23. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 755-808

Bran

He has seen the deaths of Robb and Grey Wind in a dream when he was one with Summer, and he is trying not to think about it. He hasn't told Jojen or Meera either.

They have reached the Nightfort at the Wall, which Bran remembers as the scene of some of the scariest stories told by Old Nan. Maester Luwin had cautioned him not to put too much credence in her stories, but when he asked his uncle Benjen about them, he said only that the Nightfort had been abandoned by the Watch for two hundred years.

The place is full of noises that Bran doesn't like. "Even Summer was not at ease here. Bran slipped inside his skin, just for an instant, to get the smell of the place. He did not like that either." Still Jojen had had a green dream about the place, and was determined to check it out, even though there was no gate through the Wall there. It had been sealed when the Watch abandoned it.

Bran has argued that they should have followed Jon, whom he saw through Summer's eyes when the wolf attacked the wildlings and Jon escaped. "We should have found the kingsroad and gone to Castle Black." But Jojen insisted that that course was too dangerous. Summer had almost been killed during the attack on the wildlings: When an arrow struck the wolf, the pain had been so great that Bran was driven out of Summer's skin, and it had returned every time Bran tried to become the wolf again. He was afraid Summer was dying, but the wolf finally returned with an arrow in his leg that Meera drew and treated with some herbs. Summer still limped, but less each day.

Meera suggests that they should try another castle, but Bran points out that the only ones whose gates haven't been sealed are Castle Black and the two at the extreme ends of the Wall, Eastwatch and the Shadow Tower. So Meera proposes to climb to the top of the Wall and see if she can spot anything from there. The prospect of climbing the Wall only makes Bran regret his paralysis more.

Meera's climb is made easier by the steps that the Watch had carved into the Wall's side at the Nightfort, though the ice makes them treacherous and there are times when she has to get down on hands and knees to make the ascent. When she reaches the top and disappears from view, Jojen suggests that they explore the Nightfort.

It is full of rats, running through the cellars and tunnels. It was the oldest and largest of the castles at the Wall, and they spend half a day exploring the crumbling towers. "Sometimes Summer would hear sounds that Bran seemed deaf to, or bare his teeth at nothing, the fur on the back of his neck bristling," but none of the ghosts of Old Nan's stories made an appearance.

Meera returns as the sun is setting, and tells them that she saw the haunted forest and the hills beyond. "I even saw an eagle circling. I think he saw me too. I waved at him." But there is no way down the other side of the wall, and certainly no way for Bran to make it over. She asks Jojen again if he is certain this is the place he saw in his dream, and he assures her that there is a gate there. But the only one Bran knows of is blocked by rubble and ice.

As it gets dark, they decide to bed down in the ruins of the kitchens, an octagon with a broken dome and a weirwood growing up through the floor. "It was a queer kind of tree, skinnier than any other weirwood that Bran had ever seen and faceless as well, but it made him feel as if the old gods were with him here, at least." But he remembers Old Nan's stories about the Rat Cook who baked a prince in a pie.

Next to the weirwood there is a well, twelve feet in diameter, with steps going down the side into its depths. They can't see any water at the bottom. Hodor says his name into the well and is startled by the way the echo reverberates, then picks up a broken piece of slate from the floor and drops it in. Bran calls out for him not to do that, but too late. "You might have hurt something, or ... or woken something up."

Far, far, far below, they heard the sound as the stone found water. It wasn't a splash, not truly. It was more a gulp, as if whatever was below had opened a quivering gelid mouth to swallow Hodor's stone. Faint echoes traveled up the well, and for a moment Bran thought he heard something moving, thrashing about in the water. 

They cook and eat a fish that Meera had caught in the last stream they had crossed, then bed down for the night. Bran is unable to sleep, but makes himself close his eyes. Then he hears a noise that starts as a scuffling sound and then becomes footsteps. He doesn't want to wake Meera or Jojen because he thinks it might just be his imagination, stirred by memories of Old Nan's stories. But the sounds get louder and he realizes that they are coming from the well. And as they get louder he hears "a high thin whimpering sound, like someone in pain, and heavy muffled breathing."

Finally he drags himself across the floor and wakes Meera, who hears the sound too. She grabs her frog spear and her net and moves toward the well. Jojen and Hodor are still asleep, and Bran doesn't want Meera to fight the thing alone, and Summer is far away. He slips his consciousness into Hodor and tries to stand and grab Hodor's longsword. But the thing in the well starts to scream, and Bran loses control of Hodor and finds himself back on the floor.

The thing is caught in Meera's net and she is stabbing at it with her frog spear. The thing falls and calls out, "No, no, don't, please, DON'T...." In response to Meera's question, "'I'm SAM,' the black thing sobbed. 'Sam, Sam, I'm Sam, let me out, you stabbed me...." Jojen has fed the fire and the flames illuminate the room, revealing Sam Tarly struggling in the net, and Gilly and the crying baby bundled up, emerging from the well.

It's Bran who recognizes that Sam is wearing the black of the Night's Watch. Sam confirms it: "I'm a crow, please. Let me out of this." Bran asks, "Are you the three-eyed crow?" although he can't quite believe it. Sam says he doesn't think so, and Meera tells him to stop struggling with the net and she'll untangle him. Jojen asks Gilly who she is and where she comes from. She says, "From Craster's," and asks Jojen, "Are you the one?"

Gilly explains that Coldhands had said Sam wasn't "The one he was sent to find," and Sam, now untangling from the net and trying to catch his breath, says that he said there would be people in the castle. "I didn't know you'd throw a net on me or stab me in the stomach." He asks if he is bleeding, and Meera checks and says he's wearing mail. "I never got near your skin."

Bran asks if Sam is "really a brother of the Night's Watch," and Sam says he's only a steward who took care of the ravens, but lost them. "I got us lost too. I couldn't even find the Wall. It's a hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high, and I couldn't find it!" Jojen asks how he got through the wall, and Sam says there's a gate: "A hidden gate, as old as the Wall itself. The Black Gate, he called it." The gate is at the bottom of the well, but it will open only for a member of the Night's Watch who has sworn his vow.

Jojen asks who "he" is, "This ... Coldhands?" Gilly explains that that wasn't really his name, just what she and Sam called him. "His hands were cold as ice, but he saved us from the dead men, him and his ravens, and he brought us here on his elk." Much confusion about the elk and the ravens ensues, but Sam finally clarifies that the man is waiting for them, and that he can't come through the Wall himself. And Jojen clarifies that it's Bran who is the one the man is waiting for.

Sam suddenly realizes that Bran is "Jon Snow's brother. The one who fell...." Jojen tries to deny it, but Bran just tells Sam to keep it secret. Sam tells him that Jon "was the best friend I ever had," but he has disappeared. Bran replies that Summer had seen Jon with some wildlings, but he escaped and probably went to Castle Black.

Summer appears then, frightening Gilly, but Bran reassures her. Sam is not afraid, because he knows that the Starks have wolves, and he has met Ghost. He pulls off a glove and lets Summer lick his fingers, which makes Bran decide that they should all go through the Black Gate with Sam.

Gilly stays behind with the baby as the others make the descent. As they get lower into the well, Bran can see the Black Gate, except it isn't black: "It was white weirwood, and there was a face on it." They reach the gate and Bran thinks of the face, "If a man could live for a thousand years and never die but just grow older, his face might come to look like that."

When Sam stands before it, the face opens its eyes, which are white and blind. It asks, "Who are you?" and Sam replies with the words of the oath of the Watch. The mouth of the door opens and admits them. As Hodor goes through with Bran on his back, he fails to duck enough: "The door's upper lip brushed softly against the top of Bran's head, and a drop of water fell on him and ran slowly down his nose. It was strangely warm, and salty as a tear."

Daenerys

They have moved on to a third city, Meereen, which is "as large as Astapor and Yunkai combined. The city's hero rides out in front of it, daring them to attack, and Daenerys's bloodriders are ready to take him on. She forbids it, however, saying that their place is at her side. Ser Jorah agrees with her: "Let the fool ride back and forth and shout until his horse goes lame. He does us no harm."

But Arstan Whitebeard is of another mind: "This hero builds courage in the hearts of his own men and plants the seeds of doubt in ours." Daenerys tells Arstan and Jorah to stop squabbling. She's aware of some problems: Though she has more than eighty thousand followers after the fall of the first two cities, less than a fourth of them are soldiers. "The rest ... well, Ser Jorah called them mouths with feet, and soon they would be starving." The Meereen had burned the fields in expectation of their arrival, leaving them with nothing to forage upon.

And they had done something that troubles her more: "they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen." The atrocity had made her the more determined to conquer the city.

