs in proportion to its body, and its snout and 
+jaw were markedly leaner and more pronounced. There was something gaunt and terrible about them as 
+they stood there amid the gently falling snow. Fresh blood spotted Grey Wind's muzzle. 
+"Dogs," the big bald man said contemptuously. "Yet I'm told there's nothing like a wolfskin cloak to 
+warm a man by night." He made a sharp gesture. "Take them." 
+Robb shouted, "Winterfell!" and kicked his horse. The gelding 
+plunged down the bank as the ragged men closed. A man with an axe rushed in, shouting and heedless. 
+Robb's sword caught him full in the face with a sickening crunch and a spray of bright blood. The man 
+with the gaunt stubbly face made a grab for the reins, and for half a second he had them . . . and then 
+Grey Wind was on him, bearing him down. He fell back into the stream with a splash and a shout, flailing 
+wildly with his knife as his head went under. The direwolf plunged in after him, and the white water turned 
+red where they had vanished. 
+Robb and Osha matched blows in midstream. Her long spear was a steel-headed serpent, flashing out at 
+his chest, once, twice, three times, but Robb parried every thrust with his longsword, turning the point 
+aside. On the fourth or fifth thrust, the tall woman overextended herself and lost her balance, just for a 
+second. Robb charged, riding her down. 
+A few feet away, Summer darted in and snapped at Hali. The knife bit at his flank. Summer slid away, 
+snarling, and came rushing in again. This time his jaws closed around her calf. Holding the knife with both 
+hands, the small woman stabbed down, but the direwolf seemed to sense the blade coming. He pulled 
+free for an instant, his mouth full of leather and cloth and bloody flesh. When Hali stumbled and fell, he 
+came at her again, slamming her backward, teeth tearing at her belly. 
+The sixth man ran from the carnage . . . but not far. As he went scrambling up the far side of the bank, 
+Grey Wind emerged from the stream, dripping wet. He shook the water off and bounded after the 
+running man, hamstringing him with a single snap of his teeth, and going for the throat as the screaming 
+man slid back down toward the water. 
+And then there was no one left but the big man, Stiv. He slashed at Bran's chest strap, grabbed his arm, 
+and yanked. Suddenly Bran was falling. He sprawled on the ground, his legs tangled under him, one foot 
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+in the stream. He could not feel the cold of the water, but he felt the steel when Stiv pressed his dagger to 
+his throat. "Back away," the man warned, "or I'll open the boy's windpipe, I swear it." 
+Robb reined his horse in, breathing hard. The fury went out of his eyes, and his sword arm dropped. 
+In that moment Bran saw everything. Summer was savaging Hali, pulling glistening blue snakes from her 
+belly. Her eyes were wide and staring. Bran could not tell whether she was alive or dead. The grey 
+stubbly man and the one with the axe lay unmoving, but Osha was on her knees, crawling toward her 
+fallen spear. Grey Wind padded toward her, dripping wet. "Call him off!" the big man shouted. "Call 
+them both off, or the cripple boy dies now!" 
+"Grey Wind, Summer, to me," Robb said. 
+The direwolves stopped, turned their heads. Grey Wind loped back to Robb. Summer stayed where he 
+was, his eyes on Bran and the man beside him. He growled. His muzzle was wet and red, but his eyes 
+burned. 
+Osha used the butt end of her spear to lever herself back to her feet. Blood leaked from a wound on the 
+upper arm where Robb had cut her. Bran could see sweat trickling down the big man's face. Stiv was as 
+scared as he was, he realized. "Starks," the man muttered, "bloody Starks." He raised his voice. "Osha, 
+kill the wolves and get his sword." 
+"Kill them yourself," she replied. "I'll not be getting near those monsters." 
+For a moment Stiv was at a loss. His hand trembled; Bran felt a trickle of blood where the knife pressed 
+against his neck. The stench of the man filled his nose; he smelled of fear. "You," he called out to Robb. 
+"You have a name?" 
+"I am Robb Stark, the heir to Winterfell." 
+"This is your brother?" 
+"Yes.,, 
+"You want him alive, you do what I say. Off the horse." 
+Robb hesitated a moment. Then, slowly and deliberately, he dismounted and stood with his sword in 
+hand. 
+"Now kill the wolves." 
+Robb did not move. 
+"You do it. The wolves or the boy." 
+"No!" Bran screamed. If Robb did as they asked, Stiv would kill them both anyway, once the 
+direwolves were dead. 
+The bald man took hold of his hair with his free hand and twisted it cruelly, till Bran sobbed in pain. "You 
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+shut your mouth, cripple, you hear me?" He twisted harder. "You hear me?" 
+A low thrum came from the woods behind them. Stiv gave a choked gasp as a half foot of razor-tipped 
+broadhead suddenly exploded out of his chest. The arrow was bright red, as if it had been painted in 
+blood. 
+The dagger fell away from Bran's throat. The big man swayed and collapsed, facedown in the stream. 
+The arrow broke beneath him. Bran watched his life go swirling off in the water. 
+Osha glanced around as Father's guardsmen appeared from beneath the trees, steel in hand. She threw 
+down her spear. "Mercy, m'lord," she called to Robb. 
+The guardsmen had a strange, pale look to their faces as they took in the scene of slaughter. They eyed 
+the wolves uncertainly, and when Summer returned to Hali's corpse to feed, Joseth dropped his knife 
+and scrambled for the bush, heaving. Even Maester Luwin seemed shocked as he stepped from behind 
+a tree, but only for an instant. Then he shook his head and waded across the stream to Bran's side. "Are 
+you hurt?" 
+"He cut my leg," Bran said, "but I couldn't feel it." 
+As the maester knelt to examine the wound, Bran turned his head. Theon Greyjoy stood beside a 
+sentinel tree, his bow in hand. He was smiling. Ever smiling. A half-dozen arrows were thrust into the soft 
+ground at his feet, but it had taken only one. "A dead enemy is a thing of beauty," he announced. 
+"Jon always said you were an ass, Greyjoy," Robb said loudly. "I ought to chain you up in the yard and 
+let Bran take a few practice shots at you. " 
+"You should be thanking me for saving your brother's life." 
+"What if you had missed the shot?" Robb said. "What if you'd only wounded him? What if you had made 
+his hand jump, or hit Bran instead? For all you knew, the man might have been wearing a breastplate, all 
+you could see was the back of his cloak. What would have happened to my brother then? Did you ever 
+think of that, Greyjoy?" 
+Theon's smile was gone. He gave a sullen shrug and began to pull his arrows from the ground, one by 
+one. 
+Robb glared at his guardsmen. "Where were you?" he demanded of them. "I was sure you were close 
+behind us." 
+The men traded unhappy glances. "We were following, m'lord," said Quent, the youngest of them, his 
+beard a soft brown fuzz. "Only first we waited for Maester Luwin and his ass, begging your pardons, and 
+then, well, as it were He glanced over at Theon and quickly looked away, abashed. 
+"I spied a turkey," Theon said, annoyed by the question. "How was I to know that you'd leave the boy 
+alone?" 
+Robb turned his head to look at Theon once more. Bran had never seen him so angry, yet he said 
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+nothing. Finally he knelt beside Maester Luwin. "How badly is my brother wounded?" 
+"No more than a scratch," the maester said. He wet a cloth in the stream to clean the cut. "Two of them 
+wear the black," he told Robb as he worked. 
+Robb glanced over at where Stiv lay sprawled in the stream, his ragged black cloak moving fitfully as the 
+rushing waters tugged at it. "Deserters from the Night's Watch," he said grimly. "They must have been 
+fools, to come so close to Winterfell." 
+"Folly and desperation are ofttimes hard to tell apart," said Maester Luwin. 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 359 
+"Shall we bury them, m'lord?" asked Quent. 
+"They would not have buried us," Robb said. "Hack off their heads, we'll send them back to the Wall. 
+Leave the rest for the carrion crows." 
+"And this one?" Quent jerked a thumb toward Osha. 
+Robb walked over to her. She was a head taller than he was, but she dropped to her knees at his 
+approach. "Give me my life, m1ord of Stark, and I am yours." 
+"Mine? What would I do with an oathbreaker?" 
+"I broke no oaths. Stiv and Wallen flew down off the Wall, not me. The black crows got no place for 
+women." 
+Theon Greyjoy sauntered closer. "Give her to the wolves," he urged Robb. The woman's eyes went to 
+what was left of Hali, and just as quickly away. She shuddered. Even the guardsmen looked queasy. 
+"She's a woman," Robb said. 
+"A wildling," Bran told him. "She said they should keep me alive so they could take me to Mance 
+Rayder." 
+"Do you have a name?" Robb asked her. 
+"Osha, as it please the lord," she muttered sourly. 
+Maester Luwin stood. "We might do well to question her." 
+Bran could see the relief on his brother's face. "As you say, Maester. Wayn, bind her hands. She'll come 
+back to Winterfell with us . . . and live or die by the truths she gives us." 
+TYRION 
+"Yu want eat?" Mord asked, glowering. He had a plate of oiled beans in one thick, stub-fingered hand. 
+Page 272
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+Tyrion Lannister was starved, but he refused to let this brute see him cringe. "A leg of lamb would be 
+pleasant," he said, from the heap of soiled straw in the corner of his cell. "Perhaps a dish of peas and 
+onions, some fresh baked bread with butter, and a flagon of mulled wine to wash it down. Or beer, if 
+that's easier. I try not to be overly particular." 
+"Is beans," Mord said. "Here." He held out the plate. 
+Tyrion sighed. The turnkey was twenty stone of gross stupidity, with brown rotting teeth and small dark 
+eyes. The left side of his face was slick with scar where an axe had cut off his ear and part of his cheek. 
+He was as predictable as he was ugly, but Tyrion was hungry. He reached up for the plate. 
+Mord jerked it away, grinning. "Is here," he said, holding it out beyond Tyrion's reach. 
+The dwarf climbed stiffly to his feet, every joint aching. "Must we play the same fool's game with every 
+meal?" He made another grab for the beans. 
+Mord shambled backward, grinning through his rotten teeth. "Is here, dwarf man." He held the plate out 
+at arm's length, over the edge 
+where the cell ended and the sky began. "You not want eat? Here. Come take." 
+Tyrion's arms were too short to reach the plate, and he was not about to step that close to the edge. All 
+it would take would be a quick shove of Mord's heavy white belly, and he would end up a sickening red 
+splotch on the stones of Sky, like so many other prisoners of the Eyrie over the centuries. "Come to think 
+on it, I'm not hungry after all," he declared, retreating to the corner of his cell. 
+Mord grunted and opened his thick fingers. The wind took the plate, flipping it over as it fell. A handful 
+of beans sprayed back at them as the food tumbled out of sight. The turnkey laughed, his gut shaking like 
+a bowl of pudding. 
+Tyrion felt a pang of rage. "You fucking son of a pox-ridden ass," he spat. "I hope you die of a bloody 
+flux." 
+For that, Mord gave him a kick, driving a steel-toed boot hard into Tyrion's ribs on the way out. "I take 
+it back!" he gasped as he doubled over on the straw. "I'll kill you myself, I swear it!" The heavy 
+ironbound door slammed shut. Tyrion heard the rattle of keys. 
+For a small man, he had been cursed with a dangerously big mouth, he reflected as he crawled back to 
+his corner of what the Arryns laughably called their dungeon. He huddled beneath the thin blanket that 
+was his only bedding, staring out at a blaze of empty blue sky and distant mountains that seemed to go on 
+forever, wishing he still had the shadowskin cloak he'd won from Marillion at dice, after the singer had 
+stolen it off the body of that brigand chief. The skin had smelled of blood and mold, but it was warm and 
+thick. Mord had taken it the moment he laid eyes on it. 
+The wind tugged at his blanket with gusts sharp as talons. His cell was miserably small, even for a dwarf. 
+Not five feet away, where a wall ought to have been, where a wall would be in a proper dungeon, the 
+floor ended and the sky began. He had plenty of fresh air and sunshine, and the moon and stars by night, 
+but Tyrion would have traded it all in an instant for the dankest, gloomiest pit in the bowels of the 
+Casterly Rock. 
+Page 273
+
+"You fly," Mord had promised him, when he'd shoved him into the cell. "Twenty day, thirty, fifty maybe. 
+Then you fly." 
+The Arryns kept the only dungeon in the realm where the prisoners were welcome to escape at will. 
+That first day, after girding up his courage for hours, Tyrion had lain flat on his stomach and squirmed to 
+the edge, to poke out his head and look down. Sky was six hundred feet below, with nothing between 
+but empty air. If he craned his neck out as far as it could go, he could see other cells to his right and left 
+and 
+above him. He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had torn off his wings. 
+It was cold in the cell, the wind screamed night and day, and worst of all, the floor sloped. Ever so 
+slightly, yet it was enough. He was afraid to close his eyes, afraid that he might roll over in his steep and 
+wake in sudden terror as he went sliding off the edge. Small wonder the sky cells drove men mad. 
+Gods save me, some previous tenant had written on the wall in something that looked suspiciously like 
+blood, the blue is calling. At first Tyrion wondered who he'd been, and what had become of him; later, he 
+decided that he would rather not know. 
+If only he had shut his mouth . . . 
+The wretched boy had started it, looking down on him from a throne of carved weirwood beneath the 
+moon-and-falcon banners of House Arryn. Tyrion Lannister had been looked down on all his life, but 
+seldom by rheumy-eyed six-year-olds who needed to stuff fat cushions under their cheeks to lift them to 
+the height of a man. "Is he the bad man?" the boy had asked, clutching his doll. 
+"He is," the Lady Lysa had said from the lesser throne beside him. She was all in blue, powdered and 
+perfumed for the suitors who filled her court. 
+"He's so small," the Lord of the Eyrie said, giggling. 
+"This is Tyrion the Imp, of House Lannister, who murdered your father." She raised her voice so it 
+carried down the length of High Hall of the Eyrie, ringing off the milk-white walls and the slender pillars, 
+so every man could hear it. "He slew the Hand of the King!" 
+"Oh, did I kill him too?" Tyrion had said, like a fool. 
+That would have been a very good time to have kept his mouth closed and his head bowed. He could 
+see that now; seven hells, he had seen it then. The High Hall of the Arryns was long and austere, with a 
+forbidding coldness to its walls of blue-veined white marble, but the faces around him had been colder by 
+far. The power of Casterly Rock was far away, and there were no friends of the Lannisters in the Vale of 
+Arryn. Submission and silence would have been his best defenses. 
+But Tyrion's mood had been too foul for sense. To his shame, he had faltered during the last leg of their 
+day-long climb up to the Eyrie, his stunted legs unable to take him any higher. Brorm had carried him the 
+rest of the way, and the humiliation poured oil on the flames of his anger. "It would seem I've been a busy 
+little fellow," he said with bitter sarcasm. "I wonder when I found the time to do all this slaying and 
+murdering." 
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+
+He ought to have remembered who he was dealing with. Lysa Arryn 
+and her half-sane weakling son had not been known at court for their love of wit, especially when it was 
+directed at them. 
+"Imp," Lysa said coldly, "you will guard that mocking tongue of yours and speak to my son politely, or I 
+promise you will have cause to regret it. Remember where you are. This is the Eyrie, and these are 
+knights of the Vale you see around you, true men who loved Jon Arryn well. Every one of them would 
+die for me." 
+"Lady Arryn, should any harm come to me, my brother Jaime will be pleased to see that they do." Even 
+as he spat out the words, Tyrion knew they were folly. 
+"Can you fly, my lord of Lannister?" Lady Lysa asked. "Does a dwarf have wings? If not, you would be 
+wiser to swallow the next threat that comes to mind." 
+"I made no threats," Tyrion said. "That was a promise." 
+Little Lord Robert hopped to his feet at that, so upset he dropped his doll. "You can't hurt us," he 
+screamed. "No one can hurt us here. Tell him, Mother, tell him he can't hurt us here." The boy began to 
+twitch. 
+"The Eyrie is impregnable," Lysa Arryn declared calmly. She drew her son close, holding him safe in the 
+circle of her plump white arms. "The Imp is trying to frighten us, sweet baby. The Lannisters are all liars. 
+No one will hurt my sweet boy." 
+The hell of it was, she was no doubt right. Having seen what it took to get here, Tyrion could well 
+imagine how it would be for a knight trying to fight his way up in armor, while stones and arrows poured 
+down from above and enemies contested with him for every step. Nightmare did not begin to describe it. 
+Small wonder the Eyrie had never been taken. 
+Still, Tyrion had been unable to silence himself. "Not impregnable," he said, "merely inconvenient." 
+Young Robert pointed down, his hand trembling. "You're a liar. Mother, I want to see him fly." Two 
+guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks seized Tyrion by the arms, lifting him off his floor. 
+The gods only know what might have happened then were it not for Catelyn Stark. "Sister," she called 
+out from where she stood below the thrones, "I beg you to remember, this man is my prisoner. I will not 
+have him harmed." 
+Lysa Arryn glanced at her sister coolly for a moment, then rose and swept down on Tyrion, her long 
+skirts trailing after her. For an instant he feared she would strike him, but instead she commanded them to 
+release him. Her men shoved him to the floor, his legs went out from under him, and Tyrion fell. 
+He must have made quite a sight as he struggled to his knees, only to feel his right leg spasm, sending him 
+sprawling once more. Laughter boomed up and down the High Hall of the Arryns. 
+Page 275
+
+"My sister's little guest is too weary to stand," Lady Lysa announced. "Ser Vardis, take him down to the 
+dungeon. A rest in one of our sky cells will do him much good." 
+The guardsmen jerked him upright. Tyrion Lannister dangled between them, kicking feebly, his face red 
+with shame. "I will remember this," he told them all as they carried him off. 
+And so he did, for all the good it did him. 
+At first he had consoled himself that this imprisonment could not last long. Lysa Arryn wanted to humble 
+him, that was all. She would send for him again, and soon. If not her, then Catelyn Stark would want to 
+question him. This time he would guard his tongue more closely. They dare not kill him out of hand; he 
+was still a Lannister of Casterly Rock, and if they shed his blood, it would mean war. Or so he had told 
+himself. 
+Now he was not so certain. 
+Perhaps his captors only meant to let him rot here, but he feared he did not have the strength to rot for 
+long. He was growing weaker every day, and it was only a matter of time until Mord's kicks and blows 
+did him serious harm, provided the gaoler did not starve him to death first. A few more nights of cold and 
+hunger, and the blue would start calling to him too. 
+He wondered what was happening beyond the walls (such as they were) of his cell. Lord Tywin would 
+surely have sent out riders when the word reached him. Jaime might be leading a host through the 
+Mountains of the Moon even now . . . unless he was riding north against Winterfell instead. Did anyone 
+outside the Vale even suspect where Catelyn Stark had taken him? He wondered what Cersei would do 
+when she heard. The king could order him freed, but would Robert listen to his queen or his Hand? 
+Tyrion had no illusions about the king's love for his sister. 
+If Cersei kept her wits about her, she would insist the king sit in judgment of Tyrion himself. Even Ned 
+Stark could scarcely object to that, not without impugning the honor of the king. And Tyrion would be 
+only too glad to take his chances in a trial. Whatever murders they might lay at his door, the Starks had 
+no proof of anything so far as he could see. Let them make their case before the Iron Throne and the 
+lords of the land. It would be the end of them. If only Cersei were clever enough to see that . . . 
+Tyrion Lannister sighed. His sister was not without a certain low 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 365 
+cunning, but her pride blinded her. She would see the insult in this, not the opportunity. And Jaime was 
+even worse, rash and headstrong and quick to anger. His brother never untied a knot when he could 
+slash it in two with his sword. 
+He wondered which of them had sent the footpad to silence the Stark boy, and whether they had truly 
+conspired at the death of Lord Arryn. If the old Hand had been murdered, it was deftly and subtly done. 
+Men of his age died of sudden illness all the time. In contrast, sending some oaf with a stolen knife after 
+Brandon Stark struck him as unbelievably clumsy. And wasn't that peculiar, come to think on it . . . 
+Tyrion shivered. Now there was a nasty suspicion. Perhaps the direwolf and the lion were not the only 
+beasts in the woods, and if that was true, someone was using him as a catspaw. Tyrion Lannister hated 
+being used. 
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+
+He would have to get out of here, and soon. His chances of overpowering Mord were small to none, 
+and no one was about to smuggle him a six-hundred-foot-long rope, so he would have to talk himself 
+free. His mouth had gotten him into this cell; it could damn well get him out. 
+Tyrion pushed himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the slope of the floor beneath him, with its 
+ever-so-subtle tug toward the edge. He hammered on the door with a fist. "Mord!" he shouted. 
+"Turnkey! Mord, I want you!" He had to keep it up a good ten minutes before he heard footsteps. Tyrion 
+stepped back an instant before the door opened with a crash. 
+"Making noise," Mord growled, with blood in his eyes. Dangling from one meaty hand was a leather 
+strap, wide and thick, doubled over in his fist. 
+Never show them You're afraid, Tyrion reminded himself. "How would you like to be rich?" he asked. 
+Mord hit him. He swung the strap backhand, lazily, but the leather caught Tyrion high on the arm. The 
+force of it staggered him, and the pain made him grit his teeth. "No mouth, dwarf man," Mord warned 
+him. 
+"Gold," Tyrion said, miming a smile. "Casterly Rock is full of gold . . . ahhhh . . ." This time the blow was 
+a forehand, and Mord put more of his arm into the swing, making the leather crack and jump. It caught 
+Tyrion in the ribs and dropped him to his knees, wimpering. He forced himself to look up at the gaoler. 
+"As rich as the Lannisters," he wheezed. "That's what they say, Mord-" 
+Mord grunted. The strap whistled through the air and smashed Tyrion full in the face. The pain was so 
+bad he did not remember 
+falling, but when he opened his eyes again he was on the floor of his cell. His ear was ringing, and his 
+mouth was full of blood. He groped for purchase, to push himself up, and his fingers brushed against . . . 
+nothing. Tyrion snatched his hand back as fast as if it had been scalded, and tried his best to stop 
+breathing. He had fallen right on the edge, inches from the blue. 
+"More to say?" Mord held the strap between his fists and gave it a sharp pull. The snap made Tyrion 
+jump. The turnkey laughed. 
+He won'tpush me over, Tyrion told himself desperately as he crawled away from the edge. Catelyn 
+Stark wants me alive, he doesn't dare kill me. He wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his hand, 
+grinned, and said, "That was a stiff one, Mord." The gaoler squinted at him, trying to decide if he was 
+being mocked. "I could make good use of a strong man like you." The strap flew at him, but this time 
+Tyrion was able to cringe away from it. He took a glancing blow to the shoulder, nothing more. "Gold," 
+he repeated, scrambling backward like a crab, ,'more gold than you'll see here in a lifetime. Enough to 
+buy land, women, horses . . . you could be a lord. Lord Mord." Tyrion hawked up a glob of blood and 
+phlegm and spat it out into the sky. 
+"Is no gold," Mord said. 
+He's listening! Tyrion thought. "They relieved me of my purse when they captured me, but the gold is still 
+mine. Catelyn Stark might take a man prisoner, but she'd never stoop to rob him. That wouldn't be 
+honorable. Help me, and all the gold is yours." Mord's strap licked out, but it was a halfhearted, 
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+
+desultory swing, slow and contemptuous. Tyrion caught the leather in his hand and held it prisoned. 
+"There will be no risk to you. All you need do is deliver a message." 
+The gaoler yanked his leather strap free of Tyrion's grasp. "Message," he said, as if he had never heard 
+the word before. His frown made deep creases in his brow. 
+"You heard me, my lord. Only carry my word to your lady. Tell her . . ." "at? "at would possibly make 
+Lysa Anyn relent? The inspiration came to Tyrion Lannister suddenly. tell her that I wish to confess my 
+crimes." 
+Mord raised his arm and Tyrion braced himself for another blow, but the turnkey hesitated. Suspicion 
+and greed warred in his eyes. He wanted that gold, yet he feared a trick; he had the look of a man who 
+had often been tricked. "Is lie," he muttered darkly. "Dwarf man cheat me.,, 
+"I will put my promise in writing," Tyrion vowed. 
+Some illiterates held writing in disdain; others seemed to have a superstitious reverence for the written 
+word, as if it were some sort of 
+A GAML OF THRONLS 367 
+magic. Fortunately, Mord was one of the latter. The turnkey lowered the strap. "Writing down gold. 
+Much gold." 
+"Oh, much gold," Tyrion assured him. "The purse is just a taste, my friend. My brother wears armor of 
+solid gold plate." In truth, Jaime's armor was gilded steel, but this oaf would never know the difference. 
+Mord fingered his strap thoughtfully, but in the end, he relented and went to fetch paper and ink. When 
+the letter was written, the gaoler frowned at it suspiciously. "Now deliver my message," Tyrion urged. 
+He was shivering in his sleep when they came for him, late that night. Mord opened the door but kept his 
+silence. Ser Vardis Egen woke Tyrion with the point of his boot. "On your feet, Imp. My lady wants to 
+see you." 
+Tyrion rubbed the sleep from his eyes and put on a grimace he scarcely felt. "No doubt she does, but 
+what makes you think I wish to see her?" 
+Ser Vardis frowned. Tyrion remembered him well from the years he had spent at King's Landing as the 
+captain of the Hand's household guard. A square, plain face, silver hair, a heavy build, and no humor 
+whatsoever. "Your wishes are not my concern. On your feet, or I'll have you carried." 
+Tyrion clambered awkwardly to his feet. "A cold night," he said casually, "and the High Hall is so drafty. 
+I don't wish to catch a chill. Mord, if you would be so good, fetch my cloak." 
+The gaoler squinted at him, face dull with suspicion. 
+"My cloak," Tyrion repeated. "The shadowskin you took from me for safekeeping. You recall." 
+"Get him the damnable cloak," Ser Vardis said. 
+Mord did not dare grumble. He gave Tyrion a glare that promised future retribution, yet he went for the 
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+cloak. When he draped it around his prisoner's neck, Tyrion smiled. "My thanks. I shall think of you 
+whenever I wear it." He flung the trailing end of the long fur over his right shoulder, and felt warm for the 
+first time in days. "Lead on, Ser Vardis." 
+The High Hall of the Arryns was aglow with the light of fifty torches, burning in the sconces along the 
+walls. The Lady Lysa wore black silk, with the moon-and-falcon sewn on her breast in pearls. Since she 
+did not look the sort to join the Night's Watch, Tyrion could only imagine that she had decided mourning 
+clothes were appropriate garb for a confession. Her long auburn hair, woven into an elaborate braid, fell 
+across her left shoulder. The taller throne beside her was 
+empty; no doubt the little Lord of the Eyrie was off shaking in his sleep. Tyrion was thankful for that 
+much, at least. 
+He bowed deeply and took a moment to glance around the hall. Lady Arryn had summoned her knights 
+and retainers to hear his confession, as he had hoped. He saw Ser Brynden Tully's craggy face and Lord 
+Nestor Royce's bluff one. Beside Nestor stood a younger man with fierce black side-whiskers who 
+could only be his heir, Ser Albar. Most of the principal houses of the Vale were represented. Tyrion 
+noted Ser Lyn Corbray, slender as a sword, Lord Hunter with his gouty legs, the widowed Lady 
+Waynwood surrounded by her sons. Others sported sigils he did not know; broken lance, green viper, 
+burning tower, winged chalice. 
+Among the lords of the Vale were several of his companions from the high road; Ser Rodrik Cassel, 
+pale from half-healed wounds, stood with Ser Willis Wode beside him. Marillion the singer had found a 
+new woodharp. Tyrion smiled; whatever happened here tonight, he did not wish it to happen in secret, 
+and there was no one like a singer for spreading a story near and far. 
+In the rear of the hall, Bronn lounged beneath a pillar. The freerider's black eyes were fixed on Tyrion, 
+and his hand lay lightly on the pommel of his sword. Tyrion gave him a long look, wondering . . . 
+Catelyn Stark spoke first. "You wish to confess your crimes, we are told." 
+"I do, my lady," Tyrion answered. 
+Lysa Arryn smiled at her sister. "The sky cells always break them. The gods can see them there, and 
+there is no darkness to hide in." 
+"He does not look broken to me," Lady Catelyn said. 
+Lady Lysa paid her no mind. "Say what you will," she commanded Tyrion. 
+And now to roll the dice, he thought with another quick glance back at Bronn. "Where to begin? I am a 
+vile little man, I confess it. My crimes and sins are beyond counting, my lords and ladies. I have lain with 
+whores, not once but hundreds of times. I have wished my own lord father dead, and my sister, our 
+gracious queen, as well." Behind him, someone chuckled. "I have not always treated my servants with 
+kindness. I have gambled. I have even cheated, I blush to admit. I have said many cruel and malicious 
+things about the noble lords and ladies of the court." That drew outright laughter. "Once I-" 
+"Silence!" Lysa Arryn's pale round face had turned a burning pink. "What do you imagine you are doing, 
+dwarf?" 
+Page 279
+
+Tyrion cocked his head to one side. "Why, confessing my crimes, my lady-" 
+Catelyn Stark took a step forward. "You are accused of sending a hired knife to slay my son Bran in his 
+bed, and of conspiring to murder Lord Jon Arryn, the Hand of the King." 
+Tyrion gave a helpless shrug. "Those crimes I cannot confess, I fear. I know nothing of any murders." 
+Lady Lysa rose from her weirwood throne. "I will not be made mock of. You have had your little jape, 
+Imp. I trust you enjoyed it. Ser Vardis, take him back to the dungeon . . . but this time find him a smaller 
+cell, with a floor more sharply sloped." 
+"Is this how justice is done in the Vale?" Tyrion roared, so loudly that Ser Vardis froze for an instant. 
+"Does honor stop at the Bloody Gate? You accuse me of crimes, I deny them, so you throw me into an 
+open cell to freeze and starve." He lifted his head, to give them all a good look at the bruises Mord had 
+left on his face. "Where is the king's justice? Is the Eyrie not part of the Seven Kingdoms? I stand 
+accused, you say. Very well. I demand a ttial! Let me speak, and let my truth or falsehood be judged 
+openly, in the sight of gods and men." 
+A low murmuring filled the High Hall. He had her, Tyrion knew. He was highborn, the son of the most 
+powerful lord in the realm, the brother of the queen. He could not be denied a trial. Guardsmen in 
+sky-blue cloaks had started toward Tyrion, but Ser Vardis bid them halt and looked to Lady Lysa. 
+Her small mouth twitched in a petulant smile. "If you are tried and found to be guilty of the crimes for 
+which you stand accused, then by the king's own laws, you must pay with your life's blood. We keep no 
+headsman in the Eyrie, my lord of Lannister. Open the Moon Door." 
+The press of spectators parted. A narrow weirwood door stood between two slender marble pillars, a 
+crescent moon carved in the white wood. Those standing closest edged backward as a pair of 
+guardsmen marched through. One man removed the heavy bronze bars; the second pulled the door 
+inward. Their blue cloaks rose snapping from their shoulders, caught in the sudden gust of wind that came 
+howling through the open door. Beyond was the emptiness of the night sky, speckled with cold uncaring 
+stars. 
+"Behold the king's justice," Lysa Arryn said. Torch flames fluttered like permons along the walls, and 
+here and there the odd torch guttered out. 
+"Lysa, I think this unwise," Catelyn Stark said as the black wind swirled around the hall. 
+Her sister ignored her. "You want a trial, my lord of Lannister. Very well, a trial you shall have. My son 
+will listen to whatever you care to 
+say, and you shall hear his judgment. Then you may leave ... by one door or the other." 
+She looked so pleased with herself, Tyrion thought, and small wonder. How could a trial threaten her, 
+when her weakling son was the lord judge? Tyrion glanced at her Moon Door. Mother, I want to see him 
+fly! the boy had said. How many men had the snot-nosed little wretch sent through that door already? 
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+" I thank you, my good lady, but I see no need to trouble Lord Robert," Tyrion said politely. "The gods 
+know the truth of my innocence. I will have their verdict, not the judgment of men. I demand trial by 
+combat." 
+A storm of sudden laughter filled the High Hall of the Arryns. Lord Nestor Royce snorted, Ser Willis 
+chuckled, Ser Lyn Corbray guffawed, and others threw back their heads and howled until tears ran 
+down their faces. Marillion clumsily plucked a gay note on his new woodharp with the fingers of his 
+broken hand. Even the wind seemed to whistle with derision as it came skirling through the Moon Door. 
+Lysa Arryn's watery blue eyes looked uncertain. He had caught her off balance. "You have that right, to 
+be sure." 
+The young knight with the green viper embroidered on his surcoat stepped forward and went to one 
+knee. "My lady, I beg the boon of championing your cause." 
+"The honor should be mine," old Lord Hunter said. "For the love I bore your lord husband, let me 
+avenge his death." 
+"My father served Lord Jon faithfully as High Steward of the Vale," Ser Albar Royce boomed. "Let me 
+serve his son in this." 
+"The gods favor the man with the just cause," said Ser Lyn Corbray, "yet often that turns out to be the 
+man with the surest sword. We all know who that is." He smiled modestly. 
+A dozen other men all spoke at once, clamoring to be heard. Tyrion found it disheartening to realize so 
+many strangers were eager to kill him. Perhaps this had not been such a clever plan after all. 
+Lady Lysa raised a hand for silence. "I thank you, my lords, as I know my son would thank you if he 
+were among us. No men in the Seven Kingdoms are as bold and true as the knights of the Vale. Would 
+that I could grant you all this honor. Yet I can choose only one." She gestured. "Ser Vardis Egen, you 
+were ever my lord husband's good right hand. You shall be our champion." 
+Ser Vardis had been singularly silent. "My lady," he said gravely, sinking to one knee, "pray give this 
+burden to another, I have no taste for it. The man is no warrior. Look at him. A dwarf, half my size and 
+lame in the legs. It would be shameful to slaughter such a man and call it justice." 
+Oh, excellent, Tyrion thought. "I agree." 
+Lysa glared at him. "You demanded a trial by combat." 
+"And now I demand a champion, such as you have chosen for yourself. My brother Jaime will gladly 
+take my part, I know." 
+"Your precious Kingslayer is hundreds of leagues from here," snapped Lysa Arryn. 
+"Send a bird for him. I will gladly await his arrival." 
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+"You will face Ser Vardis on the morrow." 
+"Singer," Tyrion said, turning to Marillion, "when you make a ballad of this, be certain you tell them how 
+Lady Arryn denied the dwarf the right to a champion, and sent him forth lame and bruised and hobbling 
+to face her finest knight." 
+"I deny you nothing!" Lysa Arryn said, her voice peeved and shrill with irritation. "Name your champion, 
+Imp . . . if you think you can find a man to die for you." 
+"If it is all the same to you, I'd sooner find one to kill for me." Tyrion looked over the long hall. No one 
+moved. For a long moment he wondered if it had all been a colossal blunder. 
+Then there was a stirring in the rear of the chamber. "I'll stand for the dwarf," Bronn called out. 
+EDDARD 
+He dreamt an old dream, of three knights in white cloaks, and a tower long fallen, and Lyanna in her bed 
+of blood. 
+In the dream his friends rode with him, as they had in life. Proud Martyn Cassel, Jory's father; faithful 
+Theo Wull; Ethan Glover, who had been Brandon's squire; Ser Mark Ryswell, soft of speech and gentle 
+of heart; the crannogman, Howland Reed; Lord Dustin on his great red stallion. Ned had known their 
+faces as well as he knew his own once, but the years leech at a man's memories, even those he has 
+vowed never to forget. In the dream they were only shadows, grey wraiths on horses made of mist. 
+They were seven, facing three. In the dream as it had been in life. Yet these were no ordinary three. 
+They waited before the round tower, the red mountains of Dorne at their backs, their white cloaks 
+blowing in the wind. And these were no shadows; their faces burned clear, even now. Ser Arthur Dayne, 
+the Sword of the Morning, had a sad smile on his lips. The hilt of the greatsword Dawn poked up over 
+his right shoulder. Ser Oswell Whent was on one knee, sharpening his blade with a whetstone. Across his 
+white-enameled helm, the black bat of his House spread its wings. Between them stood fierce old Ser 
+Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard. 
+"I looked for you on the Trident," Ned said to them. 
+"We were not there," Ser Gerold answered. 
+"Woe to the Usurper if we had been," said Ser Oswell. 
+"When King's Landing fell, Ser Jaime slew your king with a golden sword, and I wondered where you 
+were." 
+"Far away," Ser Gerold said, "or Aerys would yet sit the Iron Throne, and our false brother would burn 
+in seven hells." 
+"I came down on Storm's End to lift the siege," Ned told them, .,and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne 
+dipped their banners, and all their knights bent the knee to pledge us fealty. I was certain you would be 
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+among them." 
+"Our knees do not bend easily," said Ser Arthur Dayne. 
+"Ser Willem Darry is fled to Dragonstone, with your queen and Prince Viserys. I thought you might have 
+sailed with him." 
+"Ser Willem is a good man and true," said Ser Oswell. 
+"But not of the Kingsguard," Ser Gerold pointed out. "The Kingsguard does not flee." 
+"Then or now," said Ser Arthur. He donned his helm. 
+"We swore a vow," explained old Ser Gerold. 
+Ned's wraiths moved up beside him, with shadow swords in hand. They were seven against three. 
+"And now it begins," said Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. He unsheathed Dawn and held 
+it with both hands. The blade was pale as milkglass, alive with light. 
+"No," Ned said with sadness in his voice. "Now it ends." As they came together in a rush of steel and 
+shadow, he could hear Lyanna screaming. "Eddard!" she called. A storm of rose petals blew across a 
+blood-streaked sky, as blue as the eyes of death. 
+"Lord Eddard," Lyanna called again. 
+"I promise," he whispered. "Lya, I promise 
+"Lord Eddard," a man echoed from the dark. 
+Groaning, Eddard Stark opened his eyes. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows of the Tower of 
+the Hand. 
+"Lord Eddard?" A shadow stood over the bed. 
+"How . . . how long?" The sheets were tangled, his leg splinted and plastered. A dull throb of pain shot 
+up his side. 
+"Six days and seven nights." The voice was Vayon Poole's. The steward held a cup to Ned's lips. 
+"Drink, my lord." 
+,,what . . . T' 
+"Only water. Maester Pycelle said you would be thirsty." 
+Ned drank. His lips were parched and cracked. The water tasted sweet as honey. 
+"The king left orders," Vayon Poole told him when the cup was empty. "He would speak with you, my 
+lord." 
+374 GLORGE R.R. MARTIN 
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+
+"On the morrow," Ned said. "When I am stronger." He could not face Robert now. The dream had left 
+him weak as a kitten. 
+"My lord," Poole said, "he commanded us to send you to him the moment you opened your eyes." The 
+steward busied himself lighting a bedside candle. 
+Ned cursed softly. Robert was never known for his patience. "Tell him I'm too weak to come to him. If 
+he wishes to speak with me, I should be pleased to receive him here. I hope you wake him from a sound 
+sleep. And summon . . ." He was about to say Jory when he remembered. "Summon the captain of my 
+guard." 
+Alyn stepped into the bedchamber a few moments after the steward had taken his leave. "My lord." 
+"Poole tells me it has been six days," Ned said. "I must know how things stand." 
+"The Kingslayer is fled the city," Alyn told him. "The talk is he's ridden back to Casterly Rock to join his 
+father. The story of how Lady Catelyn took the Imp is on every lip. I have put on extra guards, if it 
+please you." 
+"It does," Ned assured him. "My daughters?" 
+"They have been with you every day, my lord. Sansa prays quietly, but Arya . . ." He hesitated. "She has 
+not said a word since they brought you back. She is a fierce little thing, my lord. I have never seen such 
+anger in a girl." 
+"Whatever happens," Ned said, "I want my daughters kept safe. I fear this is only the beginning." 
+"No harm will come to them, Lord Eddard," Alyn said. "I stake my life on that." 
+:,Jory and the others 
+J gave them over to the silent sisters, to be sent north to Winterfell. Jory would want to lie beside his 
+grandfather." 
+It would have to be his grandfather, for Jory's father was buried far to the south. Martyn Cassel had 
+perished with the rest. Ned had pulled the tower down afterward, and used its bloody stones to build 
+eight cairns upon the ridge. It was said that Rhaegar had named that place the tower of joy, but for Ned 
+it was a bitter memory. They had been seven against three, yet only two had lived to ride away; Eddard 
+Stark himself and the little crannogman, Howland Reed. He did not think it omened well that he should 
+dream that dream again after so many years. 
+"You've done well, Alyn," Ned was saying when Vayon Poole returned. The steward bowed low. "His 
+Grace is without, my lord, and the queen with him." 
+Ned pushed himself up higher, wincing as his leg trembled with pain. He had not expected Cersei to 
+come. It did not bode well that she had. "Send them in, and leave us. What we have to say should not go 
+beyond these walls." Poole withdrew quietly. 
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+
+Robert had taken time to dress. He wore a black velvet doublet with the crowned stag of Baratheon 
+worked upon the breast in golden thread, and a golden mantle with a cloak of black and gold squares. A 
+flagon of wine was in his hand, his face already flushed from drink. Cersei Lannister entered behind him, 
+a jeweled tiara in her hair. 
+"Your Grace," Ned said. "Your pardons. I cannot rise." 
+"No matter," the king said gruffly. "Some wine? From the Arbor. A good vintage." 
+"A small cup," Ned said. "My head is still heavy from the milk of the poppy." 
+"A man in your place should count himself fortunate that his head is still on his shoulders," the queen 
+declared. 
+"Quiet, woman," Robert snapped. He brought Ned a cup of wine. "Does the leg still pain you?" 
+"Some," Ned said. His head was swimming, but it would not do to admit to weakness in front of the 
+queen. 
+"Pycelle swears it will heal clean." Robert frowned. "I take it you know what Catelyn has done?" 
+"I do." Ned took a small swallow of wine. "My lady wife is blameless, Your Grace. All she did she did 
+at my command." 
+"I am not pleased, Ned," Robert grumbled. 
+"By what right do you dare lay hands on my blood?" Cersei demanded. "Who do you think you are?" 
+"The Hand of the King," Ned told her with icy courtesy. "Charged by your own lord husband to keep 
+the king's peace and enforce the king's justice." 
+"You were the Hand," Cersei began, "but now-" 
+"Silence!" the king roared. "You asked him a question and he answered it." Cersei subsided, cold with 
+anger, and Robert turned back to Ned. "Keep the king's peace, you say. Is this how you keep my 
+peace, Ned? Seven men are dead . . ." 
+"Eight," the queen corrected. "Tregar died this morning, of the blow Lord Stark gave him." 
+"Abductions on the kingsroad and drunken slaughter in my streets," the king said. "I will not have it, 
+Ned." 
+"Catelyn had good reason for taking the Irnp-" 
+"I said, I will not have it! To hell with her reasons. You will command 
+her to release the dwarf at once, and you will make your peace with Jaime." 
+"Three of my men were butchered before my eyes, because Jaime Lannister wished to chasten me. Am I 
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+
+to forget that?" 
+"My brother was not the cause of this quarrel," Cersei told the king. "Lord Stark was returning drunk 
+from a brothel. His men attacked Jaime and his guards, even as his wife attacked Tyrion on the 
+kingsroad." 
+"You know me better than that, Robert," Ned said. "Ask Lord Baelish if you doubt me. He was there." 
+"I've talked to Littlefinger," Robert said. "He claims he rode off to bring the gold cloaks before the 
+fighting began, but he admits you were returning from some whorehouse." 
+"Some whorehouse? Damn your eyes, Robert, I went there to have a look at your daughter! Her mother 
+has named her Barra. She looks like that first girl you fathered, when we were boys together in the Vale." 
+He watched the queen as he spoke; her face was a mask, still and pale, betraying nothing. 
+Robert flushed. "Barra," he grumbled. "Is that supposed to please me? Damn the girl. I thought she had 
+more sense." 
+"She cannot be more than fifteen, and a whore, and you thought she had sense?" Ned said, incredulous. 
+His leg was beginning to pain him sorely. It was hard to keep his temper. "The fool child is in love with 
+you, Robert." 
+The king glanced at Cersei. "This is no fit subject for the queen's ears." 
+"Her Grace will have no liking for anything I have to say," Ned replied. "I am told the Kingslayer has fled 
+the city. Give me leave to bring him back to justice." 
+The king swirled the wine in his cup, brooding. He took a swallow. "No," he said. "I want no more of 
+this. Jaime slew three of your men, and you five of his. Now it ends." 
+"Is that your notion of justice?" Ned flared. "If so, I am pleased that I am no longer your Hand." 
+The queen looked to her husband. "If any man had dared speak to a Targaryen as he has spoken to 
+you-" 
+"Do you take me for Aerys?" Robert interrupted. 
+"I took you for a king. Jaime and Tyrion are your own brothers, by all the laws of marriage and the 
+bonds we share. The Starks have driven off the one and seized the other. This man dishonors you with 
+every breath he takes, and yet you stand there meekly, asking if his leg pains him and would he like some 
+wine." 
+Robert's face was dark with anger. "How many times must I tell you to hold your tongue, woman?" 
+Cersei's face was a study in contempt. "What a jape the gods have made of us two," she said. "By all 
+rights, you ought to be in skirts and me in mail." 
+Purple with rage, the king lashed out, a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head. She stumbled 
+against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei Lannister did not cry out. Her slender fingers brushed her 
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+
+cheek, where the pale smooth skin was already reddening. On the morrow the bruise would cover half 
+her face. "I shall wear this as a badge of honor," she announced. 
+"Wear it in silence, or I'll honor you again," Robert vowed. He shouted for a guard. Ser Meryn Trant 
+stepped into the room, tall and somber in his white armor. "The queen is tired. See her to her 
+bedchamber." The knight helped Cersei to her feet and led her out without a word. 
+Robert reached for the flagon and refilled his cup. "You see what she does to me, Ned." The king seated 
+himself, cradling his wine cup. "My loving wife. The mother of my children." The rage was gone from him 
+now; in his eyes Ned saw something sad and scared. "I should not have hit her. That was not . . . that 
+was not kingly." He stared down at his hands, as if he did not quite know what they were. "I was always 
+strong . . . no one could stand before me, no one. How do you fight someone if you can't hit them?" 
+Confused, the king shook his head. "Rhaegar . . . Rhaegar won, damn him. I killed him, Ned, I drove the 
+spike right through that black armor into his black heart, and he died at my feet. They made up songs 
+about it. Yet somehow he still won. He has Lyanna now, and I have her." The king drained his cup. 
+"Your Grace," Ned Stark said, "we must talk . . ." 
+Robert pressed his fingertips against his temples. "I am sick unto death of talk. On the morrow I'm going 
+to the kingswood to hunt. Whatever you have to say can wait until I return." 
+"If the gods are good, I shall not be here on your return. You commanded me to return to Winterfell, 
+remember?" 
+Robert stood up, grasping one of the bedposts to steady himself. "The gods are seldom good, Ned. 
+Here, this is yours." He pulled the heavy silver hand clasp from a pocket in the lining of his cloak and 
+tossed it on the bed. "Like it or not, you are my Hand, damn you. I forbid you to leave." 
+Ned picked up the silver clasp. He was being given no choice, it seemed. His leg throbbed, and he felt 
+as helpless as a child. "The Targaryen girl-" 
+The king groaned. "Seven hells, don't start with her again. That's done, I'll hear no more of it." 
+"Why would you want me as your Hand, if you refuse to listen to my counsel?" 
+"Why?" Robert laughed. "Why not? Someone has to rule this damnable kingdom. Put on the badge, 
+Ned. It suits you. And if you ever throw it in my face again, I swear to you, I'll pin the damned thing on 
+Jaime Lannister." 
+CATELYN 
+The eastern sky was rose and gold as the sun broke over the Vale of Arryn. Catelyn Stark watched the 
+light spread, her hands resting on the delicate carved stone of the balustrade outside her window. Below 
+her the world turned from black to indigo to green as dawn crept across fields and forests. Pale white 
+mists rose off Alyssa's Tears, where the ghost waters plunged over the shoulder of the mountain to begin 
+their long tumble down the face of the Giant's Lance. Catelyn could feel the faint touch of spray on her 
+face. 
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+
+Alyssa Arryn had seen her husband, her brothers, and all her children slain, and yet in life she had never 
+shed a tear. So in death, the gods had decreed that she would know no rest until her weeping watered 
+the black earth of the Vale, where the men she had loved were buried. Alyssa had been dead six 
+thousand years now, and still no drop of the torrent had ever reached the valley floor far below. Catelyn 
+wondered how large a waterfall her own tears would make when she died. "Tell me the rest of it," she 
+said. 
+"The Kingslayer is massing a host at Casterly Rock," Ser Rodrik Cassel answered from the room behind 
+her. "Your brother writes that he has sent riders to the Rock, demanding that Lord Tywin proclaim his 
+intent, but he has had no answer. Edmure has commanded Lord Vance and Lord Piper to guard the pass 
+below the Golden Tooth. He 
+vows to you that he will yield no foot of Tully land without first watering it with Lannister blood." 
+Catelyn turned away from the sunrise. Its beauty did little to lighten her mood; it seemed cruel for a day 
+to dawn so fair and end so foul as this one promised to. "Edmure has sent riders and made vows," she 
+said, "but Edmure is not the Lord of Riverrun. What of my lord father?" 
+"The message made no mention of Lord Hoster, my lady." Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. They had 
+grown in white as snow and bristly as a thornbush while he was recovering from his wounds; he looked 
+almost himself again. 
+"My father would not have given the defense of Riverrun over to Edmure unless he was very sick," she 
+said, worried. "I should have been woken as soon as this bird arrived." 
+"Your lady sister thought it better to let you sleep, Maester Colemon told me." 
+A should have been woken," she insisted. 
+"The maester tells me your sister planned to speak with you after the combat," Ser Rodrik said. 
+"Then she still plans to go through with this mummer's farce?" Catelyn grimaced. "The dwarf has played 
+her like a set of pipes, and she is too deaf to hear the tune. Whatever happens this morning, Ser Rodrik, 
+it is past time we took our leave. My place is at Winterfell with my sons. If you are strong enough to 
+travel, I shall ask Lysa for an escort to see us to Gulltown. We can take ship from there." 
+"Another ship?" Ser Rodrik looked a shade green, yet he managed not to shudder. "As you say, my 
+lady." 
+The old knight waited outside her door as Catelyn summoned the servants Lysa had given her. If she 
+spoke to her sister before the duel, perhaps she could change her mind, she thought as they dressed her. 
+Lysa's policies varied with her moods, and her moods changed hourly. The shy girl she had known at 
+Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy, reckless, timid, 
+stubborn, vain, and, above all, inconstant. 
+When that vile turnkey of hers had come crawling to tell them that Tyrion Lannister wished to confess, 
+Catelyn had urged Lysa to have the dwarf brought to them privately, but no, nothing would do but that 
+her sister must make a show of him before half the Vale. And now this . . . 
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+
+"Lannister is my prisoner," she told Ser Rodrik as they descended the tower stairs and made their way 
+through the Eyrie's cold white 
+halls. Catelyn wore plain grey wool with a silvered belt. "My sister must be reminded of that." 
+At the doors to Lysa's apartments, they met her uncle storming out. "Going to join the fool's festival?" 
+Ser Brynden snapped. "I'd tell you to slap some sense into your sister, if I thought it would do any good, 
+but you'd only bruise your hand." 
+"There was a bird from Riverrun," Catelyn began, "a letter from Edmure . . ." 
+"I know, child." The black fish that fastened his cloak was Brynden's only concession to ornament. "I 
+had to hear it from Maester Colemon. I asked your sister for leave to take a thousand seasoned men and 
+ride for Riverrun with all haste. Do you know what she told me? The Vale cannot spare a thousand 
+swords, nor even one, Uncle, she said. You are the Knight of the Gate. Your place is here." A gust of 
+childish laughter drifted through the open doors behind him, and her uncle glanced darkly over his 
+shoulder. "Well, I told her she could bloody well find herself a new Knight of the Gate. Black fish or no, I 
+am still a Tully. I shall leave for Riverrun by evenfall." 
+Catelyn could not pretend to surprise. "Alone? You know as well as I that you will never survive the high 
+road. Ser Rodrik and I are returning to Winterfell. Come with us, Uncle. I will give you your thousand 
+men. Riverrun will not fight alone." 
+Brynden thought a moment, then nodded a brusque agreement. "As you say. It's the long way home, but 
+I'm more like to get there. I'll wait for you below." He went striding off, his cloak swirling behind him. 
+Catelyn exchanged a look with Ser Rodrik. They went through the doors to the high, nervous sound of a 
+child's giggles. 
+Lysa's apartments opened over a small garden, a circle of dirt and grass planted with blue flowers and 
+ringed on all sides by tall white towers. The builders had intended it as a godswood, but the Eyrie rested 
+on the hard stone of the mountain, and no matter how much soil was hauled up from the Vale, they could 
+not get a weirwood to take root here. So the Lords of the Eyrie planted grass and scattered statuary 
+amidst low, flowering shrubs. It was there the two champions would meet to place their lives, and that of 
+Tyrion Lannister, into the hands of the gods. 
+Lysa, freshly scrubbed and garbed in cream velvet with a rope of sapphires and moonstones around her 
+milk-white neck, was holding court on the terrace overlooking the scene of the combat, surrounded by 
+her knights, retainers, and lords high and low. Most of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the 
+Vale of Arryn by her side. 
+From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was a vain hope. 
+A wooden platform had been built to elevate Robert's chair; there the Lord of the Eyrie sat, giggling and 
+clapping his hands as a humpbacked puppeteer in blue-and-white motley made two wooden knights 
+hack and slash at each other. Pitchers of thick cream and baskets of blackberries had been set out, and 
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+the guests were sipping a sweet orange-scented wine from engraved silver cups. A fool's festival, 
+Brynden had called it, and small wonder. 
+Across the terrace, Lysa laughed gaily at some jest of Lord Hunter's, and nibbled a blackberry from the 
+point of Ser Lyn Corbray's dagger. They were the suitors who stood highest in Lysa's favor . . . today, at 
+least. Catelyn would have been hard-pressed to say which man was more unsuitable. Eon Hunter was 
+even older than Jon Arryn had been, half-crippled by gout, and cursed with three quarrelsome sons, each 
+more grasping than the last. Ser Lyn was a different sort of folly; lean and handsome, heir to an ancient 
+but impoverished house, but vain, reckless, hot-tempered . . . and, it was whispered, notoriously 
+uninterested in the intimate charms of women. 
+When Lysa espied Catelyn, she welcomed her with a sisterly embrace and a moist kiss on the cheek. 
+"Isn't it a lovely morning? The gods are smiling on us. Do try a cup of the wine, sweet sister. Lord Hunter 
+was kind enough to send for it, from his own cellars." 
+"Thank you, no. Lysa, we must talk." 
+"After," her sister promised, already beginning to turn away from her. 
+"Now." Catelyn spoke more loudly than she'd intended. Men were turning to look. "Lysa, you cannot 
+mean to go ahead with this folly. Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is only food for crows. And if his 
+champion should prevail here-" 
+"Small chance of that, my lady," Lord Hunter assured her, patting her shoulder with a liver-spotted hand. 
+"Ser Vardis is a doughty fighter. He will make short work of the sellsword." 
+"Will he, my lord?" Catelyn said coolly. "I wonder." She had seen Bronn fight on the high road; it was no 
+accident that he had survived the journey while other men had died. He moved like a panther, and that 
+ugly sword of his seemed a part of his arm. 
+Lysa's suitors were gathering around them like bees round a blossom. "Women understand little of these 
+things," Ser Morton Waynwood said. "Ser Vardis is a knight, sweet lady. This other fellow, well, his sort 
+are all cowards at heart. Useful enough in a battle, with 
+thousands of their fellows around them, but stand them up alone and the manhood leaks right out of 
+them." 
+"Say you have the truth of it, then," Catelyn said with a courtesy that made her mouth ache. "What will 
+we gain by the dwarf's death? Do you imagine that Jaime will care a fig that we gave his brother a trial 
+before we flung him off a mountain?" 
+"Behead the man," Ser Lyn Corbray suggested. "When the Kingslayer receives the Imp's head, it will be 
+a warning to him," 
+Lysa gave an impatient shake of her waist-long auburn hair. "Lord Robert wants to see him fly," she 
+said, as if that settled the matter. "And the Imp has only himself to blame. It was he who demanded a trial 
+by combat." 
+"Lady Lysa had no honorable way to deny him, even if she'd wished to," Lord Hunter intoned 
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+
+ponderously. 
+Ignoring them all, Catelyn turned all her force on her sister. "I remind you, Tyrion Lannister is my 
+prisoner." 
+"And I remind you, the dwarf murdered my lord husband!" Her voice rose. "He poisoned the Hand of 
+the King and left my sweet baby fatherless, and now I mean to see him pay!" Whirling, her skirts 
+swinging around her, Lysa stalked across the terrace. Ser Lyn and Ser Morton and the other suitors 
+excused themselves with cool nods and trailed after her. 
+"Do you think he did?" Ser Rodrik asked her quietly when they were alone again. "Murder Lord Jon, 
+that is? The Imp still denies it, and most fiercely . . ." 
+"I believe the Lannisters murdered Lord Arryn," Catelyn replied, "but whether it was Tyrion, or Ser 
+Jaime, or the queen, or all of them together, I could not begin to say." Lysa had named Cersei in the letter 
+she had sent to Winterfell, but now she seemed certain that Tyrion was the killer . . . perhaps because the 
+dwarf was here, while the queen was safe behind the walls of the Red Keep, hundreds of leagues to the 
+south. Catelyn almost wished she had burned her sister's letter before reading it. 
+Ser Rodrik tugged at his whiskers. "Poison, well . . . that could be the dwarf s work, true enough. Or 
+Cersei's. It's said poison is a woman's weapon, begging your pardons, my lady. The Kingslayer, now 
+I have no great liking for the man, but he's not the sort. Too fond of the sight of blood on that golden 
+sword of his. Was it poison, my lady?" 
+Catelyn frowned, vaguely uneasy. "How else could they make it look a natural death?" Behind her, Lord 
+Robert shrieked with delight as one of the puppet knights sliced the other in half, spilling a flood of 
+red sawdust onto the terrace. She glanced at her nephew and sighed. "The boy is utterly without 
+discipline. He will never be strong enough to rule unless he is taken away from his mother for a time." 
+"His lord father agreed with you," said a voice at her elbow. She turned to behold Maester Colemon, a 
+cup of wine in his hand. "He was planning to send the boy to Dragonstone for fostering, you know . . . 
+oh, but I'm speaking out of turn." The apple of his throat bobbed anxiously beneath the loose maester's 
+chain. "I fear I've had too much of Lord Hunter's excellent wine. The prospect of bloodshed has my 
+nerves all a-fray . . ." 
+"You are mistaken, Maester," Catelyn said. "It was Casterly Rock, not Dragonstone, and those 
+arrangements were made after the Hand's death, without my sister's consent." 
+The maester's head jerked so vigorously at the end of his absurdly long neck that he looked half a 
+puppet himself. "No, begging your forgiveness, my lady, but it was Lord Jon who-" 
+A bell tolled loudly below them. High lords and serving girls alike broke off what they were doing and 
+moved to the balustrade. Below, two guardsmen in sky-blue cloaks led forth Tyrion Lannister. The 
+Eyrie's plump septon escorted him to the statue in the center of the garden, a weeping woman carved in 
+veined white marble, no doubt meant to be Alyssa. 
+"The bad little man," Lord Robert said, giggling. "Mother, can I make him fly? I want to see him fly." 
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+"Later, my sweet baby," Lysa promised him. 
+"Trial first," drawled Ser Lyn Corbray, "then execution." 
+A moment later the two champions appeared from opposite sides of the garden. The knight was 
+attended by two young squires, the sellsword by the Eyrie's master-at-arms. 
+Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy plate armor over mail and padded 
+surcoat. Large circular rondels, enameled cream-and-blue in the moon-and-falcon sigil of House Arryn, 
+protected the vulnerable juncture of arm and breast. A skirt of lobstered metal covered him from waist to 
+midthigh, while a solid gorget encircled his throat. Falcon's wings sprouted from the temples of his helm, 
+and his visor was a pointed metal beak with a narrow slit for vision. 
+Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the knight. He wore only a shirt of black 
+oiled ringmail over boiled leather, a round steel halfhelm with a noseguard, and a mail coif. High leather 
+boots with steel shinguards gave some protection to his legs, and discs of black iron were sewn into the 
+fingers of his gloves. Yet Catelyn noted that the sellsword stood half a hand taller than his foe, with a 
+A CAME OF THRONES 385 
+longer reach ... and Bronn was fifteen years younger, if she was any judge. 
+They knelt in the grass beneath the weeping woman, facing each other, with Lannister between them. 
+The septon removed a faceted crystal sphere from the soft cloth bag at his waist. He lifted it high above 
+his head, and the light shattered. Rainbows danced across the Imp's face. In a high, solemn, singsong 
+voice, the septon asked the gods to look down and bear witness, to find the truth in this man's soul, to 
+grant him life and freedom if he was innocent, death if he was guilty. His voice echoed off the surrounding 
+towers. 
+When the last echo had died away, the septon lowered his crystal and made a hasty departure. Tyrion 
+leaned over and whispered something in Bronn's ear before the guardsmen led him away. The sellsword 
+rose laughing and brushed a blade of grass from his knee. 
+Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie and Defender of the Vale, was fidgeting impatiently in his elevated chair. 
+"When are they going to fight?" he asked plaintively. 
+Ser Vardis was helped back to his feet by one of his squires. The other brought him a triangular shield 
+almost four feet tall, heavy oak dotted with iron studs. They strapped it to his left forearm. When Lysa's 
+master-at-arms offered Brorm a similar shield, the sellsword spat and waved it away. Three days growth 
+of coarse black beard covered his jaw and cheeks, but if he did not shave it was not for want of a razor; 
+the edge of his sword had the dangerous glimmer of steel that had been honed every day for hours, until it 
+was too sharp to touch. 
+Ser Vardis held out a gauntleted hand, and his squire placed a handsome double-edged longsword in his 
+grasp. The blade was engraved with a delicate silver tracery of a mountain sky; its pommel was a falcon's 
+head, its crossguard fashioned into the shape of wings. "I had that sword crafted for Jon in King's 
+Landing," Lysa told her guests proudly as they watched Ser Vardis try a practice cut. "He wore it 
+whenever he sat the Iron Throne in King Robert's place. Isn't it a lovely thing? I thought it only fitting that 
+our champion avenge Jon with his own blade." 
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+The engraved silver blade was beautiful beyond a doubt, but it seemed to Catelyn that Ser Vardis might 
+have been more comfortable with his own sword. Yet she said nothing; she was weary of futile 
+arguments with her sister. 
+"Make them fight!" Lord Robert called out. 
+Ser Vardis faced the Lord of the Eyrie and lifted his sword in salute. "For the Eyrie and the Vale!" 
+Tyrion Lannister had been seated on a balcony across the garden, flanked by his guards. It was to him 
+that Bronn turned with a cursory salute. 
+"They await your command," Lady Lysa said to her lord son. 
+"Fight!" the boy screamed, his arms trembling as they clutched at his chair. 
+Ser Vardis swiveled, bringing up his heavy shield. Bronn turned to face him. Their swords rang together, 
+once, twice, a testing. The sellsword backed off a step. The knight came after, holding his shield before 
+him. He tried a slash, but Bronn jerked back, just out of reach, and the silver blade cut only air. Bronn 
+circled to his right. Ser Vardis turned to follow, keeping his shield between them. The knight pressed 
+forward, placing each foot carefully on the uneven ground. The sellsword gave way, a faint smile playing 
+over his lips. Ser Vardis attacked, slashing, but Bronn leapt away from him, hopping lightly over a low, 
+moss-covered stone. Now the sellsword circled left, away from the shield, toward the knight's 
+unprotected side. Ser Vardis tried a hack at his legs, but he did not have the reach. Bronn danced farther 
+to his left. Ser Vardis turned in place. 
+"The man is craven," Lord Hunter declared. "Stand and fight, coward! " Other voices echoed the 
+sentiment. 
+Catelyn looked to Ser Rodrik. Her master-at-arms gave a curt shake of his head. "He wants to make 
+Ser Vardis chase him. The weight of armor and shield will tire even the strongest man." 
+She had seen men practice at their swordplay near every day of her life, had viewed half a hundred 
+tourneys in her time, but this was something different and deadlier: a dance where the smallest misstep 
+meant death. And as she watched, the memory of another duel in another time came back to Catelyn 
+Stark, as vivid as if it had been yesterday. 
+They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore only helm and breastplate 
+and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor he might wear, but she had 
+turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon Stark, and so it was to him that she gave her 
+token, a pale blue handscarf she had embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she pressed it 
+into his hand, she pleaded with him. "He is only a foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It 
+would grieve me to see him die." And her betrothed looked at her with the cool grey eyes of a Stark and 
+promised to spare the boy who loved her. 
+That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all 
+the way across the bailey and down 
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+the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a 
+dozen wounds. "Yield!" he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, 
+grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand cut 
+that bit through Petyr's rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was 
+certain that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured "Cat" as the bright blood 
+came flowing out between his mailed fingers. She thought she had forgotten that. 
+That was the last time she had seen his face . . . until the day she was brought before him in King's 
+Landing. 
+A fortnight passed before Littlefinger was strong enough to leave Riverrun, but her lord father forbade 
+her to visit him in the tower where he lay abed. Lysa helped their maester nurse him; she had been softer 
+and shyer in those days. Edmure had called on him as well, but Petyr had sent him away. Her brother 
+had acted as Brandon's squire at the duel, and Littlefinger would not forgive that. As soon as he was 
+strong enough to be moved, Lord Hoster Tully sent Petyr Baelish away in a closed litter, to finish his 
+healing on the Fingers, upon the windswept jut of rock where he'd been born. 
+The ringing clash of steel on steel jarred Catelyn back to the present. Ser Vardis was coming hard at 
+Bronn, driving into him with shield and sword. The sellsword scrambled backward, checking each blow, 
+stepping lithely over rock and root, his eyes never leaving his foe. He was quicker, Catelyn saw; the 
+knight's silvered sword never came near to touching him, but his own ugly grey blade hacked a notch 
+from Ser Vardis's shoulder plate. 
+The brief flurry of fighting ended as swiftly as it had begun when Bronn sidestepped and slid behind the 
+statue of the weeping woman. Ser Vardis lunged at where he had been, striking a spark off the pate 
+marble of Alyssa's thigh. 
+"They're not fighting good, Mother," the Lord of the Eyrie complained. "I want them to fight." 
+"They will, sweet baby," his mother soothed him. "The sellsword can't run all day." 
+Some of the lords on Lysa's terrace were making wry jests as they refilled their wine cups, but across 
+the garden, Tyrion Lannister's mismatched eyes watched the champions dance as if there were nothing 
+else in the world. 
+Bronn came out from behind the statue hard and fast, still moving left, aiming a two-handed cut at the 
+knight's unshielded right side. Ser Vardis blocked, but clumsily, and the sellsword's blade flashed upward 
+at his head. Metal rang, and a falcon's wing collapsed with a crunch. Ser Vardis took a half step back to 
+brace himself, raised his shield. Oak chips flew as Bronn's sword hacked at the wooden wall. The 
+sellsword stepped left again, away from the shield, and caught Ser Vardis across the stomach, the razor 
+edge of his blade leaving a bright gash when it bit into the knight's plate. 
+Ser Vardis drove forward off his back foot, his own silver blade descending in a savage arc. Bronn 
+slammed it aside and danced away. The knight crashed into the weeping woman, rocking her on her 
+plinth. Staggered, he stepped backward, his head turning this way and that as he searched for his foe. 
+The slit visor of his helm narrowed his vision. 
+"Behind you, ser!" Lord Hunter shouted, too late. Bronn brought his sword down with both hands, 
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+catching Ser Vardis in the elbow of his sword arm. The thin lobstered metal that protected the joint 
+crunched. The knight grunted, turning, wrenching his weapon up. This time Bronn stood his ground. The 
+swords flew at each other, and their steel song filled the garden and rang off the white towers of the 
+Eyrie. 
+"Ser Vardis is hurt," Ser Rodrik said, his voice grave. 
+Catelyn did not need to be told; she had eyes, she could see the bright finger of blood running along the 
+knight's forearm, the wetness inside the elbow joint. Every parry was a little slower and a little lower than 
+the one before. Ser Vardis turned his side to his foe, trying to use his shield to block instead, but Bronn 
+slid around him, quick as a cat. The sellsword seemed to be getting stronger. His cuts were leaving their 
+marks now. Deep shiny gashes gleamed all over the knight's armor, on his right thigh, his beaked visor, 
+crossing on his breastplate, a long one along the front of his gorget. The moon-and-falcon rondel over 
+Ser Vardis's right arm was sheared clean in half, hanging by its strap. They could hear his labored breath, 
+rattling through the air holes in his visor. 
+Blind with arrogance as they were, even the knights and lords of the Vale could see what was happening 
+below them, yet her sister could not. "Enough, Ser Vardis!" Lady Lysa called down. "Finish him now, my 
+baby is growing tired." 
+And it must be said of Ser Vardis Egen that he was true to his lady's command, even to the last. One 
+moment he was reeling backward, half-crouched behind his scarred shield; the next he charged. The 
+sudden bull rush caught Bronn off balance. Ser Vardis crashed into him and slammed the lip of his shield 
+into the sellsword's face. Almost, almost, Bronn lost his feet . . . he staggered back, tripped over a rock, 
+and caught hold of the weeping woman to keep his balance. 
+Throwing aside his shield, Ser Vardis lurched after him, using both hands to raise his sword. His right 
+arm was blood from elbow to fingers now, yet his last desperate blow would have opened Bronn from 
+neck to navel . . . if the sellsword had stood to receive it. 
+But Bronn jerked back. Jon Arryn's beautiful engraved silver sword glanced off the marble elbow of the 
+weeping woman and snapped clean a third of the way up the blade. Bronn put his shoulder into the 
+statue's back. The weathered likeness of Alyssa Arryn tottered and fell with a great crash, and Ser 
+Vardis Egen went down beneath her. 
+Bronn was on him in a heartbeat, kicking what was left of his shattered rondel aside to expose the weak 
+spot between arm and breastplate. Ser Vardis was lying on his side, pinned beneath the broken torso of 
+the weeping woman. Catelyn heard the knight groan as the sellsword lifted his blade with both hands and 
+drove it down and in with all his weight behind it, under the arm and through the ribs. Ser Vardis Egen 
+shuddered and lay still. 
+Silence hung over the Eyrie. Bronn yanked off his halfhelm and let it fall to the grass. His lip was 
+smashed and bloody where the shield had caught him, and his coal-black hair was soaked with sweat. 
+He spit out a broken tooth. 
+"Is it over, Mother?" the Lord of the Eyrie asked. 
+No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it's only now beginning. 
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+"Yes," Lysa said glumly, her voice as cold and dead as the captain of her guard. 
+"Can I make the little man fly now?" 
+Across the garden, Tyrion Lannister got to his feet. "Not this little man," he said. "This little man is going 
+down in the turnip hoist, thank you very much." 
+"You presume-" Lysa began. 
+"I presume that House Arryn remembers its own words," the Imp said. "As High as Honor. " 
+"You promised I could make him fly," the Lord of the Eyrie screamed at his mother. He began to shake. 
+Lady Lysa's face was flushed with fury. "The gods have seen fit to proclaim him innocent, child. We 
+have no choice but to free him." She lifted her voice. "Guards. Take my lord of Lannister and his . . . 
+creature here out of my sight. Escort them to the Bloody Gate and set them free. See that they have 
+horses and supplies sufficient to reach the Trident, and make certain all their goods and weapons are 
+returned to them. They shall need them on the high road." 
+"The high road," Tyrion Lannister said. Lysa allowed herself a faint, satisfied smile. It was another sort of 
+death sentence, Catelyn realized. Tyrion Lannister must know that as well. Yet the dwarf favored Lady 
+Arryn with a mocking bow. "As you command, my lady," he said. "I believe we know the way." 
+JON 
+You are as hopeless as any boys I have ever trained," Ser Alliser Thorne announced when they had all 
+assembled in the yard. "Your hands were made for manure shovels, not for swords, and if it were up to 
+me, the lot of you would be set to herding swine. But last night I was told that Gueren is marching five 
+new boys up the kingsroad. One or two may even be worth the price of piss. To make room for them, I 
+have decided to pass eight of you on to the Lord Commander to do with as he will." He called out the 
+names one by one. "Toad. Stone Head. Aurochs. Lover. Pimple. Monkey. Ser Loon." Last, he looked 
+at Jon. "And the Bastard." 
+Pyp let fly a whoop and thrust his sword into the air. Ser Alliser fixed him with a reptile stare. "They will 
+call you men of Night's Watch now, but you are bigger fools than the Mummer's Monkey here if you 
+believe that. You are boys still, green and stinking of summer, and when the winter comes you will die 
+like flies." And with that, Ser Alliser Thorne took his leave of them. 
+The other boys gathered round the eight who had been named, laughing and cursing and offering 
+congratulations. Halder smacked Toad on the butt with the flat of his sword and shouted, "Toad, of the 
+Night's Watch!" Yelling that a black brother needed a horse, Pyp leapt onto Grenn's shoulders, and they 
+tumbled to the ground, rolling and punching and hooting. Dareon dashed inside the armory and returned 
+with a skin of sour red. As they passed the wine from hand to hand, grinning like fools, Jon noticed 
+Samwell Tarly standing by himself beneath a bare dead tree in the corner of the yard. Jon offered him the 
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+skin. "A swallow of wine?" 
+Sam shook his head. "No thank you, Jon." 
+"Are you well?" 
+"Very well, truly," the fat boy lied. "I am so happy for you all." His round face quivered as he forced a 
+smile. "You will be First Ranger someday, just as your uncle was." 
+"Is, " Jon corrected. He would not accept that Benjen Stark was dead. Before he could say more, 
+Haider cried, "Here, you planning to drink that all yourself?" Pyp snatched the skin from his hand and 
+danced away, laughing. While Grenn seized his arm, Pyp gave the skin a squeeze, and a thin stream of 
+red squirted Jon in the face. Haider howled in protest at the waste of good wine. Jon sputtered and 
+struggled. Matthar and Jeren climbed the wall and began pelting them all with snowballs. 
+By the time he wrenched free, with snow in his hair and wine stains on his surcoat, Samwell Tarly had 
+gone. 
+That night, Three-Finger Hobb cooked the boys a special meal to mark the occasion. When Jon arrived 
+at the common hall, the Lord Steward himself led him to the bench near the fire. The older men clapped 
+him on the arm in passing. The eight soon-to-be brothers feasted on rack of lamb baked in a crust of 
+garlic and herbs, garnished with sprigs of mint, and surrounded by mashed yellow turnips swimming in 
+butter. "From the Lord Commander's own table," Bowen Marsh told them. There were salads of spinach 
+and chickpeas and turnip greens, and afterward bowls of iced blueberries and sweet cream. 
+"Do you think they'll keep us together?" Pyp wondered as they gorged themselves happily. 
+Toad made a face. "I hope not. I'm sick of looking at those ears of yours." 
+"Ho," said Pyp. "Listen to the crow call the raven black. You're certain to be a ranger, Toad. They'll 
+want you as far from the castle as they can. If Mance Rayder attacks, lift your visor and show your face, 
+and he'll run off screaming." 
+Everyone laughed but Grenn. "I hope I'm a ranger." 
+"You and everyone else," said Matthar. Every man who wore the black walked the Wall, and every man 
+was expected to take up steel in its defense, but the rangers were the true fighting heart of the Night's 
+Watch. It was they who dared ride beyond the Wall, sweeping through 
+the haunted forest and the icy mountain heights west of the Shadow Tower, fighting wildlings and giants 
+and monstrous snow bears. 
+"Not everyone," said Halder. "It's the builders for me. What use would rangers be if the Wall fell down?" 
+The order of builders provided the masons and carpenters to repair keeps and towers, the miners to dig 
+tunnels and crush stone for roads and footpaths, the woodsmen to clear away new growth wherever the 
+forest pressed too close to the Wall. Once, it was said, they had quarried immense blocks of ice from 
+frozen lakes deep in the haunted forest, dragging them south on sledges so the Wall might be raised ever 
+higher. Those days were centuries gone, however; now, it was all they could do to ride the Wall from 
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+Eastwatch to the Shadow Tower, watching for cracks or signs of melt and making what repairs they 
+could. 
+"The Old Bear's no fool," Dareon observed. "You're certain to be a builder, and Jon's certain to be a 
+ranger. He's the best sword and the best rider among us, and his uncle was the First before he . . ." His 
+voice trailed off awkwardly as he realized what he had almost said. 
+"Benjen Stark is still First Ranger," Jon Snow told him, toying with his bowl of blueberries. The rest 
+might have given up all hope of his uncle's safe return, but not him. He pushed away the berries, scarcely 
+touched, and rose from the bench. 
+"Aren't you going to eat those?" Toad asked. 
+"They're yours." Jon had hardly tasted Hobb's great feast. "I could not eat another bite." He took his 
+cloak from its hook near the door and shouldered his way out. 
+Pyp followed him. "Jon, what is it?" 
+"Sam," he admitted. "He was not at table tonight." 
+"It's not like him to miss a meal," Pyp said thoughtfully. "Do you suppose he's taken ill?" 
+"He's frightened. We're leaving him." He remembered the day he had left Winterfell, all the bittersweet 
+farewells; Bran lying broken, Robb with snow in his hair, Arya raining kisses on him after he'd given her 
+Needle. "Once we say our words, we'll all have duties to attend to. Some of us may be sent away, to 
+Eastwatch or the Shadow Tower. Sam will remain in training, with the likes of Rast and Cuger and these 
+new boys who are coming up the kingsroad. Gods only know what they'll be like, but you can bet Ser 
+Alliser will send them against him, first chance he gets." 
+Pyp made a grimace. "You did all you could." 
+"All we could wasn't enough," Jon said. 
+A deep restlessness was on him as he went back to Hardin's Tower for Ghost. The direwolf walked 
+beside him to the stables. Some of the 
+more skittish horses kicked at their stalls and laid back their ears as they entered. Jon saddled his mare, 
+mounted, and rode out from Castle Black, south across the moonlit night. Ghost raced ahead of him, 
+flying over the ground, gone in the blink of an eye. Jon let him go. A wolf needed to hunt. 
+He had no destination in mind. He wanted only to ride. He followed the creek for a time, listening to the 
+icy trickle of water over rock, then cut across the fields to the kingsroad. It stretched out before him, 
+narrow and stony and pocked with weeds, a road of no particular promise, yet the sight of it filled Jon 
+Snow with a vast longing. Winterfell was down that road, and beyond it Riverrun and King's Landing and 
+the Eyrie and so many other places; Casterly Rock, the Isles of Faces, the red mountains of Dorne, the 
+hundred islands of Braavos in the sea, the smoking ruins of old Valyria. All the places that Jon would 
+never see. The world was down that road . . . and he was here. 
+Once he swore his vow, the Wall would be his home until he was old as Maester Aemon. "I have not 
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+sworn yet," he muttered. He was no outlaw, bound to take the black or pay the penalty for his crimes. 
+He had come here freely, and he might leave freely . . . until he said the words. He need only ride on, and 
+he could leave it all behind. By the time the moon was full again, he would be back in Winterfell with his 
+brothers. 
+Your half brothers, a voice inside reminded him. And Lady Stark, who will not welcome you. There was 
+no place for him in Winterfell, no place in King's Landing either. Even his own mother had not had a 
+place for him. The thought of her made him sad. He wondered who she had been, what she had looked 
+like, why his father had left her. Because she was a whore or an adulteress, fool. Something dark and 
+dishonorable, or else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to speak of her? 
+Jon Snow turned away from the kingsroad to look behind him. The fires of Castle Black were hidden 
+behind a hill, but the Wall was there, pale beneath the moon, vast and cold, running from horizon to 
+horizon. 
+He wheeled his horse around and started for home. 
+Ghost returned as he crested a rise and saw the distant glow of lamplight from the Lord Commander's 
+Tower. The direwolf s muzzle was red with blood as he trotted beside the horse. Jon found himself 
+thinking of Samwell Tarly again on the ride back. By the time he reached the stables, he knew what he 
+must do. 
+Maester Aemon's apartments were in a stout wooden keep below the rookery. Aged and frail, the 
+maester shared his chambers with two 
+of the younger stewards, who tended to his needs and helped him in his duties. The brothers joked that 
+he had been given the two ugliest men in the Night's Watch; being blind, he was spared having to look at 
+them. Clydas was short, bald, and chinless, with small pink eyes like a mole. Chett had a wen on his neck 
+the size of a pigeon's egg, and a face red with boils and pimples. Perhaps that was why he always 
+seemed so angry. 
+It was Chett who answered Jon's knock. "I need to speak to Maester Aemon," Jon told him. 
+"The maester is abed, as you should be. Come back on the morrow and maybe he'll see you." He began 
+to shut the door. 
+Jon jammed it open with his boot. "I need to speak to him now. The morning will be too late." 
+Chett scowled. "The maester is not accustomed to being woken in the night. Do you know how old he 
+is?" 
+"Old enough to treat visitors with more courtesy than you," Jon said. "Give him my pardons. I would not 
+disturb his rest if it were not important." 
+"And if I refuse?" 
+Jon had his boot wedged solidly in the door. "I can stand here all night if I must." 
+The black brother made a disgusted noise and opened the door to admit him. "Wait in the library. 
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+There's wood. Start a fire. I won't have the maester catching a chill on account of you." 
+Jon had the logs crackling merrily by the time Chett led in Maester Aemon. The old man was clad in his 
+bed robe, but around his throat was the chain collar of his order. A maester did not remove it even to 
+sleep. "The chair beside the fire would be pleasant," he said when he felt the warmth on his face. When 
+he was settled comfortably, Chett covered his legs with a fur and went to stand by the door. 
+"I am sorry to have woken you, Maester," Jon Snow said. 
+"You did not wake me," Maester Aemon replied. "I find I need less sleep as I grow older, and I am 
+grown very old. I often spend half the night with ghosts, remembering times fifty years past as if they were 
+yesterday. The mystery of a midnight visitor is a welcome diversion. So tell me, Jon Snow, why have you 
+come calling at this strange hour?" 
+"To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of the Night's Watch." 
+"This is no concern of Maester Aemon," Chett complained. 
+"Our Lord Commander has given the training of recruits into the hands of Ser Alliser Thorne," the 
+maester said gently. "Only he may 
+say when a boy is ready to swear his vow, as you surely know. Why then come to me?" 
+"The Lord Commander listens to you," Jon told him. "And the wounded and the sick of the Night's 
+Watch are in your charge." 
+"And is your friend Samwell wounded or sick?" 
+"He will be," Jon promised, "unless you help." 
+He told them all of it, even the part where he'd set Ghost at Rast's throat. Maester Aemon listened 
+silently, blind eyes fixed on the fire, but Chett's face darkened with each word. "Without us to keep him 
+safe, Sam will have no chance," Jon finished. "He's hopeless with a sword. My sister Arya could tear him 
+apart, and she's not yet ten. If Ser Alliser makes him fight, it's only a matter of time before he's hurt or 
+killed." 
+Chett could stand no more. "I've seen this fat boy in the common hall," he said. "He is a pig, and a 
+hopeless craven as well, if what you say is true." 
+"Maybe it is so," Maester Aemon said. "Tell me, Chett, what would you have us do with such a boy?" 
+"Leave him where he is," Chett said. "The Wall is no place for the weak. Let him train until he is ready, 
+no matter how many years that takes. Ser Alliser shall make a man of him or kill him, as the gods will." 
+"That's stupid, " Jon said. He took a deep breath to gather his thoughts. "I remember once I asked 
+Maester Luwin why he wore a chain around his throat." 
+Maester Aemon touched his own collar lightly, his bony, wrinkled finger stroking the heavy metal links. 
+"Go on." 
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+"He told me that a maester's collar is made of chain to remind him that he is sworn to serve," Jon said, 
+remembering. "I asked why each link was a different metal. A silver chain would look much finer with his 
+grey robes, I said. Maester Luwin laughed. A maester forges his chain with study, he told me. The 
+different metals are each a different kind of learning, gold for the study of money and accounts, silver for 
+healing, iron for warcraft. And he said there were other meanings as well. The collar is supposed to 
+remind a maester of the realm he serves, isn't that so? Lords are gold and knights steel, but two links 
+can't make a chain. You also need silver and iron and lead, tin and copper and bronze and all the rest, 
+and those are farmers and smiths and merchants and the like. A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a 
+land needs all sorts of people." 
+Maester Aemon smiled. "And so?" 
+"The Night's Watch needs all sorts too. Why else have rangers and stewards and builders? Lord Randyll 
+couldn't make Sam a warrior, 
+and Ser Alliser won't either. You can't hammer tin into iron, no matter how hard you beat it, but that 
+doesn't mean tin is useless. Why shouldn't Sam be a steward?" 
+Chett gave an angry scowl. "I'm a steward. You think it's easy work, fit for cowards? The order of 
+stewards keeps the Watch alive. We hunt and farm, tend the horses, milk the cows, gather firewood, 
+cook the meals. Who do you think makes your clothing? Who brings up supplies from the south? The 
+stewards." 
+Maester Aemon was gentler. "Is your friend a hunter?" 
+"He hates hunting," Jon had to admit. 
+"Can he plow a field?" the maester asked. "Can he drive a wagon or sail a ship? Could he butcher a 
+cow?" 
+"No.,, 
+Chett gave a nasty laugh. "I've seen what happens to soft lordlings when they're put to work. Set them to 
+churning butter and their hands blister and bleed. Give them an axe to split logs, and they cut off their 
+own foot." 
+"I know one thing Sam could do better than anyone." 
+"Yes?" Maester Aemon prompted. 
+Jon glanced warily at Chett, standing beside the door, his boils red and angry. "He could help you," he 
+said quickly. "He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can't read, and 
+Clydas has weak eyes. Sam read every book in his father's library. He'd be good with the ravens too. 
+Animals seem to like him. Ghost took to him straight off. There's a lot he could do, besides fighting. The 
+Night's Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end? Make use of him instead." 
+Maester Aemon closed his eyes, and for a brief moment Jon was afraid that he had gone to sleep. 
+Finally he said, "Maester Luwin taught you well, Jon Snow. Your mind is as deft as your blade, it would 
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+seem." 
+"Does that mean . . . T' 
+"It means I shall think on what you have said," the maester told him firmly. "And now, I believe I am 
+ready to sleep. Chett, show our young brother to the door." 
+TYRION 
+They had taken shelter beneath a copse of aspens just off the high road. Tyrion was gathering 
+deadwood while their horses took water from a mountain stream. He stooped to pick up a splintered 
+branch and examined it critically. "Will this do? I am not practiced at starting fires. Morrec did that for 
+me." 
+"Afire?" Bronn said, spitting. "Are you so hungry to die, dwarf? Or have you taken leave of your senses? 
+A fire will bring the clansmen down on us from miles around. I mean to survive this journey, Lannister." 
+"And how do you hope to do that?" Tyrion asked. He tucked the branch under his arm and poked 
+around through the sparse undergrowth, looking for more. His back ached from the effort of bending; 
+they had been riding since daybreak, when a stone-faced Ser Lyn Corbray had ushered them through the 
+Bloody Gate and commanded them never to return. 
+"We have no chance of fighting our way back," Bronn said, "but two can cover more ground than ten, 
+and attract less notice. The fewer days we spend in these mountains, the more like we are to reach the 
+riverlands. Ride hard and fast, I say. Travel by night and hole up by day, avoid the road where we can, 
+make no noise and light no fires." 
+Tyrion Lannister sighed. "A splendid plan, Bronn. Try it, as you like . . . and forgive me if I do not linger 
+to bury you." 
+"You think to outlive me, dwarf?" The sellsword grinned. He had a dark gap in his smile where the edge 
+of Ser Vardis Egen's shield had cracked a tooth in half. 
+Tyrion shrugged. "Riding hard and fast by night is a sure way to tumble down a mountain and crack your 
+skull. I prefer to make my crossing slow and easy. I know you love the taste of horse, Bronn, but if our 
+mounts die under us this time, we'll be trying to saddle shadowcats . . . and if truth be told, I think the 
+clans will find us no matter what we do. Their eyes are all around us." He swept a gloved hand over the 
+high, wind-carved crags that surrounded them. 
+Bronn grimaced. "Then we're dead men, Lannister." 
+"If so, I prefer to die comfortable," Tyrion replied. "We need a fire. The nights are cold up here, and hot 
+food will warm our bellies and lift our spirits. Do you suppose there's any game to be had? Lady Lysa 
+has kindly provided us with a veritable feast of salt beef, hard cheese, and stale bread, but I would hate 
+to break a tooth so far from the nearest maester." 
+"I can find meat." Beneath a fall of black hair, Bronn's dark eyes regarded Tyrion suspiciously. "I should 
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+leave you here with your fool's fire. If I took your horse, I'd have twice the chance to make it through. 
+What would you do then, dwarf?" 
+"Die, most like." Tyrion stooped to get another stick. 
+"You don't think I'd do it?" 
+"You'd do it in an instant, if it meant your life. You were quick enough to silence your friend Chiggen 
+when he caught that arrow in his belly." Bronn had yanked back the man's head by the hair and driven 
+the point of his dirk in under the ear, and afterward told Catelyn Stark that the other sellsword had died 
+of his wound. 
+"He was good as dead," Bronn said, "and his moaning was bringing them down on us. Chiggen would 
+have done the same for me . . . and he was no friend, only a man I rode with. Make no mistake, dwarf. I 
+fought for you, but I do not love you." 
+"It was your blade I needed," Tyrion said, "not your love." He dumped his armful of wood on the 
+ground. 
+Bronn grinned. "You're bold as any sellsword, I'll give you that. How did you know I'd take your part?" 
+"Know?" Tyrion squatted awkwardly on his stunted legs to build the fire. "I tossed the dice. Back at the 
+inn, you and Chiggen helped take me captive. Why? The others saw it as their duty, for the honor of the 
+lords they served, but not you two. You had no lord, no duty, and precious little honor, so why trouble to 
+involve yourselves?" He took out his knife and whittled some thin strips of bark off one of the sticks 
+he'd gathered, to serve as kindling. "Well, why do sellswords do anything? For gold. You were thinking 
+Lady Catelyn would reward you for your help, perhaps even take you into her service. Here, that should 
+do, I hope. Do you have a flint?" 
+Bronn slid two fingers into the pouch at his belt and tossed down a flint. Tyrion caught it in the air. 
+"My thanks," he said. "The thing is, you did not know the Starks. Lord Eddard is a proud, honorable, 
+and honest man, and his lady wife is worse. Oh, no doubt she would have found a coin or two for you 
+when this was all over, and pressed it in your hand with a polite word and a look of distaste, but that's 
+the most you could have hoped for. The Starks look for courage and loyalty and honor in the men they 
+choose to serve them, and if truth be told, you and Chiggen were lowborn scum." Tyrion struck the flint 
+against his dagger, trying for a spark. Nothing. 
+Bronn snorted. "You have a bold tongue, little man. One day someone is like to cut it out and make you 
+eat it." 