Brown Ben Plumm, the new commander of the Second Sons, who had joined forces with her at Yunkai, says the champion of Meereen is Oznak zo Pahl, whose uncle is the richest man in the city. Daario Naharis now volunteers to take care of Oznak, but she holds him back. Instead, she sends for Strong Belwas, who had once been a slave in the fighting pits of Meereen. If he wins, it will embarrass Meereen, and if he loses it will not be such a great triumph. Besides, "Belwas was the man she could most easily spare."

Belwas dallies with Oznak, but in the end he is holding the champion's head aloft. Dario delights in the victory, but Ser Jorah calls it "without meaning.... We will not win Meereen by killing its defenders one at a time." Daenerys agrees, and turns her attention to ways to conquer the city. Ser Jorah says he hasn't seen any weaknesses in the landward walls, so she asks about attacking it by river or sea. They only have three ships, however.

Ser Jorah now offers a suggestion that he knows Daenerys will not like: "I say, let this city be. You cannot free every slave in the world, Khaleesi. Your war is in Westeros." They should simply pass the city by and march westward to Pentos, biding their time until the dragons are large enough to be useful in warfare. Even her bloodriders see the sense in the plan: Rakharo says, "when cowards hide and burn the food and fodder, great khals must seek for braver foes."

But Daenerys remembers the children mounted as signposts, and is unwilling to leave them unavenged. Finally, Brown Ben Plumm has an idea: They can attack the city through the sewers. He escaped from Meereen that way, though he has never forgotten the smell and is not about to volunteer to go back through them the other way.

She decides that she needs to think about it some more and sends them away. But what she really thinks about is Daario, who has captured her fancy by bringing her a flower every night when he made his report. "And Daario Naharis made her laugh, which Ser Jorah never did." The restlessness he stirs in her makes her have Missandei bring her her horse to go out riding. She is accompanied by Missandei and by Arstan, for whom she feels no sexual attraction.

They ride through the camps taking notice of the drilling of the Unsullied and of the freedmen, some of whom call her "Mother" and reach out to touch her. Then a tall man in ragged clothes grabs her wrist and pulls her from her saddle. He pulls out his sword and she recognizes Mero, the former captain of the Second Sons. She cries for help, but Mero cuts down the freedman who steps forward.

Then Arstan leaps from his horse, wielding his hardwood staff. He knocks Mero down and with moves too fast for her to follow, parries Mero's sword strikes until he breaks Mero's leg and then knocks him unconscious. Freedmen gather around the fallen man and attack him with knives and stones.

Arstan kneels and apologizes for being so slow to recognize Mero, who had shaved his beard and hair. They return to her tent, where Ser Jorah arrives with news of his reconnoiter along the river wall. But she scolds him for not letting her know that Mero had escaped, and tells him that Arstan killed him. She wants Arstan to be knighted, but to her surprise both men object. Arstan tells her that he "was a knight in Westeros." He hasn't lied to her, but he has withheld the truth. And then Ser Jorah recognizes him: "Mero shaved his beard, but you grew one, didn't you? No wonder you looked so bloody familiar." He tells Daenerys,

"I saw him perhaps a dozen times ... from afar most often, standing with his brothers or riding in some tourney. But every man in the Seven Kingdoms knew Barristan the Bold." He laid the point of his sword against the old man's neck. "Khaleesi, before you kneels Ser Barristan Selmy, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, who betrayed your House to serve the Usurper Robert Baratheon." 

Daenerys demands the full truth from Arstan, now Barristan, and he tells her that Jorah is correct. "I might be serving in King's Landing still if the vile boy upon the Iron Throne had not cast me aside, it shames me to admit." But Joffrey's conduct opened his eyes: "That was when I knew I must find my true king, and die in his service--" Jorah offers to provide that death now, but Barristan continues, saying that he had fought against Robert Baratheon at the Triden, at the time when Mormont was on Robert's side.

He disguised himself after leaving Westeros because Varys's spies were watching Viserys closely. And they are still watching her: "since the day you wed Khal Drogo, there has been an informer by your side selling your secrets, trading whispers to the Spider for gold and promises." When Daenerys turns to look at Mormont, Ser Jorah admits it, but he says, "it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love...." She interrupts him furiously, and her dragons start emitting smoke and fire. "I should say the word and burn the two of them," she thinks. But instead she orders both Barristan and Ser Jorah out.

When she calms down a little, she thinks about how both of them had saved her life. And she decides what to do with them.

Tyrion

Tyrion has told Sansa about the deaths of Robb and Catelyn, and was surprised at the stoic way she received the news until he heard her sobbing by herself later: "Even her tears she hoards to herself." Now he sneaks down into the cellars where the dragon skulls are kept and Shae is waiting for hm. He has hired Shae to be one of Sansa's maids, but he still has to contrive to meet her in secret.

Sansa

She wakes from a dream that she was back in Winterfell with Lady and her family was safe and sound. Now she faces the reality, "All of them are dead but me. She was alone in the world now." Shae and Brella prepare her bath. The wedding is at noon in the Great Sept of Baelor and the feast, with seventy-seven courses, in the evening. But first she has to breakfast with the queen.

Tyrion arrives with Podrick Payne as she is dressing, and goes in to change too. Sansa braces herself for the ordeal and they go down to breakfast, where presents are presented to the groom. Joffrey receives them all graciously until Tyrion presents their gift: "a huge old book called Lives of Four Kings, bound in leather and gorgeously illuminated." Joffrey leafs through it and then pushes it across the table: "My father had no time for books.... If you read less, Uncle Imp, perhaps lady Sansa would have a baby in her belly by now." The court laughs because Joffrey laughs. Sansa worries that Tyrion will say something to anger the king, but he simply drinks another cup of wine.

Mace Tyrell presents Joffrey with a three-foot-tall golden chalice with seven sides, each ornamented with a different gemstone representing the seven great houses, including a pearl direwolf for House Stark. Joffrey remarks that they'll need to chip the wolf off, and Sansa pretends not to hear. The last gift is from Lord Tywin: a longsword. Joffrey decides that he will name it Widow's Wail, and he takes the sword and hacks the book Tyrion had given him to pieces. Ser Garlan Tyrell observes that there were only four copies of the book in existence. "Now there are three," Joffrey replies, and says, "You and Lady Sansa owe me a better present, Uncle Imp. This one is all chopped to pieces."

Tyrion says, "Perhaps a knife, sire. To match your sword. A dagger of the same fine Valyrian steel ... with a dragonbone hilt, say?" He is describing the dagger used in the attempt on Bran Stark's life, and he gets a "sharp look" from Joffrey, who says he would prefer "a gold hit with rubies in it. Dragonbone is too plain."

As Tyrion and Sansa are walking to the wedding, they meet up with Prince Oberyn and his mistress, Ellaria. Shae has told Sansa that Ellaria "was almost a whore when he found her, m'lady ... and now she's near a princess." Oberyn and Tyrion talk about the book Joffrey has destroyed. Oberyn thinks that the book was too kind to King Viserys, who "poisoned his own nephew to gain the throne and then did nothing once he had it."

When they reach their litter, Tyrion asks Sansa to draw the curtains. She protests that the day is lovely, but he says that the citizens are likely to throw things at them if they see him. She says she is sorry for Joffrey's destruction of the book, but perhaps the dagger would please him better. Tyrion says, "Joff quarreled with your brother Robb at Winterfell. Tell me, was there ill feeling between Bran and His Grace as well?" She doesn't think so, but he presses on: "Sansa, do you know what happened to Bran at Winterfell?" She says only that he fell, and "He was always climbing things." He starts to talk about Catelyn's accusation that Tyrion had tried to have Bran killed. "She accused me falsely. I never harmed your brother Bran. And I mean no harm to you." But she can't figure out why he is talking to her about these things, and when he says, "You have never asked me how Robb died, or your lady mother," she says she "would sooner not know. It would give me bad dreams."

"I know about bad dreams," Tyrion replies.

17. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 556-589

Jon

Jon and the wildlings are moving through the Gift, and they come upon a somewhat familiar location: a tower in the middle of a lake near a deserted village. Ygritte is amazed at the size of the tower, and when Jon tells her there are towers three times its height at Winterfell, and one taller than the Wall in Oldtown, she doesn't believe him. He wishes he could take her to Winterfell, but she says she would be content to come back here and live in this tower: "Would you want that, Jon Snow? After?"

The word "after" haunts him, because to Ygritte it means "After the war. After the conquest. After the wildlings break the Wall...." -- things that he is sworn to prevent. But her entire world view is antithetical to his:

"The gods made the earth for all men t' share. Only when the kings come with their crowns and steel swords, they claimed it was all theirs. My trees, they said, you can't eat them apples. My stream, you can't fish here. My wood, you're not t' hunt. My earth, my water, my castle, my daughter, keep your hands away or I'll chop 'em off, but maybe if you kneel t' me I'll let you have a sniff. You call us thieves, but at least a thief has t' be brave and clever and quick. A kneeler only has t' kneel." 

When Jon tries to argue with her, she answers with her usual line: "You know nothing, Jon Snow." It is her response to his attempt to persuade her that Mance Rayder can't win his war against the people on this side of the Wall: "I don't doubt that you're all very brave, but when it comes to battle, discipline beats valor every time. In the end Mance will fail as all the Kings-beyond-the-Wall have failed before him. And when he does, you'll die. All of you."

She refuses to hear him, and he knows from that point that his duty is going to prevail over their love. He is also aware that if he is forced to kill one of his own, a brother of the Night's Watch, he is doomed to remain with the wildlings. And he knows that Castle Black is defenseless except for the Wall, and as far as he can guess is sadly undermanned, with only the weakest and least-trained men left to guard it. "If the Magnar takes Castle Black unawares, it will be red slaughter, boys butchered in their beds before they know they are under attack." He has to find a way to warn them, and he worries what will happen to Ygritte when his betrayal is discovered.

He has also lost Ghost, and wonders if he really went to Castle Black or if he has joined a pack on the other side of the Wall. "He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off."

It is dark and a storm is raging when they reach the village by the lake. He can see the tower when the lightning flashes. They have also spotted a fire in the ruins of the inn. A scout goes ahead and reports that it is "An old man with a horse." Jon knows that Styr will kill the old man and that he mustn't do anything to prevent it, so he finds shelter in the ruins of a cottage. Ygritte joins him there, and he tells her that he recognizes the tower. She says some of the Thenns say they have heard noises coming from it, like shouting. He says that they should go out to investigate the noise -- having recognized the tower, he knows about the causeway, too. When the lightning comes again, he points out the gilding on the top of the tower, and tells her the story of Queen Alysanne.

Jon is summoned by the Magnar, and Ygritte comes with him. Styr commands Jon to kill the old man, and he reluctantly draws Longclaw as the man begs for mercy. He hesitates, and Ygritte urges him, "You must. T' prove you are no crow, but one o' the free folk." But Jon picks up on the last phrase and refuses to follow through: "'You command Thenns,' Jon told [Styr], 'not free folk.'" Styr replies, "I see no free folk. I see a crow and a crow wife."

"I'm no crow wife!" Ygritte says, and takes her own knife and slits the man's throat. Then she shouts, "You know nothing, Jon Snow!" and throws the knife at his feet. Jon expects to be attacked by the Thenns, but at that moment there is a blinding flash of lightning and a wolf attacks. Jon thinks it's Ghost at first, but another flash reveals to him that the wolf is gray. He lashes out with Longclaw and manages at the same time to grab the mane of the old man's frightened horse and leap onto its back. Desperately clinging to the horse, he rides off through the storm. A spear flies past him, but the sounds of pursuit behind him grow more faint.

He rides as long as he can, not knowing what direction he's headed, and when the storm is ended and he finally stops he feels "a deep throbbing ache in his right thigh." He realizes that his leg has been pierced by an arrow, and when he tries to pull it out, the pain is too great. Then he thinks about the wolf attack: "Like a grey wind.... Could Robb have returned to the north?" But the pain makes it hard to concentrate on "the wolf, the old man, Ygritte, any of it...." He dismounts, and the wounded leg gives under him. He is bleeding profusely, and knows that the arrow has to come out. "Jon pushed back his bloody breeches to get a better grip, grimaced, and slowly drew the shaft through his leg. How he got through that without fainting he never knew."

He washes the wound in the stream the horse is drinking from, and binds his leg. He studies the arrow, but can't tell whether its fletching was gray or white. "Ygritte fletched her arrows with pale grey goose feathers. Did she loose a shaft at me as I fled?  Jon could not blame her for that." He rests for a while as the horse grazes, wondering how he had been able to leap on her back while carrying a sword in one hand. The sky has cleared, and he finds his way north by looking at the stars. He heads for the Wall and Castle Black. "I am going home, he told himself. But if that was true, why did he feel so hollow?"

Daenerys

She has ridden out with Ser Jorah to see the forces arrayed against hers to defend the city of Yunkai. They number about five thousand, she estimates, and Jorah confirms the number, pointing out that the flanks of the army are made up of mercenaries. The center is composed of Yunkai soldiers. He says they can be defeated easily, but at the risk of bloodshed on their side: "Astapor was complacent and vulnerable. Yunkai is forewarned." Daenerys decides to parley not only with the Yunkai slavers, but also with the two groups of sellswords, each separately: "The Stormcrows at midday, the Second Sons two hours later."

She returns to the camp to talk to Grey Worm, who had been designated the leader of the Unsullied after she set them free and told them to select officers. She had abolished the practice of having the Unsullied select new names each day, and Grey Worm had elected to keep the name he had drawn on the day he was set free, thinking it a lucky one. She tells him that they are to spare the life of any slave soldier who surrenders. "The fewer slain, the more remain to join us after."

After freeing the slaves of Astapor, she had left the city in the charge of "a council of former slaves led by a healer, a scholar, and a priest." But tens of thousands of the newly freed had chosen to follow her. They are "more burden than benefit," but she can't bring herself to turn them away since she had been the one to set them free.

She confers with Missandei about the Yunkai, and learns that they speak a dialect of Valyrian and that the slavers who rule the city are called the Wise Masters. Ser Jorah arrives with three captains of the Stormcrows, whose spokesman seems to be a Ghiscari named Prendahl na Ghezn. She learns of his contempt for the other group of sellswords, the Second Sons, and tells him that if he leaves the Yunkai and joins her, "you shall keep the gold the Yunkai'i paid you and claim a share of the plunder besides, with greater rewards later when I come into my kingdom. Fight for the Wise Masters, and your wages will be death."

Prendahl rejects the offer and insults Daenerys in the bargain, but she tells him to go back and present the offer to his men and to report his decision the next day. As they leave, one of the captains, a flamboyant Tyroshi named Daario Naharis, glances back at her "and inclined his head in polite farewell."

The commander of the Second Sons arrives two hours later. He is a Braavosi named Mero, but calls himself the Titan's Bastard. He makes indecent proposals to her but she parries them and makes him an offer to join her side, too. She can tell that his sexual swagger angers Ser Jorah, but says that she will await his answer tomorrow. Mero likes the wine she has served him and she sends him away with a wagon full of it. When he is gone, Arstan Whitebeard advises her not to trust him: "That one has an evil reputation, even in Westeros.... He will drink three toasts to your health tonight and rape you on the morrow." Jorah agrees, saying that under Mero's leadership the Second Sons have become "near as bad as the Brave Companions." But Daenerys says she doesn't want him for his reputation but for his numbers.

The Yunkai delegation is led by a man named Grazdan mo Eraz, who blusters, "I am told you have freed your eunuchs. Freedom means as much to an Unsullied as a hat to a haddock." He says they will re-enslave the survivors of the battle and retake Astapor, and sell Daenerys into prostitution: "There are pleasure houses in Lys and Tyrosh where men would pay handsomely to bed the last Targaryen." She shouldn't waste her effort on conquering Yunkai when she "will need every man to regain your father's throne in far Westeros. Yunkai wishes you only well in that endeavor. And to prove the truth of that, I have brought you a gift."

She opens the chest that is placed before her, which is full of gold coins. "Very pretty," she says. "I wonder how many chests like this I shall find when I take your city?" She says she has a gift in return: She gives him three days, at the end of which he is to free all of the city's slaves and allow them to take whatever they want from their masters as payment for their years of enslavement. Each of them is to "be given a weapon, and as much food, clothing, coin, and goods as he or she can carry." Then the Unsullied will enter the city and make sure that everyone has been freed. And if they have been, Yunkai and its people will be unharmed.

When Grazdan says she is mad, she says, "Dracarys," and the three dragons reply, with Drogon spitting fire that sets his robe aflame. Whitebeard douses the fire with a flagon of water. When Grazdan protests that he was under safe conduct, she says she'll buy him a new robe if he meets her demands about freeing the slaves. "Elsewise, Drogon will give you a warmer kiss."

When he is gone, she tells Ser Jorah to call the bloodriders, and when they are all assembled tells them that they will attack at an hour past midnight. "The Stormcrows will be arguing about my offer. The Second Sons will be drunk on the wine I gave Mero. And the Yunkai'i believe they have three days." The Unsullied will attack from right and left and the horsemen will move in a wedge through the center. When she asks what they think of the plan, Ser Jorah says, "I think you are Rhaegar Targaryen's sister," and Arstan agrees, "and a queen as well."

At midnight, Ser Jorah comes to her with the news that the Unsullied had caught Daario Naharis trying to sneak into the camp. When he is brought to her the Tyroshi informs her that he and the Stormcrows are hers, and presents her with the heads of the other two captains. At her request, he swears his sword to her service. Then she sends him back to lead the Stormcrows in an attack on the rear of the Yunkish forces.