+"Everyone tells me that." Tyrion glanced up at the sellsword. "Did I offend you? My pardons . . . but you 
+are scum, Bronn, make no mistake. Duty, honor, friendship, what's that to you? No, don't trouble 
+yourself, we both know the answer. Still, you're not stupid. Once we reached the Vale, Lady Stark had 
+no more need of you . . . but I did, and the one thing the Lannisters have never lacked for is gold. When 
+the moment came to toss the dice, I was counting on your being smart enough to know where your best 
+interest lay. Happily for me, you did." He slammed stone and steel together again, fruitlessly. 
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+"Here," said Bronn, squatting, "I'll do it." He took the knife and flint from Tyrion's hands and struck 
+sparks on his first try. A curl of bark began to smolder. 
+"Well done," Tyrion said. "Scum you may be, but you're undeniably useful, and with a sword in your 
+hand you're almost as good as my brother Jaime. What do you want, Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? 
+Keep me alive, and you'll have it." 
+Bronn blew gently on the fire, and the flames leapt up higher. "And if you die?" 
+"Why then, I'll have one mourner whose grief is sincere," Tyrion said, grinning. "The gold ends when I 
+do." 
+The fire was blazing up nicely. Bronn stood, tucked the flint back into his pouch, and tossed Tyrion his 
+dagger. "Fair enough," he said. "My sword's yours, then . . . but don't go looking for me to bend the knee 
+and m7ord you every time you take a shit. I'm no man's toady." 
+"Nor any man's friend," Tyrion said. "I've no doubt you'd betray me 
+as quick as you did Lady Stark, if you saw a profit in it. If the day ever comes when you're tempted to 
+sell me out, remember this, Bronn-I'll match their price, whatever it is. I like living. And now, do you 
+think you could do something about finding us some supper?" 
+"Take care of the horses," Bronn said, unsheathing the long dirk he wore at his hip. He strode into the 
+trees. 
+An hour later the horses had been rubbed down and fed, the fire was crackling away merrily, and a 
+haunch of a young goat was turning above the flames, spitting and hissing. "All we lack now is some good 
+wine to wash down our kid," Tyrion said. 
+"That, a woman, and another dozen swords," Bronn said. He sat cross-legged beside the fire, honing the 
+edge of his longsword with an oilstone. There was something strangely reassuring about the rasping 
+sound it made when he drew it down the steel. "It will be full dark soon," the sellsword pointed out. "I'll 
+take first watch . . . for all the good it will do us. It might be kinder to let them kill us in our sleep." 
+"Oh, I imagine they'll be here long before it comes to sleep." The smell of the roasting meat made 
+Tyrion's mouth water. 
+Bronn watched him across the fire. "You have a plan," he said flatly, with a scrape of steel on stone. 
+"A hope, call it," Tyrion said. "Another toss of the dice." 
+"With our lives as the stake?" 
+Tyrion shrugged. "What choice do we have?" He leaned over the fire and sawed a thin slice of meat 
+from the kid. "Ahhhh," he sighed happily as he chewed. Grease ran down his chin. "A bit tougher than I'd 
+like, and in want of spicing, but I'll not complain too loudly. If I were back at the Eyrie, I'd be dancing on 
+a precipice in hopes of a boiled bean." 
+"And yet you gave the turnkey a purse of gold," Bronn said. 
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+"A Lannister always pays his debts." 
+Even Mord had scarcely believed it when Tyrion tossed him the leather purse. The gaoler's eyes had 
+gone big as boiled eggs as he yanked open- the drawstring and beheld the glint of gold. "I kept the 
+silver," Tyrion had told him with a crooked smile, "but you were promised the gold, and there it is." It 
+was more than a man like Mord could hope to earn in a lifetime of abusing prisoners. "And remember 
+what I said, this is only a taste. If you ever grow tired of Lady Arryn's service, present yourself at 
+Casterly Rock, and I'll pay you the rest of what I owe you." With golden dragons spilling out of both 
+hands, Mord had fallen to his knees and promised that he would do just that. 
+Bronn yanked out his dirk and pulled the meat from the fire. He began to carve thick chunks of charred 
+meat off the bone as Tyrion 
+402 GEORGE R.R. MARUN 
+hollowed out two heels of stale bread to serve as trenchers. "If we do reach the river, what will you do 
+then?" the sellsword asked as he cut. 
+"Oh, a whore and a featherbed and a flagon of wine, for a start." Tyrion held out his trencher, and Bronn 
+filled it with meat. "And then to Casterly Rock or King's Landing, I think. I have some questions that 
+want answering, concerning a certain dagger." 
+The sellsword chewed and swallowed. "So you were telling it true? It was not your knife?" 
+Tyrion smiled thinly. "Do I look a liar to you?" 
+By the time their bellies were full, the stars had come out and a halfmoon was rising over the mountains. 
+Tyrion spread his shadowskin cloak on the ground and stretched out with his saddle for a pillow. "Our 
+friends are taking their sweet time." 
+"If I were them, I'd fear a trap," Bronn said. "Why else would we be so open, if not to lure them in?" 
+Tyrion chuckled. "Then we ought to sing and send them fleeing in terror." He began to whistle a tune. 
+"You're mad, dwarf," Bronn said as he cleaned the grease out from under his nails with his dirk. 
+"Where's your love of music, Bronn?" 
+"If it was music you wanted, you should have gotten the singer to champion you." 
+Tyrion grinned. "That would have been amusing. I can just see him fending off Ser Vardis with his 
+woodharp." He resumed his whistling. "Do you know this song?" he asked. 
+"You hear it here and there, in inns and whorehouses." 
+"Myrish. 'The Seasons of My Love.' Sweet and sad, if you understand the words. The first girl I ever 
+bedded used to sing it, and I've never been able to put it out of my head." Tyrion gazed up at the sky. It 
+was a clear cold night and the stars shone down upon the mountains as bright and merciless as truth. "I 
+met her on a night like this," he heard himself saying. "Jaime and I were riding back from Lannisport when 
+we heard a scream, and she came running out into the road with two men dogging her heels, shouting 
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+threats. My brother unsheathed his sword and went after them, while I dismounted to protect the girl. 
+She was scarcely a year older than I was, dark-haired, slender, with a face that would break your heart. 
+It certainly broke mine. Lowborn, halfstarved, unwashed . . . yet lovely. They'd torn the rags she was 
+wearing half off her back, so I wrapped her in my cloak while Jaime chased the men into the woods. By 
+the time he came trotting back, I'd gotten a name out of her, and a story. She was a crofter's child, 
+orphaned 
+when her father died of fever, on her way to ... well, nowhere, really. 
+"Jaime was all in a lather to hunt down the men. It was not often outlaws dared prey on travelers so near 
+to Casterly Rock, and he took it as an insult. The girl was too frightened to send off by herself, though, so 
+I offered to take her to the closest inn and feed her while my brother rode back to the Rock for help. 
+"She was hungrier than I would have believed. We finished two whole chickens and part of a third, and 
+drank a flagon of wine, talking. I was only thirteen, and the wine went to my head, I fear. The next thing I 
+knew, I was sharing her bed. If she was shy, I was shyer. I'll never know where I found the courage. 
+When I broke her maidenhead, she wept, but afterward she kissed me and sang her little song, and by 
+morning I was in love." 
+"You?" Bronn's voice was amused. 
+"Absurd, isn't it?" Tyrion began to whistle the song again. "I married her," he finally admitted. 
+"A Lannister of Casterly Rock wed to a crofter's daughter," Bronn said. "How did you manage that?" 
+"Oh, you'd be astonished at what a boy can make of a few lies, fifty pieces of silver, and a drunken 
+septon. I dared not bring my bride home to Casterly Rock, so I set her up in a cottage of her own, and 
+for a fortnight we played at being man and wife. And then the septon sobered and confessed all to my 
+lord father." Tyrion was surprised at how desolate it made him feel to say it, even after all these years. 
+Perhaps he was just tired. "That was the end of my marriage." He sat up and stared at the dying fire, 
+blinking at the light. 
+"He sent the girl away?" 
+"He did better than that," Tyrion said. "First he made my brother tell me the truth. The girl was a whore, 
+you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of it. He thought it was time I had a 
+woman. He paid double for a maiden, knowing it would be my first time. 
+"After Jaime had made his confession, to drive home the lesson, Lord Tywin brought my wife in and 
+gave her to his guards. They paid her fair enough. A silver for each man, how many whores command 
+that high a price? He sat me down in the corner of the barracks and bade me watch, and at the end she 
+had so many silvers the coins were slipping through her fingers and rolling on the floor, she . . ." The 
+smoke was stinging his eyes. Tyrion cleared his throat and turned away from the fire, to gaze out into 
+darkness. "Lord Tywin had me go last," 
+he said in a quiet voice. "And he gave me a gold coin to pay her, because I was a Lannister, and worth 
+more." 
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+After a time he heard the noise again, the rasp of steel on stone as Bronn sharpened his sword. "Thirteen 
+or thirty or three, I would have killed the man who did that to me." 
+Tyrion swung around to face him. "You may get that chance one day. Remember what I told you. A 
+Lannister always pays his debts." He yawned. "I think I will try and sleep. Wake me if we're about to 
+die." 
+He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony and cold, but after a 
+time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, 
+big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . . 
+"Tyrion. " Bronn's warning was low and urgent. 
+Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned down to embers, and the shadows were 
+creeping in all around them. Bronn had raised himself to one knee, his sword in one hand and his dirk in 
+the other. Tyrion held up a hand: stay still, it said. "Come share our fire, the night is cold," he called out to 
+the creeping shadows. "I fear we've no wine to offer you, but you're welcome to some of our goat." 
+All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on metal. "Our mountain," a voice called out 
+from the trees, deep and hard and unfriendly. "Our goat." 
+"Your goat," Tyrion agreed. "Who are you?" 
+"When you meet your gods," a different voice replied, "say it was Gunthor son of Gurn of the Stone 
+Crows who sent you to them." A branch cracked underfoot as he stepped into the light; a thin man in a 
+horned helmet, armed with a long knife. 
+"And Shagga son of Dolf." That was the first voice, deep and deadly. A boulder shifted to their left, and 
+stood, and became a man. Massive and slow and strong he seemed, dressed all in skins, with a club in 
+his right hand and an axe in his left. He smashed them together as he lumbered closer. 
+Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and more that Tyrion forgot the instant he 
+heard them; ten at least. A few had swords and knives; others brandished pitchforks and scythes and 
+wooden spears. He waited until they were done shouting out their names before he gave them answer. "I 
+am Tyrion son of Tywin, of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will gladly pay you for the 
+goat we ate." 
+"What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?" asked the one who named himself Gunthor, who 
+seemed to be their chief. 
+"There is silver in my purse," Tyrion told them. "This hauberk I wear is large for me, but it should fit 
+Conn nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit Shagga's mighty hand far better than that wood-axe he 
+holds." 
+"The halfman would pay us with our own coin," said Conn. 
+"Conn speaks truly," Gunthor said. "Your silver is ours. Your horses are ours. Your hauberk and your 
+battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours too. You have nothing to give us but your lives. How 
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+would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?" 
+"In my own bed, with a belly full of wine and a maiden's mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty," he 
+replied. 
+The huge one, Shagga, laughed first and loudest. The others seemed less amused. "Conn, take their 
+horses," Gunthor commanded. "Kill the other and seize the halfinan. He can milk the goats and make the 
+mothers laugh." 
+Bronn sprang to his feet. "Who dies first?" 
+"No!" Tyrion said sharply. "Gunthor son of Gurn, hear me. My House is rich and powerful. If the Stone 
+Crows will see us safely through these mountains, my lord father will shower you with gold." 
+"The gold of a lowland lord is as worthless as a halfman's promises," Gunthor said. 
+"Half a man I may be," Tyrion said, "yet I have the courage to face my enemies. What do the Stone 
+Crows do, but hide behind rocks and shiver with fear as the knights of the Vale ride by?" 
+Shagga gave a roar of anger and clashed club against axe. Jaggot poked at Tyrion's face with the 
+fire-hardened point of a long wooden spear. He did his best not to flinch. "Are these the best weapons 
+you could steal?" he said. "Good enough for killing sheep, perhaps . . . if the sheep do not fight back. My 
+father's smiths shit better steel." 
+"Little boyman," Shagga roared, "will you mock my axe after I chop off your manhood and feed it to the 
+goats?" 
+But Gunthor raised a hand. "No. I would hear his words. The mothers go hungry, and steel fills more 
+mouths than gold. What would you give us for your lives, Tyrion son of Tywin? Swords? Lances? Mail?" 
+"All that, and more, Gunthor son of Gurn," Tyrion Lannister replied, smiling. "I will give you the Vale of 
+Arryn." 
+EDDARD 
+Through the high narrow windows of the Red Keep's cavernous throne room, the light of sunset spilled 
+across the floor, laying dark red stripes upon the walls where the heads of dragons had once hung. Now 
+the stone was covered with hunting tapestries, vivid with greens and browns and blues, and yet still it 
+seemed to Ned Stark that the only color in the hall was the red of blood. 
+He sat high upon the immense ancient seat of Aegon the Conqueror, an ironwork monstrosity of spikes 
+and jagged edges and grotesquely twisted metal. It was, as Robert had warned him, a hellishly 
+uncomfortable chair, and never more so than now, with his shattered leg throbbing more sharply every 
+minute. The metal beneath him had grown harder by the hour, and the fanged steel behind made it 
+impossible to lean back. A king should never sit easy, Aegon the Conqueror had said, when he 
+commanded his armorers to forge a great seat from the swords laid down by his enemies. Damn Aegon 
+for his arrogance, Ned thought sullenly, and damn Robert and his hunting as well. 
+"You are quite certain these were more than brigands?" Varys asked softly from the council table 
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+beneath the throne. Grand Maester Pycelle stirred uneasily beside him, while Littlefinger toyed with a 
+pen. They were the only councillors in attendance. A white hart had been sighted in the kingswood, and 
+Lord Renly and Ser Barristan had joined the king to hunt it, along with Prince Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, 
+Balon Swann, and half the court. So Ned must needs sit the Iron Throne in his absence. 
+At least he could sit. Save the council, the rest must stand respectfully, or kneel. The petitioners 
+clustered near the tall doors, the knights and high lords and ladies beneath the tapestries, the smallfolk in 
+the gallery, the mailed guards in their cloaks, gold or grey: all stood. 
+The villagers were kneeling: men, women, and children, alike tattered and bloody, their faces drawn by 
+fear. The three knights who had brought them here to bear witness stood behind them. 
+"Brigands, Lord Varys?" Ser Raymun Darry's voice dripped scorn. "Oh, they were brigands, beyond a 
+doubt. Lannister brigands." 
+Ned could feel the unease in the hall, as high lords and servants alike strained to listen. He could not 
+pretend to surprise. The west had been a tinderbox since Catelyn had seized Tyrion Lannister. Both 
+Riverrun and Casterly Rock had called their banners, and armies were massing in the pass below the 
+Golden Tooth. It had only been a matter of time until the blood began to flow. The sole question that 
+remained was how best to stanch the wound. 
+Sad-eyed Ser Karyl Vance, who would have been handsome but for the winestain birthmark that 
+discolored his face, gestured at the kneeling villagers. "This is all the remains of the holdfast of Sherrer, 
+Lord Eddard. The rest are dead, along with the people of Wendish Town and the Mummer's Ford." 
+"Rise," Ned commanded the villagers. He never trusted what a man told him from his knees. "All of you, 
+up." 
+In ones and twos, the holdfast of Sherrer struggled to its feet. One ancient needed to be helped, and a 
+young girl in a bloody dress stayed on her knees, staring blankly at Ser Arys Oakheart, who stood by the 
+foot of the throne in the white armor of the Kingsguard, ready to protect and defend the king . . . or, Ned 
+supposed, the King's Hand. 
+"Joss," Ser Raymun Darry said to a plump balding man in a brewer's apron. "Tell the Hand what 
+happened at Sherrer." 
+Joss nodded. "If it please His Grace-" 
+"His Grace is hunting across the Blackwater," Ned said, wondering how a man could live his whole life a 
+few days ride from the Red Keep and still have no notion what his king looked like. Ned was clad in a 
+white linen doublet with the direwolf of Stark on the breast; his black wool cloak was fastened at the 
+collar by his silver hand of office. Black and white and grey, all the shades of truth. "I am Lord Eddard 
+Stark, the King's Hand. Tell me who you are and what you know of these raiders." 
+"I keep . . . I kept . . . I kept an alehouse, m'lord, in Sherrer, by 
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+the stone bridge. The finest ale south of the Neck, everyone said so, begging your pardons, m1ord. It's 
+gone now like all the rest, m'lord. They come and drank their fill and spilled the rest before they fired my 
+roof, and they would of spilled my blood too, if they'd caught me. M'lord." 
+"They burnt us out," a farmer beside him said. "Come riding in the dark, up from the south, and fired the 
+fields and the houses alike, killing them as tried to stop them. They weren't no raiders, though, m1ord. 
+They had no mind to steal our stock, not these, they butchered my milk cow where she stood and left her 
+for the flies and the crows." 
+"They rode down my 'prentice boy," said a squat man with a smith's muscles and a bandage around his 
+head. He had put on his finest clothes to come to court, but his breeches were patched, his cloak 
+travel-stained and dusty. "Chased him back and forth across the fields on their horses, poking at him with 
+their lances like it was a game, them laughing and the boy stumbling and screaming till the big one pierced 
+him clean through." 
+The girl on her knees craned her head up at Ned, high above her on the throne. "They killed my mother 
+too, Your Grace. And they . . . they . . ." Her voice trailed off, as if she had forgotten what she was 
+about to say. She began to sob. 
+Ser Raymun Darry took up the tale. "At Wendish Town, the people sought shelter in their holdfast, but 
+the walls were timbered. The raiders piled straw against the wood and burnt them all alive. When the 
+Wendish folk opened their gates to flee the fire, they shot them down with arrows as they came running 
+out, even women with suckling babes." 
+"Oh, dreadful," murmured Varys. "How cruel can men be?" 
+"They would of done the same for us, but the Sherrer holdfast's made of stone," Joss said. "Some 
+wanted to smoke us out, but the big one said there was riper fruit upriver, and they made for the 
+Mummer's Ford." 
+Ned could feel cold steel against his fingers as he leaned forward. Between each finger was a blade, the 
+points of twisted swords fanning out like talons from arms of the throne. Even after three centuries, some 
+were still sharp enough to cut. The Iron Throne was full of traps for the unwary. The songs said it had 
+taken a thousand blades to make it, heated white-hot in the furnace breath of Balerion the Black Dread. 
+The hammering had taken fifty-nine days. The end of it was this hunched black beast made of razor 
+edges and barbs and ribbons of sharp metal; a chair that could kill a man, and had, if the stories could be 
+believed. 
+What Eddard Stark was doing sitting there he would never comprehend, yet there he sat, and these 
+people looked to him for justice. "What proof do you have that these were Lannisters?" he asked, trying 
+to keep his fury under control. "Did they wear crimson cloaks or fly a lion banner?" 
+"Even Lannisters are not so blind stupid as that," Ser Marq Piper snapped. He was a swaggering bantam 
+rooster of a youth, too young and too hot-blooded for Ned's taste, though a fast friend of Catelyn's 
+brother, Edmure Tully. 
+"Every man among them was mounted and mailed, my lord," Ser Karyl answered calmly. "They were 
+armed with steel-tipped lances and longswords, with battle-axes for the butchering." He gestured toward 
+one of the ragged survivors. "You. Yes, you, no one's going to hurt you. Tell the Hand what you told 
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+me." 
+The old man bobbed his head. "Concerning their horses," he said, "it were warhorses they rode. Many a 
+year I worked in old Ser Willum's stables, so I knows the difference. Not a one of these ever pulled a 
+plow, gods bear witness if I'm wrong." 
+"Well-mounted brigands," observed Littlefinger. "Perhaps they stole the horses from the last place they 
+raided." 
+"How many men were there in this raiding party?" Ned asked. 
+"A hundred, at the least," Joss answered, in the same instant as the bandaged smith said, "Fifty," and the 
+grandmother behind him, "Hunnerds and hunnerds, m1ord, an army they was." 
+"You are more right than you know, goodwoman," Lord Eddard told her. "You say they flew no 
+banners. What of the armor they wore? Did any of you note ornaments or decorations, devices on shield 
+or helm?" 
+The brewer, Joss, shook his head. "It grieves me, m1ord, but no, the armor they showed us was plain, 
+only . . . the one who led them, he was armored like the rest, but there was no mistaking him all the same. 
+It was the size of him, m'lord. Those as say the giants are all dead never saw this one, I swear. Big as an 
+ox he was, and a voice like stone breaking." 
+"The Mountain!" Ser Marq said loudly. "Can any man doubt it? This was Gregor Clegane's work." 
+Ned heard muttering from beneath the windows and the far end of the hall. Even in the galley, nervous 
+whispers were exchanged. High lords and smallfolk alike knew what it could mean if Ser Marq was 
+proved right. Ser Gregor Clegane stood bannerman to Lord Tywin Lannister. 
+He studied the frightened faces of the villagers. Small wonder they 
+had been so fearful; they had thought they were being dragged here to name Lord Tywin a red-handed 
+butcher before a king who was his son by marriage. He wondered if the knights had given them a choice. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle rose ponderously from the council table, his chain of office clinking. "Ser Marq, 
+with respect, you cannot know that this outlaw was Ser Gregor. There are many large men in the realm." 
+"As large as the Mountain That Rides?" Ser Karyl said. "I have never met one." 
+"Nor has any man here," Ser Raymun added hotly. "Even his brother is a pup beside him. My lords, 
+open your eyes. Do you need to see his seal on the corpses? It was Gregor." 
+"Why should Ser Gregor turn brigand?" Pycelle asked. "By the grace of his liege lord, he holds a stout 
+keep and lands of his own. The man is an anointed knight." 
+"A false knight!" Ser Marq said. "Lord Tywin's mad dog." 
+"My lord Hand," Pycelle declared in a stiff voice, "I urge you to remind this good knight that Lord Tywin 
+Lannister is the father of our own gracious queen." 
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+"Thank you, Grand Maester Pycelle," Ned said. "I fear we might have forgotten that if you had not 
+pointed it out." 
+From his vantage point atop the throne, he could see men slipping out the door at the far end of the hall. 
+Hares going to ground, he supposed . . . or rats off to nibble the queen's cheese. He caught a glimpse of 
+Septa Mordane in the gallery, with his daughter Sansa beside her. Ned felt a flash of anger; this was no 
+place for a girl. But the septa could not have known that today's court would be anything but the usual 
+tedious business of hearing petitions, settling disputes between rival holdfasts, and adjudicating the 
+placement of boundary stones. 
+At the council table below, Petyr Baelish lost interest in his quill and leaned forward. "Ser Marq, Ser 
+Karyl, Ser Raymun-perhaps I might ask you a question? These holdfasts were under your protection. 
+Where were you when all this slaughtering and burning was going on?" 
+Ser Karyl Vance answered. "I was attending my lord father in the pass below the Golden Tooth, as was 
+Ser Marq. When the word of these outrages reached Ser Edmure Tully, he sent word that we should 
+take a small force of men to find what survivors we could and bring them to the king." 
+Ser Raymun Darry spoke up. "Ser Edmure had summoned me to Riverrun with all my strength. I was 
+camped across the river from his walls, awaiting his commands, when the word reached me. By the time 
+1 could return to my own lands, Clegane and his vermin were back across the Red Fork, riding for 
+Lannister's hills." 
+Littlefinger stroked the point of his beard thoughtfully. "And if they come again, ser?" 
+"If they come again, we'll use their blood to water the fields they burnt," Ser Marq Piper declared hotly. 
+"Ser Edmure has sent men to every village and holdfast within a day's ride of the border," Ser Karyl 
+explained. "The next raider will not have such an easy time of it." 
+And that may be precisely what Lord Tywin wants, Ned thought to himself, to bleed off strength from 
+Riverrun, goad the boy into scattering his swords. His wife's brother was young, and more gallant than 
+wise. He would try to hold every inch of his soil, to defend every man, woman, and child who named him 
+lord, and Tywin Lannister was shrewd enough to know that. 
+"If your fields and holdfasts are safe from harm," Lord Petyr was saying, "what then do you ask of the 
+throne?" 
+"The lords of the Trident keep the king's peace," Ser Raymun Darry said. "The Lannisters have broken 
+it. We ask leave to answer them, steel for steel. We ask justice for the smallfolk of Sherrer and Wendish 
+Town and the Mummer's Ford." 
+"Edmure agrees, we must pay Gregor Clegane back his bloody coin," Ser Marq declared, "but old Lord 
+Hoster commanded us to come here and beg the king's leave before we strike." 
+Thank the gods for old Lord Hoster, then. Tywin Lannister was as much fox as lion. If indeed he'd sent 
+Ser Gregor to burn and pillageand Ned did not doubt that he had-he'd taken care to see that he rode 
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+under cover of night, without banners, in the guise of a common brigand. Should Riverrun strike back, 
+Cersei and her father would insist that it had been the Tullys who broke the king's peace, not the 
+Lannisters. The gods only knew what Robert would believe. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle was on his feet again. "My lord Hand, if these good folk believe that Ser Gregor 
+has forsaken his holy vows for plunder and rape, let them go to his liege lord and make their complaint. 
+These crimes are no concern of the throne. Let them seek Lord Tywin's justice." 
+"It is all the king's justice," Ned told him. "North, south, east, or west, all we do we do in Robert's 
+name." 
+"The king's justice," Grand Maester Pycelle said. "So it is, and so we should defer this matter until the 
+king-" 
+"The king is hunting across the river and may not return for days," Lord Eddard said. "Robert bid me to 
+sit here in his place, to listen with 
+his ears, and to speak with his voice. I mean to do just that ... though I agree that he must be told." He 
+saw a familiar face beneath the tapestries. "Ser Robar." 
+Ser Robar Royce stepped forward and bowed. "My lord." 
+"Your father is hunting with the king," Ned said. "Will you bring them word of what was said and done 
+here today?" 
+"At once, my lord." 
+"Do we have your leave to take our vengeance against Ser Gregor, then?" Marq Piper asked the throne. 
+"Vengeance?" Ned said. "I thought we were speaking of justice. Burning Clegane's fields and 
+slaughtering his people will not restore the king's peace, only your injured pride." He glanced away 
+before the young knight could voice his outraged protest, and addressed the villagers. "People of Sherrer, 
+I cannot give you back your homes or your crops, nor can I restore your dead to life. But perhaps I can 
+give you some small measure of justice, in the name of our king, Robert." 
+Every eye in the hall was fixed on him, waiting. Slowly Ned struggled to his feet, pushing himself up from 
+the throne with the strength of his arms, his shattered leg screaming inside its cast. He did his best to 
+ignore the pain; it was no moment to let them see his weakness. "The First Men believed that the judge 
+who called for death should wield the sword, and in the north we hold to that still. I mislike sending 
+another to do my killing . . . yet it seems I have no choice." He gestured at his broken leg. 
+"Lord Eddard!" The shout came from the west side of the hall as a handsome stripling of a boy strode 
+forth boldly. Out of his armor, Ser Loras Tyrell looked even younger than his sixteen years. He wore 
+pale blue silk, his belt a linked chain of golden roses, the sigil of his House. "I beg you the honor of acting 
+in your place. Give this task to me, my lord, and I swear I shall not fail you." 
+Littlefinger chuckled. "Ser Loras, if we send you off alone, Ser Gregor will send us back your head with 
+a plum stuffed in that pretty mouth of yours. The Mountain is not the sort to bend his neck to any man's 
+justice." 
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+
+"I do not fear Gregor Clegane," Ser Loras said haughtily. 
+Ned eased himself slowly back onto the hard iron seat of Aegon's misshapen throne. His eyes searched 
+the faces along the wall. "Lord Beric," he called out. "Thoros of Myr. Ser Gladden. Lord Lothar." The 
+men named stepped forward one by one. "Each of you is to assemble twenty men, to bring my word to 
+Gregor's keep. Twenty of my own guards shall go with you. Lord Beric Dondarrion, you shall have the 
+command, as befits your rank." 
+The young lord with the red-gold hair bowed. "As you command, Lord Eddard." 
+Ned raised his voice, so it carried to the far end of the throne room. "In the name of Robert of the 
+House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of 
+the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, by the word of Eddard of the House Stark, his Hand, I 
+charge you to ride to the westlands with all haste, to cross the Red Fork of the Trident under the king's 
+flag, and there bring the king's justice to the false knight Gregor Clegane, and to all those who shared in 
+his crimes. I denounce him, and attaint him, and strip him of all rank and titles, of all lands and incomes 
+and holdings, and do sentence him to death. May the gods take pity on his soul." 
+When the echo of his words had died away, the Knight of Flowers seemed perplexed. "Lord Eddard, 
+what of me?" 
+Ned looked down on him. From on high, Loras Tyrell seemed almost as young as Robb. "No one 
+doubts your valor, Ser Loras, but we are about justice here, and what you seek is vengeance." He 
+looked back to Lord Beric. "Ride at first light. These things are best done quickly." He held up a hand. 
+"The throne will hear no more petitions today." 
+Alyn and Porther climbed the steep iron steps to help him back down. As they made their descent, he 
+could feel Loras Tyrell's sullen stare, but the boy had stalked away before Ned reached the floor of the 
+throne room. 
+At the base of the Iron Throne, Varys was gathering papers from the council table. Littlefinger and 
+Grand Maester Pycelle had already taken their leave. "You are a bolder man than 1, my lord," the 
+eunuch said softly. 
+"How so, Lord Varys?" Ned asked brusquely. His leg was throbbing, and he was in no mood for word 
+games. 
+"Had it been me up there, I should have sent Ser Loras. He so wanted to go . . . and a man who has the 
+Lannisters for his enemies would do well to make the Tyrells his friends." 
+"Ser Loras is young," said Ned. "I daresay he will outgrow the disappointment." 
+"And Ser Ilyn?" The eunuch stroked a plump, powdered cheek. "He is the King's Justice, after all. 
+Sending other men to do his office . . . some might construe that as a grave insult." 
+"No slight was intended." In truth, Ned did not trust the mute knight, though perhaps that was only 
+because he misliked execution- 
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+ers. "I remind you, the Paynes are bannermen to House Lannister. I thought it best to choose men who 
+owed Lord Tywin no fealty." 
+"Very prudent, no doubt," Varys said. "Still, I chanced to see Ser Ilyn in the back of the hall, staring at 
+us with those pale eyes of his, and I must say, he did not look pleased, though to be sure it is hard to tell 
+with our silent knight. I hope he outgrows his disappointment as well. He does so love his work . . ." 
+SANSA 
+"He wouldn't send Ser Loras," Sansa told Jeyne Poole that night as they shared a cold supper by 
+lamplight. "I think it was because of his leg." 
+Lord Eddard had taken his supper in his bedchamber with Alyn, Harwin, and Vayon Poole, the better to 
+rest his broken leg, and Septa Mordane had complained of sore feet after standing in the gallery all day. 
+Arya was supposed to join them, but she was late coming back from her dancing lesson. 
+"His leg?" Jeyne said uncertainly. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of Sansa's own age. "Did Ser Loras 
+hurt his leg?" 
+"Not his leg," Sansa said, nibbling delicately at a chicken leg. "Father's leg, silly. It hurts him ever so 
+much, it makes him cross. Otherwise I'm certain he would have sent Ser Loras." 
+Her father's decision still bewildered her. When the Knight of Flowers had spoken up, she'd been sure 
+she was about to see one of Old Nan's stories come to life. Ser Gregor was the monster and Ser Loras 
+the true hero who would slay him. He even looked a true hero, so slim and beautiful, with golden roses 
+around his slender waist and his rich brown hair tumbling down into his eyes. And then Father had 
+refused him! It had upset her more than she could tell. She had said as much to Septa Mordane as they 
+descended the stairs from the gallery, but the 
+septa had only told her it was not her place to question her lord father's decisions. 
+That was when Lord Baelish had said, "Oh, I don't know, Septa. Some of her lord father's decisions 
+could do with a bit of questioning. The young lady is as wise as she is lovely." He made a sweeping bow 
+to Sansa, so deep she was not quite sure if she was being complimented or mocked. 
+Septa Mordane had been very upset to realize that Lord Baelish had overheard them. "The girl was just 
+talking, my lord," she'd said. "Foolish chatter. She meant nothing by the comment." 
+Lord Baelish stroked his little pointed beard and said, "Nothing? Tell me, child, why would you have 
+sent Ser Loras?" 
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+Sansa had no choice but to explain about heroes and monsters. The king's councillor smiled. "Well, 
+those are not the reasons I'd have given, but . . ." He had touched her cheek, his thumb lightly tracing the 
+line of a cheekbone. "Life is not a song, sweetling. You may learn that one day to your sorrow." 
+Sansa did not feel like telling all that to Jeyne, however; it made her uneasy just to think back on it. 
+"Ser Ilyn's the King's Justice, not Ser Loras," Jcyne said. "Lord Eddard should have sent him." 
+Sansa shuddered. Every time she looked at Ser Ilyn Payne, she shivered. He made her feel as though 
+something dead were slithering over her naked skin. "Ser Ilyn's almost like a second monster. I'm glad 
+Father didn't pick him." 
+"Lord Beric is as much a hero as Ser Loras. He's ever so brave and gallant." 
+"I suppose," Sansa said doubtfully. Beric Dondarrion was handsome enough, but he was awfully old, 
+almost twenty-two; the Knight of Flowers would have been much better. Of course, Jeyne had been in 
+love with Lord Beric ever since she had first glimpsed him in the lists. Sansa thought she was being silly; 
+Jeyne was only a steward's daughter, after all, and no matter how much she mooned after him, Lord 
+Beric would never look at someone so far beneath him, even if she hadn't been half his age. 
+It would have been unkind to say so, however, so Sansa took a sip of milk and changed the subject. "I 
+had a dream that Jofftey would be the one to take the white hart," she said. It had been more of a wish, 
+actually, but it sounded better to call it a dream. Everyone knew that dreams were prophetic. White harts 
+were supposed to be very rare and magical, and in her heart she knew her gallant prince was worthier 
+than his drunken father. 
+"A dream? Truly? Did Prince Joffrey just go up to it and touch it with his bare hand and do it no harm?" 
+"No," Sansa said. "He shot it with a golden arrow and brought it back for me." In the songs, the knights 
+never killed magical beasts, they just went up to them and touched them and did them no harm, but she 
+knew Jofftey liked hunting, especially the killing part. Only animals, though. Sansa was certain her prince 
+had no part in murdering Jory and those other poor men; that had been his wicked uncle, the Kingslayer. 
+She knew her father was still angry about that, but it wasn't fair to blame Joff. That would be like blaming 
+her for something that Arya had done. 
+"I saw your sister this afternoon," Jeyne blurted out, as if she'd been reading Sansa's thoughts. "She was 
+walking through the stables on her hands. Why would she do a thing like that?" 
+"I'm sure I don't know why Arya does anything." Sansa hated stables, smelly places full of manure and 
+flies. Even when she went riding, she liked the boy to saddle the horse and bring it to her in the yard. "Do 
+you want to hear about the court or not?" 
+"I do," Jeyne said. 
+"There-was a black brother," Sansa said, "begging men for the Wall, only he was kind of old and 
+smelly." She hadn't liked that at all. She had always imagined the Night's Watch to be men like Uncle 
+Benjen. In the songs, they were called the black knights of the Wall. But this man had been crookbacked 
+and hideous, and he looked as though he might have lice. If this was what the Night's Watch was truly 
+like, she felt sorry for her bastard half brother, Jon. "Father asked if there were any knights in the hall 
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+who would do honor to their houses by taking the black, but no one came forward, so he gave this 
+Yoren his pick of the king's dungeons and sent him on his way. And later these two brothers came before 
+him, freeriders from the Dornish Marches, and pledged their swords to the service of the king. Father 
+accepted their oaths . . ." 
+Jeyne yawned. "Are there any lemon cakes?" 
+Sansa did not like being interrupted, but she had to admit, lemon cakes sounded more interesting than 
+most of what had gone on in the throne room. "Let's see," she said. 
+The kitchen yielded no lemon cakes, but they did find half of a cold strawberry pie, and that was almost 
+as good. They ate it on the tower steps, giggling and gossiping and sharing secrets, and Sansa went to 
+bed that night feeling almost as wicked as Arya. 
+The next morning she woke before first light and crept sleepily to her window to watch Lord Beric form 
+up his men. They rode out as 
+dawn was breaking over the city, with three banners going before them; the crowned stag of the king 
+flew from the high staff, the direwolf of Stark and Lord Beric's own forked lightning standard from 
+shorter poles. It was all so exciting, a song come to life; the clatter of swords, the flicker of torchlight, 
+banners dancing in the wind, horses snorting and whinnying, the golden glow of sunrise slanting through 
+the bars of the portcullis as it jerked upward. The Winterfell men looked especially fine in their silvery 
+mail and long grey cloaks. 
+Alyn carried the Stark banner. When she saw him rein in beside Lord Beric to exchange words, it made 
+Sansa feel ever so proud. Alyn was handsomer than Jory had been; he was going to be a knight one day. 
+The Tower of the Hand seemed so empty after they left that Sansa was even pleased to see Arya when 
+she went down to break her fast. "Where is everyone?" her sister wanted to know as she ripped the skin 
+from a blood orange. "Did Father send them to hunt down Jaime Lannister?" 
+Sansa sighed. "They rode with Lord Beric, to behead Ser Gregor Clegane." She turned to Septa 
+Mordane, who was eating porridge with a wooden spoon. "Septa, will Lord Beric spike Ser Gregor's 
+head on his own gate or bring it back here for the king?" She and Jeyne Poole had been arguing over that 
+last night. 
+The septa was horror-struck. "A lady does not discuss such things over her porridge. Where are your 
+courtesies, Sansa? I swear, of late you've been near as bad as your sister." 
+"What did Gregor do?" Arya asked. 
+"He burned down a holdfast and murdered a lot of people, women and children too." 
+Arya screwed up her face in a scowl. "Jaime Lannister murdered Jory and Heward and Wyl, and the 
+Hound murdered Mycah. Somebody should have beheaded them." 
+"It's not the same," Sansa said. "The Hound is Joffrey's sworn shield. Your butcher's boy attacked the 
+prince." 
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+
+"Liar," Arya said. Her hand clenched the blood orange so hard that red juice oozed between her fingers. 
+"Go ahead, call me all the names you want," Sansa said airily. "You won't dare when I'm married to 
+Joffrey. You'll have to bow to me and call me Your Grace." She shrieked as Arya flung the orange 
+across the table. It caught her in the middle of the forehead with a wet squish and plopped down into her 
+lap. 
+"You have juice on your face, Your Grace," Arya said. 
+It was running down her nose and stinging her eyes. Sansa wiped it 
+away with a napkin. When she saw what the fruit in her lap had done to her beautiful ivory silk dress, 
+she shrieked again. "You're horrible," she screamed at her sister. "They should have killed you instead of 
+Lady!" 
+Septa Mordane came lurching to her feet. "Your lord father will hear of this! Go to your chambers, at 
+once. At once!" 
+"Me too?" Tears welled in Sansa's eyes. "That's not fair." 
+"The matter is not subject to discussion. Go!" 
+Sansa stalked away with her head up. She was to be a queen, and queens did not cry. At least not 
+where people could see. When she reached her bedchamber, she barred the door and took off her 
+dress. The blood orange had left a blotchy red stain on the silk. "I hate her!" she screamed. She balled up 
+the dress and flung it into the cold hearth, on top of the ashes of last night's fire. When she saw that the 
+stain had bled through onto her underskirt, she began to sob despite herself. She ripped off the rest of her 
+clothes wildly, threw herself into bed, and cried herself back to sleep. 
+It was midday when Septa Mordane knocked upon her door. "Sansa. Your lord father will see you 
+now." 
+Sansa sat up. "Lady," she whispered. For a moment it was as if the direwolf was there in the room, 
+looking at her with those golden eyes, sad and knowing. She had been dreaming, she realized. Lady was 
+with her, and they were running together, and . . . and . . . trying to remember was like trying to catch the 
+rain with her fingers. The dream faded, and Lady was dead again. 
+"Sansa." The rap came again, sharply. "Do you hear me?" 
+"Yes, Septa," she called out. "Might I have a moment to dress, please?" Her eyes were red from crying, 
+but she did her best to make herself beautiful. 
+Lord Eddard was bent over a huge leather-bound book when Septa Mordane marched her into the 
+solar, his plaster-wrapped leg stiff beneath the table. "Come here, Sansa," he said, not unkindly, when the 
+septa had gone for her sister. "Sit beside me." He closed the book. 
+Septa Mordane returned with Arya squirming in her grasp. Sansa had put on a lovely pale green damask 
+gown and a look of remorse, but her sister was still wearing the ratty leathers and roughspun she'd worn 
+at breakfast. "Here is the other one," the septa announced. 
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+
+"My thanks, Septa Mordane. I would talk to my daughters alone, if you would be so kind." The septa 
+bowed and left. 
+"Arya started it," Sansa said quickly, anxious to have the first word. "She called me a liar and threw an 
+orange at me and spoiled my dress, the ivory silk, the one Queen Cersei gave me when I was betrothed 
+to 
+Prince Joffrey. She hates that I'm going to marry the prince. She tries to spoil everything, Father, she 
+can't stand for anything to be beautiful or nice or splendid." 
+"Enough, Sansa." Lord Eddard's voice was sharp with impatience. 
+Arya raised her eyes. "I'm sorry, Father. I was wrong and I beg my sweet sister's forgiveness." 
+Sansa was so startled that for a moment she was speechless. Finally she found her voice. "What about 
+my dress?" 
+"Maybe . . . I could wash it," Arya said doubtfully. 
+"Washing won't do any good," Sansa said. "Not if you scrubbed all day and all night. The silk is ruined." 
+"Then I'll . . . make you a new one," Arya said. 
+Sansa threw back her head in disdain. "You? You couldn't sew a dress fit to clean the pigsties." 
+Their father sighed. "I did not call you here to talk of dresses. I'm sending you both back to Winterfell." 
+For the second time Sansa found herself too stunned for words. She felt her eyes grow moist again. 
+"You can't," Arya said. 
+"Please, Father," Sansa managed at last. "Please don't." 
+Eddard Stark favored his daughters with a tired smile. "At last we've found something you agree on." 
+"I didn't do anything wrong," Sansa pleaded with him. "I don't want to go back." She loved Mng's 
+Landing; the pagaentry of the court, the high lords and ladies in their velvets and silks and gemstones, the 
+great city with all its people. The tournament had been the most magical time of her whole life, and there 
+was so much she had not seen yet, harvest feasts and masked balls and mummer shows. She could not 
+bear the thought of losing it all. "Send Arya away, she started it, Father, I swear it. I'll be good, you'll see, 
+just let me stay and I promise to be as fine and noble and courteous as the queen." 
+Father's mouth twitched strangely. "Sansa, I'm not sending you away for fighting, though the gods know 
+I'm sick of you two squabbling. I want you back in Winterfell for your own safety. Three of my men were 
+cut down like dogs not a league from where we sit, and what does Robert do? He goes hunting." 
+Arya was chewing at her lip in that disgusting way she had. "Can we take Syrio back with us?" 
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+"Who cares about your stupid dancing master?" Sansa flared. "Father, I only just now remembered, I 
+can't go away, I'm to marry Prince Joffrey." She tried to smile bravely for him. "I love him, Father, I truly 
+truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the 
+Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies." 
+"Sweet one," her father said gently, "listen to me. When you're old enough, I will make you a match with 
+a high lord who's worthy of you, someone brave and gentle and strong. This match with Joffrey was a 
+terrible mistake. That boy is no Prince Aemon, you must believe me." 
+"He is!" Sansa insisted. "I don't want someone brave and gentle, I want him. We'll be ever so happy, just 
+like in the songs, you'll see. I'll give him a son with golden hair, and one day he'll be the king of all the 
+realm, the greatest king that ever was, as brave as the wolf and as proud as the lion." 
+Arya made a face. "Not if Joffrey's his father," she said. "He's a liar and a craven and anyhow he's a 
+stag, not a lion." 
+Sansa felt tears in her eyes. "He is not! He's not the least bit like that old drunken king," she screamed at 
+her sister, forgetting herself in her grief. 
+Father looked at her strangely. "Gods, " he swore softly, "out of the mouth of babes . . ." He shouted for 
+Septa Mordane. To the girls he said, "I am looking for a fast trading galley to take you home. These 
+days, the sea is safer than the kingsroad. You will sail as soon as I can find a proper ship, with Septa 
+Mordane and a complement of guards . . . and yes, with Syrio Forel, if he agrees to enter my service. 
+But say nothing of this. It's better if no one knows of our plans. We'll talk again tomorrow." 
+Sansa cried as Septa Mordane marched them down the steps. They were going to take it all away; the 
+tournaments and the court and her prince, everything, they were going to send her back to the bleak grey 
+walls of Winterfell and lock her up forever. Her life was over before it had begun. 
+"Stop that weeping, child," Septa Mordane said sternly. "I am certain your lord father knows what is 
+best for you." 
+"It won't be so bad, Sansa," Arya said. "We're going to sail on a galley. It will be an adventure, and then 
+we'll be with Bran and Robb again, and Old Nan and Hodor and the rest." She touched her on the arm. 
+"Hodor!" Sansa yelled. "You ought to marry Hodor, you're just like him, stupid and hairy and ugly!" She 
+wrenched away from her sister's hand, stormed into her bedchamber, and barred the door behind her. 
+EDDARD 
+"Pain is a gift from the gods, Lord Eddard," Grand Maester Pycelle told him. "It means the bone is 
+knitting, the flesh 
+healing itself. Be thankful." 
+"I will be thankful when my leg stops throbbing." 
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+Pycelle set a stoppered flask on the table by the bed. "The milk of the poppy, for when the pain grows 
+too onerous." 
+"I sleep too much already." 
+"Sleep is the great healer." 
+"I had hoped that was you." 
+Pycelle smiled wanly. "It is good to see you in such a fierce humor, my lord." He leaned close and 
+lowered his voice. "There was a raven this morning, a letter for the queen from her lord father. I thought 
+you had best know." 
+"Dark wings, dark words," Ned said grimly. "What of it?" 
+"Lord Tywin is greatly wroth about the men you sent after Ser Gregor Clegane," the maester confided. "I 
+feared he would be. You will recall, I said as much in council." 
+"Let him be wroth," Ned said. Every time his leg throbbed, he remembered Jaime Lannister's smile, and 
+Jory dead in his arms. "Let him write all the letters to the queen he likes. Lord Beric rides beneath the 
+king's own banner. If Lord Tywin attempts to interfere with the king's justice, he will have Robert to 
+answer to. The only thing His 
+Grace enjoys more than hunting is making war on lords who defy him." 
+Pycelle pulled back, his maester's chain jangling. "As you say. I shall visit again on the morrow." The old 
+man hurriedly gathered up his things and took his leave. Ned had little doubt that he was bound straight 
+for the royal apartments, to whisper at the queen. I thought you had best know, indeed . . . as if Cersei 
+had not instructed him to pass along her father's threats. He hoped his response rattled those perfect 
+teeth of hers. Ned was not near as confident of Robert as he pretended, but there was no reason Cersei 
+need know that. 
+When Pycelle was gone, Ned called for a cup of honeyed wine. That clouded the mind as well, yet not 
+as badly. He needed to be able to think. A thousand times, he asked himself what Jon Arryn might have 
+done, had he lived long enough to act on what he'd learned. Or perhaps he had acted, and died for it. 
+It was queer how sometimes a child's innocent eyes can see things that grown men are blind to. 
+Someday, when Sansa was grown, he would have to tell her how she had made it all come clear for him. 
+He's not the least bit like that old drunken king, she had declared, angry and unknowing, and the simple 
+truth of it had twisted inside him, cold as death. This was the sword that killed Jon Anyn, Ned thought 
+then, and it will kill Robert as well, a slower death but full as certain. Shattered legs may heal in time, but 
+some betrayals fester and poison the soul. 
+Littlefinger came calling an hour after the Grand Maester had left, clad in a plum-colored doublet with a 
+mockingbird embroidered on the breast in black thread, and a striped cloak of black and white. "I cannot 
+visit long, my lord," he announced. "Lady Tanda expects me to lunch with her. No doubt she will roast 
+me a fatted calf. If it's near as fatted as her daughter, I'm like to rupture and die. And how is your leg?" 
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+"Inflamed and painful, with an itch that is driving me mad." 
+Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. "In future, try not to let any horses fall on it. I would urge you to heal 
+quickly. The realm grows restive. Varys has heard ominous whispers from the west. Freeriders and 
+sellswords have been flocking to Casterly Rock, and not for the thin pleasure of Lord Tywin's 
+conversation." 
+"Is there word of the king?" Ned demanded. "Just how long does Robert intend to hunt?" 
+"Given his preferences, I believe he'd stay in the forest until you and the queen both die of old age," Lord 
+Petyr replied with a faint smile. "Lacking that, I imagine he'll return as soon as he's killed something. They 
+found the white hart, it seems . . . or rather, what remained 
+of it. Some wolves found it first, and left His Grace scarcely more than a hoof and a horn. 
+Robert was in a fury, until he heard talk of some monstrous boar deeper in the forest. Then nothing 
+would do but he must have it. Prince Joffrey returned this morning, with the Royces, Ser Balon Swann, 
+and some twenty others of the party. The rest are still with the king." 
+"The Hound?" Ned asked, frowning. Of all the Lannister party, Sandor Clegane was the one who 
+concerned him the most, now that Ser Jaime had fled the city to join his father. 
+"Oh, returned with Joffrey, and went straight to the queen." Littlefinger smiled. "I would have given a 
+hundred silver stags to have been a roach in the rushes when he learned that Lord Beric was off to 
+behead his brother." 
+"Even a blind man could see the Hound loathed his brother." 
+"Ah, but Gregor was his to loathe, not yours to kill. Once Dondarrion lops the summit off our Mountain, 
+the Clegane lands and incomes will pass to Sandor, but I wouldn't hold my water waiting for his thanks, 
+not that one. And now you must forgive me. Lady Tanda awaits with her fatted calves." 
+On the way to the door, Lord Petyr spied Grand Maester Malleon's massive tome on the table and 
+paused to idly flip open the cover. "The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven 
+Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children, " he read. 
+"Now there is tedious reading if ever I saw it. A sleeping potion, my lord?" 
+For a brief moment Ned considered telling him all of it, but there was something in Littlefinger's japes 
+that irked him. The man was too clever by half, a mocking smile never far from his lips. "Jon Arryn was 
+studying this volume when he was taken sick," Ned said in a careful tone, to see how he might respond. 
+And he responded as he always did: with a quip. "In that case," he said, "death must have come as a 
+blessed relief." Lord Petyr Baelish bowed and took his leave. 
+Eddard Stark allowed himself a curse. Aside from his own retainers, there was scarcely a man in this city 
+he trusted. Littlefinger had concealed Catelyn and helped Ned in his inquiries, yet his haste to save his 
+own skin when Jaime and his swords had come out of the rain still rankled. Varys was worse. For all his 
+protestations of loyalty, the eunuch knew too much and did too little. Grand Maester Pycelle seemed 
+more Cersei's creature with every passing day, and Ser Barristan was an old man, and rigid. He would 
+tell Ned to do his duty. 
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+Time was perilously short. The king would return from his hunt 
+soon, and honor would require Ned to go to him with all he had learned. Vayon Poole had arranged for 
+Sansa and Arya to sail on the Wind Witch out of Braavos, three days hence. They would be back at 
+Winterfell before the harvest. Ned could no longer use his concern for their safety to excuse his delay. 
+Yet last night he had dreamt of Rhaegar's children. Lord Tywin had laid the bodies beneath the Iron 
+Throne, wrapped in the crimson cloaks of his house guard. That was clever of him; the blood did not 
+show so badly against the red cloth. The little princess had been barefoot, still dressed in her bed gown, 
+and the boy . . . the boy . . . 
+Ned could not let that happen again. The realm could not withstand a second mad king, another dance 
+of blood and vengeance. He must find some way to save the children. 
+Robert could be merciful. Ser Barristan was scarcely the only man he had pardoned. Grand Maester 
+Pycelle, Varys the Spider, Lord Balon Greyjoy; each had been counted an enemy to Robert once, and 
+each had been welcomed into friendship and allowed to retain honors and office for a pledge of fealty. 
+So long as a man was brave and honest, Robert would treat him with all the honor and respect due a 
+valiant enemy. 
+This was something else: poison in the dark, a knife thrust to the soul. This he could never forgive, no 
+more than he had forgiven Rhaegar. He will kill them all, Ned realized. 
+And yet, he knew he could not keep silent. He had a duty to Robert, to the realm, to the shade of Jon 
+Arryn . . . and to Bran, who surely must have stumbled on some part of the truth. Why else would they 
+have tried to slay him? 
+Late that afternoon he summoned Tomard, the portly guardsman with the ginger-colored whiskers his 
+children called Fat Tom. With Jory dead and Alyn gone, Fat Tom had command of his household guard. 
+The thought filled Ned with vague disquiet. Tomard was a solid man; affable, loyal, tireless, capable in a 
+limited way, but he was near fifty, and even in his youth he had never been energetic. Perhaps Ned 
+should not have been so quick to send off half his guard, and all his best swords among them. 
+"I shall require your help," Ned said when Tomard appeared, looking faintly apprehensive, as he always 
+did when called before his lord. "Take me to the godswood." 
+"Is that wise, Lord Eddard? With your leg and all?" 
+"Perhaps not. But necessary." 
+Tomard summoned Varly. With one arm around each man's shoulders, Ned managed to descend the 
+steep tower steps and hobble across 
+the bailey. "I want the guard doubled," he told Fat Tom. "No one enters or leaves the Tower of the 
+Hand without my leave." 
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+Tom blinked. "NI'lord, with Alyn and the others away, we are hardpressed already-" 
+"It will only be a short while. Lengthen the watches." 
+"As you say, m'lord," Tom answered. "Might I ask why-" 
+"Best not," Ned answered crisply. 
+The godswood was empty, as it always was here in this citadel of the southron gods. Ned's leg was 
+screaming as they lowered him to the grass beside the heart tree. "Thank you." He drew a paper from his 
+sleeve, sealed with the sigil of his House. "Kindly deliver this at once." 
+Tomard looked at the name Ned had written on the paper and licked his lips anxiously. "My lord . . ." 
+"Do as I bid you, Tom," Ned said. 
+How long he waited in the quiet of the godswood, he could not say. It was peaceful here. The thick 
+walls shut out the clamor of the castle, and he could hear birds singing, the murmur of crickets, leaves 
+rustling in a gentle wind. The heart tree was an oak, brown and faceless, yet Ned Stark still felt the 
+presence of his gods. His leg did not seem to hurt so much. 
+She came to him at sunset, as the clouds reddened above the walls and towers. She came alone, as he 
+had bid her. For once she was dressed simply, in leather boots and hunting greens. When she drew back 
+the hood of her brown cloak, he saw the bruise where the king had struck her. The angry plum color had 
+faded to yellow, and the swelling was down, but there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was. 
+"Why here?" Cersei Lannister asked as she stood over him. 
+"So the gods can see." 
+She sat beside him on the grass. Her every move was graceful. Her curling blond hair moved in the 
+wind, and her eyes were green as the leaves of summer. It had been a long time since Ned Stark had 
+seen her beauty, but he saw it now. "I know the truth Jon Arryn died for," he told her. 
+"Do you?" The queen watched his face, wary as a cat. "Is that why you called me here, Lord Stark? To 
+pose me riddles? Or is it your intent to seize me, as your wife seized my brother?" 
+"If you truly believed that, you would never have come." Ned touched her cheek gently. "Has he done 
+this before?" 
+"Once or twice." She shied away from his hand. "Never on the face before. Jaime would have killed him, 
+even if it meant his own life." 
+Cersei looked at him defiantly. "My brother is worth a hundred of your friend." 
+"Your brother?" Ned said. "Or your lover?" 
+"Both." She did not flinch from the truth. "Since we were children together. And why not? The 
+Targaryens wed brother to sister for three hundred years, to keep the bloodlines pure. And Jaime and I 
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+are more than brother and sister. We are one person in two bodies. We shared a womb together. He 
+came into this world holding my foot, our old maester said. When he is in me, I feel . . . whole." The 
+ghost of a smile flitted over her lips. 
+"My son Bran . . ." 
+To her credit, Cersei did not look away. "He saw us. You love your children, do you not?" 
+Robert had asked him the very same question, the morning of the melee. He gave her the same answer. 
+"With all my heart." 
+"No less do I love mine." 
+Ned thought, If it came to that, the life of some child I did not know, against Robb and Sansa and Arya 
+and Bran and Rickon, what would I do? Even more so, what would Catelyn do, if it were Jon's life, 
+against the children of her body? He did not know. He prayed he never would. 
+"All three are Jaime's," he said. It was not a question. 
+"Thank the gods." 
+The seed is strong, Jon Arryn had cried on his deathbed, and so it was. All those bastards, all with hair 
+as black as night. Grand Maester Malleon recorded the last mating between stag and lion, some ninety 
+years ago, when Tya Lannister wed Gowen Baratheon, third son of the reigning lord. Their only issue, an 
+unnamed boy described in Malleon's tome as a large and lusty lad born with a full head of black hair, 
+died in infancy. Thirty years before that a male Lannister had taken a Baratheon maid to wife. She had 
+given him three daughters and a son, each black-haired. No matter how far back Ned searched in the 
+brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal. 
+"A dozen years," Ned said. "How is it that you have had no children by the king?" 
+She lifted her head, defiant. "Your Robert got me with child once," she said, her voice thick with 
+contempt. "My brother found a woman to cleanse me. He never knew, If truth be told, I can scarcely 
+bear for him to touch me, and I have not let him inside me for years. I know other ways to pleasure him, 
+when he leaves his whores long enough to stagger up to my bedchamber. Whatever we do, the king is 
+usually so drunk that he's forgotten it all by the next morning." 
+How could they have all been so blind? The truth was there in front 
+of them all the time, written on the children's faces. Ned felt sick. "I remember Robert as he was the day 
+he took the throne, every inch a king," he said quietly. "A thousand other women might have loved him 
+with all their hearts. What did he do to make you hate him so?" 
+Her eyes burned, green fire in the dusk, like the lioness that was her sigil. "The night of our wedding 
+feast, the first time we shared a bed, he called me by your sister's name. He was on top of me, in me, 
+stinking of wine, and he whispered Lyanna. " 
+Ned Stark thought of pale blue roses, and for a moment he wanted to weep. "I do not know which of 
+you I pity most." 
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+The queen seemed amused by that. "Save your pity for yourself, Lord Stark. I want none of it." 
+"You know what I must do." 
+"Must?" She put her hand on his good leg, just above the knee. "A true man does what he will, not what 
+he must." Her fingers brushed lightly against his thigh, the gentlest of promises. "The realm needs a strong 
+Hand. Joff will not come of age for years. No one wants war again, least of all me." Her hand touched his 
+face, his hair. "If friends can turn to enemies, enemies can become friends. Your wife is a thousand 
+leagues away, and my brother has fled. Be kind to me, Ned. I swear to you, you shall never regret it." 
+"Did you make the same offer to Jon Arryn?" 
+She slapped him. 
+"I shall wear that as a badge of honor," Ned said dryly. 
+"Honor, " she spat. "How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You've a 
+bastard of your own, I've seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped 
+while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself 
+into the sea, I'm told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my 
+honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?" 
+"For a start," said Ned, "I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only 
+once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. 
+You and your children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free 
+Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow." 
+"Exile," she said. "A bitter cup to drink from." 
+"A sweeter cup than your father served Rhaegar's children," Ned said, "and kinder than you deserve. 
+Your father and your brothers would do well to go with you. Lord Tywin's gold will buy you comfort 
+and hire swords to keep you safe. You shall need them. I promise you, no matter where you flee, 
+Robert's wrath will follow you, to the back of beyond if need be." 
+The queen stood. "And what of my wrath, Lord Stark?" she asked softly. Her eyes searched his face. 
+"You should have taken the realm for yourself. It was there for the taking. Jaime told me how you found 
+him on the Iron Throne the day King's Landing fell, and made him yield it up. That was your moment. All 
+you needed to do was climb those steps, and sit. Such a sad mistake." 
+"I have made more mistakes than you can possibly imagine," Ned said, "but that was not one of them." 
+"Oh, but it was, my lord," Cersei insisted. "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. 
+There is no middle ground." 
+She turned up her hood to hide her swollen face and left him there in the dark beneath the oak, amidst 
+the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were coming out. 
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+DAENERYS 
+The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw and bloody. His 
+arms were red to the elbow. Behind him, his bloodriders knelt on the sand beside the corpse of the wild 
+stallion, stone knives in their hands. The stallion's blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the 
+torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit. 
+Dany touched the soft swell of her belly. Sweat beaded her skin and trickled down her brow. She could 
+feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones of Vaes Dothrak, with eyes that shone dark as 
+polished flint in their wrinkled faces. She must not flinch or look afraid. I am the blood of the dragon, she 
+told herself as she took the stallion's heart in both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and plunged her teeth into 
+the tough, stringy flesh. 
+Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened to gag her, but she made 
+herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion would make her son strong and swift and fearless, or so 
+the Dothraki believed, but only if the mother could eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched up the 
+flesh, the omens were less favorable; the child might be stillborn, or come forth weak, deformed, or 
+female. 
+Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the tender mother's stomach that 
+had afflicted her these past 
+two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri 
+made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching. She had starved herself for a day 
+and a night before the ceremony in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat. 
+The wild stallion's heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her teeth and chew each mouthful 
+a long time. No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of 
+the Mother of Mountains; she had to rip the heart apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach roiled and 
+heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode 
+against her lips. 
+Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black braid was 
+shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold bells in his braid, and a heavy belt of solid gold 
+medallions around his waist, but his chest was bare. She looked at him whenever she felt her strength 
+failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. 
+Toward the end, Dany thought she glimpsed a fierce pride in his dark, almondshaped eyes, but she could 
+not be sure. The khal's face did not often betray the thoughts within. 
+And finally it was done. Her cheeks and fingers were sticky as she forced down the last of it. Only then 
+did she turn her eyes back to the old women, the crones of the dosh khaleen. 
+"Khalakka dothrae mranha!" she proclaimed in her best Dothraki. A prince tides inside me! She had 
+practiced the phrase for days with her handmaid Jhiqui. 
+The oldest of the crones, a bent and shriveled stick of a woman with a single black eye, raised her arms 
+on high. "Khalakka dothrae!" she shrieked. The prince is tiding! 
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+"He is tiding!" the other women answered. "Rakh! Rakh! Rakh haj!" they proclaimed. A boy, a boy, a 
+strong boy. 
+Bells rang, a sudden clangor of bronze birds. A deep-throated warhorn sounded its long low note. The 
+old women began to chant. Underneath their painted leather vests, their withered dugs swayed back and 
+forth, shiny with oil and sweat. The eunuchs who served them threw bundles of dried grasses into a great 
+bronze brazier, and clouds of fragrant smoke rose up toward the moon and the stars. The Dothraki 
+believed the stars were horses made of fire, a great herd that galloped across the sky by night. 
+As the smoke ascended, the chanting died away and the ancient crone closed her single eye, the better 
+to peer into the future. The 
+silence that fell was complete. Dany could hear the distant call of night birds, the hiss and crackle of the 
+torches, the gentle lapping of water from the lake. The Dothraki stared at her with eyes of night, waiting. 
+Khal Drogo laid his hand on Dany's arm. She could feel the tension in his fingers. Even a khal as mighty 
+as Drogo could know fear when the dosh khaleen peered into smoke of the future. At her back, her 
+handmaids fluttered anxiously. 
+Finally the crone opened her eye and lifted her arms. "I have seen his face, and heard the thunder of his 
+hooves," she proclaimed in a thin, wavery voice. 
+"The thunder of his hooves!" the others chorused. 
+"As swift as the wind he rides, and behind him his khalasar covers the earth, men without number, with 
+arakhs shining in their hands like blades of razor grass. Fierce as a storm this prince will be. His enemies 
+will tremble before him, and their wives will weep tears of blood and rend their flesh in grief. The bells in 
+his hair will sing his coming, and the milk men in the stone tents will fear his name." The old woman 
+trembled and looked at Dany almost as if she were afraid. "The prince is riding, and he shall be the 
+stallion who mounts the world." 
+"The stallion who mounts the world!" the onlookers cried in echo, until the night rang to the sound of 
+their voices. 
+The one-eyed crone peered at Dany. "What shall he be called, the stallion who mounts the world?" 
+She stood to answer. "He shall be called Rhaego," she said, using the words that Jhiqui had taught her. 
+Her hands touched the swell beneath her breasts protectively as a roar went up from the Dothraki. 
+"Rhaego, " they screamed. "Rhaego, Rhaego, Rhaego!" 
+The name was still ringing in her ears as Khal Drogo led her from the pit. His bloodriders fell in behind 
+them. A procession followed them out onto the godsway, the broad grassy road that ran through the 
+heart of Vaes Dothrak, from the horse gate to the Mother of Mountains. The crones of the dosh khaleen 
+came first, with their eunuchs and slaves. Some supported themselves with tall carved staffs as they 
+struggled along on ancient, shaking legs, while others walked as proud as any horselord. Each of the old 
+women had been a khaleesi once. When their lord husbands died and a new khal took his place at the 
+front of his riders, with a new khaleesi mounted beside him, they were sent here, to reign over the vast 
+Dothraki nation. Even the mightiest of khals bowed to the wisdom and authority of the dosh khaleen. 
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+Still, it gave Dany the shivers to think that one day she might be sent to join them, whether she willed it or 
+no. 
+Behind the wise women came the others; Khal Ogo and his son, the 
+khalakka Fogo, Khal Jommo and his wives, the chief men of Drogo's khalasar, Dany's handmaids, the 
+khal's servants and slaves, and more. Bells rang and drums beat a stately cadence as they marched along 
+the godsway. Stolen heroes and the gods of dead peoples brooded in the darkness beyond the road. 
+Alongside the procession, slaves ran lightly through the grass with torches in their hands, and the 
+flickering flames made the great monuments seem almost alive. 
+"What is meaning, name Rhaego?" Khal Drogo asked as they walked, using the Common Tongue of the 
+Seven Kingdoms. She had been teaching him a few words when she could. Drogo was quick to learn 
+when he put his mind to it, though his accent was so thick and barbarous that neither Ser Jorah nor 
+Viserys could understand a word he said. 
+"My brother Rhaegar was a fierce warrior, my sun-and-stars," she told him. "He died before I was born. 
+Ser Jorah says that he was the last of the dragons." 
+Khal Drogo looked down at her. His face was a copper mask, yet under the long black mustache, 
+drooping beneath the weight of its gold rings, she thought she glimpsed the shadow of a smile. "Is good 
+name, Dan Ares wife, moon of my life," he said. 
+They rode to the lake the Dothraki called the Womb of the World, surrounded by a fringe of reeds, its 
+water still and calm. A thousand thousand years ago, Jhiqui told her, the first man had emerged from its 
+depths, riding upon the back of the first horse. 
+The procession waited on the grassy shore as Dany stripped and let her soiled clothing fall to the ground. 
+Naked, she stepped gingerly into the water. Irri said the lake had no bottom, but Dany felt soft mud 
+squishing between her toes as she pushed through the tall reeds. The moon floated on the still black 
+waters, shattering and re-forming as her ripples washed over it. Goose pimples rose on her pale skin as 
+the coldness crept up her thighs and kissed her lower lips. The stallion's blood had dried on her hands 
+and around her mouth. Dany cupped her fingers and lifted the sacred waters over her head, cleansing 
+herself and the child inside her while the khal and the others looked on. She heard the old women of the 
+dosh khaleen muttering to each other as they watched, and wondered what they were saying. 
+When she emerged from the lake, shivering and dripping, her handmaid Doreah hurried to her with a 
+robe of painted sandsilk, but Khal Drogo waved her away. He was looking on her swollen breasts and 
+the curve of her belly with approval, and Dany could see the shape of his manhood pressing through his 
+horsehide trousers, below the heavy gold medallions of his belt. She went to him and helped him unlace. 
+Then her huge khal took her by the hips and lifted her into the air, as he might lift a child. The bells in his 
+hair rang softly. 
+Dany wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face against his neck as he thrust himself 
+inside her. Three quick strokes and it was done. "The stallion who mounts the world, " Drogo whispered 
+hoarsely. His hands still smelled of horse blood. He bit at her throat, hard, in the moment of his pleasure, 
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+and when he lifted her off, his seed filled her and trickled down the inside of her thighs. Only then was 
+Doreah permitted to drape her in the scented sandsilk, and Irri to fit soft slippers to her feet. 
+Khal Drogo laced himself up and spoke a command, and horses were brought to the lakeshore. Cohollo 
+had the honor of helping the khaleesi onto her silver. Drogo spurred his stallion, and set off down the 
+godsway beneath the moon and stars. On her silver, Dany easily kept pace. 
+The silk tenting that roofed Khal Drogo's hall had been rolled up tonight, and the moon followed them 
+inside. Flames leapt ten feet in the air from three huge stone-lined firepits. The air was thick with the 
+smells of roasting meat and curdled, fermented mare's milk. The hall was crowded and noisy when they 
+entered, the cushions packed with those whose rank and name were not sufficient to allow them at the 
+ceremony. As Dany rode beneath the arched entry and up the center aisle, every eye was on her. The 
+Dothraki screamed out comments on her belly and her breasts, hailing the life within her. She could not 
+understand all they shouted, but one phrase came clear. "The stallion that mounts the world, " she heard, 
+bellowed in a thousand voices. 
+The sounds of drums and horns swirled up into the night. Halfclothed women spun and danced on the 
+low tables, amid joints of meat and platters piled high with plums and dates and pomegranates. Many of 
+the men were drunk on clotted mare's milk, yet Dany knew no arakhs would clash tonight, not here in the 
+sacred city, where blades and bloodshed were forbidden. 
+Khal Drogo dismounted and took his place on the high bench. Khal Jommo and Khal Ogo, who had 
+been in Vaes Dothrak with their khalasars when they arrived, were given seats of high honor to Drogo's 
+right and left. The bloodriders of the three khals sat below them, and farther down Khal Jommo's four 
+wives. 
+Dany climbed off her silver and gave the reins to one of the slaves. As Doreah and Irri arranged her 
+cushions, she searched for her brother. Even across the length of the crowded hall, Viserys should have 
+been conspicuous with his pale skin, silvery hair, and beggar's rags, but she did not see him anywhere. 
+Her glance roamed the crowded tables near the walls, where men whose braids were even shorter than 
+their manhoods sat on frayed rugs and flat cushions around the low tables, but all the faces she saw had 
+black eyes and copper skin. She spied Ser Jorah Mormont near the center of the hall, close to the middle 
+firepit. It was a place of respect, if not high honor; the Dothraki esteemed the knight's prowess with a 
+sword. Dany sent Jhiqui to bring him to her table. Mormont came at once, and went to one knee before 
+her. "Khaleesi, " he said, "I am yours to command." 
+She patted the stuffed horsehide cushion beside her. "Sit and talk with me." 
+"You honor me." The knight seated himself cross-legged on the cushion. A slave knelt before him, 
+offering a wooden platter full of ripe figs. Ser Jorah took one and bit it in half. 
+"Where is my brother?" Dany asked. "He ought to have come by now, for the feast." 
+"I saw His Grace this morning," he told her. "He told me he was going to the Western Market, in search 
+of wine." 
+"Wine?" Dany said doubtfully. Viserys could not abide the taste of the fermented mare's milk the 
+Dothraki drank, she knew that, and he was oft at the bazaars these days, drinking with the traders who 
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+came in the great caravans from east and west. He seemed to find their company more congenial than 
+hers. 
+"Wine," Ser Jorah confirmed, "and he has some thought to recruit men for his army from the sellswords 
+who guard the caravans." A serving girl laid a blood pie in front of him, and he attacked it with both 
+hands. 
+"Is that wise?" she asked. "He has no gold to pay soldiers. What if he's betrayed?" Caravan guards were 
+seldom troubled much by thoughts of honor, and the Usurper in King's Landing would pay well for her 
+brother's head. "You ought to have gone with him, to keep him safe. You are his sworn sword." 
+"We are in Vaes Dothrak," he reminded her. "No one may carry a blade here or shed a man's blood." 
+"Yet men die," she said. "Jhogo told me. Some of the traders have eunuchs with them, huge men who 
+strangle thieves with wisps of silk. That way no blood is shed and the gods are not angered." 
+"Then let us hope your brother will be wise enough not to steal anything." Ser Jorah wiped the grease off 
+his mouth with the back of his hand and leaned close over the table. "He had planned to take your 
+dragon's eggs, until I warned him that I'd cut off his hand if he so much as touched them." 
+For a moment Dany was so shocked she had no words. "My eggs ... but they're mine, Magister Illyrio 
+gave them to me, a bride gift, why would Viserys want . . . they're only stones . . ." 
+"The same could be said of rubies and diamonds and fire opals, Princess . . . and dragon's eggs are rarer 
+by far. Those traders he's been drinking with would sell their own manhoods for even one of those 
+stones, and with all three Viserys could buy as many sellswords as he might need." 
+Dany had not known, had not even suspected. "Then . . . he should have them. He does not need to 
+steal them. He had only to ask. He is my brother . . . and my true king." 
+"He is your brother," Ser Jorah acknowledged. 
+"You do not understand, ser," she said. "My mother died giving me birth, and my father and my brother 
+Rhaegar even before that. I would never have known so much as their names if Viserys had not been 
+there to tell me. He was the only one left. The only one. He is all I have." 
+"Once," said Ser Jorah. "No longer, Khaleesi. You belong to the Dothraki now. In your womb rides the 
+stallion who mounts the world." He held out his cup, and a slave filled it with fermented mare's milk, 
+sour-smelling and thick with clots. 
+Dany waved her away. Even the smell of it made her feel ill, and she would take no chances of bringing 
+up the horse heart she had forced herself to eat. "What does it mean?" she asked. "What is this stallion? 
+Everyone was shouting it at me, but I don't understand." 
+"The stallion is the khal of khals promised in ancient prophecy, child. He will unite the Dothraki into a 
+single khalasar and ride to the ends of the earth, or so it was promised. All the people of the world will 
+be his herd." 
+"Oh," Dany said in a small voice. Her hand smoothed her robe down over the swell of her stomach. "I 
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+named him Rhaego." 
+"A name to make the Usurper's blood run cold." 
+Suddenly Doreah was tugging at her elbow. "My lady, " the handmaid whispered urgently, "your brother 
+. . ." 
+Dany looked down the length of the long, roofless hall and there he was, striding toward her. From the 
+lurch in his step, she could tell at once that Viserys had found his wine . . . and something that passed for 
+courage. 
+He was wearing his scarlet silks, soiled and travel-stained. His cloak and gloves were black velvet, 
+faded from the sun. His boots were dry and cracked, his silver-blond hair matted and tangled. A 
+longsword 
+swung from his belt in a leather scabbard. The Dothraki eyed the sword as he passed; Dany heard 
+curses and threats and angry muttering rising all around her, like a tide. The music died away in a nervous 
+stammering of drums. 
+A sense of dread closed around her heart. "Go to him," she commanded Ser Jorah. "Stop him. Bring him 
+here. Tell him he can have the dragon's eggs if that is what he wants." The knight rose swiftly to his feet. 
+"Where is my sister?" Viserys shouted, his voice thick with wine. "I've come for her feast. How dare you 
+presume to eat without me? No one eats before the king. Where is she? The whore can't hide from the 
+dragon." 
+He stopped beside the largest of the three firepits, peering around at the faces of the Dothraki. There 
+were five thousand men in the hall, but only a handful who knew the Common Tongue. Yet even if his 
+words were incomprehensible, you had only to look at him to know that he was drunk. 
+Ser Jorah went to him swiftly, whispered something in his ear, and took him by the arm, but Viserys 
+wrenched free. "Keep your hands off me! No one touches the dragon without leave." 
+Dany glanced anxiously up at the high bench. Khal Drogo was saying something to the other khals 
+beside him. Khal Jommo grinned, and Khal Ogo began to guffaw loudly. 
+The sound of laughter made Viserys lift his eyes. "Khal Drogo," he said thickly, his voice almost polite. 
+"I'm here for the feast." He staggered away from Ser Jorah, making to join the three khals on the high 
+bench. 
+Khal Drogo rose, spat out a dozen words in Dothraki, faster than Dany could understand, and pointed. 
+"Khal Drogo says your place is not on the high bench," Ser Jorah translated for her brother. "Khal Drogo 
+says your place is there." 
+Viserys glanced where the khal was pointing. At the back of the long hall, in a corner by the wall, deep 
+in shadow so better men would not need to look on them, sat the lowest of the low; raw unblooded 
+boys, old men with clouded eyes and stiff joints, the dim-witted and the maimed. Far from the meat, and 
+farther from honor. "That is no place for a king," her brother declared. 
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+"Is place," Khal Drogo answered, in the Common Tongue that Dany had taught him, "for Sorefoot 
+King." He clapped his hands together. "A cart! Bring cart for Khal Rhaggat! " 
+Five thousand Dothraki began to laugh and shout. Ser Jorah was 
+standing beside Viserys, screaming in his ear, but the roar in the hall was so thunderous that Dany could 
+not hear what he was saying. Her brother shouted back and the two men grappled, until Mormont 
+knocked Viserys bodily to the floor. 
+Her brother drew his sword. 
+The bared steel shone a fearful red in the glare from the firepits. "Keep away from me!" Viserys hissed. 
+Ser Jorah backed off a step, and her brother climbed unsteadily to his feet. He waved the sword over his 
+head, the borrowed blade that Magister Illyrio had given him to make him seem more kingly. Dothraki 
+were shrieking at him from all sides, screaming vile curses. 
+Dany gave a wordless cry of terror. She knew what a drawn sword meant here, even if her brother did 
+not. 
+Her voice made Viserys turn his head, and he saw her for the first time. "There she is," he said, smiling. 
+He stalked toward her, slashing at the air as if to cut a path through a wall of enemies, though no one 
+tried to bar his way. 
+"The blade . . . you must not," she begged him. "Please, Viserys. It is forbidden. Put down the sword 
+and come share my cushions. There's drink, food . . . is it the dragon's eggs you want? You can have 
+them, only throw away the sword." 
+"Do as she tells you, fool," Ser Jorah shouted, "before you get us all killed." 
+Viserys laughed. "They can't kill us. They can't shed blood here in the sacred city . . . but I can." He laid 
+the point of his sword between Daenerys's breasts and slid it downward, over the curve of her belly. "I 
+want what I came for," he told her. "I want the crown he promised me. He bought you, but he never paid 
+for you. Tell him I want what I bargained for, or I'm taking you back. You and the eggs both. He can 
+keep his bloody foal. I'll cut the bastard out and leave it for him." The sword point pushed through her 
+silks and pricked at her navel. Viserys was weeping, she saw; weeping and laughing, both at the same 
+time, this man who had once been her brother. 
+Distantly, as from far away, Dany heard her handmaid Jhiqui sobbing in fear, pleading that she dared not 
+translate, that the khal would bind her and drag her behind his horse all the way up the Mother of 
+Mountains. She put her arm around the girl. "Don't be afraid," she said. "I shall tell him." 
+She did not know if she had enough words, yet when she was done Khal Drogo spoke a few brusque 
+sentences in Dothraki, and she knew he understood. The sun of her life stepped down from the high 
+bench. 
+"What did he say?" the man who had been her brother asked her, flinching. 
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+It had grown so silent in the hall that she could hear the bells in Khal Drogo's hair, chiming softly with 
+each step he took. His bloodriders followed him, like three copper shadows. Daenerys had gone cold all 
+over. "He says you shall have a splendid golden crown that men shall tremble to behold." 
+Viserys smiled and lowered his sword. That was the saddest thing, the thing that tore at her afterward . . 
+. the way he smiled. "That was all I wanted," he said. "What was promised." 
+When the sun of her life reached her, Dany slid an arm around his waist. The khal said a word, and his 
+bloodriders leapt forward. Qotho seized the man who had been her brother by the arms. Haggo 
+shattered his wrist with a single, sharp twist of his huge hands. Cohollo pulled the sword from his limp 
+fingers. Even now Viserys did not understand. "No," he shouted, "you cannot touch me, I am the dragon, 
+the dragon, and I will be crowned!" 
+Khal Drogo unfastened his belt. The medallions were pure gold, massive and ornate, each one as large 
+as a man's hand. He shouted a command. Cook slaves pulled a heavy iron stew pot from the firepit, 
+dumped the stew onto the ground, and returned the pot to the flames. Drogo tossed in the belt and 
+watched without expression as the medallions turned red and began to lose their shape. She could see 
+fires dancing in the onyx of his eyes. A slave handed him a pair of thick horsehair mittens, and he pulled 
+them on, never so much as looking at the man. 
+Viserys began to scream the high, wordless scream of the coward facing death. He kicked and twisted, 
+whimpered like a dog and wept like a child, but the Dothraki held him tight between them. Ser Jorah had 
+made his way to Dany's side. He put a hand on her shoulder. "Turn away, my princess, I beg you." 
+"No." She folded her arms across the swell of her belly, protectively. 
+At the last, Viserys looked at her. "Sister, please . . . Dany, tell them . . . make them . . . sweet sister . . 
+." 
+When the gold was half-melted and starting to run, Drogo reached into the flames, snatched out the pot. 
+"Crown!" he roared. "Here. A crown for Cart King!" And upended the pot over the head of the man 
+who had been her brother. 
+The sound Viserys Targaryen made when that hideous iron helmet covered his face was like nothing 
+human. His feet hammered a frantic 
+beat against the dirt floor, slowed, stopped. Thick globs of molten gold dripped down onto his chest, 
+setting the scarlet silk to smoldering . . . yet no drop of blood was spilled. 
+He was no dragon, Dany thought, curiously calm. Fire cannot kill a dragon. 
+EDDARD 
+He was walking through the crypts beneath Winterfell, as he hhad walked a thousand times before. The 
+Kings of Winter atched him pass with eyes of ice, and the direwolves at their feet turned their great stone 
+heads and snarled. Last of all, he came to the tomb where his father slept, with Brandon and Lyanna 
+beside him. "Promise me, Ned, " Lyanna's statue whispered. She wore a garland of pale blue roses, and 
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+her eyes wept blood. 
+Eddard Stark jerked upright, his heart racing, the blankets tangled around him. The room was black as 
+pitch, and someone was hammering on the door. "Lord Eddard," a voice called loudly. 
+"A moment." Groggy and naked, he stumbled his way across the darkened chamber. When he opened 
+the door, he found Tomard with an upraised fist, and Cayn with a taper in hand. Between them stood the 
+king's own steward. 
+The man's face might have been carved of stone, so little did it show. "My lord Hand," he intoned. "His 
+Grace the King commands your presence. At once." 
+So Robert had returned from his hunt. It was long past time. "I shall need a few moments to dress." Ned 
+left the man waiting without. Cayn helped him with his clothes; white linen tunic and grey cloak, trousers 
+cut open down his plaster-sheathed leg, his badge of office, and last of 
+all a belt of heavy silver links. He sheathed the Valyrian dagger at his waist. 
+The Red Keep was dark and still as Cayn and Tomard escorted him across the inner bailey. The moon 
+hung low over the walls, ripening toward full. On the ramparts, a guardsman in a gold cloak walked his 
+rounds. 
+The royal apartments were in Maegor's Holdfast, a massive square fortress that nestled in the heart of 
+the Red Keep behind walls twelve feet thick and a dry moat lined with iron spikes, a 
+castle-within-acastle. Ser Boros Blount guarded the far end of the bridge, white steel armor ghostly in the 
+moonlight. Within, Ned passed two other knights of the Kingsguard; Ser Preston Greenfield stood at the 
+bottom of the steps, and Ser Barristan Selmy waited at the door of the king's bedchamber. Three men in 
+white cloaks, he thought, remembering, and a strange chill went through him. Ser Barristan's face was as 
+pale as his armor. Ned had only to look at him to know that something was dreadfully wrong. The royal 
+steward opened the door. "Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King," he announced. 
+"Bring him here," Robert's voice called, strangely thick. 
+Fires blazed in the twin hearths at either end of the bedchamber, filling the room with a sullen red glare. 
+The heat within was suffocating. Robert lay across the canopied bed. At the bedside hovered Grand 
+Maester Pycelle, while Lord Renly paced restlessly before the shuttered windows. Servants moved back 
+and forth, feeding logs to the fire and boiling wine. Cersei Lannister sat on the edge of the bed beside her 
+husband. Her hair was tousled, as if from sleep, but there was nothing sleepy in her eyes. They followed 
+Ned as Tomard and Cayn helped him cross the room. He seemed to move very slowly, as if he were still 
+dreaming. 
+The king still wore his boots. Ned could see dried mud and blades of grass clinging to the leather where 
+Robert's feet stuck out beneath the blanket that covered him, A green doublet lay on the floor, slashed 
+open and discarded, the cloth crusted with red-brown stains. The room smelled of smoke and blood and 
+death. 
+"Ned," the king whispered when he saw him. His face was pale as milk. "Come . . . closer." 
+His men brought him close. Ned steadied himself with a hand on the bedpost. He had only to look down 
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+at Robert to know how bad it was. "What . . . ?" he began, his throat clenched. 
+"A boar." Lord Renly was still in his hunting greens, his cloak spattered with blood. 
+"A devil," the king husked. "My own fault. Too much wine, damn me to hell. Missed my thrust." 
+"And where were the rest of you?" Ned demanded of Lord Renly. "Where was Ser Barristan and the 
+Kingsguard?" 
+Renly's mouth twitched. "My brother commanded us to stand aside and let him take the boar alone." 
+Eddard Stark lifted the blanket. 
+They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. The boar must have 
+been a fearsome thing. It had ripped the king from groin to nipple with its tusks. The wine-soaked 
+bandages that Grand Maester Pycelle had applied were already black with blood, and the smell off the 
+wound was hideous. Ned's stomach turned. He let the blanket fall. 
+"Stinks," Robert said. "The stink of death, don't think I can't smell it. Bastard did me good, eh? But I . . . 
+I paid him back in kind, Ned." The king's smile was as terrible as his wound, his teeth red. "Drove a knife 
+right through his eye. Ask them if I didn't. Ask them." 
+"Truly," Lord Renly murmured. "We brought the carcass back with us, at my brother's command." 
+"For the feast," Robert whispered. "Now leave us. The lot of you. I need to speak with Ned." 
+"Robert, my sweet lord Cersei began. 
+"I said leave," Robert insisted with a hint of his old fierceness. "What part of that don't you understand, 
+woman?" 
+Cersei gathered up her skirts and her dignity and led the way to the door. Lord Renly and the others 
+followed. Grand Maester Pycelle lingered, his hands shaking as he offered the king a cup of thick white 
+liquid. "The milk of the poppy, Your Grace," he said. "Drink. For your pain." 
+Robert knocked the cup away with the back of his hand. "Away with you. I'll sleep soon enough, old 
+fool. Get out." 
+Grand Maester Pycelle gave Ned a stricken look as he shuffled from the room. 
+"Damn you, Robert," Ned said when they were alone. His leg was throbbing so badly he was almost 
+blind with pain. Or perhaps it was grief that fogged his eyes. He lowered himself to the bed, beside his 
+friend. "Why do you always have to be so headstrong?" 
+"Ah, fuck you, Ned," the king said hoarsely. "I killed the bastard, didn't IT' A lock of matted black hair 
+fell across his eyes as he glared up at Ned. "Ought to do the same for you. Can't leave a man to hunt in 
+peace. Ser Robar found me. Gregor's head. Ugly thought. Never told the Hound. Let Cersei surprise 
+him." His laugh turned into a grunt as 
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+a spasm of pain hit him. "Gods have mercy," he muttered, swallowing his agony. "The girl. Daenerys. 
+Only a child, you were right ... that's why, the girl . . . the gods sent the boar . . . sent to punish me . . ." 
+The king coughed, bringing up blood. "Wrong, it was wrong, I . . . only a girl . . . Varys, Littlefinger, even 
+my brother . . . worthless . . . no one to tell me no but you, Ned . . . only you . . ." He lifted his hand, the 
+gesture pained and feeble. "Paper and ink. There, on the table. Write what I tell you." 
+Ned smoothed the paper out across his knee and took up the quill. "At your command, Your Grace." 
+"This is the will and word of Robert of House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and 
+all the rest-put in the damn titles, you know how it goes. I do hereby command Eddard of House Stark, 
+Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the King, to serve as Lord Regent and Protector of the Realm upon my . 
+. . upon my death . . . to rule in my . . . in my stead, until my son Joffrey does come of age . . . 
+"Robert Joffirey is not your son, he wanted to say, but the words would not come. The agony was 
+written too plainly across Robert's face; he could not hurt him more. So Ned bent his head and wrote, 
+but where the king had said "my son Joffrey," he scrawled "my heir" instead. The deceit made him feel 
+soiled. The lies we tellfor love, he thought. May the gods forgive me. "What else would you have me 
+say?" 
+"Say . . . whatever you need to. Protect and defend, gods old and new, you have the words. Write. I'll 
+sign it. You give it to the council when I'm dead." 
+"Robert," Ned said in a voice thick with grief, "you must not do this. Don't die on me. The realm needs 
+you." 
+Robert took his hand, fingers squeezing hard. "You are . . . such a bad liar, Ned Stark," he said through 
+his pain. "The realm . . . the realm knows . . . what a wretched king I've been. Bad as Aerys, the gods 
+spare me." 
+"No," Ned told his dying friend, "not so bad as Aerys, Your Grace. Not near so bad as Aerys." 
+Robert managed a weak red smile. "At the least, they will say . . . this last thing . . . this I did right. You 
+won't fail me. You'll rule now. You'll hate it, worse than I did . . . but you'll do well. Are you done with 
+the scribbling?" 
+"Yes, Your Grace." Ned offered Robert the paper. The king scrawled his signature blindly, leaving a 
+smear of blood across the letter. "The seal should be witnessed." 
+"Serve the boar at my funeral feast," Robert rasped. "Apple in its mouth, skin seared crisp. Eat the 
+bastard. Don't care if you choke on him. Promise me, Ned." 
+"I promise." Promise me, Ned, Lyanna's voice echoed. 
+"The girl," the king said. "Daenerys. Let her live. If you can, if it . . . not too late . . . talk to them . . . 
+Varys, Littlefinger . . . don't let them kill her. And help my son, Ned. Make him be . . . better than me." 
+He winced. "Gods have mercy." 
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+"They will, my friend," Ned said. "They will." 
+The king closed his eyes and seemed to relax. "Killed by a pig," he muttered. "Ought to laugh, but it 
+hurts too much." 
+Ned was not laughing. "Shall I call them back?" 
+Robert gave a weak nod. "As you will. Gods, why is it so cold in here?" 
+The servants rushed back in and hurried to feed the fires. The queen had gone; that was some small 
+relief, at least. If she had any sense, Cersei would take her children and fly before the break of day, Ned 
+thought. She had lingered too long already. 
+King Robert did not seem to miss her. He bid his brother Renly and Grand Maester Pycelle to stand in 
+witness as he pressed his seal into the hot yellow wax that Ned had dripped upon his letter. "Now give 
+me something for the pain and let me die." 
+Hurriedly Grand Maester Pycelle mixed him another draught of the milk of the poppy. This time the king 
+drank deeply. His black beard was beaded with thick white droplets when he threw the empty cup aside. 
+"Will I dream?" 
+Ned gave him his answer. "You will, my lord." 
+"Good," he said, smiling. "I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my children for me." 
+The words twisted in Ned's belly like a knife. For a moment he was at a loss. He could not bring himself 
+to lie. Then he remembered the bastards: little Barra at her mother's breast, Mya in the Vale, Gendry at 
+his forge, and all the others. "I shall . . . guard your children as if they were my own," he said slowly. 
+Robert nodded and closed his eyes. Ned watched his old friend sag softly into the pillows as the milk of 
+the poppy washed the pain from his face. Sleep took him. 
+Heavy chains jangled softly as Grand Maester Pycelle came up to Ned. "I will do all in my power, my 
+lord, but the wound has mortified. It took them two days to get him back. By the time I saw him, it was 
+too late. I can lessen His Grace's suffering, but only the gods can heal him now." 
+"How long?" Ned asked. 
+"By rights, he should be dead already. I have never seen a man cling to life so fiercely." 
+"My brother was always strong," Lord Renly said. "Not wise, perhaps, but strong." In the sweltering 
+heat of the bedchamber, his brow was slick with sweat. He might have been Robert's ghost as he stood 
+there, young and dark and handsome. "He slew the boar. His entrails were sliding from his belly, yet 
+somehow he slew the boar." His voice was full of wonder. 
+"Robert was never a man to leave the battleground so long as a foe remained standing," Ned told him. 
+Outside the door, Ser Barristan Selmy still guarded the tower stairs. "Maester Pycelle has given Robert 
+the milk of the poppy," Ned told him. "See that no one disturbs his rest without leave from me." 
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+" It shall be as you command, my lord." Ser Barristan seemed old beyond his years. "I have failed my 
+sacred trust." 
+"Even the truest knight cannot protect a king against himself," Ned said. "Robert loved to hunt boar. I 
+have seen him take a thousand of them." He would stand his ground without flinching, his legs braced, the 
+great spear in his hands, and as often as not he would curse the boar as it charged, and wait until the last 
+possible second, until it was almost on him, before he killed it with a single sure and savage thrust. "No 
+one could know this one would be his death." 
+"You are kind to say so, Lord Eddard." 
+"The king himself said as much. He blamed the wine." 
+The white-haired knight gave a weary nod. "His Grace was reeling in his saddle by the time we flushed 
+the boar from his lair, yet he commanded us all to stand aside." 
+" I wonder, Ser Barristan," asked Varys, so quietly, "who gave the king this wine?" 
+Ned had not heard the eunuch approach, but when he looked around, there he stood. He wore a black 
+velvet robe that brushed the floor, and his face was freshly powdered. 
+"The wine was from the king's own skin," Ser Barristan said. 
+"Only one skin? Hunting is such thirsty work." 
+"I did not keep count. More than one, for a certainty. His squire would fetch him a fresh skin whenever 
+he required it." 
+"Such a dutiful boy," said Varys, "to make certain His Grace did not lack for refreshment." 
+Ned had a bitter taste in his mouth. He recalled the two fair-haired boys Robert had sent chasing after a 
+breastplate stretcher. The king 
+had told everyone the tale that night at the feast, laughing until he shook. "Which squire?" 
+"The elder," said Ser Barristan. "Lancel." 
+"I know the lad well," said Varys. "A stalwart boy, Ser Kevan Lannister's son, nephew to Lord Tywin 
+and cousin to the queen. I hope the dear sweet lad does not blame himself. Children are so vulnerable in 
+the innocence of their youth, how well do I remember." 
+Certainly Varys had once been young. Ned doubted that he had ever been innocent. "You mention 
+children. Robert had a change of heart concerning Daenerys Targaryen. Whatever arrangements you 
+made, I want unmade. At once." 
+"Alas," said Varys. "At once may be too late. I fear those birds have flown. But I shall do what I can, my 
+lord. With your leave." He bowed and vanished down the steps, his soft-soled slippers whispering 
+against the stone as he made his descent. 
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+Cayn and Tomard were helping Ned across the bridge when Lord Renly emerged from Maegor's 
+Holdfast. "Lord Eddard," he called after Ned, "a moment, if you would be so kind." 
+Ned stopped. "As you wish." 
+Renly walked to his side. "Send your men away." They met in the center of the bridge, the dry moat 
+beneath them. Moonlight silvered the cruel edges of the spikes that lined its bed. 
+Ned gestured. Tomard and Cayn bowed their heads and backed away respectfully. Lord Renly glanced 
+warily at Ser Boros on the far end of the span, at Ser Preston in the doorway behind them. "That letter." 
+He leaned close. "Was it the regency? Has my brother named you Protector?" He did not wait for a 
+reply. "My lord, I have thirty men in my personal guard, and other friends beside, knights and lords. Give 
+me an hour, and I can put a hundred swords in your hand." 
+"And what should I do with a hundred swords, my lord?" 
+"Strike! Now, while the castle sleeps." Renly looked back at Ser Boros again and dropped his voice to 
+an urgent whisper. "We must get Joffrey away from his mother and take him in hand. Protector or no, the 
+man who holds the king holds the kingdom. We should seize Myrcella and Tommen as well. Once we 
+have her children, Cersei will not dare oppose us. The council will confirm you as Lord Protector and 
+make Joffrey your ward." 
+Ned regarded him coldly. "Robert is not dead yet. The gods may spare him. If not, I shall convene the 
+council to hear his final words and consider the matter of the succession, but I will not dishonor his last 
+hours on earth by shedding blood in his halls and dragging frightened children from their beds." 
+Lord Renly took a step back, taut as a bowstring. "Every moment you delay gives Cersei another 
+moment to prepare. By the time Robert dies, it may be too late . . . for both of us." 
+"Then we should pray that Robert does not die." 
+"Small chance of that," said Renly. 
+"Sometimes the gods are merciful." 
+"The Lannisters are not." Lord Renly turned away and went back across the moat, to the tower where 
+his brother lay dying. 
+By the time Ned returned to his chambers, he felt weary and heartsick, yet there was no question of his 
+going back to sleep, not now. When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die, Cersei Lannister 
+had told him in the godswood. He found himself wondering if he had done the right thing by refusing Lord 
+Renly's offer. He had no taste for these intrigues, and there was no honor in threatening children, and yet . 
+. . if Cersei elected to fight rather than flee, he might well have need of Renly's hundred swords, and more 
+besides. 
+"I want Littlefinger," he told Cayn. "If he's not in his chambers, take as many men as you need and 
+search every winesink and whorehouse in King's Landing until you find him. Bring him to me before 
+break of day." Cayn bowed and took his leave, and Ned turned to Tomard. "The Wind Witch sails on 
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+the evening tide. Have you chosen the escort?" 
+"Ten men, with Porther in command." 
+"Twenty, and you will command," Ned said. Porther was a brave man, but headstrong. He wanted 
+someone more solid and sensible to keep watch over his daughters. 
+"As you wish, m'lord," Tom said. "Can't say I'll be sad to see the back of this place. I miss the wife." 
+"You will pass near Dragonstone when you turn north. I need you to deliver a letter for me." 
+Tom looked apprehensive. "To Dragonstone, m'lord?" The island fortress of House Targaryen had a 
+sinister repute. 
+"Tell Captain Qos to hoist my banner as soon as he comes in sight of the island. They may be wary of 
+unexpected visitors. If he is reluctant, offer him whatever it takes. I will give you a letter to place into the 
+hand of Lord Stannis Baratheon. No one else. Not his steward, nor the captain of his guard, nor his lady 
+wife, but only Lord Stannis himself." 
+"As you command, m1ord." 
+When Tomard had left him, Lord Eddard Stark sat staring at the flame of the candle that burned beside 
+him on the table. For a moment his grief overwhelmed him. He wanted nothing so much as to seek out 
+the godswood, to kneel before the heart tree and pray for the life of Robert Baratheon, who had been 
+more than a brother to him. Men would whisper afterward that Eddard Stark had betrayed his king's 
+friendship and disinherited his sons; he could only hope that the gods would know better, and that Robert 
+would learn the truth of it in the land beyond the grave. 
+Ned took out the king's last letter. A roll of crisp white parchment sealed with golden wax, a few short 
+words and a smear of blood. How small the difference between victory and defeat, between life and 
+death. 
+He drew out a fresh sheet of paper and dipped his quill in the inkpot. To His Grace, Stannis of the 
+House Baratheon, he wrote. By the time you receive this letter, your brother Robert, our King these past 
+fifteen years, will be dead. He was savaged by a boar whilst hunting in the kingswood . . . 
+The letters seemed to writhe and twist on the paper as his hand trailed to a stop. Lord Tywin and Ser 
+Jaime were not men to suffer disgrace meekly; they would fight rather than flee. No doubt Lord Stannis 
+was wary, after the murder of Jon Arryn, but it was imperative that he sail for King's Landing at once 
+with all his power, before the Lannisters could march. 
+Ned chose each word with care. When he was done, he signed the letter Eddard Stark, Lord of 
+Winterfell, Hand of the King, and Protector of the Realm, blotted the paper, folded it twice, and melted 
+the sealing wax over the candle flame. 
+His regency would be a short one, he reflected as the wax softened. The new king would choose his 
+own Hand. Ned would be free to go home. The thought of Winterfell brought a wan smile to his face. He 
+wanted to hear Bran's laughter once more, to go hawking with Robb, to watch Rickon at play. He 
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+wanted to drift off to a dreamless sleep in his own bed with his arms wrapped tight around his lady, 
+Catelyn. 
+Cayn returned as he was pressing the direwolf seal down into the soft white wax. Desmond was with 
+him, and between them Littlefinger. Ned thanked his guards and sent them away. 
+Lord Petyr was clad in a blue velvet tunic with puffed sleeves, his silvery cape patterned with 
+mockingbirds. "I suppose congratulations are in order," he said as he seated himself. 
+Ned scowled. "The king lies wounded and near to death." 
+"I know," Littlefinger said. "I also know that Robert has named you Protector of the Realm." 
+Ned's eyes flicked to the king's letter on the table beside him, its seal unbroken. "And how is it you 
+know that, my lord?" 
+"Varys hinted as much," Littlefinger said, "and you have just confirmed it." 
+Ned's mouth twisted in anger. "Damn Varys and his little birds. Catelyn spoke truly, the man has some 
+black art. I do not trust him." 
+"Excellent. You're learning." Littlefinger leaned forward. "Yet I'll wager you did not drag me here in the 
+black of night to discuss the eunuch." 
+"No," Ned admitted. "I know the secret Jon Arryn was murdered to protect. Robert will leave no 
+trueborn son behind him. Joffrey and Tommen are Jaime Lannister's bastards, born of his incestuous 
+union with the queen." 
+Littlefinger lifted an eyebrow. "Shocking," he said in a tone that suggested he was not shocked at all. 
+"The girl as well? No doubt. So when the king dies . . ." 
+"The throne by rights passes to Lord Stannis, the elder of Robert's two brothers." 
+Lord Petyr stroked his pointed beard as he considered the matter. "So it would seem. Unless . . ." 
+"Unless, my lord? There is no seeming to this. Stannis is the heir. Nothing can change that." 
+" Stannis cannot take the throne without your help. If you're wise, you'll make certain Joffrey succeeds." 
+Ned gave him a stony stare. "Have you no shred of honor?" 
+"Oh, a shred, surely," Littlefinger replied negligently. "Hear me out. Stannis is no friend of yours, nor of 
+mine. Even his brothers can scarcely stomach him. The man is iron, hard and unyielding. He'll give us a 
+new Hand and a new council, for a certainty. No doubt he'll thank you for handing him the crown, but he 
+won't love you for it. And his ascent will mean war. Stannis cannot rest easy on the throne until Cersei 
+and her bastards are dead. Do you think Lord Tywin will sit idly while his daughter's head is measured 
+for a spike? Casterly Rock will rise, and not alone. Robert found it in him to pardon men who served 
+King Aerys, so long as they did him fealty. Stannis is less forgiving. He will not have forgotten the siege of 
+Storm's End, and the Lords Tyrell and Redwyne dare not. Every man who fought beneath the dragon 
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+banner or rose with Balon Greyjoy will have good cause to fear. Seat Stannis on the Iron Throne and I 
+promise you, the realm will bleed. 
+"Now look at the other side of the coin. Joffrey is but twelve, and Robert gave you the regency, my lord. 
+You are the Hand of the King and Protector of the Realm. The power is yours, Lord Stark. All you need 
+do is reach out and take it. Make your peace with the Lannisters. Release the Imp. Wed Joffrey to your 
+Sansa. Wed your younger girl to 
+Prince Tommen, and your heir to Myrcella. It will be four years before Joffrey comes of age. By then he 
+will look to you as a second father, and if not, well . . . four years is a good long while, my lord. Long 
+enough to dispose of Lord Stannis. Then, should Joffrey prove troublesome, we can reveal his little 
+secret and put Lord Renly on the throne." 
+"We?" Ned repeated. 
+Littlefinger gave a shrug. "You'll need someone to share your burdens. I assure you, my price would be 
+modest." 
+"Your price." Ned's voice was ice. "Lord Baelish, what you suggest is treason." 
+"Only if we lose." 
+"You forget," Ned told him. "You forget Jon Arryn. You forget Jory Cassel. And you forget this." He 
+drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as 
+sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. "They 
+sent a man to cut my son's throat, Lord Baelish." 
+Littlefinger sighed. "I fear I did forget, my lord. Pray forgive me. For a moment I did not remember that I 
+was talking to a Stark." His mouth quirked. "So it will be Stannis, and war?" 
+"It is not a choice. Stannis is the heir." 
+"Far be it from me to dispute the Lord Protector. What would you have of me, then? Not my wisdom, 
+for a certainty." 
+"I shall do my best to forget your . . . wisdom," Ned said with distaste. "I called you here to ask for the 
+help you promised Catelyn. This is a perilous hour for all of us. Robert has named me Protector, true 
+enough, but in the eyes of the world, Joffrey is still his son and heir. The queen has a dozen knights and a 
+hundred men-at-arms who will do whatever she commands . . . enough to overwhelm what remains of 
+my own household guard. And for all I know, her brother Jaime may be riding for King's Landing even 
+as we speak, with a Lannister host at his back." 
+"And you without an army." Littlefinger toyed with the dagger on the table, turning it slowly with a finger. 
+"There is small love lost between Lord Renly and the Lannisters. Bronze Yohn Royce, Ser Balon Swann, 
+Ser Loras, Lady Tanda, the Redwyne twins . . . each of them has a retinue of knights and sworn swords 
+here at court." 
+"Renly has thirty men in his personal guard, the rest even fewer. It is not enough, even if I could be 
+certain that all of them will choose to give me their allegiance. I must have the gold cloaks. The City 
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+Watch is 
+two thousand strong, sworn to defend the castle, the city, and the king's peace." 
+"Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace do they protect?" 
+Lord Petyr flicked at the dagger with his finger, setting it spinning in place. Round and round it went, 
+wobbling as it turned. When at last it slowed to a stop, the blade pointed at Littlefinger. "Why, there's 
+your answer," he said, smiling. "They follow the man who pays them." He leaned back and looked Ned 
+full in the face, his grey-green eyes bright with mockery. "You wear your honor like a suit of armor, 
+Stark. You think it keeps you safe, but all it does is weigh you down and make it hard for you to move. 
+Look at you now. You know why you summoned me here. You know what you want to ask me to do. 
+You know it has to be done . . . but it's not honorable, so the words stick in your throat." 
+Ned's neck was rigid with tension. For a moment he was so angry that he did not trust himself to speak. 
+Littlefinger laughed. "I ought to make you say it, but that would be cruel . . . so have no fear, my good 
+lord. For the sake of the love I bear for Catelyn, I will go to Janos Slynt this very hour and make certain 
+that the City Watch is yours. Six thousand gold pieces should do it. A third for the Commander, a third 
+for the officers, a third for the men. We might be able to buy them for half that much, but I prefer not to 
+take chances." Smiling, he plucked up the dagger and offered it to Ned, hilt first. 
+JON 
+Jon was breaking his fast on applecakes and blood sausage when Samwell Tarly plopped himself down 
+on the bench. "I've been summoned to the sept," Sam said in an excited whisper. "They're passing me out 
+of training. I'm to be made a brother with the rest of you. Can you believe it?" 
+"No, truly?" 
+"Truly. I'm to assist Maester Aemon with the library and the birds. He needs someone who can read and 
+write letters." 
+"You'll do well at that," Jon said, smiling. 
+Sam glanced about anxiously. "Is it time to go? I shouldn't be late, they might change their minds." He 
+was fairly bouncing as they crossed the weed-strewn courtyard. The day was warm and sunny. Rivulets 
+of water trickled down the sides of the Wall, so the ice seemed to sparkle and shine. 
+Inside the sept, the great crystal caught the morning light as it streamed through the south-facing window 
+and spread it in a rainbow on the altar. Pyp's mouth dropped open when he caught sight of Sam, and 
+Toad poked Grenn in the ribs, but no one dared say a word. Septon Celladar was swinging a censer, 
+filling the air with fragrant incense that reminded Jon of Lady Stark's little sept in Winterfell. For once the 
+septon seemed sober. 
+The high officers arrived in a body; Maester Aemon leaning on 
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+Clydas, Ser Alliser cold-eyed and grim, Lord Commander Mormont resplendent in a black wool 
+doublet with silvered bearclaw fastenings. Behind them came the senior members of the three orders: 
+red-faced Bowen Marsh the Lord Steward, First Builder Othell Yarwyck, and Ser Jaremy Rykker, who 
+commanded the rangers in the absence of Benjen Stark. 
+Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head. "You came to us outlaws," 
+he began, "poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us children. You came to us 
+alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of 
+you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards' names, or no names at all. It makes no 
+matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house. 
+"At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering night, you shall take your vows. From that 
+moment, you will be a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch. Your crimes will be washed away, your 
+debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old 
+wrongs and old loves alike. Here you begin anew. 
+"A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this 
+house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in 
+it. A man of the Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. 
+And you are the only sons we shall ever know. 
+"You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully before you say them, for once you have taken 
+the black, there is no turning back. The penalty for desertion is death." The Old Bear paused for a 
+moment before he said, "Are there any among you who wish to leave our company? If so, go now, and 
+no one shall think the less of you." 
+No one moved. 
+"Well and good," said Mormont. "You may take your vows here at evenfall, before Septon Celladar and 
+the first of your order. Do any of you keep to the old gods?" 
+Jon stood. "I do, my lord." 
+"I expect you will want to say your words before a heart tree, as your uncle did," Mormont said. 
+"Yes, my lord," Jon said. The gods of the sept had nothing to do with him; the blood of the First Men 
+flowed in the veins of the Starks. 
+He heard Grenn whispering behind him. "There's no godswood here. Is there? I never saw a 
+godswood." 
+"You wouldn't see a herd of aurochs until they trampled you into the snow," Pyp whispered back. 
+"I would so," Grenn insisted. "I'd see them a long way off." 
+Mormont himself confirmed Grenn's doubts. "Castle Black has no need of a godswood. Beyond the 
+Wall the haunted forest stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the Andals brought the Seven 
+across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods half a league from this spot, and mayhap your 
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+gods as well." 
+"My lord." The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on his feet. The fat boy 
+wiped his sweaty palms against his tunic. "Might I . . . might I go as well? To say my words at this heart 
+tree?" 
+"Does House Tarly keep the old gods too?" Mormont asked. 
+"No, my lord," Sam replied in a thin, nervous voice. The high officers frightened him, Jon knew, the Old 
+Bear most of all. "I was named in the light of the Seven at the sept on Horn Hill, as my father was, and his 
+father, and all the Tarlys for a thousand years." 
+"Why would you forsake the gods of your father and your House?" wondered Ser Jaremy Rykker. 
+"The Night's Watch is my House now," Sam said. "The Seven have never answered my prayers. 
+Perhaps the old gods will." 
+"As you wish, boy," Mormont said. Sam took his seat again, as did Jon. "We have placed each of you in 
+an order, as befits our need and your own strengths and skills." Bowen Marsh stepped forward and 
+handed him a paper. The Lord Commander unrolled it and began to read. "Haider, to the builders," he 
+began. Haider gave a stiff nod of approval. "Grenn, to the rangers. Albett, to the builders. Pypar, to the 
+rangers." Pyp looked over at Jon and wiggled his ears. "Samwell, to the stewards." Sam sagged with 
+relief, mopping at his brow with,a scrap of silk. "Matthar, to the rangers. Dareon, to the stewards. 
+Todder, to the rangers. Jon, to the stewards." 
+The stewards? For a moment Jon could not believe what he had heard. Mormont must have read it 
+wrong. He started to rise, to open his mouth, to tell them there had been a mistake . . . and then he saw 
+Ser Alliser studying him, eyes shiny as two flakes of obsidian, and he knew. 
+The Old Bear rolled up the paper. "Your firsts will instruct you in your duties. May all the gods preserve 
+you, brothers." The Lord Commander favored them with a half bow, and took his leave. Ser Alliser went 
+with him, a thin smile on his face. Jon had never seen the masterat-arms took quite so happy. 
+"Rangers with me," Ser Jaremy Rykker called when they were gone. 
+Pyp was staring at Jon as he got slowly to his feet. His ears were red. Grenn, grinning broadly, did not 
+seem to realize that anything was amiss. Matt and Toad fell in beside them, and they followed Ser Jaremy 
+from the sept. 
+"Builders," announced lantern-jawed Othell Yarwyck. Haider and Albett trailed out after him. 
+Jon looked around him in sick disbelief. Maester Aemon's blind eyes were raised toward the light he 
+could not see. The septon was arranging crystals on the altar. Only Sam and Darcon remained on the 
+benches; a fat boy, a singer . . . and him. 
+Lord Steward Bowen Marsh rubbed his plump hands together. "Samwell, you will assist Maester 
+Aemon in the rookery and library. Chett is going to the kennels, to help with the hounds. You shall have 
+his cell, so as to be close to the maester night and day. I trust you will take good care of him. He is very 
+old and very precious to us. 
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+
+"Dareon, I am told that you sang at many a high lord's table and shared their meat and mead. We are 
+sending you to Eastwatch. It may be your palate will be some help to Cotter Pyke when merchant galleys 
+come trading. We are paying too dear for salt beef and pickled fish, and the quality of the olive oil we're 
+getting has been frightful, Present yourself to Borcas when you arrive, he will keep you busy between 
+ships." 
+Marsh turned his smile on Jon. "Lord Commander Mormont has requested you for his personal steward, 
+Jon. You'll sleep in a cell beneath his chambers, in the Lord Commander's tower." 
+"And what will my duties be?" Jon asked sharply. "Will I serve the Lord Commander's meals, help him 
+fasten his clothes, fetch hot water for his bath?" 
+."Certainly." Marsh frowned at Jon's tone. "And you will run his messages, keep a fire burning in his 
+chambers, change his sheets and blankets daily, and do all else that the Lord Commander might require 
+of YOU." 
+"Do you take me for a servant?" 
+"No," Maester Aemon said, from the back of the sept. Clydas helped him stand. "We took you for a 
+man of Night's Watch . . . but perhaps we were wrong in that." 
+It was all Jon could do to stop himself from walking out. Was he supposed to churn butter and sew 
+doublets like a girl for the rest of his days? "May I go?" he asked stiffly. 
+"As you wish," Bowen Marsh responded. 
+Dareon and Sam left with him. They descended to the yard in silence. Outside, Jon looked up at the 
+Wall shining in the sun, the 
+melting ice creeping down its side in a hundred thin fingers. Jon's rage was such that he would have 
+smashed it all in an instant, and the world be damned. 
+"Jon," Samwell Tarly said excitedly. "Wait. Don't you see what they're doing?" 
+Jon turned on him in a fury. "I see Ser Alliser's bloody hand, that's all I see. He wanted to shame me, 
+and he has." 
+Dareon gave him a look. "The stewards are fine for the likes of you and me, Sam, but not for Lord 
+Snow." 
+"I'm a better swordsman and a better rider than any of you," Jon blazed back. "It's notfair!" 
+"Fair?" Dareon sneered. "The girl was waiting for me, naked as the day she was born. She pulled me 
+through the window, and you talk to me of fair?" He walked off. 
+"There is no shame in being a steward," Sam said. 
+"Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life washing an old man's smallclothes?" 
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+"The old man is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," Sam reminded him. "You'll be with him day 
+and night. Yes, you'll pour his wine and see that his bed linen is fresh, but you'll also take his letters, 
+attend him at meetings, squire for him in battle. You'll be as close to him as his shadow. You'll know 
+everything, be a part of everything . . . and the Lord Steward said Mormont asked for you himself! 
+"When I was little, my father used to insist that I attend him in the audience chamber whenever he held 
+court. When he rode to Highgarden to bend his knee to Lord Tyrell, he made me come. Later, though, 
+he started to take Dickon and leave me at home, and he no longer cared whether I sat through his 
+audiences, so long as Dickon was there. He wanted his heir at his side, don't you see? To watch and 
+listen and learn from all he did. I'll wager that's why Lord Mormont requested you, Jon. What else could 
+it be? He wants to groom you for command!" 
+Jon was taken aback. It was true, Lord Eddard had often made Robb part of his councils back at 
+Winterfell. Could Sam be right? Even a bastard could rise high in the Night's Watch, they said. "I never 
+asked for this," he said stubbornly. 
+"None of us are here for asking," Sam reminded him. 
+And suddenly Jon Snow was ashamed. 
+Craven or not, Samwell Tarly had found the courage to accept his fate like a man. On the Wall, a man 
+gets only what he earns, Benjen Stark had said the last night Jon had seen him alive. You're no ranger, 
+Jon, only a green boy with the smell of summer still on you. He'd heard it 
+said that bastards grow up faster than other children; on the Wall, you grew up or you died. 
+Jon let out a deep sigh. "You have the right of it. I was acting the boy.,, 
+"Then you'll stay and say your words with me?" 
+"The old gods will be expecting us." He made himself smile. 
+They set out late that afternoon. The Wall had no gates as such, neither here at Castle Black nor 
+anywhere along its three hundred miles. They led their horses down a narrow tunnel cut through the ice, 
+cold dark walls pressing in around them as the passage twisted and turned. Three times their way was 
+blocked by iron bars, and they had to stop while Bowen Marsh drew out his keys and unlocked the 
+massive chains that secured them. Jon could sense the vast weight pressing down on him as he waited 
+behind the Lord Steward. The air was colder than a tomb, and more still. He felt a strange relief when 
+they reemerged into the afternoon light on the north side of the Wall. 
+Sam blinked at the sudden glare and looked around apprehensively. "The wildlings . . . they wouldn't . . . 
+they'd never dare come this close to the Wall. Would they?" 
+"They never have." Jon climbed into his saddle. When Bowen Marsh and their ranger escort had 
+mounted, Jon put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. Ghost came loping out of the tunnel. 
+The Lord Steward's garron whickered and backed away from the direwolf. "Do you mean to take that 
+beast?" 
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+"Yes, my lord," Jon said. Ghost's head lifted. He seemed to taste the air. In the blink of an eye he was 
+off, racing across the broad, weedchoked field to vanish in the trees. 
+Once they had entered the forest, they were in a different world. Jon had often hunted with his father and 
+Jory and his brother Robb. He knew the wolfswood around Winterfell as well as any man. The haunted 
+forest was much the same, and yet the feel of it was very different. 
+Perhaps it was all in the knowing. They had ridden past the end of the world; somehow that changed 
+everything. Every shadow seemed darker, every sound more ominous. The trees pressed close and shut 
+out the light of the setting sun. A thin crust of snow cracked beneath the hooves of their horses, with a 
+sound like breaking bones. When the wind set the leaves to rustling, it was like a chilly finger tracing a 
+path up Jon's spine. The Wall was at their backs, and only the gods knew what lay ahead. 
+The sun was sinking below the trees when they reached their destination, a small clearing in the deep of 
+the wood where nine weirwoods 
+grew in a rough circle. Jon drew in a breath, and be saw Sam Tarly staring. Even in the wolfswood, you 
+never found more than two or three of the white trees growing together; a grove of nine was unheard of. 
+The forest floor was carpeted with fallen leaves, bloodred on top, black rot beneath. The wide smooth 
+trunks were bone pale, and nine faces stared inward. The dried sap that crusted in the eyes was red and 
+hard as ruby. Bowen Marsh commanded them to leave their horses outside the circle. "This is a sacred 
+place, we will not defile it." 
+When they entered the grove, Samwell Tarly turned slowly looking at each face in turn. No two were 
+quite alike. "They're watching us," he whispered. "The old gods." 
+"Yes." Jon knelt, and Sam knelt beside him. 
+They said the words together, as the last light faded in the west and grey day became black night. 
+"Hear my words, and bear witness to my vow," they recited, their voices filling the twilit grove. "Night 
+gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, 
+father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. f am the 
+sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light 
+that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge 
+my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all the nights to come." 
+The woods fell silent. "You knelt as boys," Bowen Marsh intoned solemnly. "Rise now as men of the 
+Night's Watch." 
+Jon held out a hand to pull Sam back to his feet. The rangers gathered round to offer smiles and 
+congratulations, all but the gnarled old forester Dywen. "Best we be starting back, m'lord," he said to 
+Bowen Marsh. "Dark's falling, and there's something in the smell o' the night that I mislike." 
+And suddenly Ghost was back, stalking softly between two weirwoods. White fur and red eyes, Jon 
+realized, disquieted. Like the trees . . . 
+The wolf had something in his jaws. Something black. "What's he got there?" asked Bowen Marsh, 
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+frowning. 
+"To me, Ghost." Jon knelt. "Bring it here." 
+The direwolf trotted to him. Jon heard Samwell Tarly's sharp intake of breath. 
+"Gods be good," Dywen muttered. "That's a hand." 
+EDDARD 
+The grey light of dawn was streaming through his window when the thunder of hoofbeats awoke Eddard 
+Stark from his brief, exhausted sleep. He lifted his head from the table to look down into the yard. 
+Below, men in mail and leather and crimson cloaks were making the morning ring to the sound of swords, 
+and riding down mock warriors stuffed with straw. Ned watched Sandor Clegane gallop across the 
+hard-packed ground to drive an iron-tipped lance through a dummy's head. Canvas ripped and straw 
+exploded as Lannister guardsmen joked and cursed. 
+Is this brave show for my benefit? he wondered. If so, Cersei was a greater fool than he'd imagined. 
+Damn her, he thought, why is the woman not fled? I have given her chance after chance . . . 
+The morning was overcast and grim. Ned broke his fast with his daughters and Septa Mordane. Sansa, 
+still disconsolate, stared sullenly at her food and refused to eat, but Arya wolfed down everything that 
+was set in front of her. "Syrio says we have time for one last lesson before we take ship this evening," she 
+said. "Can 1, Father? All my things are packed." 
+"A short lesson, and make certain you leave yourself time to bathe and change. I want you ready to 
+leave by midday, is that understood?" 
+"By midday," Arya said. 
+Sansa looked up from her food. "If she can have a dancing lesson, why won't you let me say farewell to 
+Prince Joffrey?" 
+"I would gladly go with her, Lord Eddard," Septa Mordane offered. "There would be no question of her 
+missing the ship." 
+"It would not be wise for you to go to Joffrey right now, Sansa. I'm sorry." 
+Sansa's eyes filled with tears. "But why?" 
+"Sansa, your lord father knows best," Septa Mordane said. "You are not to question his decisions." 
+"It's notfair!" Sansa pushed back from her table, knocked over her chair, and ran weeping from the 
+solar. 
+Septa Mordane rose, but Ned gestured her back to her seat. "Let her go, Septa. I will try to make her 
+understand when we are all safely back in Winterfell." The septa bowed her head and sat down to finish 
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+her breakfast. 
+It was an hour later when Grand Maester Pycelle came to Eddard Stark in his solar. His shoulders 
+slumped, as if the weight of the great maester's chain around his neck had become too great to bear. "My 
+lord," he said, "King Robert is gone. The gods give him rest." 
+"No," Ned answered. "He hated rest. The gods give him love and laughter, and the joy of righteous 
+battle." It was strange how empty he felt. He had been expecting the visit, and yet with those words, 
+something died within him. He would have given all his titles for the freedom to weep . . . but he was 
+Robert's Hand, and the hour he dreaded had come. "Be so good as to summon the members of the 
+council here to my solar," he told Pycelle. The Tower of the Hand was as secure as he and Tomard 
+could make it; he could not say the same for the council chambers. 
+"My lord?" Pycelle blinked. "Surely the affairs of the kingdom will keep till the morrow, when our grief is 
+not so fresh." 
+Ned was quiet but firm. "I fear we must convene at once." 
+Pycelle bowed. "As the Hand commands." He called his servants and sent them running, then gratefully 
+accepted Ned's offer of a chair and a cup of sweet beer. 
+Ser Barristan Selmy was the first to answer the summons, immaculate in white cloak and enameled 
+scales. "My lords," he said, "my place is beside the young king now. Pray give me leave to attend him." 
+"Your place is here, Ser Barristan," Ned told him. 
+Littlefinger came next, still garbed in the blue velvets and silver mockingbird cape he had worn the night 
+previous, his boots dusty from riding. "My lords," he said, smiling at nothing in particular before he 
+turned to Ned. "That little task you set me is accomplished, Lord Eddard." 
+Varys entered in a wash of lavender, pink from his bath, his plump face scrubbed and freshly powdered, 
+his soft slippers all but soundless. "The little birds sing a grievous song today," he said as he seated 
+himself. "The realm weeps. Shall we begin?" 
+"When Lord Renly arrives," Ned said. 
+Varys gave him a sorrowful look. "I fear Lord Renly has left the city." 
+"Left the city?" Ned had counted on Renly's support. 
+"He took his leave through a postern gate an hour before dawn, accompanied by Ser Loras Tyrell and 
+some fifty retainers," Varys told them. "When last seen, they were galloping south in some haste, no 
+doubt bound for Storm's End or Highgarden." 
+So much for Renly and his hundred swords. Ned did not like the smell of that, but there was nothing to 
+be done for it. He drew out Robert's last letter. "The king called me to his side last night and commanded 
+me to record his final words. Lord Renly and Grand Maester Pycelle stood witness as Robert sealed the 
+letter, to be opened by the council after his death. Ser Barristan, if you would be so kind?" 
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+The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard examined the paper. "King Robert's seal, and unbroken." He 
+opened the letter and read. "Lord Eddard Stark is herein named Protector of the Realm, to rule as regent 
+until the heir comes of age." 
+And as it happens, he is of age, Ned reflected, but he did not give voice to the thought. He trusted 
+neither Pycelle nor Varys, and Ser Barristan was honor-bound to protect and defend the boy he thought 
+his new king. The old knight would not abandon Joffrey easily. The need for deceit was a bitter taste in 
+his mouth, but Ned knew he must tread softly here, must keep his counsel and play the game until he was 
+firmly established as regent. There would be time enough to deal with the succession when Arya and 
+Sansa were safely back in Winterfell, and Lord Stannis had returned to King's Landing with all his 
+power. 
+"I would ask this council to confirm me as Lord Protector, as Robert wished," Ned said, watching their 
+faces, wondering what thoughts hid behind Pycelle's half-closed eyes, Littlefinger's lazy half-smile, and 
+the nervous flutter of Varys's fingers. 
+The door opened. Fat Tom stepped into the solar. "Pardon, my lords, the king's steward insists . . ." 
+The royal steward entered and bowed. "Esteemed lords, the king 
+demands the immediate presence of his small council in the throne room." 
+Ned had expected Cersei to strike quickly; the summons came as no surprise. "The king is dead," he 
+said, "but we shall go with you nonetheless. Tom, assemble an escort, if you would." 
+Littlefinger gave Ned his arm to help him down the steps. Varys, Pycelle, and Ser Barristan followed 
+close behind. A double column of men-at-arms in chainmail and steel helms was waiting outside the 
+tower, eight strong. Grey cloaks snapped in the wind as the guardsmen marched them across the yard. 
+There was no Lannister crimson to be seen, but Ned was reassured by the number of gold cloaks visible 
+on the ramparts and at the gates. 
+Janos Slynt met them at the door to the throne room, armored in ornate black-and-gold plate, with a 
+high-crested helm under one arm. The Commander bowed stiffly. His men pushed open the great oaken 
+doors, twenty feet tall and banded with bronze. 
+The royal steward led them in. "All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister, the 
+First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms 
+and Protector of the Realm," he sang out. 
+It was a long walk to the far end of the hall, where Joffrey waited atop the Iron Throne. Supported by 
+Littlefinger, Ned Stark slowly limped and hopped toward the boy who called himself king. The others 
+followed. The first time he had come this way, he had been on horseback, sword in hand, and the 
+Targaryen dragons had watched from the walls as he forced Jaime Lannister down from the throne. He 
+wondered if Joffrey would step down quite so easily. 
+Five knights of the Kingsguard-all but Ser Jaime and Ser Barristan-were arrayed in a crescent around 
+the base of the throne. They were in full armor, enameled steel from helm to heel, long pale cloaks over 
+their shoulders, shining white shields strapped to their left arms. Cersei Lannister and her two younger 
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+children stood behind Ser Boros and Ser Meryn. The queen wore a gown of sea-green silk, trimmed 
+with Myrish lace as pale as foam. On her finger was a golden ring with an emerald the size of a pigeon's 
+egg, on her head a matching tiara. 
+Above them, Prince Joffrey sat amidst the barbs and spikes in a cloth-of-gold doublet and a red satin 
+cape. Sandor Clegane was stationed at the foot of the throne's steep narrow stair. He wore mail and 
+soot-grey plate and his snarling dog's-head helm. 
+Behind the throne, twenty Lannister guardsmen waited with longswords hanging from their belts. 
+Crimson cloaks draped their shoulders and steel lions crested their helms. But Littlefinger had kept his 
+promise; all along the walls, in front of Robert's tapestries with their scenes of hunt and battle, the 
+gold-cloaked ranks of the City Watch stood stiffly to attention, each man's hand clasped around the haft 
+of an eight-foot-long spear tipped in black iron. They outnumbered the Lannisters five to one. 
+Ned's leg was a blaze of pain by the time he stopped. He kept a hand on Littlefinger's shoulder to help 
+support his weight. 
+Joffrey stood. His red satin cape was patterned in gold thread; fifty roaring lions to one side, fifty 
+prancing stags to the other. "I command the council to make all the necessary arrangements for my 
+coronation," the boy proclaimed. "I wish to be crowned within the fortnight. Today I shall accept oaths of 
+fealty from my loyal councillors." 
+Ned produced Robert's letter. "Lord Varys, be so kind as to show this to my lady of Lannister." 
+The eunuch carried the letter to Cersei. The queen glanced at the words. "Protector of the Realm," she 
+read. "Is this meant to be your shield, my lord? A piece of paper?" She ripped the letter in half, ripped 
+the halves in quarters, and let the pieces flutter to the floor. 
+"Those were the king's words," Ser Barristan said, shocked. 
+"We have a new king now," Cersei Lannister replied. "Lord Eddard, when last we spoke, you gave me 
+some counsel. Allow me to return the courtesy. Bend the knee, my lord. Bend the knee and swear fealty 
+to my son, and we shall allow you to step down as Hand and live out your days in the grey waste you call 
+home." 
+"Would that I could," Ned said grimly. If she was so determined to force the issue here and now, she left 
+him no choice. "Your son has no claim to the throne he sits. Lord Stannis is Robert's true heir." 
+"Liar!" Joffrey screamed, his face reddening. 
+"Mother, what does he mean?" Princess Myrcella asked the queen plaintively. "Isn't Joff the king now?" 
+"You condemn yourself with your own mouth, Lord Stark," said Cersei Lannister. "Ser Barristan, seize 
+this traitor." 
+The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard hesitated. In the blink of an eye he was surrounded by Stark 
+guardsmen, bare steel in their mailed fists. 
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+"And now the treason moves from words to deeds," Cersei said. "Do you think Ser Barristan stands 
+alone, my lord?" With an ominous rasp of metal on metal, the Hound drew his longsword. The knights of 
+the Kingsguard and twenty Lannister guardsmen in crimson cloaks moved to support him. 
+"Kill him!" the boy king screamed down from the Iron Throne. "Kill all of them, I command it!" 
+"You leave me no choice," Ned told Cersei Lannister. He called out to Janos Slynt. "Commander, take 
+the queen and her children into custody. Do them no harm, but escort them back to the royal apartments 
+and keep them there, under guard." 
+"Men of the Watch!" Janos Slynt shouted, donning his helm. A hundred gold cloaks leveled their spears 
+and closed. 
+"I want no bloodshed," Ned told the queen. "Tell your men to lay down their swords, and no one need-" 
+With a single sharp thrust, the nearest gold cloak drove his spear into Tomard's back. Fat Tom's blade 
+dropped from nerveless fingers as the wet red point burst out through his ribs, piercing leather and mail. 
+He was dead before his sword hit the floor. 
+Ned's shout came far too late. Janos Slynt himself slashed open Varly's throat. Cayn whirled, steel 
+flashing, drove back the nearest spearman with a flurry of blows; for an instant it looked as though he 
+might cut his way free. Then the Hound was on him. Sandor Clegane's first cut took off Cayn's sword 
+hand at the wrist; his second drove him to his knees and opened him from shoulder to breastbone. 
+As his men died around him, Littlefinger slid Ned's dagger from its sheath and shoved it up under his 
+chin. His smile was apologetic. "I did warn you not to trust me, you know." 
+ARYA 
+"High," Syrio Forel called out, slashing at her head. The stick swords clacked as Arya parried. 
+"Left," he shouted, and his blade came whistling. Hers darted to meet it. The clack made him click his 
+teeth together. 
+"Right," he said, and "Low," and "Left," and "Left" again, faster and faster, moving forward. Arya 
+retreated before him, checking each blow. 
+"Lunge," he warned, and when he thrust she sidestepped, swept his blade away, and slashed at his 
+shoulder. She almost touched him, almost, so close it made her grin. A strand of hair dangled in her eyes, 
+limp with sweat. She pushed it away with the back of her hand. 
+"Left," Syrio sang out. "Low." His sword was a blur, and the Small Hall echoed to the clack clack clack. 
+"Left. Left. High. Left. Right. Left. Low. Left!" 
+The wooden blade caught her high in the breast, a sudden stinging blow that hurt all the more because it 
+came from the wrong side. "Owl " she cried out. She would have a fresh bruise there by the time she 
+went to sleep, somewhere out at sea. A bruise is a lesson, she told herself, and each lesson makes us 
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+better. 
+Syrio stepped back. "You are dead now." 
+Arya made a face. "You cheated," she said hotly. "You said left and you went right." 
+"Just so. And now you are a dead girl." 
+"But you lied!" 
+"My words lied. My eyes and my arm shouted out the truth, but you were not seeing." 
+"I was so," Arya said. "I watched you every second!" 
+"Watching is not seeing, dead girl. The water dancer sees. Come, put down the sword, it is time for 
+listening now." 
+She followed him over to the wall, where he settled onto a bench. "Syrio Forel was first sword to the 
+Sealord of Braavos, and are you knowing how that came to pass?" 
+"You were the finest swordsman in the city." 
+"Just so, but why? Other men were stronger, faster, younger, why was Syrio Forel the best? I will tell 
+you now." He touched the tip of his little finger lightly to his eyelid. "The seeing, the true seeing, that is the 
+heart of it. 
+"Hear me. The ships of Braavos sail as far as the winds blow, to lands strange and wonderful, and when 
+they return their captains fetch queer animals to the Sealord's menagerie. Such animals as you have never 
+seen, striped horses, great spotted things with necks as long as stilts, hairy mouse-pigs as big as cows, 
+stinging manticores, tigers that carry their cubs in a pouch, terrible walking lizards with scythes for claws. 
+Syrio Forel has seen these things. 
+"On the day I am speaking of, the first sword was newly dead, and the Sealord sent for me. Many 
+bravos had come to him, and as many had been sent away, none could say why. When I came into his 
+presence, he was seated, and in his lap was a fat yellow cat. He told me that one of his captains had 
+brought the beast to him, from an island beyond the sunrise. 'Have you ever seen her likeT he asked of 
+me. 
+"And to him I said, 'Each night in the alleys of Braavos I see a thousand like him,' and the Sealord 
+laughed, and that day I was named the first sword." 
+Arya screwed up her face. "I don't understand." 
+Syrio clicked his teeth together. "The cat was an ordinary cat, no more. The others expected a fabulous 
+beast, so that is what they saw. How large it was, they said. It was no larger than any other cat, only fat 
+from indolence, for the Sealord fed it from his own table. What curious small ears, they said. Its ears had 
+been chewed away in kitten fights. And it was plainly a tomcat, yet the Sealord said 'her,' and that is what 
+the others saw. Are you hearing?" 
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+
+Arya thought about it. "You saw what was there." 
+"Just so. Opening your eyes is all that is needing. The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the 
+eyes see true. Look with your 
+eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then 
+comes the thinking, afterward, and in that way knowing the truth." 
+"Just so," said Arya, grinning. 
+Syrio Forel allowed himself a smile. "I am thinking that when we are reaching this Winterfell of yours, it 
+will be time to put this needle in your hand." 
+"Yes!" Arya said eagerly. "Wait till I show Jon-" 
+Behind her the great wooden doors of the Small Hall flew open with a resounding crash. Arya whirled. 
+A knight of the Kingsguard stood beneath the arch of the door with five Lannister guardsmen arrayed 
+behind him. He was in full armor, but his visor was up. Arya remembered his droopy eyes and 
+rustcolored whiskers from when he had come to Winterfell with the king: Ser Meryn Trant. The red 
+cloaks wore mail shirts over boiled leather and steel caps with lion crests. "Arya Stark," the knight said, 
+"come with us, child." 
+Arya chewed her lip uncertainly. "What do you want?" 
+"Your father wants to see you." 
+Arya took a step forward, but Syrio Forel held her by the arm. "And why is it that Lord Eddard is 
+sending Lannister men in the place of his own? I am wondering." 
+"Mind your place, dancing master," Ser Meryn said. "This is no concern of yours." 
+"My father wouldn't send you," Arya said. She snatched up her stick sword. The Lannisters laughed. 
+"Put down the stick, girl," Ser Meryn told her. "I am a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard, the White 
+Swords." 
+"So was the Kingslayer when he killed the old king," Arya said. "I don't have to go with you if I don't 
+want." 
+Ser Meryn Trant ran out of patience. "Take her," he said to his men. He lowered the visor of his helm. 
+Three of them started forward, chainmail clinking softly with each step. Arya was suddenly afraid. Fear 
+cuts deeper than swords, she told herself, to slow the racing of her heart. 
+Syrio Forel stepped between them, tapping his wooden sword lightly against his boot. "You will be 
+stopping there. Are you men or dogs that you would threaten a child?" 
+"Out of the way, old man," one of the red cloaks said. 
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+Syrio's stick came whistling up and rang against his helm. "I am Syrio Forel, and you will now be 
+speaking to me with more respect." 
+"Bald bastard." The man yanked free his longsword. The stick 
+moved again, blindingly fast. Arya heard a loud crack as the sword went clattering to the stone floor. 
+"My hand," the guardsman yelped, cradling his broken fingers. 
+"You are quick, for a dancing master," said Ser Meryn. 
+"You are slow, for a knight," Syrio replied. 
+"Kill the Braavosi and bring me the girl," the knight in the white armor commanded. 
+Four Lannister guardsmen unsheathed their swords. The fifth, with the broken fingers, spat and pulled 
+free a dagger with his left hand. 
+Syrio Forel clicked his teeth together, sliding into his water dancer's stance, presenting only his side to 
+the foe. "Arya child," he called out, never looking, never taking his eyes off the Lannisters, "we are done 
+with dancing for the day. Best you are going now. Run to your father." 
+Arya did not want to leave him, but he had taught her to do as he said. "Swift as a deer, " she 
+whispered. 
+"Just so," said Syrio Forel as the Lannisters closed. 
+Arya retreated, her own sword stick clutched tightly in her hand. Watching him now, she realized that 
+Syrio had only been toying with her when they dueled. The red cloaks came at him from three sides with 
+steel in their hands. They had chainmail over their chest and arms, and steel codpieces sewn into their 
+pants, but only leather on their legs. Their hands were bare, and the caps they wore had noseguards, but 
+no visor over the eyes. 
+Syrio did not wait for them to reach him, but spun to his left. Arya had never seen a man move as fast. 
+He checked one sword with his stick and whirled away from a second. Off balance, the second man 
+lurched into the first. Syrio put a boot to his back and the red cloaks went down together. The third 
+guard came leaping over them, slashing at the water dancer's head. Syrio ducked under his blade and 
+thrust upward. The guardsman fell screaming as blood welled from the wet red hole where his left eye 
+had been. 
+The fallen men were getting up. Syrio kicked one in the face and snatched the steel cap off the other's 
+head. The dagger man stabbed at him. Syrio caught the thrust in the helmet and shattered the man's 
+kneecap with his stick. The last red cloak shouted a curse and charged, hacking down with both hands 
+on his sword. Syrio rolled right, and the butcher's cut caught the helmetless man between neck and 
+shoulder as he struggled to his knees. The longsword crunched through mail and leather and flesh. The 
+man on his knees shrieked. Before his killer could wrench free his blade, Syrio jabbed him in the apple of 
+his throat. The guardsman gave a choked cry and staggered back, clutching at his neck, his face 
+blackening. 
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+Five men were down, dead, or dying by the time Arya reached the back door that opened on the 
+kitchen. She heard Ser Meryn Trant curse. "Bloody oafs," he swore, drawing his longsword from its 
+scabbard. 
+Syrio Forel resumed his stance and clicked his teeth together. "Arya child," he called out, never looking 
+at her, "be gone now." 
+Look with your eyes, he had said. She saw: the knight in his pale armor head to foot, legs, throat, and 
+hands sheathed in metal, eyes hidden behind his high white helm, and in his hand cruel steel. Against that: 
+Syrio, in a leather vest, with a wooden sword in his hand. "Syrio, run," she screamed. 
+"The first sword of Braavos does not run," he sang as Ser Meryn slashed at him. Syrio danced away 
+from his cut, his stick a blur. In a heartbeat, he had bounced blows off the knight's temple, elbow, and 
+throat, the wood ringing against the metal of helm, gauntlet, and gorget. Arya stood frozen. Ser Meryn 
+advanced; Syrio backed away. He checked the next blow, spun away from the second, deflected the 
+third. 
+The fourth sliced his stick in two, splintering the wood and shearing through the lead core. 
+Sobbing, Arya spun and ran. 
+She plunged through the kitchens and buttery, blind with panic, weaving between cooks and potboys. A 
+baker's helper stepped in front of her, holding a wooden tray. Arya bowled her over, scattering fragrant 
+loaves of fresh-baked bread on the floor. She heard shouting behind her as she spun around a portly 
+butcher who stood gaping at her with a cleaver in his hands. His arms were red to the elbow. 
+All that Syrio Forel had taught her went racing through her head. Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. 
+Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. Fear cuts deeper than swords. 
+Strong as a bear. Fierce as a wolverine. Fear cuts deeper than swords. The man who fears losing has 
+already lost. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Fear cuts deeper than 
+swords. The grip of her wooden sword was slick with sweat, and Arya was breathing hard when she 
+reached the turret stair. For an instant she froze. Up or down? Up would take her to the covered bridge 
+that spanned the small court to the Tower of the Hand, but that would be the way they'd expect her to 
+go, for certain. Never do what they expect, Syrio once said. Arya went down, around and around, 
+leaping over the narrow stone steps two and three at a time. She emerged in a cavernous vaulted cellar, 
+surrounded by casks of ale stacked twenty feet tall. The only light came through narrow slanting windows 
+high in the wall. 
+The cellar was a dead end. There was no way out but the way she 
+had come in. She dare not go back up those steps, but she couldn't stay here, either. She had to find her 
+father and tell him what had happened. Her father would protect her. 
+Arya thrust her wooden sword through her belt and began to climb, leaping from cask to cask until she 
+could reach the window. Grasping the stone with both hands, she pulled herself up. The wall was three 
+feet thick, the window a tunnel slanting up and out. Arya wriggled toward daylight. When her head 
+reached ground level, she peered across the bailey to the Tower of the Hand. 
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+The stout wooden door hung splintered and broken, as if by axes. A dead man sprawled facedown on 
+the steps, his cloak tangled beneath him, the back of his mailed shirt soaked red. The corpse's cloak was 
+grey wool trimmed with white satin, she saw with sudden terror. She could not tell who he was. 
+"No, " she whispered. What was happening? Where was her father? Why had the red cloaks come for 
+her? She remembered what the man with the yellow beard had said, the day she had found the monsters. 
+If one Hand can die, why not a second? Arya felt tears in her eyes. She held her breath to listen. She 
+heard the sounds of fighting, shouts, screams, the clang of steel on steel, coming through the windows of 
+the Tower of the Hand. 
+She could not go back. Her father . . . 
+Arya closed her eyes. For a moment she was too frightened to move. They had killed Jory and Wyl and 
+Heward, and that guardsman on the step, whoever he had been. They could kill her father too, and her if 
+they caught her. "Fear cuts deeper than swords, " she said aloud, but it was no good pretending to be a 
+water dancer, Syrio had been a water dancer and the white knight had probably killed him, and anyhow 
+she was only a little girl with a wooden stick, alone and afraid. 
+She squirmed out into the yard, glancing around warily as she climbed to her feet. The castle seemed 
+deserted. The Red Keep was never deserted. All the people must be hiding inside, their doors barred. 
+Arya glanced up longingly at her bedchamber, then moved away from the Tower of the Hand, keeping 
+close to the wall as she slid from shadow to shadow. She pretended she was chasing cats . . . except she 
+was the cat now, and if they caught her, they would kill her. 
+Moving between buildings and over walls, keeping stone to her back wherever possible so no one could 
+surprise her, Arya reached the stables almost without incident. A dozen gold cloaks in mail and plate ran 
+past as she was edging across the inner bailey, but without knowing whose side they were on, she 
+hunched down low in the shadows and let them pass. 
+Hullen, who had been master of horse at Winterfell as long as Arya could remember, was slumped on 
+the ground by the stable door. He had been stabbed so many times it looked as if his tunic was patterned 
+with scarlet flowers. Arya was certain he was dead, but when she crept closer, his eyes opened. "Arya 
+Underfoot," he whispered. "You must . . . warn your . . . your lord father . . ." Frothy red spittle bubbled 
+from his mouth. The master of horse closed his eyes again and said no more. 
+Inside were more bodies; a groom she had played with, and three of her father's household guard. A 
+wagon, laden with crates and chests, stood abandoned near the door of the stable. The dead men must 
+have been loading it for the trip to the docks when they were attacked. Arya snuck closer. One of the 
+corpses was Desmond, who'd shown her his longsword and promised to protect her father. He lay on his 
+back, staring blindly at the ceiling as flies crawled across his eyes. Close to him was a dead man in the 
+red cloak and lion-crest helm of the Lannisters. Only one, though. Every northerner is worth ten of these 
+southron swords, Desmond had told her. "You liar!" she said, kicking his body in a sudden fury. 
+The animals were restless in their stalls, whickering and snorting at the scent of blood. Arya's only plan 
+was to saddle a horse and flee, away from the castle and the city. All she had to do was stay on the 
+kingsroad and it would take her back to Winterfell. She took a bridle and harness off the wall. 
+As she crossed in back of the wagon, a fallen chest caught her eye. It must have been knocked down in 
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+the fight or dropped as it was being loaded. The wood had split, the lid opening to spill the chest's 
+contents across the ground. Arya recognized silks and satins and velvets she never wore. She might need 
+warm clothes on the kingsroad, though . . . and besides . . . 
+Arya knelt in the dirt among the scattered clothes. She found a heavy woolen cloak, a velvet skirt and a 
+silk tunic and some smallclothes, a dress her mother had embroidered for her, a silver baby bracelet she 
+might sell. Shoving the broken lid out of the way, she groped inside the chest for Needle. She had hidden 
+it way down at the bottom, under everything, but her stuff had all been jumbled around when the chest 
+was dropped. For a moment Arya was afraid someone had found the sword and stolen it. Then her 
+fingers felt the hardness of metal under a satin gown. 
+"There she is," a voice hissed close behind her. 
+Startled, Arya whirled. A stableboy stood behind her, a smirk on his face, his filthy white undertunic 
+peeking out from beneath a soiled 
+jerkin. His boots were covered with manure, and he had a pitchfork in one hand. "Who are you?" she 
+asked. 
+"She don't know me," he said, "but I knows her, oh, yes. The wolf girl." 
+"Help me saddle a horse," Arya pleaded, reaching back into the chest, groping for Needle. "My father's 
+the Hand of the King, he'll reward you." 
+"Father's dead," the boy said. He shuffled toward her. "It's the queen who'll be rewarding me. Come 
+here, girl." 
+"Stay away!" Her fingers closed around Needle's hilt. 
+"I says, come." He grabbed her arm, hard. 
+Everything Syrio Forel had ever taught her vanished in a heartbeat. In that instant of sudden terror, the 
+only lesson Arya could remember was the one Jon Snow had given her, the very first. 
+She stuck him with the pointy end, driving the blade upward with a wild, hysterical strength. 
+Needle went through his leather jerkin and the white flesh of his belly and came out between his shoulder 
+blades. The boy dropped the pitchfork and made a soft noise, something between a gasp and a sigh. His 
+hands closed around the blade. "Oh, gods," he moaned, as his undertunic began to redden. "Take it out." 
+When she took it out, he died. 
+The horses were screaming. Arya stood over the body, still and frightened in the face of death. Blood 
+had gushed from the boy's mouth as he collapsed, and more was seeping from the slit in his belly, pooling 
+beneath his body. His palms were cut where he'd grabbed at the blade. She backed away slowly, 
+Needle red in her hand. She had to get away, someplace far from here, someplace safe away from the 
+stableboy's accusing eyes. 
+She snatched up the bridle and harness again and ran to her mare, but as she lifted the saddle to the 
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+horse's back, Arya realized with a sudden sick dread that the castle gates would be closed. Even the 
+postern doors would likely be guarded. Maybe the guards wouldn't recognize her. If they thought she 
+was a boy, perhaps they'd let her . . . no, they'd have orders not to let anyone out, it wouldn't matter 
+whether they knew her or not. 
+But there was another way out of the castle . . . 
+The saddle slipped from Arya's fingers and fell to the dirt with a thump and a puff of dust. Could she find 
+the room with the monsters again? She wasn't certain, yet she knew she had to try. 
+She found the clothing she'd gathered and slipped into the cloak, concealing Needle beneath its folds. 
+The rest of her things she tied in a 
+roll. With the bundle under her arm, she crept to the far end of the stable. Unlatching the back door, she 
+peeked out anxiously. She could hear the distant sound of swordplay, and the shivery wail of a man 
+screaming in pain across the bailey. She would need to go down the serpentine steps, past the small 
+kitchen and the pig yard, that was how she'd gone last time, chasing the black tomcat . . . only that would 
+take her right past the barracks of the gold cloaks. She couldn't go that way. Arya tried to think of 
+another way. If she crossed to the other side of the castle, she could creep along the river wall and 
+through the little godswood . . . but first she'd have to cross the yard, in the plain view of the guards on 
+the walls. 
+She had never seen so many men on the walls. Gold cloaks, most of them, armed with spears. Some of 
+them knew her by sight. What would they do if they saw her running across the yard? She'd look so 
+small from up there, would they be able to tell who she was? Would they care? 
+She had to leave now, she told herself, but when the moment came, she was too frightened to move. 
+Calm as still water, a small voice whispered in her ear. Arya was so startled she almost dropped her 
+bundle. She looked around wildly, but there was no one in the stable but her, and the horses, and the 
+dead men. 
+Quiet as a shadow, she heard. Was it her own voice, or Syrio's? She could not tell, yet somehow it 
+calmed her fears. 
+She stepped out of the stable. 
+It was the scariest thing she'd ever done. She wanted to run and hide, but she made herself walk across 
+the yard, slowly, putting one foot in front of the other as if she had all the time in the world and no reason 
+to be afraid of anyone. She thought she could feel their eyes, like bugs crawling on her skin under her 
+clothes. Arya never looked up. If she saw them watching, all her courage would desert her, she knew, 
+and she would drop the bundle of clothes and run and cry like a baby, and then they would have her. She 
+kept her gaze on the ground. By the time she reached the shadow of the royal sept on the far side of the 
+yard, Arya was cold with sweat, but no one had raised the hue and cry. 
+The sept was open and empty. Inside, half a hundred prayer candles burned in a fragrant silence. Arya 
+figured the gods would never miss two. She stuffed them up her sleeves, and left by a back window. 
+Sneaking back to the alley where she had cornered the one-eared tom was easy, but after that she got 
+lost. She crawled in and out of windows, hopped over walls, and felt her way through dark cellars, quiet 
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+as a shadow. Once she heard a woman weeping. It took her more than an hour to find the low narrow 
+window that slanted down to the dungeon where the monsters waited. 
+She tossed her bundle through and doubled back to light her candle. That was chancy; the fire she'd 
+remembered seeing had burnt down to embers, and she heard voices as she was blowing on the coals. 
+Cupping her fingers around the flickering candle, she went out the window as they were coming in the 
+door, without ever getting a glimpse of who it was. 
+This time the monsters did not frighten her. They seemed almost old friends. Arya held the candle over 
+her head. With each step she took, the shadows moved against the walls, as if they were turning to watch 
+her pass. "Dragons, " she whispered. She slid Needle out from under her cloak. The slender blade 
+seemed very small and the dragons very big, yet somehow Arya felt better with steel in her hand. 
+The long windowless hall beyond the door was as black as she remembered. She held Needle in her left 
+hand, her sword hand, the candle in her right fist. Hot wax ran down across her knuckles. The entrance 
+to the well had been to the left, so Arya went right. Part of her wanted to run, but she was afraid of 
+snuffing out her candle. She heard the faint squeaking of rats and glimpsed a pair of tiny glowing eyes on 
+the edge of the light, but rats did not scare her. Other things did. It would be so easy to hide here, as she 
+had hidden from the wizard and the man with the forked beard. She could almost see the stableboy 
+standing against the wall, his hands curled into claws with the blood still dripping from the deep gashes in 
+his palms where Needle had cut him. He might be waiting to grab her as she passed. He would see her 
+candle coming a long way off. Maybe she would be better off without the light . . . 
+Fear cuts deeper than swords, the quiet voice inside her whispered. Suddenly Arya remembered the 
+crypts at Winterfell. They were a lot scarier than this place, she told herself. She'd been just a little girl the 
+first time she saw them. Her brother Robb had taken them down, her and Sansa and baby Bran, who'd 
+been no bigger than Rickon was now. They'd only had one candle between them, and Bran's eyes had 
+gotten as big as saucers as he stared at the stone faces of the Kings of Winter, with their wolves at their 
+feet and their iron swords across their laps. 
+Robb took them all the way down to the end, past Grandfather and Brandon and Lyanna, to show them 
+their own tombs. Sansa kept looking at the stubby little candle, anxious that it might go out. Old Nan had 
+told her there were spiders down here, and rats as big as dogs. Robb smiled when she said that. "There 
+are worse things than spiders 
+and rats," he whispered. "This is where the dead walk." That was when they heard the sound, low and 
+deep and shivery. Baby Bran had clutched at Arya's hand. 
+When the spirit stepped out of the open tomb, pale white and moaning for blood, Sansa ran shrieking for 
+the stairs, and Bran wrapped himself around Robb's leg, sobbing. Arya stood her ground and gave the 
+spirit a punch. It was only Jon, covered with flour. "You stupid," she told him, "you scared the baby," but 
+Jon and Robb just laughed and laughed, and pretty soon Bran and Arya were laughing too. 
+The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no more terrors for her. The stableboy 
+was dead, she'd killed him, and if he jumped out at her she'd kill him again. She was going home. 
+Everything would be better once she was home again, safe behind Winterfell's grey granite walls. 
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+Her footsteps sent soft echoes hurrying ahead of her as Arya plunged deeper into the darkness. 
+SANSA 
+They came for Sansa on the third day. 
+She chose a simple dress of dark grey wool, plainly cut but richly embroidered around the collar and 
+sleeves. Her fingers felt thick and clumsy as she struggled with the silver fastenings without the benefit of 
+servants. Jeyne Poole had been confined with her, but Jeyne was useless. Her face was puffy from all her 
+crying, and she could not seem to stop sobbing about her father. 
+"I'm certain your father is well," Sansa told her when she had finally gotten the dress buttoned right. "I'll 
+ask the queen to let you see him." She thought that kindness might lift Jeyne's spirits, but the other girl just 
+looked at her with red, swollen eyes and began to cry all the harder. She was such a child. 
+Sansa had wept too, the first day. Even within the stout walls of Maegor's Holdfast, with her door 
+closed and barred, it was hard not to be terrified when the killing began. She had grown up to the sound 
+of steel in the yard, and scarcely a day of her life had passed without hearing the clash of sword on 
+sword, yet somehow knowing that the fighting was real made all the difference in the world. She heard it 
+as she had never heard it before, and there were other sounds as well, grunts of pain, angry curses, 
+shouts for help, and the moans of wounded and dying men. In the songs, the knights never screamed nor 
+begged for mercy. 
+So she wept, pleading through her door for them to tell her what was happening, calling for her father, 
+for Septa Mordane, for the king, for her gallant prince. If the men guarding her heard her pleas, they gave 
+no answer. The only time the door opened was late that night, when they thrust Jeyne Poole inside, 
+bruised and shaking. "They're killing everyone, " the steward's daughter had shrieked at her. She went on 
+and on. The Hound had broken down her door with a warhammer, she said. There were bodies on the 
+stair of the Tower of the Hand, and the steps were slick with blood. Sansa dried her own tears as she 
+struggled to comfort her friend. They went to sleep in the same bed, cradled in each other's arms like 
+sisters. 
+The second day was even worse. The room where Sansa had been confined was at the top of the 
+highest tower of Maegor's Holdfast. From its window, she could see that the heavy iron portcullis in the 
+gatehouse was down, and the drawbridge drawn up over the deep dry moat that separated the 
+keep-within-a-keep from the larger castle that surrounded it. Lannister guardsmen prowled the walls with 
+spears and crossbows to hand. The fighting was over, and the silence of the grave had settled over the 
+Red Keep. The only sounds were Jeyne Poole's endless whimpers and sobs. 
+They were fed-hard cheese and fresh-baked bread and milk to break their fast, roast chicken and 
+greens at midday, and a late supper of beef and barley stew-but the servants who brought the meals 
+would not answer Sansa's questions. That evening, some women brought her clothes from the Tower of 
+the Hand, and some of Jeyne's things as well, but they seemed nearly as frightened as Jeyne, and when 
+she tried to talk to them, they fled from her as if she had the grey plague. The guards outside the door still 
+refused to let them leave the room. 
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+"Please, I need to speak to the queen again," Sansa told them, as she told everyone she saw that day. 
+"She'll want to talk to me, I know she will. Tell her I want to see her, please. If not the queen, then Prince 
+Joffrey, if you'd be so kind. We're to marry when we're older." 
+At sunset on the second day, a great bell began to ring. Its voice was deep and sonorous, and the long 
+slow clanging filled Sansa with a sense of dread. The ringing went on and on, and after a while they heard 
+other bells answering from the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's Hill. The sound rumbled across the city 
+like thunder, warning of the storm to come. 
+"What is it?" Jeyne asked, covering her ears. "Why are they ringing the bells?" 
+"The king is dead." Sansa could not say how she knew it, yet she 
+did. The slow, endless clanging filled their room, as mournful as a dirge. Had some enemy stormed the 
+castle and murdered King Robert? Was that the meaning of the fighting they had heard? 
+She went to sleep wondering, restless, and fearful. Was her beautiful Joffrey the king now? Or had they 
+killed him too? She was afraid for him, and for her father. If only they would tell her what was happening 
+. . . 
+That night Sansa dreamt of Joffrey on the throne, with herself seated beside him in a gown of woven 
+gold. She had a crown on her head, and everyone she had ever known came before her, to bend the 
+knee and say their courtesies. 
+The next morning, the morning of the third day, Ser Boros Blount of the Kingsguard came to escort her 
+to the queen. 
+Ser Boros was an ugly man with a broad chest and short, bandy legs. His nose was flat, his cheeks 
+baggy with jowls, his hair grey and brittle. Today he wore white velvet, and his snowy cloak was 
+fastened with a lion brooch. The beast had the soft sheen of gold, and his eyes were tiny rubies. "You 
+look very handsome and splendid this morning, Ser Boros," Sansa told him. A lady remembered her 
+courtesies, and she was resolved to be a lady no matter what. 
+"And you, my lady," Ser Boros said in a flat voice. "Her Grace awaits. Come with me." 
+There were guards outside her door, Lannister men-at-arms in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms. 
+Sansa made herself smile at them pleasantly and bid them a good morning as she passed. It was the first 
+time she had been allowed outside the chamber since Ser Arys Oakheart had led her there two mornings 
+past. "To keep you safe, my sweet one," Queen Cersei had told her. "Joffrey would never forgive me if 
+anything happened to his precious." 
+Sansa had expected that Ser Boros would escort her to the royal apartments, but instead he led her out 
+of Maegor's Holdfast. The bridge was down again. Some workmen were lowering a man on ropes into 
+the depths of the dry moat. When Sansa peered down, she saw a body impaled on the huge iron spikes 
+below. She averted her eyes quickly, afraid to ask, afraid to look too long, afraid he might be someone 
+she knew. 
+They found Queen Cersei in the council chambers, seated at the head of a long table littered with 
+papers, candles, and blocks of sealing wax. The room was as splendid as any that Sansa had ever seen. 
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+She stared in awe at the carved wooden screen and the twin sphinxes that sat beside the door. 
+"Your Grace," Ser Boros said when they were ushered inside by 
+another of the Kingsguard, Ser Mandon of the curiously dead face, "I've brought the girl." 
+Sansa had hoped Joffrey might be with her. Her prince was not there, but three of the king's councillors 
+were. Lord Petyr Baelish sat on the queen's left hand, Grand Maester Pycelle at the end of the table, 
+while Lord Varys hovered over them, smelling flowery. All of them were clad in black, she realized with 
+a feeling of dread. Mourning clothes . . . 
+The queen wore a high-collared black silk gown, with a hundred dark red rubies sewn into her bodice, 
+covering her from neck to bosom. They were cut in the shape of teardrops, as if the queen were weeping 
+blood. Cersei smiled to see her, and Sansa thought it was the sweetest and saddest smile she had ever 
+seen. "Sansa, my sweet child," she said, "I know you've been asking for me. I'm sorry that I could not 
+send for you sooner. Matters have been very unsettled, and I have not had a moment. I trust my people 
+have been taking good care of you?" 
+"Everyone has been very sweet and pleasant, Your Grace, thank you ever so much for asking," Sansa 
+said politely. "Only, well, no one will talk to us or tell us what's happened 
+"Us?" Cersei seemed puzzled. 
+"We put the steward's girl in with her," Ser Boros said. "We did not know what else to do with her." 
+The queen frowned. "Next time, you will ask," she said, her voice sharp. "The gods only know what sort 
+of tales she's been filling Sansa's head with." 
+"Jeyne's scared," Sansa said. "She won't stop crying. I promised her I'd ask if she could see her father." 
+Old Grand Maester Pycelle lowered his eyes. 
+"Her father is well, isn't he?" Sansa said anxiously. She knew there had been fighting, but surely no one 
+would harm a steward. Vayon Poole did not even wear a sword. 
+Queen Cersei looked at each of the councillors in turn. "I won't have Sansa fretting needlessly. What 
+shall we do with this little friend of hers, my lords?" 
+Lord Petyr leaned forward. "I'll find a place for her." 
+"Not in the city," said the queen. 
+"Do you take me for a fool?" 
+The queen ignored that. "Ser Boros, escort this girl to Lord Petyr's apartments and instruct his people to 
+keep her there until he comes for her. Tell her that Littlefinger will be taking her to see her father, that 
+ought to calm her down. I want her gone before Sansa returns to her chamber." 
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+"As you command, Your Grace," Ser Boros said. He bowed deeply, spun on his heel, and took his 
+leave, his long white cloak stirring the air behind him. 
+Sansa was confused. "I don't understand," she said. "Where is Jeyne's father? Why can't Ser Boros take 
+her to him instead of Lord Petyr having to do it?" She had promised herself she would be a lady, gentle 
+as the queen and as strong as her mother, the Lady Catelyn, but all of a sudden she was scared again. 
+For a second she thought she might cry. "Where are you sending her? She hasn't done anything wrong, 
+she's a good girl." 
+"She's upset you," the queen said gently. "We can't be having that. Not another word, now. Lord Baelish 
+will see that Jeyne's well taken care of, I promise you." She patted the chair beside her. "Sit down, 
+Sansa. I want to talk to you." 
+Sansa seated herself beside the queen. Cersei smiled again, but that did not make her feel any less 
+anxious. Varys was wringing his soft hands together, Grand Maester Pycelle kept his sleepy eyes on the 
+papers in front of him, but she could feel Littlefinger staring. Something about the way the small man 
+looked at her made Sansa feel as though she had no clothes on. Goose bumps pimpled her skin. 
+"Sweet Sansa," Queen Cersei said, laying a soft hand on her wrist. "Such a beautiful child. I do hope you 
+know how much Joffrey and I love you." 
+"You do?" Sansa said, breathless. Littlefinger was forgotten. Her prince loved her. Nothing else 
+mattered. 
+The queen smiled. "I think of you almost as my own daughter. And I know the love you bear for 
+Joffrey." She gave a weary shake of her head. "I am afraid we have some grave news about your lord 
+father. You must be brave, child." 
+Her quiet words gave Sansa a chill. "What is it?" 
+"Your father is a traitor, dear," Lord Varys said. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle lifted his ancient head. "With my own ears, I heard Lord Eddard swear to our 
+beloved King Robert that he would protect the young princes as if they were his own sons. And yet the 
+moment the king was dead, he called the small council together to steal Prince Joffrey's rightful throne." 
+"No," Sansa blurted. "He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't!" 
+The queen picked up a letter. The paper was torn and stiff with dried blood, but the broken seal was her 
+father's, the direwolf stamped in pale wax. "We found this on the captain of your household guard, 
+Sansa. It is a letter to my late husband's brother Stannis, inviting him to take the crown." 
+"Please, Your Grace, there's been a mistake." Sudden panic made her dizzy and faint. "Please, send for 
+my father, he'll tell you, he would never write such a letter, the king was his friend." 
+"Robert thought so," said the queen. "This betrayal would have broken his heart. The gods are kind, that 
+he did not live to see it." She sighed. "Sansa, sweetling, you must see what a dreadful position this has left 
+us in. You are innocent of any wrong, we all know that, and yet you are the daughter of a traitor. How 
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+can I allow you to marry my son?" 
+"But I love him," Sansa wailed, confused and frightened. What did they mean to do to her? What had 
+they done to her father? It was not supposed to happen this way. She had to wed Joffrey, they were 
+betrothed, he was promised to her, she had even dreamed about it. It wasn't fair to take him away from 
+her on account of whatever her father might have done. 
+"How well I know that, child," Cersei said, her voice so kind and sweet. "Why else should you have 
+come to me and told me of your father's plan to send you away from us, if not for love?" 
+"It was for love," Sansa said in a rush. "Father wouldn't even give me leave to say farewell." She was the 
+good girl, the obedient girl, but she had felt as wicked as Arya that morning, sneaking away from Septa 
+Mordane, defying her lord father. She had never done anything so willful before, and she would never 
+have done it then if she hadn't loved Joffrey as much as she did. "He was going to take me back to 
+Winterfell and marry me to some hedge knight, even though it was Joff I wanted. I told him, but he 
+wouldn't listen." The king had been her last hope. The king could command Father to let her stay in 
+King's Landing and marry Prince Joffrey, Sansa knew he could, but the king had always frightened her. 
+He was loud and rough-voiced and drunk as often as not, and he would probably have just sent her back 
+to Lord Eddard, if they even let her see him. So she went to the queen instead, and poured out her heart, 
+and Cersei had listened and thanked her sweetly . . . only then Ser Arys had escorted her to the high 
+room in Maegor's Holdfast and posted guards, and a few hours later, the fighting had begun outside. 
+"Please," she finished, "you have to let me marry Joffrey, I'll be ever so good a wife to him, you'll see. I'll 
+be a queen just like you, I promise." 
+Queen Cersei looked to the others. "My lords of the council, what do you say to her plea?" 
+"The poor child," murmured Varys. "A love so true and innocent, Your Grace, it would be cruel to deny 
+it . . . and yet, what can we do? 
+Her father stands condemned." His soft hands washed each other in a gesture of helpless distress. 
+"A child born of traitor's seed will find that betrayal comes naturally to her," said Grand Maester Pycelle. 
+"She is a sweet thing now, but in ten years, who can say what treasons she may hatch?" 
+"No, " Sansa said, horrified. "I'm not, I'd never . . . I wouldn't betray Joffrey, I love him, I swear it, I 
+do." 
+"Oh, so poignant," said Varys. "And yet, it is truly said that blood runs truer than oaths." 
+"She reminds me of the mother, not the father," Lord Petyr Baelish said quietly. "Look at her. The hair, 
+the eyes. She is the very image of Cat at the same age." 
+The queen looked at her, troubled, and yet Sansa could see kindness in her clear green eyes. "Child," 
+she said, "if I could truly believe that you were not like your father, why nothing should please me more 
+than to see you wed to my Joffrey. I know he loves you with all his heart." She sighed. "And yet, I fear 
+that Lord Varys and the Grand Maester have the right of it. The blood will tell. I have only to remember 
+how your sister set her wolf on my son." 
+"I'm not like Arya," Sansa blurted. "She has the traitor's blood, not me. I'm good, ask Septa Mordane, 
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+she'll tell you, I only want to be Joffrey's loyal and loving wife." 
+She felt the weight of Cersei's eyes as the queen studied her face. "I believe you mean it, child." She 
+turned to face the others. "My lords, it seems to me that if the rest of her kin were to remain loyal in this 
+terrible time, that would go a long way toward laying our fears to rest." 
+Grand Maester Pycelle stroked his huge soft beard, his wide brow furrowed in thought. "Lord Eddard 
+has three sons." 
+"Mere boys," Lord Petyr said with a shrug. "I should be more concerned with Lady Catelyn and the 
+Tullys." 
+The queen took Sansa's hand in both of hers. "Child, do you know your letters?" 
+Sansa nodded nervously. She could read and write better than any of her brothers, although she was 
+hopeless at sums. 
+"I am pleased to hear that. Perhaps there is hope for you and Joffrey still . . ." 
+"What do you want me to do?" 
+"You must write your lady mother, and your brother, the eldest . . . what is his name?" 
+"Robb," Sansa said. 
+"The word of your lord father's treason will no doubt reach them 
+soon. Better that it should come from you. You must tell them how Lord Eddard betrayed his king." 
+Sansa wanted Joffrey desperately, but she did not think she had the courage to do as the queen was 
+asking. "But he never . . . I don't . . . Your Grace, I wouldn't know what to say . . ." 
+The queen patted her hand. "We will tell you what to write, child. The important thing is that you urge 
+Lady Catelyn and your brother to keep the king's peace." 
+"It will go hard for them if they don't," said Grand Maester Pycelle. "By the love you bear them, you 
+must urge them to walk the path of wisdom." 
+"Your lady mother will no doubt fear for you dreadfully," the queen said. "You must tell her that you are 
+well and in our care, that we are treating you gently and seeing to your every want. Bid them to come to 
+King's Landing and pledge their fealty to Joffrey when he takes his throne. If they do that . . . why, then 
+we shall know that there is no taint in your blood, and when you come into the flower of your 
+womanhood, you shall wed the king in the Great Sept of Baelor, before the eyes of gods and men." 
+. . . wed the king . . . The words made her breath come faster, yet still Sansa hesitated. "Perhaps . . . if I 
+might see my father, talk to him about . . ." 
+"Treason?" Lord Varys hinted. 
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+"You disappoint me, Sansa," the queen said, with eyes gone hard as stones. "We've told you of your 
+father's crimes. If you are truly as loyal as you say, why should you want to see him?" 
+"I . . . I only meant Sansa felt her eyes grow wet. "He's not 
+. . . please, he hasn't been . . . hurt, or . . . or . . . 
+,:Lord Eddard has not been harmed," the queen said. But . . . what's to become of him?" 
+"That is a matter for the king to decide," Grand Maester Pycelle announced ponderously. 
+The king! Sansa blinked back her tears. Joffrey was the king now, she thought. Her gallant prince would 
+never hurt her father, no matter what he might have done. If she went to him and pleaded for mercy, she 
+was certain he'd listen. He had to listen, he loved her, even the queen said so. Joff would need to punish 
+Father, the lords would expect it, but perhaps he could send him back to Winterfell, or exile him to one 
+of the Free Cities across the narrow sea. It would only have to be for a few years. By then she and 
+Joffrey would be married. Once she was queen, she could persuade Joff to bring Father back and grant 
+him a pardon. 
+Only ... if Mother or Robb did anything treasonous, called the banners or refused to swear fealty or 
+anything, it would all go wrong. Her Joffrey was good and kind, she knew it in her heart, but a king had 
+to be stern with rebels. She had to make them understand, she had to! 
+"I'll . I'll write the letters," Sansa told them. 
+With a smile as warm as the sunrise, Cersei Lannister leaned close and kissed her gently on the cheek. "I 
+knew you would. Joffrey will be so proud when I tell him what courage and good sense you've shown 
+here today." 
+In the end, she wrote four letters. To her mother, the Lady Catelyn Stark, and to her brothers at 
+Winterfell, and to her aunt and her grandfather as well, Lady Lysa Arryn of the Eyrie, and Lord Hoster 
+Tully of Riverrun. By the time she had done, her fingers were cramped and stiff and stained with ink. 
+Varys had her father's seal. She warmed the pale white beeswax over a candle, poured it carefully, and 
+watched as the eunuch stamped each letter with the direwolf of House Stark. 
+Jeyne Poole and all her things were gone when Ser Mandon Moore returned Sansa to the high tower of 
+Maegor's Holdfast. No more weeping, she thought gratefully. Yet somehow it seemed colder with Jeyne 
+gone, even after she'd built a fire. She pulled a chair close to the hearth, took down one of her favorite 
+books, and lost herself in the stories of Florian and Jonquil, of Lady Shella and the Rainbow Knight, of 
+valiant Prince Aemon and his doomed love for his brother's queen. 
+It was not until later that night, as she was drifting off to sleep, that Sansa realized she had forgotten to 
+ask about her sister. 
+JON 
+"Othor," announced Ser Jaremy Rykker, "beyond a doubt. And this one was Jafer Flowers." He turned 
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+the corpse over with his foot, and the dead white face stared up at the overcast sky with blue, blue eyes. 
+"They were Ben Stark's men, both of them." 
+My uncle's men, Jon thought numbly. He remembered how he'd pleaded to ride with them. Gods, I was 
+such a green boy. If he had taken me, it might be me lying here . . . 
+Jafer's right wrist ended in the ruin of torn flesh and splintered bone left by Ghost'sjaws. His right hand 
+was floating in ajar of vinegar back in Maester Aemon's tower. His left hand, still at the end of his arm, 
+was as black as his cloak. 
+"Gods have mercy," the Old Bear muttered. He swung down from his garron, handing his reins to Jon. 
+The morning was unnaturally warm; beads of sweat dotted the Lord Commander's broad forehead like 
+dew on a melon. His horse was nervous, rolling her eyes, backing away from the dead men as far as her 
+lead would allow. Jon led her off a few paces, fighting to keep her from bolting. The horses did not like 
+the feel of this place. For that matter, neither did Jon. 
+The dogs liked it least of all. Ghost had led the party here; the pack of hounds had been useless. When 
+Bass the kennelmaster had tried to get them to take the scent from the severed hand, they had gone wild, 
+yowling and barking, fighting to get away. Even now they were snarling and whimpering by turns, pulling 
+at their leashes while Chett cursed them for curs. 
+It is only a wood, Jon told himself, and they're only dead men. He had seen dead men before . . . 
+Last night he had dreamt the Winterfell dream again. He was wandering the empty castle, searching for 
+his father, descending into the crypts. Only this time the dream had gone further than before. In the dark 
+he'd heard the scrape of stone on stone. When he turned he saw that the vaults were opening, one after 
+the other. As the dead kings came stumbling from their cold black graves, Jon had woken in pitchdark, 
+his heart hammering. Even when Ghost leapt up on the bed to nuzzle at his face, he could not shake his 
+deep sense of terror. He dared not go back to sleep. Instead he had climbed the Wall and walked, 
+restless, until he saw the light of the dawn off to the cast. It was only a dream. I am a brother of the 
+Night's Watch now, not a ffightened boy. 
+Samwell Tarly huddled beneath the trees, half-hidden behind the horses. His round fat face was the 
+color of curdled milk. So far he had not lurched off to the woods to retch, but he had not so much as 
+glanced at the dead men either. "I can't look," he whispered miserably. 
+"You have to look," Jon told him, keeping his voice low so the others would not hear. "Maester Aemon 
+sent you to be his eyes, didn't he? What good are eyes if they're shut?" 
+"Yes, but . . . I'm such a coward, Jon." 
+Jon put a hand on Sam's shoulder. "We have a dozen rangers with us, and the dogs, even Ghost. No 
+one will hurt you, Sam. Go ahead and look. The first look is the hardest." 
+Sam gave a tremulous nod, working up his courage with a visible effort. Slowly he swiveled his head. 
+His eyes widened, but Jon held his arm so he could not turn away. 
+"Ser Jaremy," the Old Bear asked gruffly, "Ben Stark had six men with him when he rode from the Wall. 
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+Where are the others?" 
+Ser Jaremy shook his head. "Would that I knew." 
+Plainly Mormont was not pleased with that answer. "Two of our brothers butchered almost within sight 
+of the Wall, yet your rangers heard nothing, saw nothing. Is this what the Night's Watch has fallen to? Do 
+we still sweep these woods?" 
+"Yes, my lord, but-" 
+"Do we still mount watches?" 
+"We do, but-" 
+"This man wears a hunting horn." Mormont pointed at Othor. "Must I suppose that he died without 
+sounding it? Or have your rangers all gone deaf as well as blind?" 
+Ser Jaremy bristled, his face taut with anger. "No horn was blown, my lord, or my rangers would have 
+heard it. I do not have sufficient men to mount as many patrols as I should like . . . and since Benjen was 
+lost, we have stayed closer to the Wall than we were wont to do before, by your own command." 
+The Old Bear grunted. "Yes. Well. Be that as it may." He made an impatient gesture. "Tell me how they 
+died." 
+Squatting beside the dead man he had named Jafer Flowers, Ser Jaremy grasped his head by the scalp. 
+The hair came out between his fingers, brittle as straw. The knight cursed and shoved at the face with the 
+heel of his hand. A great gash in the side of the corpse's neck opened like a mouth, crusted with dried 
+blood. Only a few ropes of pale tendon still attached the head to the neck. "This was done with an axe." 
+"Aye," muttered Dywen, the old forester. "Belike the axe that Othor carried, m'lord." 
+Jon could feel his breakfast churning in his belly, but he pressed his lips together and made himself look 
+at the second body. Othor had been a big ugly man, and he made a big ugly corpse. No axe was in 
+evidence. Jon remembered Othor; he had been the one bellowing the bawdy song as the rangers rode 
+out. His singing days were done. His flesh was blanched white as milk, everywhere but his hands. His 
+hands were black like Jafer's. Blossoms of hard cracked blood decorated the mortal wounds that 
+covered him like a rash, breast and groin and throat. Yet his eyes were still open. They stared up at the 
+sky, blue as sapphires. 
+Ser Jaremy stood. "The wildlings have axes too." 
+Mormont rounded on him. "So you believe this is Mance Rayder's work? This close to the Wall?" 
+"Who else, my lord?" 
+Jon could have told him. He knew, they all knew, yet no man of them would say the words. The Others 
+are only a story, a tale to make children shiver. If they ever lived at all, they are gone eight thousand 
+years. Even the thought made him feel foolish; he was a man grown now, a black brother of the Night's 
+Watch, not the boy who'd once sat at Old Nan's feet with Bran and Robb and Arya. 
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+Yet Lord Commander Mormont gave a snort. "If Ben Stark had come under wildling attack a half day's 
+ride from Castle Black, he 
+would have returned for more men, chased the killers through all seven hells and brought me back their 
+heads." 
+"Unless he was slain as well," Ser Jaremy insisted. 
+The words hurt, even now. It had been so long, it seemed folly to cling to the hope that Ben Stark was 
+still alive, but Jon Snow was nothing if not stubborn. 
+"It has been close on half a year since Benjen left us, my lord," Ser Jaremy went on. "The forest is vast. 
+The wildlings might have fallen on him anywhere. I'd wager these two were the last survivors of his party, 
+on their way back to us . . . but the enemy caught them before they could reach the safety of the Wall. 
+The corpses are still fresh, these men cannot have been dead more than a day 
+"No, " Samwell Tarly squeaked. 
+Jon was startled. Sam's nervous, high-pitched voice was the last he would have expected to hear. The 
+fat boy was frightened of the officers, and Ser Jaremy was not known for his patience. 
+"I did not ask for your views, boy," Rykker said coldly. 
+"Let him speak, ser," Jon blurted. 
+Mormont's eyes flicked from Sam to Jon and back again. "If the lad has something to say, I'll hear him 
+out. Come closer, boy. We can't see you behind those horses." 
+Sam edged past Jon and the garrons, sweating profusely. "My lord, it . . . it can't be a day or . . . look . . 
+. the blood . . ." 
+"Yes?" Mormont growled impatiently. "Blood, what of it?" 
+"He soils his smallclothes at the sight of it," Chett shouted out, and the rangers laughed. 
+Sam mopped at the sweat on his brow. "You . . . you can see where Ghost . . . Jon's direwolf . . . you 
+can see where he tore off that man's hand, and yet . . . the stump hasn't bled, look . . ." He waved a 
+hand. "My father . . . L-lord Randyll, he, he made me watch him dress animals sometimes, when . . . after 
+. . ." Sam shook his head from side to side, his chins quivering. Now that he had looked at the bodies, he 
+could not seem to look away. "A fresh kill . . . the blood would still flow, my lords. Later . . . later it 
+would be clotted, like a . . . a jelly, thick and . . . and . . ." He looked as though he was going to be sick. 
+"This man . . . look at the wrist, it's all . . . crusty . . . dry . . . like . . . " 
+Jon saw at once what Sam meant. He could see the torn veins in the dead man's wrist, iron worms in the 
+pale flesh. His blood was a black dust. Yet Jaremy Rykker was unconvinced. "If they'd been dead much 
+longer than a day, they'd be ripe by now, boy. They don't even smell." 
+Dywen, the gnarled old forester who liked to boast that he could 
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+smell snow coming on, sidled closer to the corpses and took a whiff. "Well, they're no pansy flowers, 
+but ... m'lord has the truth of it. There's no corpse stink." 
+"They . . . they aren't rotting." Sam pointed, his fat finger shaking only a little. "Look, there's . . . there's 
+no maggots or . . . or . . . worms or anything . . . they've been lying here in the woods, but they . . . they 
+haven't been chewed or eaten by animals . . . only Ghost . . . otherwise they're . . . they're . . ." 
+"Untouched," Jon said softly. "And Ghost is different. The dogs and the horses won't go near them." 
+The rangers exchanged glances; they could see it was true, every man of them. Mormont frowned, 
+glancing from the corpses to the dogs. "Chett, bring the hounds closer." 