When he is gone, Ser Jorah protests her decision, saying she can't trust a man like Naharis. But she sees the sexual jealousy behind his opinion, remembering the prophecy: "And I shall be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love." She asks if he is "the only man I should ever trust?"

"You have been a better friend to me than any I have known, a better brother than Viserys ever was. You are the first of my Queensguard, the commander of my army, my most valued counselor, my good right hand. I honor and respect and cherish you -- but I do not desire you, Jorah Mormont, and I am weary of your trying to push every other man in the world away from me, so I must needs rely on you and you alone. It will not serve, and it will not make me love you any better."

When she sends him off to prepare for the battle, she is filled with doubt and uncertainty and remembers that "Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me." She turns to her dragons and calls them her children, "my three fierce children."

She calls for Whitebeard and asks him to tell her about her brother Rhaegar. He says that "He was born in grief, my queen, and that shadow hung over him all his days." As he is elaborating on her brother's melancholy, the dragons hear the sound of horses and begin to roar. Ser Jorah enters to report on the victory, which had gone as Daenerys had foreseen. They "have several thousand captives" and their own losses amount to "A dozen. If that many."

The next day they march to the city, and on the third the gates open and the freed slaves emerge. Missandei tells them "that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons." People begin to cry out the word "Mhysa!" When Daenerys asks what it means, Missandei tells her, "It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means 'Mother.'"

10. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 344-381

Davos

Davos's cell is warm and full of rats, but he is regaining his strength, thanks to a visit from Maester Pylos. He is also eating regularly, and can count the days by the visits of the two jailers who bring him his meals. He calls one Porridge, because he brinks breakfast, and the other Lamprey, because he once bought half a lamprey pie, though it was too rich for the still-malnourished Davos to keep down. The jailers, however, never answer any of his questions about the war or whether his son Devan is still alive. Still, the regular attention makes him believe, "They are keeping me alive, for some purpose of their own."

And then one day he has a visitor, though not one he's particularly eager to see: Melisandre. She comments that the cell is a dark place, and points to the torch burning outside of it: "This is all that stands between you and the darkness, Onion Knight. This little fire, this gift of R'hllor. Shall I put it out?" He says no, of course, but he refuses to beg. Then she says that she is like the torch: "We are both instruments of R'hllor. We were made for a single purpose -- to keep the darkness at bay."

He retorts that she is "the mother of darkness," as he saw when she gave birth to the terrible shadow at Storm's End. She replies that it takes light to give birth to shadow, and anyway, he needn't fear that happening any time soon: "the king's fires burn so low I dare not draw off any more to make another son." Davos, on the other hand, she proposes, has enough fire left, and if he really wants to serve Stannis, he should come to her chambers. "I could give you pleasure such as you have never known, and with your life-fire I could make...." He completes her sentence: "...a horror." And he calls on the Seven to protect him.

She proclaims them false gods, and proclaims a Manichean creed:

"The night is dark and full of terrors, the day bright and beautiful and full of hope. One is black, the other white.There is ice and there is fire. Hate and love. Bitter and sweet. Male and female. Pain and pleasure. Winter and summer. Evil and good." She took a step toward him. "Death and life. Everywhere, opposites. Everywhere, the war." 

He is puzzled by her reference to the war, and she explains that she doesn't mean the conflict over the throne of the Seven Kingdoms: She's not there just "to put yet another vain king on yet another empty throne." (So much for Stannis.) She is there to fight on behalf of "R'hllor, the Lord of Light, the Heart of Fire, the God of Flame and Shadow" against "the Great Other whose name may not be spoken, the Lord of Darkness, the Soul of Ice, the God of Night and Terror." She asks which side he is on. All he can say is that he is "full of doubts."

But this pleases her: "The good knight is honest to the last, even in his day of darkness. It is well you did not lie to me.  I would have known." And she asks why he wanted to kill her. He says he'll tell her if she tells him who betrayed him. She replies that no one betrayed him: "I saw your purpose in my flames." So if she's so good with fire, he asks, why did she let them burn in the attack on King's Landing. Those weren't her flames, she says. She wasn't even there, she reminds him, and things would have turned out differently if she had been. It was Stannis's fault: "his pride proved stronger than his faith," and he surrounded himself with unbelievers. But he has learned his lesson.

Davos reflects bitterly that it took the deaths of his sons to teach Stannis a lesson. But she prophesies a future victory for Stannis: "He is the Lord's chosen, the warrior of fire. I have seen him leading the fight against the dark, I have seen it in the flames." She leaves him to reflect on her prophecy. "And because R'hllor is the source of all good, I shall leave the torch as well."

Left alone he reflects on what she has said, and for a while stares at the torchlight trying to see something in it, "but there was nothing, only fire, and after a time his eyes began to water."

Then three days later, he receives a cellmate. There is the sound of a struggle, and Ser Axell Florent and two guardsmen arrive with the prisoner, who pleads his innocence and demands to see the queen. And when he cries out, "I am the King's Hand!" Davos recognizes Alester Florent, Axell's brother and Queen Selyse's uncle. Alester is able to answer Davos's questions about what happened on the Blackwater, including the loss of the ship Fury which had been captained by Alester's nephew, Imry, and on which Davos's son Maric had been oarmaster. Imry had led the fleet up the Blackwater.

Alester has been imprisoned for treason because he believes the loss of the fleet and of Stannis's allies means defeat for the king. "The best hope that remains is to try and salvage something with a peace. That is all I meant to do. Gods be good, how can they call it treason?" So he has written a letter to Tywin Lannister, proposing that Stannis give up his claim on the throne, retract his words about Joffrey's illegitimacy and incestuous birth, in exchange for being allowed to remain as Lord of Dragonstone and Storm's End. He also proposed marrying Stannis's daughter, Shireen, to Tommen. "The terms ... they are as good as we are ever like to get."

Davos agrees that they are probably good terms, but asks what the king thought of them. Alester says the king "is not in his right mind." He is under the sway of Melisandre. "This talk of a stone dragon ... madness, I tell you, sheer madness." Davos is as ignorant as we are of this talk, though we know more about what's happening with live dragons than either of them does. So given the king's debility, Alester took it upon himself to sue for peace: "Stannis gave me his seal, he gave me leave to rule. The Hand speaks with the king's voice." About this, Davos knows better: "It is not in Stannis to yield, so long as he knows his claim is just." And he would never marry Tommen, born of the same incestuous relationship as Joffrey, to his daughter.

Alester insists, "He has no choice." But Davos knows better about this: "He can choose to die a king."

Jon

Jon has gone to look for Ghost, and to bid him goodbye. There is no way the direwolf can cross the Wall. So Jon tells him to go to Castle Black and wait for him there. "They will know you at Castle Black, and maybe your coming will warn them." Ghost bounds away, but Jon doesn't know whether he has understood the command or is just chasing after a hare.

He judges from the terrain that they are somewhere between Castle Black and the Shadow Tower at the westernmost end of the Wall, and probably closer to the latter. As he returns to the camp, he berates himself for not killing Mance Rayder when he had the opportunity, even if it meant losing his own life. But instead he has ridden off with Styr the Magnar, Jarl, and a company of Thenns and raiders, as well as Ygritte. They have become lovers, and though he is torn with guilt for breaking his vow of chastity as a member of the Watch, he also cannot resist her. "Was this how it was for my father, he wondered. Was he as weak as I am, when he dishonored himself in my mother's bed?"

He is summoned to Magnar by one of the Thenns. Jarl, who is the lover of Mance Rayder's sister-in-law, has joint command with Magnar, who resents sharing the power. But Jarl had crossed the Wall a dozen times, so his skill is particularly valuable on this mission. Magnar wants to know more details about how often the Watch patrols the Wall, and Jon tells him what he has to, though he tries to hold back as much information as possible. He also overestimates the strength of the Watch at the places which are guarded. Jarl challenges these numbers, but Jon doesn't back down.

They are camped in a system of caverns, and Jon finds Ygritte in one with a pool fed by a waterfall. She tells him legends of the caverns that supposedly go under the Wall, and of a King-beyond-the-Wall named Gorne who supposedly found it, as well his his brother Gendel who supposedly got lost in the caverns and whose descendants still live there, feeding on the unwary humans who come upon them. Ygritte has developed a catchphrase, "You know nothing, Jon Snow," whenever she has a bit of lore that he is unfamiliar with, and she uses it often. On the other hand, there's something she knows nothing of, which is cunnilingus, and when Jon practices it on her, she is duly impressed.

When the torch starts to burn down, he suggests that they leave. But they don't.

His guilt came back afterward, but weaker than before. If this is so wrong, he wondered, why did the gods make it feel so good?