+Chett tried, cursing, yanking on the leashes, giving one animal a lick of his boot. Most of the dogs just 
+whimpered and planted their feet. He tried dragging one. The bitch resisted, growling and squirming as if 
+to escape her collar. Finally she lunged at him. Chett dropped the leash and stumbled backward. The 
+dog leapt over him and bounded off into the trees. 
+"This . . . this is all wrong," Sam Tarly said earnestly. "The blood . . . there's bloodstains on their clothes, 
+and . . . and their flesh, dry and hard, but . . . there's none on the ground, or . . . anywhere. With those . . 
+. those . . . those . . ." Sam made himself swallow, took a deep breath. "With those wounds . . . terrible 
+wounds . . . there should be blood all over. Shouldn't there?" 
+Dywen sucked at his wooden teeth. "Might be they didn't die here. Might be someone brought 'ern and 
+left 'ern for us. A warning, as like." The old forester peered down suspiciously. "And might be I'm a fool, 
+but I don't know that Othor never had no blue eyes afore." 
+Ser Jaremy looked startled. "Neither did Flowers," he blurted, turning to stare at the dead man. 
+A silence fell over the wood. For a moment all they heard was Sam's heavy breathing and the wet sound 
+of Dywen sucking on his teeth. Jon squatted beside Ghost. 
+"Bum them, " someone whispered. One of the rangers; Jon could not have said who. "Yes, burn them," a 
+second voice urged. 
+The Old Bear gave a stubborn shake of his head. "Not yet. I want Maester Aemon to have a look at 
+them. We'll bring them back to the Wall." 
+Some commands are more easily given than obeyed. They wrapped the dead men in cloaks, but when 
+Hake and Dywen tried to tie one onto a horse, the animal went mad, screaming and rearing, lashing out 
+with its hooves, even biting at Ketter when he ran to help. The rangers had no better luck with the other 
+garrons; not even the most placid wanted any part of these burdens. In the end they were forced to hack 
+off branches and fashion crude slings to carry the corpses back on foot. It was well past midday by the 
+time they started back. 
+"I will have these woods searched," Mormont commanded Ser Jaremy as they set out. "Every tree, 
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+every rock, every bush, and every foot of muddy ground within ten leagues of here. Use all the men you 
+have, and if you do not have enough, borrow hunters and foresters from the stewards. If Ben and the 
+others are out here, dead or alive, I will have them found. And if there is anyone else in these woods, I 
+will know of it. You are to track them and take them, alive if possible. Is that understood?" 
+"It is, my lord," Ser Jaremy said. "It will be done." 
+After that, Mormont rode in silence, brooding. Jon followed close behind him; as the Lord 
+Commander's steward, that was his place. The day was grey, damp, overcast, the sort of day that made 
+you wish for rain. No wind stirred the wood; the air hung humid and heavy, and Jon's clothes clung to his 
+skin. It was warm. Too warm. The Wall was weeping copiously, had been weeping for days, and 
+sometimes Jon even imagined it was shrinking. 
+The old men called this weather spirit summer, and said it meant the season was giving up its ghosts at 
+last. After this the cold would come, they warned, and a long summer always meant a long winter. This 
+summer had lasted ten years. Jon had been a babe in arms when it began. 
+Ghost ran with them for a time and then vanished among the trees. Without the direwolf, Jon felt almost 
+naked. He found himself glancing at every shadow with unease. Unbidden, he thought back on the tales 
+that Old Nan used to tell them, when he was a boy at Winterfell. He could almost hear her voice again, 
+and the click-click-click of her needles. In that darkness, the Others came riding, she used to say, 
+dropping her voice lower and lower. Cold and dead they were, and they hated iron and fire and the 
+touch of the sun, and every living creature with hot blood in its veins. Holdfasts and cities and kingdoms 
+of men allfell before them, as they moved south on pale dead horses, leading hosts of the slain. They fed 
+their dead servants on the flesh of human children . . . 
+When he caught his first glimpse of the Wall looming above the tops of an ancient gnarled oak, Jon was 
+vastly relieved. Mormont reined up suddenly and turned in his saddle. "Tarly," he barked, "come here." 
+Jon saw the start of fright on Sam's face as he lumbered up on his mare; doubtless he thought he was in 
+trouble. "You're fat but you're 
+not stupid, boy," the Old Bear said gruffly. "You did well back there. And you, Snow." 
+Sam blushed a vivid crimson and tripped over his own tongue as he tried to stammer out a courtesy. Jon 
+had to smile. 
+When they emerged from under the trees, Mormont spurred his tough little garron to a trot. Ghost came 
+streaking out from the woods to meet them, licking his chops, his muzzle red from prey. High above, the 
+men on the Wall saw the column approaching. Jon heard the deep, throaty call of the watchman's great 
+horn, calling out across the miles; a single long blast that shuddered through the trees and echoed off the 
+ice. 
+UUUUUUUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooo. 
+The sound faded slowly to silence. One blast meant rangers returning, and Jon thought, I was a rangerfor 
+one day, at least. Whatever may come, they cannot take that away from me. 
+Bowen Marsh was waiting at the first gate as they led their garrons through the icy tunnel. The Lord 
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+Steward was red-faced and agitated. "My lord," he blurted at Mormont as he swung open the iron bars, 
+"there's been a bird, you must come at once." 
+"What is it, man?" Mormont said gruffly. 
+Curiously, Marsh glanced at Jon before he answered. "Maester Aemon has the letter. He's waiting in 
+your solar." 
+"Very well. Jon, see to my horse, and tell Ser Jaremy to put the dead men in a storeroom until the 
+maester is ready for them." Mormont strode away grumbling. 
+As they led their horses back to the stable, Jon was uncomfortably aware that people were watching 
+him. Ser Alliser Thorne was drilling his boys in the yard, but he broke off to stare at Jon, a faint half smile 
+on his lips. One-armed Donal Noye stood in the door of the armory. "The gods be with you, Snow," he 
+called out. 
+Something's wrong, Jon thought. Something's very wrong. 
+The dead men were carried to one of the storerooms along the base of the Wall, a dark cold cell 
+chiseled from the ice and used to keep meat and grain and sometimes even beer. Jon saw that 
+Mormont's horse was fed and watered and groomed before he took care of his own. Afterward he 
+sought out his friends. Grenn and Toad were on watch, but he found Pyp in the common hall. "What's 
+happened?" he asked. 
+Pyp lowered his voice. "The king's dead." 
+Jon was stunned. Robert Baratheon had looked old and fat when he visited Winterfell, yet he'd seemed 
+hale enough, and there'd been no talk of illness. "How can you know?" 
+"One of the guards overheard Clydas reading the letter to Maester Aemon." Pyp leaned close. "Jon, I'm 
+sorry. He was your father's friend, wasn't he?" 
+"They were as close as brothers, once." Jon wondered if Joffrey would keep his father as the King's 
+Hand. It did not seem likely. That might mean Lord Eddard would return to Winterfell, and his sisters as 
+well. He might even be allowed to visit them, with Lord Mormont's permission. It would be good to see 
+Arya's grin again and to talk with his father. I will ask him about my mother, he resolved. I am a man 
+now, it is past time he told me. Even if she was a whore, I don't care, I want to know. 
+"I heard Hake say the dead men were your uncle's," Pyp said. 
+"Yes," Jon replied. "Two of the six he took with him. They'd been dead a long time, only . . . the bodies 
+are queer." 
+"Queer?" Pyp was all curiosity. "How queer?" 
+"Sam will tell you." Jon did not want to talk of it. "I should see if the Old Bear has need of me." 
+He walked to the Lord Commander's Tower alone, with a curious sense of apprehension. The brothers 
+on guard eyed him solemnly as he approached. "The Old Bear's in his solar," one of them announced. 
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+"He was asking for you." 
+Jon nodded. He should have come straight from the stable. He climbed the tower steps briskly. He 
+wants wine or a fire in his hearth, that's all, he told himself. 
+When he entered the solar, Mormont's raven screamed at him. "Corn!" the bird shrieked. "Corn! Corn! 
+Corn!" 
+"Don't you believe it, I just fed him," the Old Bear growled. He was seated by the window, reading a 
+letter. "Bring me a cup of wine, and pour one for yourself." 
+"For myself, my lord?" 
+Mormont lifted his eyes from the letter to stare at Jon. There was pity in that look; he could taste it. "You 
+heard me." 
+Jon poured with exaggerated care, vaguely aware that he was drawing out the act. When the cups were 
+filled, he would have no choice but to face whatever was in that letter. Yet all too soon, they were filled. 
+"Sit, boy," Mormont commanded him. "Drink." 
+Jon remained standing. "It's my father, isn't it?" 
+The Old Bear tapped the letter with a finger. "Your father and the king," he rumbled. "I won't lie to you, 
+it's grievous news. I never thought to see another king, not at my age, with Robert half my years and 
+strong as a bull." He took a gulp of wine. "They say the king loved to hunt. The things we love destroy us 
+every time, lad. Remember that. 
+My son loved that young wife of his. Vain woman. If not for her, he would never have thought to sell 
+those poachers." 
+Jon could scarcely follow what he was saying. "My lord, I don't understand. What's happened to my 
+father?" 
+"I told you to sit," Mormont grumbled. "Sit, " the raven screamed. "And have a drink, damn you. That's 
+a command, Snow." 
+Jon sat, and took a sip of wine. 
+"Lord Eddard has been imprisoned. He is charged with treason. It is said he plotted with Robert's 
+brothers to deny the throne to Prince Joffrey." 
+"No," Jon said at once. "That couldn't be. My father would never betray the king!" 
+"Be that as it may," said Mormont. "It is not for me to say. Nor for you.,, 
+"But it's a lie," Jon insisted. How could they think his father was a traitor, had they all gone mad? Lord 
+Eddard Stark would never dishonor himself . . . would he? 
+He fathered a bastard, a small voice whispered inside him. Where was the honor in that? And your 
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+mother, what of her? He will not even speak her name. 
+"My lord, what will happen to him? Will they kill him?" 
+"As to that, I cannot say, lad. I mean to send a letter. I knew some of the king's councillors in my youth. 
+Old Pycelle, Lord Stannis, Ser Barristan . . . Whatever your father has done, or hasn't done, he is a great 
+lord. He must be allowed to take the black and join us here. Gods knows, we need men of Lord 
+Eddard's ability." 
+Jon knew that other men accused of treason had been allowed to redeem their honor on the Wall in 
+days past. Why not Lord Eddard? His father here. That was a strange thought, and strangely 
+uncomfortable. It would be a monstrous injustice to strip him of Winterfell and force him to take the 
+black, and yet if it meant his life . . . 
+And would Joffrey allow it? He remembered the prince at Winterfell, the way he'd mocked Robb and 
+Ser Rodrik in the yard. Jon himself he had scarcely even noticed; bastards were beneath even his 
+contempt. "My lord, will the king listen to you?" 
+The Old Bear shrugged. "A boy king . . . I imagine he'll listen to his mother. A pity the dwarf isn't with 
+them. He's the lad's uncle, and he saw our need when he visited us. It was a bad thing, your lady mother 
+taking him captive-" 
+"Lady Stark is not my mother," Jon reminded him sharply. Tyrion Lannister had been a friend to him. If 
+Lord Eddard was killed, she 
+would be as much to blame as the queen. "My lord, what of my sisters? Arya and Sansa, they were with 
+my father, do you know-" 
+"Pycelle makes no mention of them, but doubtless they'll be treated gently. I will ask about them when I 
+write." Mormont shook his head. "This could not have happened at a worse time. If ever the realm 
+needed a strong king . . . there are dark days and cold nights ahead, I feel it in my bones . . ." He gave 
+Jon a long shrewd look. "I hope you are not thinking of doing anything stupid, boy." 
+He's myfather, Jon wanted to say, but he knew that Mormont would not want to hear it. His throat was 
+dry. He made himself take another sip of wine. 
+"Your duty is here now," the Lord Commander reminded him. "Your old life ended when you took the 
+black." His bird made a raucous echo. "Black. " Mormont took no notice. "Whatever they do in King's 
+Landing is none of our concern." When Jon did not answer, the old man finished his wine and said, 
+"You're free to go. I'll have no further need of you today. On the morrow you can help me write that 
+letter." 
+Jon did not remember standing or leaving the solar. The next he knew, he was descending the tower 
+steps, thinking, This is my father, my sisters, how can it be none of my concern? 
+Outside, one of the guards looked at him and said, "Be strong, boy. The gods are cruel." 
+They know, Jon realized. "My father is no traitor," he said hoarsely. Even the words stuck in his throat, 
+as if to choke him. The wind was rising, and it seemed colder in the yard than it had when he'd gone in. 
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+Spirit summer was drawing to an end. 
+The rest of the afternoon passed as if in a dream. Jon could not have said where he walked, what he did, 
+who he spoke with. Ghost was with him, he knew that much. The silent presence of the direwolf gave 
+him comfort. The girls do not even have that much, he thought. Their wolves might have kept them safe, 
+but Lady is dead and Nymeria's lost, they're all alone. 
+A north wind had begun to blow by the time the sun went down. Jon could hear it skirling against the 
+Wall and over the icy battlements as he went to the common hall for the evening meal. Hobb had cooked 
+up a venison stew, thick with barley, onions, and carrots. When he spooned an extra portion onto Jon's 
+plate and gave him the crusty heel of the bread, he knew what it meant. He knows. He looked around 
+the hall, saw heads turn quickly, eyes politely averted. They all know. 
+His friends rallied to him. "We asked the septon to light a candle for your father," Matthar told him. "It's 
+a lie, we all know it's a lie, even 
+Grenn knows it's a lie," Pyp chimed in. Grenn nodded, and Sam clasped Jon's hand, "You're my brother 
+now, so he's my father too," the fat boy said. "If you want to go out to the weirwoods and pray to the old 
+gods, I'll go with you." 
+The weirwoods were beyond the Wall, yet he knew Sam meant what he said. They are my brothers, he 
+thought. As much as Robb and Bran and Rickon . . . 
+And then he heard the laughter, sharp and cruel as a whip, and the voice of Ser Alliser Thorne. "Not 
+only a bastard, but a traitor's bastard," he was telling the men around him. 
+In the blink of an eye, Jon had vaulted onto the table, dagger in his hand. Pyp made a grab for him, but 
+he wrenched his leg away, and then he was sprinting down the table and kicking the bowl from Ser 
+Alliser's hand. Stew went flying everywhere, spattering the brothers. Thorne recoiled. People were 
+shouting, but Jon Snow did not hear them. He lunged at Ser Alliser's face with the dagger, slashing at 
+those cold onyx eyes, but Sam threw himself between them and before Jon could get around him, Pyp 
+was on his back clinging like a monkey, and Grenn was grabbing his arm while Toad wrenched the knife 
+from his fingers. 
+Later, much later, after they had marched him back to his sleeping cell, Mormont came down to see him, 
+raven on his shoulder. "I told you not to do anything stupid, boy," the Old Bear said. "Boy, " the bird 
+chorused. Mormont shook his head, disgusted. "And to think I had high hopes for you." 
+They took his knife and his sword and told him he was not to leave his cell until the high officers met to 
+decide what was to be done with him. And then they placed a guard outside his door to make certain he 
+obeyed. His friends were not allowed to see him, but the Old Bear did relent and permit him Ghost, so 
+he was not utterly alone. 
+"My father is no traitor," he told the direwolf when the rest had gone. Ghost looked at him in silence. Jon 
+slumped against the wall, hands around his knees, and stared at the candle on the table beside his narrow 
+bed. The flame flickered and swayed, the shadows moved around him, the room seemed to grow darker 
+and colder. I will not sleep tonight, Jon thought. 
+Yet he must have dozed. When he woke, his legs were stiff and cramped and the candle had long since 
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+burned out. Ghost stood on his hind legs, scrabbling at the door. Jon was startled to see how tall he'd 
+grown. "Ghost, what is it?" he called softly. The direwolf turned his head and looked down at him, baring 
+his fangs in a silent snarl. Has he gone mad? Jon wondered. "It's me, Ghost," he murmured, trying not 
+to sound afraid. Yet he was trembling, violently. When had it gotten so cold? 
+Ghost backed away from the door. There were deep gouges where he'd raked the wood. Jon watched 
+him with mounting disquiet. "There's someone out there, isn't there?" he whispered. Crouching, the 
+direwolf crept backward, white fur rising on the back of his neck. The guard, he thought, they left a man 
+to guard my door, Ghost smells him through the door, that's all it is. 
+Slowly, Jon pushed himself to his feet. He was shivering uncontrollably, wishing he still had a sword. 
+Three quick steps brought him to the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled it inward. The creak of the 
+hinges almost made him jump. 
+His guard was sprawled bonelessly across the narrow steps, looking up at him. Looking up at him, even 
+though he was lying on his stomach. His head had been twisted completely around. 
+It can't be, Jon told himself. This is the Lord Commander's Tower, it's guarded day and night, this 
+couldn't happen, it's a dream, I'm having a nightmare. 
+Ghost slid past him, out the door. The wolf started up the steps, stopped, looked back at Jon. That was 
+when he heard it; the soft scrape of a boot on stone, the sound of a latch turning. The sounds came from 
+above. From the Lord Commander's chambers. 
+A nightmare this might be, yet it was no dream. 
+The guard's sword was in its sheath. Jon knelt and worked it free. The heft of steel in his fist made him 
+bolder. He moved up the steps, Ghost padding silently before him. Shadows lurked in every turn of the 
+stair. Jon crept up warily, probing any suspicious darkness with the point of his sword. 
+Suddenly he heard the shriek of Mormont's raven. "Corn, " the bird was screaming. "Corn, corn, corn, 
+corn, corn, corn. " Ghost bounded ahead, and Jon came scrambling after. The door to Mormont's solar 
+was wide open. The direwolf plunged through. Jon stopped in the doorway, blade in hand, giving his 
+eyes a moment to adjust. Heavy drapes had been pulled across the windows, and the darkness was 
+black as ink. "Who's there?" he called out. 
+Then he saw it, a shadow in the shadows, sliding toward the inner door that led to Mormont's sleeping 
+cell, a man-shape all in black, cloaked and hooded . . . but beneath the hood, its eyes shone with an icy 
+blue radiance . . . 
+Ghost leapt. Man and wolf went down together with neither scream nor snarl, rolling, smashing into a 
+chair, knocking over a table laden with papers. Mormont's raven was flapping overhead, screaming, 
+"Corn, corn, corn, corn. " Jon felt as blind as Maester Aemon. Keeping the wall to his back, he slid 
+toward the window and ripped down the curtain. Moonlight flooded the solar. He glimpsed black hands 
+buried in white fur, swollen dark fingers tightening around his direwolf's throat. Ghost was twisting and 
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+snapping, legs flailing in the air, but he could not break free. 
+Jon had no time to be afraid. He threw himself forward, shouting, bringing down the longsword with all 
+his weight behind it. Steel sheared through sleeve and skin and bone, yet the sound was wrong somehow. 
+The smell that engulfed him was so queer and cold he almost gagged. He saw arm and hand on the floor, 
+black fingers wriggling in a pool of moonlight. Ghost wrenched free of the other hand and crept away, 
+red tongue lolling from his mouth. 
+The hooded man lifted his pale moon face, and Jon slashed at it without hesitation. The sword laid the 
+intruder open to the bone, taking off half his nose and opening a gash cheek to cheek under those eyes, 
+eyes, eyes like blue stars burning. Jon knew that face. Othor, he thought, reeling back. Gods, he's dead, 
+he's dead, I saw him dead. 
+He felt something scrabble at his ankle. Black fingers clawed at his calf. The arm was crawling up his leg, 
+ripping at wool and flesh. Shouting with revulsion, Jon pried the fingers off his leg with the point of his 
+sword and flipped the thing away. It lay writhing, fingers opening and closing. 
+The corpse lurched forward. There was no blood. One-armed, face cut near in half, it seemed to feel 
+nothing. Jon held the longsword before him. "Stay away!" he commanded, his voice gone shrill. "Corn, " 
+screamed the raven, "corn, corn. " The severed arm was wriggling out of its torn sleeve, a pale snake 
+with a black five-fingered head. Ghost pounced and got it between his teeth. Finger bones crunched. Jon 
+hacked at the corpse's neck, felt the steel bite deep and hard. 
+Dead Othor slammed into him, knocking him off his feet. 
+Jon's breath went out of him as the fallen table caught him between his shoulder blades. The sword, 
+where was the sword? He'd lost the damned sword! When he opened his mouth to scream, the wight 
+jammed its black corpse fingers into Jon's mouth. Gagging, he tried to shove it off, but the dead man was 
+too heavy. Its hand forced itself farther down his throat, icy cold, choking him. Its face was against his 
+own, filling the world. Frost covered its eyes, sparkling blue. Jon raked cold flesh with his nails and 
+kicked at the thing's legs. He tried to bite, tried to punch, tried to breathe . . . 
+And suddenly the corpse's weight was gone, its fingers ripped from his throat. It was all Jon could do to 
+roll over, retching and shaking. 
+Ghost had it again. He watched as the direwolf buried his teeth in the wight's gut and began to rip and 
+tear. He watched, only half conscious, for a long moment before he finally remembered to look for his 
+sword . . . 
+* * ' and saw Lord Mormont, naked and groggy from sleep, standing in the doorway with an oil lamp in 
+hand. Gnawed and fingerless, the arm thrashed on the floor, wriggling toward him. 
+Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away and snatched 
+the lamp from the Old Bear's fingers. The flame flickered and almost died. "Bum!" the raven cawed. 
+"Bum, bum, bum!" 
+Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he'd ripped from the window. He flung the lamp into the puddled cloth 
+with both hands. Metal crunched, glass shattered, oil spewed, and the hangings went up in a great 
+whoosh of flame. The heat of it on his face was sweeter than any kiss Jon had ever known. "Ghost!" he 
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+shouted. 
+The direwolf wrenched free and came to him as the wight struggled to rise, dark snakes spilling from the 
+great wound in its belly. Jon plunged his hand into the flames, grabbed a fistful of the burning drapes, and 
+whipped them at the dead man. Let it bum, he prayed as the cloth smothered the corpse, gods, please, 
+please, let it bum. 
+BRAN 
+The Karstarks came in on a cold windy morning, bringing three hundred horsemen and near two 
+thousand foot from their castle at Karhold. The steel points of their pikes winked in the pale sunlight as 
+the column approached. A man went before them, pounding out a slow, deep-throated marching rhythm 
+on a drum that was bigger than he was, boom, boom, boom. 
+Bran watched them come from a guard turret atop the outer wall, peering through Maester Luwin's 
+bronze far-eye while perched on Hodor's shoulders. Lord Rickard himself led them, his sons Harrion and 
+Eddard and Torrhen riding beside him beneath night-black banners emblazoned with the white sunburst 
+of their House. Old Nan said they had Stark blood in them, going back hundreds of years, but they did 
+not look like Starks to Bran. They were big men, and fierce, faces covered with thick beards, hair worn 
+loose past the shoulders. Their cloaks were made of skins, the pelts of bear and sea] and wolf. 
+They were the last, he knew. The other lords were already here, with their hosts. Bran yearned to ride 
+out among them, to see the winter houses full to bursting, the jostling crowds in the market square every 
+morning, the streets rutted and torn by wheel and hoof. But Robb had forbidden him to leave the castle. 
+"We have no men to spare to guard you," his brother had explained. 
+"I'll take Summer," Bran argued. 
+"Don't act the boy with me, Bran," Robb said. "You know better than that. Only two days ago one of 
+Lord Bolton's men knifed one of Lord Cerwyn's at the Smoking Log. Our lady mother would skin me for 
+a pelt if I let you put yourself at risk." He was using the voice of Robb the Lord when he said it; Bran 
+knew that meant there was no appeal. 
+It was because of what had happened in the wolfswood, he knew. The memory still gave him bad 
+dreams. He had been as helpless as a baby, no more able to defend himself than Rickon would have 
+been. Less, even . . . Rickon would have kicked them, at the least. It shamed him. He was only a few 
+years younger than Robb; if his brother was almost a man grown, so was he. He should have been able 
+to protect himself. 
+A year ago, before, he would have visited the town even if it meant climbing over the walls by himself. In 
+those days he could run down stairs, get on and off his pony by himself, and wield a wooden sword good 
+enough to knock Prince Tommen in the dirt. Now he could only watch, peering out through Maester 
+Luwin's lens tube. The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist of the Glovers, silver on 
+scarlet; Lady Mormont's black bear; the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the 
+Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the 
+Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains. 
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+And soon enough he learned the faces too, when the lords and their sons and knights retainer came to 
+Winterfell to feast. Even the Great Hall was not large enough to seat all of them at once, so Robb hosted 
+each of the principal bannermen in turn. Bran was always given the place of honor at his brother's right 
+hand. Some of the lords bannermen gave him queer hard stares as he sat there, as if they wondered by 
+what right a green boy should be placed above them, and him a cripple too. 
+"How many is it now?" Bran asked Maester Luwin as Lord Karstark and his sons rode through the 
+gates in the outer wall. 
+"Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no matter." 
+"How many knights?" 
+"Few enough," the maester said with a touch of impatience. "To be a knight, you must stand your vigil in 
+a sept, and be anointed with the seven oils to consecrate your vows. In the north, only a few of the great 
+houses worship the Seven. The rest honor the old gods, and name no knights . . . but those lords and 
+their sons and sworn swords are no 
+less fierce or loyal or honorable. A man's worth is not marked by a ser before his name. As I have told 
+you a hundred times before." 
+"Still," said Bran, "how many knights?" 
+Maester Luwin sighed. "Three hundred, perhaps four . . . among three thousand armored lances who are 
+not knights." 
+"Lord Karstark is the last," Bran said thoughtfully. "Robb will feast him tonight." 
+"No doubt he will." 
+"How long before . . . before they go?" 
+"He must march soon, or not at all," Maester Luwin said. "The winter town is full to bursting, and this 
+army of his will eat the countryside clean if it camps here much longer. Others are waiting to join him all 
+along the kingsroad, barrow knights and crannogmen and the Lords Manderly and Flint. The fighting has 
+begun in the riverlands, and your brother has many leagues to go." 
+"I know." Bran felt as miserable as he sounded. He handed the bronze tube back to the maester, and 
+noticed how thin Luwin's hair had grown on top. He could see the pink of scalp showing through. It felt 
+queer to look down on him this way, when he'd spent his whole life looking up at him, but when you sat 
+on Hodor's back you looked down on everyone. "I don't want to watch anymore. Hodor, take me back 
+to the keep." 
+"Hodor," said Hodor. 
+Maester Luwin tucked the tube up his sleeve. "Bran, your lord brother will not have time to see you 
+now. He must greet Lord Karstark and his sons and make them welcome." 
+"I won't trouble Robb. I want to visit the godswood." He put his hand on Hodor's shoulder. "Hodor." 
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+A series of chisel-cut handholds made a ladder in the granite of the tower's inner wall. Hodor hummed 
+tunelessly as he went down hand under hand, Bran bouncing against his back in the wicker seat that 
+Maester Luwin had fashioned for him. Luwin had gotten the idea from the baskets the women used to 
+carry firewood on their backs; after that it had been a simple matter of cutting legholes and attaching 
+some new straps to spread Bran's weight more evenly. It was not as good as riding Dancer, but there 
+were places Dancer could not go, and this did not shame Bran the way it did when Hodor carried him in 
+his arms like a baby. Hodor seemed to like it too, though with Hodor it was hard to tell. The only tricky 
+part was doors. Sometimes Hodor forgot that he had Bran on his back, and that could be painful when 
+he went through a door. 
+For near a fortnight there had been so many comings and goings 
+that Robb ordered both portcullises kept up and the drawbridge down between them, even in the dead 
+of night. A long column of armored lancers was crossing the moat between the walls when Bran emerged 
+from the tower; Karstark men, following their lords into the castle. They wore black iron halfhelms and 
+black woolen cloaks patterned with the white sunburst. Hodor trotted along beside them, smiling to 
+himself, his boots thudding against the wood of the drawbridge. The riders gave them queer looks as they 
+went by, and once Bran heard someone guffaw. He refused to let it trouble him. "Men will look at you," 
+Maester Luwin had warned him the first time they had strapped the wicker basket around Hodor's chest. 
+"They will look, and they will talk, and some will mock you." Let them mock, Bran thought. No one 
+mocked him in his bedchamber, but he would not live his life in bed. 
+As they passed beneath the gatehouse portcullis, Bran put two fingers into his mouth and whistled. 
+Summer came loping across the yard. Suddenly the Karstark lancers were fighting for control, as their 
+horses rolled their eyes and whickered in dismay. One stallion reared, screaming, his rider cursing and 
+hanging on desperately. The scent of the direwolves sent horses into a frenzy of fear if they were not 
+accustomed to it, but they'd quiet soon enough once Summer was gone. "The godswood," Bran 
+reminded Hodor. 
+Even Winterfell itself was crowded. The yard rang to the sound of sword and axe, the rumble of 
+wagons, and the barking of dogs. The armory doors were open, and Bran glimpsed Mikken at his forge, 
+his hammer ringing as sweat dripped off his bare chest. Bran had never seen as many strangers in all his 
+years, not even when King Robert had come to visit Father. 
+He tried not to flinch as Hodor ducked through a low door. They walked down a long dim hallway, 
+Summer padding easily beside them. The wolf glanced up from time to time, eyes smoldering like liquid 
+gold. Bran would have liked to touch him, but he was riding too high for his hand to reach. 
+The godswood was an island of peace in the sea of chaos that Winterfell had become. Hodor made his 
+way through the dense stands of oak and ironwood and sentinels, to the still pool beside the heart tree. 
+He stopped under the gnarled limbs of the weirwood, humming. Bran reached up over his head and 
+pulled himself out of his seat, drawing the dead weight of his legs up through the holes in the wicker 
+basket. He hung for a moment, dangling, the dark red leaves brushing against his face, until Hodor lifted 
+him and lowered him to the smooth stone beside the water. "I want to be by myself for a while," he said. 
+"You go soak. Go to the pools." 
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+"Hodor." Hodor stomped through the trees and vanished. Across the godswood, beneath the windows 
+of the Guest House, an underground hot spring fed three small ponds. Steam rose from the water day 
+and night, and the wall that loomed above was thick with moss. Hodor hated cold water, and would fight 
+like a treed wildcat when threatened with soap, but he would happily immerse himself in the hottest pool 
+and sit for hours, giving a loud burp to echo the spring whenever a bubble rose from the murky green 
+depths to break upon the surface. 
+Summer lapped at the water and settled down at Bran's side. He rubbed the wolf under the jaw, and for 
+a moment boy and beast both felt at peace. Bran had always liked the godswood, even before, but of 
+late he found himself drawn to it more and more. Even the heart tree no longer scared him the way it used 
+to. The deep red eyes carved into the pale trunk still watched him, yet somehow he took comfort from 
+that now. The gods were looking over him, he told himself; the old gods, gods of the Starks and the First 
+Men and the children of the forest, hisfather's gods. He felt safe in their sight, and the deep silence of the 
+trees helped him think. Bran had been thinking a lot since his fall; thinking, and dreaming, and talking with 
+the gods. 
+"Please make it so Robb won't go away," he prayed softly. He moved his hand through the cold water, 
+sending ripples across the pool. "Please make him stay. Or if he has to go, bring him home safe, with 
+Mother and Father and the girls. And make it . . . make it so Rickon understands." 
+His baby brother had been wild as a winter storm since he learned Robb was riding off to war, weeping 
+and angry by turns. He'd refused to eat, cried and screamed for most of a night, even punched Old Nan 
+when she tried to sing him to sleep, and the next day he'd vanished. Robb had set half the castle 
+searching for him, and when at last they'd found him down in the crypts, Rickon had slashed at them with 
+a rusted iron sword he'd snatched from a dead king's hand, and Shaggydog had come slavering out of 
+the darkness like a green-eyed demon. The wolf was near as wild as Rickon; he'd bitten Gage on the 
+arm and torn a chunk of flesh from Mikken's thigh. It had taken Robb himself and Grey Wind to bring 
+him to bay. Farlen had the black wolf chained up in the kennels now, and Rickon cried all the more for 
+being without him. 
+Maester Luwin counseled Robb to remain at Winterfell, and Bran pleaded with him too, for his own 
+sake as much as Rickon's, but his brother only shook his head stubbornly and said, "I don't want to go. I 
+have to." 
+It was only half a lie. Someone had to go, to hold the Neck and help the Tullys against the Lannisters, 
+Bran could understand that, but it did not have to be Robb. His brother might have given the command to 
+Hal Mollen or Theon Greyjoy, or to one of his lords bannermen. Maester Luwin urged him to do just 
+that, but Robb would not hear of it. "My lord father would never have sent men off to die while he 
+huddled like a craven behind the walls of Winterfell," he said, all Robb the Lord. 
+Robb seemed half a stranger to Bran now, transformed, a lord in truth, though he had not yet seen his 
+sixteenth name day. Even their father's bannermen seemed to sense it. Many tried to test him, each in his 
+own way. Roose Bolton and Robett Glover both demanded the honor of battle command, the first 
+brusquely, the second with a smile and a jest. Stout, grey-haired Maege Mormont, dressed in mail like a 
+man, told Robb bluntly that he was young enough to be her grandson, and had no business giving her 
+commands . . . but as it happened, she had a granddaughter she would be willing to have him marry. 
+Softspoken Lord Cerwyn had actually brought his daughter with him, a plump, homely maid of thirty 
+years who sat at her father's left hand and never lifted her eyes from her plate. Jovial Lord Hornwood 
+had no daughters, but he did bring gifts, a horse one day, a haunch of venison the next, a silver-chased 
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+hunting horn the day after, and he asked nothing in return . . . nothing but a certain holdfast taken from his 
+grandfather, and hunting rights north of a certain ridge, and leave to dam the White Knife, if it please the 
+lord. 
+Robb answered each of them with cool courtesy, much as Father might have, and somehow he bent 
+them to his will. 
+And when Lord Umber, who was called the Greatjon by his men and stood as tall as Hodor and twice 
+as wide, threatened to take his forces home if he was placed behind the Hornwoods or the Cerwyns in 
+the order of march, Robb told him he was welcome to do so. "And when we are done with the 
+Lannisters," he promised, scratching Grey Wind behind the ear, "we will march back north, root you out 
+of your keep, and hang you for an oathbreaker." Cursing, the Greatjon flung a flagon of ale into the fire 
+and bellowed that Robb was so green he must piss grass. When Hallis Mollen moved to restrain him, he 
+knocked him to the floor, kicked over a table, and unsheathed the biggest, ugliest greatsword that Bran 
+had ever seen. All along the benches, his sons and brothers and sworn swords leapt to their feet, 
+grabbing for their steel. 
+Yet Robb only said a quiet word, and in a snarl and the blink of an eye Lord Umber was on his back, 
+his sword spinning on the floor three 
+feet away and his hand dripping blood where Grey Wind had bitten off two fingers. "My lord father 
+taught me that it was death to bare steel against your liege lord," Robb said, "but doubtless you only 
+meant to cut my meat." Bran's bowels went to water as the Greatjon struggled to rise, sucking at the red 
+stumps of fingers . . . but then, astonishingly, the huge man laughed. "Your meat," he roared, "is bloody 
+tough. " 
+And somehow after that the Greatjon became Robb's right hand, his staunchest champion, loudly telling 
+all and sundry that the boy lord was a Stark after all, and they'd damn well better bend their knees if they 
+didn't fancy having them chewed off. 
+Yet that very night, his brother came to Bran's bedchamber pale and shaken, after the fires had burned 
+low in the Great Hall. "I thought he was going to kill me," Robb confessed. "Did you see the way he 
+threw down Hal, like he was no bigger than Rickon? Gods, I was so scared. And the Greatjon's not the 
+worst of them, only the loudest. Lord Roose never says a word, he only looks at me, and all I can think 
+of is that room they have in the Dreadfort, where the Boltons hang the skins of their enemies." 
+"That's just one of Old Nan's stories," Bran said. A note of doubt crept into his voice. "Isn't it?" 
+"I don't know." He gave a weary shake of his head. "Lord Cerwyn means to take his daughter south 
+with us. To cook for him, he says. Theon is certain I'll find the girl in my bedroll one night. I wish . . . I 
+wish Father was here . . ." 
+That was the one thing they could agree on, Bran and Rickon and Robb the Lord; they all wished Father 
+was here. But Lord Eddard was a thousand leagues away, a captive in some dungeon, a hunted fugitive 
+running for his life, or even dead. No one seemed to know for certain; every traveler told a different tale, 
+each more terrifying than the last. The heads of Father's guardsmen were rotting on the walls of the Red 
+Keep, impaled on spikes. King Robert was dead at Father's hands. The Baratheons had laid siege to 
+King's Landing. Lord Eddard had fled south with the king's wicked brother Renly. Arya and Sansa had 
+been murdered by the Hound. Mother had killed Tyrion the Imp and hung his body from the walls of 
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+Riverrun. Lord Tywin Lannister was marching on the Eyrie, burning and slaughtering as he went. One 
+winesodden taleteller even claimed that Rhaegar Targaryen had returned from the dead and was 
+marshaling a vast host of ancient heroes on Dragonstone to reclaim his father's throne. 
+When the raven came, bearing a letter marked with Father's own seal and written in Sansa's hand, the 
+cruel truth seemed no less incredible. 
+Bran would never forget the look on Robb's face as he stared at their sister's words. "She says 
+Father conspired at treason with the king's brothers," he read. "King Robert is dead, and Mother and I 
+are summoned to the Red Keep to swear fealty to Joffrey. She says we must be loyal, and when she 
+marries Jofftey she will plead with him to spare our lord father's life." His fingers closed into a fist, 
+crushing Sansa's letter between them. "And she says nothing of Arya, nothing, not so much as a word. 
+Damn her! What's wrong with the girl?" 
+Bran felt all cold inside. "She lost her wolf," he said, weakly, remembering the day when four of his 
+father's guardsmen had returned from the south with Lady's bones. Summer and Grey Wind and 
+Shaggydog had begun to howl before they crossed the drawbridge, in voices drawn and desolate. 
+Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, 
+where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants. It was there they buried Lady, while her 
+brothers stalked between the graves like restless shadows. She had gone south, and only her bones had 
+returned. 
+Their grandfather, old Lord Rickard, had gone as well, with his son Brandon who was Father's brother, 
+and two hundred of his best men. None had ever returned. And Father had gone south, with Arya and 
+Sansa, and Jory and Hullen and Fat Tom and the rest, and later Mother and Ser Rodrik had gone, and 
+they hadn't come back either. And now Robb meant to go. Not to King's Landing and not to swear 
+fealty, but to Riverrun, with a sword in his hand. And if their lord father were truly a prisoner, that could 
+mean his death for a certainty. It frightened Bran more than he could say. 
+"If Robb has to go, watch over him," Bran entreated the old gods, as they watched him with the heart 
+tree's red eyes, "and watch over his men, Hal and Quent and the rest, and Lord Umber and Lady 
+Mormont and the other lords. And Theon too, I suppose. Watch them and keep them safe, if it please 
+you, gods. Help them defeat the Lannisters and save Father and bring them home." 
+A faint wind sighed through the godswood and the red leaves stirred and whispered. Summer bared his 
+teeth. "You hear them, boy?" a voice asked. 
+Bran lifted his head. Osha stood across the pool, beneath an ancient oak, her face shadowed by leaves. 
+Even in irons, the wildling moved quiet as a cat. Summer circled the pool, sniffed at her. The tall woman 
+flinched. 
+"Summer, to me," Bran called. The direwolf took one final sniff, spun, and bounded back. Bran 
+wrapped his arms around him. "What are you doing here?" He had not seen Osha since they'd taken her 
+captive in the wolfswood, though he knew she'd been set to working in the kitchens. 
+"They are my gods too," Osha said. "Beyond the Wall, they are the only gods." Her hair was growing 
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+out, brown and shaggy. It made her look more womanly, that and the simple dress of brown roughspun 
+they'd given her when they took her mail and leather. "Gage lets me have my prayers from time to time, 
+when I feel the need, and I let him do as he likes under my skirt, when he feels the need. It's nothing to 
+me. I like the smell of flour on his hands, and he's gentler than Stiv." She gave an awkward bow. "I'll 
+leave you. There's pots that want scouring." 
+"No, stay," Bran commanded her. "Tell me what you meant, about hearing the gods." 
+Osha studied him. "You asked them and they're answering. Open your ears, listen, you'll hear." 
+Bran listened. "It's only the wind," he said after a moment, uncertain. "The leaves are rustling." 
+"Who do you think sends the wind, if not the gods?" She seated herself across the pool from him, 
+clinking faintly as she moved. Mikken had fixed iron manacles to her ankles, with a heavy chain between 
+them; she could walk, so long as she kept her strides small, but there was no way for her to run, or climb, 
+or mount a horse. "They see you, boy. They hear you talking. That rustling, that's them talking back." 
+:'What are they saying?" 
+'They're sad. Your lord brother will get no help from them, not where he's going. The old gods have no 
+power in the south. The weirwoods there were all cut down, thousands of years ago. How can they 
+watch your brother when they have no eyes?" 
+Bran had not thought of that. It frightened him. If even the gods could not help his brother, what hope 
+was there? Maybe Osha wasn't hearing them right. He cocked his head and tried to listen again. He 
+thought he could hear the sadness now, but nothing more than that. 
+The rustling grew louder. Bran heard muffled footfalls and a low humming, and Hodor came blundering 
+out of the trees, naked and smiling. "Hodor!" 
+"He must have heard our voices," Bran said. "Hodor, you forgot your clothes." 
+"Hodor," Hodor agreed. He was dripping wet from the neck down, steaming in the chill air. His body 
+was covered with brown hair, thick as a pelt. Between his legs, his manhood swung long and heavy. 
+Osha eyed him with a sour smile. "Now there's a big man," she said. "He has giant's blood in him, or I'm 
+the queen." 
+"Maester Luwin says there are no more giants. He says they're all dead, like the children of the forest. 
+All that's left of them are old bones in the earth that men turn up with plows from time to time." 
+"Let Maester Luwin ride beyond the Wall," Osha said. "He'll find giants then, or they'll find him. My 
+brother killed one. Ten foot tall she was, and stunted at that. They've been known to grow big as twelve 
+and thirteen feet. Fierce things they are too, all hair and teeth, and the wives have beards like their 
+husbands, so there's no telling them apart. The women take human men for lovers, and it's from them the 
+half bloods come. It goes harder on the women they catch. The men are so big they'll rip a maid apart 
+before they get her with child." She grinned at him. "But you don't know what I mean, do you, boy?" 
+"Yes I do," Bran insisted. He understood about mating; he had seen dogs in the yard, and watched a 
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+stallion mount a mare. But talking about it made him uncomfortable. He looked at Hodor. "Go back and 
+bring your clothes, Hodor," he said. "Go dress." 
+"Hodor." He walked back the way he had come, ducking under a low-hanging tree limb. 
+He was awfully big, Bran thought as he watched him go. "Are there truly giants beyond the Wall?" he 
+asked Osha, uncertainly. 
+"Giants and worse than giants, Lordling. I tried to tell your brother when he asked his questions, him and 
+your maester and that smiley boy Greyjoy. The cold winds are rising, and men go out from their fires and 
+never come back . . . or if they do, they're not men no more, but only wights, with blue eyes and cold 
+black hands. Why do you think I run south with Stiv and Hali and the rest of them fools? Mance thinks 
+he'll fight, the brave sweet stubborn man, like the white walkers were no more than rangers, but what 
+does he know? He can call himself King-beyond-the-Wall all he likes, but he's still just another old black 
+crow who flew down from the Shadow Tower. He's never tasted winter. I was born up there, child, like 
+my mother and her mother before her and her mother before her, born of the Free Folk. We remember." 
+Osha stood, her chains rattling together. "I tried to tell your lordling brother. Only yesterday, when I saw 
+him in the yard. 'M'Iord Stark,' I called to him, respectful as you please, but he looked through me, and 
+that sweaty oaf Greatjon Umber shoves me out of the path. So be it. I'll wear my irons and hold my 
+tongue. A man who won't listen can't hear." 
+"Tell me. Robb will listen to me, I know he will." 
+"Will he now? We'll see. You tell him this, m1ord. You tell him he's bound on marching the wrong way. 
+It's north he should be taking his swords. North, not south. You hear me?" 
+Bran nodded. "I'll tell him." 
+But that night, when they feasted in the Great Hall, Robb was not with them. He took his meal in the 
+solar instead, with Lord Rickard and the Greatjon and the other lords bannermen, to make the final plans 
+for the long march to come. It was left to Bran to fill his place at the head of the table, and act the host to 
+Lord Karstark's sons and honored friends. They were already at their places when Hodor carried Bran 
+into the hall on his back, and knelt beside the high seat. Two of the serving men helped lift him from his 
+basket. Bran could feel the eyes of every stranger in the hall. It had grown quiet. "My lords," Hallis 
+Mollen announced, "Brandon Stark, of Winterfell." 
+"I welcome you to our fires," Bran said stiffly, "and offer you meat and mead in honor of our friendship." 
+Harrion Karstark, the oldest of Lord Rickard's sons, bowed, and his brothers after him, yet as they 
+settled back in their places he heard the younger two talking in low voices, over the clatter of wine cups. 
+11. . . sooner die than live like that," muttered one, his father's namesake Eddard, and his brother 
+Torrhen said likely the boy was broken inside as well as out, too craven to take his own life. 
+Broken, Bran thought bitterly as he clutched his knife. Is that what he was now? Bran the Broken? "I 
+don't want to be broken," he whispered fiercely to Maester Luwin, who'd been seated to his right. "I 
+want to be a knight." 
+"There are some who call my order the knights of the mind," Luwin replied. "You are a surpassing clever 
+boy when you work at it, Bran. Have you ever thought that you might wear a maester's chain? There is 
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+no limit to what you might learn." 
+"I want to learn magic," Bran told him. "The crow promised that I would fly." 
+Maester Luwin sighed. "I can teach you history, healing, herblore. I can teach you the speech of ravens, 
+and how to build a castle, and the way a sailor steers his ship by the stars. I can teach you to measure the 
+days and mark the seasons, and at the Citadel in Oldtown they can teach you a thousand things more. 
+But, Bran, no man can teach you magic." 
+"The children could," Bran said. "The children of the forest." That reminded him of the promise he had 
+made to Osha in the godswood, so he told Luwin what she had said. 
+The maester listened politely. "The wildling woman could give Old Nan lessons in telling tales, I think," 
+he said when Bran was done. "I will talk with her again if you like, but it would be best if you did not 
+trouble your brother with this folly. He has more than enough to 
+concern him without fretting over giants and dead men in the woods. It's the Lannisters who hold your 
+lord father, Bran, not the children of the forest." He put a gentle hand on Bran's arm. "Think on what I 
+said, child." 
+And two days later, as a red dawn broke across a windswept sky, Bran found himself in the yard 
+beneath the gatehouse, strapped atop Dancer as he said his farewells to his brother. 
+"You are the lord in Winterfell now," Robb told him. He was mounted on a shaggy grey stallion, his 
+shield hung from the horse's side; wood banded with iron, white and grey, and on it the snarling face of a 
+direwolf. His brother wore grey chainmail over bleached leathers, sword and dagger at his waist, a 
+fur-trimmed cloak across his shoulders. "You must take my place, as I took Father's, until we come 
+home." 
+"I know," Bran replied miserably. He had never felt so little or alone or scared. He did not know how to 
+be a lord. 
+"Listen to Maester Luwin's counsel, and take care of Rickon. Tell him that I'll be back as soon as the 
+fighting is done." 
+Rickon had refused to come down. He was up in his chamber, redeyed and defiant. "No!" he'd 
+screamed when Bran had asked if he didn't want to say farewell to Robb. "NO farewell!" 
+"I told him," Bran said. "He says no one ever comes back." 
+"He can't be a baby forever. He's a Stark, and near four." Robb sighed. "Well, Mother will be home 
+soon. And I'll bring back Father, I promise." 
+He wheeled his courser around and trotted away. Grey Wind followed, loping beside the warhorse, lean 
+and swift. Hallis Mollen went before them through the gate, carrying the rippling white banner of House 
+Stark atop a high standard of grey ash. Theon Greyjoy and the Greatjon fell in on either side of Robb, 
+and their knights formed up in a double column behind them, steel-tipped lances glinting in the sun. 
+Uncomfortably, he remembered Osha's words. He's marching the wrong way, he thought. For an instant 
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+he wanted to gallop after him and shout a warning, but when Robb vanished beneath the portcullis, the 
+moment was gone. 
+Beyond the castle walls, a roar of sound went up. The foot soldiers and townsfolk were cheering Robb 
+as he rode past, Bran knew; cheering for Lord Stark, for the Lord of Winterfell on his great stallion, with 
+his cloak streaming and Grey Wind racing beside him. They would never cheer for him that way, he 
+realized with a dull ache. He might be the lord in Winterfell while his brother and father were gone, but he 
+was still Bran the Broken. He could not even get off his own horse, except to fall. 
+When the distant cheers had faded to silence and the yard was empty at last, Winterfell seemed deserted 
+and dead. Bran looked around at the faces of those who remained, women and children and old men . . . 
+and Hodor. The huge stableboy had a lost and frightened look to his face. "Hodor?" he said sadly. 
+"Hodor," Bran agreed, wondering what it meant. 
+DAENERYS 
+When he had taken his pleasure, Khal Drogo rose from their sleeping mats to tower above her. His skin 
+shone dark as bronze in the ruddy light from the brazier, the faint lines of old scars visible on his broad 
+chest. Ink-black hair, loose and unbound, cascaded over his shoulders and down his back, well past his 
+waist. His manhood glistened wetly. The khal's mouth twisted in a frown beneath the droop of his long 
+mustachio. "The stallion who mounts the world has no need of iron chairs." 
+Dany propped herself on an elbow to look up at him, so tall and magnificent. She loved his hair 
+especially. It had never been cut; he had never known defeat. "It was prophesied that the stallion will ride 
+to the ends of the earth," she said. 
+"The earth ends at the black salt sea," Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water 
+to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. "No horse can cross the poison water." 
+"In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand," Dany told him, as she had told him before. 
+"Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind." 
+Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. "We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs." He 
+dropped the cloth and began to dress. "This day I will go to the grass and hunt, woman wife," he 
+announced as he shrugged into a painted vest and buckled on a wide belt with heavy medallions of 
+silver, gold, and bronze. 
+"Yes, my sun-and-stars," Dany said. Drogo would take his bloodriders and ride in search of hrakkar, 
+the great white lion of the plains. If they returned triumphant, her lord husband's joy would be fierce, and 
+he might be willing to hear her out. 
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+Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different 
+matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green 
+plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other 
+horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found . . . but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship 
+. . . 
+After the khal and his bloodriders had ridden off with their bows, Dany summoned her handmaids. Her 
+body felt so fat and ungainly now that she welcomed the help of their strong arms and deft hands, 
+whereas before she had often been uncomfortable with the way they fussed and fluttered about her. They 
+scrubbed her clean and dressed her in sandsilk, loose and flowing. As Doreah combed out her hair, she 
+sent Jhiqui to find Ser Jorah Mormont. 
+The knight came at once. He wore horsehair leggings and painted vest, like a rider. Coarse black hair 
+covered his thick chest and muscular arms. "My princess. How may I serve you?" 
+"You must talk to my lord husband," Dany said. "Drogo says the stallion who mounts the world will have 
+all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar 
+east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea." 
+The knight looked thoughtful. "The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms," he said. "They are nothing 
+to him. If he thinks of them at all, no doubt he thinks of islands, a few small cities clinging to rocks in the 
+manner of Lorath or Lys, surrounded by stormy seas. The riches of the east must seem a more tempting 
+prospect." 
+"But he must ride west," Dany said, despairing. "Please, help me make him understand." She had never 
+seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she felt as though she knew them from all the 
+tales her brother had told her. Viserys had promised her a thousand times that he would take her back 
+one day, but he was dead now and his promises had died with him. 
+"The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons," the knight answered. "Have patience, 
+Princess. Do not make your brother's mistake. We will go home, I promise you." 
+Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, 
+but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading 
+memory of a red door ... was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? When she looked at the crones of 
+the dosh khaleen, was she looking at her future? 
+Ser Jorah must have seen the sadness on her face. "A great caravan arrived during the night, Khaleesi. 
+Four hundred horses, from Pentos by way of Norvos and Qohor, under the command of Merchant 
+Captain Byan Votyris. Illyrio may have sent a letter. Would you care to visit the Western Market?" 
+Dany stirred. "Yes," she said. "I would like that." The markets came alive when a caravan had come in. 
+You could never tell what treasures the traders might bring this time, and it would be good to hear men 
+speaking Valyrian again, as they did in the Free Cities. "Irri, have them prepare a litter.,, 
+"I shall tell your khas," Ser Jorah said, withdrawing. 
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+If Khal Drogo had been with her, Dany would have ridden her silver. Among the Dothraki, mothers 
+stayed on horseback almost up to the moment of birth, and she did not want to seem weak in her 
+husband's eyes. But with the khal off hunting, it was pleasant to lie back on soft cushions and be carried 
+across Vaes Dothrak, with red silk curtains to shield her from the sun. Ser Jorah saddled up and rode 
+beside her, with the four young men of her khas and her handmaids. 
+The day was warm and cloudless, the sky a deep blue. When the wind blew, she could smell the rich 
+scents of grass and earth. As her litter passed beneath the stolen monuments, she went from sunlight to 
+shadow and back again. Dany swayed along, studying the faces of dead heroes and forgotten kings. She 
+wondered if the gods of burned cities could still answer prayers. 
+If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She was khaleesi, 
+she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored 
+place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew old . . . and in her womb grew a son who would 
+one day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman . . . but not for the dragon. With 
+Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too 
+the child inside her. She must not forget. 
+The Western Market was a great square of beaten earth surrounded by warrens of mud-baked brick, 
+animal pens, whitewashed drinking halls. Hummocks rose from the ground like the backs of great 
+subterranean beasts breaking the surface, yawning black mouths leading down to cool and cavernous 
+storerooms below. The interior of the 
+square was a maze of stalls and crookback aisles, shaded by awnings of woven grass. 
+A hundred merchants and traders were unloading their goods and setting up in stalls when they arrived, 
+yet even so the great market seemed hushed and deserted compared to the teeming bazaars that Dany 
+remembered from Pentos and the other Free Cities. The caravans made their way to Vaes Dothrak from 
+east and west not so much to sell to the Dothraki as to trade with each other, Ser Jorah had explained. 
+The riders let them come and go unmolested, so long as they observed the peace of the sacred city, did 
+not profane the Mother of Mountains or the Womb of the World, and honored the crones of the dosh 
+khaleen with the traditional gifts of salt, silver, and seed. The Dothraki did not truly comprehend this 
+business of buying and selling. 
+Dany liked the strangeness of the Eastern Market too, with all its queer sights and sounds and smells. 
+She often spent her mornings there, nibbling tree eggs, locust pie, and green noodles, listening to the high 
+ululating voices of the spellsingers, gaping at manticores in silver cages and immense grey elephants and 
+the striped black-and-white horses of the Jogos Nhai. She enjoyed watching all the people too: dark 
+solemn Asshai'i and tall pale Qartheen, the bright-eyed men of Yi Ti in monkey-tail hats, warrior maids 
+from Bayasabhad, Shamyriana, and Kayakayanaya with iron rings in their nipples and rubies in their 
+cheeks, even the dour and frightening Shadow Men, who covered their arms and legs and chests with 
+tattoos and hid their faces behind masks. The Eastern Market was a place of wonder and magic for 
+Dany. 
+But the Western Market smelled of home. 
+As Irri and Jhiqui helped her from her litter, she sniffed, and recognized the sharp odors of garlic and 
+pepper, scents that reminded Dany of days long gone in the alleys of Tyrosh and Myr and brought a fond 
+smile to her face. Under that she smelled the heady sweet perfumes of Lys. She saw slaves carrying bolts 
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+of intricate Myrish lace and fine wools in a dozen rich colors. Caravan guards wandered among the aisles 
+in copper helmets and knee-length tunics of quilted yellow cotton, empty scabbards swinging from their 
+woven leather belts. Behind one stall an armorer displayed steel breastplates worked with gold and silver 
+in ornate patterns, and helms hammered in the shapes of fanciful beasts. Next to him was a pretty young 
+woman selling Lannisport goldwork, rings and brooches and torcs and exquisitely wrought medallions 
+suitable for belting. A huge eunuch guarded her stall, mute and hairless, dressed in sweat-stained velvets 
+and scowling at anyone who came close. Across the aisle, a fat cloth trader from Yi Ti was 
+haggling with a Pentoshi over the price of some green dye, the monkey tail on his hat swaying back and 
+forth as he shook his head. 
+"When I was a little girl, I loved to play in the bazaar," Dany told Ser Jorah as they wandered down the 
+shady aisle between the stalls. "It was so alive there, all the people shouting and laughing, so many 
+wonderful things to look at . . . though we seldom had enough coin to buy anything . . . well, except for a 
+sausage now and again, or honeyfingers . . . do they have honeyfingers in the Seven Kingdoms, the kind 
+they bake in Tyrosh?" 
+"Cakes, are they? I could not say, Princess." The knight bowed. "If you would pardon me for a time, I 
+will seek out the captain and see if he has letters for us." 
+"Very well. I'll help you find him." 
+"There is no need for you to trouble yourself." Ser Jorah glanced away impatiently. "Enjoy the market. I 
+will rejoin you when my business is concluded." 
+Cutious, Dany thought as she watched him stride off through the throngs. She didn't see why she should 
+not go with him. Perhaps Ser Jorah meant to find a woman after he met with the merchant captain. 
+Whores frequently traveled with the caravans, she knew, and some men were queerly shy about their 
+couplings. She gave a shrug. "Come," she told the others. 
+Her handmaids trailed along as Dany resumed her stroll through the market. "Oh, look," she exclaimed 
+to Doreah, "those are the kind of sausages I meant." She pointed to a stall where a wizened little woman 
+was grilling meat and onions on a hot firestone. "They make them with lots of garlic and hot peppers." 
+Delighted with her discovery, Dany insisted the others join her for a sausage. Her handmaids wolfed 
+theirs down giggling and grinning, though the men of her khas sniffed at the grilled meat suspiciously. 
+"They taste different than I remember," Dany said after her first few bites. 
+"In Pentos, I make them with pork," the old woman said, "but all my pigs died on the Dothraki sea. 
+These are made of horsemeat, Khaleesi, but I spice them the same." 
+"Oh." Dany felt disappointed, but Quaro liked his sausage so well he decided to have another one, and 
+Rakharo had to outdo him and eat three more, belching loudly. Dany giggled. 
+"You have not laughed since your brother the Khal Rhaggat was crowned by Drogo," said Irri. "It is 
+good to see, Khaleesi." 
+Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again. 
+They wandered for half the morning. She saw a beautiful feathered cloak from the Summer Isles, and 
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+took it for a gift. In return, she gave 
+the merchant a silver medallion from her belt. That was how it was done among the Dothraki. A 
+birdseller taught a green-and-red parrot to say her name, and Dany laughed again, yet still refused to take 
+him. What would she do with a green-and-red parrot in a khalasar? She did take a dozen flasks of 
+scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff them and she could 
+see the big house with the red door once more. When Doreah looked longingly at a fertility charm at a 
+magician's booth, Dany took that too and gave it to the handmaid, thinking that now she should find 
+something for Irri and Jhiqui as well. 
+Turning a corner, they came upon a wine merchant offering thimble-sized cups of his wares to the 
+passersby. "Sweet reds," he cried in fluent Dothraki, "I have sweet reds, from Lys and Volantis and the 
+Arbor. Whites from Lys, Tyroshi pear brandy, firewine, pepperwine, the pale green nectars of Myr. 
+Smokeberry browns and Andalish sours, I have them, I have them." He was a small man, slender and 
+handsome, his flaxen hair curled and perfumed after the fashion of Lys. When Dany paused before his 
+stall, he bowed low. "A taste for the khaleesi? I have a sweet red from Dorne, my lady, it sings of plums 
+and cherries and rich dark oak. A cask, a cup, a swallow? One taste, and you will name your child after 
+me." 
+Dany smiled. "My son has his name, but I will try your summerwine," she said in Valyrian, Valyrian as 
+they spoke it in the Free Cities. The words felt strange on her tongue, after so long. "Just a taste, if you 
+would be so kind." 
+The merchant must have taken her for Dothraki, with her clothes and her oiled hair and sun-browned 
+skin. When she spoke, he gaped at her in astonishment. "My lady, you are . . . Tyroshi? Can it be so?" 
+"My speech may be Tyroshi, and my garb Dothraki, but I am of Westeros, of the Sunset Kingdoms," 
+Dany told him. 
+Doreah stepped up beside her. "You have the honor to address Daenerys of the House Targaryen, 
+Daenerys Stormborn, khaleesi of the riding men and princess of the Seven Kingdoms." 
+The wine merchant dropped to his knees. "Princess," he said, bowing his head. 
+"Rise," Dany commanded him. "I would still like to taste that summerwine you spoke of." 
+The man bounded to his feet. "That? Dornish swill. It is not worthy of a princess. I have a dry red from 
+the Arbor, crisp and delectable. Please, let me give you a cask." 
+Khal Drogo's visits to the Free Cities had given him a taste for good 
+wine, and Dany knew that such a noble vintage would please him. "You honor me, ser," she murmured 
+sweetly. 
+"The honor is mine." The merchant rummaged about in the back of his stall and produced a small oaken 
+cask. Burned into the wood was a cluster of grapes. "The Redwyne sigil," he said, pointing, "for the 
+Arbor. There is no finer drink." 
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+"Khal Drogo and I will share it together. Aggo, take this back to my litter, if you'd be so kind." The 
+wineseller beamed as the Dothraki hefted the cask. 
+She did not realize that Ser Jorah had returned until she heard the knight say, "No. " His voice was 
+strange, brusque. "Aggo, put down that cask." 
+Aggo looked at Dany. She gave a hesitant nod. "Ser Jorah, is something wrong?" 
+"I have a thirst. Open it, wineseller." 
+The merchant frowned. "The wine is for the khaleesi, not for the likes of you, ser." 
+Ser Jorah moved closer to the stall. "If you don't open it, I'll crack it open with your head." He carried 
+no weapons here in the sacred city, save his hands-yet his hands were enough, big, hard, dangerous, his 
+knuckles covered with coarse dark hairs. The wineseller hesitated a moment, then took up his hammer 
+and knocked the plug from the cask. 
+"Pour," Ser Jorah commanded. The four young warriors of Dany's khas arrayed themselves behind him, 
+frowning, watching with their dark, almond-shaped eyes. 
+"It would be a crime to drink this rich a wine without letting it breathe." The wineseller had not put his 
+hammer down. 
+Jhogo reached for the whip coiled at his belt, but Dany stopped him with a light touch on the arm. "Do 
+as Ser Jorah says," she said. People were stopping to watch. 
+The man gave her a quick, sullen glance. "As the princess commands." He had to set aside his hammer 
+to lift the cask. He filled two thimble-sized tasting cups, pouring so deftly he did not spill a drop. 
+Ser Jorah lifted a cup and sniffed at the wine, frowning. 
+"Sweet, isn't it?" the wineseller said, smiling. "Can you smell the fruit, ser? The perfume of the Arbor. 
+Taste it, my lord, and tell me it isn't the finest, richest wine that's ever touched your tongue." 
+Ser Jorah offered him the cup. "You taste it first." 
+"Me?" The man laughed. "I am not worthy of this vintage, my lord. And it's a poor wine merchant who 
+drinks up his own wares." His smile was amiable, yet she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. 
+"You will drink," Dany said, cold as ice. "Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you down while Ser 
+Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat." 
+The wineseller shrugged, reached for the cup . . . and grabbed the cask instead, flinging it at her with 
+both hands. Ser Jorah bulled into her, knocking her out of the way. The cask bounced off his shoulder 
+and smashed open on the ground. Dany stumbled and lost her feet. "No, " she screamed, thrusting her 
+hands out to break her fall . . . and Doreah caught her by the arm and wrenched her backward, so she 
+landed on her legs and not her belly. 
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+The trader vaulted over the stall, darting between Aggo and Rakharo. Quaro reached for an arakh that 
+was not there as the blond man slammed him aside. He raced down the aisle. Dany heard the snap of 
+Jhogo's whip, saw the leather lick out and coil around the wineseller's leg. The man sprawled face first in 
+the dirt. 
+A dozen caravan guards had come running. With them was the master himself, Merchant Captain Byan 
+Votyris, a diminutive Norvoshi with skin like old leather and a bristling blue mustachio that swept up to 
+his ears. He seemed to know what had happened without a word being spoken. "Take this one away to 
+await the pleasure of the khal," he commanded, gesturing at the man on the ground. Two guards hauled 
+the wineseller to his feet. "His goods I gift to you as well, Princess," the merchant captain went on. "Small 
+token of regret, that one of mine would do this thing." 
+Doreah and Jhiqui helped Dany back to her feet. The poisoned wine was leaking from the broken cask 
+into the dirt. "How did you know?" she asked Ser Jorah, trembling. "How?" 
+"I did not know, Khaleesi, not until the man refused to drink, but once I read Magister Illyrio's letter, I 
+feared." His dark eyes swept over the faces of the strangers in the market. "Come. Best not to talk of it 
+here." 
+Dany was near tears as they carried her back. The taste in her mouth was one she had known before: 
+fear. For years she had lived in terror of Viserys, afraid of waking the dragon. This was even worse. It 
+was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he 
+moved restlessly inside her. Dany stroked the swell of her belly gently, wishing she could reach him, 
+touch him, soothe him. "You are the blood of the dragon, little one," she whispered as her litter swayed 
+along, curtains drawn tight. "You are the blood of the dragon, and the dragon does not fear." 
+Under the hollow hummock of earth that was her home in Vaes Dothrak, Dany ordered them to leave 
+her-all but Ser Jorah. "Tell 
+me," she commanded as she lowered herself onto her cushions. "Was it the Usurper?" 
+"Yes." The knight drew out a folded parchment. "A letter to Viserys, from Magister Illyrio. Robert 
+Baratheon offers lands and lordships for your death, or your brother's." 
+"My brother?" Her sob was half a laugh. "He does not know yet, does he? The Usurper owes Drogo a 
+lordship." This time her laugh was half a sob. She hugged herself protectively. "And me, you said. Only 
+me?" 
+"You and the child," Ser Jorah said, grim. 
+"No. He cannot have my son." She would not weep, she decided. She would not shiver with fear. The 
+Usurper has woken the dragon now, she told herself . . . and her eyes went to the dragon's eggs resting 
+in their nest of dark velvet. The shifting lamplight linmed their stony scales, and shimmering motes of jade 
+and scarlet and gold swam in the air around them, like courtiers around a king. 
+Was it madness that seized her then, born of fear? Or some strange wisdom buried in her blood? Dany 
+could not have said. She heard her own voice saying, "Ser Jorah, light the brazier." 
+"Khaleesi?" The knight looked at her strangely. "It is so hot. Are you certain?" 
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+She had never been so certain. "Yes. I . . . I have a chill. Light the brazier." 
+He bowed. "As you command." 
+When the coals were afire, Dany sent Ser Jorah from her. She had to be alone to do what she must do. 
+This is madness, she told herself as she lifted the black-and-scarlet egg from the velvet. It will only crack 
+and bum, and it's so beautiful, Ser Jorah will call me a fool if I ruin it, and yet, and yet . . . 
+Cradling the egg with both hands, she carried it to the fire and pushed it down amongst the burning 
+coals. The black scales seemed to glow as they drank the heat. Flames licked against the stone with small 
+red tongues. Dany placed the other two eggs beside the black one in the fire. As she stepped back from 
+the brazier, the breath trembled in her throat. 
+She watched until the coals had turned to ashes. Drifting sparks floated up and out of the smokehole. 
+Heat shimmered in waves around the dragon's eggs. And that was all. 
+Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, Ser Jorah had said. Dany gazed at her eggs sadly. What had 
+she expected? A thousand thousand years ago they had been alive, but now they were only pretty rocks. 
+They could not make a dragon. A dragon was air and fire. Living flesh, not dead stone. 
+The brazier was cold again by the time Khal Drogo returned. Cohollo was leading a packhorse behind 
+him, with the carcass of a great white lion slung across its back. Above, the stars were coming out. The 
+khal laughed as he swung down off his stallion and showed her the scars on his leg where the hrakkar 
+had raked him through his leggings. "I shall make you a cloak of its skin, moon of my life," he swore. 
+When Dany told him what had happened at the market, all laughter stopped, and Khal Drogo grew very 
+quiet. 
+"This poisoner was the first," Ser Jorah Mormont warned him, "but he will not be the last. Men will risk 
+much for a lordship." 
+Drogo was silent for a time. Finally he said, "This seller of poisons ran from the moon of my life. Better 
+he should run after her. So he will. Jhogo, Jorah the Andal, to each of you I say, choose any horse you 
+wish from my herds, and it is yours. Any horse save my red and the silver that was my bride gift to the 
+moon of my life. I make this gift to you for what you did. 
+"And to Rhaego son of Drogo, the stallion who will mount the world, to him I also pledge a gift. To him I 
+will give this iron chair his mother's father sat in. I will give him Seven Kingdoms. 1, Drogo, khal, will do 
+this thing." His voice rose, and he lifted his fist to the sky. "I will take my khalasar west to where the 
+world ends, and ride the wooden horses across the black salt water as no khal has done before. I will kill 
+the men in the iron suits and tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as 
+slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak to bow down beneath the Mother of 
+Mountains. This I vow, 1, Drogo son of Bharbo. This I swear before the Mother of Mountains, as the 
+stars look down in witness." 
+His khalasar left Vaes Dothrak two days later, striking south and west across the plains. Khal Drogo led 
+them on his great red stallion, with Daenerys beside him on her silver. The wineseller hurried behind them, 
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+naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany's silver. As 
+she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would come to him . . . so long as he kept 
+up. 
+CATELYN 
+It was too far to make out the banners clearly, but even through the drifting fog she could see that they 
+were white, with a dark 
+smudge in their center that could only be the direwolf of Stark, grey upon its icy field. When she saw it 
+with her own eyes, Catelyn reined up her horse and bowed her head in thanks. The gods were good. 
+She was not too late. 
+"They await our coming, my lady," Ser Wylis Manderly said, "as my lord father swore they would." 
+"Let us not keep them waiting any longer, ser." Ser Brynden Tully put the spurs to his horse and trotted 
+briskly toward the banners. Catelyn rode beside him. 
+Ser Wylis and his brother Ser Wendel followed, leading their levies, near fifteen hundred men: some 
+twenty-odd knights and as many squires, two hundred mounted lances, swordsmen, and freeriders, and 
+the rest foot, armed with spears, pikes and tridents. Lord Wyman had remained behind to see to the 
+defenses of White Harbor. A man of near sixty years, he had grown too stout to sit a horse. "If I had 
+thought to see war again in my lifetime, I should have eaten a few less eels," he'd told Catelyn when he 
+met her ship, slapping his massive belly with both hands. His fingers were fat as sausages. "My boys will 
+see you safe to your son, though, have no fear." 
+His "boys" were both older than Catelyn, and she might have 
+wished that they did not take after their father quite so closely. Ser Wylis was only a few eels short of 
+not being able to mount his own horse; she pitied the poor animal. Ser Wendel, the younger boy, would 
+have been the fattest man she'd ever known, had she only neglected to meet his father and brother. Wylis 
+was quiet and formal, Wendel loud and boisterous; both had ostentatious walrus mustaches and heads as 
+bare as a baby's bottom; neither seemed to own a single garment that was not spotted with food stains. 
+Yet she liked them well enough; they had gotten her to Robb, as their father had vowed, and nothing else 
+mattered. 
+She was pleased to see that her son had sent eyes out, even to the east. The Lannisters would come 
+from the south when they came, but it was good that Robb was being careful. My son is leading a host to 
+war, she thought, still only half believing it. She was desperately afraid for him, and for Winterfell, yet she 
+could not deny feeling a certain pride as well. A year ago he had been a boy. What was he now? she 
+wondered. 
+Outriders spied the Manderly banners-the white merman with trident in hand, rising from a blue-green 
+sea-and hailed them warmly. They were led to a spot of high ground dry enough for a camp. Ser Wylis 
+called a halt there, and remained behind with his men to see the fires laid and the horses tended, while his 
+brother Wendel rode on with Catelyn and her uncle to present their father's respects to their liege lord. 
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+The ground under their horses' hooves was soft and wet. It fell away slowly beneath them as they rode 
+past smoky peat fires, lines of horses, and wagons heavy-laden with hardbread and salt beef. On a stony 
+outcrop of land higher than the surrounding country, they passed a lord's pavilion with walls of heavy 
+sailcloth. Catelyn recognized the banner, the bull moose of the Hornwoods, brown on its dark orange 
+field. 
+Just beyond, through the mists, she glimpsed the walls and towers of Moat Cailin . . . or what remained 
+of them. Immense blocks of black basalt, each as large as a crofter's cottage, lay scattered and tumbled 
+like a child's wooden blocks, half-sunk in the soft boggy soil. Nothing else remained of a curtain wall that 
+had once stood as high as Winterfell's. The wooden keep was gone entirely, rotted away a thousand 
+years past, with not so much as a timber to mark where it had stood. All that was left of the great 
+stronghold of the First Men were three towers . . . three where there had once been twenty, if the 
+taletellers could be believed. 
+The Gatehouse Tower looked sound enough, and even boasted a 
+A GAME, OF THRONLS 525 
+few feet of standing wall to either side of it. The Drunkard's Tower, off in the bog where the south and 
+west walls had once met, leaned like a man about to spew a bellyful of wine into the gutter. And the tall, 
+slender Children's Tower, where legend said the children of the forest had once called upon their 
+nameless gods to send the hammer of the waters, had lost half its crown. It looked as if some great beast 
+had taken a bite out of the crenellations along the tower top, and spit the rubble across the bog. All three 
+towers were green with moss. A tree was growing out between the stones on the north side of the 
+Gatehouse Tower, its gnarled limbs festooned with ropy white blankets of ghostskin. 
+"Gods have mercy," Ser Brynden exclaimed when he saw what lay before them. "This is Moat Cailin? 
+It's no more than a-" 
+"-death trap," Catelyn finished. "I know how it looks, Uncle. I thought the same the first time I saw it, but 
+Ned assured me that this ruin is more formidable than it seems. The three surviving towers command the 
+causeway from all sides, and any enemy must pass between them. The bogs here are impenetrable, full of 
+quicksands and suckholes and teeming with snakes. To assault any of the towers, an army would need to 
+wade through waist-deep black muck, cross a moat full of lizard-lions, and scale walls slimy with moss, 
+all the while exposing themselves to fire from archers in the other towers." She gave her uncle a grim 
+smile. "And when night falls, there are said to be ghosts, cold vengeful spirits of the north who hunger for 
+southron blood." 
+Ser Brynden chuckled. "Remind me not to linger here. Last I looked, I was southron myself." 
+Standards had been raised atop all three towers. The Karstark sunburst hung from the Drunkard's 
+Tower, beneath the direwolf; on the Children's Tower it was the Greatjon's giant in shattered chains. But 
+on the Gatehouse Tower, the Stark banner flew alone. That was where Robb had made his seat. Catelyn 
+made for it, with Ser Brynden and Ser Wendel behind her, their horses stepping slowly down the 
+log-andplank road that had been laid across the green-and-black fields of mud. 
+She found her son surrounded by his father's lords bannermen, in a drafty hall with a peat fire smoking in 
+a black hearth. He was seated at a massive stone table, a pile of maps and papers in front of him, talking 
+intently with Roose Bolton and the Greatjon. At first he did not notice her . . . but his wolf did. The great 
+grey beast was lying near the fire, but when Catelyn entered he lifted his head, and his golden eyes met 
+hers. The lords fell silent one by one, and Robb looked up at the 
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+sudden quiet and saw her. "Mother?" he said, his voice thick with emotion. 
+Catelyn wanted to run to him, to kiss his sweet brow, to wrap him in her arms and hold him so tightly 
+that he would never come to harm . * . but here in front of his lords, she dared not. He was playing a 
+man's part now, and she would not take that away from him. So she held herself at the far end of the 
+basalt slab they were using for a table. The direwolf got to his feet and padded across the room to where 
+she stood. It seemed bigger than a wolf ought to be. "You've grown a beard," she said to Robb, while 
+Grey Wind sniffed her hand. 
+He rubbed his stubbled jaw, suddenly awkward. "Yes." His chin hairs were redder than the ones on his 
+head. 
+"I like it." Catelyn stroked the wolfs head, gently. "It makes you look like my brother Edmure." Grey 
+Wind nipped at her fingers, playful, and trotted back to his place by the fire. 
+Ser Helman Tallhart was the first to follow the direwolf across the room to pay his respects, kneeling 
+before her and pressing his brow to her hand. "Lady Catelyn," he said, "you are fair as ever, a welcome 
+sight in troubled times." The Glovers followed, Galbart and Robett, and Greatjon Umber, and the rest, 
+one by one. Theon Greyjoy was the last. "I had not looked to see you here, my lady," he said as he knelt. 
+"I had not thought to be here," Catelyn said, "until I came ashore at White Harbor, and Lord Wyman 
+told me that Robb had called the banners. You know his son, Ser Wendel." Wendel Manderly stepped 
+forward and bowed as low as his girth would allow. "And my uncle, Ser Brynden Tully, who has left my 
+sister's service for mine." 
+"The Blackfish," Robb said. "Thank you for joining us, ser. We need men of your courage. And you, Ser 
+Wendel, I am glad to have you here. Is Ser Rodrik with you as well, Mother? I've missed him." 
+"Ser Rodrik is on his way north from White Harbor. I have named him castellan and commanded him to 
+hold Winterfell till our return. Maester Luwin is a wise counsellor, but unskilled in the arts of war." 
+"Have no fear on that count, Lady Stark," the Greatjon told her in his bass rumble. "Winterfell is safe. 
+We'll shove our swords up Tywin Lannister's bunghole soon enough, begging your pardons, and then it's 
+on to the Red Keep to free Ned." 
+"My lady, a question, as it please you." Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort, had a small voice, yet 
+when he spoke larger men quieted to listen. His eyes were curiously pale, almost without color, and his 
+look disturbing. "It is said that you hold Lord Tywin's dwarf son as captive. Have you brought him to us? 
+I vow, we should make good use of such a hostage." 
+"I did hold Tyrion Lannister, but no longer," Catelyn was forced to admit. A chorus of consternation 
+greeted the news. "I was no more pleased than you, my lords. The gods saw fit to free him, with some 
+help from my fool of a sister." She ought not to be so open in her contempt, she knew, but her parting 
+from the Eyrie had not been pleasant. She had offered to take Lord Robert with her, to foster him at 
+Winterfell for a few years. The company of other boys would do him good, she had dared to suggest. 
+Lysa's rage had been frightening to behold. "Sister or no," she had replied, "if you try to steal my son, you 
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+will leave by the Moon Door." After that there was no more to be said. 
+The lords were anxious to question her further, but Catelyn raised a hand. "No doubt we will have time 
+for all this later, but my journey has fatigued me. I would speak with my son alone. I know you will 
+forgive me, my lords." She gave them no choice; led by the ever-obliging Lord Hornwood, the 
+bannermen bowed and took their leave. "And you, Theon," she added when Greyjoy lingered. He smiled 
+and left them. 
+There was ale and cheese on the table. Catelyn tilled a horn, sat, sipped, and studied her son. He 
+seemed taller than when she'd left, and the wisps of beard did make him look older. "Edmure was sixteen 
+when he grew his first whiskers." 
+"I will be sixteen soon enough," Robb said. 
+"And you are fifteen now. Fifteen, and leading a host to battle. Can you understand why I might fear, 
+Robb?" 
+His look grew stubborn. "There was no one else." 
+"No one?" she said. "Pray, who were those men I saw here a moment ago? Roose Bolton, Rickard 
+Karstark, Galbart and Robett Glover, the Greatjon, Heiman Tallhart . . . you might have given the 
+command to any of them. Gods be good, you might even have sent Theon, though he would not be my 
+choice." 
+"They are not Starks," he said. 
+"They are men, Robb, seasoned in battle. You were fighting with wooden swords less than a year past." 
+She saw anger in his eyes at that, but it was gone as quick as it came, and suddenly he was a boy again. 
+"I know," he said, abashed. "Are you . . . are you sending me back to Winterfell?" 
+Catelyn sighed. "I should. You ought never have left. Yet I dare not, not now. You have come too far. 
+Someday these lords will look to you as their liege. If I pack you off now, like a child being sent to bed 
+without his supper, they will remember, and laugh about it in their cups. The day will come when you 
+need them to respect you, even fear you a little. Laughter is poison to fear. I will not do that to you, much 
+as I might wish to keep you safe." 
+"You have my thanks, Mother," he said, his relief obvious beneath the formality. 
+She reached across his table and touched his hair. "You are my firstborn, Robb. I have only to look at 
+you to remember the day you came into the world, red-faced and squalling." 
+He rose, clearly uncomfortable with her touch, and walked to the hearth. Grey Wind rubbed his head 
+against his leg. "You know . . . about Father?" 
+"Yes." The reports of Robert's sudden death and Ned's fall had frightened Catelyn more than she could 
+say, but she would not let her son see her fear. "Lord Manderly told me when I landed at White Harbor. 
+Have you had any word of your sisters?" 
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+"There was a letter," Robb said, scratching his direwolf under the jaw. "One for you as well, but it came 
+to Winterfell with mine." He went to the table, rummaged among some maps and papers, and returned 
+with a crumpled parchment. "This is the one she wrote me, I never thought to bring yours." 
+Something in Robb's tone troubled her. She smoothed out the paper and read. Concern gave way to 
+disbelief, then to anger, and lastly to fear. "This is Cersei's letter, not your sister's," she said when she was 
+done. "The real message is in what Sansa does not say. All this about how kindly and gently the 
+Lannisters are treating her . . . I know the sound of a threat, even whispered. They have Sansa hostage, 
+and they mean to keep her." 
+"There's no mention of Arya," Robb pointed out, miserable. 
+"No." Catelyn did not want to think what that might mean, not now, not here. 
+"I had hoped . . . if you still held the Imp, a trade of hostages . . ." He took Sansa's letter and crumpled it 
+in his fist, and she could tell from the way he did it that it was not the first time. "Is there word from the 
+Eyrie? I wrote to Aunt Lysa, asking help. Has she called Lord Arryn's banners, do you know? Will the 
+knights of the Vale come join us?" 
+"Only one," she said, "the best of them, my uncle . . . but Brynden Blackfish was a Tully first. My sister is 
+not about to stir beyond her Bloody Gate." 
+Robb took it hard. "Mother, what are we going to do? I brought this whole army together, eighteen 
+thousand men, but I don't . . . I'm not certain . . ." He looked to her, his eyes shining, the proud young 
+lord melted away in an instant, and quick as that he was a child again, a fifteen-year-old boy looking to 
+his mother for answers. 
+It would not do. 
+"What are you so afraid of, Robb?" she asked gently. 
+"I . . ." He turned his head away, to hide the first tear. "If we march ... even if we win ... the Lannisters 
+hold Sansa, and Father. They'll kill them, won't they?" 
+"They want us to think so." 
+"You mean they're lying?" 
+"I do not know, Robb. What I do know is that you have no choice. If you go to King's Landing and 
+swear fealty, you will never be allowed to leave. If you turn your tail and retreat to Winterfell, your lords 
+will lose all respect for you. Some may even go over to the Lannisters. Then the queen, with that much 
+less to fear, can do as she likes with her prisoners. Our best hope, our only true hope, is that you can 
+defeat the foe in the field. If you should chance to take Lord Tywin or the Kingslayer captive, why then a 
+trade might very well be possible, but that is not the heart of it. So long as you have power enough that 
+they must fear you, Ned and your sister should be safe. Cersei is wise enough to know that she may need 
+them to make her peace, should the fighting go against her." 
+"What if the fighting doesn't go against her?" Robb asked. "What if it goes against us?" 
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+Catelyn took his hand. "Robb, I will not soften the truth for you. If you lose, there is no hope for any of 
+us. They say there is naught but stone at the heart of Casterly Rock. Remember the fate of Rhaegar's 
+children." 
+She saw the fear in his young eyes then, but there was a strength as well. "Then I will not lose," he 
+vowed. 
+"Tell me what you know of the fighting in the riverlands," she said. She had to learn if he was truly ready. 
+"Less than a fortnight past, they fought a battle in the hills below the Golden Tooth," Robb said. "Uncle 
+Edmure had sent Lord Vance and Lord Piper to hold the pass, but the Kingslayer descended on them 
+and put them to flight. Lord Vance was slain. The last word we had was that Lord Piper was falling back 
+to join your brother and his other bannermen at Riverrun, with Jaime Lannister on his heels. That's not the 
+worst of it, though. All the time they were battling in the pass, Lord Tywin was bringing a second 
+Lannister army around from the south. It's said to be even larger than Jaime's host. 
+"Father must have known that, because he sent out some men to oppose them, under the king's own 
+banner. He gave the command to some southron lordling, Lord Erik or Derik or something like that, but 
+Ser Raymun Darry rode with him, and the letter said there were other knights as well, and a force of 
+Father's own guardsmen. Only it was a 
+trap. Lord Derik had no sooner crossed the Red Fork than the Lannisters fell upon him, the king's 
+banner be damned, and Gregor Clegane took them in the rear as they tried to pull back across the 
+Mummer's Ford. This Lord Derik and a few others may have escaped, no one is certain, but Ser 
+Raymun was killed, and most of our men from Winterfell. Lord Tywin has closed off the kingsroad, it's 
+said, and now he's marching north toward Harrenhal, burning as he goes." 
+Grim and grimmer, thought Catelyn. It was worse than she'd imagined. "You mean to meet him here?" 
+she asked. 
+"If he comes so far, but no one thinks he will," Robb said. "I've sent word to Howland Reed, Father's 
+old friend at Greywater Watch. If the Lannisters come up the Neck, the crannogmen will bleed them 
+every step of the way, but Galbart Glover says Lord Tywin is too smart for that, and Roose Bolton 
+agrees. He'll stay close to the Trident, they believe, taking the castles of the river lords one by one, until 
+Riverrun stands alone. We need to march south to meet him." 
+The very idea of it chilled Catelyn to the bone. What chance would a fifteen-year-old boy have against 
+seasoned battle commanders like Jaime and Tywin Lannister? "Is that wise? You are strongly placed 
+here. It's said that the old Kings in the North could stand at Moat Cailin and throw back hosts ten times 
+the size of their own." 
+"Yes, but our food and supplies are running low, and this is not land we can live off easily. We've been 
+waiting for Lord Manderly, but now that his sons have joined us, we need to march." 
+She was hearing the lords bannermen speaking with her son's voice, she realized. Over the years, she 
+had hosted many of them at Winterfell, and been welcomed with Ned to their own hearths and tables. 
+She knew what sorts of men they were, each one. She wondered if Robb did. 
+And yet there was sense in what they said. This host her son had assembled was not a standing army 
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+such as the Free Cities were accustomed to maintain, nor a force of guardsmen paid in coin. Most of 
+them were smallfolk: crofters, fieldhands, fishermen, sheepherders, the sons of innkeeps and traders and 
+tanners, leavened with a smattering of sellswords and freeriders hungry for plunder. When their lords 
+called, they came . . . but not forever. "Marching is all very well," she said to her son, "but where, and to 
+what purpose? What do you mean to do?" 
+Robb hesitated. "The Greatjon thinks we should take the battle to Lord Tywin and surprise him," he 
+said, "but the Glovers and the Karstarks feel we'd be wiser to go around his army and join up with Uncle 
+Ser Edmure against the Kingslayer." He ran his fingers through 
+his shaggy mane of auburn hair, looking unhappy. "Though by the time we reach Riverrun ... I'm not 
+certain . . ." 
+"Be certain," Catelyn told her son, "or go home and take up that wooden sword again. You cannot 
+afford to seem indecisive in front of men like Roose Bolton and Rickard Karstark. Make no mistake, 
+Robb-these are your bannermen, not your friends. You named yourself battle commander. Command." 
+Her son looked at her, startled, as if he could not credit what he was hearing. "As you say, Mother." 
+"I'll ask you again. What do you mean to do?" 
+Robb drew a map across the table, a ragged piece of old leather covered with lines of faded paint. One 
+end curled up from being rolled; he weighed it down with his dagger. "Both plans have virtues, but . . . 
+look, if we try to swing around Lord Tywin's host, we take the risk of being caught between him and the 
+l(ingslayer, and if we attack him . . . by all reports, he has more men than I do, and a lot more armored 
+horse. The Greatjon says that won't matter if we catch him with his breeches down, but it seems to me 
+that a man who has fought as many battles as Tywin Lannister won't be so easily surprised." 
+"Good," she said. She could hear echoes of Ned in his voice, as he sat there, puzzling over the map. 
+"Tell me more." 
+"I'd leave a small force here to hold Moat Cailin, archers mostly, and march the rest down the 
+causeway," he said, "but once we're below the Neck, I'd split our host in two. The foot can continue 
+down the kingsroad, while our horsemen cross the Green Fork at the Twins." He pointed. "When Lord 
+Tywin gets word that we've come south, he'll march north to engage our main host, leaving our riders free 
+to hurry down the west bank to Riverrun." Robb sat back, not quite daring to smile, but pleased with 
+himself and hungry for her praise. 
+Catelyn frowned down at the map. "You'd put a river between the two parts of your army." 
+"And between Jaime and Lord Tywin," he said eagerly. The smile came at last. "There's no crossing on 
+the Green Fork above the ruby ford, where Robert won his crown. Not until the Twins, all the way up 
+here, and Lord Frey controls that bridge. He's your father's bannerman, isn't that so?" 
+The Late Lord Frey, Catelyn thought. "He is," she admitted, "but my father has never trusted him. Nor 
+should you." 
+"I won't," Robb promised. "What do you think?" 
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+She was impressed despite herself. He looks like a Tully, she thought, yet he's still his father's son, and 
+Ned taught him well. "Which force would you command?" 
+"The horse," he answered at once. Again like his father; Ned would always take the more dangerous 
+task himself. 
+"And the other?" 
+"The Greatjon is always saying that we should smash Lord Tywin. I thought I'd give him the honor." 
+It was his first misstep, but how to make him see it without wounding his fledgling confidence? "Your 
+father once told me that the Greatjon was as fearless as any man he had ever known." 
+Robb grinned. "Grey Wind ate two of his fingers, and he laughed about it. So you agree, then?" 
+"Your father is not fearless," Catelyn pointed out. "He is brave, but that is very different." 
+Her son considered that for a moment. "The eastern host will be all that stands between Lord Tywin and 
+Winterfell," he said thoughtfully. "Well, them and whatever few bowmen I leave here at the Moat. So I 
+don't want someone fearless, do IT' 
+"No. You want cold cunning, I should think, not courage." 
+"Roose Bolton," Robb said at once. "That man scares me." 
+"Then let us pray he will scare Tywin Lannister as well." 
+Robb nodded and rolled up the map. "I'll give the commands, and assemble an escort to take you home 
+to Winterfell." 
+Catelyn had fought to keep herself strong, for Ned's sake and for this stubborn brave son of theirs. She 
+had put despair and fear aside, as if they were garments she did not choose to wear . . . but now she saw 
+that she had donned them after all. 
+"I am not going to Winterfell," she heard herself say, surprised at the sudden rush of tears that blurred 
+her vision. "My father may be dying behind the walls of Riverrun. My brother is surrounded by foes. I 
+must go to them." 
+TYRION 
+Chella daughter of Cheyk of the Black Ears had gone ahead to scout, and it was she who brought back 
+word of the army at the crossroads. "By their fires I call them twenty thousand strong," she said. "Their 
+banners are red, with a golden lion." 
+"Your father?" Bronn asked. 
+"Or my brother Jaime," Tyrion said. "We shall know soon enough." He surveyed his ragged band of 
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+brigands: near three hundred Stone Crows, Moon Brothers, Black Ears, and Burned Men, and those just 
+the seed of the army he hoped to grow. Gunthor son of Gurn was raising the other clans even now. He 
+wondered what his lord father would make of them in their skins and bits of stolen steel. If truth be told, 
+he did not know what to make of them himself. Was he their commander or their captive? Most of the 
+time, it seemed to be a little of both. "It might be best if I rode down alone," he suggested. 
+"Best for Tyrion son of Tywin," said Ulf, who spoke for the Moon Brothers. 
+Shagga glowered, a fearsome sight to see. "Shagga son of Dolf likes this not. Shagga will go with the 
+boyman, and if the boyman lies, Shagga will chop off his manhood-" 
+,,-and feed it to the goats, yes," Tyrion said wearily. "Shagga, I give you my word as a Lannister, I will 
+return." 
+"Why should we trust your word?" Chella was a small hard woman, 
+flat as a boy, and no fool. "Lowland lords have lied to the clans before." 
+"You wound me, Chella," Tyrion said. "Here I thought we had become such friends. But as you will. 
+You shall ride with me, and Shagga and Conn for the Stone Crows, Ulf for the Moon Brothers, and 
+Timett son of Timett for the Burned Men." The clansmen exchanged wary looks as he named them. "The 
+rest shall wait here until I send for you. Try not to kill and maim each other while I'm gone." 
+He put his heels to his horse and trotted off, giving them no choice but to follow or be left behind. Either 
+was fine with him, so long as they did not sit down to talk for a day and a night. That was the trouble with 
+the clans; they had an absurd notion that every man's voice should be heard in council, so they argued 
+about everything, endlessly. Even their women were allowed to speak. Small wonder that it had been 
+hundreds of years since they last threatened the Vale with anything beyond an occasional raid. Tyrion 
+meant to change that. 
+Brorm rode with him. Behind them-after a quick bit of grumbling-the five clansmen followed on their 
+undersize garrons, scrawny things that looked like ponies and scrambled up rock walls like goats. 
+The Stone Crows rode together, and Chella and Ulf stayed close as well, as the Moon Brothers and 
+Black Ears had strong bonds between them. Timett son of Timett rode alone. Every clan in the 
+Mountains of the Moon feared the Burned Men, who mortified their flesh with fire to prove their courage 
+and (the others said) roasted babies at their feasts. And even the other Burned Men feared Timett, who 
+had put out his own left eye with a white-hot knife when he reached the age of manhood. Tyrion gathered 
+that it was more customary for a boy to burn off a nipple, a finger, or (if he was truly brave, or truly mad) 
+an ear. Timett's fellow Burned Men were so awed by his choice of an eye that they promptly named him 
+a red hand, which seemed to be some sort of a war chief. 
+"I wonder what their king burned off," Tyrion said to Bronn when he heard the tale. Grinning, the 
+sellsword had tugged at his crotch . . . but even Brorm kept a respectful tongue around Timett. If a man 
+was mad enough to put out his own eye, he was unlikely to be gentle to his enemies. 
+Distant watchers peered down from towers of unmortared stone as the party descended through the 
+foothills, and once Tyrion saw a raven take wing. Where the high road twisted between two rocky 
+outcrops, they came to the first strong point. A low earthen wall four feet high closed off the road, and a 
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+dozen crossbowmen manned the heights. 
+A GAME OF TFIRONES 535 
+Tyrion halted his followers out of range and rode to the wall alone. "Who commands here?" he shouted 
+up. 
+The captain was quick to appear, and even quicker to give them an escort when he recognized his lord's 
+son. They trotted past blackened fields and burned holdfasts, down to the riverlands and the Green Fork 
+of the Trident. Tyrion saw no bodies, but the air was full of ravens and carrion crows; there had been 
+fighting here, and recently. 
+Half a league from the crossroads, a barricade of sharpened stakes had been erected, manned by 
+pikemen and archers. Behind the line, the camp spread out to the far distance. Thin fingers of smoke rose 
+from hundreds of cookfires, mailed men sat under trees and honed their blades, and familiar banners 
+fluttered from staffs thrust into the muddy ground. 
+A party of mounted horsemen rode forward to challenge them as they approached the stakes. The 
+knight who led them wore silver armor inlaid with amethysts and a striped purple-and-silver cloak. His 
+shield bore a unicorn sigil, and a spiral horn two feet long jutted up from the brow of his horsehead helm. 
+Tyrion reined up to greet him. "Ser Flement." 
+Ser Flement Brax lifted his visor. "Tyrion," he said in astonishment. "My lord, we all feared you dead, or 
+. . ." He looked at the clansmen uncertainly. "These . . . companions of yours . . ." 
+"Bosom friends and loyal retainers," Tyrion said. "Where will I find my lord father?" 
+"He has taken the inn at the crossroads for his quarters." 
+Tyrion laughed. The inn at the crossroads! Perhaps the gods were just after all. "I will see him at once." 
+"As you say, my lord." Ser Flement wheeled his horse about and shouted commands. Three rows of 
+stakes were pulled from the ground to make a hole in the line. Tyrion led his party through. 
+Lord Tywin's camp spread over leagues. Chella's estimate of twenty thousand men could not be far 
+wrong. The common men camped out in the open, but the knights had thrown up tents, and some of the 
+high lords had erected pavilions as large as houses. Tyrion spied the red ox of the Presters, Lord 
+Crakehall's brindled boar, the burning tree of Marbrand, the badger of Lydden. Knights called out to him 
+as he cantered past, and men-at-arms gaped at the clansmen in open astonishment. 
+Shagga was gaping back; beyond a certainty, he had never seen so many men, horses, and weapons in 
+all his days. The rest of the mountain brigands did a better job of guarding their faces, but Tyrion had no 
+doubts that they were full as much in awe. Better and better. The more 
+impressed they were with the power of the Lannisters, the easier they would be to command. 
+The inn and its stables were much as he remembered, though little more than tumbled stones and 
+blackened foundations remained where the rest of the village had stood. A gibbet had been erected in the 
+yard, and the body that swung there was covered with ravens. At Tyrion's approach they took to the air, 
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+squawking and flapping their black wings. He dismounted and glanced up at what remained of the 
+corpse. The birds had eaten her lips and eyes and most of her cheeks, baring her stained red teeth in a 
+hideous smile. "A room, a meal, and a flagon of wine, that was all I asked," he reminded her with a sigh 
+of reproach. 
+Boys emerged hesitantly from the stables to see to their horses. Shagga did not want to give his up. "The 
+lad won't steal your mare," Tyrion assured him. "He only wants to give her some oats and water and 
+brush out her coat." Shagga's coat could have used a good brushing too, but it would have been less than 
+tactful to mention it. "You have my word, the horse will not be harmed." 
+Glaring, Shagga let go his grip on the reins. "This is the horse of Shagga son of Dolf," he roared at the 
+stableboy. 
+"If he doesn't give her back, chop off his manhood and feed it to the goats," Tyrion promised. "Provided 
+you can find some." 
+A pair of house guards in crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms stood under the inn's sign, on either side 
+of the door. Tyrion recognized their captain. "My father?" 
+"In the common room, m'lord." 
+"My men will want meat and mead," Tyrion told him. "See that they get it." He entered the inn, and there 
+was Father. 
+Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, was in his middle fifties, yet hard as a 
+man of twenty. Even seated, he was tall, with long legs, broad shoulders, a flat stomach. His thin arms 
+were corded with muscle. When his once-thick golden hair had begun to recede, he had commanded his 
+barber to shave his head; Lord Tywin did not believe in half measures. He razored his lip and chin as 
+well, but kept his side-whiskers, two great thickets of wiry golden hair that covered most of his cheeks 
+from ear to jaw. His eyes were a pale green, flecked with gold. A fool more foolish than most had once 
+jested that even Lord Tywin's shit was flecked with gold. Some said the man was still alive, deep in the 
+bowels of Casterly Rock. 
+Ser Kevan Lannister, his father's only surviving brother, was sharing a flagon of ale with Lord Tywin 
+when Tyrion entered the common room. His uncle was portly and balding, with a close-cropped yellow 
+beard that followed the line of his massive jaw. Ser Kevan saw him first. "Tyrion," he said in surprise. 
+"Uncle," Tyrion said, bowing. "And my lord father. What a pleasure to find you here." 
+Lord Tywin did not stir from his chair, but he did give his dwarf son a long, searching look. "I see that 
+the rumors of your demise were unfounded." 
+"Sorry to disappoint you, Father," Tyrion said. "No need to leap up and embrace me, I wouldn't want 
+you to strain yourself." He crossed the room to their table, acutely conscious of the way his stunted legs 
+made him waddle with every step. Whenever his father's eyes were on him, he became uncomfortably 
+aware of all his deformities and shortcomings. "Kind of you to go to war for me," he said as he climbed 
+into a chair and helped himself to a cup of his father's ale. 
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+
+"By my lights, it was you who started this," Lord Tywin replied. "Your brother Jaime would never have 
+meekly submitted to capture at the hands of a woman." 
+"That's one way we differ, Jaime and 1. He's taller as well, you may have noticed." 
+His father ignored the sally. "The honor of our House was at stake. I had no choice but to ride. No man 
+sheds Lannister blood with impunity.,, 
+"Hear Me Roar, " Tyrion said, grinning. The Lannister words. "Truth be told, none of my blood was 
+actually shed, although it was a close thing once or twice. Morrec and Jyck were killed." 
+"I suppose you will be wanting some new men." 
+"Don't trouble yourself, Father, I've acquired a few of my own." He tried a swallow of the ale. It was 
+brown and yeasty, so thick you could almost chew it. Very fine, in truth. A pity his father had hanged the 
+innkeep. "How is your war going?" 
+His uncle answered. "Well enough, for the nonce. Ser Edmure had scattered small troops of men along 
+his borders to stop our raiding, and your lord father and I were able to destroy most of them piecemeal 
+before they could regroup." 
+"Your brother has been covering himself with glory," his father said. "He smashed the Lords Vance and 
+Piper at the Golden Tooth, and met the massed power of the Tullys under the walls of Riverrun. The 
+lords of the Trident have been put to rout. Ser Edmure Tully was taken captive, with many of his knights 
+and bannermen. Lord Blackwood led a few survivors back to Riverrun, where Jaime has them under 
+siege. The rest fled to their own strongholds." 
+"Your father and I have been marching on each in turn," Ser Kevan 
+said. "With Lord Blackwood gone, Raventree fell at once, and Lady Whent yielded Harrenhal for want 
+of men to defend it. Ser Gregor burnt out the Pipers and the Brackens . . ." 
+"Leaving you unopposed?" Tyrion said. 
+"Not wholly," Ser Kevan said. "The Mallisters still hold Seagard and Walder Frey is marshaling his levies 
+at the Twins." 
+"No matter," Lord Tywin said. "Frey only takes the field when the scent of victory is in the air, and all he 
+smells now is ruin. And Jason Mallister lacks the strength to fight alone. Once Jaime takes Riverrun, they 
+will both be quick enough to bend the knee. Unless the Starks and the Arryns come forth to oppose us, 
+this war is good as won." 
+"I would not fret overmuch about the Arryns if I were you," Tyrion said. "The Starks are another matter. 
+Lord Eddard-" 
+"-is our hostage," his father said. "He will lead no armies while he rots in a dungeon under the Red 
+Keep." 
+"No," Ser Kevan agreed, "but his son has called the banners and sits at Moat Cailin with a strong host 
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+around him." 
+"No sword is strong until it's been tempered," Lord Tywin declared. "The Stark boy is a child. No doubt 
+he likes the sound of warhorns well enough, and the sight of his banners fluttering in the wind, but in the 
+end it comes down to butcher's work. I doubt he has the stomach for it." 
+Things had gotten interesting while he'd been away, Tyrion reflected. "And what is our fearless monarch 
+doing whilst all this 'butcher's work' is being done?" he wondered. "How has my lovely and persuasive 
+sister gotten Robert to agree to the imprisonment of his dear friend Ned?" 
+"Robert Baratheon is dead," his father told him. "Your nephew reigns in King's Landing." 
+That did take Tyrion aback. "My sister, you mean." He took another gulp of ale. The realm would be a 
+much different place with Cersei ruling in place of her husband. 
+"If you have a mind to make yourself of use, I will give you a command," his father said. "Marq Piper 
+and Karyl Vance are loose in our rear, raiding our lands across the Red Fork." 
+Tyrion made a tsking sound. "The gall of them, fighting back. Ordinarily I'd be glad to punish such 
+rudeness, Father, but the truth is, I have pressing business elsewhere." 
+"Do you?" Lord Tywin did not seem awed. "We also have a pair of Ned Stark's afterthoughts making a 
+nuisance of themselves by harassing my foraging parties. Beric Dondarrion, some young lordling with 
+delusions of valor. He has that fat jape of a priest with him, the one 
+who likes to set his sword on fire. Do you think you might be able to deal with them as you scamper off? 
+Without making too much a botch of it?" 
+Tyrion wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. "Father, it warms my heart to think that 
+you might entrust me with . . . what, twenty men? Fifty? Are you sure you can spare so many? Well, no 
+matter. If I should come across Thoros and Lord Beric, I shall spank them both." He climbed down from 
+his chair and waddled to the sideboard, where a wheel of veined white cheese sat surrounded by fruit. 
+"First, though, I have some promises of my own to keep," he said as he sliced off a wedge. "I shall 
+require three thousand helms and as many hauberks, plus swords, pikes, steel spearheads, maces, 
+battleaxes, gauntlets, gorgets, greaves, breastplates, wagons to carry all this-" 
+The door behind him opened with a crash, so violently that Tyrion almost dropped his cheese. Ser 
+Kevan leapt up swearing as the captain of the guard went flying across the room to smash against the 
+hearth. As he tumbled down into the cold ashes, his lion helm askew, Shagga snapped the man's sword 
+in two over a knee thick as a tree trunk, threw down the pieces, and lumbered into the common room. 
+He was preceded by his stench, riper than the cheese and overpowering in the closed space. "Little 
+redcape," he snarled, "when next you bare steel on Shagga son of Dolf, I will chop off your manhood and 
+roast it in the fire." 
+"What, no goats?" Tyrion said, taking a bite of cheese. 
+The other clansmen followed Shagga into the common room, Bronn with them. The sellsword gave 
+Tyrion a rueful shrug. 
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+"Who might you be?" Lord Tywin asked, cool as snow. 
+"They followed me home, Father," Tyrion explained. "May I keep them? They don't eat much." 
+No one was smiling. "By what right do you savages intrude on our councils?" demanded Ser Kevan. 
+"Savages, lowlander?" Conn might have been handsome if you washed him. "We are free men, and free 
+men by rights sit on all war councils." 
+"Which one is the lion lord?" Chella asked. 
+"They are both old men," announced Timett son of Timett, who had yet to see his twentieth year. 
+Ser Kevan's hand went to his sword hilt, but his brother placed two fingers on his wrist and held him 
+fast. Lord Tywin seemed unperturbed. "Tyrion, have you forgotten your courtesies? Kindly acquaint us 
+with our . . . honored guests." 
+Tyrion licked his fingers. "With pleasure," he said. "The fair maid is Chella daughter of Cheyk of the 
+Black Ears." 
+"I'm no maid," Chella protested. "My sons have taken fifty ears among them." 
+"May they take fifty more." Tyrion waddled away from her. "This is Conn son of Coratt. Shagga son of 
+Dolf is the one who looks like Casterly Rock with hair. They are Stone Crows. Here is Ulf son of Umar 
+of the Moon Brothers, and here Timett son of Timett, a red hand of the Burned Men. And this is Bronn, 
+a sellsword of no particular allegiance. He has already changed sides twice in the short time I've known 
+him, you and he ought to get on famously, Father." To Bronn and the clansmen he said, "May I present 
+my lord father, Tywin son of Tytos of House Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West, 
+Shield of Lannisport, and once and future Hand of the King." 
+Lord Tywin rose, dignified and correct. "Even in the west, we know the prowess of the warrior clans of 
+the Mountains of the Moon. What brings you down from your strongholds, my lords?" 
+"Horses," said Shagga. 
+"A promise of silk and steel," said Timett son of Timett. 
+Tyrion was about to tell his lord father how he proposed to reduce the Vale of Arryn to a smoking 
+wasteland, but he was never given the chance. The door banged open again. The messenger gave 
+Tyrion's clansmen a quick, queer look as he dropped to one knee before Lord Tywin. "My lord," he 
+said, "Ser Addam bid me tell you that the Stark host is moving down the causeway." 
+Lord Tywin Lannister did not smile. Lord Tywin never smiled, but Tyrion had learned to read his father's 
+pleasure all the same, and it was there on his face. "So the wolfling is leaving his den to play among the 
+lions," he said in a voice of quiet satisfaction. "Splendid. Return to Ser Addam and tell him to fall back. 
+He is not to engage the northerners until we arrive, but I want him to harass their flanks and draw them 
+farther south." 
+"It will be as you command." The rider took his leave. 
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+"We are well situated here," Ser Kevan pointed out. "Close to the ford and ringed by pits and spikes. If 
+they are coming south, I say let them come, and break themselves against us." 
+"The boy may hang back or lose his courage when he sees our numbers," Lord Tywin replied. "The 
+sooner the Starks are broken, the sooner I shall be free to deal with Stannis Baratheon. Tell the 
+drummers to beat assembly, and send word to Jaime that I am marching against Robb Stark." 
+"As you will," Ser Kevan said. 
+Tyrion watched with a grim fascination as his lord father turned next to the half-wild clansmen. "It is said 
+that the men of the mountain clans are warriors without fear." 
+"It is said truly," Conn of the Stone Crows answered. 
+"And the women," Chella added. 
+"Ride with me against my enemies, and you shall have all my son promised you, and more," Lord Tywin 
+told them. 
+"Would you pay us with our own coin?" Ulf son of Umar said. "Why should we need the father's 
+promise, when we have the son's?" 
+"I said nothing of need," Lord Tywin replied. "My words were courtesy, nothing more. You need not 
+join us. The men of the winterlands are made of iron and ice, and even my boldest knights fear to face 
+them." 
+Oh, deftly done, Tyrion thought, smiling crookedly. 
+"The Burned Men fear nothing. Timett son of Timett will ride with the lions." 
+"Wherever the Burned Men go, the Stone Crows have been there first," Conn declared hotly. "We ride 
+as well." 
+"Shagga son of Dolf will chop off their manhoods and feed them to the crows." 
+"We will ride with you, lion lord," Chella daughter of Cheyk agreed, "but only if your halfman son goes 
+with us. He has bought his breath with promises. Until we hold the steel he has pledged us, his life is 
+ours." 
+Lord Tywin turned his gold-flecked eyes on his son. 
+"Joy," Tyrion said with a resigned smile. 
+SANSA 
+The walls of the throne room had been stripped bare, the hunting tapestries that King Robert loved 
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+taken down and stacked in the corner in an untidy heap. 
+Ser Mandon Moore went to take his place under the throne beside two of his fellows of the Kingsguard. 
+Sansa hovered by the door, for once unguarded. The queen had given her freedom of the castle as a 
+reward for being good, yet even so, she was escorted everywhere she went. "Honor guards for my 
+daughter-to-be," the queen called them, but they did not make Sansa feel honored. 
+"Freedom, of the castle" meant that she could go wherever she chose within the Red Keep so long as 
+she promised not to go beyond the walls, a promise Sansa had been more than willing to give. She 
+couldn't have gone beyond the walls anyway. The gates were watched day and night by Janos Slynt's 
+gold cloaks, and Lannister house guards were always about as well. Besides, even if she could leave the 
+castle, where would she go? It was enough that she could walk in the yard, pick flowers in Myrcella's 
+garden, and visit the sept to pray for her father. Sometimes she prayed in the godswood as well, since the 
+Starks kept the old gods. 
+This was the first court session of Joffrey's reign, so Sansa looked about nervously. A line of Lannister 
+house guards stood beneath the western windows, a line of gold-cloaked City Watchmen beneath the 
+east. Of smallfolk and commoners, she saw no sign, but under the gallery a cluster of lords great and 
+small milled restlessly. There were no more than twenty, where a hundred had been accustomed to wait 
+upon King Robert. 
+Sansa slipped in among them, murmuring greetings as she worked her way toward the front. She 
+recognized black-skinned Jalabhar Xho, gloomy Ser Aron Santagar, the Redwyne twins Horror and 
+Slobber . . . only none of them seemed to recognize her. Or if they did, they shied away as if she had the 
+grey plague. Sickly Lord Gyles covered his face at her approach and feigned a fit of coughing, and when 
+funny drunken Ser Dontos started to hail her, Ser Balon Swann whispered in his ear and he turned away. 
+And so many others were missing. Where had the rest of them gone? Sansa wondered. Vainly, she 
+searched for friendly faces. Not one of them would meet her eyes. It was as if she had become a ghost, 
+dead before her time. 
+Grand Maester Pycelle was seated alone at the council table, seemingly asleep, his hands clasped 
+together atop his beard. She saw Lord Varys hurry into the hall, his feet making no sound. A moment 
+later Lord Baelish entered through the tall doors in the rear, smiling. He chatted amiably with Ser Balon 
+and Ser Dontos as he made his way to the front. Butterflies fluttered nervously in Sansa's stomach. I 
+shouldn't be afraid, she told herself. I have nothing to be afraid of, it will all come out well, Joff loves me 
+and the queen does too, she said so. 
+A herald's voice rang out. "All hail His Grace, Joffrey of the Houses Baratheon and Lannister, the First 
+of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, and Lord of the Seven Kingdoms. All 
+hail his lady mother, Cersei of House Lannister, Queen Regent, Light of the West, and Protector of the 
+Realm." 
+Ser Barristan Selmy, resplendent in white plate, led them in. Ser Arys Oakheart escorted the queen, 
+while Ser Boros Blount walked beside Joffrey, so six of the Kingsguard were now in the hall, all the 
+White Swords save Jaime Lannister alone. Her prince-no, her king now!-took the steps of the Iron 
+Throne two at a time, while his mother was seated with the council. Joff wore plush black velvets slashed 
+with crimson, a shimmering cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar, and on his head a golden crown crusted 
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+with rubies and black diamonds. 
+When Joffrey turned to look out over the hall, his eye caught Sansa's. He smiled, seated himself, and 
+spoke. "It is a king's duty to punish the disloyal and reward those who are true. Grand Maester Pycelle, I 
+command you to read my decrees." 
+Pycelle pushed himself to his feet. He was clad in a magnificent robe of thick red velvet, with an ermine 
+collar and shiny gold fastenings. From a drooping sleeve, heavy with gilded scrollwork, he drew a 
+parchment, unrolled it, and began to read a long list of names, commanding each in the name of king and 
+council to present themselves and swear their fealty to Joffrey. Failing that, they would be adjudged 
+traitors, their lands and titles forfeit to the throne. 
+The names he read made Sansa hold her breath. Lord Stannis Baratheon, his lady wife, his daughter. 
+Lord Renly Baratheon. Both Lord Royces and their sons. Ser Loras Tyrell. Lord Mace Tyrell, his 
+brothers, uncles, sons. The red priest, Thoros of Myr. Lord Beric Dondarrion. Lady Lysa Arryn and her 
+son, the little Lord Robert. Lord Hoster Tully, his brother Ser Brynden, his son Ser Edmure. Lord Jason 
+Mallister. Lord Bryce Caron of the Marches. Lord Tytos Blackwood. Lord Walder Frey and his heir 
+Ser Stevron. Lord Karyl Vance. Lord Jonos Bracken. Lady Sheila Whent. Doran Martell, Prince of 
+Dorne, and all his sons. So many, she thought as Pycelle read on and on, it will take a whole flock of 
+ravens to send out these commands. 
+And at the end, near last, came the names Sansa had been dreading. Lady Catelyn Stark. Robb Stark. 
+Brandon Stark, Rickon Stark, Arya Stark. Sansa stifled a gasp. Arya. They wanted Arya to present 
+herself and swear an oath . . . it must mean her sister had fled on the galley, she must be safe at Winterfell 
+by now . . . 
+Grand Maester Pycelle rolled up the list, tucked it up his left sleeve, and pulled another parchment from 
+his right. He cleared his throat and resumed. "In the place of the traitor Eddard Stark, it is the wish of His 
+Grace that Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock and Warden of the West, take up the office of Hand 
+of the King, to speak with his voice, lead his armies against his enemies, and carry out his royal will. So 
+the king has decreed. The small council consents. 
+"In the place of the traitor Stannis Baratheon, it is the wish of His Grace that his lady mother, the Queen 
+Regent Cersei Lannister, who has ever been his staunchest support, be seated upon his small council, that 
+she may help him rule wisely and with justice. So the king has decreed. The small council consents." 
+Sansa heard a soft murmuring from the lords around her, but it was quickly stilled. Pycelle continued. 
+"It is also the wish of His Grace that his loyal servant, Janos Slynt, Commander of the City Watch of 
+King's Landing, be at once raised to the rank of lord and granted the ancient seat of Harrenhal with all its 
+attendant lands and incomes, and that his sons and grandsons shall hold these honors after him until the 
+end of time. It is moreover his 
+command that Lord Slynt be seated immediately upon his small council, to assist in the governance of the 
+realm. So the king has decreed. The small council consents." 
+Sansa glimpsed motion from the corner of her eye as Janos Slynt made his entrance. This time the 
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+muttering was louder and angrier. Proud lords whose houses went back thousands of years made way 
+reluctantly for the balding, frog-faced commoner as he marched past. Golden scales had been sewn onto 
+the black velvet of his doublet and rang together softly with each step. His cloak was checked 
+black-andgold satin. Two ugly boys who must have been his sons went before him, struggling with the 
+weight of a heavy metal shield as tall as they were. For his sigil he had taken a bloody spear, gold on a 
+night-black field. The sight of it raised goose prickles up and down Sansa's arms. 
+As Lord Slynt took his place, Grand Maester Pycelle resumed. "Lastly, in these times of treason and 
+turmoil, with our beloved Robert so lately dead, it is the view of the council that the life and safety of 
+King Joffrey is of paramount importance He looked to the queen. 
+Cersei stood. "Ser Barristan Selmy, stand forth." 
+Ser Barristan had been standing at the foot of the Iron Throne, as still as any statue, but now he went to 
+one knee and bowed his head. "Your Grace, I am yours to command." 
+"Rise, Ser Barristan," Cersei Lannister said. "You may remove your helm." 
+"My lady?" Standing, the old knight took off his high white helm, though he did not seem to understand 
+why. 
+"You have served the realm long and faithfully, good ser, and every man and woman in the Seven 
+Kingdoms owes you thanks. Yet now I fear your service is at an end. It is the wish of king and council 
+that you lay down your heavy burden." 
+"My . . . burden? I fear I . . . I do not 
+The new-made lord, Janos Slynt, spoke up, his voice heavy and blunt. "Her Grace is trying to tell you 
+that you are relieved as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard." 
+The tall, white-haired knight seemed to shrink as he stood there, scarcely breathing. "Your Grace," he 
+said at last. "The Kingsguard is a Sworn Brotherhood. Our vows are taken for life. Only death may 
+relieve the Lord Commander of his sacred trust." 
+"Whose death, Ser Barristan?" The queen's voice was soft as silk, but her words carried the whole 
+length of the hall. "Yours, or your king's?" 
+"You let my father die," Joffrey said accusingly from atop the Iron Throne. "You're too old to protect 
+anybody." 
+Sansa watched as the knight peered up at his new king. She had never seen him look his years before, 
+yet now he did. "Your Grace," he said. "I was chosen for the White Swords in my twenty-third year. It 
+was all I had ever dreamed, from the moment I first took sword in hand. I gave up all claim to my 
+ancestral keep. The girl I was to wed married my cousin in my place, I had no need of land or sons, my 
+life would be lived for the realm. Ser Gerold Hightower himself heard my vows . . . to ward the king with 
+all my strength . . . to give my blood for his . . . I fought beside the White Bull and Prince Lewyn of 
+Dorne . . . beside Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of the Morning. Before I served your father, I helped 
+shield King Aerys, and his father Jaehaerys before him . . . three kings . . ." 
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+"And all of them dead," Littlefinger pointed out. 
+"Your time is done," Cersei Lannister announced. "Joffrey requires men around him who are young and 
+strong. The council has determined that Ser Jaime Lannister will take your place as the Lord Commander 
+of Sworn Brothers of the White Swords." 
+"The Kingslayer," Ser Barristan said, his voice hard with contempt. "The false knight who profaned his 
+blade with the blood of the king he had sworn to defend." 
+"Have a care for your words, ser," the queen warned. "You are speaking of our beloved brother, your 
+king's own blood." 
+Lord Varys spoke, gentler than the others. "We are not unmindful of your service, good ser. Lord Tywin 
+Lannister has generously agreed to grant you a handsome tract of land north of Lannisport, beside the 
+sea, with gold and men sufficient to build you a stout keep, and servants to see to your every need." 
+Ser Barristan looked up sharply. "A hall to die in, and men to bury me. I thank you, my lords . . . but I 
+spit upon your pity." He reached up and undid the clasps that held his cloak in place, and the heavy white 
+garment slithered from his shoulders to fall in a heap on the floor. His helmet dropped with a clang. "I am 
+a knight," he told them. He opened the silver fastenings of his breastplate and let that fall as well. "I shall 
+die a knight." 
+"A naked knight, it would seem," quipped Littlefinger. 
+They all laughed then, Joffrey on his throne, and the lords standing attendance, Janos Slynt and Queen 
+Cersei and Sandor Clegane and even the other men of the Kingsguard, the five who had been his 
+brothers until a moment ago. Surely that must have hurt the most, Sansa 
+thought. Her heart went out to the gallant old man as he stood shamed and red-faced, too angry to 
+speak. Finally he drew his sword. 
+Sansa heard someone gasp. Ser Boros and Ser Meryn moved forward to confront him, but Ser 
+Barristan froze them in place with a look that dripped contempt. "Have no fear, sers, your king is safe . . . 
+no thanks to you. Even now, I could cut through the five of you as easy as a dagger cuts cheese. If you 
+would serve under the Kingslayer, not a one of you is fit to wear the white." He flung his sword at the 
+foot of the Iron Throne. "Here, boy. Melt it down and add it to the others, if you like. It will do you more 
+good than the swords in the hands of these five. Perhaps Lord Stannis will chance to sit on it when he 
+takes your throne." 
+He took the long way out, his steps ringing loud against the floor and echoing off the bare stone walls. 
+Lords and ladies parted to let him pass. Not until the pages had closed the great oak-and-bronze doors 
+behind him did Sansa hear sounds again: soft voices, uneasy stirrings, the shuffle of papers from the 
+council table. "He called me boy," Joffrey said peevishly, sounding younger than his years. "He talked 
+about my uncle Stannis too." 
+"Idle talk," said Varys the eunuch. "Without meaning 
+"He could be making plots with my uncles. I want him seized and questioned." No one moved. Joffrey 
+raised his voice. "I said, I want him seized!" 
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+Janos Slynt rose from the council table. "My gold cloaks will see to it, Your Grace." 
+"Good," said King Joffrey. Lord Janos strode from the hall, his ugly sons double-stepping to keep up as 
+they lugged the great metal shield with the arms of House Slynt. 
+"Your Grace," Littlefinger reminded the king. "If we might resume, the seven are now six. We find 
+ourselves in need of a new sword for your Kingsguard." 
+Joffrey smiled. "Tell them, Mother." 
+"The king and council have determined that no man in the Seven Kingdoms is more fit to guard and 
+protect His Grace than his sworn shield, Sandor Clegane." 
+"How do you like that, dog?" King Joffrey asked. 
+The Hound's scarred face was hard to read. He took a long moment to consider. "Why not? I have no 
+lands nor wife to forsake, and who'd care if I did?" The burned side of his mouth twisted. "But I warn 
+you, I'll say no knight's vows." 
+"The Sworn Brothers of the Kingsguard have always been knights," Ser Boros said firmly. 
+"Until now," the Hound said in his deep rasp, and Ser Boros fell silent. 
+When the king's herald moved forward, Sansa realized the moment was almost at hand. She smoothed 
+down the cloth of her skirt nervously. She was dressed in mourning, as a sign of respect for the dead 
+king, but she had taken special care to make herself beautiful. Her gown was the ivory silk that the queen 
+had given her, the one Arya had ruined, but she'd had them dye it black and you couldn't see the stain at 
+all. She had fretted over her jewelry for hours and finally decided upon the elegant simplicity of a plain 
+silver chain. 
+The herald's voice boomed out. "If any man in this hall has other matters to set before His Grace, let him 
+speak now or go forth and hold his silence." 
+Sansa quailed. Now, she told herself, I must do it now. Gods give me courage. She took one step, then 
+another. Lords and knights stepped aside silently to let her pass, and she felt the weight of their eyes on 
+her. I must be as strong as my lady mother. "Your Grace," she called out in a soft, tremulous voice. 
+The height of the Iron Throne gave Joffrey a better vantage point than anyone else in the hall. He was the 
+first to see her. "Come forward, my lady," he called out, smiling. 
+His smile emboldened her, made her feel beautiful and strong. He does love me, he does. Sansa lifted 
+her head and walked toward him, not too slow and not too fast. She must not let them see how nervous 
+she was. 
+"The Lady Sansa, of House Stark," the herald cried. 
+She stopped under the throne, at the spot where Ser Barristan's white cloak lay puddled on the floor 
+beside his helm and breastplate. "Do you have some business for king and council, Sansa?" the queen 
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+asked from the council table. 
+"I do." She knelt on the cloak, so as not to spoil her gown, and looked up at her prince on his fearsome 
+black throne. "As it please Your Grace, I ask mercy for my father, Lord Eddard Stark, who was the 
+Hand of the King." She had practiced the words a hundred times. 
+The queen sighed. "Sansa, you disappoint me. What did I tell you about traitor's blood?" 
+"Your father has committed grave and terrible crimes, my lady," Grand Maester Pycelle intoned. 
+"Ah, poor sad thing," sighed Varys. "She is only a babe, my lords, she does not know what she asks." 
+Sansa had eyes only for Joffrey. He must listen to me, he must, she 
+thought. The king shifted on his seat, "Let her speak," he commanded. "I want to hear what she says." 
+"Thank you, Your Grace." Sansa smiled, a shy secret smile, just for him. He was listening. She knew he 
+would. 
+"Treason is a noxious weed," Pycelle declared solemnly. "It must be torn up, root and stem and seed, 
+lest new traitors sprout from every roadside." 
+"Do you deny your father's crime?" Lord Baelish asked. 
+"No, my lords." Sansa knew better than that. "I know he must be punished. All I ask is mercy. I know 
+my lord father must regret what he did. He was King Robert's friend and he loved him, you all know he 
+loved him. He never wanted to be Hand until the king asked him. They must have lied to him. Lord Renly 
+or Lord Stannis or . . . or somebody, they must have lied, otherwise . . ." 
+King Joffrey leaned forward, hands grasping the arms of the throne. Broken sword points fanned out 
+between his fingers. "He said I wasn't the king. Why did he say that?" 
+"His leg was broken," Sansa replied eagerly. "It hurt ever so much, Maester Pycelle was giving him milk 
+of the poppy, and they say that milk of the poppy fills your head with clouds. Otherwise he would never 
+have said it." 
+Varys said, "A child's-faith . . . such sweet innocence . . . and yet, they say wisdom oft comes from the 
+mouths of babes." 
+"Treason is treason," Pycelle replied at once. 
+Joffrey rocked restlessly on the throne. "Mother?" 
+Cersei Lannister considered Sansa thoughtfully. "If Lord Eddard were to confess his crime," she said at 
+last, "we would know he had repented his folly." 
+Joffrey pushed himself to his feet. Please, Sansa thought, please, please, be the king I know you are, 
+good and kind and noble, please. "Do you have any more to say?" he asked her. 
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+"Only . . . that as you love me, you do me this kindness, my prince," Sansa said. 
+King Joffrey looked her up and down. "Your sweet words have moved me," he said gallantly, nodding, 
+as if to say all would be well. "I shall do as you ask . . . but first your father has to confess. He has to 
+confess and say that I'm the king, or there will be no mercy for him." 
+"He will," Sansa said, heart soaring. "Oh, I know he will." 
+EDDARD 
+The straw on the floor stank of urine. There was no window, no bed, not even a slop bucket. He 
+remembered walls of pale red stone festooned with patches of nitre, a grey door of splintered wood, four 
+inches thick and studded with iron. He had seen them, briefly, a quick glimpse as they shoved him inside. 
+Once the door had slammed shut, he had seen no more. The dark was absolute. He had as well been 
+blind. 
+Or dead. Buried with his king. "Ah, Robert," he murmured as his groping hand touched a cold stone 
+wall, his leg throbbing with every motion. He remembered the jest the king had shared in the crypts of 
+Winterfell, as the Kings of Winter looked on with cold stone eyes. The king eats, Robert had said, and 
+the Hand takes the shit. How he had laughed. Yet he had gotten it wrong. The king dies, Ned Stark 
+thought, and the Hand is buried. 
+The dungeon was under the Red Keep, deeper than he dared imagine. He remembered the old stories 
+about Maegor the Cruel, who murdered all the masons who labored on his castle, so they might never 
+reveal its secrets. 
+He damned them all: Littlefinger, Janos Slynt and his gold cloaks, the queen, the Kingslayer, Pycelle and 
+Varys and Ser Barristan, even Lord Renly, Robert's own blood, who had run when he was needed 
+most. Yet in the end he blamed himself. "Fool, " he cried to the darkness, "thrice-damned blind fool." 
+Cersei Lannister's face seemed to float before him in the darkness. Her hair was full of sunlight, but there 
+was mockery in her smile. "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die," she whispered. 
+Ned had played and lost, and his men had paid the price of his folly with their life's blood. 
+When he thought of his daughters, he would have wept gladly, but the tears would not come. Even now, 
+he was a Stark of Winterfell, and his grief and his rage froze hard inside him. 
+When he kept very still, his leg did not hurt so much, so he did his best to lie unmoving. For how long he 
+could not say. There was no sun and no moon. He could not see to mark the walls. Ned closed his eyes 
+and opened them; it made no difference. He slept and woke and slept again. He did not know which was 
+more painful, the waking or the sleeping. When he slept, he dreamed: dark disturbing dreams of blood 
+and broken promises. When he woke, there was nothing to do but think, and his waking thoughts were 
+worse than nightmares. The thought of Cat was as painful as a bed of nettles. He wondered where she 
+was, what she was doing. He wondered whether he would ever see her again. 
+Hours turned to days, or so it seemed. He could feel a dull ache in his shattered leg, an itch beneath the 
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+
+plaster. When he touched his thigh, the flesh was hot to his fingers. The only sound was his breathing. 
+After a time, he began to talk aloud, just to hear a voice. He made plans to keep himself sane, built 
+castles of hope in the dark. Robert's brothers were out in the world, raising armies at Dragonstone and 
+Storm's End. Alyn and Harwin would return to King's Landing with the rest of his household guard once 
+they had dealt with Ser Gregor. Catelyn would raise the north when the word reached her, and the lords 
+of river and mountain and Vale would join her. 
+He found himself thinking of Robert more and more. He saw the king as he had been in the flower of his 
+youth, tall and handsome, his great antlered helm on his head, his warhammer in hand, sitting his horse 
+like a horned god. He heard his laughter in the dark, saw his eyes, blue and clear as mountain lakes. 
+"Look at us, Ned," Robert said. "Gods, how did we come to this? You here, and me killed by a pig. We 
+won a throne together . . ." 
+Ifailed you, Robert, Ned thought. He could not say the words. I lied to you, hid the truth. I let them kill 
+you. 
+The king heard him. "You stiff-necked fool," he muttered, "too proud to listen. Can you eat pride, Stark? 
+Will honor shield your 
+children?" Cracks ran down his face, fissures opening in the flesh, and he reached up and ripped the 
+mask away. It was not Robert at all; it was Littlefinger, grinning, mocking him. When he opened his 
+mouth to speak, his lies turned to pale grey moths and took wing. 
+Ned was half-asleep when the footsteps came down the hall. At first he thought he dreamt them; it had 
+been so long since he had heard anything but the sound of his own voice. Ned was feverish by then, his 
+leg a dull agony, his lips parched and cracked. When the heavy wooden door creaked open, the sudden 
+light was painful to his eyes. 
+A gaoler thrust a jug at him. The clay was cool and beaded with moisture. Ned grasped it with both 
+hands and gulped eagerly. Water ran from his mouth and dripped down through his beard. He drank until 
+he thought he would be sick. "How long . . . T' he asked weakly when he could drink no more. 
+The gaoler was a scarecrow of a man with a rat's face and frayed beard, clad in a mail shirt and a leather 
+half cape. "No talking," he said as he wrenched the jug from Ned's hands. 
+"Please," Ned said, "my daughters . . ." The door crashed shut. He blinked as the light vanished, lowered 
+his head to his chest, and curled up on the straw. It no longer stank of urine and shit. It no longer smelled 
+at all. 
+He could no longer tell the difference between waking and sleeping. The memory came creeping upon 
+him in the darkness, as vivid as a dream. It was the year of false spring, and he was eighteen again, down 
+from the Eyrie to the tourney at Harrenhal. He could see the deep green of the grass, and smell the pollen 
+on the wind. Warm days and cool nights and the sweet taste of wine. He remembered Brandon's 
+laughter, and Robert's berserk valor in the melee, the way he laughed as he unhorsed men left and right. 
+He remembered Jaime Lannister, a golden youth in scaled white armor, kneeling on the grass in front of 
+the king's pavilion and making his vows to protect and defend King Aerys. Afterward, Ser Oswell Whent 
+helped Jaime to his feet, and the White Bull himself, Lord Commander Ser Gerold Hightower, fastened 
+the snowy cloak of the Kingsguard about his shoulders. All six White Swords were there to welcome 
+their newest brother. 
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+
+Yet when the jousting began, the day belonged to Rhaegar Targaryen. The crown prince wore the armor 
+he would die in: gleaming black plate with the three-headed dragon of his House wrought in rubies on the 
+breast. A plume of scarlet silk streamed behind him when he rode, and it seemed no lance could touch 
+him. Brandon fell to him, and Bronze Yohn Royce, and even the splendid Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword 
+of the Morning. 
+Robert had been jesting with Jon and old Lord Hunter as the prince circled the field after unhorsing Ser 
+Barristan in the final tilt to claim the champion's crown. Ned remembered the moment when all the smiles 
+died, when Prince Rhaegar Targaryen urged his horse past his own wife, the Dornish princess Elia 
+Martell, to lay the queen of beauty's laurel in Lyanna's lap. He could see it still: a crown of winter roses, 
+blue as frost. 
+Ned Stark reached out his hand to grasp the flowery crown, but beneath the pale blue petals the thorns 
+lay hidden. He felt them clawing at his skin, sharp and cruel, saw the slow trickle of blood run down his 
+fingers, and woke, trembling, in the dark. 
+Promise me, Ned, his sister had whispered from her bed of blood. She had loved the scent of winter 
+roses. 
+"Gods save me," Ned wept. "I am going mad." 
+The gods did not deign to answer. 
+Each time the turnkey brought him water, he told himself another day had passed. At first he would beg 
+the man for some word of his daughters and the world beyond his cell. Grunts and kicks were his only 
+replies. Later, when the stomach cramps began, he begged for food instead. It made no matter; he was 
+not fed. Perhaps the Lannisters meant for him to starve to death. "No," he told himself. If Cersei had 
+wanted him dead, he would have been cut down in the throne room with his men. She wanted him alive. 
+Weak, desperate, yet alive. Catelyn held her brother; she dare not kill him or the Imp's life would be 
+forfeit as well. 
+From outside his cell came the rattle of iron chains. As the door creaked open, Ned put a hand to the 
+damp wall and pushed himself toward the light. The glare of a torch made him squint. "Food," he 
+croaked. 
+"Wine," a voice answered. It was not the rat-faced man; this gaoler was stouter, shorter, though he wore 
+the same leather half cape and spiked steel cap. "Drink, Lord Eddard." He thrust a wineskin into Ned's 
+hands. 
+The voice was strangely familiar, yet it took Ned Stark a moment to place it. "Varys?" he said groggily 
+when it came. He touched the man's face. "I'm not . . . not dreaming this. You're here." The eunuch's 
+plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the coarse hair with his fingers. Varys 
+had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. "How did you . . . what 
+sort of magician are you?" 
+"A thirsty one," Varys said. "Drink, my lord." 
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+
+Ned's hands fumbled at the skin. "Is this the same poison they gave Robert?" 
+"You wrong me," Varys said sadly. "Truly, no one loves a eunuch. Give me the skin." He drank, a trickle 
+of red leaking from the corner of his plump mouth. "Not the equal of the vintage you offered me the night 
+of the tourney, but no more poisonous than most," he concluded, wiping his lips. "Here." 
+Ned tried a swallow. "Dregs." He felt as though he were about to bring the wine back up. 
+"All men must swallow the sour with the sweet. High lords and eunuchs alike. Your hour has come, my 
+lord." 
+"My daughters . . ." 
+"The younger girl escaped Ser Meryn and fled," Varys told him. "I have not been able to find her. Nor 
+have the Lannisters. A kindness, there. Our new king loves her not. Your older girl is still betrothed to 
+Joffrey. Cersei keeps her close. She came to court a few days ago to plead that you be spared. A pity 
+you couldn't have been there, you would have been touched." He leaned forward intently. "I trust you 
+realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?" 
+"The queen will not kill me," Ned said. His head swam; the wine was strong, and it had been too long 
+since he'd eaten. "Cat . . . Cat holds her brother . . ." 
+"The wrong brother," Varys sighed. "And lost to her, in any case. She let the Imp slip through her 
+fingers. I expect he is dead by now, somewhere in the Mountains of the Moon." 
+"If that is true, slit my throat and have done with it." He was dizzy from the wine, tired and heartsick. 
+"Your blood is the last thing I desire." 
+Ned frowned. "When they slaughtered my guard, you stood beside the queen and watched, and said not 
+a word." 
+"And would again. I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmored, and surrounded by Lannister 
+swords." The eunuch looked at him curiously, tilting his head. "When I was a young boy, before I was 
+cut, I traveled with a troupe of mummers through the Free Cities. They taught me that each man has a 
+role to play, in life as well as mummery. So it is at court. The King's Justice must be fearsome, the master 
+of coin must be frugal, the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard must be valiant . . . and the master of 
+whisperers must be sly and obsequious and without scruple. A courageous informer would be as useless 
+as a cowardly knight." He took the wineskin back and drank. 
+Ned studied the eunuch's face, searching for truth beneath the 
+mummer's scars and false stubble. He tried some more wine. This time it went down easier. "Can you 
+free me from this pit?" 
+"I could . . . but will I? No. Questions would be asked, and the answers would lead back to me." 
+Ned had expected no more. "You are blunt." 
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+
+"A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord." 
+"Would you at least consent to carry a message out for me?" 
+"That would depend on the message. I will gladly provide you with paper and ink, if you like. And when 
+you have written what you will, I will take the letter and read it, and deliver it or not, as best serves my 
+own ends." 
+"Your own ends. What ends are those, Lord Varys?" 
+"Peace," Varys replied without hesitation. "If there was one soul in King's Landing who was truly 
+desperate to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me." He sighed. "For fifteen years I protected him from 
+his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness led you to tell the 
+queen that you had learned the truth of Joffrey's birth?" 
+"The madness of mercy," Ned admitted. 
+"Ah," said Varys. "To be sure. You are an honest and honorable man, Lord Eddard. Ofttimes I forget 
+that. I have met so few of them in my life." He glanced around the cell. "When I see what honesty and 
+honor have won you, I understand why." 
+Ned Stark laid his head back against the damp stone wall and closed his eyes. His leg was throbbing. 
+"The king's wine . . . did you question Lancel?" 
+"Oh, indeed. Cersei gave him the wineskins, and told him it was Robert's favorite vintage." The eunuch 
+shrugged. "A hunter lives a perilous life. If the boar had not done for Robert, it would have been a fall 
+from a horse, the bite of a wood adder, an arrow gone astray . . . the forest is the abbatoir of the gods. It 
+was not wine that killed the king. It was your mercy." 
+Ned had feared as much. "Gods forgive me." 
+"If there are gods," Varys said, "I expect they will. The queen would not have waited long in any case. 
+Robert was becoming unruly, and she needed to be rid of him to free her hands to deal with his brothers. 
+They are quite a pair, Stannis and Renly. The iron gauntlet and the silk glove." He wiped his mouth with 
+the back of his hand. "You have been foolish, my lord. You ought to have heeded Littlefinger when he 
+urged you to support Joffrey's succession." 
+"How . . . how could you know of that?" 
+Varys smiled. "I know, that's all that need concern you. I also know that on the morrow the queen will 
+pay you a visit." 
+Slowly Ned raised his eyes. "Why?" 
+"Cersei is frightened of you, my lord . . . but she has other enemies she fears even more. Her beloved 
+Jaime is fighting the river lords even now. Lysa Arryn sits in the Eyrie, ringed in stone and steel, and there 
+is no love lost between her and the queen. In Dorne, the Martells still brood on the murder of Princess 
+Elia and her babes. And now your son marches down the Neck with a northern host at his back." 
+Page 423
+
+"Robb is only a boy," Ned said, aghast. 
+"A boy with an army," Varys said. "Yet only a boy, as you say. The king's brothers are the ones giving 
+Cersei sleepless nights . . . Lord Stannis in particular. His claim is the true one, he is known for his 
+prowess as a battle commander, and he is utterly without mercy. There is no creature on earth half so 
+terrifying as a truly just man. No one knows what Stannis has been doing on Dragonstone, but I will 
+wager you that he's gathered more swords than seashells. So here is Cersei's nightmare: while her father 
+and brother spend their power battling Starks and Tullys, Lord Stannis will land, proclaim himself king, 
+and lop off her son's curly blond head . . . and her own in the bargain, though I truly believe she cares 
+more about the boy." 
+"Stannis Baratheon is Robert's true heir," Ned said. "The throne is his by rights. I would welcome his 
+ascent." 
+Varys tsked. "Cersei will not want to hear that, I promise you. Stannis may win the throne, but only your 
+rotting head will remain to cheer unless you guard that tongue of yours. Sansa begged so sweetly, it 
+would be a shame if you threw it all away. You are being given your life back, if you'll take it. Cersei is 
+no fool. She knows a tame wolf is of more use than a dead one." 
+"You want me to serve the woman who murdered my king, butchered my men, and crippled my son?" 
+Ned's voice was thick with disbelief. 
+"I want you to serve the realm," Varys said. "Tell the queen that you will confess your vile treason, 
+command your son to lay down his sword, and proclaim Joffrey as the true heir. Offer to denounce 
+Stannis and Renly as faithless usurpers. Our green-eyed lioness knows you are a man of honor. If you 
+will give her the peace she needs and the time to deal with Stannis, and pledge to carry her secret to your 
+grave, I believe she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with 
+your brother and that baseborn son of yours." 
+The thought of Jon filled Ned with a sense of shame, and a sorrow 
+too deep for words. If only he could see the boy again, sit and talk with him . . . pain shot through his 
+broken leg, beneath the filthy grey plaster of his cast. He winced, his fingers opening and closing 
+helplessly. "Is this your own scheme," he gasped out at Varys, "or are you in league with Littlefinger?" 
+That seemed to amuse the eunuch. "I would sooner wed the Black Goat of Qohor. Littlefinger is the 
+second most devious man in the Seven Kingdoms. Oh, I feed him choice whispers, sufficient so that he 
+thinks I am his . . . just as I allow Cersei to believe I am hers." 
+"And just as you let me believe that you were mine. Tell me, Lord Varys, who do you truly serve?" 
+Varys smiled thinly. "Why, the realm, my good lord, how ever could you doubt that? I swear it by my 
+lost manhood. I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace." He finished the last swallow of wine, and 
+tossed the empty skin aside. "So what is your answer, Lord Eddard? Give me your word that you'll tell 
+the queen what she wants to hear when she comes calling." 
+"If I did, my word would be as hollow as an empty suit of armor. My life is not so precious to me as 
+that." 
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+"Pity." The eunuch stood. "And your daughter's life, my lord? How precious is that?" 
+A chill pierced Ned's heart. "My daughter 
+"Surely you did not think I'd forgotten about your sweet innocent, my lord? The queen most certainly has 
+not." 
+"No, " Ned pleaded, his voice cracking. "Varys, gods have mercy, do as you like with me, but leave my 
+daughter out of your schemes. Sansa's no more than a child." 
+"Rhaenys was a child too. Prince Rhaegar's daughter. A precious little thing, younger than your girls. She 
+had a small black kitten she called Balerion, did you know? I always wondered what happened to him. 
+Rhaenys liked to pretend he was the true Balerion, the Black Dread of old, but I imagine the Lannisters 
+taught her the difference between a kitten and a dragon quick enough, the day they broke down her 
+door." Varys gave a long weary sigh, the sigh of a man who carried all the sadness of the world in a sack 
+upon his shoulders. "The High Septon once told me that as we sin, so do we suffer. If that's true, Lord 
+Eddard, tell me . . . why is it always the innocents who suffer most, when you high lords play your game 
+of thrones? Ponder it, if you would, while you wait upon the queen. And spare a thought for this as well: 
+The next visitor who calls on you could bring you bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your 
+pain . . . or he could bring you Sansa's head. 
+"The choice, my dear lord Hand, is entirely yours." 
+CATELYN 
+As the host trooped down the causeway through the black bogs of the Neck and spilled out into the 
+riverlands beyond, Catelyn's apprehensions grew. She masked her fears behind a face kept still and 
+stern, yet they were there all the same, growing with every league they crossed. Her days were anxious, 
+her nights restless, and every raven that flew overhead made her clench her teeth. 
+She feared for her lord father, and wondered at his ominous silence. She feared for her brother Edmure, 
+and prayed that the gods would watch over him if he must face the Kingslayer in battle. She feared for 
+Ned and her girls, and for the sweet sons she had left behind at Winterfell. And yet there was nothing she 
+could do for any of them, and so she made herself put all thought of them aside. You must save your 
+strength for Robb, she told herself. He is the only one you can help. You must be as fierce and hard as 
+the north, Catelyn Tully. You must be a Stark for true now, like your son. 
+Robb rode at the front of the column, beneath the flapping white banner of Winterfell. Each day he 
+would ask one of his lords to join him, so they might confer as they marched; he honored every man in 
+turn, showing no favorites, listening as his lord father had listened, weighing the words of one against the 
+other. He has learned so much from Ned, she thought as she watched him, but has he learned enough? 
+The Blackfish had taken a hundred picked men and a hundred swift 
+horses and raced ahead to screen their movements and scout the way. The reports Ser Brynden's riders 
+brought back did little to reassure her. Lord Tywin's host was still many days to the south . . . but Walder 
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+Frey, Lord of the Crossing, had assembled a force of near four thousand men at his castles on the Green 
+Fork. 
+"Late again," Catelyn murmured when she heard. It was the Trident all over, damn the man. Her brother 
+Edmure had called the banners; by rights, Lord Frey should have gone to join the Tully host at Riverrun, 
+yet here he sat. 
+"Four thousand men," Robb repeated, more perplexed than angry. "Lord Frey cannot hope to fight the 
+Lannisters by himself. Surely he means to join his power to ours." 
+"Does he?" Catelyn asked. She had ridden forward to join Robb and Robett Glover, his companion of 
+the day. The vanguard spread out behind them, a slow-moving forest of lances and banners and spears. 
+"I wonder. Expect nothing of Walder Frey, and you will never be surprised." 
+"He's your father's bannerman." 
+"Some men take their oaths more seriously than others, Robb. And Lord Walder was always friendlier 
+with Casterly Rock than my father would have liked. One of his sons is wed to Tywin Lannister's sister. 
+That means little of itself, to be sure. Lord Walder has sired a great many children over the years, and 
+they must needs marry someone. Still . . ." 
+"Do you think he means to betray us to the Lannisters, my lady?" Robett Glover asked gravely. 
+Catelyn sighed. "If truth be told, I doubt even Lord Frey knows what Lord Frey intends to do. He has 
+an old man's caution and a young man's ambition, and has never lacked for cunning." 
+"We must have the Twins, Mother," Robb said heatedly. "There is no other way across the river. You 
+know that." 
+"Yes. And so does Walder Frey, you can be sure of that." 
+That night they made camp on the southern edge of the bogs, halfway between the kingsroad and the 
+river. It was there Theon Greyjoy brought them further word from her uncle. "Ser Brynden says to tell 
+you he's crossed swords with the Lannisters. There are a dozen scouts who won't be reporting back to 
+Lord Tywin anytime soon. Or ever." He grinned. "Ser Addam Marbrand commands their outriders, and 
+he's pulling back south, burning as he goes. He knows where we are, more or less, but the Blackfish 
+vows he will not know when we split." 
+"Unless Lord Frey tells him," Catelyn said sharply. "Theon, when 
+you return to my uncle, tell him he is to place his best bowmen around the Twins, day and night, with 
+orders to bring down any raven they see leaving the battlements. I want no birds bringing word of my 
+son's movements to Lord Tywin." 
+"Ser Brynden has seen to it already, my lady," Theon replied with a cocky smile. "A few more 
+blackbirds, and we should have enough to bake a pie. I'll save you their feathers for a hat." 
+She ought to have known that Brynden Blackfish would be well ahead of her. "What have the Freys 
+been doing while the Lannisters; burn their fields and plunder their holdfasts?" 
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+"There's been some fighting between Ser Addam's men and Lord Walder's," Theon answered. "Not a 
+day's ride from here, we found two Lannister scouts feeding the crows where the Freys had strung them 
+up. Most of Lord Walder's strength remains massed at the Twins, though." 
+That bore Walder Frey's seal beyond a doubt, Catelyn thought bitterly; hold back, wait, watch, take no 
+risk unless forced to it. 
+"If he's been fighting the Lannisters, perhaps he does mean to hold to his vows," Robb said. 
+Catelyn was less encouraged. "Defending his own lands is one thing, open battle against Lord Tywin 
+quite another." 
+Robb turned back to Theon Greyjoy. "Has the Blackfish found any other way across the Green Fork?" 
+Theon shook his head. "The river's running high and fast. Ser Brynden says it can't be forded, not this far 
+north." 
+"I must have that crossing!" Robb declared, fuming. "Oh, our horses might be able to swim the river, I 
+suppose, but not with armored men on their backs. We'd need to build rafts to pole our steel across, 
+helms and mail and lances, and we don't have the trees for that. Or the time. Lord Tywin is marching 
+north He balled his hand into a fist. 
+"Lord Frey would be a fool to try and bar our way," Theon Greyjoy said with his customary easy 
+confidence. "We have five times his numbers. You can take the Twins if you need to, Robb." 
+"Not easily," Catelyn warned them, "and not in time. While you were mounting your siege, Tywin 
+Lannister would bring up his host and assault you from the rear." 
+Robb glanced from her to Greyjoy, searching for an answer and finding none. For a moment he looked 
+even younger than his fifteen years, despite his mail and sword and the stubble on his cheeks. "What 
+would my lord father do?" he asked her. 
+"Find a way across," she told him. "Whatever it took." 
+The next morning it was Ser Brynden Tully himself who rode back to them. He had put aside the heavy 
+plate and helm he'd worn as the Knight of the Gate for the lighter leather-and-mail of an outrider, but his 
+obsidian fish still fastened his cloak. 
+Her uncle's face was grave as he swung down off his horse. "There has been a battle under the walls of 
+Riverrun," he said, his mouth grim. "We had it from a Lannister outrider we took captive. The Kingslayer 
+has destroyed Edmure's host and sent the lords of the Trident reeling in flight." 
+A cold hand clutched at Catelyn's heart. "And my brother?" 
+"Wounded and taken prisoner," Ser Brynden said. "Lord Blackwood and the other survivors are under 
+siege inside Riverrun, surrounded by Jaime's host." 
+Robb looked fretful. "We must get across this accursed river if we're to have any hope of relieving them 
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+
+in time." 
+"That will not be easily done," her uncle cautioned. "Lord Frey has pulled his whole strength back inside 
+his castles, and his gates are closed and barred." 
+"Damn the man," Robb swore. "If the old fool does not relent and let me cross, he'll leave me no choice 
+but to storm his walls. I'll pull the Twins down around his ears if I have to, we'll see how well he likes 
+that!" 
+"You sound like a sulky boy, Robb," Catelyn said sharply. "A child sees an obstacle, and his first thought 
+is to run around it or knock it down. A lord must learn that sometimes words can accomplish what 
+swords cannot." 
+Robb's neck reddened at the rebuke. "Tell me what you mean, Mother," he said meekly. 
+"The Freys have held the crossing for six hundred years, and for six hundred years they have never failed 
+to exact their toll." 
+"What toll? What does he want?" 
+She smiled. "That is what we must discover." 
+"And what if I do not choose to pay this toll?" 
+"Then you had best retreat back to Moat Cailin, deploy to meet Lord Tywin in battle . . . or grow wings. 
+I see no other choices." Catelyn put her heels to her horse and rode off, leaving her son to ponder her 
+words. It would not do to make him feel as if his mother were usurping his place. Did you teach him 
+wisdom as well as valor, Ned? she wondered. Didyou teach him how to kneel? The graveyards of the 
+Seven Kingdoms were full of brave men who had never learned that lesson. 
+It was near midday when their vanguard came in sight of the Twins, where the Lords of the Crossing had 
+their seat. 
+The Green Fork ran swift and deep here, but the Freys had spanned it many centuries past and grown 
+rich off the coin men paid them to cross. Their bridge was a massive arch of smooth grey rock, wide 
+enough for two wagons to pass abreast; the Water Tower rose from the center of the span, commanding 
+both road and river with its arrow slits, murder holes, and portcullises. It had taken the Freys three 
+generations to complete their bridge; when they were done they'd thrown up stout timber keeps on either 
+bank, so no one might cross without their leave. 
+The timber had long since given way to stone. The Twins-two squat, ugly, formidable castles, identical in 
+every respect, with the bridge arching between-had guarded the crossing for centuries. High curtain 
+walls, deep moats, and heavy oak-and-iron gates protected the approaches, the bridge footings rose 
+from within stout inner keeps, there was a barbican and portcullis on either bank, and the Water Tower 
+defended the span itself. 
+One glance was sufficient to tell Catelyn that the castle would not be taken by storm. The battlements 
+bristled with spears and swords and scorpions, there was an archer at every crenel and arrow slit, the 
+drawbridge was up, the portcullis down, the gates closed and barred. 
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+
+The Greatjon began to curse and swear as soon as he saw what awaited them. Lord Rickard Karstark 
+glowered in silence. "That cannot be assaulted, my lords," Roose Bolton announced. 
+"Nor can we take it by siege, without an army on the far bank to invest the other castle," Helman Tallhart 
+said gloomily. Across the deep-running green waters, the western twin stood like a reflection of its 
+eastern brother. "Even if we had the time. Which, to be sure, we do not." 
+As the northern lords studied the castle, a sally port opened, a plank bridge slid across the moat, and a 
+dozen knights rode forth to confront them, led by four of Lord Walder's many sons. Their banner bore 
+twin towers, dark blue on a field of pale silver-grey. Ser Stevron Frey, Lord Walder's heir, spoke for 
+them. The Freys all looked like weasels; Ser Stevron, past sixty with grandchildren of his own, looked 
+like an especially old and tired weasel, yet he was polite enough. "My lord father has sent me to greet 
+you, and inquire as to who leads this mighty host." 
+"I do." Robb spurred his horse forward. He was in his armor, with the direwolf shield of Winterfell 
+strapped to his saddle and Grey Wind padding by his side. 
+The old knight looked at her son with a faint flicker of amusement 
+in his watery grey eyes, though his gelding whickered uneasily and sidled away from the direwolf. "My 
+lord father would be most honored if you would share meat and mead with him in the castle and explain 
+your purpose here." 
+His words crashed among the lords bannermen like a great stone from a catapult. Not one of them 
+approved. They cursed, argued, shouted down each other. 
+"You must not do this, my lord," Galbart Glover pleaded with Robb. "Lord Walder is not to be trusted." 
+Roose Bolton nodded. "Go in there alone and you're his. He can sell you to the Lannisters, throw you in 
+a dungeon, or slit your throat, as he likes." 
+"If he wants to talk to us, let him open his gates, and we will all share his meat and mead," declared Ser 
+Wendel Manderly. 
+"Or let him come out and treat with Robb here, in plain sight of his men and ours," suggested his brother, 
+Ser Wylis. 
+Catelyn Stark shared all their doubts, but she had only to glance at Ser Stevron to see that he was not 
+pleased by what he was hearing. A few more words and the chance would be lost. She had to act, and 
+quickly. "I will go, " she said loudly. 
+"You, my lady?" The Greatjon furrowed his brow. 
+"Mother, are you certain?" Clearly, Robb was not. 
+"Never more," Catelyn lied glibly. "Lord Walder is my father's bannerman. I have known him since I was 
+a girt. He would never offer me any harm." Unless he saw some profit in it, she added silently, but some 
+truths did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary. 
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+
+"I am certain my lord father would be pleased to speak to the Lady Catelyn," Ser Stevron said. "To 
+vouchsafe for our good intentions, my brother Ser Perwyn will remain here until she is safely returned to 
+you.,, 
+"He shall be our honored guest," said Robb. Ser Perwyn, the youngest of the four Freys in the party, 
+dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to a brother. "I require my lady mother's return by evenfall, 
+Ser Stevron," Robb went on. "It is not my intent to linger here long." 
+Ser Stevron Frey gave a polite nod. "As you say, my lord." Catelyn spurred her horse forward and did 
+not look back. Lord Walder's sons and envoys fell in around her. 
+Her father had once said of Walder Frey that he was the only lord in the Seven Kingdoms who could 
+field an army out of his breeches. When the Lord of the Crossing welcomed Catelyn in the great hall of 
+the east castle, surrounded by twenty living sons (minus Ser Perwyn, who would have made twenty-one), 
+thirty-six grandsons, nineteen 
+great-grandsons, and numerous daughters, granddaughters, bastards, and grandbastards, she 
+understood just what he had meant. 
+Lord Walder was ninety, a wizened pink weasel with a bald spotted head, too gouty to stand unassisted. 
+His newest wife, a pale frail girl of sixteen years, walked beside his litter when they carried him in. She 
+was the eighth Lady Frey. 
+"It is a great pleasure to see you again after so many years, my lord," Catelyn said. 
+The old man squinted at her suspiciously. "Is it? I doubt that. Spare me your sweet words, Lady 
+Catelyn, I am too old. Why are you here? Is your boy too proud to come before me himself? What am I 
+to do with you?" 
+Catelyn had been a girl the last time she had visited the Twins, but even then Lord Walder had been 
+irascible, sharp of tongue, and blunt of manner. Age had made him worse than ever, it would seem. She 
+would need to choose her words with care, and do her best to take no offense from his. 
+"Father," Ser Stevron said reproachfully, "you forget yourself. Lady Stark is here at your invitation." 
+"Did I askyou? You are not Lord Frey yet, not until I die. Do I look dead? I'll hear no instructions from 
+you." 
+"This is no way to speak in front of our noble guest, Father," one of his younger sons said. 
+"Now my bastards presume to teach me courtesy," Lord Walder complained. "I'll speak any way I like, 
+damn you. I've had three kings to guest in my life, and queens as well, do you think I require lessons from 
+the likes of you, Ryger? Your mother was milking goats the first time I gave her my seed." He dismissed 
+the red-faced youth with a flick of his fingers and gestured to two of his other sons. "Danwell, Whalen, 
+help me to my chair." 
+They shifted Lord Walder from his litter and carried him to the high seat of the Freys, a tall chair of black 
+oak whose back was carved in the shape of two towers linked by a bridge. His young wife crept up 
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+timidly and covered his legs with a blanket. When he was settled, the old man beckoned Catelyn forward 
+and planted a papery dry kiss on her hand. "There," he announced. "Now that I have observed the 
+courtesies, my lady, perhaps my sons will do me the honor of shutting their mouths. Why are you here?" 
+"To ask you to open your gates, my lord," Catelyn replied politely. "My son and his lords bannermen are 
+most anxious to cross the river and be on their way." 
+"To Riverrun?" He sniggered. "Oh, no need to tell me, no need. I'm not blind yet. The old man can still 
+read a map." 
+"To Riverrun," Catelyn confirmed. She saw no reason to deny it. "Where I might have expected to find 
+you, my lord. You are still my father's bannerman, are you not?" 
+"Heh, " said Lord Walder, a noise halfway between a laugh and a grunt. "I called my swords, yes I did, 
+here they are, you saw them on the walls. It was my intent to march as soon as all my strength was 
+assembled. Well, to send my sons. I am well past marching myself, Lady Catelyn." He looked around for 
+likely confirmation and pointed to a tall, stooped man of fifty years. "Tell her, Jared. Tell her that was my 
+intent." 
+"It was, my lady," said Ser Jared Frey, one of his sons by his second wife. "On my honor." 
+"Is it my fault that your fool brother lost his battle before we could march?" He leaned back against his 
+cushions and scowled at her, as if challenging her to dispute his version of events. "I am told the 
+Kingslayer went through him like an axe through ripe cheese. Why should my boys hurry south to die? 
+All those who did go south are running north again." 
+Catelyn would gladly have spitted the querulous old man and roasted him over a fire, but she had only till 
+evenfall to open the bridge. Calmly, she said, "All the more reason that we must reach Riverrun, and 
+soon. Where can we go to talk, my lord?" 
+"We're talking now," Lord Frey complained. The spotted pink head snapped around. "What are you all 
+looking at?" he shouted at his kin. "Get out of here. Lady Stark wants to speak to me in private. Might be 
+she has designs on my fidelity, heh. Go, all of you, find something useful to do. Yes, you too, woman. 
+Out, out, out." As his sons and grandsons and daughters and bastards and nieces and nephews streamed 
+from the hall, he leaned close to Catelyn and confessed, "They're all waiting for me to die. Stevron's been 
+waiting for forty years, but I keep disappointing him. Heh. Why should I die just so he can be a lord? I 
+ask you. I won't do it." 
+"I have every hope that you will live to be a hundred." 
+"That would boil them, to be sure. Oh, to be sure. Now, what do you want to say?" 
+"We want to cross," Catelyn told him. 
+"Oh, do you? That's blunt. Why should I let you?" 
+For a moment her anger flared. "If you were strong enough to climb your own battlements, Lord Frey, 
+you would see that my son has twenty thousand men outside your walls." 
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+"They'll be twenty thousand fresh corpses when Lord Tywin gets here," the old man shot back. "Don't 
+you try and frighten me, my lady. Your husband's in some traitor's cell under the Red Keep, your father's 
+sick, might be dying, and Jaime Lannister's got your brother in chains. What do you have that I should 
+fear? That son of yours? I'll match you son for son, and I'll still have eighteen when yours are all dead." 
+"You swore an oath to my father," Catelyn reminded him. 
+He bobbed his head side to side, smiling. "Oh, yes, I said some words, but I swore oaths to the crown 
+too, it seems to me. Joffrey's the king now, and that makes you and your boy and all those fools out there 
+no better than rebels. If I had the sense the gods gave a fish, I'd help the Lannisters boil you all." 
+"Why don't you?" she challenged him. 
+Lord Walder snorted with disdain. "Lord Tywin the proud and splendid, Warden of the West, Hand of 
+the King, oh, what a great man that one is, him and his gold this and gold that and lions here and lions 
+there. I'll wager you, he cats too many beans, he breaks wind just like me, but you'll never hear him admit 
+it, oh, no. What's he got to be so puffed up about anyway? Only two sons, and one of them's a twisted 
+little monster. I'll match him son for son, and I'll still have nineteen and a half left when all of his are dead!" 
+He cackled. "If Lord Tywin wants my help, he can bloody well ask for it." 
+That was all Catelyn needed to hear. "I am asking for your help, my lord," she said humbly. "And my 
+father and my brother and my lord husband and my sons are asking with my voice." 
+Lord Walder jabbed a bony finger at her face. "Save your sweet words, my lady. Sweet words I get 
+from my wife. Did you see her? Sixteen she is, a little flower, and her honey's only for me. I wager she 
+gives me a son by this time next year. Perhaps I'll make him heir, wouldn't that boil the rest of them?" 
+"I'm certain she will give you many sons." 
+His head bobbed up and down. "Your lord father did not come to the wedding. An insult, as I see it. 
+Even if he is dying. He never came to my last wedding either. He calls me the Late Lord Frey, you know. 
+Does he think I'm dead? I'm not dead, and I promise you, I'll outlive him as I outlived his father. Your 
+family has always pissed on me, don't deny it, don't lie, you know it's true. Years ago, I went to your 
+father and suggested a match between his son and my daughter. Why not? I had a daughter in mind, 
+sweet girl, only a few years older than Edmure, but if your brother didn't warm to her, I had others he 
+might have had, young ones, old ones, virgins, widows, whatever he wanted. 
+No, Lord Hoster would not hear of it. Sweet words he gave me, excuses, but what I wanted was to get 
+rid of a daughter. 
+"And your sister, that one, she's full as bad. It was, oh, a year ago, no more, Jon Arryn was still the 
+King's Hand, and I went to the city to see my sons ride in the tourney. Stevron and Jared are too old for 
+the lists now, but Danwell and Hosteen rode, Perwyn as well, and a couple of my bastards tried the 
+melee. If I'd known how they'd shame me, I would never have troubled myself to make the journey. Why 
+did I need to ride all that way to see Hosteen knocked off his horse by that Tyrell whelp? I ask you. The 
+boy's half his age, Ser Daisy they call him, something like that. And Danwell was unhorsed by a hedge 
+knight! Some days I wonder if those two are truly mine. My third wife was a Crakehall, all of the 
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+
+Crakehall women are sluts. Well, never mind about that, she died before you were born, what do you 
+care? 
+"I was speaking of your sister. I proposed that Lord and Lady Arryn foster two of my grandsons at 
+court, and offered to take their own son to ward here at the Twins. Are my grandsons unworthy to be 
+seen at the king's court? They are sweet boys, quiet and mannerly. Walder is Merrett's son, named after 
+me, and the other one . . . heh, I don't recall . . . he might have been another Walder, they're always 
+naming them Walder so I'll favor them, but his father . . . which one was his father now?" His face 
+wrinkled up. "Well, whoever he was, Lord Arryn wouldn't have him, or the other one, and I blame your 
+lady sister for that. She frosted up as if I'd suggested selling her boy to a mummer's show or making a 
+eunuch out of him, and when Lord Arryn said the child was going to Dragonstone to foster with Stannis 
+Baratheon, she stormed off without a word of regrets and all the Hand could give me was apologies. 
+What good are apologies? I ask you." 
+Catelyn frowned, disquieted. "I had understood that Lysa's boy was to be fostered with Lord Tywin at 
+Casterly Rock." 
+"No, it was Lord Stannis," WaIder Frey said irritably. "Do you think I can't tell Lord Stannis from Lord 
+Tywin? They're both bungholes who think they're too noble to shit, but never mind about that, I know the 
+difference. Or do you think I'm so old I can't remember? I'm ninety and I remember very well. I 
+remember what to do with a woman too. That wife of mine will give me a son before this time next year, 
+I'll wager. Or a daughter, that can't be helped. Boy or girl, it will be red, wrinkled, and squalling, and like 
+as not she'll want to name it Walder or Walda." 
+Catelyn was not concerned with what Lady Frey might choose to name her child. "Jon Arryn was going 
+to foster his son with Lord Stannis, you are quite certain of that?" 
+"Yes, yes, yes," the old man said. "Only he died, so what does it matter? You say you want to cross the 
+river?" 
+"We do.,' 
+"Well, you can't!" Lord Walder announced crisply. "Not unless I allow it, and why should I? The Tullys 
+and the Starks have never been friends of mine." He pushed himself back in his chair and crossed his 
+arms, smirking, waiting for her answer. 
+The rest was only haggling. 
+A swollen red sun hung low against the western hills when the gates of the castle opened. The 
+drawbridge creaked down, the portcullis winched up, and Lady Catelyn Stark rode forth to rejoin her 
+son and his lords bannermen. Behind her came Ser Jared Frey, Ser Hosteen Frey, Ser Danwell Frey, 
+and Lord Walder's bastard son Ronel Rivers, leading a long column of pikemen, rank on rank of shuffling 
+men in blue steel ringmail and silvery grey cloaks. 
+Robb galloped out to meet her, with Grey Wind racing beside his stallion. "It's done," she told him. 
+"Lord Walder will grant you your crossing. His swords are yours as well, less four hundred he means to 
+keep back to hold the Twins. I suggest that you leave four hundred of your own, a mixed force of 
+archers and swordsmen. He can scarcely object to an offer to augment his garrison . . . but make certain 
+you give the command to a man you can trust. Lord Walder may need help keeping faith." 
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+"As you say, Mother," Robb answered, gazing at the ranks of pikemen. "Perhaps . . . Ser Helman 
+Tallhart, do you think?" 
+"A fine choice." 
+"What . . . what did he want of us?" 
+"If you can spare a few of your swords, I need some men to escort two of Lord Frey's grandsons north 
+to Winterfell," she told him. "I have agreed to take them as wards. They are young boys, aged eight years 
+and seven. It would seem they are both named Walder. Your brother Bran will welcome the 
+companionship of lads near his own age, I should think." 
+"Is that all? Two fosterlings? That's a small enough price to-" 
+"Lord Frey's son Olyvar will be coming with us," she went on. "He is to serve as your personal squire. 
+His father would like to see him knighted, in good time." 
+"A squire." He shrugged. "Fine, that's fine, if he's-" 
+"Also, if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord Walder's youngest 
+son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age." 
+Robb looked nonplussed. "Arya won't like that one bit." 
+"And you are to wed one of his daughters, once the fighting is done," she finished. "His lordship has 
+graciously consented to allow you to choose whichever girl you prefer. He has a number he thinks might 
+be suitable." 
+To his credit, Robb did not flinch. "I see." 
+"Do you consent?" 
+"Can I refuse?" 
+"Not if you wish to cross." 
+"I consent," Robb said solemnly. He had never seemed more manly to her than he did in that moment. 
+Boys might play with swords, but it took a lord to make a marriage pact, knowing what it meant. 
+They crossed at evenfall as a horned moon floated upon the river. The double column wound its way 
+through the gate of the eastern twin like a great steel snake, slithering across the courtyard, into the keep 
+and over the bridge, to issue forth once more from the second castle on the west bank. 
+Catelyn rode at the head of the serpent, with her son and her uncle Ser Brynden and Ser Stevron Frey. 
+Behind followed nine tenths of their horse; knights, lancers, freeriders, and mounted bowmen. It took 
+hours for them all to cross. Afterward, Catelyn would remember the clatter of countless hooves on the 
+drawbridge, the sight of Lord Walder Frey in his litter watching them pass, the glitter of eyes peering 
+down through the slats of the murder holes in the ceiling as they rode through the Water Tower. 
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+The larger part of the northern host, pikes and archers and great masses of men-at-arms on foot, 
+remained upon the east bank under the command of Roose Bolton. Robb had commanded him to 
+continue the march south, to confront the huge Lannister army coming north under Lord Tywin. 
+For good or ill, her son had thrown the dice. 
+JON 
+Are you well, Snow?" Lord Mormont asked, scowling. "Well, " his raven squawked. "Well. " 
+"I am, my lord," Jon lied . . . loudly, as if that could make it true. "And you?" 
+Mormont frowned. "A dead man tried to kill me. How well could I be?" He scratched under his chin. 
+His shaggy grey beard had been singed in the fire, and he'd hacked it off. The pale stubble of his new 
+whiskers made him look old, disreputable, and grumpy. "You do not look well. How is your hand?" 
+"Healing." Jon flexed his bandaged fingers to show him. He had burned himself more badly than he knew 
+throwing the flaming drapes, and his right hand was swathed in silk halfway to the elbow. At the time he'd 
+felt nothing; the agony had come after. His cracked red skin oozed fluid, and fearsome blood blisters 
+rose between his fingers, big as roaches. "The maester says I'll have scars, but otherwise the hand should 
+be as good as it was before." 
+"A scarred hand is nothing. On the Wall, you'll be wearing gloves often as not." 
+"As you say, my lord." It was not the thought of scars that troubled Jon; it was the rest of it. Maester 
+Aemon had given him milk of the poppy, yet even so, the pain had been hideous. At first it had felt as if 
+his hand were still aflame, burning day and night. Only plunging it into 
+basins of snow and shaved ice gave any relief at all. Jon thanked the gods that no one but Ghost saw him 
+writhing on his bed, whimpering from the pain. And when at last he did sleep, he dreamt, and that was 
+even worse. In the dream, the corpse he fought had blue eyes, black hands, and his father's face, but he 
+dared not tell Mormont that. 
+"Dywen and Hake returned last night," the Old Bear said. "They found no sign of your uncle, no more 
+than the others did." 
+"I know." Jon had dragged himself to the common hall to sup with his friends, and the failure of the 
+rangers' search had been all the men had been talking of. 
+"You know," Mormont grumbled. "How is it that everyone knows everything around here?" He did not 
+seem to expect an answer. "It would seem there were only the two of . . . of those creatures, whatever 
+they were, I will not call them men. And thank the gods for that. Any more and . . . well, that doesn't 
+bear thinking of. There will be more, though. I can feel it in these old bones of mine, and Maester Aemon 
+agrees. The cold winds are rising. Summer is at an end, and a winter is coming such as this world has 
+never seen." 
+Page 435
+
+Winter is coming. The Stark words had never sounded so grim or ominous to Jon as they did now. "My 
+lord," he asked hesitantly, "it's said there was a bird last night 
+"There was. What of it?" 
+"I had hoped for some word of my father." 
+"Father, " taunted the old raven, bobbing its head as it walked across Mormont's shoulders. "Father. " 
+The Lord Commander reached up to pinch its beak shut, but the raven hopped up on his head, fluttered 
+its wings, and flew across the chamber to light above a window. "Grief and noise," Mormont grumbled. 
+"That's all they're good for, ravens. Why I put up with that pestilential bird . . . if there was news of Lord 
+Eddard, don't you think I would have sent for you? Bastard or no, you're still his blood. The message 
+concerned Ser Barristan Selmy. It seems he's been removed from the Kingsguard. They gave his place to 
+that black dog Clegane, and now Selmy's wanted for treason. The fools sent some watchmen to seize 
+him, but he slew two of them and escaped." Mormont snorted, leaving no doubt of his view of men 
+who'd send gold cloaks against a knight as renowed as Barristan the Bold. "We have white shadows in 
+the woods and unquiet dead stalking our halls, and a boy sits the Iron Throne," he said in disgust. 
+The raven laughed shrilly. "Boy, boy, boy, boy." 
+Ser Barristan had been the Old Bear's best hope, Jon remembered; if he had fallen, what chance was 
+there that Mormont's letter would be 
+heeded? He curled his hand into a fist. Pain shot through his burned fingers. "What of my sisters?" 
+"The message made no mention of Lord Eddard or the girls." He gave an irritated shrug. "Perhaps they 
+never got my letter. Aemon sent two copies, with his best birds, but who can say? More like, Pycelle did 
+not deign to reply. It would not be the first time, nor the last. I fear we count for less than nothing in 
+King's Landing. They tell us what they want us to know, and that's little enough." 
+And you tell me what you want me to know, and that's less, Jon thought resentfully. His brother Robb 
+had called the banners and ridden south to war, yet no word of that had been breathed to him . . . save 
+by Samwell Tarly, who'd read the letter to Maester Aemon and whispered its contents to Jon that night in 
+secret, all the time saying how he shouldn't. Doubtless they thought his brother's war was none of his 
+concern. It troubled him more than he could say. Robb was marching and he was not. No matter how 
+often Jon told himself that his place was here now, with his new brothers on the Wall, he still felt craven. 
+"Corn, " the raven was crying. "Corn, corn. 
+"Oh, be quiet," the Old Bear told it. "Snow, how soon does Maester Aemon say you'll have use of that 
+hand back?" 
+:, Soon," Jon replied. 
+'Good." On the table between them, Lord Mormont laid a large sword in a black metal scabbard 
+banded with silver. "Here. You'll be ready for this, then." 
+The raven flapped down and landed on the table, strutting toward the sword, head cocked curiously. 
+Page 436
+
+Jon hesitated. He had no inkling what this meant. "My lord?" 
+"The fire melted the silver off the pommel and burnt the crossguard and grip. Well, dry leather and old 
+wood, what could you expect? The blade, now . . . you'd need a fire a hundred times as hot to harm the 
+blade." Mormont shoved the scabbard across the rough oak planks. "I had the rest made anew. Take it." 
+"Take it, " echoed his raven, preening. "Take it, take it. 
+Awkwardly, Jon took the sword in hand. His left hand; his bandaged right was still too raw and clumsy. 
+Carefully he pulled it from its scabbard and raised it level with his eyes. 
+The pommel was a hunk of pale stone weighted with lead to balance the long blade. It had been carved 
+into the likeness of a snarling wolf's head, with chips of garnet set into the eyes. The grip was virgin 
+leather, soft and black, as yet unstained by sweat or blood. The blade itself was a good half foot longer 
+than those Jon was used to, tapered to thrust as 
+well as slash, with three fullers deeply incised in the metal. Where Ice was a true two-handed 
+greatsword, this was a hand-and-a-halfer, sometimes named a "bastard sword." Yet the wolf sword 
+actually seemed lighter than the blades he had wielded before. When Jon turned it sideways, he could see 
+the ripples in the dark steel where the metal had been folded back on itself again and again. "This is 
+Valyrian steel, my lord," he said wonderingly. His father had let him handle Ice often enough; he knew the 
+look, the feel. 
+"It is," the Old Bear told him. "It was my father's sword, and his father's before him. The Mormonts have 
+carried it for five centuries. I wielded it in my day and passed it on to my son when I took the black." 
+He is giving me his son's sword. Jon could scarcely believe it. The blade was exquisitely balanced. The 
+edges glimmered faintly as they kissed the light. "Your son-" 
+"My son brought dishonor to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to leave the sword behind 
+when he fled. My sister returned it to my keeping, but the very sight of it reminded me of Jorah's shame, 
+so I put it aside and thought no more of it until we found it in the ashes of my bedchamber. The original 
+pommel was a bear's head, silver, yet so worn its features were all but indistinguishable. For you, I 
+thought a white wolf more apt. One of our builders is a fair stonecarver." 
+When Jon had been Bran's age, he had dreamed of doing great deeds, as boys always did. The details 
+of his feats changed with every dreaming, but quite often he imagined saving his father's life. Afterward 
+Lord Eddard would declare that Jon had proved himself a true Stark, and place Ice in his hand. Even 
+then he had known it was only a child's folly; no bastard could ever hope to wield a father's sword. Even 
+the memory shamed him. What kind of man stole his own brother's birthright? I have no right to this, he 
+thought, no more than to ke. He twitched his burned fingers, feeling a throb of pain deep under the skin. 
+"My lord, you honor me, but-" 
+"Spare me your but's, boy," Lord Mormont interrupted. "I would not be sitting here were it not for you 
+and that beast of yours. You fought bravely . . . and more to the point, you thought quickly. Fire! Yes, 
+damn it. We ought to have known. We ought to have remembered. The Long Night has come before. 
+Oh, eight thousand years is a good while, to be sure . . . yet if the Night's Watch does not remember, 
+who will?" 
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+
+"Who will, " chimed the talkative raven. ""o will. 
+Truly, the gods had heard Jon's prayer that night; the fire had caught in the dead man's clothing and 
+consumed him as if his flesh were candle wax and his bones old dry wood. Jon had only to close his 
+eyes to see the thing staggering across the solar, crashing against the furniture and flailing at the flames. It 
+was the face that haunted him most; surrounded by a nimbus of fire, hair blazing like straw, the dead flesh 
+melting away and sloughing off its skull to reveal the gleam of bone beneath. 
+Whatever demonic force moved Othor had been driven out by the flames; the twisted thing they had 
+found in the ashes had been no more than cooked meat and charred bone. Yet in his nightmare he faced 
+it again . . . and this time the burning corpse wore Lord Eddard's features. It was his father's skin that 
+burst and blackened, his father's eyes that ran liquid down his cheeks like jellied tears. Jon did not 
+understand why that should be or what it might mean, but it frightened him more than he could say. 
+"A sword's small payment for a life," Mormont concluded. "Take it, I'll hear no more of it, is that 
+understood?" 
+"Yes, my lord." The soft leather gave beneath Jon's fingers, as if the sword were molding itself to his grip 
+already. He knew he should be honored, and he was, and yet . . . 
+He is not my father. The thought leapt unbidden to Jon's mind. Lord Eddard Stark is my father. I will not 
+forget him, no matter how many swords they give me. Yet he could scarcely tell Lord Mormont that it 
+was another man's sword he dreamt of . . . 
+"I want no courtesies either," Mormont said, "so thank me no thanks. Honor the steel with deeds, not 
+words." 
+Jon nodded. "Does it have a name, my lord?" 
+"It did, once. Longclaw, it was called." 
+"Claw, " the raven cried. "Claw. " 
+"Longclaw is an apt name." Jon tried a practice cut. He was clumsy and uncomfortable with his left hand, 
+yet even so the steel seemed to flow through the air, as if it had a will of its own. "Wolves have claws, as 
+much as bears." 
+The Old Bear seemed pleased by that. "I suppose they do. You'll want to wear that over the shoulder, I 
+imagine. It's too long for the hip, at least until you've put on a few inches. And you'll need to work at your 
+two-handed strikes as well. Ser Endrew can show you some moves, when your burns have healed." 
+"Ser Endrew?" Jon did not know the name. 
+"Ser Endrew Tarth, a good man. He's on his way from the Shadow Tower to assume the duties of 
+master-at-arms. Ser Alliser Thorne left yestermorn for Eastwatch-by-the-Sea." 
+Jon lowered the sword. "Why?" he said, stupidly. 
+Page 438
+
+Mormont snorted. "Because I sent him, why do you think? He's 
+bringing the hand your Ghost tore off the end of Jafer Flowers's wrist. I have commanded him to take 
+ship to King's Landing and lay it before this boy king. That should get young Joffrey's attention, I'd think . 
+. . and Ser Alliser's a knight, highborn, anointed, with old friends at court, altogether harder to ignore than 
+a glorified crow." 
+"Crow. " Jon thought the raven sounded faintly indignant. 
+"As well," the Lord Commander continued, ignoring the bird's protest, "it puts a thousand leagues twixt 
+him and you without it seeming a rebuke." He jabbed a finger up at Jon's face. "And don't think this 
+means I approve of that nonsense in the common hall. Valor makes up for a fair amount of folly, but 
+you're not a boy anymore, however many years you've seen. That's a man's sword you have there, and it 
+will take a man to wield her. I'll expect you to act the part, henceforth." 