 
Danerys

Daenerys has gone to the Good Masters of Astapor with an astonishing offer: to buy all of the Unsullied. She is wearing a Qartheen gown that bares her left breast, and after she makes her offer, "She could not quite make out all that they were saying, but she could hear the greed."

There are eight slave brokers, each with a company of body slaves, and she has brought Irri and Jhiqui, Whitebeard and Belwas, her bloodriders, and Ser Jorah. Kraznys mo Naklos asks if by all she means, in addition to the eight thousands, the six centuries who are waiting to make up another thousand once the trainees are promoted to their ranks. She says she does, "and the ones who are still in training as well. The ones who have not earned the spikes."

This sets off an argument among the brokers, some of whom say they can't sell boys who aren't fully trained, while others insist, "We can, if her gold is good." Moreover, if they sell them all, it will be ten years or more before they can train enough new Unsullied, but one fat man argues, "Gold in my purse is better than gold in my future." Kraznys tells her the consensus: She can have the eight thousands and the six centuries now, and in a year they'll have another two thousands to sell her. But she insists on all of them: "Tell the Good Masters that I will want even the little ones who still have their puppies. Tell them that I will pay as much for the boy they cut yesterday as for an Unsullied in a spiked helm."

When they say no, she says she will pay double. One of them who speaks the Common Tongue asks if she really has the gold and the goods to pay that much. She says they have inspected the cargo on her ships; does she have enough?  They say she has enough for one thousand, but only five centuries if she pays double. She offers to throw in the three ships, and they say that would add up to two thousands, but that they are being generous in offering that. Finally, reluctantly, she plays her trump card: "'Give me all,' she said, 'and you may have a dragon.'"

The members of her retinue are shocked, and Whitebeard goes down on one knee to beg her not to do this. She orders Jorah to take him away, and apologizes to the brokers for the interruption. She knows that she has them where she wants them. Finally one of the brokers calls it a deal, as long as they can choose which dragon. And the one they want is Drogon, the largest. When it is agreed on, Kraznys even throws in the slave girl, his interpreter, as "a token of a bargain well struck."

She leaves them, feeling ill, but when she sees Whitebeard, she tells him he may disagree with her all he wants in private, but never to question her judgment in front of others. He submits. Then she asks the slave girl, in High Valryian, if she has a name. When the girl realizes that Daenerys has spoken the language that she was supposedly translating, she says, "Oh." Daenerys asks if that's her name, and the girl asks her forgiveness and says, "Your slave's name is Missandei, but...." Daenerys tells her she isn't a slave anymore, and tells her to ride in the litter with her. If she wants to leave her, she may, but if she stays she will be one of her handmaids. Missandei decides to stay.

Daenerys warns her that the journey will be difficult and she might be killed. Missandei replies, in High Valryian,"Valar morghulis." Daenerys translates the phrase: "All men must die."

She learns more from her new handmaid about the Unsullied: It is true that they have no fear and that the "wine of courage" has removed all sense of pain. They are so obedient that, "If you told them not to breathe, they would find that easier than not to obey." And what will she do with them once she has won her war and claimed her throne. They make excellent guards and watchmen, Missandei says, and she can always sell them. Daenerys says that men are not bought and sold in Westeros, and even if she did sell them, could their new owners tell them to fight against her. Missandei says, first, that Unsullied aren't men, and second that they do whatever their owner commands: "They do not question, Your Grace. All the questions have been culled from them." The only solution to that problem would be to have them kill themselves, which they would do.

Daenerys realizes that this last troubles Missandei, and she asks why. "Three of them were my brothers once, Your Grace," she replies.

Back at the ship and in private, Daenerys gives way to tears. But then she argues with the captain, Groleo, about trading the ships, and the anger gives her strength. She calls her bloodriders and Ser Jorah to her cabin, and later goes out on deck where Jorah joins her. She asks him, "Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?" He has no answer, and she goes back to her cabin, where she dreams that she is Rhaegar, mounted on a dragon, confronting "the Usurper's rebel host" who are armored in ice. The dragonfire melts them.

She awakes feeling triumphant, but she senses someone in her cabin. She calls out for her handmaids, but a woman tells her that they are all asleep. Then she says,

"Remember. To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow."

She recognizes the words, and cries out, "Quaithe?" But when she opens the door, letting in the light and waking Irri and Jhiqui, there is no sign of the "woman in a red lacquer mask." She tells the girls she had a dream, and to go back to sleep, but she doesn't sleep again that night.

The next morning she and all of her people, including the Dothraki and the captains and crews of the ships, enter Astapor in a caravan transporting the goods from the ships. The three dragons are chained and restless. In the Plaza of Punishment, where slaves are "racked, and flayed, and hanged," the Unsullied and the trainees are all gathered, and the slave brokers are waiting. At a command from Ser Jorah, the trade goods are unloaded from wagons and piled before the slavers. When this is done, Daenerys tells them that there is much more on the ships, which are also part of the deal, so that the only thing remaining is the dragon.

Daenerys gives Kraznys mo Nakloz the end of the chain that restrains Drogon, and in exchange he gives her the whip that signifies her authority over the Unsullied. "The handle was black dragonbone, elaborately carved and inlaid with gold. Nine long thin leather lashes trailed from it, each one tipped by a gilded claw. The gold pommel was a woman's head with pointed ivory teeth." Kraznys calls it "The harpy's fingers."

Daenerys mounts her horse and raises the whip, then rides among the ranks of the Unsullied, crying out "YOU ARE THE DRAGON'S NOW! YOU'RE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR! IT IS DONE! IT IS DONE!" Only one of the slavers notices that she is speaking Valyrian. The others are struggling to control Drogon. She rides back to them, accompanied by her bloodriders. Kraznys says, "He will not come." She replies, "There is a reason. A dragon is no slave," and she lashes out at Kraznys with the whip. "The harpy's fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash." And then she calls out to Drogon, "Dracarys."

The dragon incinerates Kraznys, and the bloodriders take care of the rest of the slavers. Then she calls to the Unsullied to kill the Good Masters, the soldiers, and the slave drivers but to "harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see." She calls out, "Dracarys," and the Unsullied echo the word. "And all around them the slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire."

9. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 311-343

Daenerys

They have landed at Astapor, an ancient city of the old kingdom of Ghis whose symbol is a bronze harpy. Daenerys has gone to see Kraznys mo Nakloz, a slaver who deals in the warriors known as the Unsullied. Kraznys speaks High Valyrian to an interpreter, a slave girl, who translates what he has supposedly said into the Common Tongue. But thinking that Daenerys doesn't know his language, Kraznys freely insults her, calling her "the Westerosi whore" and "a sunset savage," trusting the interpreter to bowdlerize his words into something more diplomatic.

Daenerys wants an account of how the Unsullied are trained, at which Kraznys snorts, "Are all Westerosi pigs so ignorant?" but tells the interpreter to get on with it as fast as possible because the day is hot. A thousand Unsullied have been marched out for her inspection, wearing white loincloths and conical bronze helmets topped by a foot-long spike. Their training is so rigorous that when it is over, Daenerys is told, "no duty that will ever fall to them could be so hard as their training." And Kraznys says they have been standing there for a day and a night and will stand there as long as he commands them to, "and when nine hundred and ninety-nine have collapsed to die upon the bricks, the last will stand there still, and never move until his own death claims him."

Arstan Whitebeard, who is there with Daenerys says that is "madness, not courage." He has opposed the visit to Astapor and the buying of the slave army, and Daenerys has brought him along for that reason. She left Ser Jorah in charge of the dragons who have been hidden belowdecks to keep them away from the curious. Arstan understands Valyrian, too, but like Daenerys he feigns ignorance when Kraznys calls him a "smelly old man." She inspects the ranks of Unsullied, noting that they have been drawn from a variety of cultures, and are of various heights and ages from fourteen to twenty.

She asks why they have all been castrated, when this reduces their strength. Kraznys says they have discipline, which is better than strength. They are "absolutely obedient, absolutely loyal, and utterly without fear." He gives one of them a lash across the face with his whip, drawing blood, and asks if the man would like another a lash. The answer is, "If it please your worship." In the next row, he asks a man for his sword and proceeds to use it to cut off the man's nipple. He hands the sword back to the man, who is bleeding profusely, and the man says, "This one is pleased to have served you."

They feel no pain, Kraznys explains, because they drink something called "The wine of courage," which is a blend of "deadly nightshade, bloodfly larva, black lotus root, and many secret things." Because they don't feel pain, he says, they can't be tortured into revealing secrets. When they are castrated, the penis is removed as well as the testicles, so they are not just infertile but incapable of sexual pleasure. He says he has heard that in Westeros there are those who take vows of chastity, and Arstan confirms that it's true of "the maesters of the Citadel, the septons and septas who serve the Seven, the silent sisters of the dead, the Kingsguard and the Night's Watch." Kraznys says that they are nevertheless subject to temptation, which the Unsullied aren't: "No woman can ever tempt them, nor any man."