+"Yes, my lord." Jon slid the sword back into the silver-banded scabbard. If not the blade he would have 
+chosen, it was nonetheless a noble gift, and freeing him from Alliser Thorne's malignance was nobler still. 
+The Old Bear scratched at his chin. "I had forgotten how much a new beard itches," he said. "Well, no 
+help for that. Is that hand of yours healed enough to resume your duties?" 
+"Yes, my lord." 
+"Good. The night will be cold, I'll want hot spice wine. Find me a flagon of red, not too sour, and don't 
+skimp on the spices. And tell Hobb that if he sends me boiled mutton again I'm like to boil him. That last 
+haunch was grey. Even the bird wouldn't touch it." He stroked the raven's head with his thumb, and the 
+bird made a contented quorking sound. "Away with you. I've work to do." 
+The guards smiled at him from their niches as he wound his way down the turret stair, carrying the sword 
+in his good hand. "Sweet steel," one man said. "You earned that, Snow," another told him. Jon made 
+himself smile back at them, but his heart was not in it. He knew he should be pleased, yet he did not feel 
+it. His hand ached, and the taste of anger was in his mouth, though he could not have said who he was 
+angry with or why. 
+A half dozen of his friends were lurking outside when he left the King's Tower, where Lord Commander 
+Mormont now made his residence. They'd hung a target on the granary doors, so they could seem to be 
+honing their skills as archers, but he knew lurkers when he saw them. No sooner did he emerge than Pyp 
+called out, "Well, come about, let's have a look." 
+"At what?" Jon said. 
+Toad sidled close. "Your rosy butt cheeks, what else?" 
+"The sword," Grenn stated. "We want to see the sword." 
+Jon raked them with an accusing look. "You knew." 
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+
+Pyp grinned. "We're not all as dumb as Grenn." 
+"You are so," insisted Grenn. "You're dumber." 
+Halder gave an apologetic shrug. "I helped Pate carve the stone for the pommel," the builder said, "and 
+your friend Sam bought the garnets in Mole's Town." 
+"We knew even before that, though," Grenn said. "Rudge has been helping Donal Noye in the forge. He 
+was there when the Old Bear brought him the burnt blade." 
+"The sword!" Matt insisted. The others took up the chant. "The sword, the sword, the sword." 
+Jon unsheathed Longclaw and showed it to them, turning it this way and that so they could admire it. The 
+bastard blade glittered in the pale sunlight, dark and deadly. "Valyrian steel," he declared solemnly, trying 
+to sound as pleased and proud as he ought to have felt. 
+"I heard of a man who had a razor made of Valyrian steel," declared Toad. "He cut his head off trying to 
+shave." 
+Pyp grinned. "The Night's Watch is thousands of years old," he said, "but I'll wager Lord Snow's the first 
+brother ever honored for burning down the Lord Commander's Tower." 
+The others laughed, and even Jon had to smile. The fire he'd started had not, in truth, burned down that 
+formidable stone tower, but it had done a fair job of gutting the interior of the top two floors, where the 
+Old Bear had his chambers. No one seemed to mind that very much, since it had also destroyed Othor's 
+murderous corpse. 
+The other wight, the one-handed thing that had once been a ranger named Jafer Flowers, had also been 
+destroyed, cut near to pieces by a dozen swords . . . but not before it had slain Ser Jaremy Rykker and 
+four other men. Ser Jaremy had finished the job of hacking its head off, yet had died all the same when 
+the headless corpse pulled his own dagger from its sheath and buried it in his bowels. Strength and 
+courage did not avail much against foemen who would not fall because they were already dead; even 
+arms and armor offered small protection. 
+That grim thought soured Jon's fragile mood. "I need to see Hobb about the Old Bear's supper," he 
+announced brusquely, sliding Longclaw back into its scabbard. His friends meant well, but they did not 
+understand. It was not their fault, truly; they had not had to face Othor, they had not seen the pale glow 
+of those dead blue eyes, had not felt the cold of those dead black fingers. Nor did they know of the 
+fighting in the riverlands. How could they hope to comprehend? He turned away from them abruptly and 
+strode off, sullen. Pyp called after him, but Jon paid him no mind. 
+They had moved him back to his old cell in tumbledown Hardin's Tower after the fire, and it was there 
+he returned. Ghost was curled up asleep beside the door, but he lifted his head at the sound of Jon's 
+boots. The direwolf's red eyes were darker than garnets and wiser than men. Jon knelt, scratched his ear, 
+and showed him the pommel of the sword. "Look. It's you." 
+Ghost sniffed at his carved stone likeness and tried a lick. Jon smiled. "You're the one deserves an 
+honor," he told the wolf . . . and suddenly he found himself remembering how he'd found him, that day in 
+the late summer snow. They had been riding off with the other pups, but Jon had heard a noise and 
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+
+turned back, and there he was, white fur almost invisible against the drifts. He was all alone, he thought, 
+apart from the others in the litter. He was different, so they drove him out. 
+"Jon?" He looked up. Samwell Tarly stood rocking nervously on his heels. His cheeks were red, and he 
+was wrapped in a heavy fur cloak that made him look ready for hibernation. 
+"Sam." Jon stood. "What is it? Do you want to see the sword?" If the others had known, no doubt Sam 
+did too. 
+The fat boy shook his head. "I was heir to my father's blade once," he said mournfully. "Heartsbane. 
+Lord Randyll let me hold it a few times, but it always scared me. It was Valyrian steel, beautiful but so 
+sharp I was afraid I'd hurt one of my sisters. Dickon will have it now." He wiped sweaty hands on his 
+cloak. "I ah . . . Maester Aemon wants to see you." 
+It was not time for his bandages to be changed. Jon frowned suspiciously. "Why?" he demanded. Sam 
+looked miserable. That was answer enough. "You told him, didn't you?" Jon said angrily. "You told him 
+that you told me." 
+"I . . . he . . . Jon, I didn't want to . . . he asked . . . I mean I think he knew, he sees things no one else 
+sees . . ." 
+"He's blind," Jon pointed out forcefully, disgusted. "I can find the way myself." He left Sam standing 
+there, openmouthed and quivering. 
+He found Maester Aemon up in the rookery, feeding the ravens. Clydas was with him, carrying a bucket 
+of chopped meat as they shuffled from cage to cage. "Sam said you wanted me?" 
+The maester nodded. "I did indeed. Clydas, give Jon the bucket. Perhaps he will be kind enough to 
+assist me." The hunched, pink-eyed brother handed Jon the bucket and scurried down the ladder. "Toss 
+the meat into the cages," Aemon instructed him. "The birds will do the rest. " 
+Jon shifted the bucket to his right hand and thrust his left down into the bloody bits. The ravens began to 
+scream noisily and fly at the bars, 
+beating at the metal with night-black wings. The meat had been chopped into pieces no larger than a 
+finger joint. He filled his fist and tossed the raw red morsels into the cage, and the squawking and 
+squabbling grew hotter. Feathers flew as two of the larger birds fought over a choice piece. Quickly Jon 
+grabbed a second handful and threw it in after the first. "Lord Mormont's raven likes fruit and corn." 
+"He is a rare bird," the maester said. "Most ravens will eat grain, but they prefer flesh. It makes them 
+strong, and I fear they relish the taste of blood. In that they are like men . . . and like men, not all ravens 
+are alike." 
+Jon had nothing to say to that. He threw meat, wondering why he'd been summoned. No doubt the old 
+man would tell him, in his own good time. Maester Aemon was not a man to be hurried. 
+"Doves and pigeons can also be trained to carry messages," the maester went on, "though the raven is a 
+stronger flyer, larger, bolder, far more clever, better able to defend itself against hawks . . . yet ravens are 
+black, and they eat the dead, so some godly men abhor them. Baelor the Blessed tried to replace all the 
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+
+ravens with doves, did you know?" The maester turned his white eyes on Jon, smiling. "The Night's 
+Watch prefers ravens." 
+Jon's fingers were in the bucket, blood up to the wrist. "Dywen says the wildlings call us crows," he said 
+uncertainty. 
+"The crow is the raven's poor cousin. They are both beggars in black, hated and misunderstood." 
+Jon wished he understood what they were talking about, and why. What did he care about ravens and 
+doves? If the old man had something to say to him, why couldn't he just say it? 
+"Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night's Watch take no wives and father no children?" 
+Maester Aemon asked. 
+Jon shrugged. "No." He scattered more meat. The fingers of his left hand were slimy with blood, and his 
+right throbbed from the weight of the bucket. 
+"So they will not love," the old man answered, "for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty." 
+That did not sound right to Jon, yet he said nothing. The maester was a hundred years old, and a high 
+officer of the Night's Watch; it was not his place to contradict him. 
+The old man seemed to sense his doubts. "Tell me, Jon, if the day should ever come when your lord 
+father must needs choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other, what would 
+he do?" 
+Jon hesitated. He wanted to say that Lord Eddard would never 
+dishonor himself, not even for love, yet inside a small sly voice whispered, He fathered a bastard, where 
+was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name. "He 
+would do whatever was right," he said . . . ringingly, to make up for his hesitation. "No matter what." 
+"Then Lord Eddard is a man in ten thousand. Most of us are not so strong. What is honor compared to 
+a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms . . . or the memory of a 
+brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us 
+for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. 
+"The men who formed the Night's Watch knew that only their courage shielded the realm from the 
+darkness to the north. They knew they must have no divided loyalties to weaken their resolve. So they 
+vowed they would have no wives nor children. 
+"Yet brothers they had, and sisters. Mothers who gave them birth, fathers who gave them names. They 
+came from a hundred quarrelsome kingdoms, and they knew times may change, but men do not. So they 
+pledged as well that the Night's Watch would take no part in the battles of the realms it guarded. 
+"They kept their pledge. When Aegon slew Black Harren and claimed his kingdom, Harren's brother 
+was Lord Commander on the Wall, with ten thousand swords to hand. He did not march. In the days 
+when the Seven Mngdoms were seven kingdoms, not a generation passed that three or four of them 
+were not at war. The Watch took no part. When the Andals crossed the narrow sea and swept away the 
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+
+kingdoms of the First Men, the sons of the fallen kings held true to their vows and remained at their 
+posts. So it has always been, for years beyond counting. Such is the price of honor. 
+"A craven can be as brave as any man, when there is nothing to fear. And we all do our duty, when 
+there is no cost to it. How easy it seems then, to walk the path of honor. Yet soon or late in every man's 
+life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose." 
+Some of the ravens were still eating, long stringy bits of meat dangling from their beaks. The rest seemed 
+to be watching him. Jon could feel the weight of all those tiny black eyes. "And this is my day . . . is that 
+what you're saying?" 
+Maester Aemon turned his head and looked at him with those dead white eyes. It was as if he were 
+seeing right into his heart. Jon felt naked and exposed. He took the bucket in both hands and flung the 
+rest of the slops through the bars. Strings of meat and blood flew everywhere, scattering the ravens. They 
+took to the air, shrieking 
+wildly. The quicker birds snatched morsels on the wing and gulped them down greedily. Jon let the 
+empty bucket clang to the floor. 
+The old man laid a withered, spotted hand on his shoulder. "It hurts, boy," he said softly. "Oh, yes. 
+Choosing . . . it has always hurt. And always will. I know." 
+"You don't know," Jon said bitterly. "No one knows. Even if I am his bastard, he's still my father . . ." 
+Maester Aemon sighed. "Have you heard nothing I've told you, Jon? Do you think you are the first?" He 
+shook his ancient head, a gesture weary beyond words. "Three times the gods saw fit to test my vows. 
+Once when I was a boy, once in the fullness of my manhood, and once when I had grown old. By then 
+my strength was fled, my eyes grown dim, yet that last choice was as cruel as the first. My ravens would 
+bring the news from the south, words darker than their wings, the ruin of my House, the death of my kin, 
+disgrace and desolation. What could I have done, old, blind, frail? I was helpless as a suckling babe, yet 
+still it grieved me to sit forgotten as they cut down my brother's poor grandson, and his son, and even the 
+little children . . ." 
+Jon was shocked to see the shine of tears in the old man's eyes. "Who are you?" he asked quietly, 
+almost in dread. 
+A toothless smile quivered on the ancient lips. "Only a maester of the Citadel, bound in service to Castle 
+Black and the Night's Watch. In my order, we put aside our house names when we take our vows and 
+don the collar." The old man touched the maester's chain that hung loosely around his thin, fleshless neck. 
+"My father was Maekar, the First of his Name, and my brother Aegon reigned after him in my stead. My 
+grandfather named me for Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, who was his uncle, or his father, depending 
+on which tale you believe. Aemon, he called me . . ." 
+"Aemon . . . Targaryen?" Jon could scarcely believe it. 
+"Once," the old man said. "Once. So you see, Jon, I do know . . . and knowing, I will not tell you stay or 
+go. You must make that choice yourself, and live with it all the rest of your days. As I have." His voice 
+fell to a whisper. "As I have . . ." 
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+DAENERYS 
+When the battle was done, Dany rode her silver through the fields of the dead. Her handmaids and the 
+men of her khas came after, smiling and jesting among themselves. 
+Dothraki hooves had torn the earth and trampled the rye and lentils into the ground, while arakhs and 
+arrows had sown a terrible new crop and watered it with blood. Dying horses lifted their heads and 
+screamed at her as she rode past. Wounded men moaned and prayed. Jaqqa rhan moved among them, 
+the mercy men with their heavy axes, taking a harvest of heads from the dead and dying alike. After them 
+would scurry a flock of small girls, pulling arrows from the corpses to fill their baskets. Last of all the 
+dogs would come sniffing, lean and hungry, the feral pack that was never far behind the khalasar. 
+The sheep had been dead longest. There seemed to be thousands of them, black with flies, arrow shafts 
+bristling from each carcass. Khal Ogo's riders had done that, Dany knew; no man of Drogo's khalasar 
+would be such a fool as to waste his arrows on sheep when there were shepherds yet to kill. 
+The town was afire, black plumes of smoke roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard blue sky. 
+Beneath broken walls of dried mud, riders galloped back and forth, swinging their long whips as they 
+herded the survivors from the smoking rubble. The women and chil 
+dren of Ogo's khalasar walked with a sullen pride, even in defeat and bondage; they were slaves now, 
+but they seemed not to fear it. It was different with the townsfolk. Dany pitied them; she remembered 
+what terror felt like. Mothers stumbled along with blank, dead faces, pulling sobbing children by the 
+hand. There were only a few men among them, cripples and cowards and grandfathers. 
+Ser Jorah said the people of this country named themselves the Lhazareen, but the Dothraki called them 
+haesh rakhi, the Lamb Men. Once Dany might have taken them for Dothraki, for they had the same 
+copper skin and almond-shaped eyes. Now they looked alien to her, squat and flat-faced, their black 
+hair cropped unnaturally short. They were herders of sheep and eaters of vegetables, and Khal Drogo 
+said they belonged south of the river bend. The grass of the Dothraki sea was not meant for sheep. 
+Dany saw one boy bolt and run for the river. A rider cut him off and turned him, and the others boxed 
+him in, cracking their whips in his face, running him this way and that. One galloped behind him, lashing 
+him across the buttocks until his thighs ran red with blood. Another snared his ankle with a lash and sent 
+him sprawling. Finally, when the boy could only crawl, they grew bored of the sport and put an arrow 
+through his back. 
+Ser Jorah met her outside the shattered gate. He wore a dark green surcoat over his mail. His gauntlets, 
+greaves, and greathelm were dark grey steel. The Dothraki had mocked him for a coward when he 
+donned his armor, but the knight had spit insults right back in their teeth, tempers had flared, longsword 
+had clashed with arakh, and the rider whose taunts had been loudest had been left behind to bleed to 
+death. 
+Ser Jorah lifted the visor of his flat-topped greathelm as he rode up. "Your lord husband awaits you 
+within the town." 
+"Drogo took no harm?" 
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+
+"A few cuts," Ser Jorah answered, "nothing of consequence. He slew two khals this day. Khal Ogo first, 
+and then the son, Fogo, who became khal when Ogo fell. His bloodriders cut the bells from their hair, 
+and now Khal Drogo's every step rings louder than before." 
+Ogo and his son had shared the high bench with her lord husband at the naming feast where Viserys had 
+been crowned, but that was in Vaes Dothrak, beneath the Mother of Mountains, where every rider was 
+a brother and all quarrels were put aside. It was different out in the grass. Ogo's khalasar had been 
+attacking the town when Khal Drogo caught him. She wondered what the Lamb Men had thought, when 
+they first saw the dust of their horses from atop those crackedmud 
+walls. Perhaps a few, the younger and more foolish who still believed that the gods heard the 
+prayers of desperate men, took it for deliverance. 
+Across the road, a girl no older than Dany was sobbing in a high thin voice as a rider shoved her over a 
+pile of corpses, facedown, and thrust himself inside her. Other riders dismounted to take their turns. That 
+was the sort of deliverance the Dothraki brought the Lamb Men. 
+I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She 
+pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate. 
+"Most of Ogo's riders fled," Ser Jorah was saying. "Still, there may be as many as ten thousand 
+captives." 
+Slaves, Dany thought. Khal Drogo would drive them downriver to one of the towns on Slaver's Bay. 
+She wanted to cry, but she told herself that she must be strong. This is war, this is what it looks like, this 
+is the price of the Iron Throne. 
+"I've told the khal he ought to make for Meereen," Ser Jorah said. "They'll pay a better price than he'd 
+get from a slaving caravan. Illyrio writes that they had a plague last year, so the brothels are paying 
+double for healthy young girls, and triple for boys under ten. If enough children survive the journey, the 
+gold will buy us all the ships we need, and hire men to sail them." 
+Behind them, the girl being raped made a heartrending sound, a long sobbing wail that went on and on 
+and on. Dany's hand clenched hard around the reins, and she turned the silver's head. "Make them stop," 
+she commanded Ser Jorah. 
+"Khaleesi?" The knight sounded perplexed. 
+"You heard my words," she said. "Stop them." She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. 
+"Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape." 
+The warriors exchanged a baffled look. 
+Jorah Mormont spurred his horse closer. "Princess," he said, "you have a gentle heart, but you do not 
+understand. This is how it has always been. Those men have shed blood for the khal. Now they claim 
+their reward." 
+Across the road, the girl was still crying, her high singsong tongue strange to Dany's ears. The first man 
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+
+was done with her now, and a second had taken his place. 
+"She is a lamb girl," Quaro said in Dothraki. "She is nothing, Khaleesi. The riders do her honor. The 
+Lamb Men lay with sheep, it is known." 
+"It is known," her handmaid Irri echoed. 
+"It is known," agreed Jhogo, astride the tall grey stallion that Drogo had given him. "If her wailing offends 
+your ears, Khaleesi, Jhogo will bring you her tongue." He drew his arakh. 
+"I will not have her harmed," Dany said. "I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal Drogo will know 
+the reason why." 
+'Ai, Khaleesi," Jhogo replied, kicking his horse. Quaro and the others followed his lead, the bells in their 
+hair chiming. 
+"Go with them," she commanded Ser Jorah. 
+"As you command." The knight gave her a curious look. "You are your brother's sister, in truth." 
+"Viserys?" She did not understand. 
+"No," he answered. "Rhaegar." He galloped off. 
+Dany heard Jhogo shout. The rapers laughed at him. One man shouted back. Jhogo's arakh flashed, and 
+the man's head went tumbling from his shoulders. Laughter turned to curses as the horsemen reached for 
+weapons, but by then Quaro and Aggo and Rakharo were there. She saw Aggo point across the road to 
+where she sat upon her silver. The riders looked at her with cold black eyes. One spat. The others 
+scattered to their mounts, muttering. 
+All the while the man atop the lamb girl continued to plunge in and out of her, so intent on his pleasure 
+that he seemed unaware of what was going on around him. Ser Jorah dismounted and wrenched him off 
+with a mailed hand. The Dothraki went sprawling in the mud, bounced up with a knife in hand, and died 
+with Aggo's arrow through his throat. Mormont pulled the girl off the pile of corpses and wrapped her in 
+his blood-spattered cloak. He led her across the road to Dany. "What do you want done with her?" 
+The girl was trembling, her eyes wide and vague. Her hair was matted with blood. "Doreah, see to her 
+hurts. You do not have a rider's look, perhaps she will not fear you. The rest, with me." She urged the 
+silver through the broken wooden gate. 
+It was worse inside the town. Many of the houses were afire, and the jaqqa rhan had been about their 
+grisly work. Headless corpses filled the narrow, twisty lanes. They passed other women being raped. 
+Each time Dany reined up, sent her khas to make an end to it, and claimed the victim as slave. One of 
+them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of forty years, blessed Dany haltingly in the Common Tongue, 
+but from the others she got only flat black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness; 
+afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate. 
+"You cannot claim them all, child," Ser Jorah said, the fourth time 
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+they stopped, while the warriors of her khas herded her new slaves behind her. 
+"I am khaleesi, heir to the Seven Kingdoms, the blood of the dragon," Dany reminded him. "It is not for 
+you to tell me what I cannot do." Across the city, a building collapsed in a great gout of fire and smoke, 
+and she heard distant screams and the wailing of frightened children. 
+They found Khal Drogo seated before a square windowless temple with thick mud walls and a bulbous 
+dome like some immense brown onion. Beside him was a pile of heads taller than he was. One of the 
+short arrows of the Lamb Men stuck through the meat of his upper arm, and blood covered the left side 
+of his bare chest like a splash of paint. His three bloodriders were with him. 
+Jhiqui helped Dany dismount; she had grown clumsy as her belly grew larger and heavier. She knelt 
+before the khaL "My sun-and-stars is wounded." The arakh cut was wide but shallow; his left nipple was 
+gone, and a flap of bloody flesh and skin dangled from his chest like a wet rag. 
+"Is scratch, moon of life, from arakh of one bloodrider to Khal Ogo," Khal Drogo said in the Common 
+Tongue. "I kill him for it, and Ogo too." He turned his head, the bells in his braid ringing softly. "Is Ogo 
+you hear, and Fogo his khalakka, who was khal when I slew him." 
+"No man can stand before the sun of my life," Dany said, "the father of the stallion who mounts the 
+world." 
+A mounted warrior rode up and vaulted from his saddle. He spoke to Haggo, a stream of angry 
+Dothraki too fast for Dany to understand. The huge bloodrider gave her a heavy look before he turned to 
+his khaL "This one is Mago, who rides in the khas of Ko Jhaqo. He says the khaleesi has taken his 
+spoils, a daughter of the lambs who was his to mount." 
+Khal Drogo's face was still and hard, but his black eyes were curious as they went to Dany. "Tell me the 
+truth of this, moon of my life," he commanded in Dothraki. 
+Dany told him what she had done, in his own tongue so the khal would understand her better, her words 
+simple and direct. 
+When she was done, Drogo was frowning. "This is the way of war. These women are our slaves now, to 
+do with as we please." 
+"It pleases me to hold them safe," Dany said, wondering if she had dared too much. "If your warriors 
+would mount these women, let them take them gently and keep them for wives. Give them places in the 
+khalasar and let them bear you sons." 
+Qotho was ever the cruelest of the bloodriders. It was he who laughed. "Does the horse breed with the 
+sheep?" 
+Something in his tone reminded her of Viserys. Dany turned on him angrily. "The dragon feeds on horse 
+and sheep alike." 
+Khal Drogo smiled. "See how fierce she grows!" he said. "It is my son inside her, the stallion who 
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+
+mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride slowly, Ootho . . . if the mother does not burn you where 
+you sit, the son will trample you into the mud. And you, Mago, hold your tongue and find another lamb to 
+mount. These belong to my khaleesi." He started to reach out a hand to Daenerys, but as he lifted his arm 
+Drogo grimaced in sudden pain and turned his head. 
+Dany could almost feel his agony. The wounds were worse than Ser Jorah had led her to believe. 
+"Where are the healers?" she demanded. The khalasar had two sorts: barren women and eunuch slaves. 
+The herbwomen dealt in potions and spells, the eunuchs in knife, needle, and fire. "Why do they not 
+attend the khal?" 
+"The khal sent the hairless men away, Khaleesi," old Cohollo assured her. Dany saw the bloodrider had 
+taken a wound himself; a deep gash in his left shoulder. 
+"Many riders are hurt," Khal Drogo said stubbornly. "Let them be healed first. This arrow is no more 
+than the bite of a fly, this little cut only a new scar to boast of to my son." 
+Dany could see the muscles in his chest where the skin had been cut away. A trickle of blood ran from 
+the arrow that pierced his arm. "It is not for Khal Drogo to wait," she proclaimed. "Jhogo, seek out these 
+eunuchs and bring them here at once." 
+"Silver Lady," a woman's voice said behind her, "I can help the Great Rider with his hurts." 
+Dany turned her head. The speaker was one of the slaves she had claimed, the heavy, flat-nosed woman 
+who had blessed her. 
+"The khal needs no help from women who lie with sheep," barked Qotho. "Aggo, cut out her tongue." 
+Aggo grabbed her hair and pressed a knife to her throat. 
+Dany lifted a hand. "No. She is mine. Let her speak." 
+Aggo looked from her to Qotho. He lowered his knife. 
+"I meant no wrong, fierce riders." The woman spoke Dothraki well. The robes she wore had once been 
+the lightest and finest of woolens, rich with embroidery, but now they were mud-caked and bloody and 
+ripped. She clutched the torn cloth of her bodice to her heavy breasts. "I have some small skill in the 
+healing arts." 
+"Who are you?" Dany asked her. 
+"I am named Mirri Maz Duur. I am godswife of this temple." 
+"Maegi," grunted Haggo, fingering his arakh. His look was dark. Dany remembered the word from a 
+terrifying story that Jhiqui had told her one night by the cookfire. A maegi was a woman who lay with 
+demons and practiced the blackest of sorceries, a vile thing, evil and soulless, who came to men in the 
+dark of night and sucked life and strength from their bodies. 
+"I am a healer," Mirri Maz Duur said. 
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+
+"A healer of sheeps," sneered Qotho. "Blood of my blood, I say kill this maegi and wait for the hairless 
+men." 
+Dany ignored the bloodrider's outburst. This old, homely, thickbodied woman did not look like a maegi 
+to her. "Where did you learn your healing, Mirri Maz Duur?" 
+"My mother was godswife before me, and taught me all the songs and spells most pleasing to the Great 
+Shepherd, and how to make the sacred smokes and ointments from leaf and root and berry. When I was 
+younger and more fair, I went in caravan to Asshai by the Shadow, to learn from their mages. Ships from 
+many lands come to Asshai, so I lingered long to study the healing ways of distant peoples. A moonsinger 
+of the Jogos Nhai gifted me with her birthing songs, a woman of your own riding people taught me the 
+magics of grass and corn and horse, and a maester from the Sunset Lands opened a body for me and 
+showed me all the secrets that hide beneath the skin." 
+Ser Jorah Mormont spoke up. "A maester?" 
+"Marwyn, he named himself," the woman replied in the Common Tongue. "From the sea. Beyond the 
+sea. The Seven Lands, he said. Sunset Lands. Where men are iron and dragons rule. He taught me this 
+speech." 
+"A maester in Asshai," Ser Jorah mused. "Tell me, Godswife, what did this Marwyn wear about his 
+neck?" 
+"A chain so tight it was like to choke him, Iron Lord, with links of many metals." 
+The knight looked at Dany. "Only a man trained in the Citadel of Oldtown wears such a chain," he said, 
+"and such men do know much of healing." 
+"Why should you want to help my khal?" 
+"All men are one flock, or so we are taught," replied Mirri Maz Duur. "The Great Shepherd sent me to 
+earth to heal his lambs, wherever I might find them." 
+Qotho gave her a stinging slap. "We are no sheep, maegi." 
+"Stop it," Dany said angrily. "She is mine. I will not have her harmed." 
+Khal Drogo grunted. "The arrow must come out, Qotho." 
+"Yes, Great Rider," Mirri Maz Duur answered, touching her bruised face. "And your breast must be 
+washed and sewn, lest the wound fester." 
+"Do it, then," Kbal Drogo commanded. 
+"Great Rider," the woman said, "my tools and potions are inside the god's house, where the healing 
+powers are strongest." 
+"I will carry you, blood of my blood," Haggo offered. 
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+Khal Drogo waved him away. "I need no man's help," he said, in a voice proud and hard. He stood, 
+unaided, towering over them all. A fresh wave of blood ran down his breast, from where Ogo's arakh 
+had cut off his nipple. Dany moved quickly to his side. "I am no man," she whispered, "so you may lean 
+on me." Drogo put a huge hand on her shoulder. She took some of his weight as they walked toward the 
+great mud temple. The three bloodriders followed. Dany commanded Ser Jorah and the warriors of her 
+khas to guard the entrance and make certain no one set the building afire while they were still inside. 
+They passed through a series of anterooms, into the high central chamber under the onion. Faint light 
+shone down through hidden windows above. A few torches burnt smokily from sconces on the walls. 
+Sheepskins were scattered across the mud floor. "There," Mirri Maz Duur said, pointing to the altar, a 
+massive blue-veined stone carved with images of shepherds and their flocks. Khal Drogo lay upon it. The 
+old woman threw a handful of dried leaves onto a brazier, filling the chamber with fragrant smoke. "Best 
+if you wait outside," she told the rest of them. 
+"We are blood of his blood," Cohollo said. "Here we wait." 
+Qotho stepped close to Mirri Maz Duur. "Know this, wife of the Lamb God. Harm the khal and you 
+suffer the same." He drew his skinning knife and showed her the blade. 
+"She will do no harm." Dany felt she could trust this old, plainfaced woman with her flat nose; she had 
+saved her from the hard hands of her rapers, after all. 
+"If you must stay, then help," Mirri told the bloodriders. "The Great Rider is too strong for me. Hold him 
+still while I draw the arrow from his flesh." She let the rags of her gown fall to her waist as she opened a 
+carved chest, and busied herself with bottles and boxes, knives and needles. When she was ready, she 
+broke off the barbed arrowhead and pulled out the shaft, chanting in the singsong tongue of the 
+Lhazareen. She heated a flagon of wine to boiling on the brazier, and poured it over his wounds. Khal 
+Drogo cursed her, but he did not move. She bound the arrow wound with a plaster of wet leaves and 
+turned to the gash on his breast, smearing it with a pale green paste 
+before she pulled the flap of skin back in place. The khal ground his teeth together and swallowed a 
+scream. The godswife took out a silver needle and a bobbin of silk thread and began to close the flesh. 
+When she was done she painted the skin with red ointment, covered it with more leaves, and bound the 
+breast in a ragged piece of lambskin. "You must say the prayers I give you and keep the lambskin in 
+place for ten days and ten nights," she said. "There will be fever, and itching, and a great scar when the 
+healing is done." 
+Khal Drogo sat, bells ringing. "I sing of my scars, sheep woman." He flexed his arm and scowled. 
+"Drink neither wine nor the milk of the poppy," she cautioned him. "Pain you will have, but you must 
+keep your body strong to fight the poison spirits." 
+"I am khal," Drogo said. "I spit on pain and drink what I like. Cohollo, bring my vest." The older man 
+hastened off. 
+"Before," Dany said to the ugly Lhazareen woman, "I heard you speak of birthing songs . . ." 
+"I know every secret of the bloody bed, Silver Lady, nor have I ever lost a babe," Mirri Maz Duur 
+replied. 
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+
+"My time is near," Dany said. "I would have you attend me when he comes, if you would." 
+Khal Drogo laughed. "Moon of my life, you do not ask a slave, you tell her. She will do as you 
+command." He jumped down from the altar. "Come, my blood. The stallions call, this place is ashes. It is 
+time to ride." 
+Haggo followed the khal from the temple, but Qotho lingered long enough to favor Mirri Maz Duur with 
+a stare. "Remember, maegi, as the khal fares, so shall you." 
+"As you say, rider," the woman answered him, gathering up her jars and bottles. "The Great Shepherd 
+guards the flock." 
+TYRION 
+0n a hill overlooking the kingsroad, a long trestle table of rough-hewn pine had been erected beneath an 
+elm tree and covered with a golden cloth. There, beside his pavilion, Lord Tywin took his evening meal 
+with his chief knights and lords bannermen, his great crimson-and-gold standard waving overhead from a 
+lofty pike. 
+Tyrion arrived late, saddlesore, and sour, all too vividly aware of how amusing he must look as he 
+waddled up the slope to his father. The day's march had been long and tiring. He thought he might get 
+quite drunk tonight. It was twilight, and the air was alive with drifting fireflies. 
+The cooks were serving the meat course: five suckling pigs, skin seared and crackling, a different fruit in 
+every mouth. The smell made his mouth water. "My pardons," he began, taking his place on the bench 
+beside his uncle. 
+"Perhaps I'd best charge you with burying our dead, Tyrion," Lord Tywin said. "If you are as late to 
+battle as you are to table, the fighting will all be done by the time you arrive." 
+"Oh, surely you can save me a peasant or two, Father," Tyrion replied. "Not too many, I wouldn't want 
+to be greedy." He filled his wine cup and watched a serving man carve into the pig. The crisp skin 
+crackled under his knife, and hot juice ran from the meat. It was the loveliest sight Tyrion had seen in 
+ages. 
+"Ser Addam's outriders say the Stark host has moved south from the Twins," his father reported as his 
+trencher was filled with slices of pork. "Lord Frey's levies have joined them. They are likely no more than 
+a day's march north of us." 
+"Please, Father," Tyrion said. "I'm about to eat." 
+"Does the thought of facing the Stark boy unman you, Tyrion? Your brother Jaime would be eager to 
+come to grips with him." 
+"I'd sooner come to grips with that pig. Robb Stark is not half so tender, and he never smelled as good." 
+Page 451
+
+Lord Lefford, the sour bird who had charge of their stores and supplies, leaned forward. "I hope your 
+savages do not share your reluctance, else we've wasted our good steel on them." 
+"My savages will put your steel to excellent use, my lord," Tyrion replied. When he had told Lefford he 
+needed arms and armor to equip the three hundred men Ulf had fetched down out of the foothills, you 
+would have thought he'd asked the man to turn his virgin daughters over to their pleasure. 
+Lord Lefford frowned. "I saw that great hairy one today, the one who insisted that he must have two 
+battle-axes, the heavy black steel ones with twin crescent blades." 
+"Shagga likes to kill with either hand," Tyrion said as a trencher of steaming pork was laid in front of him. 
+"He still had that wood-axe of his strapped to his back." 
+"Shagga is of the opinion that three axes are even better than two." Tyrion reached a thumb and 
+forefinger into the salt dish, and sprinkled a healthy pinch over his meat. 
+Ser Kevan leaned forward. "We had a thought to put you and your wildlings in the vanguard when we 
+come to battle." 
+Ser Kevan seldom "had a thought" that Lord Tywin had not had first. Tyrion had skewered a chunk of 
+meat on the point of his dagger and brought it to his mouth. Now he lowered it. "The vanguard?" he 
+repeated dubiously. Either his lord father had a new respect for Tyrion's abilities, or he'd decided to rid 
+himself of his embarrassing get for good. Tyrion had the gloomy feeling he knew which. 
+"They seem ferocious enough," Ser Kevan said. 
+"Ferocious?" Tyrion realized he was echoing his uncle like a trained bird. His father watched, judging 
+him, weighing every word. "Let me tell you how ferocious they are. Last night, a Moon Brother stabbed 
+a Stone Crow over a sausage. So today as we made camp three Stone Crows seized the man and 
+opened his throat for him. Perhaps they 
+were hoping to get the sausage back, I couldn't say. Bronn managed to keep Shagga from chopping off 
+the dead man's cock, which was fortunate, but even so Ulf is demanding blood money, which Conn and 
+Shagga refuse to pay." 
+"When soldiers lack discipline, the fault lies with their lord commander," his father said. 
+His brother Jaime had always been able to make men follow him eagerly, and die for him if need be. 
+Tyrion lacked that gift. He bought loyalty with gold, and compelled obedience with his name. "A bigger 
+man would be able to put the fear in them, is that what you're saying, my lord?" 
+Lord Tywin Lannister turned to his brother. "If my son's men will not obey his commands, perhaps the 
+vanguard is not the place for him. No doubt he would be more comfortable in the rear, guarding our 
+baggage train." 
+"Do me no kindnesses, Father," he said angrily. "If you have no other command to offer me, I'll lead 
+your van." 
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+
+Lord Tywin studied his dwarf son. "I said nothing about command. You will serve under Ser Gregor." 
+Tyrion took one bite of pork, chewed a moment, and spit it out angrily. "I find I am not hungry after all," 
+he said, climbing awkwardly off the bench. "Pray excuse me, my lords." 
+Lord Tywin inclined his head, dismissing him. Tyrion turned and walked away. He was conscious of 
+their eyes on his back as he waddled down the hill. A great gust of laughter went up from behind him, but 
+he did not look back. He hoped they all choked on their suckling pigs. 
+Dusk had settled, turning all the banners black. The Lannister camp sprawled for miles between the river 
+and the kingsroad. In amongst the men and the horses and the trees, it was easy to get lost, and `I~rion 
+did. He passed a dozen great pavilions and a hundred cookfires. Fireflies drifted amongst the tents like 
+wandering stars. He caught the scent of garlic sausage, spiced and savory, so tempting it made his empty 
+stomach growl. Away in the distance, he heard voices raised in some bawdy song. A giggling woman 
+raced past him, naked beneath a dark cloak, her drunken pursuer stumbling over tree roots. Farther on, 
+two spearmen faced each other across a little trickle of a stream, practicing their thrust- and-parry in the 
+fading light, their chests bare and slick with sweat. 
+No one looked at him. No one spoke to him. No one paid him any mind. He was surrounded by men 
+sworn to House Lannister, a vast host twenty thousand strong, and yet he was alone. 
+When he heard the deep rumble of Shagga's laughter booming 
+through the dark, he followed it to the Stone Crows in their small corner of the night. Conn son of Coratt 
+waved a tankard of ale. "Tyrion Halftnan! Come, sit by our fire, share meat with the Stone Crows. We 
+have an ox." 
+"I can see that, Conn son of Coratt." The huge red carcass was suspended over a roaring fire, skewered 
+on a spit the size of a small tree. No doubt it was a small tree. Blood and grease dripped down into the 
+flames as two Stone Crows turned the meat. "I thank you. Send for me when the ox is cooked." From 
+the look of it, that might even be before the battle. He walked on. 
+Each clan had its own cookfire; Black Ears did not eat with Stone Crows, Stone Crows did not eat with 
+Moon Brothers, and no one ate with Burned Men. The modest tent he had coaxed out of Lord Lefford's 
+stores had been erected in the center of the four fires. Tyrion found Bronn sharing a skin of wine with the 
+new servants. Lord Tywin had sent him a groom and a body servant to see to his needs, and even 
+insisted he take a squire. They were seated around the embers of a small cookfire. A girl was with them; 
+slim, dark-haired, no more than eighteen by the look of her. Tyrion studied her face for a moment, before 
+he spied fishbones in the ashes. "What did you eat?" 
+"Trout, m'lord," said his groom. "Bronn caught them." 
+Trout, he thought. Suckling pig. Damn my father. He stared mournfully at the bones, his belly rumbling. 
+His squire, a boy with the unfortunate name of Podrick Payne, swallowed whatever he had been about 
+to say. The lad was a distant cousin to Ser Ilyn Payne, the king's headsman . . . and almost as quiet, 
+although not for want of a tongue. Tyrion had made him stick it out once, just to be certain. "Definitely a 
+tongue," he had said. "Someday you must learn to use it." 
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+At the moment, he did not have the patience to try and coax a thought out of the lad, whom he 
+suspected had been inflicted on him as a cruel jape. Tyrion turned his attention back to the girl. "Is this 
+her?" he asked Bronn. 
+She rose gracefully and looked down at him from the lofty height of five feet or more. "It is, m'lord, and 
+she can speak for herself, if it please you." 
+He cocked his head to one side. "I am Tyrion, of House Lannister. Men call me the Imp." 
+"My mother named me Shae. Men call me . . . often." 
+Bronn laughed, and Tyrion had to smile. "Into the tent, Shae, if you would be so kind." He lifted the flap 
+and held it for her. Inside, he knelt to light a candle. 
+The life of a soldier was not without certain compensations. Wherever you have a camp, you are certain 
+to have camp followers. At the end of the day's march, Tyrion had sent Bronn back to find him a likely 
+whore. "I would prefer one who is reasonably young, with as pretty a face as you can find," he had said. 
+"If she has washed sometime this year, I shall be glad. If she hasn't, wash her. Be certain that you tell her 
+who I am, and warn her of what I am." Jyck had not always troubled to do that. There was a look the 
+girls got in their eyes sometimes when they first beheld the lordling they'd been hired to pleasure . . . a 
+took that Tyrion Lannister did not ever care to see again. 
+He lifted the candle and looked her over. Bronn had done well enough; she was doe-eyed and slim, with 
+small firm breasts and a smile that was by turns shy, insolent, and wicked. He liked that. "Shall I take my 
+gown off, m'lord?" she asked. 
+"In good time. Are you a maiden, Shae?" 
+"If it please you, m'lord," she said demurely. 
+"What would please me would be the truth of you, girl." 
+"Aye, but that will cost you double." 
+Tyrion decided they would get along splendidly. "I am a Lannister. Gold I have in plenty, and you'll find 
+me generous . . . but I'll want more from you than what you've got between your legs, though I'll want 
+that too. You'll share my tent, pour my wine, laugh at my jests, rub the ache from my legs after each day's 
+ride . . . and whether I keep you a day or a year, for so long as we are together you will take no other 
+men into your bed." 
+"Fair enough." She reached down to the hem of her thin roughspun gown and pulled it up over her head 
+in one smooth motion, tossing it aside. There was nothing underneath but Shae. "If he don't put down that 
+candle, m1ord will burn his fingers." 
+Tyrion put down the candle, took her hand in his, and pulled her gently to him. She bent to kiss him. Her 
+mouth tasted of honey and cloves, and her fingers were deft and practiced as they found the fastenings of 
+his clothes. 
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+When he entered her, she welcomed him with whispered endearments and small, shuddering gasps of 
+pleasure. Tyrion suspected her delight was feigned, but she did it so well that it did not matter. That much 
+truth he did not crave. 
+He had needed her, Tyrion realized afterward, as she lay quietly in his arms. Her or someone like her. It 
+had been nigh on a year since he'd lain with a woman, since before he had set out for Winterfell in 
+company with his brother and King Robert. He could well die on the morrow or the day after, and if he 
+did, he would sooner go to his grave 
+thinking of Shae than of his lord father, Lysa Arryn, or the Lady Catelyn Stark. 
+He could feel the softness of her breasts pressed against his arm as she lay beside him. That was a good 
+feeling. A song filled his head. Softly, quietly, he began to whistle. 
+"What's that, m'lord?" Shae murmured against him. 
+"Nothing," he told her. "A song I learned as a boy, that's all. Go to sleep, sweetling." 
+When her eyes were closed and her breathing deep and steady, Tyrion slid out from beneath her, gently, 
+so as not to disturb her sleep. Naked, he crawled outside, stepped over his squire, and walked around 
+behind his tent to make water. 
+Bronn was seated cross-legged under a chestnut tree, near where they'd tied the horses. He was honing 
+the edge of his sword, wide awake; the sellsword did not seem to sleep like other men. "Where did you 
+find her?" Tyrion asked him as he pissed. 
+"I took her from a knight. The man was loath to give her up, but your name changed his thinking 
+somewhat . . . that, and my dirk at his throat." 
+"Splendid," Tyrion said dryly, shaking off the last drops. "I seem to recall saying find me a whore, not 
+make me an enemy." 
+"The pretty ones were all claimed," Bronn said. "I'll be pleased to take her back if you'd prefer a 
+toothless drab." 
+Tyrion limped closer to where he sat. "My lord father would call that insolence, and send you to the 
+mines for impertinence." 
+"Good for me you're not your father," Bronn replied. "I saw one with boils all over her nose. Would you 
+like her?" 
+"What, and break your heart?" Tyrion shot back. "I shall keep Shae. Did you perchance note the name 
+of this knight you took her from? I'd rather not have him beside me in the battle." 
+Bronn rose, cat-quick and cat-graceful, turning his sword in his hand. "You'll have me beside you in the 
+battle, dwarf." 
+Tyrion nodded. The night air was warm on his bare skin. "See that I survive this battle, and you can 
+name your reward." 
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+Bronn tossed the longsword from his right hand to his left, and tried a cut. "Who'd want to kill the likes 
+of you?" 
+"My lord father, for one. He's put me in the van." 
+"I'd do the same. A small man with a big shield. You'll give the archers fits." 
+"I find you oddly cheering," Tyrion said. "I must be mad." 
+Bronn sheathed his sword. "Beyond a doubt." 
+When Tyrion returned to his tent, Shae rolled onto her elbow and murmured sleepily, "I woke and 
+m'lord was gone." 
+"M'Iord is back now." He slid in beside her. 
+Her hand went between his stunted legs, and found him hard. "Yes he is," she whispered, stroking him. 
+He asked her about the man Bronn had taken her from, and she named the minor retainer of an 
+insignificant lordling. "You need not fear his like, m'lord," the girl said, her fingers busy at his cock. "He is 
+a small man." 
+"And what am 1, pray?" Tyrion asked her. "A giant?" 
+"Oh, yes," she purred, "my giant of Lannister." She mounted him then, and for a time, she almost made 
+him believe it. Tyrion went to sleep smiling . . . 
+* ' * and woke in darkness to the blare of trumpets. Shae was shaking him by the shoulder. "M'Iord," 
+she whispered. "Wake up, m'lord. I'm frightened." 
+Groggy, he sat up and threw back the blanket. The horns called through the night, wild and urgent, a cry 
+that said huny huny huny. He heard shouts, the clatter of spears, the whicker of horses, though nothing 
+yet that spoke to him of fighting. "My lord father's trumpets," he said. "Battle assembly. I thought Stark 
+was yet a day's march away." 
+Shae shook her head, lost. Her eyes were wide and white. 
+Groaning, Tyrion lurched to his feet and pushed his way outside, shouting for his squire. Wisps of pale 
+fog drifted through the night, long white fingers off the river. Men and horses blundered through the 
+predawn chill; saddles were being cinched, wagons loaded, fires extinguished. The trumpets blew again: 
+huny huny huny. Knights vaulted onto snorting coursers while men-at-arms buckled their sword belts as 
+they ran. When he found Pod, the boy was snoring softly. Tyrion gave him a sharp poke in the ribs with 
+his toe. "My armor," he said, "and be quick about it." Bronn came trotting out of the mists, already 
+armored and ahorse, wearing his battered halfhelm. "Do you know what's happened?" Tyrion asked him. 
+"The Stark boy stole a march on us," Bronn said. "He crept down the kingsroad in the night, and now his 
+host is less than a mile north of here, forming up in battle array." 
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+Huny, the trumpets called, huny huny huny. 
+"See that the clansmen are ready to ride." Tyrion ducked back inside his tent. "Where are my clothes?" 
+he barked at Shae. "There. No, the leather, damn it. Yes. Bring me my boots." 
+By the time he was dressed, his squire had laid out his armor, such that it was. Tyrion owned a fine suit 
+of heavy plate, expertly crafted to 
+fit his misshapen body. Alas, it was safe at Casterly Rock, and he was not. He had to make do with 
+oddments assembled from Lord Lefford's wagons: mail hauberk and coif, a dead knight's gorget, 
+lobstered greaves and gauntlets and pointed steel boots. Some of it was ornate, some plain; not a bit of it 
+matched, or fit as it should. His breastplate was meant for a bigger man; for his oversize head, they found 
+a huge bucket-shaped greathelm topped with a foot-long triangular spike. 
+Shae helped Pod with the buckles and clasps. "If I die, weep for me," Tyrion told the whore. 
+"How will you know? You'll be dead." 
+"I'll know." 
+"I believe you would." Shae lowered the greathelm down over his head, and Pod fastened it to his 
+gorget. Tyrion buckled on his belt, heavy with the weight of shortsword and dirk. By then his groom had 
+brought up his mount, a formidable brown courser armored as heavily as he was. He needed help to 
+mount; he felt as though he weighed a thousand stone. Pod handed him up his shield, a massive slab of 
+heavy ironwood banded with steel. Lastly they gave him his battle-axe. Shae stepped back and looked 
+him over. "NI'lord looks fearsome." 
+"NI'lord looks a dwarf in mismatched armor," Tyrion answered sourly, "but I thank you for the kindness. 
+Podrick, should the battle go against us, see the lady safely home." He saluted her with his axe, wheeled 
+his horse about, and trotted off. His stomach was a hard knot, so tight it pained him. Behind, his servants 
+hurriedly began to strike his tent. Pale crimson fingers fanned out to the east as the first rays of the sun 
+broke over the horizon. The western sky was a deep purple, speckled with stars. Tyrion wondered 
+whether this was the last sunrise he would ever see . . . and whether wondering was a mark of 
+cowardice. Did his brother Jaime ever contemplate death before a battle? 
+A warhorn sounded in the far distance, a deep mournful note that chilled the soul. The clansmen climbed 
+onto their scrawny mountain horses, shouting curses and rude jokes. Several appeared to be drunk. The 
+rising sun was burning off the drifting tendrils of fog as Tyrion led them off. What grass the horses had left 
+was heavy with dew, as if some passing god had scattered a bag of diamonds over the earth. The 
+mountain men fell in behind him, each clan arrayed behind its own leaders. 
+In the dawn light, the army of Lord Tywin Lannister unfolded like an iron rose, thorns gleaming. 
+His uncle would lead the center. Ser Kevan had raised his standards above the kingsroad. Quivers 
+hanging from their belts, the foot archers arrayed themselves into three long lines, to east and west of the 
+road, 
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+
+and stood calmly stringing their bows. Between them, pikemen formed squares; behind were rank on 
+rank of men-at-arms with spear and sword and axe. Three hundred heavy horse surrounded Ser Kevan 
+and the lords bannermen Lefford, Lydden, and Serrett with all their sworn retainers. 
+The right wing was all cavalry, some four thousand men, heavy with the weight of their armor. More than 
+three quarters of the knights were there, massed together like a great steel fist. Ser Addam Marbrand 
+had the command. Tyrion saw his banner unfurl as his standardbearer shook it out; a burning tree, orange 
+and smoke. Behind him flew Ser Flement's purple unicorn, the brindled boar of Crakehall, the bantam 
+rooster of Swyft, and more. 
+His lord father took his place on the hill where he had slept. Around him, the reserve assembled; a huge 
+force, half mounted and half foot, five thousand strong. Lord Tywin almost always chose to command the 
+reserve; he would take the high ground and watch the battle unfold below him, committing his forces 
+when and where they were needed most. 
+Even from afar, his lord father was resplendent. Tywin Lannister's battle armor put his son Jaime's gilded 
+suit to shame. His greatcloak was sewn from countless layers of cloth-of-gold, so heavy that it barely 
+stirred even when he charged, so large that its drape covered most of his stallion's hindquarters when he 
+took the saddle. No ordinary clasp would suffice for such a weight, so the greatcloak was held in place 
+by a matched pair of miniature lionesses crouching on his shoulders, as if poised to spring. Their mate, a 
+male with a magnificent mane, reclined atop Lord Tywin's greathelm, one paw raking the air as he 
+roared. All three lions were wrought in gold, with ruby eyes. His armor was heavy steel plate, enameled 
+in a dark crimson, greaves and gauntlets inlaid with ornate gold scrollwork. His rondels were golden 
+sunbursts, all his fastenings were gilded, and the red steel was burnished to such a high sheen that it shone 
+like fire in the light of the rising sun. 
+Tyrion could hear the rumble of the foemen's drums now. He remembered Robb Stark as he had last 
+seen him, in his father's high seat in the Great Hall of Winterfell, a sword naked and shining in his hands. 
+He remembered how the direwolves had come at him out of the shadows, and suddenly he could see 
+them again, snarling and snapping, teeth bared in his face. Would the boy bring his wolves to war with 
+him? The thought made him uneasy. 
+The northerners would be exhausted after their long sleepless march. Tyrion wondered what the boy had 
+been thinking. Did he think 
+to take them unawares while they slept? Small chance of that; whatever else might be said of him, Tywin 
+Lannister was no man's fool. 
+The van was massing on the left. He saw the standard first, three black dogs on a yellow field. Ser 
+Gregor sat beneath it, mounted on the biggest horse Tyrion had ever seen. Bronn took one look at him 
+and grinned. "Always follow a big man into battle." 
+Tyrion threw him a hard look. "And why is that?" 
+"They make such splendid targets. That one, he'll draw the eyes of every bowman on the field." 
+Laughing, Tyrion regarded the Mountain with fresh eyes. "I confess, I had not considered it in that light." 
+Clegane had no splendor about him; his armor was steel plate, dull grey, scarred by hard use and 
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+showing neither sigil nor ornament. He was pointing men into position with his blade, a two-handed 
+greatsword that Ser Gregor waved about with one hand as a lesser man might wave a dagger. "Any man 
+runs, I'll cut him down myself," he was roaring when he caught sight of Tyrion. "Imp! Take the left. Hold 
+the river. If you can." 
+The left of the left. To turn their flank, the Starks would need horses that could run on water. Tyrion led 
+his men toward the riverbank. "Look," he shouted, pointing with his axe. "The river." A blanket of pale 
+mist still clung to the surface of the water, the murky green current swirling past underneath. The shallows 
+were muddy and choked with reeds. "That river is ours. Whatever happens, keep close to the water. 
+Never lose sight of it. Let no enemy come between us and our river. If they dirty our waters, hack off 
+their cocks and feed them to the fishes." 
+Shagga had an axe in either hand. He smashed them together and made them ring. "Halfman!" he 
+shouted. Other Stone Crows picked up the cry, and the Black Ears and Moon Brothers as well. The 
+Burned Men did not shout, but they rattled their swords and spears. "Halfman! Ha Ifm a n! Ha 1fm a n! " 
+Tyrion turned his courser in a circle to look over the field. The ground was rolling and uneven here; soft 
+and muddy near the river, rising in a gentle slope toward the kingsroad, stony and broken beyond it, to 
+the cast. A few trees spotted the hillsides, but most of the land had been cleared and planted. His heart 
+pounded in his chest in time to the drums, and under his layers of leather and steel his brow was cold with 
+sweat. He watched Ser Gregor as the Mountain rode up and down the line, shouting and gesticulating. 
+This wing too was all cavalry, but where the right was a mailed fist of knights and heavy lancers, the 
+vanguard was made up of the sweepings of the west: mounted archers 
+in leather jerkins, a swarming mass of undisciplined freeriders and sellswords, fieldhands on plow horses 
+armed with scythes and their fathers' rusted swords, half-trained boys from the stews of Lannisport and 
+Tyrion and his mountain clansmen. 
+Crow food," Bronn muttered beside him, giving voice to what Tyrion had left unsaid. He could only nod. 
+Had his lord father taken leave of his senses? No pikes, too few bowmen, a bare handful of knights, the 
+ill-armed and unarmored, commanded by an unthinking brute who led with his rage . . . how could his 
+father expect this travesty of a battle to hold his left? 
+He had no time to think about it. The drums were so near that the beat crept under his skin and set his 
+hands to twitching. Bronn drew his longsword, and suddenly the enemy was there before them, boiling 
+over the tops of the hills, advancing with measured tread behind a wall of shields and pikes. 
+Gods be damned, look at them all, Tyrion thought, though he knew his father had more men on the field. 
+Their captains led them on armored warhorses, standard-bearers riding alongside with their banners. He 
+glimpsed the bull moose of the Hornwoods, the Karstark sunburst, Lord Cerwyn's battle-axe, and the 
+mailed fist of the Glovers . . . and the twin towers of Frey, blue on grey. So much for his father's certainty 
+that Lord Walder would not bestir himself. The white of House Stark was seen everywhere, the grey 
+direwolves seeming to run and leap as the banners swirled and streamed from the high staffs. "ere is the 
+boy? Tyrion wondered. 
+A warhorn blew. Haroooooooooooooooooooooooo, it cried, its voice as long and low and chilling as a 
+cold wind from the north. The Lannister trumpets answered, da-DA da-DA da-DAAAAAAAAA, 
+brazen and defiant, yet it seemed to Tyrion that they sounded somehow smaller, more anxious. He could 
+feel a fluttering in his bowels, a queasy liquid feeling; he hoped he was not going to die sick. 
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+As the horns died away, a hissing filled the air; a vast flight of arrows arched up from his right, where the 
+archers stood flanking the road. The northerners broke into a run, shouting as they came, but the 
+Lannister arrows fell on them like hail, hundreds of arrows, thousands, and shouts turned to screams as 
+men stumbled and went down. By then a second flight was in the air, and the archers were fitting a third 
+arrow to their bowstrings. 
+The trumpets blared again, da-DAAA da-DAAA da-DA da-DA daDAAAAAAA. Ser Gregor waved 
+his huge sword and bellowed a command, and a thousand other voices screamed back at him. Tyrion put 
+his spurs to his horse and added one more voice to the cacophony, and 
+the van surged forward. "The river!" he shouted at his clansmen as they rode. "Remember, hew to the 
+river." He was still leading when they broke a canter, until Chella gave a bloodcurdling shriek and 
+galloped past him, and Shagga howled and followed. The clansmen charged after them, leaving Tyrion in 
+their dust. 
+A crescent of enemy spearmen had formed ahead, a double hedgehog bristling with steel, waiting behind 
+tall oaken shields marked with the sunburst of Karstark. Gregor Clegane was the first to reach them, 
+leading a wedge of armored veterans. Half the horses shied at the last second, breaking their charge 
+before the row of spears. The others died, sharp steel points ripping through their chests. Tyrion saw a 
+dozen men go down. The Mountain's stallion reared, lashing out with iron-shod hooves as a barbed 
+spearhead raked across his neck. Maddened, the beast lunged into the ranks. Spears thrust at him from 
+every side, but the shield wall broke beneath his weight. The northerners stumbled away from the 
+animal's death throes. As his horse fell, snorting blood and biting with his last red breath, the Mountain 
+rose untouched, laying about him with his two-handed greatsword. 
+Shagga went bursting through the gap before the shields could close, other Stone Crows hard behind 
+him. Tyrion shouted, "Burned Men! Moon Brothers! After me!" but most of them were ahead of him. He 
+glimpsed Timett son of Timett vault free as his mount died under him in full stride, saw a Moon Brother 
+impaled on a Karstark spear, watched Conn's horse shatter a man's ribs with a kick. A flight of arrows 
+descended on them; where they came from he could not say, but they fell on Stark and Lannister alike, 
+rattling off armor or finding flesh. Tyrion lifted his shield and hid beneath it. 
+The hedgehog was crumbling, the northerners reeling back under the impact of the mounted assault. 
+Tyrion saw Shagga catch a spearman full in the chest as the fool came on at a run, saw his axe shear 
+through mail and leather and muscle and lungs. The man was dead on his feet, the axehead lodged in his 
+breast, yet Shagga rode on, cleaving a shield in two with his left-hand battle-axe while the corpse was 
+bouncing and stumbling bonelessly along on his right. Finally the dead man slid off. Shagga smashed the 
+two axes together and roared. 
+By then the enemy was on him, and Tyrion's battle shrunk to the few feet of ground around his horse. A 
+man-at-arms thrust at his chest and his axe lashed out, knocking the spear aside. The man danced back 
+for another try, but Tyrion spurred his horse and rode right over him. Bronn was surrounded by three 
+foes, but he lopped the head off the first spear that came at him, and raked his blade across a second 
+man's face on his backslash. 
+A thrown spear came hurtling at Tyrion from the left and lodged in his shield with a woody chunk. He 
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+wheeled and raced after the thrower, but the man raised his own shield over his head. Tyrion circled 
+around him, raining axe blows down on the wood. Chips of oak went flying, until the northerner lost his 
+feet and slipped, failing flat on his back with his shield on top of him. He was below the reach of Tyrion's 
+axe and it was too much bother to dismount, so he left him there and rode after another man, taking him 
+from behind with a sweeping downcut that sent a jolt of impact up his arm. That won him a moment's 
+respite. Reining up, he looked for the river. There it was, off to the right. Somehow he had gotten turned 
+around. 
+A Burned Man rode past, slumped against his horse. A spear had entered his belly and come out 
+through his back. He was past any help, but when Tyrion saw one of the northerners run up and make a 
+grab for his reins, he charged. 
+His quarry met him sword in hand. He was tall and spare, wearing a long chainmail hauberk and 
+gauntlets of lobstered steel, but he'd lost his helm and blood ran down into his eyes from a gash across 
+his forehead. Tyrion aimed a swipe at his face, but the tall man slammed it aside. "Dwarf," he screamed. 
+"Die." He turned in a circle as Tyrion rode around him, hacking at his head and shoulders. Steel rang on 
+steel, and Tyrion soon realized that the tall man was quicker and stronger than he was. Where in the 
+seven hells was Bronn? "Die," the man grunted, chopping at him savagely. Tyrion barely got his shield up 
+in time, and the wood seemed to explode inward under the force of the blow. The shattered pieces fell 
+away from his arm. "Die!" the swordsman bellowed, shoving in close and whanging Tyrion across the 
+temple so hard his head rang. The blade made a hideous scraping sound as he drew it back over the 
+steel. The tall man grinned . . . until Tyrion's destrier bit, quick as a snake, laying his cheek bare to the 
+bone. Then he screamed. Tyrion buried his axe in his head. "You die," he told him, and he did. 
+As he wrenched the blade free, he heard a shout. 'Eddard!" a voice rang out. "For Eddard and 
+Winterfell!" The knight came thundering down on him, swinging the spiked ball of a morningstar around 
+his head. Their warhorses slammed together before Tyrion could so much as open his mouth to shout for 
+Bronn. His right elbow exploded with pain as the spikes punched through the thin metal around the joint. 
+His axe was gone, as fast as that. He clawed for his sword, but the morningstar was circling again, 
+coming at his face. A sickening crunch, and he was falling. He did not recall hitting the ground, but when 
+he looked up there was only sky above him. He rolled onto his side and 
+tried to find his feet, but pain shuddered through him and the world throbbed. The knight who had felled 
+him drew up above him. "Tyrion the Imp," he boomed down. "You are mine. Do you yield, Lannister?" 
+Yes, Tyrion thought, but the word caught in his throat. He made a croaking sound and fought his way to 
+his knees, fumbling for a weapon. His sword, his dirk, anything . . . 
+"Do you yield?" The knight loomed overhead on his armored warhorse. Man and horse both seemed 
+immense. The spiked ball swung in a lazy circle. Tyrion's hands were numb, his vision blurred, his 
+scabbard empty. "Yield or die," the knight declared, his flail whirling faster and faster. 
+Tyrion lurched to his feet, driving his head into the horse's belly. The animal gave a hideous scream and 
+reared. It tried to twist away from the agony, a shower of blood and viscera poured down over Tyrion's 
+face, and the horse fell like an avalanche. The next he knew, his visor was packed with mud and 
+something was crushing his foot. He wriggled free, his throat so tight he could scarce talk. 
+. . yield . . ." he managed to croak faintly. 
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+"Yes," a voice moaned, thick with pain. 
+Tyrion scraped the mud off his helm so he could see again. The horse had fallen away from him, onto its 
+rider. The knight's leg was trapped, the arm he'd used to break his fall twisted at a grotesque angle. 
+"Yield," he repeated. Fumbling at his belt with his good hand, he drew a sword and flung it at Tyrion's 
+feet. "I yield, my lord." 
+Dazed, the dwarf knelt and lifted the blade. Pain hammered through his elbow when he moved his arm. 
+The battle seemed to have moved beyond him. No one remained on his part of the field save a large 
+number of corpses. Ravens were already circling and landing to feed. He saw that Ser Kevan had 
+brought up his center in support of the van; his huge mass of pikemen had pushed the northerners back 
+against the hills. They were struggling on the slopes, pikes thrusting against another wall of shields, these 
+oval and reinforced with iron studs. As he watched, the air filled with arrows again, and the men behind 
+the oak wall crumbled beneath the murderous fire. "I believe you are losing, ser," he told the knight under 
+the horse. The man made no reply. 
+The sound of hooves coming up behind him made him whirl, though he could scarcely lift the sword he 
+held for the agony in his elbow. Brorm reined up and looked down on him. 
+"Small use you turned out to be," Tyrion told him. 
+"It would seem you did well enough on your own," Bronn answered. "You've lost the spike off your 
+helm, though." 
+Tyrion groped at the top of the greathelm. The spike had snapped off clean. "I haven't lost it. I know just 
+where it is. Do you see my horse?" 
+By the time they found it, the trumpets had sounded again and Lord Tywin's reserve came sweeping up 
+along the river. Tyrion watched his father fly past, the crimson-and-gold banner of Lannister rippling over 
+his head as he thundered across the field. Five hundred knights surrounded him, sunlight flashing off the 
+points of their lances. The remnants of the Stark lines shattered like glass beneath the hammer of their 
+charge. 
+With his elbow swollen and throbbing inside his armor, Tyrion made no attempt to join the slaughter. He 
+and Bronn went looking for his men. Many he found among the dead. Ulf son of Umar lay in a pool of 
+congealing blood, his arm gone at the elbow, a dozen of his Moon Brothers sprawled around him. 
+Shagga was slumped beneath a tree, riddled with arrows, Conn's head in his lap. Tyrion thought they 
+were both dead, but as he dismounted, Shagga opened his eyes and said, "They have killed Conn son of 
+Coratt." Handsome Conn had no mark but for the red stain over his breast, where the spear thrust had 
+killed him. When Bronn pulled Shagga to his feet, the big man seemed to notice the arrows for the first 
+time. He plucked them out one by one, cursing the holes they had made in his layers of mail and leather, 
+and yowling like a babe at the few that had buried themselves in his flesh. Chella daughter of Cheyk rode 
+up as they were yanking arrows out of Shagga, and showed them four ears she had taken. Timett they 
+discovered looting the bodies of the slain with his Burned Men. Of the three hundred clansmen who had 
+ridden to battle behind Tyrion Lannister, perhaps half had survived. 
+He left the living to look after the dead, sent Bronn to take charge of his captive knight, and went alone 
+in search of his father. Lord Tywin was seated by the river, sipping wine from a jeweled cup as his squire 
+undid the fastenings on his breastplate. "A fine victory," Ser Kevan said when he saw Tyrion. "Your wild 
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+men fought well." 
+His father's eyes were on him, pale green flecked with gold, so cool they gave Tyrion a chill. "Did that 
+surprise you, Father?" he asked. "Did it upset your plans? We were supposed to be butchered, were we 
+not?" 
+Lord Tywin drained his cup, his face expressionless. "I put the least disciplined men on the left, yes. I 
+anticipated that they would break. Robb Stark is a green boy, more like to be brave than wise. I'd hoped 
+that if he saw our left collapse, he might plunge into the gap, eager for a rout. Once he was fully 
+committed, Ser Kevan's pikes would wheel 
+and take him in the flank, driving him into the river while I brought up the reserve." 
+"And you thought it best to place me in the midst of this carnage, yet keep me ignorant of your plans." 
+"A feigned rout is less convincing," his father said, "and I am not inclined to trust my plans to a man who 
+consorts with sellswords and savages." 
+"A pity my savages ruined your dance." Tyrion pulled off his steel gauntlet and let it fall to the ground, 
+wincing at the pain that stabbed up his arm. 
+"The Stark boy proved more cautious than I expected for one of his years," Lord Tywin admitted, "but a 
+victory is a victory. You appear to be wounded." 
+Tyrion's right arm was soaked with blood. "Good of you to notice, Father," he said through clenched 
+teeth. "Might I trouble you to send for your maesters? Unless you relish the notion of having a one-armed 
+dwarf for a son . . ." 
+An urgent shout of "Lord Tywin!" turned his father's head before he could reply. Tywin Lannister rose to 
+his feet as Ser Addam Marbrand leapt down off his courser. The horse was lathered and bleeding from 
+the mouth. Ser Addam dropped to one knee, a rangy man with dark copper hair that fell to his shoulders, 
+armored in burnished bronzed steel with the fiery tree of his House etched black on his breastplate. "My 
+liege, we have taken some of their commanders. Lord Cerwyn, Ser Wylis Manderly, Harrion Karstark, 
+four Freys. Lord Hornwood is dead, and I fear Roose Bolton has escaped us." 
+"And the boy?" Lord Tywin asked. 
+Ser Addam hesitated. "The Stark boy was not with them, my lord. They say he crossed at the Twins 
+with the great part of his horse, riding hard for Riverrun." 
+A green boy, Tyrion remembered, more like to be brave than wise. He would have laughed, if he hadn't 
+hurt so much. 
+CATELYN 
+The woods were full of whispers. 
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+Moonlight winked on the tumbling waters of the stream below as it wound its rocky way along the floor 
+of the valley. Beneath the trees, warhorses whickered softly and pawed at the moist, leafy ground, while 
+men made nervous jests in hushed voices. Now and again, she heard the chink of spears, the faint 
+metallic slither of chain mail, but even those sounds were muffled. 
+"it should not be long now, my lady," Hallis Mollen said. He had asked for the honor of protecting her in 
+the battle to come; it was his right, as Winterfell's captain of guards, and Robb had not refused it to him. 
+She had thirty men around her, charged to keep her unharmed and see her safely home to Winterfell if 
+the fighting went against them. Robb had wanted fifty; Catelyn had insisted that ten would be enough, that 
+he would need every sword for the fight. They made their peace at thirty, neither happy with it. 
+"It will come when it comes," Catelyn told him. When it came, she knew it would mean death. Hal's 
+death perhaps . . . or hers, or Robb's. No one was safe. No life was certain. Catelyn was content to 
+wait, to listen to the whispers in the woods and the faint music of the brook, to feel the warm wind in her 
+hair. 
+She was no stranger to waiting, after all. Her men had always made her wait. "Watch for me, little cat," 
+her father would always tell her, 
+when he rode off to court or fair or battle. And she would, standing patiently on the battlements of 
+Riverrun as the waters of the Red Fork and the Tumblestone flowed by. He did not always come when 
+he said he would, and days would ofttimes pass as Catelyn stood her vigil, peering out between crenels 
+and through arrow loops until she caught a glimpse of Lord Hoster on his old brown gelding, trotting 
+along the rivershore toward the landing. "Did you watch for me?" he'd ask when he bent to bug her. "Did 
+you, little cat?" 
+Brandon Stark had bid her wait as well. "I shall not be long, my lady," he had vowed. "We will be wed 
+on my return." Yet when the day came at last, it was his brother Eddard who stood beside her in the 
+sept. 
+Ned had lingered scarcely a fortnight with his new bride before he too had ridden off to war with 
+promises on his lips. At least he had left her with more than words; he had given her a son. Nine moons 
+had waxed and waned, and Robb had been born in Riverrun while his father still warred in the south. She 
+had brought him forth in blood and pain, not knowing whether Ned would ever see him. Her son. He had 
+been so small . . . 
+And now it was for Robb that she waited . . . for Robb, and for Jaime Lannister, the gilded knight who 
+men said had never learned to wait at all. "The Kingslayer is restless, and quick to anger," her uncle 
+Brynden had told Robb. And he had wagered their lives and their best hope of victory on the truth of 
+what he said. 
+If Robb was frightened, he gave no sign of it. Catelyn watched her son as he moved among the men, 
+touching one on the shoulder, sharing a jest with another, helping a third to gentle an anxious horse. His 
+armor clinked softly when he moved. Only his head was bare. Catelyn watched a breeze stir his auburn 
+hair, so like her own, and wondered when her son had grown so big. Fifteen, and near as tall as she was. 
+Let him grow taller, she asked the gods. Let him know sixteen, and twenty, and fifty. Let him grow as 
+tall as his father, and hold his own son in his arms. Please, please, please. As she watched him, this tall 
+young man with the new beard and the direwolf prowling at his heels, all she could see was the babe they 
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+
+had laid at her breast at Riverrun, so long ago. 
+The night was warm, but the thought of Riverrun was enough to make her shiver. Where are they? she 
+wondered. Could her uncle have been wrong? So much rested on the truth of what he had told them. 
+Robb had given the Blackfish three hundred picked men, and sent them ahead to screen his march. 
+"Jaime does not know," Ser Brynden said when he rode back. "I'll stake my life on that. No bird has 
+reached 
+him, my archers have seen to that. We've seen a few of his outriders, but those that saw us did not live 
+to tell of it. He ought to have sent out more. He does not know." 
+"How large is his host?" her son asked. 
+"Twelve thousand foot, scattered around the castle in three separate camps, with the rivers between," 
+her uncle said, with the craggy smile she remembered so well. "There is no other way to besiege 
+Riverrun, yet still, that will be their undoing. Two or three thousand horse." 
+:'The Kingslayer has us three to one," said Galbart Glover. 
+'True enough," Ser Brynden said, "yet there is one thing Ser Jaime lacks." 
+"Yes?" Robb asked. 
+"Patience." 
+Their host was greater than it had been when they left the Twins. Lord Jason Mallister had brought his 
+power out from Seagard to join them as they swept around the headwaters of the Blue Fork and 
+galloped south, and others had crept forth as well, hedge knights and small lords and masterless 
+men-at-arms who had fled north when her brother Edmure's army was shattered beneath the walls of 
+Riverrun. They had driven their horses as hard as they dared to reach this place before Jaime Lannister 
+had word of their coming, and now the hour was at hand. 
+Catelyn watched her son mount up. 01yvar Frey held his horse for him, Lord Walder's son, two years 
+older than Robb, and ten years younger and more anxious. He strapped Robb's shield in place and 
+handed up his helm. When he lowered it over the face she loved so well, a tall young knight sat on his 
+grey stallion where her son had been. It was dark among the trees, where the moon did not reach. When 
+Robb turned his head to look at her, she could see only black inside his visor. "I must ride down the line, 
+Mother," he told her. "Father says you should let the men see you before a battle." 
+'Go, then," she said. "Let them see you." 
+'It will give them courage," Robb said. 
+And who will give me courage? she wondered, yet she kept her silence and made herself smile for him. 
+Robb turned the big grey stallion and walked him slowly away from her, Grey Wind shadowing his steps. 
+Behind him his battle guard formed up. When he'd forced Catelyn to accept her protectors, she had 
+insisted that he be guarded as well, and the lords bannermen had agreed. Many of their sons had 
+clamored for the honor of riding with the Young Wolf, as they had taken to calling him. Torrhen Karstark 
+and his brother Eddard were 
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+among his thirty, and Patrek Mallister, Smalljon Umber, Daryn Hornwood, Theon Greyjoy, no less than 
+five of Walder Frey's vast brood, along with older men like Ser Wendel Manderly and Robin Flint. One 
+of his companions was even a woman: Dacey Mormont, Lady Maege's eldest daughter and heir to Bear 
+Island, a lanky sixfooter who had been given a morningstar at an age when most girls were given dolls. 
+Some of the other lords muttered about that, but Catelyn would not listen to their complaints. "This is not 
+about the honor of your houses," she told them. "This is about keeping my son alive and whole." 
+And if it comes to that, she wondered, will thiny be enough? Will six thousand be enough? 
+A bird called faintly in the distance, a high sharp trill that felt like an icy hand on Catelyn's neck. Another 
+bird answered; a third, a fourth. She knew their call well enough, from her years at Winterfell. Snow 
+shrikes. Sometimes you saw them in the deep of winter, when the godswood was white and still. They 
+were northern birds. 
+They are coming, Catelyn thought. 
+"They're coming, my lady," Hal Mollen whispered. He was always a man for stating the obvious. "Gods 
+be with us." 
+She nodded as the woods grew still around them. In the quiet she could hear them, far off yet moving 
+closer; the tread of many horses, the rattle of swords and spears and armor, the murmur of human 
+voices, with here a laugh, and there a curse. 
+Eons seemed to come and go. The sounds grew louder. She heard more laughter, a shouted command, 
+splashing as they crossed and recrossed the little stream. A horse snorted. A man swore. And then at last 
+she saw him . . . only for an instant, framed between the branches of the trees as she looked down at the 
+valley floor, yet she knew it was him. Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister was unmistakable. The 
+moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black. He was 
+not wearing a helm. 
+He was there and he was gone again, his silvery armor obscured by the trees once more. Others came 
+behind him, long columns of them, knights and sworn swords and freeriders, three quarters of the 
+Lannister horse. 
+"He is no man for sitting in a tent while his carpenters build siege towers," Ser Brynden had promised. 
+"He has ridden out with his knights thrice already, to chase down raiders or storm a stubborn holdfast." 
+Nodding, Robb had studied the map her uncle had drawn him. Ned 
+had taught him to read maps. "Raid him here," he said, pointing. "A few hundred men, no more. Tully 
+banners. When he comes after you, we will be waiting"-his finger moved an inch to the left-"here." 
+Here was a hush in the night, moonlight and shadows, a thick carpet of dead leaves underfoot, densely 
+wooded ridges sloping gently down to the streambed, the underbrush thinning as the ground fell away. 
+Here was her son on his stallion, glancing back at her one last time and lifting his sword in salute. 
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+
+Here was the call of Maege Mormont's warhorn, a long low blast that rolled down the valley from the 
+east, to tell them that the last of Jaime's riders had entered the trap. 
+And Grey Wind threw back his head and howled. 
+The sound seemed to go right through Catelyn Stark, and she found herself shivering. It was a terrible 
+sound, a frightening sound, yet there was music in it too. For a second she felt something like pity for the 
+Lannisters below. So this is what death sounds like, she thought. 
+HAAroooooooooooooooooooooooo came the answer from the far ridge as the Greatjon winded his 
+own horn. To east and west, the trumpets of the Mallisters and Freys blew vengeance. North, where the 
+valley narrowed and bent like a cocked elbow, Lord Karstark's warhorns added their own deep, 
+mournful voices to the dark chorus. Men were shouting and horses rearing in the stream below. 
+The whispering wood let out its breath all at once, as the bowmen Robb had hidden in the branches of 
+the trees let fly their arrows and the night erupted with the screams of men and horses. All around her, the 
+riders raised their lances, and the dirt and leaves that had buried the cruet bright points fell away to reveal 
+the gleam of sharpened steel. "Winte~pll!" she heard Robb shout as the arrows sighed again. He moved 
+away from her at a trot, leading his men downhill. 
+Catelyn sat on her horse, unmoving, with Hal Mollen and her guard around her, and she waited as she 
+had waited before, for Brandon and Ned and her father. She was high on the ridge, and the trees hid 
+most of what was going on beneath her. A heartbeat, two, four, and suddenly it was as if she and her 
+protectors were alone in the wood. The rest were melted away into the green. 
+Yet when she looked across the valley to the far ridge, she saw the Greatjon's riders emerge from the 
+darkness beneath the trees. They were in a long line, an endless line, and as they burst from the wood 
+there was an instant, the smallest part of a heartbeat, when all Catelyn saw was the moonlight on the 
+points of their lances, as if a thousand willowisps were coming down the ridge, wreathed in silver flame. 
+Then she blinked, and they were only men, rushing down to kill or die. 
+Afterward, she could not claim she had seen the battle. Yet she could hear, and the valley rang with 
+echoes. The crack of a broken lance, the clash of swords, the cries of "Lannister" and "Winterfell" and 
+"Tully! Riverrun and Tully!" When she realized there was no more to see, she closed her eyes and 
+listened. The battle came alive around her. She heard hoofbeats, iron boots splashing in shallow water, 
+the woody sound of swords on oaken shields and the scrape of steel against steel, the hiss of arrows, the 
+thunder of drums, the terrified screaming of a thousand horses. Men shouted curses and begged for 
+mercy, and got it (or not), and lived (or died). The ridges seemed to play queer tricks with sound. Once 
+she heard Robb's voice, as clear as if he'd been standing at her side, calling, "To me! To me!" And she 
+heard his direwolf, snarling and growling, heard the snap of those long teeth, the tearing of flesh, shrieks 
+of fear and pain from man and horse alike. Was there only one wolf? It was hard to be certain. 
+Little by little, the sounds dwindled and died, until at last there was only the wolf. As a red dawn broke 
+in the east, Grey Wind began to howl again. 
+Robb came back to her on a different horse, riding a piebald gelding in the place of the grey stallion he 
+had taken down into the valley. The wolf's head on his shield was slashed half to pieces, raw wood 
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+showing where deep gouges had been hacked in the oak, but Robb himself seemed unhurt. Yet when he 
+came closer, Catelyn saw that his mailed glove and the sleeve of his surcoat were black with blood. 
+"You're hurt," she said. 
+Robb lifted his hand, opened and closed his fingers. "No," he said. "This is . . . Torrhen's blood, 
+perhaps, or He shook his head. "I do not know." 
+A mob of men followed him up the slope, dirty and dented and grinning, with Theon and the Greatjon at 
+their head. Between them they dragged Ser Jaime Lannister. They threw him down in front of her horse. 
+"The Kingslayer," Hal announced, unnecessarily. 
+Lannister raised his head. "Lady Stark," he said from his knees. Blood ran down one cheek from a gash 
+across his scalp, but the pale light of dawn had put the glint of gold back in his hair. "I would offer you my 
+sword, but I seem to have mislaid it." 
+"It is not your sword I want, ser," she told him. "Give me my father and my brother Edmure. Give me my 
+daughters. Give me my lord husband." 
+" I have mislaid them as well, I fear." 
+"A pity," Catelyn said coldly. 
+"Kill him, Robb," Theon Greyjoy urged. "Take his head off." 
+"No," her son answered, peeling off his bloody glove. "He's more use alive than dead. And my lord 
+father never condoned the murder of prisoners after a battle." 
+"A wise man," Jaime Lannister said, "and honorable." 
+"Take him away and put him in irons," Catelyn said. 
+"Do as my lady mother says," Robb commanded, "and make certain there's a strong guard around him. 
+Lord Karstark will want his head on a pike." 
+"That he will," the Greatjon agreed, gesturing. Lannister was led away to be bandaged and chained. 
+"Why should Lord Karstark want him dead?" Catelyn asked. 
+Robb looked away into the woods, with the same brooding look that Ned often got. "He . . . he killed 
+them . . ." 
+"Lord Karstark's sons," Galbart Glover explained. 
+"Both of them," said Robb. "Torrhen and Eddard. And Daryn Hornwood as well." 
+"No one can fault Lannister on his courage," Glover said. "When he saw that he was lost, he rallied his 
+retainers and fought his way up the valley, hoping to reach Lord Robb and cut him down. And almost 
+did." 
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+"He mislaid his sword in Eddard Karstark's neck, after he took Torrhen's hand off and split Daryn 
+Hornwood's skull open," Robb said. "All the time he was shouting for me. If they hadn't tried to stop 
+him-" 
+"-I should then be mourning in place of Lord Karstark," Catelyn said. "Your men did what they were 
+sworn to do, Robb. They died protecting their liege lord. Grieve for them. Honor them for their valor. 
+But not now. You have no time for grief. You may have lopped the head off the snake, but three quarters 
+of the body is still coiled around my father's castle. We have won a battle, not a war." 
+"But such a battle!" said Theon Greyjoy eagerly. "My lady, the realm has not seen such a victory since 
+the Field of Fire. I vow, the Lannisters lost ten men for every one of ours that fell. We've taken close to a 
+hundred knights captive, and a dozen lords bannermen. Lord Westerling, Lord Banefort, Ser Garth 
+Greenfield, Lord Estren, Ser Tytos Brax, Mallor the Dornishman . . . and three Lannisters besides Jaime, 
+Lord Tywin's own nephews, two of his sister's sons and one of his dead brother's . . ." 
+"And Lord Tywin?" Catelyn interrupted. "Have you perchance taken Lord Tywin, Theon?" 
+"No," Greyjoy answered, brought up short. 
+"Until you do, this war is far from done." 
+Robb raised his head and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. "My mother is right. We still have 
+Riverrun." 
+DAENERYS 
+The flies circled Khal Drogo slowly, their wings buzzing, a low thrum at the edge of hearing that filled 
+Dany with dread. 
+The sun was high and pitiless. Heat shimmered in waves off the stony outcrops of low hills. A thin finger 
+of sweat trickled slowly between Dany's swollen breasts. The only sounds were the steady clop of their 
+horses' hooves, the rhythmic tingle of the bells in Drogo's hair, and the distant voices behind them. 
+Dany watched the flies. 
+They were as large as bees, gross, purplish, glistening. The Dothraki called them bloodflies. They lived in 
+marshes and stagnant pools, sucked blood from man and horse alike, and laid their eggs in the dead and 
+dying. Drogo hated them. Whenever one came near him, his hand would shoot out quick as a striking 
+snake to close around it. She had never seen him miss. He would hold the fly inside his huge fist long 
+enough to hear its frantic buzzing. Then his fingers would tighten, and when he opened his hand again, the 
+fly would be only a red smear on his palm. 
+Now one crept across the rump of his stallion, and the horse gave an angry flick of its tail to brush it 
+away. The others flitted about Drogo, closer and closer. The khal did not react. His eyes were fixed on 
+distant brown hills, the reins loose in his hands. Beneath his painted vest, a plaster of fig leaves and caked 
+blue mud covered the wound on his 
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+breast. The herbwomen had made it for him. Mirri Maz Duur's poultice had itched and burned, and he 
+had torn it off six days ago, cursing her for a maegi. The mud plaster was more soothing, and the 
+herbwomen made him poppy wine as well. He'd been drinking it heavily these past three days; when it 
+was not poppy wine, it was fermented mare's milk or pepper beer. 
+Yet he scarcely touched his food, and he thrashed and groaned in the night. Dany could see how drawn 
+his face had become. Rhaego was restless in her belly, kicking like a stallion, yet even that did not stir 
+Drogo's interest as it had. Every morning her eyes found fresh lines of pain on his face when he woke 
+from his troubled sleep. And now this silence. It was making her afraid. Since they had mounted up at 
+dawn, he had said not a word. When she spoke, she got no answer but a grunt, and not even that much 
+since midday. 
+One of the bloodflies landed on the bare skin of the khal's shoulder. Another, circling, touched down on 
+his neck and crept up toward his mouth. Khal Drogo swayed in the saddle, bells ringing, as his stallion 
+kept onward at a steady walking pace. 
+Dany pressed her heels into her silver and rode closer. "My lord," she said softly. "Drogo. My 
+sun-and-stars." 
+He did not seem to hear. The bloodfly crawled up under his drooping mustache and settled on his 
+cheek, in the crease beside his nose. Dany gasped, "Drogo. " Clumsily she reached over and touched his 
+arm. 
+Khal Drogo reeled in the saddle, tilted slowly, and fell heavily from his horse. The flies scattered for a 
+heartbeat, and then circled back to settle on him where he lay. 
+"No," Dany said, reining up. Heedless of her belly for once, she scrambled off her silver and ran to him. 
+The grass beneath him was brown and dry. Drogo cried out in pain as Dany knelt beside him. His breath 
+rattled harshly in his throat, and he looked at her without recognition. "My horse," he gasped. Dany 
+brushed the flies off his chest, smashing one as he would have. His skin burned beneath her fingers. 
+The khal's bloodriders had been following just behind them. She heard Haggo shout as they galloped up. 
+Cohollo vaulted from his horse. "Blood of my blood," he said as he dropped to his knees. The other two 
+kept to their mounts. 
+"No," Khal Drogo groaned, struggling in Dany's arms. "Must ride. Ride. No." 
+"He fell from his horse," Haggo said, staring down. His broad face was impassive, but his voice was 
+leaden. 
+"You must not say that," Dany told him. "We have ridden far enough today. We will camp here." 
+"Here?" Haggo looked around them. The land was brown and sere, inhospitable. "This is no camping 
+ground." 
+"It is not for a woman to bid us halt," said Qotho, "not even a khaleesi." 
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+"We camp here," Dany repeated. "Haggo, tell them Khal Drogo commanded the halt. If any ask why, 
+say to them that my time is near and I could not continue. Cohollo, bring up the slaves, they must put up 
+the khal's tent at once. Qotho-" 
+"You do not command me, Khaleesi," Qotho said. 
+"Find Mirri Maz Duur," she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the 
+long column of slaves. "Bring her to me, with her chest." 
+Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. "The maegi." He spat. "This I will not do." 
+"You will," Dany said, "or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me." 
+Furious, Qotho wheeled his stallion around and galloped off in anger . . . but Dany knew he would return 
+with Mirri Maz Duur, however little he might like it. The slaves erected Khal Drogo's tent beneath a 
+jagged outcrop of black rock whose shadow gave some relief from the heat of the afternoon sun. Even 
+so, it was stifling under the sandsilk as Irri and Doreah helped Dany walk Drogo inside. Thick patterned 
+carpets had been laid down over the ground, and pillows scattered in the corners. Eroeh, the timid girl 
+Dany had rescued outside the mud walls of the Lamb Men, set up a brazier. They stretched Drogo out 
+on a woven mat. "No," he muttered in the Common Tongue. "No, no." It was all he said, all he seemed 
+capable of saying. 
+Doreah unhooked his medallion belt and stripped off his vest and leggings, while Jhiqui knelt by his feet 
+to undo the laces of his riding sandals. Irri wanted to leave the tent flaps open to let in the breeze, but 
+Dany forbade it. She would not have any see Drogo this way, indelirium and weakness. When her khas 
+came up, she posted them outside at guard. "Admit no one without my leave," she told Jhogo. "No one." 
+Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. "He dies," she whispered. 
+Dany slapped her. "The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the world. His hair 
+has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him." 
+"Khaleesi, " Jhiqui said, "he fell from his horse." 
+Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them. He fell from his horse! It was so, 
+she had seen it, and the bloodriders, and no doubt her handmaids and the men of her khas as well. And 
+how many more? They could not keep it secret, and Dany knew what that meant. A khal who could not 
+ride could not rule, and Drogo had fallen from his horse. 
+"We must bathe him," she said stubbornly. She must not allow herself to despair. "Irri, have the tub 
+brought at once. Doreah, Eroeh, find water, cool water, he's so hot." He was a fire in human skin. 
+The slaves set up the heavy copper tub in the corner of the tent. When Doreah brought the first jar of 
+water, Dany wet a length of silk to lay across Drogo's brow, over the burning skin. His eyes looked at 
+her, but he did not see. When his lips opened, no words escaped them, only a moan. "Where is Mirri 
+Maz Duur?" she demanded, her patience rubbed raw with fear. 
+"Ootho will find her," Irri said. 
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+Her handmaids filled the tub with tepid water that stank of sulfur, sweetening it with jars of bitter oil and 
+handfuls of crushed mint leaves. While the bath was being prepared, Dany knelt awkwardly beside her 
+lord husband, her belly great with their child within. She undid his braid with anxious fingers, as she had 
+on the night he'd taken her for the first time, beneath the stars. His bells she laid aside carefully, one by 
+one. He would want them again when he was well, she told herself. 
+A breath of air entered the tent as Aggo poked his head through the silk. "Khaleesi, " he said, "the Andal 
+is come, and begs leave to enter." 
+"The Andal" was what the Dothraki called Ser Jorah. "Yes," she said, rising clumsily, "send him in." She 
+trusted the knight. He would know what to do if anyone did. 
+Ser Jorah Mormont ducked through the door flap and waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the 
+dimness. In the fierce heat of the south, he wore loose trousers of mottled sandsilk and open-toed riding 
+sandals that laced up to his knee. His scabbard hung from a twisted horsehair belt. Under a bleached 
+white vest, he was bare-chested, skin reddened by the sun. "Talk goes from mouth to ear, all over the 
+khalasar," he said. "It is said Khal Drogo fell from his horse." 
+"Help him," Dany pleaded. "For the love you say you bear me, help him now." 
+The knight knelt beside her. He looked at Drogo long and hard, and then at Dany. "Send your maids 
+away." 
+Wordlessly, her throat tight with fear, Dany made a gesture. Irri herded the other girls from the tent. 
+When they were alone, Ser Jorah drew his dagger. Deftly, with a delicacy surprising in such a big man, 
+he began to scrape away the black leaves and dried blue mud from Drogo's chest. The plaster had caked 
+hard as the mud walls of the Lamb Men, and like those walls it cracked easily. Ser Jorah broke the dry 
+mud with his knife, pried the chunks from the flesh, peeled off the leaves one by one. A foul, sweet smell 
+rose from the wound, so thick it almost choked her. The leaves were crusted with blood and pus, 
+Drogo's breast black and glistening with corruption. 
+"No," Dany whispered as tears ran down her cheeks. "No, please, gods hear me, no." 
+Khal Drogo thrashed, fighting some unseen enemy. Black blood ran slow and thick from his open 
+wound. 
+"Your khal is good as dead, Princess." 
+"No, he can't die, he mustn't, it was only a cut." Dany took his large callused hand in her own small ones, 
+and held it tight between them. "I will not let him die . . ." 
+Ser Jorah gave a bitter laugh. "Khaleesi or queen, that command is beyond your power. Save your 
+tears, child. Weep for him tomorrow, or a year from now. We do not have time for grief. We must go, 
+and quickly, before he dies." 
+Dany was lost. "Go? Where should we go?" 
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+"Asshai, I would say. It lies far to the south, at the end of the known world, yet men say it is a great port. 
+We will find a ship to take us back to Pentos. It will be a hard journey, make no mistake. Do you trust 
+your khas? Will they come with us?" 
+"Khal Drogo commanded them to keep me safe," Dany replied uncertainly, "but if he dies . . ." She 
+touched the swell of her belly. "I don't understand. Why should we flee? I am khaleesi. I carry Drogo's 
+heir. He will be khal after Drogo . . ." 
+Ser Jorah frowned. "Princess, hear me. The Dothraki will not follow a suckling babe. Drogo's strength 
+was what they bowed to, and only that. When he is gone, Jhaqo and Pono and the other kos will fight for 
+his place, and this khalasar will devour itself. The winner will want no more rivals. The boy will be taken 
+from your breast the moment he is born. They will give him to the dogs . . ." 
+Dany hugged herself. "But why?" she cried plaintively. "Why should they kill a little baby?" 
+"He is Drogo's son, and the crones say he will be the stallion who mounts the world. It was prophesied. 
+Better to kill the child than to risk his fury when he grows to manhood." 
+The child kicked inside her, as if he had heard. Dany remembered 
+the story Viserys had told her, of what the Usurper's dogs had done to Rhaegar's children. His son had 
+been a babe as well, yet they had ripped him from his mother's breast and dashed his head against a wall. 
+That was the way of men. "They must not hurt my son!" she cried. "I will order my khas to keep him safe, 
+and Drogo's bloodriders will-" 
+Ser Jorah held her by the shoulders. "A bloodrider dies with his khaL You know that, child. They will 
+take you to Vaes Dothrak, to the crones, that is the last duty they owe him in life . . . when it is done, 
+they will join Drogo in the night lands." 
+Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible old 
+women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he 
+had been the shield that kept her safe. "I will not leave him," she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his 
+hand again. "I will not." 
+A stirring at the tent flap made Dany turn her head. MirTi Maz Duur entered, bowing low. Days on the 
+march, trailing behind the khalasar, had left her limping and haggard, with blistered and bleeding feet and 
+hollows under her eyes. Behind her came Ootho and Haggo, carrying the godswife's chest between 
+them. When the bloodriders caught sight of Drogo's wound, the chest slipped from Haggo's fingers and 
+crashed to the floor of the tent, and Qotho swore an oath so foul it seared the air. 
+Mirri Maz Duur studied Drogo, her face still and dead. "The wound has festered." 
+"This is your work, maegi," Ootho said. Haggo laid his fist across Mirri's cheek with a meaty smack that 
+drove her to the ground. Then he kicked her where she lay. 
+"Stop it!" Dany screamed. 
+Qotho pulled Haggo away, saying, "Kicks are too merciful for a maegi. Take her outside. We will stake 
+her to the earth, to be the mount of every passing man. And when they are done with her, the dogs will 
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+use her as well. Weasels will tear out her entrails and carrion crows feast upon her eyes. The flies off the 
+river shall lay their eggs in her womb and drink pus from the ruins of her breasts . . ." He dug iron-hard 
+fingers into the soft, wobbly flesh under the godswife's arm and hauled her to her feet. 
+"No," Dany said. "I will not have her harmed." 
+Qotho's lips skinned back from his crooked brown teeth in a terrible mockery of a smile. "No? You say 
+me no? Better you should pray that we do not stake you out beside your maegi. You did this, as much as 
+the other." 
+Ser Jorah stepped between them, loosening his longsword in its scabbard. "Rein in your tongue, 
+bloodrider. The princess is still your khaleesi. " 
+"Only while the blood-of-my-blood still lives," Qotho told the knight. "When he dies, she is nothing." 
+Dany felt a tightness inside her. "Before I was khaleesi, I was the blood of the dragon. Ser Jorah, 
+summon my khas." 
+"No," said Qotho. "We will go. For now . . . Khaleesi. " Haggo followed him from the tent, scowling. 
+"That one means you no good, Princess," Mormont said. "The Dothraki say a man and his bloodriders 
+share one life, and Qotho sees it ending. A dead man is beyond fear." 
+"No one has died," Dany said. "Ser Jorah, I may have need of your blade. Best go don your armor." 
+She was more frightened than she dared admit, even to herself. 
+The knight bowed. "As you say." He strode from the tent. 
+Dany turned back to Mirri Maz Duur. The woman's eyes were wary. "So you have saved me once 
+more." 
+"And now you must save him," Dany said. "Please 
+"You do not ask a slave," Mirri replied sharply, "you tell her." She went to Drogo burning on his mat, 
+and gazed long at his wound. "Ask or tell, it makes no matter. He is beyond a healer's skills." The khal's 
+eyes were closed. She opened one with her fingers. "He has been dulling the hurt with milk of the 
+poppy." 
+"Yes," Dany admitted. 
+"I made him a poultice of firepod and sting-me-not and bound it in a lambskin." 
+"It burned, he said. He tore it off. The herbwomen made him a new one, wet and soothing." 
+"It burned, yes. There is great healing magic in fire, even your hairless men know that." 
+"Make him another poultice," Dany begged. "This time I will make certain he wears it." 
+"The time for that is past, my lady," Mirri said. "All I can do now is ease the dark road before him, so he 
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+might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning." 
+Her words were a knife through Dany's breast. What had she ever done to make the gods so cruel? She 
+had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was finally going home. And now to 
+lose it all . . . "No," she pleaded. "Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way . . . 
+some magic, some . . ." 
+Mirri Maz Duur sat back on her heels and studied Daenerys 
+through eyes as black as night. "There is a spell." Her voice was quiet, scarcely more than a whisper. 
+"But it is hard, lady, and dark. Some would say that death is cleaner. I learned the way in Asshai, and 
+paid dear for the lesson. My teacher was a bloodmage from the Shadow Lands." 
+Dany went cold all over. "Then you truly are a maegi 
+"Am IT' Mirri Maz Duur smiled. "Only a maegi can save your rider now, Silver Lady." 
+"Is there no other way?" 
+"No other." 
+Khal Drogo gave a shuddering gasp. 
+"Do it," Dany blurted. She must not be afraid; she was the blood of the dragon. "Save him." 
+"There is a price," the godswife warned her. 
+"You'll have gold, horses, whatever you like." 
+"It is not a matter of gold or horses. This is bloodmagic, lady. Only death may pay for life." 
+"Death?" Dany wrapped her arms around herself protectively, rocked back and forth on her heels. "My 
+death?" She told herself she would die for him, if she must. She was the blood of the dragon, she would 
+not be afraid. Her brother Rhaegar had died for the woman he loved. 
+"No," Mirri Maz Duur promised. "Not your death, Khaleesi." 
+Dany trembled with relief. "Do it." 
+The maegi nodded solemnly. "As you speak, so it shall be done. Call your servants." 
+Khal Drogo writhed feebly as Rakharo and Quaro lowered him into the bath. "No," he muttered, "no. 
+Must ride." Once in the water, all the strength seemed to leak out of him. 
+"Bring his horse," Mirri Maz Duur commanded, and so it was done. Jhogo led the great red stallion into 
+the tent. When the animal caught the scent of death, he screamed and reared, rolling his eyes. It took 
+three men to subdue him. 
+"What do you mean to do?" Dany asked her. 
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+"We need the blood," Mirri answered. "That is the way." 
+Jhogo edged back, his hand on his arakh. He was a youth of sixteen years, whip-thin, fearless, quick to 
+laugh, with the faint shadow of his first mustachio on his upper lip. He fell to his knees before her. 
+"Khaleesi, " he pleaded, "you must not do this thing. Let me kill this maegi." 
+"Kill her and you kill your khal," Dany said. 
+"This is bloodmagic," he said. "It is forbidden." 
+" I am khaleesi, and I say it is not forbidden. In Vaes Dothrak, Khal Drogo slew a stallion and I ate his 
+heart, to give our son strength and courage. This is the same. The same." 
+The stallion kicked and reared as Rakharo, Quaro, and Aggo pulled him close to the tub where the khal 
+floated like one already dead, pus and blood seeping from his wound to stain the bathwaters. Mirri Maz 
+Duur chanted words in a tongue that Dany did not know, and a knife appeared in her hand. Dany never 
+saw where it came from. It looked old; hammered red bronze, leaf-shaped, its blade covered with 
+ancient glyphs. The maegi drew it across the stallion's throat, under the noble head, and the horse 
+screamed and shuddered as the blood poured out of him in a red rush. He would have collapsed, but the 
+men of her khas held him up. "Strength of the mount, go into the rider," Mirri sang as horse blood swirled 
+into the waters of Drogo's bath. "Strength of the beast, go into the man." 
+Jhogo looked terrified as he struggled with the stallion's weight, afraid to touch the dead flesh, yet afraid 
+to let go as well. Only a horse, Dany thought. If she could buy Drogo's life with the death of a horse, she 
+would pay a thousand times over. 
+When they let the stallion fall, the bath was a dark red, and nothing showed of Drogo but his face. Mirri 
+Maz Duur had no use for the carcass. "Burn it," Dany told them. It was what they did, she knew. When a 
+man died, his mount was killed and placed beneath him on the funeral pyre, to carry him to the night 
+lands. The men of her khas dragged the carcass from the tent. The blood had gone everywhere. Even the 
+sandsilk walls were spotted with red, and the rugs underfoot were black and wet. 
+Braziers were lit. Mirri Maz Duur tossed a red powder onto the coals. It gave the smoke a spicy scent, 
+a pleasant enough smell, yet Eroeh fled sobbing, and Dany was filled with fear. But she had gone too far 
+to turn back now. She sent her handmaids away. "Go with them, Silver Lady," Mirri Maz Duur told her. 
+"I will stay," Dany said. "The man took me under the stars and gave life to the child inside me. I will not 
+leave him." 
+"You must. Once I begin to sing, no one must enter this tent. My song will wake powers old and dark. 
+The dead will dance here this night. No living man must look on them." 
+Dany bowed her head, helpless. "No one will enter." She bent over the tub, over Drogo in his bath of 
+blood, and kissed him lightly on the brow. "Bring him back to me," she whispered to Mirri Maz Duur 
+before she fled. 
+Outside, the sun was low on the horizon, the sky a bruised red. The 
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+khalasar had made camp. Tents and sleeping mats were scattered as far as the eye could see. A hot 
+wind blew. Jhogo and Aggo were digging a firepit to burn the dead stallion. A crowd had gathered to 
+stare at Dany with hard black eyes, their faces like masks of beaten copper. She saw Ser Jorah 
+Mormont, wearing mail and leather now, sweat beading on his broad, balding forehead. He pushed his 
+way through the Dothraki to Dany's side. When he saw the scarlet footprints her boots had left on the 
+ground, the color seemed to drain from his face. "What have you done, you little fool?" he asked 
+hoarsely. 
+"I had to save him." 
+"We could have fled," he said. "I would have seen you safe to Asshai, Princess. There was no need . . ." 
+"Am I truly your princess?" she asked him. 
+"You know you are, gods save us both." 
+"Then help me now." 
+Ser Jorah grimaced. "Would that I knew how." 
+Mirri Maz Duur's voice rose to a high, ululating wail that sent a shiver down Dany's back. Some of the 
+Dothraki began to mutter and back away. The tent was aglow with the light of braziers within. Through 
+the blood-spattered sandsilk, she glimpsed shadows moving. 
+Mirri Maz Duur was dancing, and not alone. 
+Dany saw naked fear on the faces of the Dothraki. "This must not be," Ootho thundered. 
+She had not seen the bloodrider return. Haggo and Cohollo were with him. They had brought the 
+hairless men, the eunuchs who healed with knife and needle and fire. 
+"This will be," Dany replied. 
+"Maegi, " Haggo growled. And old Cohollo-Cohollo who had bound his life to Drogo's on the day of his 
+birth, Cohollo who had always been kind to her-Cohollo spat full in her face. 
+"You will die, maegi," Qotho promised, "but the other must die first." He drew his arakh and made for 
+the tent. 
+"No," she shouted, "you mustn't." She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell 
+to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. "Stop him," she commanded her 
+khas, "kill him." 
+Rakharo and Quaro stood beside the tent flap. Quaro took a step forward, reaching for the handle of his 
+whip, but Qotho spun graceful as a dancer, the curved arakh rising. It caught Quaro low under the arm, 
+the bright sharp steel biting up through leather and skin, through muscle and rib bone. Blood fountained 
+as the young rider reeled backward, gasping. 
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+Qotho wrenched the blade free. "Horselord," Ser Jorah Mormont called. "Try me." His longsword slid 
+from its scabbard. 
+Qotho whirled, cursing. The arakh moved so fast that Quaro's blood flew from it in a fine spray, like rain 
+in a hot wind. The longsword caught it a foot from Ser Jorah's face, and held it quivering for an instant as 
+Qotho howled in fury. The knight was clad in chainmail, with gauntlets and greaves of lobstered steel and 
+a heavy gorget around his throat, but he had not thought to don his helm. 
+Qotho danced backward, arakh whirling around his head in a shining blur, flickering out like lightning as 
+the knight came on in a rush. Ser Jorah parried as best he could, but the slashes came so fast that it 
+seemed to Dany that Qotho had four arakhs and as many arms. She heard the crunch of sword on mail, 
+saw sparks fly as the long curved blade glanced off a gauntlet. Suddenly it was Mormont stumbling 
+backward, and Qotho leaping to the attack. The left side of the knight's face ran red with blood, and a 
+cut to the hip opened a gash in his mail and left him limping. Qotho screamed taunts at him, calling him a 
+craven, a milk man, a eunuch in an iron suit. "You die now!" he promised, arakh shivering through the red 
+twilight. Inside Dany's womb, her son kicked wildly. The curved blade slipped past the straight one and 
+bit deep into the knight's hip where the mail gaped open. 
+Mormont grunted, stumbled. Dany felt a sharp pain in her belly, a wetness on her thighs. Qotho shrieked 
+triumph, but his arakh had found bone, and for half a heartbeat it caught. 
+It was enough. Ser Jorah brought his longsword down with all the strength left him, through flesh and 
+muscle and bone, and Qotho's forearm dangled loose, flopping on a thin cord of skin and sinew. The 
+knight's next cut was at the Dothraki's ear, so savage that Qotho's face seemed almost to explode. 
+The Dothraki were shouting, Mirri Maz Duur wailing inside the tent like nothing human, Quaro pleading 
+for water as he died. Dany cried out for help, but no one heard. Rakharo was fighting Haggo, arakh 
+dancing with arakh until Jhogo's whip cracked, loud as thunder, the lash coiling around Haggo's throat. A 
+yank, and the bloodrider stumbled backward, losing his feet and his sword. Rakharo sprang forward, 
+howling, swinging his arakh down with both hands through the top of Haggo's head. The point caught 
+between his eyes, red and quivering. Someone threw a stone, and when Dany looked, her shoulder was 
+torn and bloody. "No," she wept, "no, please, stop it, it's too high, the price is too high." More stones 
+came flying. She tried to crawl toward the tent, but Cohollo caught her. Fingers in her hair, he pulled 
+her head back and she felt the cold touch of his knife at her throat. "My baby," she screamed, and 
+perhaps the gods heard, for as quick as that, Cohollo was dead. Aggo's arrow took him under the arm, 
+to pierce his lungs and heart. 
+When at last Daenerys found the strength to raise her head, she saw the crowd dispersing, the Dothraki 
+stealing silently back to their tents and sleeping mats. Some were saddling horses and riding off. The sun 
+had set. Fires burned throughout the khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit 
+embers at the sky. She tried to rise, and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant's fist. The breath 
+went out of her; it was all she could do to gasp. The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice was like a funeral 
+dirge. Inside the tent, the shadows whirled. 
+An arm went under her waist, and then Ser Jorah was lifting her off her feet. His face was sticky with 
+blood, and Dany saw that half his ear was gone. She convulsed in his arms as the pain took her again, 
+and heard the knight shouting for her handmaids to help him. Are they all so afraid? She knew the 
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+answer. Another pain grasped her, and Dany bit back a scream. It felt as if her son had a knife in each 
+hand, as if he were hacking at her to cut his way out. "Doreah, curse you," Ser Jorah roared. "Come 
+here. Fetch the birthing women." 
+"They will not come. They say she is accursed." 
+"They'll come or I'll have their heads." 
+Doreah wept. "They are gone, my lord." 
+"The maegi," someone else said. Was that Aggo? "Take her to the maegi.11 
+No, Dany wanted to say, no, not that, you mustn't, but when she opened her mouth, a long wail of pain 
+escaped, and the sweat broke over her skin. What was wrong with them, couldn't they see? Inside the 
+tent the shapes were dancing, circling the brazier and the bloody bath, dark against the sandsilk, and 
+some did not look human. She glimpsed the shadow of a great wolf, and another like a man wreathed in 
+flames. 
+"The Lamb Woman knows the secrets of the birthing bed," Irri said. "She said so, I heard her." 
+"Yes," Doreah agreed, "I heard her too." 
+No, she shouted, or perhaps she only thought it, for no whisper of sound escaped her lips. She was 
+being carried. Her eyes opened to gaze up at a flat dead sky, black and bleak and starless. Please, no. 
+The sound of Mirri Maz Duur's voice grew louder, until it filled the world. The shapes! she screamed. 
+The dancers! 
+Ser Jorah carried her inside the tent. 
+ARYA 
+The scent of hot bread drifting from the shops along the Street of Flour was sweeter than any perfume 
+Arya had ever smelled. She took a deep breath and stepped closer to the pigeon. It was a plump one, 
+speckled brown, busily pecking at a crust that had fallen between two cobblestones, but when Arya's 
+shadow touched it, it took to the air. 
+Her stick sword whistled out and caught it two feet off the ground, and it went down in a flurry of brown 
+feathers. She was on it in the blink of an eye, grabbing a wing as the pigeon flapped and fluttered. It 
+pecked at her hand. She grabbed its neck and twisted until she felt the bone snap. 
+Compared with catching cats, pigeons were easy. 
+A passing septon was looking at her askance. "Here's the best place to find pigeon," Arya told him as 
+she brushed herself off and picked up her fallen stick sword. "They come for the crumbs." He hurried 
+away. 
+She tied the pigeon to her belt and started down the street. A man was pushing a load of tarts by on a 
+two-wheeled cart; the smells sang of blueberries and lemons and apricots. Her stomach made a hollow 
+rumbly noise. "Could I have one?" she heard herself say. "A lemon, or 
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+. or any kind." 
+The pushcart man looked her up and down. Plainly he did not like what he saw. "Three coppers." 
+Arya tapped her wooden sword against the side of her boot. "I'll trade you a fat pigeon," she said. 
+"The Others take your pigeon," the pushcart man said. 
+The tarts were still warm from the oven. The smells were making her mouth water, but she did not have 
+three coppers . . . or one. She gave the pushcart man a look, remembering what Syrio had told her about 
+seeing. He was short, with a little round belly, and when he moved he seemed to favor his left leg a little. 
+She was just thinking that if she snatched a tart and ran he would never be able to catch her when he 
+said, "You be keepin' your filthy hands off. The gold cloaks know how to deal with thieving little gutter 
+rats, that they do." 
+Arya glanced warily behind her. Two of the City Watch were standing at the mouth of an alley. Their 
+cloaks hung almost to the ground, the heavy wool dyed a rich gold; their mail and boots and gloves were 
+black. One wore a longsword at his hip, the other an iron cudgel. With a last wistful glance at the tarts, 
+Arya edged back from the cart and hurried off. The gold cloaks had not been paying her any special 
+attention, but the sight of them tied her stomach in knots. Arya had been staying as far from the castle as 
+she could get, yet even from a distance she could see the heads rotting atop the high red walls. Flocks of 
+crows squabbled noisily over each head, thick as flies. The talk in Flea Bottom was that the gold cloaks 
+had thrown in with the Lannisters, their commander raised to a lord, with lands on the Trident and a seat 
+on the king's council. 
+She had also heard other things, scary things, things that made no sense to her. Some said her father had 
+murdered King Robert and been slain in turn by Lord Renly. Others insisted that Renly had killed the 
+king in a drunken quarrel between brothers. Why else should he have fled in the night like a common 
+thief? One story said the king had been killed by a boar while hunting, another that he'd died eating a 
+boar, stuffing himself so full that he'd ruptured at the table. No, the king had died at table, others said, but 
+only because Varys the Spider poisoned him. No, it had been the queen who poisoned him. No, he had 
+died of a pox. No, he had choked on a fish bone. 
+One thing all the stories agreed on: King Robert was dead. The bells in the seven towers of the Great 
+Sept of Baelor had tolled for a day and a night, the thunder of their grief rolling across the city in a bronze 
+tide. They only rang the bells like that for the death of a king, a tanner's boy told Arya. 
+All she wanted was to go home, but leaving King's Landing was not so easy as she had hoped. Talk of 
+war was on every lip, and gold cloaks were as thick on the city walls as fleas on . . . well, her, for one. 
+She 
+had been sleeping in Flea Bottom, on rooftops and in stables, wherever she could find a place to lie 
+down, and it hadn't taken her long to learn that the district was well named. 
+Every day since her escape from the Red Keep, Arya had visited each of the seven city gates in turn. 
+The Dragon Gate, the Lion Gate, and the Old Gate were closed and barred. The Mud Gate and the 
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+Gate of the Gods were open, but only to those who wanted to enter the city; the guards let no one out. 
+Those who were allowed to leave left by the King's Gate or the Iron Gate, but Lannister men-at-arms in 
+crimson cloaks and lion-crested helms manned the guard posts there. Spying down from the roof of an 
+inn by the King's Gate, Arya saw them searching wagons and carriages, forcing riders to open their 
+saddlebags, and questioning everyone who tried to pass on foot. 
+Sometimes she thought about swimming the river, but the Blackwater Rush was wide and deep, and 
+everyone agreed that its currents were wicked and treacherous. She had no coin to pay a ferryman or 
+take passage on a ship. 
+Her lord father had taught her never to steal, but it was growing harder to remember why. If she did not 
+get out soon, she would have to take her chances with the gold cloaks. She hadn't gone hungry much 
+since she learned to knock down birds with her stick sword, but she feared so much pigeon was making 
+her sick. A couple she'd eaten raw, before she found Flea Bottom. 
+In the Bottom there were pot-shops along the alleys where huge tubs of stew had been simmering for 
+years, and you could trade half your bird for a heel of yesterday's bread and a "bowl o' brown," and 
+they'd even stick the other half in the fire and crisp it up for you, so long as you plucked the feathers 
+yourself. Arya would have given anything for a cup of milk and a lemon cake, but the brown wasn't so 
+bad. It usually had barley in it, and chunks of carrot and onion and turnip, and sometimes even apple, 
+with a film of grease swimming on top. Mostly she tried not to think about the meat. Once she had gotten 
+a piece of fish. 
+The only thing was, the pot-shops were never empty, and even as she bolted down her food, Arya 
+could feel them watching. Some of them stared at her boots or her cloak, and she knew what they were 
+thinking. With others, she could almost feel their eyes crawling under her leathers; she didn't know what 
+they were thinking, and that scared her even more. A couple times, she was followed out into the alleys 
+and chased, but so far no one had been able to catch her. 
+The silver bracelet she'd hoped to sell had been stolen her first night out of the castle, along with her 
+bundle of good clothes, snatched 
+while she slept in a burnt-out house off Pig Alley. All they left her was the cloak she had been huddled 
+in, the leathers on her back, her wooden practice sword . . . and Needle. She'd been lying on top of 
+Needle, or else it would have been gone too; it was worth more than all the rest together. Since then 
+Arya had taken to walking around with her cloak draped over her right arm, to conceal the blade at her 
+hip. The wooden sword she carried in her left hand, out where everybody could see it, to scare off 
+robbers, but there were men in the pot-shops who wouldn't have been scared off if she'd had a 
+battle-axe. It was enough to make her lose her taste for pigeon and stale bread. Often as not, she went to 
+bed hungry rather than risk the stares. 
+Once she was outside the city, she would find berries to pick, or orchards she might raid for apples and 
+cherries. Arya remembered seeing some from the kingsroad on the journey south. And she could dig for 
+roots in the forest, even run down some rabbits. In the city, the only things to run down were rats and 
+cats and scrawny dogs. The potshops would give you a fistful of coppers for a litter of pups, she'd heard, 
+but she didn't like to think about that. 
+Down below the Street of Flour was a maze of twisting alleys and cross streets. Arya scrambled through 
+the crowds, trying to put distance between her and the gold cloaks. She had learned to keep to the 
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+center of the street. Sometimes she had to dodge wagons and horses, but at least you could see them 
+coming. If you walked near the buildings, people grabbed you. In some alleys you couldn't help but brush 
+against the walls; the buildings leaned in so close they almost met. 
+A whooping gang of small children went running past, chasing a rolling hoop. Arya stared at them with 
+resentment, remembering the times she'd played at hoops with Bran and Jon and their baby brother 
+Rickon. She wondered how big Rickon had grown, and whether Bran was sad. She would have given 
+anything if Jon had been here to call her "little sister" and muss her hair. Not that it needed mussing. She'd 
+seen her reflection in puddles, and she didn't think hair got any more mussed than hers. 
+She had tried talking to the children she saw in the street, hoping to make a friend who would give her a 
+place to sleep, but she must have talked wrong or something. The little ones only looked at her with 
+quick, wary eyes and ran away if she came too close. Their big brothers and sisters asked questions 
+Arya couldn't answer, called her names, and tried to steal from her. Only yesterday, a scrawny barefoot 
+girl twice her age had knocked her down and tried to pull the boots off her feet, but Arya gave her a 
+crack on her ear with her stick sword that sent her off sobbing and bleeding. 
+A gull wheeled overhead as she made her way down the hill toward Flea Bottom. Arya glanced at it 
+thoughtfully, but it was well beyond the reach of her stick. It made her think of the sea. Maybe that was 
+the way out. Old Nan used to tell stories of boys who stowed away on trading galleys and sailed off into 
+all kinds of adventures. Maybe Arya could do that too. She decided to visit the riverfront. It was on the 
+way to the Mud Gate anyway, and she hadn't checked that one today. 
+The wharfs were oddly quiet when Arya got there. She spied another pair of gold cloaks, walking side 
+by side through the fish market, but they never so much as looked at her. Half the stalls were empty, and 
+it seemed to her that there were fewer ships at dock than she remembered. Out on the Blackwater, three 
+of the king's war galleys moved in formation, gold-painted hulls splitting the water as their oars rose and 
+fell. Arya watched them for a bit, then began to make her way along the river. 
+When she saw the guardsmen on the third pier, in grey woolen cloaks trimmed with white satin, her heart 
+almost stopped in her chest. The sight of Winterfell's colors brought tears to her eyes. Behind them, a 
+sleek three-banked trading galley rocked at her moorings. Arya could not read the name painted on the 
+hull; the words were strange, Myrish, Braavosi, perhaps even High Valyrian. She grabbed a passing 
+longshoreman by the sleeve. "Please," she said, "what ship is this?" 
+"She's the Wind Witch, out of Myr," the man said. 
+"She's still here," Arya blurted. The longshoreman gave her a queer look, shrugged, and walked away. 
+Arya ran toward the pier. The Wind Witch was the ship Father had hired to take her home . . . still 
+waiting! She'd imagined it had sailed ages ago. 
+Two of the guardsmen were dicing together while the third walked rounds, his hand on the pommel of 
+his sword. Ashamed to let them see her crying like a baby, she stopped to rub at her eyes. Her eyes her 
+eyes her eyes, why did . . . 
+Look with your eyes, she heard Syrio whisper. 
+Arya looked. She knew all of her father's men. The three in the grey cloaks were strangers. "You," the 
+one walking rounds called out. "What do you want here, boy?" The other two looked up from their dice. 
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+It was all Arya could do not to bolt and run, but she knew that if she did, they would be after her at 
+once. She made herself walk closer. They were looking for a girl, but he thought she was a boy. She'd be 
+a boy, then. "Want to buy a pigeon?" She showed him the dead bird. 
+"Get out of here," the guardsman said. 
+Arya did as he told her. She did not have to pretend to be frightened. Behind her, the men went back to 
+their dice. 
+She could not have said how she got back to Flea Bottom, but she was breathing hard by the time she 
+reached the narrow crooked unpaved streets between the hills. The Bottom had a stench to it, a stink of 
+pigsties and stables and tanner's sheds, mixed in with the sour smell of winesinks and cheap 
+whorehouses. Arya wound her way through the maze dully. It was not until she caught a wWiff of 
+bubbling brown coming through a pot-shop door that she realized her pigeon was gone. It must have 
+slipped from her belt as she ran, or someone had stolen it and she'd never noticed. For a moment she 
+wanted to cry again. She'd have to walk all the way back to the Street of Flour to find another one that 
+plump. 
+Far across the city, bells began to ring. 
+Arya glanced up, listening, wondering what the ringing meant this time. 
+"What's this now?" a fat man called from the pot-shop. 
+"The bells again, gods ha'mercy," wailed an old woman. 
+A red-haired whore in a wisp of painted silk pushed open a secondstory window. "Is it the boy king 
+that's died now?" she shouted down, leaning out over the street. "Ah, that's a boy for you, they never last 
+long." As she laughed, a naked man slid his arms around her from behind, biting her neck and rubbing the 
+heavy white breasts that hung loose beneath her shift. 
+"Stupid slut," the fat man shouted up. "The king's not dead, that's only summoning bells. One tower 
+tolling. When the king dies, they ring every bell in the city." 
+"Here, quit your biting, or I'll ring your bells," the woman in the window said to the man behind her, 
+pushing him off with an elbow. "So who is it died, if not the king?" 
+"It's a summoning," the fat man repeated. 
+Two boys close to Arya's age scampered past, splashing through a puddle. The old woman cursed 
+them, but they kept right on going. Other people were moving too, heading up the hill to see what the 
+noise was about. Arya ran after the slower boy. "Where you going?" she shouted when she was right 
+behind him. "What's happening?" 
+He glanced back without slowing. "The gold cloaks is carryin' him to the sept." 
+"Who?" she yelled, running hard. 
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+
+"The Hand! They'll be taking his head off, Buu says." 
+A passing wagon had left a deep rut in the street. The boy leapt over, but Arya never saw it. She tripped 
+and fell, face first, scraping her 
+knee open on a stone and smashing her fingers when her hands hit the hard-packed earth. Needle 
+tangled between her legs. She sobbed as she struggled to her knees. The thumb of her left hand was 
+covered with blood. When she sucked on it, she saw that half the thumbnail was gone, ripped off in her 
+fall. Her hands throbbed, and her knee was all bloody too. 
+"Make way!" someone shouted from the cross street. "Make wayfor my lords of Red4yne!" It was all 
+Arya could do to get out of the road before they ran her down, four guardsmen on huge horses, 
+pounding past at a gallop. They wore checked cloaks, blue-and-burgundy. Behind them, two young 
+lordlings rode side by side on a pair of chestnut mares alike as peas in a pod. Arya had seen them in the 
+bailey a hundred times; the Redwyne twins, Ser Horas and Ser Hobber, homely youths with orange hair 
+and square, freckled faces. Sansa and Jeyne Poole used to call them Ser Horror and Ser Slobber, and 
+giggle whenever they caught sight of them. They did not look funny now. 
+Everyone was moving in the same direction, all in a hurry to see what the ringing was all about. The bells 
+seemed louder now, clanging, calling. Arya joined the stream of people. Her thumb hurt so bad where 
+the nail had broken that it was all she could do not to cry. She bit her lip as she limped along, listening to 
+the excited voices around her. 
+"-the King's Hand, Lord Stark. They're carrying him up to Baelor's Sept." 
+"I heard he was dead." 
+"Soon enough, soon enough. Here, I got me a silver stag says they lop his head off." 
+"Past time, the traitor." The man spat. 
+Arya struggled to find a voice. "He never-" she started, but she was only a child and they talked right 
+over her. 
+"Fool! They ain't neither going to lop him. Since when do they knick traitors on the steps of the Great 
+Sept?" 
+"Well, they don't mean to anoint him no knight. I heard it was Stark killed old King Robert. Slit his throat 
+in the woods, and when they found him, he stood there cool as you please and said it was some old boar 
+did for His Grace." 
+"Ah, that's not true, it was his own brother did him, that Renly, him with his gold antlers." 
+"You shut your lying mouth, woman. You don't know what you're saying, his lordship's a fine true man." 
+By the time they reached the Street of the Sisters, they were packed in shoulder to shoulder. Arya let the 
+human current carry her along, 
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+up to the top of Visenya's Hill. The white marble plaza was a solid mass of people, all yammering 
+excitedly at each other and straining to get closer to the Great Sept of Baelor. The bells were very loud 
+here. 
+Arya squirmed through the press, ducking between the legs of horses and clutching tight to her sword 
+stick. From the middle of the crowd, all she could see were arms and legs and stomachs, and the seven 
+slender towers of the sept looming overhead. She spotted a wood wagon and thought to climb up on the 
+back where she might be able to see, but others had the same idea. The teamster cursed at them and 
+drove them off with a crack of his whip. 
+Arya grew frantic. Forcing her way to the front of the crowd, she was shoved up against the stone of a 
+plinth. She looked up at Baelor the Blessed, the septon king. Sliding her stick sword through her belt, 
+Arya began to climb. Her broken thumbnail left smears of blood on the painted marble, but she made it 
+up, and wedged herself in between the king's feet. 
+That was when she saw her father. 
+Lord Eddard stood on the High Septon's pulpit outside the doors of the sept, supported between two of 
+the gold cloaks. He was dressed in a rich grey velvet doublet with a white wolf sewn on the front in 
+beads, and a grey wool cloak trimmed with fur, but he was thinner than Arya had ever seen him, his long 
+face drawn with pain. He was not standing so much as being held up; the cast over his broken leg was 
+grey and rotten. 
+The High Septon himself stood behind him, a squat man, grey with age and ponderously fat, wearing 
+long white robes and an immense crown of spun gold and crystal that wreathed his head with rainbows 
+whenever he moved. 
+Clustered around the doors of the sept, in front of the raised marble pulpit, were a knot of knights and 
+high lords. Joffrey was prominent among them, his raiment all crimson, silk and satin patterned with 
+prancing stags and roaring lions, a gold crown on his head. His queen mother stood beside him in a black 
+mourning gown slashed with crimson, a veil of black diamonds in her hair. Arya recognized the Hound, 
+wearing a snowy white cloak over his dark grey armor, with four of the Kingsguard around him. She saw 
+Varys the eunuch gliding among the lords in soft slippers and a patterned damask robe, and she thought 
+the short man with the silvery cape and pointed beard might be the one who had once fought a duel for 
+Mother. 
+And there in their midst was Sansa, dressed in sky-blue silk, with her long auburn hair washed and 
+curled and silver bracelets on her 
+wrists. Arya scowled, wondering what her sister was doing here, why she looked so happy. 
+A long line of gold-cloaked spearmen held back the crowd, commanded by a stout man in elaborate 
+armor, all black lacquer and gold filigree. His cloak had the metallic shimmer of true cloth-of-gold. 
+When the bell ceased to toll, a quiet slowly settled across the great plaza, and her father lifted his head 
+and began to speak, his voice so thin and weak she could scarcely make him out. People behind her 
+began to shout out, "What?" and "Louder!" The man in the black-andgold armor stepped up behind 
+Father and prodded him sharply. You leave him alone! Arya wanted to shout, but she knew no one 
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+
+would listen. She chewed her lip. 
+Her father raised his voice and began again. "I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Hand of the 
+King," he said more loudly, his voice carrying across the plaza, "and I come before you to confess my 
+treason in the sight of gods and men." 
+"No, " Arya whimpered. Below her, the crowd began to scream and shout. Taunts and obscenities filled 
+the air. Sansa had hidden her face in her hands. 
+Her father raised his voice still higher, straining to be heard. "I betrayed the faith of my king and the trust 
+of my friend, Robert," he shouted. "I swore to defend and protect his children, yet before his blood was 
+cold, I plotted to depose and murder his son and seize the throne for myself. Let the High Septon and 
+Baelor the Beloved and the Seven bear witness to the truth of what I say: Joffrey Baratheon is the one 
+true heir to the Iron Throne, and by the grace of all the gods, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector 
+of the Realm." 
+A stone came sailing out of the crowd. Arya cried out as she saw her father hit. The gold cloaks kept 
+him from falling. Blood ran down his face from a deep gash across his forehead. More stones followed. 
+One struck the guard to Father's left. Another went clanging off the breastplate of the knight in the 
+black-and-gold armor. Two of the Kingsguard stepped in front of Joffrey and the queen, protecting them 
+with their shields. 
+Her hand slid beneath her cloak and found Needle in its sheath. She tightened her fingers around the 
+grip, squeezing as hard as she had ever squeezed anything. Please, gods, keep him safe, she prayed. 
+Don't let them hurt my father. 
+The High Septon knelt before Joffrey and his mother. "As we sin, so do we suffer," he intoned, in a deep 
+swelling voice much louder than Father's. "This man has confessed his crimes in the sight of gods and 
+men, here in this holy place." Rainbows danced around his head 
+as he lifted his hands in entreaty. "The gods are just, yet Blessed Baelor taught us that they are also 
+merciful. What shall be done with this traitor, Your Grace?" 
+A thousand voices were screaming, but Arya never heard them. Prince Joffrey . . . no, King Joffrey . . . 
+stepped out from behind the shields of his Kingsguard. "My mother bids me let Lord Eddard take the 
+black, and Lady Sansa has begged mercy for her father." He looked straight at Sansa then, and smiled, 
+and for a moment Arya thought that the gods had heard her prayer, until Joffrey turned back to the 
+crowd and said, "But they have the soft hearts of women. So long as I am your king, treason shall never 
+go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head!" 
+The crowd roared, and Arya felt the statue of Baelor rock as they surged against it. The High Septon 
+clutched at the king's cape, and Varys came rushing over waving his arms, and even the queen was 
+saying something to him, but Joffrey shook his head. Lords and knights moved aside as he stepped 
+through, tall and fleshless, a skeleton in iron mail, the King's Justice. Dimly, as if from far off, Arya heard 
+her sister scream. Sansa had fallen to her knees, sobbing hysterically. Ser Ilyn Payne climbed the steps of 
+the pulpit. 
+Arya wriggled between Baelor's feet and threw herself into the crowd, drawing Needle. She landed on a 
+man in a butcher's apron, knocking him to the ground. Immediately someone slammed into her back and 
+Page 486
+
+she almost went down herself. Bodies closed in around her, stumbling and pushing, trampling on the poor 
+butcher. Arya slashed at them with Needle. 
+High atop the pulpit, Ser Ilyn Payne gestured and the knight in black-and-gold gave a command. The 
+gold cloaks flung Lord Eddard to the marble, with his head and chest out over the edge. 
+"Here, you!" an angry voice shouted at Arya, but she bowled past, shoving people aside, squirming 
+between them, slamming into anyone in her way. A hand fumbled at her leg and she hacked at it, kicked 
+at shins. A woman stumbled and Arya ran up her back, cutting to both sides, but it was no good, no 
+good, there were too many people, no sooner did she make a hole than it closed again. Someone 
+buffeted her aside. She could still hear Sansa screaming. 
+Ser Ilyn drew a two-handed greatsword from the scabbard on his back. As he lifted the blade above his 
+head, sunlight seemed to ripple and dance down the dark metal, glinting off an edge sharper than any 
+razor. ke, she thought, he has ke! Her tears streamed down her face, blinding her. 
+And then a hand shot out of the press and closed round her arm like 
+a wolf trap, so hard that Needle went flying from her hand. Arya was wrenched off her feet. She would 
+have fallen if he hadn't held her up, as easy as if she were a doll. A face pressed close to hers, long black 
+hair and tangled beard and rotten teeth. "Don't look!" a thick voice snarled at her. 
+"I . . . I . I . . . Arya sobbed. 
+The old man shook her so hard her teeth rattled. "Shut your mouth and close your eyes, boy." Dimly, as 
+if from far away, she heard a . . . a noise . . . a soft sighing sound, as if a million people had let out their 
+breath at once. The old man's fingers dug into her arm, stiff as iron. "Look at me. Yes, that's the way of 
+it, at me." Sour wine perfumed his breath. "Remember, boy?" 
+It was the smell that did it. Arya saw the matted greasy hair, the patched, dusty black cloak that covered 
+his twisted shoulders, the hard black eyes squinting at her. And she remembered the black brother who 
+had come to visit her father. 
+"Know me now, do you? There's a bright boy." He spat. "They're done here. You'll be coming with me, 
+and you'll be keeping your mouth shut." When she started to reply, he shook her again, even harder. 
+"Shut, I said." 
+The plaza was beginning to empty. The press dissolved around them as people drifted back to their 
+lives. But Arya's life was gone. Numb, she trailed along beside . . . Yoren, yes, his name is Yoren. She 
+did not recall him finding Needle, until he handed the sword back to her. "Hope you can use that, boy." 
+"I'm not-" she started. 
+He shoved her into a doorway, thrust dirty fingers through her hair, and gave it a twist, yanking her head 
+back. "-not a smart boy, that what you mean to say?" 
+He had a knife in his other hand. 
+As the blade flashed toward her face, Arya threw herself backward, kicking wildly, wrenching her head 
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+
+from side to side, but he had her by the hair, so strong, she could feel her scalp tearing, and on her lips 
+the salt taste of tears. 
+BRAN 
+The oldest were men grown, seventeen and eighteen years from the day of their naming. One was past 
+twenty. Most were younger, sixteen or less. 
+Bran watched them from the balcony of Maester Luwin's turret, listening to them grunt and strain and 
+curse as they swung their staves and wooden swords. The yard was alive to the clack of wood on wood, 
+punctuated all too often by thwacks and yowls of pain when a blow struck leather or flesh. Ser Rodrik 
+strode among the boys, face reddening beneath his white whiskers, muttering at them one and all. Bran 
+had never seen the old knight look so fierce. "No," he kept saying. "No. No. No." 
+"They don't fight very well," Bran said dubiously. He scratched Summer idly behind the ears as the 
+direwolf tore at a haunch of meat. Bones crunched between his teeth. 
+"For a certainty," Maester Luwin agreed with a deep sigh. The maester was peering through his big 
+Myrish lens tube, measuring shadows and noting the position of the comet that hung low in the morning 
+sky. "Yet given time . . . Ser Rodrik has the truth of it, we need men to walk the walls. Your lord father 
+took the cream of his guard to King's Landing, and your brother took the rest, along with all the likely 
+lads for leagues around. Many will not come back to us, and we must needs find the men to take their 
+places." 
+Bran stared resentfully at the sweating boys below. "If I still had my legs, I could beat them all." He 
+remembered the last time he'd held a sword in his hand, when the king had come to Winterfell. It was 
+only a wooden sword, yet he'd knocked Prince Tommen down half a hundred times. "Ser Rodrik should 
+teach me to use a poleaxe. If I had a poleaxe with a big long haft, Hodor could be my legs. We could be 
+a knight together." 
+"I think that . . . unlikely," Maester Luwin said. "Bran, when a man fights, his arms and legs and thoughts 
+must be as one." 
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+
+Below in the yard, Ser Rodrik was yelling. "You fight like a goose. He pecks you and you peck him 
+harder. Pany! Block the blow. Goose fighting will not suffice. If those were real swords, the first peck 
+would take your arm off!" One of the other boys laughed, and the old knight rounded on him. "You 
+laugh. You. Now that is gall. You fight like a hedgehog . . ." 
+"There was a knight once who couldn't see," Bran said stubbornly, as Ser Rodrik went on below. "Old 
+Nan told me about him. He had a long staff with blades at both ends and he could spin it in his hands and 
+chop two men at once." 
+"Symeon Star-Eyes," Luwin said as he marked numbers in a book. "When he lost his eyes, he put star 
+sapphires in the empty sockets, or so the singers claim. Bran, that is only a story, like the tales of Florian 
+the Fool. A fable from the Age of Heroes." The maester tsked. "You must put these dreams aside, they 
+will only break your heart." 
+The mention of dreams reminded him. "I dreamed about the crow again last night. The one with three 
+eyes. He flew into my bedchamber and told me to come with him, so I did. We went down to the crypts. 
+Father was there, and we talked. He was sad." 
+"And why was that?" Luwin peered through his tube. 
+"It was something to do about Jon, I think." The dream had been deeply disturbing, more so than any of 
+the other crow dreams. "Hodor won't go down into the crypts." 
+The maester had only been half listening, Bran could tell. He lifted his eye from the tube, blinking. 
+"Hodor won't . . . T' 
+"Go down into the crypts. When I woke, I told him to take me down, to see if Father was truly there. At 
+first he didn't know what I was saying, but I got him to the steps by telling him to go here and go there, 
+only then he wouldn't go down. He just stood on the top step and said 'Hodor,' like he was scared of the 
+dark, but I had a torch. It made me so mad I almost gave him a swat in the head, like Old Nan is always 
+doing." He saw the way the maester was frowning and hurriedly added, "I didn't, though." 
+Page 489
+
+"Good. Hodor is a man, not a mule to be beaten." 
+"In the dream I flew down with the crow, but I can't do that when I'm awake," Bran explained. 
+"Why would you want to go down to the crypts?" 
+"I told you. To look for Father." 
+The maester tugged at the chain around his neck, as he often did when he was uncomfortable. "Bran, 
+sweet child, one day Lord Eddard will sit below in stone, beside his father and his father's father and all 
+the Starks back to the old Kings in the North . . . but that will not be for many years, gods be good. 
+Your father is a prisoner of the queen in King's Landing. You will not find him in the crypts." 
+"He was there last night. I talked to him." 
+"Stubborn boy," the maester sighed, setting his book aside. "Would you like to go see?" 
+"I can't. Hodor won't go, and the steps are too narrow and twisty for Dancer." 
+"I believe I can solve that difficulty." 
+In place of Hodor, the wildling woman Osha was summoned. She was tall and tough and uncomplaining, 
+willing to go wherever she was commanded. "I lived my life beyond the Wall, a hole in the ground won't 
+fret me none, m'lords," she said. 
+"Summer, come," Bran called as she lifted him in wiry-strong arms. The direwolf left his bone and 
+followed as Osha carried Bran across the yard and down the spiral steps to the cold vault under the 
+earth. Maester Luwin went ahead with a torch. Bran did not even mind-too badly-that she carried him in 
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+
+her arms and not on her back. Ser Rodrik had ordered Osha's chain struck off, since she had served 
+faithfully and well since she had been at Winterfell. She still wore the heavy iron shackles around her 
+ankles-a sign that she was not yet wholly trusted-but they did not hinder her sure strides down the steps. 
+Bran could not recall the last time he had been in the crypts. It had been before, for certain. When he 
+was little, he used to play down here with Robb and Jon and his sisters. 
+He wished they were here now; the vault might not have seemed so dark and scary. Summer stalked out 
+in the echoing gloom, then stopped, lifted his head, and sniffed the chill dead air. He bared his teeth and 
+crept backward, eyes glowing golden in the light of the maester's torch. Even Osha, hard as old iron, 
+seemed uncomfortable. "Grim folk, by the look of them," she said as she eyed the long row of granite 
+Starks on their stone thrones. 
+"They were the Kings of Winter," Bran whispered. Somehow it felt wrong to talk too loudly in this place. 
+Osha smiled. "Winter's got no king. If you'd seen it, you'd know that, summer boy." 
+"They were the Kings in the North for thousands of years," Maester Luwin said, lifting the torch high so 
+the light shone on the stone faces. Some were hairy and bearded, shaggy men fierce as the wolves that 
+crouched by their feet. Others were shaved clean, their features gaunt and sharp-edged as the iron 
+longswords across their laps. "Hard men for a hard time. Come." He strode briskly down the vault, past 
+the procession of stone pillars and the endless carved figures. A tongue of flame trailed back from the 
+upraised torch as he went. 
+The vault was cavernous, longer than Winterfell itself, and Jon had told him once that there were other 
+levels underneath, vaults even deeper and darker where the older kings were buried. It would not do to 
+lose the light. Summer refused to move from the steps, even when Osha followed the torch, Bran in her 
+arms. 
+"Do you recall your history, Bran?" the maester said as they walked. "Tell Osha who they were and 
+what they did, if you can." 
+Page 491
+
+He looked at the passing faces and the tales came back to him. The maester had told him the stories, 
+and Old Nan had made them come alive. "That one is Jon Stark. When the sea raiders landed in the east, 
+he drove them out and built the castle at White Harbor. His son was Rickard Stark, not my father's father 
+but another Rickard, he took the Neck away from the Marsh King and married his daughter. Theon 
+Stark's the real thin one with the long hair and the skinny beard. They called him the 'Hungry Wolf,' 
+because he was always at war. That's a Brandon, the tall one with the dreamy face, he was Brandon the 
+Shipwright, because he loved the sea. His tomb is empty. He tried to sail west across the Sunset Sea and 
+was never seen again. His son was Brandon the Burner, because he put the torch to all his father's ships 
+in grief. There's Rodrik Stark, who won Bear Island in a wrestling match and gave it to the Mormonts. 
+And that's Torrhen Stark, the King Who Knelt. He was the last King in the North and the first Lord of 
+Winterfell, after he yielded to Aegon the Conqueror. Oh, there, he's Cregan Stark. He fought with Prince 
+Aemon once, and the Dragonknight said he'd never faced a finer swordsman." They were almost at the 
+end now, and Bran felt a sadness creeping over him. "And there's my grandfather, Lord Rickard, who 
+was beheaded by Mad King Aerys. His daughter Lyanna and his son Brandon are in the tombs beside 
+him. Not me, another Brandon, my father's brother. 
+They're not supposed to have statues, that's only for the lords and the kings, but my father loved them so 
+much he had them done." 
+"The maid's a fair one," Osha said. 
+"Robert was betrothed to marry her, but Prince Rhaegar carried her off and raped her," Bran explained. 
+"Robert fought a war to win her back. He killed Rhaegar on the Trident with his hammer, but Lyanna 
+died and he never got her back at all." 
+"A sad tale," said Osha, "but those empty holes are sadder." 
+"Lord Eddard's tomb, for when his time comes," Maester Luwin said. "Is this where you saw your father 
+in your dream, Bran?" 
+"Yes." The memory made him shiver. He looked around the vault uneasily, the hairs on the back of his 
+neck bristling. Had he heard a noise? Was there someone here? 
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+
+Maester Luwin stepped toward the open sepulchre, torch in hand. "As you see, he's not here. Nor will 
+he be, for many a year. Dreams are only dreams, child." He thrust his arm into the blackness inside the 
+tomb, as into the mouth of some great beast. "Do you see? It's quite empt-" 
+The darkness sprang at him, snarling. 
+Bran saw eyes like green fire, a flash of teeth, fur as black as the pit around them. Maester Luwin yelled 
+and threw up his hands. The torch went flying from his fingers, caromed off the stone face of Brandon 
+Stark, and tumbled to the statue's feet, the flames licking up his legs. In the drunken shifting torchlight, 
+they saw Luwin struggling with the direwolf, beating at his muzzle with one hand while the jaws closed on 
+the other. 
+"Summer!" Bran screamed. 
+And Summer came, shooting from the dimness behind them, a leaping shadow. He slammed into 
+Shaggydog and knocked him back, and the two direwolves rolled over and over in a tangle of grey and 
+black fur, snapping and biting at each other, while Maester Luwin struggled to his knees, his arm torn and 
+bloody. Osha propped Bran up against Lord Rickard's stone wolf as she hurried to assist the maester. In 
+the light of the guttering torch, shadow wolves twenty feet tall fought on the wall and roof. 
+"Shaggy," a small voice called. When Bran looked up, his little brother was standing in the mouth of 
+Father's tomb. With one final snap at Summer's face, Shaggydog broke off and bounded to Rickon's 
+side. "You let my father be," Rickon warned Luwin. "You let him be." 
+"Rickon," Bran said softly. "Father's not here." 
+"Yes he is. I saw him." Tears glistened on Rickon's face. "I saw him last night." 
+"In your dream ... ?' 
+Page 493
+
+Rickon nodded. "You leave him. You leave him be. He's coming home now, like he promised. He's 
+coming home." 
+Bran had never seen Maester Luwin took so uncertain before. Blood dripped down his arm where 
+Shaggydog had shredded the wool of his sleeve and the flesh beneath. "Osha, the torch," he said, biting 
+through his pain, and she snatched it up before it went out. Soot stains blackened both legs of his uncle's 
+likeness. "That . . . that beast," Luwin went on, "is supposed to be chained up in the kennels." 
+Rickon patted Shaggydog's muzzle, damp with blood. "I let him loose. He doesn't like chains." He licked 
+at his fingers. 
+"Rickon," Bran said, "would you like to come with me?" 
+"No. I like it here." 
+"It's dark here. And cold." 
+"I'm not afraid. I have to wait for Father." 
+"You can wait with me," Bran said. "We'll wait together, you and me and our wolves." Both of the 
+direwolves were licking wounds now, and would bear close watching. 
+"Bran," the maester said firmly, "I know you mean well, but Shaggydog is too wild to run loose. I'm the 
+third man he's savaged. Give him the freedom of the castle and it's only a question of time before he kills 
+someone. The truth is hard, but the wolf has to be chained, or ." He hesitated. 
+or killed, Bran thought, but what he said was, "He was not made for chains. We will wait in your tower, 
+all of us." 
+Page 494
+
+"That is quite impossible," Maester Luwin said. 
+Osha grinned. "The boy's the lordling here, as I recall." She handed Luwin back his torch and scooped 
+Bran up into her arms again. "The maester's tower it is." 
+"Will you come, Rickon?" 
+His brother nodded. "If Shaggy comes too," he said, running after Osha and Bran, and there was nothing 
+Maester Luwin could do but follow, keeping a wary eye on the wolves. 
+Maester Luwin's turret was so cluttered that it seemed to Bran a wonder that he ever found anything. 
+Tottering piles of books covered tables and chairs, rows of stoppered jars lined the shelves, candle stubs 
+and puddles of dried wax dotted the furniture, the bronze Myrish lens tube sat on a tripod by the terrace 
+door, star charts hung from the walls, shadow maps lay scattered among the rushes, papers, quills, and 
+pots of inks were everywhere, and all of it was spotted with droppings from the ravens in the rafters. 
+Their strident quorks drifted down from above as Osha washed and cleaned and bandaged the maester's 
+wounds, under Luwin's terse instruction. "This is folly," the small grey man said while she dabbed at the 
+wolf bites with a stinging ointment. "I agree that it is odd that both you boys dreamed the same dream, 
+yet when you stop to consider it, it's only natural. You miss your lord father, and you know that he is a 
+captive. Fear can fever a man's mind and give him queer thoughts. Rickon is too young to comprehend-" 
+"I'm four now," Rickon said. He was peeking through the lens tube at the gargoyles on the First Keep. 
+The direwolves sat on opposite sides of the large round room, licking their wounds and gnawing on 
+bones. 
+"-too young, and-ooh, seven hells, that burns, no, don't stop, more. Too young, as I say, but you, Bran, 
+you're old enough to know that dreams are only dreams." 
+"Some are, some aren't." Osha poured pale red firemilk into a long gash. Luwin gasped. "The children of 
+the forest could tell you a thing or two about dreaming." 
+Page 495
+
+Tears were streaming down the maester's face, yet he shook his head doggedly. "The children . . . live 
+only in dreams. Now. Dead and gone. Enough, that's enough. Now the bandages. Pads and then wrap, 
+and make it tight, I'll be bleeding." 
+"Old Nan says the children knew the songs of the trees, that they could fly like birds and swim like fish 
+and talk to the animals," Bran said. "She says that they made music so beautiful that it made you cry like a 
+little baby just to hear it." 
+"And all this they did with magic," Maester Luwin said, distracted. "I wish they were here now. A spell 
+would heal my arm less painfully, and they could talk to Shaggydog and tell him not to bite." He gave the 
+big black wolf an angry glance out of the corner of his eye. "Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in 
+spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something." He stood 
+abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. "Have a look at these," he 
+said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads. 
+Bran picked one up. "It's made of glass." Curious, Rickon drifted closer to peer over the table. 
+"Dragonglass," Osha named it as she sat down beside Luwin, bandagings in hand. 
+"Obsidian," Maester Luwin insisted, holding out his wounded arm. "Forged in the fires of the gods, far 
+below the earth. The children of the forest hunted with that, thousands of years ago. The children worked 
+no metal. In place of mail, they wore long shirts of woven 
+leaves and bound their legs in bark, so they seemed to melt into the wood. In place of swords, they 
+carried blades of obsidian." 
+"And still do." Osha placed soft pads over the bites on the maester's forearm and bound them tight with 
+long strips of linen. 
+Page 496
+
+Bran held the arrowhead up close. The black glass was slick and shiny. He thought it beautiful. "Can I 
+keep one?" 
+"As you wish," the maester said. 
+"I want one too," Rickon said. "I want four. I'm four." 
+Luwin made him count them out. "Careful, they're still sharp. Don't cut yourself." 
+"Tell me about the children," Bran said. It was important. 
+"What do you wish to know?" 
+"Everything." 
+Maester Luwin tugged at his chain collar where it chafed against his neck. "They were people of the 
+Dawn Age, the very first, before kings and kingdoms," he said. "In those days, there were no castles or 
+holdfasts, no cities, not so much as a market town to be found between here and the sea of Dorne. There 
+were no men at all. Only the children of the forest dwelt in the lands we now call the Seven Kingdoms. 
+"They were a people dark and beautiful, small of stature, no taller than children even when grown to 
+manhood. They lived in the depths of the wood, in caves and crannogs and secret tree towns. Slight as 
+they were, the children were quick and graceful. Male and female hunted together, with weirwood bows 
+and flying snares. Their gods were the gods of the forest, stream, and stone, the old gods whose names 
+are secret. Their wise men were called greenseers, and carved strange faces in the weirwoods to keep 
+watch on the woods. How long the children reigned here or where they came from, no man can know. 
+"But some twelve thousand years ago, the First Men appeared from the east, crossing the Broken Arm 
+of Dorne before it was broken. They came with bronze swords and great leathern shields, riding horses. 
+No horse had ever been seen on this side of the narrow sea. No doubt the children were as frightened by 
+the horses as the First Men were by the faces in the trees. As the First Men carved out holdfasts and 
+farms, they cut down the faces and gave them to the fire. Horrorstruck, the children went to war. The old 
+Page 497
+
+songs say that the greenseers used dark magics to make the seas rise and sweep away the land, 
+shattering the Arm, but it was too late to close the door. The wars went on until the earth ran red with 
+blood of men and children both, but more children than men, for men were bigger and stronger, and 
+wood and stone and obsidian make a poor match for bronze. Finally the wise of both races prevailed, 
+and the chiefs and heroes of the First Men met 
+the greenseers and wood dancers amidst the weirwood groves of a small island in the great lake called 
+Gods Eye. 
+"There they forged the Pact. The First Men were given the coastlands, the high plains and bright 
+meadows, the mountains and bogs, but the deep woods were to remain forever the children's, and no 
+more weirwoods were to be put to the axe anywhere in the realm. So the gods might bear witness to the 
+signing, every tree on the island was given a face, and afterward, the sacred order of green men was 
+formed to keep watch over the Isle of Faces. 
+"The Pact began four thousand years of friendship between men and children. In time, the First Men 
+even put aside the gods they had brought with them, and took up the worship of the secret gods of the 
+wood. The signing of the Pact ended the Dawn Age, and began the Age of Heroes." 
+Bran's fist curled around the shiny black arrowhead. "But the children of the forest are all gone now, you 
+said." 
+"Here, they are," said Osha, as she bit off the end of the last bandage with her teeth. "North of the Wall, 
+things are different. That's where the children went, and the giants, and the other old races." 
+Maester Luwin sighed. "Woman, by rights you ought to be dead or in chains. The Starks have treated 
+you more gently than you deserve. It is unkind to repay them for their kindness by filling the boys' heads 
+with folly." 
+"Tell me where they went," Bran said. "I want to know." 
+Page 498
+
+"Me too," Rickon echoed. 
+"Oh, very well," Luwin muttered. "So long as the kingdoms of the First Men held sway, the Pact 
+endured, all through the Age of Heroes and the Long Night and the birth of the Seven Kingdoms, yet 
+finally there came a time, many centuries later, when other peoples crossed the narrow sea. 
+"The Andals were the first, a race of tall, fair-haired warriors who came with steel and fire and the 
+seven-pointed star of the new gods painted on their chests. The wars lasted hundreds of years, but in the 
+end the six southron kingdoms all fell before them. Only here, where the King in the North threw back 
+every army that tried to cross the Neck, did the rule of the First Men endure. The Andals burnt out the 
+weirwood groves, hacked down the faces, slaughtered the children where they found them, and 
+everywhere proclaimed the triumph of the Seven over the old gods. So the children fled north-" 
+Summer began to howl. 
+Maester Luwin broke off, startled. When Shaggydog bounded to his feet and added his voice to his 
+brother's, dread clutched at Bran's 
+heart. "It's coming, " he whispered, with the certainty of despair. He had known it since last night, he 
+realized, since the crow had led him down into the crypts to say farewell. He had known it, but he had 
+not believed. He had wanted Maester Luwin to be right. The crow, he thought, the three-eyed crow . . . 
+The howling stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Summer padded across the tower floor to 
+Shaggydog, and began to lick at a mat of bloody fur on the back of his brother's neck. From the window 
+came a flutter of wings. 
+A raven landed on the grey stone sill, opened its beak, and gave a harsh, raucous rattle of distress. 
+Rickon began to cry. His arrowheads fell from his hand one by one and clattered on the floor. Bran 
+pulled him close and hugged him. 
+Page 499
+
+Maester Luwin stared at the black bird as if it were a scorpion with feathers. He rose, slow as a 
+sleepwalker, and moved to the window. When he whistled, the raven hopped onto his bandaged 
+forearm. There was dried blood on its wings. "A hawk," Luwin murmured, "perhaps an owl. Poor thing, 
+a wonder it got through." He took the letter from its leg. 
+Bran found himself shivering as the maester unrolled the paper. "What is it?" he said, holding his brother 
+all the harder. 
+"You know what it is, boy," Osha said, not unkindly. She put her hand on his head. 
+Maester Luwin looked up at them numbly, a small grey man with blood on the sleeve of his grey wool 
+robe and tears in his bright grey eyes. "My lords," he said to the sons, in a voice gone hoarse and 
+shrunken, "we . . . we shall need to find a stonecarver who knew his likeness well . . ." 
+SANSA 
+In the tower room at the heart of Maegor's Holdfast, Sansa gave herself to the darkness. 
+She drew the curtains around her bed, slept, woke weeping, 
+and slept again. When she could not sleep she lay under her blankets shivering with grief. Servants came 
+and went, bringing meals, but the sight of food was more than she could bear. The dishes piled up on the 
+table beneath her window, untouched and spoiling, until the servants took them away again. 
+Sometimes her sleep was leaden and dreamless, and she woke from it more tired than when she had 
+closed her eyes. Yet those were the best times, for when she dreamed, she dreamed of Father. Waking 
+or sleeping, she saw him, saw the gold cloaks fling him down, saw Ser Ilyn striding forward, unsheathing 
+Ice from the scabbard on his back, saw the moment . . . the moment when . . . she had wanted to look 
+away, she had wanted to, her legs had gone out from under her and she had fallen to her knees, yet 
+somehow she could not turn her head, and all the people were screaming and shouting, and her prince 
+Page 500
+
+had smiled at her, he'd smiled and she'd felt safe, but only for a heartbeat, until he said those words, and 
+her father's legs . . . that was what she remembered, his legs, the way they'd jerked when Ser Ilyn . . . 
+when the sword . . . 
+Perhaps I will die too, she told herself, and the thought did not seem 
+so terrible to her. If she flung herself from the window, she could put an end to her suffering, and in the 
+years to come the singers would write songs of her grief. Her body would lie on the stones below, 
+broken and innocent, shaming all those who had betrayed her. Sansa went so far as to cross the 
+bedchamber and throw open the shutters . . . but then her courage left her, and she ran back to her bed, 
+sobbing. 
+The serving girls tried to talk to her when they brought her meals, but she never answered them. Once 
+Grand Maester Pycelle came with a box of flasks and bottles, to ask if she was ill. He felt her brow, 
+made her undress, and touched her all over while her bedmaid held her down. When he left he gave her a 
+potion of honeywater and herbs and told her to drink a swallow every night. She drank it all right then 
+and went back to sleep. 
+She dreamt of footsteps on the tower stair, an ominous scraping of leather on stone as a man climbed 
+slowly toward her bedchamber, step by step. All she could do was huddle behind her door and listen, 
+trembling, as he came closer and closer. It was Ser Ilyn Payne, she knew, coming for her with Ice in his 
+hand, coming to take her head. There was no place to run, no place to hide, no way to bar the door. 
+Finally the footsteps stopped and she knew he was just outside, standing there silent with his dead eyes 
+and his long pocked face. That was when she realized she was naked. She crouched down, trying to 
+cover herself with her hands, as her door began to swing open, creaking, the point of the greatsword 
+poking through . . . 
+She woke murmuring, "Please, please, I'll be good, I'll be good, please don't," but there was no one to 
+hear. 
+When they finally came for her in truth, Sansa never heard their footsteps. It was Joffrey who opened 
+her door, not Ser Ilyn but the boy who had been her prince. She was in bed, curled up tight, her curtains 
+drawn, and she could not have said if it was noon or midnight. The first thing she heard was the slam of 
+the door. Then her bed hangings were yanked back, and she threw up a hand against the sudden light 
+and saw them standing over her. 
+Page 501
+
+"You will attend me in court this afternoon," Joffrey said. "See that you bathe and dress as befits my 
+betrothed." Sandor Clegane stood at his shoulder in a plain brown doublet and green mantle, his burned 
+face hideous in the morning light. Behind them were two knights of the Mngsguard in long white satin 
+cloaks. 
+Sansa drew her blanket up to her chin to cover herself. "No," she whimpered, "please . . . leave me be." 
+"If you won't rise and dress yourself, my Hound will do it for you," Joffrey said. 
+"I beg of you, my prince 
+"I'm king now. Dog, get her out of bed." 
+Sandor Clegane scooped her up around the waist and lifted her off the featherbed as she struggled 
+feebly. Her blanket fell to the floor. Underneath she had only a thin bedgown to cover her nakedness. 
+"Do as you're bid, child," Clegane said. "Dress." He pushed her toward her wardrobe, almost gently. 
+Sansa backed away from them. "I did as the queen asked, I wrote the letters, I wrote what she told me. 
+You promised you'd be merciful. Please, let me go home. I won't do any treason, I'll be good, I swear it, 
+I don't have traitor's blood, I don't. I only want to go home." Remembering her courtesies, she lowered 
+her head. "As it please you," she finished weakly. 
+"It does not please me," Joffrey said. "Mother says I'm still to marry you, so you'll stay here, and you'll 
+obey." 
+"I don't want to marry you," Sansa wailed. "You chopped off my father's head!" 
+Page 502
+
+"He was a traitor. I never promised to spare him, only that I'd be merciful, and I was. If he hadn't been 
+your father, I would have had him torn or flayed, but I gave him a clean death." 
+Sansa stared at him, seeing him for the first time. He was wearing a padded crimson doublet patterned 
+with lions and a cloth-of-gold cape with a high collar that framed his face. She wondered how she could 
+ever have thought him handsome. His lips were as soft and red as the worms you found after a rain, and 
+his eyes were vain and cruel. "I hate you," she whispered. 
+King Joffrey's face hardened. "My mother tells me that it isn't fitting that a king should strike his wife. Ser 
+Meryn." 
+The knight was on her before she could think, yanking back her hand as she tried to shield her face and 
+backhanding her across the ear with a gloved fist. Sansa did not remember failing, yet the next she knew 
+she was sprawled on one knee amongst the rushes. Her head was ringing. Ser Meryn Trant stood over 
+her, with blood on the knuckles of his white silk glove. 
+"Will you obey now, or shall I have him chastise you again?" 
+Sansa's ear felt numb. She touched it, and her fingertips came away wet and red. "I . . . as . . . as you 
+command, my lord." 
+"Your Grace, " Joffrey corrected her. "I shall look for you in court." He turned and left. 
+Ser Meryn and Ser Arys followed him out, but Sandor Clegane 
+650 GLORGL R.R. MARTIN 
+lingered long enough to yank her roughly to her feet. "Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he 
+wants." 
+Page 503
+
+"What . . . what does he want? Please, tell me." 
+"He wants you to smile and smell sweet and be his lady love," the Hound rasped. "He wants to hear you 
+recite all your pretty little words the way the septa taught you. He wants you to love him . . . and fear 
+him." 
+After he was gone, Sansa sank back onto the rushes, staring at the wall until two of her bedmaids crept 
+timidly into the chamber. "I will need hot water for my bath, please," she told them, "and perfume, and 
+some powder to hide this bruise." The right side of her face was swollen and beginning to ache, but she 
+knew Joffrey would want her to be beautiful. 
+The hot water made her think of Winterfell, and she took strength from that. She had not washed since 
+the day her father died, and she was startled at how filthy the water became. Her maids sluiced the blood 
+off her face, scrubbed the dirt from her back, washed her hair and brushed it out until it sprang back in 
+thick auburn curls. Sansa did not speak to them, except to give them commands; they were Lannister 
+servants, not her own, and she did not trust them. When the time came to dress, she chose the green silk 
+gown that she had worn to the tourney. She recalled how gallant Joff had been to her that night at the 
+feast. Perhaps it would make him remember as well, and treat her more gently. 
+She drank a glass of buttermilk and nibbled at some sweet biscuits as she waited, to settle her stomach. 
+It was midday when Ser Meryn returned. He had donned his white armor; a shirt of enameled scales 
+chased with gold, a tall helm with a golden sunburst crest, greaves and gorget and gauntlet and boots of 
+gleaming plate, a heavy wool cloak clasped with a golden lion. His visor had been removed from his 
+helm, to better show his dour face; pouchy bags under his eyes, a wide sour mouth, rusty hair spotted 
+with grey. "My lady," he said, bowing, as if he had not beaten her bloody only three hours past. "His 
+Grace has instructed me to escort you to the throne room." 
+"Did he instruct you to hit me if I refused to come?" 
+"Are you refusing to come, my lady?" The look he gave her was without expression. He did not so much 
+as glance at the bruise he had left her. 
+He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a 
+. . . a thing to him. "No," she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he'd hurt her, to warn him 
+that when she was queen she would have him exiled if he ever 
+Page 504
+
+dared strike her again ... but she remembered what the Hound had told her, so all she said was, "I shall 
+do whatever His Grace commands." 
+"As I do," he replied. 
+"Yes . . . but you are no true knight, Ser Meryn." 
+Sandor Clegane would have laughed at that, Sansa knew. Other men might have cursed her, warned her 
+to keep silent, even begged for her forgiveness. Ser Meryn Trant did none of these. Ser Meryn Trant 
+simply did not care. 
+The balcony was deserted save for Sansa. She stood with her head bowed, fighting to hold back her 
+tears, while below Joffrey sat on his Iron Throne and dispensed what it pleased him to call justice. Nine 
+cases out of ten seemed to bore him; those he allowed his council to handle, squirming restlessly while 
+Lord Baelish, Grand Maester Pycelle, or Queen Cersei resolved the matter. When he did choose to 
+make a ruling, though, not even his queen mother could sway him. 
+A thief was brought before him and he had Ser Ilyn chop his hand off, right there in court. Two knights 
+came to him with a dispute about some land, and he decreed that they should duel for it on the morrow. 
+"To the death," he added. A woman fell to her knees to plead for the head of a man executed as a traitor. 
+She had loved him, she said, and she wanted to see him decently buried. "If you loved a traitor, you must 
+be a traitor too," Joffrey said. Two gold cloaks dragged her off to the dungeons. 
+Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny 
+cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard 
+at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she 
+could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But a voice inside her 
+whispered, There are no heroes, and she remembered what Lord Petyr had said to her, here in this very 
+hall. "Life is not a song, sweetling," he'd told her. "You may learn that one day to your sorrow." In life, the 
+monsters win, she told herself, and now it was the Hound's voice she heard, a cold rasp, metal on stone. 
+"Save yourself some pain, girl, and give him what he wants." 
+Page 505
+
+The last case was a plump tavern singer, accused of making a song that ridiculed the late King Robert. 
+Joff commanded them to fetch his woodharp and ordered him to perform the song for the court. The 
+singer wept and swore he would never sing that song again, but the king insisted. It was sort of a funny 
+song, all about Robert fighting with a pig. The pig was the boar who'd killed him, Sansa knew, but in 
+some 
+verses it almost sounded as if he were singing about the queen. When the song was done, Joffrey 
+announced that he'd decided to be merciful. The singer could keep either his fingers or his tongue. He 
+would have a day to make his choice. Janos Slynt nodded. 
+That was the final business of the afternoon, Sansa saw with relief, but her ordeal was not yet done. 
+When the herald's voice dismissed the court, she fled the balcony, only to find Joffrey waiting for her at 
+the base of the curving stairs. The Hound was with him, and Ser Meryn as well. The young king 
+examined her critically, top to bottom. "You look much better than you did." 
+"Thank you, Your Grace," Sansa said. Hollow words, but they made him nod and smile. 
+"Walk with me," Jofftey commanded, offering her his arm. She had no choice but to take it. The touch of 
+his hand would have thrilled her once; now it made her flesh crawl. "My name day will be here soon," 
+Joffrey said as they slipped out the rear of the throne room. "There will be a great feast, and gifts. What 
+are you going to give me?" 
+"I . . . I had not thought, my lord." 
+"Your Grace," he said sharply. "You truly are a stupid girl, aren't you? My mother says so." 
+"She does?" After all that had happened, his words should have lost their power to hurt her, yet 
+somehow they had not. The queen had always been so kind to her. 
+"Oh, yes. She worries about our children, whether they'll be stupid like you, but I told her not to trouble 
+herself." The king gestured, and Ser Meryn opened a door for them. 
+Page 506
+
+"Thank you, Your Grace," she murmured. The Hound was right, she thought, I am only a little bird, 
+repeating the words they taught me. The sun had fallen below the western wall, and the stones of the Red 
+Keep glowed dark as blood. 
+"I'll get you with child as soon as you're able," Joffrey said as he escorted her across the practice yard. 
+"If the first one is stupid, I'll chop off your head and find a smarter wife. When do you think you'll be able 
+to have children?" 
+Sansa could not look at him, he shamed her so. "Septa Mordane says most . . . most highborn girls have 
+their flowering at twelve or thirteen." 
+Joffrey nodded. "This way." He led her into the gatehouse, to the base of the steps that led up to the 
+battlements. 
+Sansa jerked back away from him, trembling. Suddenly she knew where they were going. "No, " she 
+said, her voice a frightened gasp. "Please, no, don't make me, I beg you . . ." 
+Joffrey pressed his lips together. "I want to show you what happens to traitors." 
+Sansa shook her head wildly. "I won't. I won't." 
+"I can have Ser Meryn drag you up," he said. "You won't like that. You had better do what I say." 
+Joffrey reached for her, and Sansa cringed away from him, backing into the Hound. 
+"Do it, girl," Sandor Clegane told her, pushing her back toward the king. His mouth twitched on the 
+burned side of his face and Sansa could almost hear the rest of it. He'll have you up there no matter what, 
+so give him what he wants. 
+Page 507
+
+She forced herself to take King Joffrey's hand. The climb was something out of a nightmare; every step 
+was a struggle, as if she were pulling her feet out of ankle-deep mud, and there were more steps than she 
+would have believed, a thousand thousand steps, and horror waiting on the ramparts. 
+From the high battlements of the gatehouse, the whole world spread out below them. Sansa could see 
+the Great Sept of Baelor on Visenya's hill, where her father had died. At the other end of the Street of 
+the Sisters stood the fire-blackened ruins of the Dragonpit. To the west, the swollen red sun was 
+half-hidden behind the Gate of the Gods. The salt sea was at her back, and to the south was the fish 
+market and the docks and the swirling torrent of the Blackwater Rush. And to the north . . . 
+She turned that way, and saw only the city, streets and alleys and hills and bottoms and more streets and 
+more alleys and the stone of distant walls. Yet she knew that beyond them was open country, farms and 
+fields and forests, and beyond that, north and north and north again, stood Winterfell. 
+"What are you looking at?" Joffrey said. "This is what I wanted you to see, right here." 
+A thick stone parapet protected the outer edge of the rampart, reaching as high as Sansa's chin, with 
+crenellations cut into it every five feet for archers. The heads were mounted between the crenels, along 
+the top of the wall, impaled on iron spikes so they faced out over the city. Sansa had noted them the 
+moment she'd stepped out onto the wallwalk, but the river and the bustling streets and the setting sun 
+were ever so much prettier. He can make me look at the heads, she told herself, but he can't make me 
+see them. 
+"This one is your father," he said. "This one here. Dog, turn it around so she can see him." 
+Sandor Clegane took the head by the hair and turned it. The severed head had been dipped in tar to 
+preserve it longer. Sansa looked at 
+it calmly, not seeing it at all. It did not really look like Lord Eddard, she thought; it did not even look 
+reaL "How long do I have to look?" 
+Page 508
+
+Joffrey seemed disappointed. "Do you want to see the rest?" There was a long row of them. 
+"If it please Your Grace." 
+Joffrey marched her down the wallwalk, past a dozen more heads and two empty spikes. "I'm saving 
+those for my uncle Stannis and my uncle Renly," he explained. The other heads had been dead and 
+mounted much longer than her father. Despite the tar, most were long past being recognizable. The king 
+pointed to one and said, "That's your septa there," but Sansa could not even have told that it was a 
+woman. The jaw had rotted off her face, and birds had eaten one ear and most of a cheek. 
+Sansa had wondered what had happened to Septa Mordane, although she supposed she had known all 
+along. "Why did you kill her?" she asked. "She was godsworn . . ." 
+"She was a traitor." Joffrey looked pouty; somehow she was upsetting him. "You haven't said what you 
+mean to give me for my name day. Maybe I should give you something instead, would you like that?" 
+"If it please you, my lord," Sansa said. 
+When he smiled, she knew he was mocking her. "Your brother is a traitor too, you know." He turned 
+Septa Mordane's head back around. "I remember your brother from Winterfell. My dog called him the 
+lord of the wooden sword. Didn't you, dog?" 
+"Did IT' the Hound replied. "I don't recall." 
+Joffrey gave a petulant shrug. "Your brother defeated my uncle Jaime. My mother says it was treachery 
+and deceit. She wept when she heard. Women are all weak, even her, though she pretends she isn't. She 
+says we need to stay in King's Landing in case my other uncles attack, but I don't care. After my name 
+day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa. 
+Your brother's head." 
+A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my brother will give me your 
+Page 509
+
+head." 
+Joffrey scowled. "You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord. Ser Meryn, 
+teach her." 
+This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he struck her. He hit her 
+twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her lip split and blood ran down her chin, to mingle with the 
+salt of her tears. 
+"You shouldn't be crying all the time," Joffrey told her. "You're more pretty when you smile and laugh." 
+Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if she did not, but it was no 
+good, the king still shook his head. "Wipe off the blood, you're all messy." 
+The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a 
+long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He 
+was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told 
+herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn't matter 
+at all. 
+"Here, girl." Sandor Clegane knelt before her, between her and Joffrey. With a delicacy surprising in 
+such a big man, he dabbed at the blood welling from her broken lip. 
+The moment was gone. Sansa lowered her eyes. "Thank you," she said when he was done. She was a 
+good girl, and always remembered her courtesies. 
+DAENERYS 
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+
+Wings shadowed her fever dreams. "You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" 
+She was walking down a long hall beneath high stone arches. She could not look behind her, must not 
+look behind her. There was a door ahead of her, tiny with distance, but even from afar, she saw that it 
+was painted red. She walked faster, and her bare feet left bloody footprints on the stone. 
+"You don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" 
+She saw sunlight on the Dothraki sea, the living plain, rich with the smells of earth and death. Wind 
+stirred the grasses, and they rippled like water. Drogo held her in strong arms, and his hand stroked her 
+sex and opened her and woke that sweet wetness that was his alone, and the stars smiled down on them, 
+stars in a daylight sky. "Home," she whispered as he entered her and filled her with his seed, but suddenly 
+the stars were gone, and across the blue sky swept the great wings, and the world took flame. 
+". . . don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" 
+Ser Jorah's face was drawn and sorrowful. "Rhaegar was the last dragon," he told her. He warmed 
+translucent hands over a glowing brazier where stone eggs smouldered red as coals. One moment he was 
+there and the next he was fading, his flesh colorless, less substantial than the wind. "The last dragon," he 
+whispered, thin as a wisp, and was 
+gone. She felt the dark behind her, and the red door seemed farther away than ever. 
+". . . don't want to wake the dragon, do you?" 
+Viserys stood before her, screaming. "The dragon does not beg, slut. You do not command the dragon. 
+I am the dragon, and I will be crowned." The molten gold trickled down his face like wax, burning deep 
+channels in his flesh. "I am the dragon and I will be crowned!" he shrieked, and his fingers snapped like 
+snakes, biting at her nipples, pinching, twisting, even as his eyes burst and ran like jelly down seared and 
+blackened cheeks. 
+Page 511
+
+". . . don't want to wake the dragon 
+The red door was so far ahead of her, and she could feel the icy breath behind, sweeping up on her. If it 
+caught her she would die a death that was more than death, howling forever alone in the darkness. She 
+began to run. 
+". . . don't want to wake the dragon 
+She could feel the heat inside her, a terrible burning in her womb. Her son was tall and proud, with 
+Drogo's copper skin and her own silver-gold hair, violet eyes shaped like almonds. And he smiled for her 
+and began to lift his hand toward hers, but when he opened his mouth the fire poured out. She saw his 
+heart burning through his chest, and in an instant he was gone, consumed like a moth by a candle, turned 
+to ash. She wept for her child, the promise of a sweet mouth on her breast, but her tears turned to steam 
+as they touched her skin. 
+". . . want to wake the dragon . . . " 
+Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. 
+They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, 
+tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever 
+they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great 
+knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning 
+blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew. 
+wake the dragon 
+The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold 
+receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the 
+green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She 
+could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and 
+arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door. 
+Page 512
+
+"... the dragon . . . " 
+And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through 
+the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." 
+Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own. 
+After that, for a long time, there was only the pain, the fire within her, and the whisperings of stars. 
+She woke to the taste of ashes. 
+"No," she moaned, "no, please." 
+"Khaleesi?" Jhiqui hovered over her, a frightened doe. 
+The tent was drenched in shadow, still and close. Flakes of ash drifted upward from a brazier, and Dany 
+followed them with her eyes through the smoke hole above. Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. 
+But it was only a dream. "Help me," she whispered, struggling to rise. "Bring me . . ." Her voice was raw 
+as a wound, and she could not think what she wanted. Why did she hurt so much? It was as if her body 
+had been torn to pieces and remade from the scraps. "I want . . ." 
+"Yes, Khaleesi." Quick as that Jhiqui was gone, bolting from the tent, shouting. Dany needed . . . 
+something . . . someone . . . what? It was important, she knew. It was the only thing in the world that 
+mattered. She rolled onto her side and got an elbow under her, fighting the blanket tangled about her 
+legs. It was so hard to move. The world swam dizzily. I have to . . . 
+They found her on the carpet, crawling toward her dragon eggs. Ser Jorah Mormont lifted her in his 
+arms and carried her back to her sleeping silks, while she struggled feebly against him. Over his shoulder 
+she saw her three handmaids, Jhogo with his little wisp of mustache, and the flat broad face of Mirri Maz 
+Duur. "I must," she tried to tell them, "I have to . . ." 
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+
+. . . sleep, Princess," Ser Jorah said. No," Dany said. "Please. Please." 
+"Yes." He covered her with silk, though she was burning. "Sleep and grow strong again, Khaleesi. Come 
+back to us." And then Mirri Maz Duur was there, the maegi, tipping a cup against her lips. She tasted 
+sour milk, and something else, something thick and bitter. Warm liquid ran down her chin. Somehow she 
+swallowed. The tent grew dimmer, and sleep took her again. This time she did not dream. She floated, 
+serene and at peace, on a black sea that knew no shore. 
+After a time-a night, a day, a year, she could not say-she woke again. The tent was dark, its silken walls 
+flapping like wings when the wind gusted outside. This time Dany did not attempt to rise. "Irri," she 
+called, "Jhiqui. Doreah." They were there at once. "My throat is dry," she said, "so dry," and they 
+brought her water. It was warm and flat, yet Dany drank it eagerly, and sent Jhiqui for more. Irri 
+dampened a soft cloth and stroked her brow. "I have been sick," Dany said. The Dothraki girl nodded. 
+"How long?" The cloth was soothing, but Irri seemed so sad, it frightened her. 'Eong, " she whispered. 
+When Jhiqui returned with more water, Mirri Maz Duur came with her, eyes heavy from sleep. "Drink," 
+she said, lifting Dany's head to the cup once more, but this time it was only wine. Sweet, sweet wine. 
+Dany drank, and lay back, listening to the soft sound of her own breathing. She could feel the heaviness 
+in her limbs, as sleep crept in to fill her up once more. "Bring me . . ." she murmured, her voice slurred 
+and drowsy. "Bring . . . I want to hold . . ." 
+"Yes?" the maegi asked. "What is it you wish, Khaleesi?" 
+"Bring me . . . egg . . . dragon's egg . . . please . . ." Her lashes turned to lead, and she was too weary to 
+hold them up. 
+When she woke the third time, a shaft of golden sunlight was pouring through the smoke hole of the tent, 
+and her arms were wrapped around a dragon's egg. It was the pale one, its scales the color of butter 
+cream, veined with whorls of gold and bronze, and Dany could feel the heat of it. Beneath her bedsilks, a 
+fine sheen of perspiration covered her bare skin. Dragondew, she thought. Her fingers trailed lightly 
+across the surface of the shell, tracing the wisps of gold, and deep in the stone she felt something twist 
+and stretch in response. It did not frighten her. All her fear was gone, burned away. 
+Page 514
+
+Dany touched her brow. Under the film of sweat, her skin was cool to the touch, her fever gone. She 
+made herself sit. There was a moment of dizziness, and the deep ache between her thighs. Yet she felt 
+strong. Her maids came running at the sound of her voice. "Water," she told them, "a flagon of water, 
+cold as you can find it. And fruit, I think. Dates." 
+"As you say, Khaleesi." 
+"I want Ser Jorah," she said, standing. Jhiqui brought a sandsilk robe and draped it over her shoulders. 
+"And a warm bath, and Mirri Maz Duur, and . . ." Memory came back to her all at once, and she 
+faltered. "Khal Drogo," she forced herself to say, watching their faces with dread. "Is he-T' 
+"The khal lives," Irri answered quietly . . . yet Dany saw a darkness in her eyes when she said the words, 
+and no sooner had she spoken than she rushed away to fetch water. 
+She turned to Doreah. "Tell me." 
+A ... I shall bring Ser Jorah," the Lysene girl said, bowing her head and fleeing the tent. 
+Jhiqui would have run as well, but Dany caught her by the wrist and held her captive. "What is it? I must 
+know. Drogo . . . and my child." Why had she not remembered the child until now? "My son . . . Rhaego 
+. . . where is he? I want him." 
+Her handmaid lowered her eyes. "The boy . . . he did not live, Khaleesi." Her voice was a frightened 
+whisper. 
+Dany released her wrist. My son is dead, she thought as Jhiqui left the tent. She had known somehow. 
+She had known since she woke the first time to Jhiqui's tears. No, she had known before she woke. Her 
+dream came back to her, sudden and vivid, and she remembered the tall man with the copper skin and 
+long silver-gold braid, bursting into flame. 
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+
+She should weep, she knew, yet her eyes were dry as ash. She had wept in her dream, and the tears 
+had turned to steam on her cheeks. All the grief has been burned out of me, she told herself. She felt sad, 
+and yet . . . she could feel Rhaego receding from her, as if he had never been. 
+Ser Jorah and Mirri Maz Duur entered a few moments later, and found Dany standing over the other 
+dragon's eggs, the two still in their chest. It seemed to her that they felt as hot as the one she had slept 
+with, which was passing strange. "Ser Jorah, come here," she said. She took his hand and placed it on 
+the black egg with the scarlet swirls. "What do you feel?" 
+"Shell, hard as rock." The knight was wary. "Scales." 
+"Heat?" 
+"No. Cold stone." He took his hand away. "Princess, are you well? Should you be up, weak as you 
+are?" 
+"Weak? I am strong, Jorah." To please him, she reclined on a pile of cushions. "Tell me how my child 
+died." 
+"He never lived, my princess. The women say He faltered, and Dany saw how the flesh hung loose on 
+him, and the way he limped when he moved. 
+"Tell me. Tell me what the women say." 
+He turned his face away. His eyes were haunted. "They say the child was . . ." 
+She waited, but Ser Jorah could not say it. His face grew dark with shame. He looked half a corpse 
+himself. 
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+
+"Monstrous," Mirri Maz Duur finished for him. The knight was a powerful man, yet Dany understood in 
+that moment that the maegi was stronger, and crueler, and infinitely more dangerous. "Twisted. I drew 
+him forth myself. He was scaled like a lizard, blind, with the stub of a tail and small leather wings like the 
+wings of a bat. When I touched him, the flesh sloughed off the bone, and inside he was full of 
+graveworms and the stink of corruption. He had been dead for years." 
+Darkness, Dany thought. The terrible darkness sweeping up behind to devour her. If she looked back 
+she was lost. "My son was alive and strong when Ser Jorah carried me into this tent," she said. "I could 
+feel him kicking, fighting to be born." 
+"That may be as it may be," answered Mirri Maz Duur, "yet the creature that came forth from your 
+womb was as I said. Death was in that tent, Khaleesi." 
+"Only shadows," Ser Jorah husked, but Dany could hear the doubt in his voice. "I saw, maegi. I saw 
+you, alone, dancing with the shadows. " 
+"The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said. "Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold 
+them back." 