They are also untempted by plunder, he claims. "They own nothing but their weapons. We do not even permit them names." Every day, they pick a medallion from a cask, and that is their name for that day. At the end of the day they throw the medallions back in the cask, and pick a new one the next morning. If they can't remember a new name each day, they "are culled in training, along with those who cannot run all day in full pack, scale a mountain in the black of night, walk across a bed of coals, or slay an infant." This last gives Daenerys pause. Kraznys explains that the potential Unsullied goes to the slave market, finds a woman with an infant, kills it, and pays the slave's owner with a silver coin. When he does this, he earns the spike on his helmet. He adds that when a boy is castrated, he is given a puppy, and at the end of the first year of training must strangle it. The boys who can't bring themselves to do this "are killed, and fed to the surviving dogs."

Daenerys observes that even though they can't be tempted by sex or gold, what if an enemy offered them freedom. He tells her that they would kill the man who offered them that, and bring her his head. "They have no life outside their duty. They are soldiers, and that is all." She says she needs soldiers, so how many does he have?  He has eight thousand, and he sells them only by units of a thousand. "Once we sold by the ten, as household guards, but that proved unsound. Ten is too few. They mingle with other slaves, even freemen, and forget who and what they are." They have no officers, so she must provide them: "We train them to obey, not to think." They come with swords, shields, spears, sandals, quilted tunics and the spiked caps. Any other armor she wants would have to be provided.

She asks Arstan Whitebeard for his advice, and he says, emphatically, no. She knows his objection, but wants the slave girl and Kraznys to hear it:

"My queen,"said Arstan, "there have been no slaves in the Seven Kingdoms for thousands of years. The old gods and the new alike hold slavery to be an abomination. Evil. If you should land in Westeros at the head of a slave army, many good men will oppose you for no other reason than that. You will do great harm to your cause, and to the honor of your House."

She argues with him a bit about how she is to raise an army, and finally turns to Kraznys and tells him, "I must consider carefully."

He replies that she'd better hurry, and that he knew of someone who wants to buy them all. The slave girl says to him that the corsair only wanted a hundred, but he tells her to tell Daenerys that he wants them all. And he tells her to offer his services as a guide to Astapor, though the delights he describes are considerably grosser than the one the slave girl transmits to Daenerys, who hears the enraged Arstan tapping angrily with his sword. She excuses herself and says she needs to return to her ship. Kraznys tells the slave girl that "It is not the woman who decides, it is this man she runs to."

As she rides back through the red-brick city, Arstan says, "Bricks and blood built Astapor, ... and bricks and blood her people." It is something a maester told him, he says, and now he sees that it's true: "The bricks of Astapor are red with the blood of the slaves who make them." He urges her to leave the city, but she replies that Ser Jorah says she must leave with an army. "Ser Jorah was a slaver himself," he reminds her, and says that she can hire sellswords in other places. She replies that Viserys had failed in raising troops in those places, and she doesn't want to go begging for them. When he retorts, "Better to come a beggar than a slaver," she observes, "There speaks one who has been neither." She knows what it's like to be sold: Viserys sold her to Drogo. He apologizes.

She wonders why Jorah mistrusts Arstan, and thinks that he might be jealous that she has found another counselor. She recalls the kiss Jorah gave her, and vows that she will never give him the opportunity to do that again. But it has awakened something dormant in her, and she has begun having sexual dreams. The man in them is not Jorah Mormont, however, but someone "younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow." She was so aroused one night that she began to masturbate, but she woke Irri, who then helped bring her to climax. The next day she thought it might be a dream, and she told herself that it wasn't Ser Jorah or Irri she wanted, but Drogo.

At the ship Ser Jorah asks how many men are for sale, and she says, "None." She is angry and disturbed by what she has seen:

"They sell eunuchs, not men. Eunuchs made of brick, like the rest of Astapor. Shall I buy eight thousand brick eunuchs with dead eyes that never move, who kill suckling babes for the sake of a spiked hat and strangle their own dogs? They don't even have names. So don't call them men, ser." 

When he tries to respond to her objections, she slaps him. "If you were my true knight, you would never have brought me to this vile sty." But what she thinks is "If you were my true knight, you would never have kissed me, or looked at my breasts the way you did, or...." He says he will tell the captain to sail on the evening tide, but she says that she can't. "There are eight thousand brick eunuchs for sale, and I must find some way to buy them." She goes below. In the cabin, Irri tells her that the dragons have been restless, cooped up, and the horses and the people below as well. When she sees how upset Daenerys is, she offers to "pleasure" her, but Daenerys says she wants to be alone to think.

At dusk, she goes back on deck, where Ser Jorah asks if he can "speak frankly." She gives him leave, and he reminds her that when her ancestor Aegon the Dragon arrived in Westeros he had to win the throne "with steel and dragonfire. And that will mean blood on your hands before the thing is done." She replies that she has no problem shedding the blood of enemies. It is the blood of innocents -- the eight thousand babies murdered by the Unsullied -- that troubles her. He argues that if she buys the  Unsullied, the only people "they'll kill are those you want dead."

She asks why the Dothraki have never sacked Astapor, and he says that the Unsullied are a powerful deterrent who once defeated the Dothraki, and besides, the slavers "know that if they feast the horselords and give them gifts, they will soon ride on. It's cheaper than fighting, and a deal more certain." She wishes it could be as easy as that: "to sail to King's Landing with her dragons, and pay the boy Joffrey a chest of gold to make him go away." She tells Jorah, "Viserys would have bought as many Unsullied as he had the coin for. But you once said I was like Rhaegar...." He acknowledges that he did. "Prince Rhaegar led free men into battle, not slaves," she says.

He replies, "Prince Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought honorably. And Rhaegar died."

Bran

They are making their way north by way of the mountain valleys, guided by the stars. But the valleys seldom run north and south, so the route is long and they sometimes get lost. Meera is weary of going up and down the mountain passes, and Bran wishes they could take the kingsroad. He is impatient to find the three-eyed crow. They are hungry, though Meera is skilled at spearing fish in the streams, and Summer brings them squirrels and rabbits. But the farther north they go, the smaller and icier the streams are, and the game grows scarcer.

Jojen reminds them why they can't follow the roads: They will encounter people who will remember encountering a crippled boy riding in a basket on the back of a seven-foot-tall man with a wolf accompanying them. But Bran knows that they have been seen by mountain folk, and is familiar with the families that live here. His great-great-grandmother "had been a Flint of the mountains," and Old Nan had said he inherited his love of climbing from her.

One day they are caught in a freezing rainstorm and Summer finds a cave for them to shelter in. But when Bran enters on Hodor's back he can see a fire in the back of the cave, and a man asks them to join him. He shares food with them, and Bran decides that he must be a Liddle because the clasp that fastens his cloak is shaped like a pinecone, the emblem of the Liddles. When Bran wishes they could travel the kingsroad, the man tells them that the Bastard of Bolton is patrolling it. "'And paying good silver for wolfskins, a man hears, and maybe gold for word of certain other walking dead.' He looked at Bran when he said that, and at Summer stretched out beside him." But he also warns them about going to the Wall: "The Old Bear took the Watch into the haunted woods, and all that come back was his ravens, with hardly a message between them."

They spend the night in the cave, and the man was gone when they awoke, though he left them a sausage and a dozen oatcakes with pinenuts and blackberries baked in them. Bran tells himself that when there is a Stark in Winterfell again he'll "send for the Liddles and pay them back a hundredfold for every nut and berry."

The trail they follow that day is easier, and Meera spots an eagle. Bran watches it, wondering what it would be like to fly so high. He tries to join with the eagle the way he joins with Summer, but fails. He asks Meera to tell a story as they walk, so she tells one about the Knight of the Laughing Tree. There was once a boy on the Neck who had "learned all the magics of my people," but he wanted to learn more, so he set out for the Isle of Faces to find the green men. It takes him many days, but he finally reaches the Gods Eye and paddles out to the Isle. He spends the winter there with the green men, but in the spring he decides to travel farther, so he paddles his boat to the castle by the lake. Bran says that must have been Harrenhal, but Meera says only, "Was it?"

A great tourney is taking place at the castle, and the boy wanted to be part of it. The daughter of the castle was a fair maid with four brothers and an uncle, a knight of the Kingsguard, as her champion. And there was the wife of the dragon prince with a dozen ladies in attendance, and the knights begged for their favors to tie on their lances. Bran warns Meera that Hodor doesn't like love stories: "He likes the stories where the knights fight monsters." But Meera reminds him, "Sometimes the knights are the monsters, Bran."