+Ser Jorah had killed her son, Dany knew. He had done what he did for love and loyalty, yet he had 
+carried her into a place no living man should go and fed her baby to the darkness. He knew it too; the 
+grey face, the hollow eyes, the limp. "The shadows have touched you too, Ser Jorah," she told him. The 
+knight made no reply. Dany turned to the godswife. "You warned me that only death could pay for life. I 
+thought you meant the horse." 
+"No," Mirri Maz Duur said. "That was a lie you told yourself. You knew the price." 
+Had she? Had she? If I look back I am lost. "The price was paid," Dany said. "The horse, my child, 
+Quaro and Qotho, Haggo and Cohollo. The price was paid and paid and paid." She rose from her 
+cushions. "Where is Khal Drogo? Show him to me, godswife, maegi, bloodmage, whatever you are. 
+Page 517
+
+Show me Khal Drogo. Show me what I bought with my son's life." 
+"As you command, Khaleesi," the old woman said. "Come, I will take you to him." 
+Dany was weaker than she knew. Ser Jorah slipped an arm around her and helped her stand. "Time 
+enough for this later, my princess," he said quietly. 
+"I would see him now, Ser Jorah." 
+After the dimness of the tent, the world outside was blinding bright. The sun burned like molten gold, and 
+the land was seared and empty. Her handmaids waited with fruit and wine and water, and Jhogo moved 
+close to help Ser Jorah support her. Aggo and Rakharo stood behind. The glare of sun on sand made it 
+hard to see more, until Dany 
+raised her hand to shade her eyes. She saw the ashes of a fire, a few score horses milling listlessly and 
+searching for a bite of grass, a scattering of tents and bedrolls. A small crowd of children had gathered to 
+watch her, and beyond she glimpsed women going about their work, and withered old men staring at the 
+flat blue sky with tired eyes, swatting feebly at bloodflies. A count might show a hundred people, no 
+more. Where the other forty thousand had made their camp, only the wind and dust lived now. 
+"Drogo's khalasar is gone," she said. 
+"A khal who cannot ride is no khal," said Jhogo. 
+"The Dothraki follow only the strong," Ser Jorah said. "I am sorry, my princess. There was no way to 
+hold them. Ko Pono left first, naming himself Khal Pono, and many followed him. Jhaqo was not long to 
+do the same. The rest slipped away night by night, in large bands and small. There are a dozen new 
+khalasars on the Dothraki sea, where once there was only Drogo's." 
+Page 518
+
+"The old remain," said Aggo. "The frightened, the weak, and the sick. And we who swore. We remain." 
+"They took Khal Drogo's herds, Khaleesi," Rakharo said. "We were too few to stop them. It is the right 
+of the strong to take from the weak. They took many slaves as well, the khal's and yours, yet they left 
+some few." 
+"Eroeh?" asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb 
+Men. 
+"Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo's bloodrider now," said Jhogo. "He mounted her high and low and 
+gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done 
+with her, they cut her throat." 
+"It was her fate, Khaleesi," said Aggo. 
+If I look back I am lost. "It was a cruel fate," Dany said, "yet not so cruel as Mago's will be. I promise 
+you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I 
+swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago 
+and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh." 
+The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. "Khaleesi, " the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, 
+"Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back." 
+She lifted her head. "And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of 
+Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon's daughter, 
+and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo." 
+He was lying on the bare red earth, staring up at the sun. 
+Page 519
+
+A dozen bloodflies had settled on his body, though he did not seem to feel them. Dany brushed them 
+away and knelt beside him. His eyes were wide open but did not see, and she knew at once that he was 
+blind. When she whispered his name, he did not seem to hear. The wound on his breast was as healed as 
+it would ever be, the scar that covered it grey and red and hideous. 
+"Why is he out here alone, in the sun?" she asked them. 
+"He seems to like the warmth, Princess," Ser Jorah said. "His eyes follow the sun, though he does not 
+see it. He can walk after a fashion. He will go where you lead him, but no farther. He will eat if you put 
+food in his mouth, drink if you dribble water on his lips." 
+Dany kissed her sun-and-stars gently on the brow, and stood to face Mirri Maz Duur. "Your spells are 
+costly, maegi." 
+"He lives," said Mirri Maz Duur. "You asked for life. You paid for life." 
+"This is not life, for one who was as Drogo was. His life was laughter, and meat roasting over a firepit, 
+and a horse between his legs. His life was an arakh in his hand and his bells ringing in his hair as he rode 
+to meet an enemy. His life was his bloodriders, and me, and the son I was to give him." 
+Mirri Maz Duur made no reply. 
+"When will he be as he was?" Dany demanded. 
+"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," said Mirri Maz Duur. "When the seas go dry and 
+mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. 
+Then he will return, and not before." 
+Dany gestured at Ser Jorah and the others. "Leave us. I would speak with this maegi alone." Mormont 
+and the Dothraki withdrew. "You knew," Dany said when they were gone. She ached, inside and out, but 
+Page 520
+
+her fury gave her strength. "You* knew what I was buying, and you knew the price, and yet you let me 
+pay it." 
+"It was wrong of them to burn my temple," the heavy, flat-nosed woman said placidly. "That angered the 
+Great Shepherd." 
+"This was no god's work," Dany said coldly. If I look back I am lost. "You cheated me. You murdered 
+my child within me." 
+"The stallion who mounts the world will burn no cities now. His khalasar shall trample no nations into 
+dusU, 
+"I spoke for you," she said, anguished. "I saved you." 
+"Saved me?" The Lhazareen woman spat. "Three riders had taken 
+me, not as a man takes a woman but from behind, as a dog takes a bitch. The fourth was in me when 
+you rode past. How then did you save me? I saw my god's house burn, where I had healed good men 
+beyond counting. My home they burned as well, and in the street I saw piles of heads. I saw the head of 
+a baker who made my bread. I saw the head of a boy I had saved from deadeye fever, only three moons 
+past. I heard children crying as the riders drove them off with their whips. Tell me again what you saved." 
+"Your life." 
+Mirri Maz Duur laughed cruelly. "Look to your khal and see what life is worth, when all the rest is gone." 
+Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, 
+but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany could 
+have her head off . . . yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death? 
+Page 521
+
+They led Khal Drogo back to her tent, and Dany commanded them to fill a tub, and this time there was 
+no blood in the water. She bathed him herself, washing the dirt and the dust from his arms and chest, 
+cleaning his face with a soft cloth, soaping his long black hair and combing the knots and tangles from it 
+till it shone again as she remembered. It was well past dark before she was done, and Dany was 
+exhausted. She stopped for drink and food, but it was all she could do to nibble at a fig and keep down a 
+mouthful of water. Sleep would have been a release, but she had slept enough . . . too long, in truth. She 
+owed this night to Drogo, for all the nights that had been, and yet might be. 
+The memory of their first ride was with her when she led him out into the darkness, for the Dothraki 
+believed that all things of importance in a man's life must be done beneath the open sky. She told herself 
+that there were powers stronger than hatred, and spells older and truer than any the maegi had learned in 
+Asshai. The night was black and moonless, but overhead a million stars burned bright. She took that for 
+an omen. 
+No soft blanket of grass welcomed them here, only the hard dusty ground, bare and strewn with stones. 
+No trees stirred in the wind, and there was no stream to soothe her fears with the gentle music of water. 
+Dany told herself that the stars would be enough. "Remember, Drogo," she whispered. "Remember our 
+first ride together, the day we wed. Remember the night we made Rhaego, with the khalasar all around 
+us and your eyes on my face. Remember how cool and clean 
+the water was in the Womb of the World. Remember, my sun-andstars. Remember, and come back to 
+me." 
+The birth had left her too raw and torn to take him inside of her, as she would have wanted, but Doreah 
+had taught her other ways. Dany used her hands, her mouth, her breasts. She raked him with her nails 
+and covered him with kisses and whispered and prayed and told him stories, and by the end she had 
+bathed him with her tears. Yet Drogo did not feel, or speak, or rise. 
+And when the bleak dawn broke over an empty horizon, Dany knew that he was truly lost to her. 
+"When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east," she said sadly. "When the seas go dry and 
+mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When my womb quickens again, and I bear a living child. Then 
+you will return, my sun-and-stars, and not before." 
+Page 522
+
+Never, the darkness cried, never never never. 
+Inside the tent Dany found a cushion, soft silk stuffed with feathers. She clutched it to her breasts as she 
+walked back out to Drogo, to her sun-and-stars. If I look back I am lost. It hurt even to walk, and she 
+wanted to sleep, to sleep and not to dream. 
+She knelt, kissed Drogo on the lips, and pressed the cushion down across his face. 
+TYRION 
+They have my son," Tywin Lannister said. 
+"They do, my lord." The messenger's voice was dulled by "Texhaustion. On the breast of his torn 
+surcoat, the brindled boar of Crakehall was half-obscured by dried blood. 
+One of your sons, Tyrion thought. He took a sip of wine and said not a word, thinking of Jaime. When 
+he lifted his arm, pain shot through his elbow, reminding him of his own brief taste of battle. He loved his 
+brother, but he would not have wanted to be with him in the Whispering Wood for all the gold in Casterly 
+Rock. 
+His lord father's assembled captains and bannermen had fallen very quiet as the courier told his tale. The 
+only sound was the crackle and hiss of the log burning in the hearth at the end of the long, drafty common 
+room. 
+After the hardships of the long relentless drive south, the prospect of even a single night in an inn had 
+cheered Tyrion mightily . . . though he rather wished it had not been this inn again, with all its memories. 
+His father had set a grueling pace, and it had taken its toll. Men wounded in the battle kept up as best 
+they could or were abandoned to fend for themselves. Every morning they left a few more by the 
+roadside, men who went to sleep never to wake. Every afternoon a few more collapsed along the way. 
+And every evening a few more 
+Page 523
+
+deserted, stealing off into the dusk. Tyrion had been half-tempted to go with them. 
+He had been upstairs, enjoying the comfort of a featherbed and the warmth of Shae's body beside him, 
+when his squire had woken him to say that a rider had arrived with dire news of Riverrun. So it had all 
+been for nothing. The rush south, the endless forced marches, the bodies left beside the road . . . all for 
+naught. Robb Stark had reached Riverrun days and days ago. 
+"How could this happen?" Ser Harys Swyft moaned. "How? Even after the Whispering Wood, you had 
+Riverrun ringed in iron, surrounded by a great host . . . what madness made Ser Jaime decide to split his 
+men into three separate camps? Surely he knew how vulnerable that would leave them?" 
+Better than you, you chinless craven, Tyrion thought. Jaime might have lost Riverrun, but it angered him 
+to hear his brother slandered by the likes of Swyft, a shameless lickspittle whose greatest 
+accomplishment was marrying his equally chinless daughter to Ser Kevan, and thereby attaching himself 
+to the Lannisters. 
+"I would have done the same," his uncle responded, a good deal more calmly than Tyrion might have. 
+"You have never seen Riverrun, Ser Harys, or you would know that Jaime had little choice in the matter. 
+The castle is situated at the end of the point of land where the Tumblestone flows into the Red Fork of 
+the Trident. The rivers form two sides of a triangle, and when danger threatens, the Tullys open their 
+sluice gates upstream to create a wide moat on the third side, turning Riverrun into an island. The walls 
+rise sheer from the water, and from their towers the defenders have a commanding view of the opposite 
+shores for many leagues around. To cut off all the approaches, a besieger must needs place one camp 
+north of the Tumblestone, one south of the Red Fork, and a third between the rivers, west of the moat. 
+There is no other way, none." 
+"Ser Kevan speaks truly, my lords," the courier said. "We'd built palisades of sharpened stakes around 
+the camps, yet it was not enough, not with no warning and the rivers cutting us off from each other. They 
+came down on the north camp first. No one was expecting an attack. Marq Piper had been raiding our 
+supply trains, but he had no more than fifty men. Ser Jaime had gone out to deal with them the night 
+before . . . well, with what we thought was them. We were told the Stark host was east of the Green 
+Fork, marching south . . ." 
+"And your outriders?" Ser Gregor Clegane's face might have been hewn from rock. The fire in the hearth 
+Page 524
+
+gave a somber orange cast to 
+his skin and put deep shadows in the hollows of his eyes. "They saw nothing? They gave you no 
+warning?" 
+The bloodstained messenger shook his head. "Our outriders had been vanishing. Marq Piper's work, we 
+thought. The ones who did come back had seen nothing." 
+"A man who sees nothing has no use for his eyes," the Mountain declared. "Cut them out and give them 
+to your next outrider. Tell him you hope that four eyes might see better than two . . . and if not, the man 
+after him will have six." 
+Lord Tywin Lannister turned his face to study Ser Gregor. Tyrion saw a glimmer of gold as the light 
+shone off his father's pupils, but he could not have said whether the look was one of approval or disgust. 
+Lord Tywin was oft quiet in council, preferring to listen before he spoke, a habit Tyrion himself tried to 
+emulate. Yet this silence was uncharacteristic even for him, and his wine was untouched. 
+"You said they came at night," Ser Kevan prompted. 
+The man gave a weary nod. "The Blacklish led the van, cutting down our sentries and clearing away the 
+palisades for the main assault. By the time our men knew what was happening, riders were pouring over 
+the ditch banks and galloping through the camp with swords and torches in hand. I was sleeping in the 
+west camp, between the rivers. When we heard the fighting and saw the tents being fired, Lord Brax led 
+us to the rafts and we tried to pole across, but the current pushed us downstream and the Tullys started 
+flinging rocks at us with the catapults on their walls. I saw one raft smashed to kindling and three others 
+overturned, men swept into the river and drowned . . . and those who did make it across found the 
+Starks waiting for them on the riverbanks." 
+Ser Flement Brax wore a silver-and-purple tabard and the look of a man who cannot comprehend what 
+he has just heard. "My lord father-" 
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+"Sorry, my lord," the messenger said. "Lord Brax was clad in plateand-mail when his raft overturned. He 
+was very gallant." 
+He was a fool, Tyrion thought, swirling his cup and staring down into the winy depths. Crossing a river at 
+night on a crude raft, wearing armor, with an enemy waiting on the other side-if that was gallantry, he 
+would take cowardice every time. He wondered if Lord Brax had felt especially gallant as the weight of 
+his steel pulled him under the black water. 
+"The camp between the rivers was overrun as well," the messenger was saying. "While we were trying to 
+cross, more Starks swept in from the west, two columns of armored horse. I saw Lord Umber's giant-in 
+chains and the Mallister eagle, but it was the boy who led them, with a monstrous wolf running at his 
+side. I wasn't there to see, but it's said the beast killed four men and ripped apart a dozen horses. Our 
+spearmen formed up a shieldwall and held against their first charge, but when the Tullys saw them 
+engaged, they opened the gates of Riverrun and Tytos Blackwood led a sortie across the drawbridge 
+and took them in the rear." 
+"Gods save us," Lord Lefford swore. 
+"Greatjon Umber fired the siege towers we were building, and Lord Blackwood found Ser Edmure Tully 
+in chains among the other captives, and made off with them all. Our south camp was under the command 
+of Ser Forley Prester. He retreated in good order when he saw that the other camps were lost, with two 
+thousand spears and as many bowmen, but the Tyroshi sellsword who led his freeriders struck his 
+banners and went over to the foe." 
+"Curse the man." His uncle Kevan sounded more angry than surprised. "I warned Jaime not to trust that 
+one. A man who fights for coin is loyal only to his purse." 
+Lord Tywin wove his fingers together under his chin. Only his eyes moved as he listened. His bristling 
+golden side-whiskers framed a face so still it might have been a mask, but Tyrion could see tiny beads of 
+sweat dappling his father's shaven head. 
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+"How could it happen?" Ser Harys Swyft wailed again. "Ser Jaime taken, the siege broken . . . this is a 
+catastrophe!" 
+Ser Addarn Marbrand said, "I am sure we are all grateful to you for pointing out the obvious, Ser Harys. 
+The question is, what shall we do about it?" 
+"What can we do? Jaime's host is all slaughtered or taken or put to flight, and the Starks and the Tullys 
+sit squarely across our line of supply. We are cut off from the west! They can march on Casterly Rock if 
+they so choose, and what's to stop them? My lords, we are beaten. We must sue for peace." 
+"Peace?" Tyrion swirled his wine thoughtfully, took a deep draft, and hurled his empty cup to the floor, 
+where it shattered into a thousand pieces. "There's your peace, Ser Harys. My sweet nephew broke it 
+for good and all when he decided to ornament the Red Keep with Lord Eddard's head. You'll have an 
+easier time drinking wine from that cup than you will convincing Robb Stark to make peace now. He's 
+winning . . . or hadn't you noticed?" 
+"Two battles do not make a war," Ser Addam insisted. "We are far from lost. I should welcome the 
+chance to try my own steel against this Stark boy." 
+"Perhaps they would consent to a truce, and allow us to trade our prisoners for theirs," offered Lord 
+Lefford. 
+"Unless they trade three-for-one, we still come out light on those scales," Tyrion said acidly. "And what 
+are we to offer for my brother? Lord Eddard's rotting head?" 
+"I had heard that Queen Cersei has the Hand's daughters," Lefford said hopefully. "If we give the lad his 
+sisters back . . ." 
+Ser Addam snorted disdainfully. "He would have to be an utter ass to trade Jaime Lannister's life for two 
+girls." 
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+
+"Then we must ransom Ser Jaime, whatever it costs," Lord Lefford said. 
+Tyrion rolled his eyes. "If the Starks feel the need for gold, they can melt down Jaime's armor." 
+"if we ask for a truce, they will think us weak," Ser Addarn argued. "We should march on them at once." 
+"Surely our friends at court could be prevailed upon to join us with fresh troops," said Ser Harys. "And 
+someone might return to Casterly Rock to raise a new host." 
+Lord Tywin Lannister rose to his feet. "They have my son, " he said once more, in a voice that cut 
+through the babble like a sword through suet. "Leave me. All of you." 
+Ever the soul of obedience, Tyrion rose to depart with the rest, but his father gave him a look. "Not you, 
+Tyrion. Remain. And you as well, Kevan. The rest of you, out." 
+Tyrion eased himself back onto the bench, startled into speechlessness. Ser Kevan crossed the room to 
+the wine casks. "Uncle," Tyrion called, "if you would be so kind-" 
+"Here." His father offered him his cup, the wine untouched. 
+Now Tyrion truly was nonplussed. He drank. 
+Lord Tywin seated himself. "You have the right of it about Stark. Alive, we might have used Lord 
+Eddard to forge a peace with Winterfell and Riverrun, a peace that would have given us the time we need 
+to deal with Robert's brothers. Dead His hand curled into a fist. "Madness. Rank madness." 
+"Joff's only a boy," Tyrion pointed out. "At his age, I committed a few follies of my own." 
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+
+His father gave him a sharp look. "I suppose we ought to be grateful that he has not yet married a 
+whore." 
+Tyrion sipped at his wine, wondering how Lord Tywin would look if he flung the cup in his face. 
+"Our position is worse than you know," his father went on. "It would seem we have a new king." 
+Ser Kevan looked poleaxed. "A new-who? What have they done to Joffrey?" 
+The faintest flicker of distaste played across Lord Tywin's thin lips. "Nothing . . . yet. My grandson still 
+sits the Iron Throne, but the eunuch has heard whispers from the south. Renly Baratheon wed Margaery 
+Tyrell at Highgarden this fortnight past, and now he has claimed the crown. The bride's father and 
+brothers have bent the knee and sworn him their swords." 
+"Those are grave tidings." When Ser Kevan frowned, the furrows in his brow grew deep as canyons. 
+"My daughter commands us to ride for King's Landing at once, to defend the Red Keep against King 
+Renly and the Knight of Flowers." His mouth tightened. "Commands us, mind you. In the name of the 
+king and council." 
+"How is King Joffrey taking the news?" Tyrion asked with a certain black amusement. 
+"Cersei has not seen fit to tell him yet," Lord Tywin said. "She fears he might insist on marching against 
+Renly himself." 
+"With what army?" Tyrion asked. "You don't plan to give him this one, I hope?" 
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+"He talks of leading the City Watch," Lord Tywin said. 
+"If he takes the Watch, he'll leave the city undefended," Ser Kevan said. "And with Lord Stannis on 
+Dragonstone . . ." 
+"Yes." Lord Tywin looked down at his son. "I had thought you were the one made for motley, Tyrion, 
+but it would appear that I was wrong." 
+"Why, Father," said Tyrion, "that almost sounds like praise." He leaned forward intently. "What of 
+Stannis? He's the elder, not Renly. How does he feel about his brother's claim?" 
+His father frowned. "I have felt from the beginning that Stannis was a greater danger than all the others 
+combined. Yet he does nothing. Oh, Varys hears his whispers. Stannis is building ships, Stannis is hiring 
+sellswords, Stannis is bringing a shadowbinder from Asshai. What does it mean? Is any of it true?" He 
+gave an irritated shrug. "Kevan, bring us the map." 
+Ser Kevan did as he was bid. Lord Tywin unrolled the leather, smoothing it flat. "Jaime has left us in a 
+bad way. Roose Bolton and the remnants of his host are north of us. Our enemies hold the Twins and 
+Moat Cailin. Robb Stark sits to the west, so we cannot retreat to Lannisport and the Rock unless we 
+choose to give battle. Jaime is taken, and his army for all purposes has ceased to exist. Thoros of Myr 
+and Beric Dondarrion continue to plague our foraging parties. To our 
+east we have the Arryns, Stannis Baratheon sits on Dragonstone, and in the south Highgarden and 
+Storm's End are calling their banners." 
+Tyrion smiled crookedly. "Take heart, Father. At least Rhaegar Targaryen is still dead." 
+"I had hoped you might have more to offer us than japes, Tyrion," Lord Tywin Lannister said. 
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+
+Ser Kevan frowned over the map, forehead creasing. "Robb Stark will have Edmure Tully and the lords 
+of the Trident with him now. Their combined power may exceed our own. And with Roose Bolton 
+behind us . . . Tywin, if we remain here, I fear we might be caught between three armies." 
+"I have no intention of remaining here. We must finish our business with young Lord Stark before Renly 
+Baratheon can march from Highgarden. Bolton does not concern me. He is a wary man, and we made 
+him warier on the Green Fork. He will be slow to give pursuit. So . . . on the morrow, we make for 
+Harrenhal. Kevan, I want Ser Addam's outriders to screen our movements. Give him as many men as he 
+requires, and send them out in groups of four. I will have no vanishings." 
+"As you say, my lord, but . . . why Harrenhal? That is a grim, unlucky place. Some call it cursed." 
+"Let them," Lord Tywin said. "Unleash Ser Gregor and send him before us with his reavers. Send forth 
+Vargo Hoat and his freeriders as well, and Ser Amory Lorch. Each is to have three hundred horse. Tell 
+them I want to see the riverlands afire from the Gods Eye to the Red Fork." 
+"They will burn, my lord," Ser Kevan said, rising. "I shall give the commands." He bowed and made for 
+the door. 
+When they were alone, Lord Tywin glanced at Tyrion. "Your savages might relish a bit of rapine. Tell 
+them they may ride with Vargo Hoat and plunder as they like-goods, stock, women, they may take what 
+they want and burn the rest." 
+"Telling Shagga and Timett how to pillage is like telling a rooster how to crow," Tyrion commented, "but 
+I should prefer to keep them with me." Uncouth and unruly they might be, yet the wildlings were his, and 
+he trusted them more than any of his father's men. He was not about to hand them over. 
+"Then you had best learn to control them. I will not have the city plundered." 
+"The city?" Tyrion was lost. "What city would that be?" 
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+
+"King's Landing. I am sending you to court." 
+It was the last thing Tyrion Lannister would ever have anticipated. 
+He reached for his wine, and considered for a moment as he sipped. "And what am I to do there?" 
+"Rule," his father said curtly 
+Tyrion hooted with laughter. "My sweet sister might have a word or two to say about that!" 
+"Let her say what she likes. Her son needs to be taken in hand before he ruins us all. I blame those 
+jackanapes on the council-our friend Petyr, the venerable Grand Maester, and that cockless wonder 
+Lord Varys. What sort of counsel are they giving Joffrey when he lurches from one folly to the next? 
+Whose notion was it to make this Janos Slynt a lord? The man's father was a butcher, and they grant him 
+Harrenhal. Harrenhal, that was the seat of kings! Not that he will ever set foot inside it, if I have a say. I 
+am told he took a bloody spear for his sigil. A bloody cleaver would have been my choice." His father 
+had not raised his voice, yet 'I~rion could see the anger in the gold of his eyes. "And dismissing Selmy, 
+where was the sense in that? Yes, the man was old, but the name of Barristan the Bold still has meaning 
+in the realm. He lent honor to any man he served. Can anyone say the same of the Hound? You feed 
+your dog bones under the table, you do not seat him beside you on the high bench." He pointed a finger 
+at Tyrion's face. "If Cersei cannot curb the boy, you must. And if these councillors are playing us false . . 
+." 
+Tyrion knew. "Spikes," he sighed. "Heads. Walls." 
+"I see you have taken a few lessons from me." 
+"More than you know, Father," Tyrion answered quietly. He finished his wine and set the cup aside, 
+thoughtful. A part of him was more pleased than he cared to admit. Another part was remembering the 
+battle upriver, and wondering if he was being sent to hold the left again. "Why me?" he asked, cocking his 
+head to one side. "Why not my uncle? Why not Ser Addam or Ser Flement or Lord Serrett? Why not a . 
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+
+. . bigger man?" 
+Lord Tywin rose abruptly. "You are my son." 
+That was when he knew. You have given him up for lost, he thought. You bloody bastard, you think 
+Jaime's good as dead, so I'm all you have left. '1~rion wanted to slap him, to spit in his face, to draw his 
+dagger and cut the heart out of him and see if it was made of old hard gold, the way the smallfolks said. 
+Yet he sat there, silent and still. 
+The shards of the broken cup crunched beneath his father's heels as Lord Tywin crossed the room. 
+"One last thing," he said at the door. "You will not take the whore to court." 
+Tyrion sat alone in the common room for a long while after his father was gone. Finally he climbed the 
+steps to his cozy garret beneath 
+the bell tower. The ceiling was low, but that was scarcely a drawback for a dwarf. From the window, he 
+could see the gibbet his father had erected in the yard. The innkeep's body turned slowly on its rope 
+whenever the night wind gusted. Her flesh had grown as thin and ragged as Lannister hopes. 
+Shae murmured sleepily and rolled toward him when he sat on the edge of the featherbed. He slid his 
+hand under the blanket and cupped a soft breast, and her eyes opened. "M'lord," she said with a drowsy 
+smile. 
+When he felt her nipple stiffen, Tyrion kissed her. "I have a mind to take you to King's Landing, 
+sweetling," he whispered. 
+JON 
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+The mare whickered softly as Jon Snow tightened the cinch. "Easy, sweet lady," he said in a soft voice, 
+quieting her with a touch. Wind whispered through the stable, a cold dead breath on his face, but Jon 
+paid it no mind. He strapped his roll to the saddle, his scarred fingers stiff and clumsy. "Ghost," he called 
+softly, "to me." And the wolf was there, eyes like embers. 
+"Jon, please. You must not do this." 
+He mounted, the reins in his hand, and wheeled the horse around to face the night. Samwell Tarly stood 
+in the stable door, a full moon peering over his shoulder. He threw a giant's shadow, immense and black. 
+"Get out of my way, Sam." 
+"Jon, you can't," Sam said. "I won't let you." 
+"I would sooner not hurt you," Jon told him. "Move aside, Sam, or I'll ride you down." 
+"You won't. You have to listen to me. Please 
+Jon put his spurs to horseflesh, and the mare bolted for the door. For an instant Sam stood his ground, 
+his face as round and pale as the moon behind him, his mouth a widening 0 of surprise. At the last 
+moment, when they were almost on him, he jumped aside as Jon had known he would, stumbled, and 
+fell. The mare leapt over him, out into the night. 
+Jon raised the hood of his heavy cloak and gave the horse her head. 
+Castle Black was silent and still as he rode out, with Ghost racing at his side. Men watched from the 
+Wall behind him, he knew, but their eyes were turned north, not south. No one would see him go, no one 
+but Sam Tarly, struggling back to his feet in the dust of the old stables. He hoped Sam hadn't hurt himself, 
+falling like that. He was so heavy and so ungainly, it would be just like him to break a wrist or twist his 
+ankle getting out of the way. "I warned him," Jon said aloud. "It was nothing to do with him, anyway." He 
+flexed his burned hand as he rode, opening and closing the scarred fingers. They still pained him, but it 
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+felt good to have the wrappings off. 
+Moonlight silvered the hills as he followed the twisting ribbon of the kingsroad. He needed to get as far 
+from the Wall as he could before they realized he was gone. On the morrow he would leave the road and 
+strike out overland through field and bush and stream to throw off pursuit, but for the moment speed was 
+more important than deception. It was not as though they would not guess where he was going. 
+The Old Bear was accustomed to rise at first light, so Jon had until dawn to put as many leagues as he 
+could between him and the Wall . . . if Sam Tarly did not betray him. The fat boy was dutiful and easily 
+frightened, but he loved Jon like a brother. If questioned, Sam would doubtless tell them the truth, but 
+Jon could not imagine him braving the guards in front of the Mng's Tower to wake Mormont from sleep. 
+When Jon did not appear to fetch the Old Bear's breakfast from the kitchen, they'd look in his cell and 
+find Longclaw on the bed. It had been hard to abandon it, but Jon was not so lost to honor as to take it 
+with him. Even Jorah Mormont had not done that, when he fled in disgrace. Doubtless Lord Mormont 
+would find someone more worthy of the blade. Jon felt bad when he thought of the old man. He knew his 
+desertion would be salt in the still-raw wound of his son's disgrace. That seemed a poor way to repay 
+him for his trust, but it couldn't be helped. No matter what he did, Jon felt as though he were betraying 
+someone. 
+Even now, he did not know if he was doing the honorable thing. The southron had it easier. They had 
+their septons to talk to, someone to tell them the gods' will and help sort out right from wrong. But the 
+Starks worshiped the old gods, the nameless gods, and if the heart trees heard, they did not speak. 
+When the last lights of Castle Black vanished behind him, Jon slowed his mare to a walk. He had a long 
+journey ahead and only the one horse to see him through. There were holdfasts and farming villages along 
+the road south where he might be able to trade the mare 
+for a fresh mount when he needed one, but not if she were injured or blown. 
+He would need to find new clothes soon; most like, he'd need to steal them. He was clad in black from 
+head to heel; high leather riding boots, roughspun breeches and tunic, sleeveless leather jerkin, and heavy 
+wool cloak. His longsword and dagger were sheathed in black moleskin, and the hauberk and coif in his 
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+
+saddlebag were black ringmail. Any bit of it could mean his death if he were taken. A stranger wearing 
+black was viewed with cold suspicion in every village and holdfast north of the Neck, and men would 
+soon be watching for him. Once Maester Aemon's ravens took flight, Jon knew he would find no safe 
+haven. Not even at Winterfell. Bran might want to let him in, but Maester Luwin had better sense. He 
+would bar the gates and send Jon away, as he should. Better not to call there at all. 
+Yet he saw the castle clear in his mind's eye, as if he had left it only yesterday; the towering granite walls, 
+the Great Hall with its smells of smoke and dog and roasting meat, his father's solar, the turret room 
+where he had slept. Part of him wanted nothing so much as to hear Bran laugh again, to sup on one of 
+Gage's beef-and-bacon pies, to listen to Old Nan tell her tales of the children of the forest and Florian the 
+Fool. 
+But he had not left the Wall for that; he had left because he was after all his father's son, and Robb's 
+brother. The gift of a sword, even a sword as fine as Longclaw, did not make him a Mormont. Nor was 
+he Aemon Targaryen. Three times the old man had chosen, and three times he had chosen honor, but 
+that was him. Even now, Jon could not decide whether the maester had stayed because he was weak 
+and craven, or because he was strong and true. Yet he understood what the old man had meant, about 
+the pain of choosing; he understood that all too well. 
+Tyrion Lannister had claimed that most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it, but Jon was 
+done with denials. He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard and oathbreaker, motherless, friendless, and 
+damned. For the rest of his life-however long that might be-he would be condemned to be an outsider, 
+the silent man standing in the shadows who dares not speak his true name. Wherever he might go 
+throughout the Seven Kingdoms, he would need to live a lie, lest every man's hand be raised against him. 
+But it made no matter, so long as he lived long enough to take his place by his brother's side and help 
+avenge his father. 
+He remembered Robb as he had last seen him, standing in the yard with snow melting in his auburn hair. 
+Jon would have to come to him 
+in secret, disguised. He tried to imagine the look on Robb's face when he revealed himself. His brother 
+would shake his head and smile, and he'd say ... he'd say ... 
+He could not see the smile. Hard as he tried, he could not see it. He found himself thinking of the 
+deserter his father had beheaded the day they'd found the direwolves. "You said the words," Lord 
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+Eddard had told him. "You took a vow, before your brothers, before the old gods and the new." 
+Desmond and Fat Tom had dragged the man to the stump. Bran's eyes had been wide as saucers, and 
+Jon had to remind him to keep his pony in hand. He remembered the look on Father's face when Theon 
+Greyjoy brought forth Ice, the spray of blood on the snow, the way Theon had kicked the head when it 
+came rolling at his feet. 
+He wondered what Lord Eddard might have done if the deserter had been his brother Benjen instead of 
+that ragged stranger. Would it have been any different? It must, surely, surely . . . and Robb would 
+welcome him, for a certainty. He had to, or else . . . 
+It did not bear thinking about. Pain throbbed, deep in his fingers, as he clutched the reins. Jon put his 
+heels into his horse and broke into a gallop, racing down the kingsroad, as if to outrun his doubts. Jon 
+was not afraid of death, but he did not want to die like that, trussed and bound and beheaded like a 
+common brigand. If he must perish, let it be with a sword in his hand, fighting his father's killers. He was 
+no true Stark, had never been one . . . but he could die like one. Let them say that Eddard Stark had 
+fathered four sons, not three. 
+Ghost kept pace with them for almost half a mile, red tongue lolling from his mouth. Man and horse alike 
+lowered their heads as he asked the mare for more speed. The wolf slowed, stopped, watching, his eyes 
+glowing red in the moonlight. He vanished behind, but Jon knew he would follow, at his own pace. 
+Scattered lights flickered through the trees ahead of him, on both sides of the road: Mole's Town. A dog 
+barked as he rode through, and he heard a mule's raucous haw from the stable, but otherwise the village 
+was still. Here and there the glow of hearth fires shone through shuttered windows, leaking between 
+wooden slats, but only a few. 
+Mole's Town was bigger than it seemed, but three quarters of it was under the ground, in deep warm 
+cellars connected by a maze of tunnels. Even the whorehouse was down there, nothing on the surface but 
+a wooden shack no bigger than a privy, with a red lantern hung over the door. On the Wall, he'd heard 
+men call the whores "buried treasures." He wondered whether any of his brothers in black were down 
+A GAME OF 'FHRONES 679 
+there tonight, mining. That was oathbreaking too, yet no one seemed to care. 
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+Not until he was well beyond the village did Jon slow again. By then both he and the mare were damp 
+with sweat. He dismounted, shivering, his burned hand aching. A bank of melting snow lay under the 
+trees, bright in the moonlight, water trickling off to form small shallow pools. Jon squatted and brought his 
+hands together, cupping the runoff between his fingers. The snowmelt was icy cold. He drank, and 
+splashed some on his face, until his cheeks tingled. His fingers were throbbing worse than they had in 
+days, and his head was pounding too. I am doing the right thing, he told himself, so why do I feel so bad? 
+The horse was well lathered, so Jon took the lead and walked her for a while. The road was scarcely 
+wide enough for two riders to pass abreast, its surface cut by tiny streams and littered with stone. That 
+run had been truly stupid, an invitation to a broken neck. Jon wondered what had gotten into him. Was 
+he in such a great rush to die? 
+Off in the trees, the distant scream of some frightened animal made him look up. His mare whinnied 
+nervously. Had his wolf found some prey? He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Ghost!" he shouted. 
+"Ghost, to me." The only answer was a rush of wings behind him as an owl took flight. 
+Frowning, Jon continued on his way. He led the mare for half an hour, until she was dry. Ghost did not 
+appear. Jon wanted to mount up and ride again, but he was concerned about his missing wolf. "Ghost, " 
+he called again. "Where are you? To me! Ghost!" Nothing in these woods could trouble a direwolf, even 
+a half-grown direwolf, unless . . . no, Ghost was too smart to attack a bear, and if there was a wolf pack 
+anywhere close Jon would have surely heard them howling. 
+He should eat, he decided. Food would settle his stomach and give Ghost the chance to catch up. There 
+was no danger yet; Castle Black still slept. In his saddlebag, he found a biscuit, a piece of cheese, and a 
+small withered brown apple. He'd brought salt beef as well, and a rasher of bacon he'd filched from the 
+kitchens, but he would save the meat for the morrow. After it was gone he'd need to hunt, and that would 
+slow him. 
+Jon sat under the trees and ate his biscuit and cheese while his mare grazed along the kingsroad. He kept 
+the apple for last. It had gone a little soft, but the flesh was still tart and juicy. He was down to the core 
+when he heard the sounds: horses, and from the north. Quickly Jon leapt up and strode to his mare. 
+Could he outrun them? No, they were too close, they'd hear him for a certainty, and if they were from 
+Castle Black . . . 
+He led the mare off the road, behind a thick stand of grey-green sentinels. "Ouiet now," he said in a 
+Page 538
+
+hushed voice, crouching down to peer through the branches. If the gods were kind, the riders would pass 
+by. Likely as not, they were only smallfolk from Mole's Town, farmers on their way to their fields, 
+although what they were doing out in the middle of the night . . . 
+He listened to the sound of hooves growing steadily louder as they trotted briskly down the kingsroad. 
+From the sound, there were five or six of them at the least. Their voices drifted through the trees. 
+". . . certain he came this way?". 
+"We can't be certain." 
+"He could have ridden east, for all you know. Or left the road to cut through the woods. That's what I'd 
+do." 
+"In the dark? Stupid. If you didn't fall off your horse and break your neck, you'd get lost and wind up 
+back at the Wall when the sun came up. 
+"I would not." Grenn sounded peeved. "I'd just ride south, you can tell south by the stars." 
+"What if the sky was cloudy?" Pyp asked. 
+"Then I wouldn't go." 
+Another voice broke in. "You know where Id be if it was me? I'd be in Mole's Town, digging for buried 
+treasure." Toad's shrill laughter boomed through the trees. Jon's mare snorted. 
+"Keep quiet, all of you," Haider said. "I thought I heard something." 
+"Where? I didn't hear anything." The horses stopped. 
+Page 539
+
+"You can't hear yourself fart." 
+"I can too," Grenn insisted. 
+"Quiet!" 
+They all fell silent, listening. Jon found himself holding his breath. Sam, he thought. He hadn't gone to the 
+Old Bear, but he hadn't gone to bed either, he'd woken the other boys. Damn them all. Come dawn, if 
+they were not in their beds, they'd be named deserters too. What did they think they were doing? 
+The hushed silence seemed to stretch on and on. From where Jon crouched, he could see the legs of 
+their horses through the branches. Finally Pyp spoke up. "What did you hear?" 
+"I don't know," Haider admitted. "A sound, I thought it might have been a horse but . . ." 
+"There's nothing here." 
+Out of the corner of his eye, Jon glimpsed a pale shape moving through the trees. Leaves rustled, and 
+Ghost came bounding out of the 
+shadows, so suddenly that Jon's mare started and gave a whinny. "There!" Halder shouted. 
+"I heard it too!" 
+Page 540
+
+"Traitor," Jon told the direwolf as he swung up into the saddle. He turned the mare's head to slide off 
+through the trees, but they were on him before he had gone ten feet. 
+"Jon!" Pyp shouted after him. 
+"Pull up," Grenn said. "You can't outrun us all." 
+Jon wheeled around to face them, drawing his sword. "Get back. I don't wish to hurt you, but I will if I 
+have to." 
+"One against seven?" Halder gave a signal. The boys spread out, surrounding him. 
+"What do you want with me?" Jon demanded. 
+"We want to take you back where you belong," Pyp said. 
+"I belong with my brother." 
+"We're your brothers now," Grenn said. 
+"They'll cut off your head if they catch you, you know," Toad put in with a nervous laugh. "This is so 
+stupid, it's like something the Aurochs would do." 
+"I would not," Grenn said. "I'm no oathbreaker. I said the words and I meant them." 
+"So did U' Jon told them. "Don't you understand? They murdered my father. It's war, my brother Robb 
+is fighting in the riverlands-" 
+Page 541
+
+"We know," said Pyp solemnly. "Sam told us everything." 
+"We're sorry about your father," Grenn said, "but it doesn't matter. Once you say the words, you can't 
+leave, no matter what." 
+"I have to," Jon said fervently. 
+"You said the words," Pyp reminded him. "Now my watch begins, you said it. It shall not end until my 
+death. " 
+"I shall live and die at my post, " Grenn added, nodding. 
+"You don't have to tell me the words, I know them as well as you do." He was angry now. Why couldn't 
+they let him go in peace? They were only making it harder. 
+"I am the sword in the darkness, " Halder intoned. 
+"The watcher on the walls, " piped Toad. 
+Jon cursed them all to their faces. They took no notice. Pyp spurred his horse closer, reciting, "I am the 
+fire that bums against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the hom that wakes the sleepers, the shield 
+that guards the realms of men. " 
+"Stay back," Jon warned him, brandishing his sword. "I mean it, Pyp." They weren't even wearing armor, 
+he could cut them to pieces if he had to. 
+Page 542
+
+Matthar had circled behind him. He joined the chorus. "Ipledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch. " 
+Jon kicked his mare, spinning her in a circle. The boys were all around him now, closing from every side. 
+"For this night Halder trotted in from the left. 
+. . . and all the nights to come, " finished Pyp. He reached over for Jon's reins. "So here are your 
+choices. Kill me, or come back with me." 
+Jon lifted his sword . . . and lowered it, helpless. "Damn you," he said. "Damn you all." 
+"Do we have to bind your hands, or will you give us your word you'll ride back peaceful?" asked 
+Halder. 
+"I won't run, if that's what you mean." Ghost moved out from under the trees and Jon glared at him. 
+"Small help you were," he said. The deep red eyes looked at him knowingly. 
+"We had best hurry," Pyp said. "If we're not back before first light, the Old Bear will have all our heads." 
+Of the ride back, Jon Snow remembered little. It seemed shorter than the journey south, perhaps 
+because his mind was elsewhere. Pyp set the pace, galloping, walking, trotting, and then breaking into 
+another gallop. Mole's Town came and went, the red lantern over the brothel long extinguished. They 
+made good time. Dawn was still an hour off when Jon glimpsed the towers of Castle Black ahead of 
+them, dark against the pale immensity of the Wall. It did not seem like home this time. 
+They could take him back, Jon told himself, but they could not make him stay. The war would not end 
+on the morrow, or the day after, and his friends could not watch him day and night. He would bide his 
+time, make them think he was content to remain here . . . and then, when they had grown lax, he would 
+be off again. Next time he would avoid the kingsroad. He could follow the Wall east, perhaps all the way 
+to the sea, a longer route but a safer one. Or even west, to the mountains, and then south over the high 
+passes. That was the wildling's way, hard and perilous, but at least no one wouid follow him. He wouldn't 
+stray within a hundred leagues of Winterfell or the kingsroad. 
+Page 543
+
+Samwell Tarly awaited them in the old stables, slumped on the ground against a bale of hay, too anxious 
+to sleep. He rose and brushed himself off. "I . . . I'm glad they found you, Jon." 
+11IPm not," Jon said, dismounting. 
+Pyp hopped off his horse and looked at the lightening sky with disgust. "Give us a hand bedding down 
+the horses, Sam," the small boy 
+said. "We have a long day before us, and no sleep to face it on, thanks to Lord Snow." 
+When day broke, Jon walked to the kitchens as he did every dawn. Three-Finger Hobb said nothing as 
+he gave him the Old Bear's breakfast. Today it was three brown eggs boiled hard, with fried bread and 
+ham steak and a bowl of wrinkled plums. Jon carried the food back to the King's Tower. He found 
+Mormont at the window seat, writing. His raven was walking back and forth across his shoulders, 
+muttering, "Corn, corn, corn. " The bird shrieked when Jon entered. "Put the food on the table," the Old 
+Bear said, glancing up. "I'll have some beer." 
+Jon opened a shuttered window, took the flagon of beer off the outside ledge, and filled a horn. Hobb 
+had given him a lemon, still cold from the Wall. Jon crushed it in his fist. The juice trickled through his 
+fingers. Mormont drank lemon in his beer every day, and claimed that was why he still had his own teeth. 
+"Doubtless you loved your father," Mormont said when Jon brought him his horn. "The things we love 
+destroy us every time, lad. Remember when I told you that?" 
+"I remember," Jon said sullenly. He did not care to talk of his father's death, not even to Mormont. 
+"See that you never forget it. The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. Fetch me my plate. Is it ham 
+again? So be it. You look weary. Was your moonlight ride so tiring?" 
+Page 544
+
+Jon's throat was dry. "You know?" 
+"Know, " the raven echoed from Mormont's shoulder. "Know. 
+The Old Bear snorted. "Do you think they chose me Lord Commander of the Night's Watch because 
+I'm dumb as a stump, Snow? Aemon told me you'd go. I told him you'd be back. I know my men . . . 
+and my boys too. Honor set you on the kingsroad . . . and honor brought you back." 
+"My friends brought me back," Jon said. 
+"Did I say it was your honor?" Mormont inspected his plate. 
+"They killed my father. Did you expect me to do nothing?" 
+"If truth be told, we expected you to do just as you did." Mormont tried a plum, spit out the pit. "I 
+ordered a watch kept over you., You were seen leaving. If your brothers had not fetched you back, you 
+would have been taken along the way, and not by friends. Unless you have a horse with wings like a 
+raven. Do you?" 
+"No." Jon felt like a fool. 
+"Pity, we could use a horse like that." 
+Jon stood tall. He told himself that he would die well; that much he 
+Page 545
+
+could do, at the least. "I know the penalty for desertion, my lord. I'm not afraid to die." 
+"Die!" the raven cried. 
+"Nor live, I hope," Mormont said, cutting his ham with a dagger and feeding a bite to the bird. "You have 
+not deserted-yet. Here you stand. If we beheaded every boy who rode to Mole's Town in the night, only 
+ghosts would guard the Wall. Yet maybe you mean to flee again on the morrow, or a fortnight from now. 
+Is that it? Is that your hope, boy?" 
+Jon kept silent. 
+"I thought so." Mormont peeled the shell off a boiled egg. "Your father is dead, lad. Do you think you 
+can bring him back?" 
+"No," he answered, sullen. 
+"Good," Mormont said. "We've seen the dead come back, you and me, and it's not something I care to 
+see again." He ate the egg in two bites and flicked a bit of shell out from between his teeth. "Your brother 
+is in the field with all the power of the north behind him. Any one of his lords bannermen commands more 
+swords than you'll find in all the Night's Watch. Why do you imagine that they need your help? Are you 
+such a mighty warrior, or do you carry a grumkin in your pocket to magic up your sword?" 
+Jon had no answer for him. The raven was pecking at an egg, breaking the shell. Pushing his beak 
+through the hole, he pulled out morsels of white and yoke. 
+The Old Bear sighed. "You are not the only one touched by this war. Like as not, my sister is marching 
+in your brother's host, her and those daughters of hers, dressed in men's mail. Maege is a hoary old 
+snark, stubborn, short-tempered, and willful. Truth be told, I can hardly stand to be around the wretched 
+woman, but that does not mean my love for her is any less than the love you bear your half sisters." 
+Frowning, Mormont took his last egg and squeezed it in his fist until the shell crunched. "Or perhaps it 
+does. Be that as it may, I'd still grieve if she were slain, yet you don't see me running off. I said the words, 
+just as you did. My place is here . . . where is yours, boy?" 
+Page 546
+
+I have no place, Jon wanted to say, I'm a bastard, I have no rights, no name, no mother, and now not 
+even a father. The words would not come. "I don't know." 
+"I do," said Lord Commander Mormont. "The cold winds are rising, Snow. Beyond the Wall, the 
+shadows lengthen. Cotter Pyke writes of vast herds of elk, streaming south and east toward the sea, and 
+mammoths as well. He says one of his men discovered huge, misshapen footprints not three leagues from 
+Eastwatch. Rangers from the 
+Shadow Tower have found whole villages abandoned, and at night Ser Denys says they see fires in the 
+mountains, huge blazes that burn from dusk till dawn. Quorin Halfhand took a captive in the depths of the 
+Gorge, and the man swears that Mance Rayder is massing all his people in some new, secret stronghold 
+he's found, to what end the gods only know. Do you think your uncle Benjen was the only ranger we've 
+lost this past year?" 
+"Ben Jen, " the raven squawked, bobbing its head, bits of egg dribbling from its beak. "Ben Jen. Ben 
+Jen. " 
+"No," Jon said. There had been others. Too many. 
+"Do you think your brother's war is more important than ours?" the old man barked. 
+Jon chewed his lip. The raven flapped its wings at him. "War, war, war, war, " it sang. 
+"It's not," Mormont told him. "Gods save us, boy, you're not blind and you're not stupid. When dead 
+men come hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits the Iron Throne?" 
+"No." Jon had not thought of it that way. 
+"Your lord father sent you to us, Jon. Why, who can say?" 
+Page 547
+
+""y? Why? Why?" the raven called. 
+"All I know is that the blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks. The First Men built the 
+Wall, and it's said they remember things otherwise forgotten. And that beast of yours . . . he led us to the 
+wights, warned you of the dead man on the steps. Ser Jaremy would doubtless call that happenstance, 
+yet Ser Jaremy is dead and I'm not." Lord Mormont stabbed a chunk of ham with the point of his dagger. 
+"I think you were meant to be here, and I want you and that wolf of yours with us when we go beyond 
+the Wall." 
+His words sent a chill of excitement down Jon's back. "Beyond the Wall?" 
+"You heard me. I mean to find Ben Stark, alive or dead." He chewed and swallowed. "I will not sit here 
+meekly and wait for the snows and the ice winds. We must know what is happening. This time the 
+Night's Watch will ride in force, against the King-beyond-the-Wall, the Others, and anything else that 
+may be out there. I mean to command them myself." He pointed his dagger at Jon's chest. "By custom, 
+the Lord Commander's steward is his squire as well . . . but I do not care to wake every dawn 
+wondering if you've run off again. So I will have an answer from you, Lord Snow, and I will have it now. 
+Are you a brother of the Night's Watch . . . or only a bastard boy who wants to play at war?" 
+Jon Snow straightened himself and took a long deep breath. Forgive me, Father. Robb, Arya, Bran ... 
+forgive me, I cannot help you. He has the truth of it. This is my place. "I am . . . yours, my lord. Your 
+man. I swear it. I will not run again." 
+The Old Bear snorted. "Good. Now go put on your sword." 
+CATELYN 
+It seemed a thousand years ago that Catelyn Stark had carried her infant son out of Riverrun, crossing 
+Page 548
+
+the Tumblestone in a small boat to begin their journey north to Winterfell. And it was across the 
+Tumblestone that they came home now, though the boy wore plate and mail in place of swaddling 
+clothes. 
+Robb sat in the bow with Grey Wind, his hand resting on his direwolf s head as the rowers pulled at their 
+oars. Theon Greyjoy was with him. Her uncle Brynden would come behind in the second boat, with the 
+Greatjon and Lord Karstark. 
+Catelyn took a place toward the stern. They shot down the Tumblestone, letting the strong current push 
+them past the looming Wheel Tower. The splash and rumble of the great waterwheel within was a sound 
+from her girlhood that brought a sad smile to Catelyn's face. From the sandstone walls of the castle, 
+soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb's, and "Winterfell!" From every rampart waved 
+the banner of House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling blue-and-red field. It was a stirring 
+sight, yet it did not lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again. Oh, Ned . . . 
+Below the Wheel Tower, they made a wide turn and knifed through the churning water. The men put 
+their backs into it. The wide arch of the Water Gate came into view, and she heard the creak of heavy 
+chains as the great iron portcullis was winched upward. It rose slowly as they approached, and Catelyn 
+saw that the lower half of it was red with rust. The bottom foot dripped brown mud on them as they 
+passed underneath, the barbed spikes mere inches above their heads. Catelyn gazed up at the bars and 
+wondered how deep the rust went and how well the portcullis would stand up to a ram and whether it 
+ought to be replaced. Thoughts like that were seldom far from her mind these days. 
+They passed beneath the arch and under the walls, moving from sunlight to shadow and back into 
+sunlight. Boats large and small were tied up all around them, secured to iron rings set in the stone. Her 
+father's guards waited on the water stair with her brother. Ser Edmure Tully was a stocky young man 
+with a shaggy head of auburn hair and a fiery beard. His breastplate was scratched and dented from 
+battle, his blue-and-red cloak stained by blood and smoke. At his side stood the Lord `I~tos 
+Blackwood, a hard pike of a man with close-cropped saltand-pepper whiskers and a hook nose. His 
+bright yellow armor was inlaid with jet in elaborate vine-and-leaf patterns, and a cloak sewn from raven 
+feathers draped his thin shoulders. It had been Lord `J~tos who led the sortie that plucked her brother 
+from the Lannister camp. 
+"Bring them in," Ser Edmure commanded. Three men scrambled down the stairs knee-deep in the water 
+Page 549
+
+and pulled the boat close with long hooks. When Grey Wind bounded out, one of them dropped his pole 
+and lurched back, stumbling and sitting down abruptly in the river. The others laughed, and the man got a 
+sheepish look on his face. Theon Greyjoy vaulted over the side of the boat and lifted Catelyn by the 
+waist, setting her on a dry step above him as water lapped around his boots. 
+Edmure came down the steps to embrace her. "Sweet sister," he murmured hoarsely. He had deep blue 
+eyes and a mouth made for smiles, but he was not smiling now. He looked worn and tired, battered by 
+battle and haggard from strain. His neck was bandaged where he had taken a wound. Catelyn hugged 
+him fiercely. 
+"Your grief is mine, Cat," he said when they broke apart. "When we heard about Lord Eddard . . . the 
+Lannisters will pay, I swear it, you will have your vengeance." 
+"Will that bring Ned back to me?" she said sharply. The wound was still too fresh for softer words. She 
+could not think about Ned now. She would not. It would not do. She had to be strong. "All that will 
+keep. I must see Father." 
+"He awaits you in his solar," Edmure said. 
+"Lord Hoster is bedridden, my lady," her father's steward ex 
+plained. When had that good man grown so old and grey? "He instructed me to bring you to him at 
+once." 
+"I'll take her." Edmure escorted her up the water stair and across the lower bailey, where Petyr Baelish 
+and Brandon Stark had once crossed swords for her favor. The: massive sandstone walls of the keep 
+loomed above them. As they pushed through a door between two guardsmen in fish-crest helms, she 
+asked, "How bad is he?" dreading the answer even as she said the words. 
+Edmure's look was somber. "He will not be with us long, the maesters say. The pain is . . . constant, and 
+grievous." 
+Page 550
+
+A blind rage filled her, a rage at all the world; at her brother Edmure and her sister Lysa, at the 
+Lannisters, at the maesters, at Ned and her father and the monstrous gods who would take them both 
+away from her. "You should have told me," she said. "You should have sent word as soon as you knew." 
+"He forbade it. He did not want his enemies to know that he was dying. With the realm so troubled, he 
+feared that if the Lannisters suspected how frail he was . . . 9' 
+". . . they might attack?" Catelyn finished, hard. It was your doing, yours, a voice whispered inside her. 
+Ifyou had not taken it upon yourself to seize the dwarf . . . 
+They climbed the spiral stair in silence. 
+The keep was three-sided, like Riverrun itself, and Lord Hoster's solar was triangular as well, with a 
+stone balcony that jutted out to the east like the prow of some great sandstone ship. From there the lord 
+of the castle could look down on his walls and battlements, and beyond, to where the waters met. They 
+had moved her father's bed out onto the balcony. "He likes to sit in the sun and watch the rivers," Edmure 
+explained. "Father, see who I've brought. Cat has come to see you . . . 
+Hoster Tully had always been a big man; tall and broad in his youth, portly as he grew older. Now he 
+seemed shrunken, the muscle and meat melted off his bones. Even his face sagged. The last time Catelyn 
+had seen him, his hair and beard had been brown, well streaked with grey. Now they had gone white as 
+snow. 
+His eyes opened to the sound of Edmure's voice. "Little cat," he murmured in a voice thin and wispy and 
+wracked by pain. "My little cat." A tremulous smile touched his face as his hand groped for hers. "I 
+watched for you . . ." 
+"I shall leave you to talk," her brother said, kissing their lord father gently on the brow before he 
+withdrew. 
+Catelyn knelt and took her father's hand in hers. It was a big hand, 
+Page 551
+
+but fleshless now, the bones moving loosely under the skin, all the strength gone from it. "You should 
+have told me," she said. "A rider, a raven . . ." 
+"Riders are taken, questioned," he answered. "Ravens are brought down . . ." A spasm of pain took him, 
+and his fingers clutched hers hard. "The crabs are in my belly . . . pinching, always pinching. Day and 
+night. They have fierce claws, the crabs. Maester Vyman makes me dreamwine, milk of the poppy . . . I 
+sleep a lot . . . but I wanted to be awake to see you, when you came. I was afraid . . . when the 
+Lannisters took your brother, the camps all around us . . . was afraid I would go, before I could see you 
+again . . . I was afraid . ." 
+"I'm here, Father," she said. "With Robb, my son. He'll want to see you too." 
+"Your boy," he whispered. "He had my eyes, I remember 
+"He did, and does. And we've brought you Jaime Lannister, in irons. Riverrun is free again, Father." 
+Lord Hoster smiled. "I saw. Last night, when it began, I told them . . . had to see. They carried me to the 
+gatehouse . . . watched from the battlements. Ah, that was beautiful . . . the torches came in a wave, I 
+could hear the cries floating across the river . .'. sweet cries . . . when that siege tower went up, gods . . . 
+would have died then, and glad, if only I could have seen you children first. Was it your boy who did it? 
+Was it your Robb?" 
+"Yes," Catelyn said, fiercely proud. "It was Robb . . . and Brynden. Your brother is here as well, my 
+lord." 
+"Him." Her father's voice was a faint whisper. "The Blackfish . . . came back? From the Vale?" 
+"Yes.,, 
+Page 552
+
+"And Lysa?" A cool wind moved through his thin white hair. "Gods be good, your sister . . . did she 
+come as well?" 
+He sounded so full of hope and yearning that it was hard to tell the truth. "No. I'm sorry . . ." 
+"Oh." His face fell, and some light went out of his eyes. "I'd hoped I would have liked to see her, before 
+"She's with her son, in the Eyrie." 
+Lord Hoster gave a weary nod. "Lord Robert now, poor Arryn's gone . . . I remember . . . why did she 
+not come with you?" 
+"She is frightened, my lord. In the Eyrie she feels safe." She kissed his wrinkled brow. "Robb will be 
+waiting. Will you see him? And Brynden?" 
+"Your son," he whispered. "Yes. Cat's child . . . he had my eyes, I remember. When he was born. Bring 
+him . . . yes." 
+"And your brother?" 
+Her father glanced out over the rivers. "Blackfish," he said. "Has he wed yet? Taken some . . . girl to 
+wife?" 
+Even on his deathbed, Catelyn thought sadly. "He has not wed. You know that, Father. Nor will he 
+ever." 
+Page 553
+
+"I told him . . . commanded him. Marry! I was his lord. He knows. My right, to make his match. A good 
+match. A Redwyne. Old House. Sweet girl, pretty . . . freckles . . . Bethany, yes. Poor child. Still waiting. 
+Yes. Still . . ." 
+"Bethany Redwyne wed Lord Rowan years ago," Catelyn reminded him. "She has three children by 
+him." 
+"Even so," Lord Hoster muttered. "Even so. Spit on the girl. The Redwynes. Spit on me. His lord, his 
+brother . . . that Blackfish. I had other offers. Lord Bracken's girl. Walder Frey . . . any of three, he said . 
+. . Has he wed? Anyone? Anyone?" 
+"No one," Catelyn said, "yet he has come many leagues to see you, fighting his way back to Riverrun. I 
+would not be here now, if Ser Brynden had not helped us." 
+"He was ever a warrior," her father husked. "That he could do. Knight of the Gate, yes." He leaned back 
+and closed his eyes, inutterably weary. "Send him. Later. I'll sleep now. Too sick to fight. Send him up 
+later, the Blackfish . . ." 
+Catelyn kissed him gently, smoothed his hair, and left him there in the shade of his keep, with his rivers 
+flowing beneath. He was asleep before she left the solar. 
+When she returned to the lower bailey, Ser Brynden Tully stood on the water stairs with wet boots, 
+talking with the captain of Riverrun's guards. He came to her at once. "Is he-T' 
+"Dying," she said. "As we feared." 
+Her uncle's craggy face showed his pain plain. He ran his fingers through his thick grey hair. "Will he see 
+me?" 
+She nodded. "He says he is too sick to fight." 
+Page 554
+
+Brynden Blackfish chuckled. "I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster will be chiding me about the 
+Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones." 
+Catelyn smiled, knowing it was true. "I do not see Robb." 
+"He went with Greyjoy to the hall, I believe." 
+Theon Greyjoy was seated on a bench in Riverrun's Great Hall, enjoying a horn of ale and regaling her 
+father's garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood. "Some tried to flee, but we'd 
+pinched the valley shut at both ends, and we rode out of the darkness with sword and lance. The 
+Lannisters must have thought the 
+Others themselves were on them when that wolf of Robb's got in among them. I saw him tear one man's 
+arm from his shoulder, and their horses went mad at the scent of him. I couldn't tell you how many men 
+were thrown-" 
+"Theon," she interrupted, "where might I find my son?" 
+"Lord Robb went to visit the godswood, MY lady.,, 
+It was what Ned would have done. He is his father's son as much as mine, I must remember. Oh, gods, 
+Ned . . . 
+She found Robb beneath the green canopy of leaves, surrounded by tall redwoods and great old elms, 
+kneeling before the heart tree, a slender weirwood with a face more sad than fierce. His longsword was 
+before him, the point thrust in the earth, his gloved hands clasped around the hilt. Around him others 
+knelt: Greatjon Umber, Rickard Karstark, Maege Mormont, Galbart Glover, and more. Even Tytos 
+Blackwood was among them, the great raven cloak fanned out behind him. These are the ones who keep 
+the old gods, she realized. She asked herself what gods she kept these days, and could not find an 
+answer. 
+Page 555
+
+It would not do to disturb them at their prayers. The gods must have their due . . . even cruel gods who 
+would take Ned from her, and her lord father as well. So Catelyn waited. The river wind moved through 
+the high branches, and she could see the Wheel Tower to her right, ivy crawling up its side. As she stood 
+there, all the memories came flooding back to her. Her father had taught her to ride amongst these trees, 
+and that was the elm that Edmure had fallen from when he broke his arm, and over there, beneath that 
+bower, she and Lysa had played at kissing with Petyr. 
+She had not thought of that in years. How young they all had been-she no older than Sansa, Lysa 
+younger than Arya, and Petyr younger still, yet eager. The girls had traded him between them, serious 
+and giggling by turns. It came back to her so vividly she could almost feel his sweaty fingers on her 
+shoulders and taste the mint on his breath. There was always mint growing in the godswood, and Petyr 
+had liked to chew it. He had been such a bold little boy, always in trouble. "He tried to put his tongue in 
+my mouth," Catelyn had confessed to her sister afterward, when they were alone. "He did with me too," 
+Lysa had whispered, shy and breathless. "I liked it." 
+Robb got to his feet slowly and sheathed his sword, and Catelyn found herself wondering whether her 
+son had ever kissed a girl in the godswood. Surely he must have. She had seen Jeyne Poole giving him 
+moist-eyed glances, and some of the serving girls, even ones as old as eighteen . . . he had ridden in 
+battle and killed men with a sword, 
+surely he had been kissed. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped them away angrily. 
+"Mother," Robb said when he saw her standing there. "We must call a council. There are things to be 
+decided." 
+"Your grandfather would like to see you," she said. "Robb, he's very sick." 
+"Ser Edmure told me. I am sorry, Mother . . . for Lord Hoster and for you. Yet first we must meet. 
+We've had word from the south. Renly Baratheon has claimed his brother's crown." 
+Page 556
+
+"Renly?" she said, shocked. "I had thought, surely it would be Lord Stannis . . ." 
+"So did we all, my lady," Galbart Glover said. 
+The war council convened in the Great Hall, at four long trestle tables arranged in a broken square. Lord 
+Hoster was too weak to attend, asleep on his balcony, dreaming of the sun on the rivers of his youth. 
+Edmure sat in the high seat of the Tullys, with Brynden Blackfish at his side, and his father's bannermen 
+arrayed to right and left and along the side tables. Word of the victory at Riverrun had spread to the 
+fugitive lords of the Trident, drawing them back. Karyl Vance came in, a lord now, his father dead 
+beneath the Golden Tooth. Ser Marq Piper was with him, and they brought a Darry, Ser Raymun's son, 
+a lad no older than Bran. Lord Jonos Bracken arrived from the ruins of Stone Hedge, glowering and 
+blustering, and took a seat as far from Tytos Blackwood as the tables would permit. 
+The northern lords sat opposite, with Catelyn and Robb facing her brother across the tables. They were 
+fewer. The Greatjon sat at Robb's left hand, and then Theon Greyjoy; Galbart Glover and Lady 
+Mormont were to the right of Catelyn. Lord Rickard Karstark, gaunt and hollow-eyed in his grief, took 
+his seat like a man in a nightmare, his long beard uncombed and unwashed. He had left two sons dead in 
+the Whispering Wood, and there was no word of the third, his eldest, who had led the Karstark spears 
+against Tywin Lannister on the Green Fork. 
+The arguing raged on late into the night. Each lord had a right to speak, and speak they did . . . and 
+shout, and curse, and reason, and cajole, and jest, and bargain, and slam tankards on the table, and 
+threaten, and walk out, and return sullen or smiling. Catelyn sat and listened to it all. 
+Roose Bolton had re-formed the battered remnants of their other host at the mouth of the causeway. Ser 
+Helman Tallhart and Walder Frey still held the Twins. Lord Tywin's army had crossed the Trident, 
+and was making for Harrenhal. And there were two kings in the realm. Two kings, and no agreement. 
+Many of the lords bannermen wanted to march on Harrenhal at once, to meet Lord Tywin and end 
+Lannister power for all time. Young, hot-tempered Marq Piper urged a strike west at Casterly Rock 
+instead. Still others counseled patience. Riverrun sat athwart the Lannister supply lines, Jason Mallister 
+pointed out; let them bide their time, denying Lord Tywin fresh levies and provisions while they 
+Page 557
+
+strengthened their defenses and rested their weary troops. Lord Blackwood would have none of it. They 
+should finish the work they began in the Whispering Wood. March to Harrenhal and bring Roose 
+Bolton's army down as well. What Blackwood urged, Bracken opposed, as ever; Lord Jonos Bracken 
+rose to insist they ought pledge their fealty to King Renly, and move south to join their might to his. 
+"Renly is not the king," Robb said. It was the first time her son had spoken. Like his father, he knew how 
+to listen. 
+"You cannot mean to hold to Joffrey, my lord," Galbart Glover said. "He put your father to death." 
+"That makes him evil," Robb replied. "I do not know that it makes Renly king. Joffrey is still Robert's 
+eldest trueborn son, so the throne is rightfully his by all the laws of the realm. Were he to die, and I mean 
+to see that he does, he has a younger brother. Tommen is next in line after Joffrey." 
+"Tommen is no less a Lannister," Ser Marq Piper snapped. 
+"As you say," said Robb, troubled. "Yet if neither one is king, still, how could it be Lord Renly? He's 
+Robert's younger brother. Bran can't be Lord of Winterfell before me, and Renly can't be king before 
+Lord Stannis." 
+Lady Mormont agreed. "Lord Stannis has the better claim." 
+"Renly is crowned," said Marq Piper. "Highgarden and Storm's End support his claim, and the 
+Dornishmen will not be laggardly. If Winterfell and Riverrun add their strength to his, he will have five of 
+the seven great houses behind him. Six, if the Arryns bestir themselves! Six against the Rock! My lords, 
+within the year, we will have all their heads on pikes, the queen and the boy king, Lord Tywin, the Imp, 
+the Kingslayer, Ser Kevan, all of them! That is what we shall win if we join with King Renly. What does 
+Lord Stannis have against that, that we should cast it all aside?" 
+"The right," said Robb stubbornly. Catelyn thought he sounded eerily like his father as he said it. 
+"So you mean us to declare for Stannis?" asked Edmure. 
+Page 558
+
+"I don't know," said Robb. "I prayed to know what to do, but the 
+gods did not answer. The Lannisters killed my father for a traitor, and we know that was a lie, but if 
+Joffrey is the lawful king and we fight against him, we will be traitors." 
+"My lord father would urge caution," aged Ser Stevron said, with the weaselly smile of a Frey. "Wait, let 
+these two kings play their game of thrones. When they are done fighting, we can bend our knees to the 
+victor, or oppose him, as we choose. With Renly arming, likely Lord Tywin would welcome a truce . . . 
+and the safe return of his son. Noble lords, allow me to go to him at Harrenhal and arrange good terms 
+and ransoms . . ." 
+A roar of outrage drowned out his voice. "Craven!" the Greatjon thundered. "Begging for a truce will 
+make us seem weak," declared Lady Mormont. "Ransoms be damned, we must not give up the 
+Kingslayer," shouted Rickard Karstark. 
+"Why not a peace?" Catelyn asked. 
+The lords looked at her, but it was Robb's eyes she felt, his and his alone. "My lady, they murdered my 
+lord father, your husband," he said grimly. He unsheathed his longsword and laid it on the table before 
+him, the bright steel on the rough wood. "This is the only peace I have for Lannisters." 
+The Greatjon bellowed his approval, and other men added their voices, shouting and drawing swords 
+and pounding their fists on the table. Catelyn waited until they had quieted. "My lords," she said then, 
+"Lord Eddard was your liege, but I shared his bed and bore his children. Do you think I love him any less 
+than you?" Her voice almost broke with her grief, but Catelyn took a long breath and steadied herself. 
+"Robb, if that sword could bring him back, I should never let you sheathe it until Ned stood at my side 
+once more . . . but he is gone, and hundred Whispering Woods will not change that. Ned is gone, and 
+Daryn Hornwood, and Lord Karstark's valiant sons, and many other good men besides, and none of 
+them will return to us. Must we have more deaths still?" 
+"You are a woman, my lady," the Greatjon rumbled in his deep voice. "Women do not understand these 
+Page 559
+
+things." 
+"You are the gentle sex," said Lord Karstark, with the lines of grief fresh on his face. "A man has a need 
+for vengeance." 
+"Give me Cersei Lannister, Lord Karstark, and you would see how gentle a woman can be," Catelyn 
+replied. "Perhaps I do not understand tactics and strategy . . . but I understand futility. We went to war 
+when Lannister armies were ravaging the riverlands, and Ned was a prisoner, falsely accused of treason. 
+We fought to defend ourselves, and to win my lord's freedom. 
+"Well, the one is done, and the other forever beyond our reach. I will mourn for Ned until the end of my 
+days, but I must think of the living. I want my daughters back, and the queen holds them still. If I must 
+trade our four Lannisters for their two Starks, I will call that a bargain and thank the gods. I want you 
+safe, Robb, ruling at Winterfell from your father's seat. I want you to live your life, to kiss a girl and wed 
+a woman and father a son. I want to write an end to this. I want to go home, my lords, and weep for my 
+husband." 
+The hall was very quiet when Catelyn finished speaking. 
+"Peace," said her uncle Brynden. "Peace is sweet, my lady . . . but on what terms? It is no good 
+hammering your sword into a plowshare if you must forge it again on the morrow." 
+"What did Torrhen and my Eddard die for, if I am to return to Karhold with nothing but their bones?" 
+asked Rickard Karstark. 
+"Aye," said Lord Bracken. "Gregor Clegane laid waste to my fields, slaughtered my smallfolk, and left 
+Stone Hedge a smoking ruin. Am I now to bend the knee to the ones who sent him? What have we 
+fought for, if we are to put all back as it was before?" 
+Lord Blackwood agreed, to Catelyn's surprise and dismay. "And if we do make peace with King 
+Joffrey, are we not then traitors to King Renly? What if the stag should prevail against the lion, where 
+Page 560
+
+would that leave us?" 
+"Whatever you may decide for yourselves, I shall never call a Lannister my king," declared Marq Piper. 
+"Nor P" yelled the little Darry boy. "I never will!" 
+Again the shouting began. Catelyn sat despairing. She had come so close, she thought. They had almost 
+listened, almost . . . but the moment was gone. There would be no peace, no chance to heal, no safety. 
+She looked at her son, watched him as he listened to the lords debate, frowning, troubled, yet wedded to 
+his war. He had pledged himself to marry a daughter of Walder Frey, but she saw his true bride plain 
+before her now: the sword he had laid on the table. 
+Catelyn was thinking of her girls, wondering if she would ever see them again, when the Greatjon lurched 
+to his feet. 
+"MYLORDS!" he shouted, his voice booming off the rafters. "Here is what I say to these two kings!" He 
+spat. " Renly Baratheon is nothing to me, nor Stannis neither. Why should they rule over me and mine, 
+from some flowery seat in Highgarden or Dorne? What do they know of the Wall or the wolfswood or 
+the barrows of the First Men? Even their gods are wrong. The Others take the Lannisters too, I've had a 
+bellyful of them." He reached back over his shoulder and drew his immense two-handed greatsword. 
+"Why shouldn't we rule ourselves 
+again? It was the dragons we married, and the dragons are all dead!" He pointed at Robb with the 
+blade. "There sits the only king I mean to bow my knee to, m'lords," he thundered. "The King in the 
+North!" 
+And he knelt, and laid his sword at her son's feet. 
+"I'll have peace on those terms," Lord Karstark said. "They can keep their red castle and their iron chair 
+as well." He eased his longsword from its scabbard. "The King in the North!" he said, kneeling beside the 
+Greatjon. 
+Page 561
+
+Maege Mormont stood. "The King of Winter!" she declared, and laid her spiked mace beside the 
+swords. And the river lords were rising too, Blackwood and Bracken and Mallister, houses who had 
+never been ruled from Winterfell, yet Catelyn watched them rise and draw their blades, bending their 
+knees and shouting the old words that had not been heard in the realm for more than three hundred 
+years, since Aegon the Dragon had come to make the Seven Kingdoms one . . . yet now were heard 
+again, ringing from the timbers of her father's hall: 
+"The King in the North!" 
+"The King in the North!" 
+"THE KING IN THE NORTH!" 
+DAFNERYS 
+The land was red and dead and parched, and good wood was hard to come by. Her foragers returned 
+with gnarled cottonwoods, purple brush, sheaves of brown grass. They took the two straightest trees, 
+hacked the limbs and branches from them, skinned off their bark, and split them, laying the logs in a 
+square. Its center they filled with straw, brush, bark shavings, and bundles of dry grass. Rakharo chose a 
+stallion from the small herd that remained to them; he was not the equal of Khal Drogo's red, but few 
+horses were. In the center of the square, Aggo fed him a withered apple and dropped him in an instant 
+with an axe blow between the eyes. 
+Bound hand and foot, Mirri Maz Duur watched from the dust with disquiet in her black eyes. "It is not 
+enough to kill a horse," she told Dany. "By itself, the blood is nothing. You do not have the words to 
+make a spell, nor the wisdom to find them. Do you think bloodmagic is a game for children? You call me 
+maegi as if it were a curse, but all it means is wise. You are a child, with a child's ignorance. Whatever 
+you mean to do, it will not work. Loose me from these bonds and I will help you." 
+"I am tired of the maegi's braying," Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife 
+kept silent. 
+Page 562
+
+Over the carcass of the horse, they built a platform of hewn logs; trunks of smaller trees and limbs from 
+the greater, and the thickest 
+I 
+9 
+straightest branches they could find. They laid the wood east to west, from sunrise to sunset. On the 
+platform they piled Khal Drogo's treasures: his great tent, his painted vests, his saddles and harness, the 
+whip his father had given him when he came to manhood, the arakh he had used to slay Khal Ogo and 
+his son, a mighty dragonbone bow. Aggo would have added the weapons Drogo's bloodriders had given 
+Dany for bride gifts as well, but she forbade it. "Those are mine," she told him, "and I mean to keep 
+them." Another layer of brush was piled about the khal's treasures, and bundles of dried grass scattered 
+over them. 
+Ser Jorah Mormont drew her aside as the sun was creeping toward its zenith. "Princess . . ." he began. 
+"Why do you call me that?" Dany challenged him. "My brother Viserys was your king, was he not?" 
+"He was, my lady." 
+"Viserys is dead. I am his heir, the last blood of House Targaryen. Whatever was his is mine now." 
+"My . . . queen," Ser Jorah said, going to one knee. "My sword that was his is yours, Dacnerys. And my 
+heart as well, that never belonged to your brother. I am only a knight, and I have nothing to offer you but 
+exile, but I beg you, hear me. Let Khal Drogo go. You shall not be alone. I promise you, no man shall 
+take you to Vaes Dothrak unless you wish to go. You need not join the dosh khaleen. Come east with 
+me. Yi Ti, Oarth, the Jade Sea, Asshai by the Shadow. We will see all the wonders yet unseen, and 
+drink what wines the gods see fit to serve us. Please, Khaleesi. I know what you intend. Do not. Do not." 
+"I must," Dany told him. She touched his face, fondly, sadly. "You do not understand." 
+Page 563
+
+A understand that you loved him," Ser Jorah said in a voice thick with despair. "I loved my lady wife 
+once, yet I did not die with her. You are my queen, my sword is yours, but do not ask me to stand aside 
+as you climb on Drogo's pyre. I will not watch you burn." 
+"Is that what you fear?" Dany kissed him lightly on his broad forehead. "I am not such a child as that, 
+sweet ser." 
+"You do not mean to die with him? You swear it, my queen?" 
+A swear it," she said in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms that by rights were hers. 
+The third level of the platform was woven of branches no thicker than a finger, and covered with dry 
+leaves and twigs. They laid them north to south, from ice to fire, and piled them high with soft cushions 
+and sleeping silks. The sun had begun to lower toward the west by the 
+time they were done. Dany called the Dothraki around her. Fewer than a hundred were left. How many 
+had Aegon started with? she wondered. It did not matter. 
+"You will be my khalasar," she told them. "I see the faces of slaves. I free you. Take off your collars. Go 
+if you wish, no one shall harm you. If you stay, it will be as brothers and sisters, husbands and wives." 
+The black eyes watched her, wary, expressionless. "I see the children, women, the wrinkled faces of the 
+aged. I was a child yesterday. Today I am a woman. Tomorrow I will be old. To each of you I say, give 
+me your hands and your hearts, and there will always be a place for you." She turned to the three young 
+warriors of her khas. "Jhogo, to you I give the silver-handled whip that was my bride gift, and name you 
+ko, and ask your oath, that you will live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe 
+from harm." 
+Jhogo took the whip from her hands, but his face was confused. "Khaleesi, " he said hesitantly, "this is 
+not done. It would shame me, to be bloodrider to a woman." 
+Page 564
+
+"Aggo," Dany called, paying no heed to Jhogo's words. If I look back I am lost. "To you I give the 
+dragonbone bow that was my bride gift." It was double-curved, shiny black and exquisite, taller than she 
+was. "I name you ko, and ask your oath, that you should live and die as blood of my blood, riding at my 
+side to keep me safe from harm." 
+Aggo accepted the bow with lowered eyes. "I cannot say these words. Only a man can lead a khalasar 
+or name a ko." 
+"Rakharo," Dany said, turning away from the refusal, "you shall have the great arakh that was my bride 
+gift, with hilt and blade chased in gold. And you too I name my ko, and ask that you live and die as blood 
+of my blood, riding at my side to keep me safe from harm." 
+"You are khaleesi," Rakharo said, taking the arakh. "I shall ride at your side to Vaes Dothrak beneath 
+the Mother of Mountains, and keep you safe from harm until you take your place with the crones of the 
+dosh khaleen. No more can I promise." 
+She nodded, as calmly as if she had not heard his answer, and turned to the last of her champions. "Ser 
+Jorah Mormont," she said, "first and greatest of my knights, I have no bride gift to give you, but I swear 
+to you, one day you shall have from my hands a longsword like none the world has ever seen, 
+dragon-forged and made of Valyrian steel. And I would ask for your oath as well." 
+"You have it, my queen," Ser Jorah said, kneeling to lay his sword at her feet. "I vow to serve you, to 
+obey you, to die for you if need be." 
+"Whatever may come?" 
+"Whatever may come." 
+"I shall hold you to that oath. I pray you never regret the giving of it." Dany lifted him to his feet. 
+Page 565
+
+Stretching on her toes to reach his lips, she kissed the knight gently and said, "You are the first of my 
+Queensguard." 
+She could feel the eyes of the khalasar on her as she entered her tent. The Dothraki were muttering and 
+giving her strange sideways looks from the corners of their dark almond eyes. They thought her mad, 
+Dany realized. Perhaps she was. She would know soon enough. If I look back I am lost. 
+Her bath was scalding hot when Irri helped her into the tub, but Dany did not flinch or cry aloud. She 
+liked the heat. It made her feel clean. Jhiqui had scented the water with the oils she had found in the 
+market in Vaes Dothrak; the steam rose moist and fragrant. Doreah washed her hair and combed it out, 
+working loose the mats and tangles. Irri scrubbed her back. Dany closed her eyes and let the smell and 
+the warmth enfold her. She could feel the heat soaking through the soreness between her thighs. She 
+shuddered when it entered her, and her pain and stiffness seemed to dissolve. She floated. 
+When she was clean, her handmaids helped her from the water. Irri and Jhiqui fanned her dry, while 
+Doreah brushed her hair until it fell like a river of liquid silver down her back. They scented her with 
+spiceflower and cinnamon; a touch on each wrist, behind her ears, on the tips of her milk-heavy breasts. 
+The last dab was for her sex. Irri's finger felt as light and cool as a lover's kiss as it slid softly up between 
+her lips. 
+Afterward, Dany sent them all away, so she might prepare Khal Drogo for his final ride into the night 
+lands. She washed his body clean and brushed and oiled his hair, running her fingers through it for the last 
+time, feeling the weight of it, remembering the first time she had touched it, the night of their wedding ride. 
+His hair had never been cut. How many men could die with their hair uncut? She buried her face in it and 
+inhaled the dark fragrance of the oils. He smelled like grass and warm earth, like smoke and semen and 
+horses. He smelled like Drogo. Forgive me, sun of my life, she thought. Forgive me for all I have done 
+and all I must do. I paid the price, my star, but it was too high, too high . . . 
+Dany braided his hair and slid the silver rings onto his mustache and hung his bells one by one. So many 
+bells, gold and silver and bronze. Bells so his enemies would hear him coming and grow weak with fear. 
+She dressed him in horsehair leggings and high boots, buckling a belt heavy with gold and silver 
+medallions about his waist. Over his scarred chest she slipped a painted vest, old and faded, the one 
+Drogo had 
+loved best. For herself she chose loose sandsilk trousers, sandals that laced halfway up her legs, and a 
+Page 566
+
+vest like Drogo's. 
+The sun was going down when she called them back to carry his body to the pyre. The Dothraki 
+watched in silence as Jhogo and Aggo bore him from the tent. Dany walked behind them. They laid him 
+down on his cushions and silks, his head toward the Mother of Mountains far to the northeast. 
+"Oil," she commanded, and they brought forth the jars and poured them over the pyre, soaking the silks 
+and the brush and the bundles of dry grass, until the oil trickled from beneath the logs and the air was rich 
+with fragrance. "Bring my eggs," Dany commanded her handmaids. Something in her voice made them 
+run. 
+Ser Jorah took her arm. "My queen, Drogo will have no use for dragon's eggs in the night lands. Better 
+to sell them in Asshai. Sell one and we can buy a ship to take us back to the Free Cities. Sell all three 
+and you will be a wealthy woman all your days." 
+"They were not given to me to sell," Dany told him. 
+She climbed the pyre herself to place the eggs around her sun-andstars. The black beside his heart, 
+under his arm. The green beside his head, his braid coiled around it. The cream-and-gold down between 
+his legs. When she kissed him for the last time, Dany could taste the sweetness of the oil on his lips. 
+As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her. "You are mad," the 
+godswife said hoarsely. 
+"Is it so far from madness to wisdom?" Dany asked. "Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the 
+pyre." 
+"To the . . . my queen, no, hear me . . ." 
+"Do as I say." Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. "You swore to obey me, whatever might come. 
+Rakharo, help him." 
+Page 567
+
+The godswife did not cry out as they dragged her to Khal Drogo's pyre and staked her down amidst his 
+treasures. Dany poured the oil over the woman's head herself. "I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur," she said, 
+"for the lessons you have taught me." 
+"You will not hear me scream," Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her 
+clothing. 
+"I will," Dany said, "but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only 
+death can pay for life." Mirri Maz Duur opened her mouth, but made no reply. As she stepped away, 
+Dany saw that the contempt was gone from the maegi's flat black eyes; in its place was something that 
+might have been fear. Then there was nothing to be done but watch the sun and look for the first star. 
+When a horselord dies, his horse is slain with him, so he might ride 
+A GAME, OF THRONLS 703 
+proud into the night lands. The bodies are burned beneath the open sky, and the khal rises on his fiery 
+steed to take his place among the stars. The more fiercely the man burned in life, the brighter his star will 
+shine in the darkness. 
+Jhogo spied it first. "There, " he said in a hushed voice. Dany looked and saw it, low in the east. The first 
+star was a comet, burning red. Bloodred; fire red; the dragon's tail. She could not have asked for a 
+stronger sign. 
+Dany took the torch from Aggo's hand and thrust it between the logs. The oil took the fire at once, the 
+brush and dried grass a heartbeat later. Tiny flames went darting up the wood like swift red mice, skating 
+over the oil and leaping from bark to branch to leaf. A rising heat puffed at her face, soft and sudden as a 
+lover's breath, but in seconds it had grown too hot to bear. Dany stepped backward. The wood 
+crackled, louder and louder. Mirri Maz Duur began to sing in a shrill, ululating voice. The flames whirled 
+and writhed, racing each other up the platform. The dusk shimmered as the air itself seemed to liquefy 
+from the heat. Dany heard logs spit and crack. The fires swept over Mirri Maz Duur. Her song grew 
+louder, shriller . . . then she gasped, again and again, and her song became a shuddering wail, thin and 
+high and full of agony. 
+Page 568
+
+And now the flames reached her Drogo, and now they were all around him. His clothing took fire, and 
+for an instant the khal was clad in wisps of floating orange silk and tendrils of curling smoke, grey and 
+greasy. Dany's lips parted and she found herself holding her breath. Part of her wanted to go to him as 
+Ser Jorah had feared, to rush into the flames to beg for his forgiveness and take him inside her one last 
+time, the fire melting the flesh from their bones until they were as one, forever. 
+She could smell the odor of burning flesh, no different than horseflesh roasting in a firepit. The pyre 
+roared in the deepening dusk like some great beast, drowning out the fainter sound of Mirri Maz Duur's 
+screaming and sending up long tongues of flame to lick at the belly of the night. As the smoke grew 
+thicker, the Dothraki backed away, coughing. Huge orange gouts of fire unfurled their banners in that 
+hellish wind, the logs hissing and cracking, glowing cinders rising on the smoke to float away into the dark 
+like so many newborn fireflies. The heat beat at the air with great red wings, driving the Dothraki back, 
+driving off even Mormont, but Dany stood her ground. She was the blood of the dragon, and the fire was 
+in her. 
+She had sensed the truth of it long ago, Dany thought as she took a step closer to the conflagration, but 
+the brazier had not been hot 
+enough. The flames writhed before her like the women who had danced at her wedding, whirling and 
+singing and spinning their yellow and orange and crimson veils, fearsome to behold, yet lovely, so lovely, 
+alive with heat. Dany opened her arms to them, her skin flushed and glowing. This is a wedding, too, she 
+thought. Mirri Maz Duur had fallen silent. The godswife thought her a child, but children grow, and 
+children learn. 
+Another step, and Dany could feel the heat of the sand on the soles of her feet, even through her sandals. 
+Sweat ran down her thighs and between her breasts and in rivulets over her cheeks, where tears had 
+once run. Ser Jorah was shouting behind her, but he did not matter anymore, only the fire mattered. The 
+flames were so beautiful, the loveliest things she had ever seen, each one a sorcerer robed in yellow and 
+orange and scarlet, swirling long smoky cloaks. She saw crimson firelions and great yellow serpents and 
+unicorns made of pale blue flame; she saw fish and foxes and monsters, wolves and bright birds and 
+flowering trees, each more beautiful than the last. She saw a horse, a great grey stallion limned in smoke, 
+its flowing mane a nimbus of blue flame. Yes, my love, my sun-and-stars, yes, mount now, tide now. 
+Her vest had begun to smolder, so Dany shrugged it off and let it fall to the ground. The painted leather 
+burst into sudden flame as she skipped closer to the fire, her breasts bare to the blaze, streams of milk 
+flowing from her red and swollen nipples. Now, she thought, now, and for an instant she glimpsed Khal 
+Drogo before her, mounted on his smoky stallion, a flaming lash in his hand. He smiled, and the whip 
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+snaked down at the pyre, hissing. 
+She heard a crack, the sound of shattering stone. The platform of wood and brush and grass began to 
+shift and collapse in upon itself. Bits of burning wood slid down at her, and Dany was showered with ash 
+and cinders. And something else came crashing down, bouncing and rolling, to land at her feet; a chunk 
+of curved rock, pale and veined with gold, broken and smoking. The roaring filled the world, yet dimly 
+through the firefall Dany heard women shriek and children cry out in wonder. 
+Only death can pay for life. 
+And there came a second crack, loud and sharp as thunder, and the smoke stirred and whirled around 
+her and the pyre shifted, the logs exploding as the fire touched their secret hearts. She heard the screams 
+of frightened horses, and the voices of the Dothraki raised in shouts of fear and terror, and Ser Jorah 
+calling her name and cursing. No, she wanted to shout to him, no, my good knight, do not fear.for me. 
+The fire is mine. I am Daenerys Stormborn, daughter of dragons, bride of 
+dragons, mother of dragons, don't you see? Don't you SEE? With a belch of flame and smoke that 
+reached thirty feet into the sky, the pyre collapsed and came down around her. Unafraid, Dany stepped 
+forward into the firestorm, calling to her children. 
+The third crack was as loud and sharp as the breaking of the world. 
+When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found 
+her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of 
+man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered with soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful 
+hair all crisped away . . . yet she was unhurt. 
+The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at the right. Her arms 
+cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck 
+coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals. 
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+Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to 
+lay his arakh at her feet. "Blood of my blood," he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. 
+"Blood of my blood," she heard Aggo echo. "Blood of my blood," Rakharo shouted. 
+And after them came her handmaids, and then the others, all the Dothraki, men and women and children, 
+and Dany had only to look at their eyes to know that they were hers now, today and tomorrow and 
+forever, hers as they had never been Drogo's. 
+As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and 
+nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings 
+unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the 
+music of dragons. 
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