As the little crannogman was walking about admiring the pageantry, three squires, "none older than fifteen, yet even so they were bigger than him," challenged him and took away his spear. Bran asks if they were Walders, because "It sounded like something Little Walder Frey might have done," but Meera just says that they didn't give their names. But as they are bullying and kicking him, a she-wolf -- on two legs, Meera says, in response to Bran's question whether she was on four legs or two -- rescues him and takes him to "her pack brothers: the wild wolf who led them, the quiet wolf beside him, and the pup who was the youngest of the four."

They invite him to join them at the feast that opens the tourney. He joins in the merriment, but in the middle of it he sees the three squires: "One served a pitchfork knight, one a porcupin, while the last attended a knight with two towers on his surcoat, a sigil all crannogmen know well." Bran identifies it as the Freys' sigil.  The wolf pup offers to find the crannogmen some armor, but he is afraid he'll make a fool of himself. That night he goes to the lakeshore and prays to the old gods.

On the second day of the tourney, the porcupine knight, the pitchfork knight, and the knight of the two towers were all victorious. But late in the afternoon, a mystery knight appeared. Bran says, "It was the little crannogman, I bet." Meera says that no one knew who he was, but he was short and his armor was made up of "bits and pieces" patched together. "The device upon his shield was a heart tree of the old gods, a white weirwood with a laughing red face." He issues a challenge to the porcupine knight, the pitchfork knight, and the knight of the two towers, and he defeats them all, one by one. And when each of the defeated knights comes to reclaim their horse and armor, the Knight of the Laughing Tree says he will return it when they teach their squires honor. "Once the defeated knights chastised their squires sharply, their horses and armor were returned. And so the little crannogman's prayer was answered ... by the green men, or the old gods, or the children of the forest, who can say?"

But that night the other knights and the king vow to unmask the mystery knight. The next day, however, the Knight of the Laughing Tree is not present, and when the dragon prince goes to search for him, he finds only his shield, hanging in a tree. So the dragon prince is declared the winner of the tourney.

Bran says it "was a good story." But he would have preferred it it had been the three knights, and not their squires, who hurt the crannogmen, and that he had killed them. "The part about the ransoms was stupid. And the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty." Meera says, "She was ... but that's a sadder story."

Bran thinks that if he could visit the Isle of Faces, maybe the green men could use their magic to make him walk again and turn him into a knight, "even if it was only for a day.... A day would be enough."

4. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 105-145

Daenerys

Daenerys has gotten her wish: She is at sea, with her dragons flying around her, and her Dothraki contingent miserably seasick and fearful.

No squall could frighten Dany, though. Daenerys Stormborn, she was called, for she had come howling into the world on distant Dragonstone as the greatest storm in the memory of Westeros howled outside, a storm so fierce that it ripped gargoyles from the castle walls and smashed her father's fleet to kindling.

The captain of Balerion, the ship on which Daenerys is sailing, is Groleo, "an old Pentoshi like his master, Illyrio Mopatis." He was initially leery of having dragons on board because of the risk of fire, but so far they have behaved and even kept down the number of rats on board. Drogon in particular is growing fast, and Daenerys thinks that in a year or two he may be large enough for her to ride.

She is standing on deck with Ser Jorah and Whitebeard, whose real name is Arstan, discussing dragon lore. Jorah is not fond of Whitebeard or of Strong Belwas, the eunuch whose squire Whitebeard claims to be. But Daenerys is drawn to him because Whitebeard claims to have known her father, King Aerys II, who had died before she was born, and her brother, Prince Rhaegar. When Whitebeard makes a reference to Ser Jorah's second wife, Lynesse, who "had ruined him, and abandoned him," Daenerys has to keep the peace between the two.

Whitebeard goes on to tell a story of the young Prince Rhaegar, who "was bookish to a fault," he says, until one day he read something that no one has identified but which changed him into a warrior. And speaking of warriors, Strong Belwas appears and orders Whitebeard to fetch food for him. His departure gives Jorah the opportunity to reiterate his warning to Daenerys: "This Arstan Whitebeard is playing you false. He is too old to be a squire, and too well spoken to be serving that oaf of a eunuch." Daenerys has to admit to herself that his suspicions make sense, especially since she has already survived two assassination attempts, although Whitebeard was the one who foiled the second. But, she reassures herself, she has Ser Jorah and her bloodriders to protect her, not to mention her dragons.

A wind comes up and fills the sails of the ship, which had been becalmed. So they begin to make headway again, though Ser Jorah asks, "to what, my queen?" That night, Daenerys is feeding her dragons when Ser Jorah comes to her cabin. She demonstrates to him how well they are eating by calling out, "Drogon, ... dracarys," and tossing a piece of pork into the air that the dragon sears with his fiery breath before gobbling it down. But when Ser Jorah asks, "Dracarys?" the three dragons turn toward him and Viserion belches out a flame that makes Jorah back away. Daenerys explains that the word means "dragonfire" in High Valyrian, and that she has trained them to respond to the word."I wanted to choose a command that no one was like to utter by chance."

Ser Jorah then asks if they can speak privately, and Daenerys sends her handmaids, Irri and Jhiqui, away. Then she asks what is troubling him, and he says, "Strong Belwas. This Arstan Whitebeard. And Illyrio Mopatis, who sent them." This isn't news to Daenerys, who is sitting naked in bed underneath a coverlet that she pulls higher. He reminds her of the prophecy of the warlocks in Qarth that she will be betrayed "Once for blood and once for gold and once for love." She says that the first was fulfilled by Mirri Maz Duur. Which leaves two, he observes, and comments, "Never forget, Robert offered a lordship to the man who slays you."

Daenerys interrupts a fight between two of the dragons and as she does the cover slips from her chest. She hastily covers herself again, and notes, "The Usurper is dead." But, he points out, his son rules in his place: "A dutiful son pays his father's debts. Even blood debts." She agrees that might be a problem, but asks what this has to do with Whitebeard and the eunuch. After all, Whitebeard killed the manticore. He asks, "Khaleesi, has it occurred to you that Whitebeard and Belwas might have been in league with the assassin? It might all have been a ploy to win your trust." When she laughs at the idea, he also reminds her that Belwas and Arstan are in the employ of Illyrio, as are the captains of the three ships they are sailing upon. "The warlocks said the second treason would be for gold. What does Illyrio Mopatis love more than gold?"

She says she knows that Illyrio is "devious" and "clever," but that she will "need clever men about me if I am to win the Iron Throne." Besides, he and her bloodriders will protect her. As far as the risk of trusting men like the three he is questioning is concerned, "how am I to win the Seven Kingdoms without such risks?" She grows angry as he continues to challenge her innocence, but he tells her he has a plan: Instead of sailing directly to Pentos, she should tell Captain Groleo to sail for Slaver's Bay instead. There she can recruit an army of the men known as the Unsullied. He tells her a story of how a force of Unsullied defeated a much larger horde of Dothraki. If they hire an army of Unsullied and then proceed overland to Pentos, "when you break bread with Magister Illyrio, you will have a thousand swords behind you, not just four."

She asks what she is to pay for this army with, and he notes that the ships are carrying trade goods from Qarth. If Illyrio "is sincere in his devotion to your cause, he will not begrudge you three shiploads of trade goods. What better use of his tiger skins than to buy you the beginnings of an army?" She begins to see the logic of his argument, but asks what if Captain Groleo, Arstan and Strong Belwas oppose the plan. He replies, "Perhaps it's time you found that out."

Excitedly, she jumps out of bed and starts to get dressed, eager to see Groleo at once. But as she is pulling on her clothes, Jorah puts his arms around her and kisses her. She doesn't pull away at once, and when she does she begins to scold him. But he declares that he should have kissed her a long time ago. He calls her "Daenerys," which she corrects to "Your Grace!"

"Your Grace," he conceded, "the dragon has three heads, remember. You have wondered at that, ever since you heard it from the warlocks in the House of Dust. Well, here's your meaning: Balerion, Meraxes, and Vhaegar, ridden by Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya. The three-headed dragon of House Targaryen -- three dragons, and three riders.... Rhaenys and Visenya were Aegon's wives as well as his sisters. You have no brothers, but you can take husbands. And I tell you truly, Daenerys, there is no man in all the world who will ever be half so true to you as me." 

Bran

Bran is seeing through Summer's eyes, racing through the woods in which he comes upon a pack of wolves. They recall for him his own pack, the five direwolf cubs "and a sixth who stood aside." He recalls their scents, particularly the "angry brother with the hot green eyes" he knows to be nearby even though he hasn't seen him for a while. And he remembers the sister who died: "Four now, not five. Four and one more, the white who has no voice." The other pack has killed a deer when he comes on them, and he fights them off so he can eat.

Then Hodor says "Hodor," and he begins to turn into a boy again, reluctantly. They are "down in the damp vault of some ancient watchtower that must have been abandoned thousands of years before." Jojen tells him, "You were gone too long," but Bran had wanted to eat the deer, not the frogs that Meera has gone to hunt. Jojen then asks him if he marked the trees he had seen in his vision, because Bran has learned to open "his third eye and put on Summer's skin," ranging the woods as the wolf does to seek out pathways for them. But he has forgotten to do the tasks that would help them navigate, clawing the trees so they can locate where he has been roaming. "He meant to do the things that Jojen asked, but once he was a wolf they never seemed important."

Jojen is worried that Bran has begun to lose himself so he asks him to say who he is. "'Bran,' he said sullenly. Bran the Broken. 'Brandon Stark.' The cripple boy. 'The Prince of Winterfell.'" But he recalls that Winterfell has been burned and its people have abandoned it. "How can you be the prince of someplace you might never see again?" Jojen also has him remember that "Bran the boy and Summer the wolf" are two distinct beings. "Remember that, Bran. Remember yourself, or the wolf will consume you. When you join, it is not enough to run and hunt and howl in Summer's skin."

Bran promises to do so, though he wonders, "What good is it to be a skinchanger if you can't wear the skin you like?" He offers to go back and perform Jojen's tasks now, though he really wants to go back and eat the deer and fight with the wolves first. But Jojen knows what Bran has in mind and tells him he has to eat as Bran now. "A warg cannot live on what his beast consumes."

Meera returns with two trout and six frogs, which reminds him of how the Walders, the Frey cousins who had been sent as wards to Winterfell, "used to say that eating frogs would make your teeth green and make moss grow under your arms. He wondered if the Walders were dead. He hadn't seen their corpses at Winterfell." But he eats the stew that Meera makes from her catch and decides he likes it, though not as much as deer.

Jojen says they should move on tomorrow, though Meera argues for staying where they are safe. He wants them to go to the Wall because that's where he has had the vision of the three-eyed crow. Meera suggests that they should find some horses and trade for them, but Jojen says no.

"Look at us, Meera. A crippled boy with a direwolf, a simpleminded giant, and two crannogmen a thousand leagues from the Neck. We will be known. And word will spread. So long as Bran remains dead, he is safe. Alive, he becomes prey for those who want him dead for good and true.... Somewhere to the north, the three-eyed crow awaits us. Bran has need of a teacher wiser than me."

Their argument is interrupted by the howl of a wolf, and Bran says it isn't Summer. He feels rebellious toward Jojen, who is always telling them what to do, so he argues that they should follow Meera's advice and steal horses, or steal a boat and make their way to Riverrun, but neither Meera nor Jojen supports his plan. Hodor begins repeating his name over and over, to their annoyance, so Bran tells him to go outside and practice with his sword. They have three swords that they took from the crypt at Winterfell.

Bran then asks Jojen what he meant about needing a teacher, and Jojen says that he is "only a boy who dreams," but Bran has the potential to be more than that: "You are the winged wolf, and there is no saying how far and high you might fly ... if you had someone to teach you." Meera says they will be safe there until the war ends, and that if they leave they risk being captured. But it may be that the risk is worth taking. Only Bran can decide.

So Bran tries to think what they should do. If they leave, they might be captured "by the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton." If they stay, they would be safe: "He would stay alive. And crippled." He would always be crippled, no matter where he went, unless Jojen's dreams were true. "'I want to fly,' he told them. 'Please. Take me to the crow.'"

Davos

They are nearing Dragonstone, and Davos sees smoke coming from the top of the mountain. "Dragonmont is restless this morning, Davos thought, or else Melisandre is burning someone else." He has vowed to revenge himself for his sons' deaths. "I will cut the living heart from her breast and see how it burns. He touched the hilt of the fine long Lysene dirk that the captain had given him."

He is still weak from his ordeal. "If he stood too long his legs shook, and sometimes he fell prey to uncontrollable fits of coughing and brought up gobs of bloody phlegm." The captain, Korane Sathmantes, has told him how the battle at King's Landing ended with Stannis fleeing from the Lannisters and the ghost of King Renly. As they enter the harbor, the captain tells him that Salladhor Saan, the prince who leads the Lysene fleet, wants to see him, but Davos insists that he must see the king first. The captain says that no one sees the king, and that he must see Salladhor first, and Davos is too weak to argue with him.

Salladhor is on board a Pentoshi ship that once belonged to Illyrio Mopatis, but which he has seized under his new authority as Lord of Blackwater Bay, a title granted by Lord Alester Florent, the Hand of King Stannis. He gives Davos the good news that his son Devan was rescued from the battle. But when Davos says he wants to see the king, he tells him that "you will be finding him changed, I am fearing. Since the battle, he sees no one, but broods in his Stone Drum. Queen Selyse keeps court for him with her uncle the Lord Alester." The only person Stannis sees is Melisandre.

"Queer talking I have heard, of hungry fires within the mountain, and how Stannis and the red woman go down together to watch the flames. There are shafts, they say, and secret stairs down into the mountain's heart, into hot places where only she may walk unburned."

When Davos talks of his plan to kill Melisandre, Salladhor tells him to be quiet, that talk like that is dangerous. He is unwell and should take to his bed. But insists that his bed is in the castle, as is his son. Melisandre is in the castle, too, Salladhor says. "While we were burning on the river, she was burning traitors," he warns. "If you kill the red woman, they will burn you for revenge, and if you fail to kill her, they will burn you for the trying." But Davos is persuaded that he was saved for the express purpose of making "an end of Melisandre of Asshai and all her works. Why else would the sea have spit me out?" Seeing that there is no reasoning with Davos, Salladhor tells him to go.

As he walks from the harbor to the castle, Davos finds the city nearly deserted. The castle gates are shut, and he pounds on them until a crossbowman looks down from the barbican and tells him to go away. When he identifies himself as Davos, the onion knight, the guard doesn't believe him. Davos asks for some men he once knew and is told that they are all dead. But finally the guard tells him to wait there, and when he comes back sends him to the sally port.

When he's inside the walls he is told to wait again in Aegon's Garden. While he is there, the fool Patchface enters, followed by the Princess Shireen, who chases after him. When they are gone, a small boy runs out of the hedge and knocks Davos down. "Jet-black hair fell to his collar, and his eyes were a startling blue." A coughing spasm seizes Davos as he picks himself up, and the boy asks if he should send for the maester. Davos says he'll be all right, and the boy asks his name. When he says he's Ser Davos Seaworth, the boy says he doesn't look like a knight, but when Davos says he's "the knight of the onions," he knows the story of how the smuggler saved the besieged city.

"I am Edric Storm," the boy says, "King Robert's son." Davos had already realized that from the boy's Baratheon features. They talk about how Stannis had chopped off Davos's fingertips, and Edric says that his father wouldn't have done that. Davos thinks, "Robert was a different man than Stannis, true enough. The boy is like him. Aye, and like Renly as well. That thought made him anxious."

But their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Ser Axell Florent and a dozen guards. Ser Axell says, "I have come to take you to the dungeon," and tells the guards, "Seize him, and take his dirk. He means to use it on our lady."

18. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 656-689

Daenerys

Having failed to persuade the influential people in Qarth to provide the ships and men she wants, Daenerys sets off for the waterfront to see what she can pick up for herself. "She was fleeing again," she realized, but it's necessary: "Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her." Her Dothraki followers, who are nomads, are getting restless, and burning down the House of the Undying had reminded the Qartheen "that dragons were dangerous."

But Xaro still thinks the dragons are worth the risk, and when he is turned down again in his offer of marriage, he tries to persuade Daenerys to trade one of her dragons for ten of his ships. Daenerys says her price for one of her dragons would be one-third of all the ships in the world. He says she's mad and that she can no longer live in his house and must return all of his gifts. She recalls, "The warlocks whispered of three treasons ... once for blood and once for gold and once for love." She thinks that the first treason must have been Mirri Maz Duur's, murdering Khal Drogo and her unborn son as retribution for the Dothraki's treatment of her people, and wonders if Pyat Pree and Xaro Xhoan Daxos were the other two treasons. But Pyat didn't try to trap her in the House of the Undying for gold, and Xaro certainly didn't love her.

As they ride to the waterfront she thinks of the warlocks' other prophesies: "Child of three, they had called her, daughter of death, slayer of lies, bride of fire. So many threes." She asks Jorah Mormont why the dragon in the sigil of House Targaryen has three heads. He suggests that the three heads were Aegon and his sisters, Visenya and Rhaenys.  She observes that she is descended from Aegon and Rhaenys. Jorah tells her to stop worrying about what the warlocks said. "All they wanted was to suck the life from you, you know that now."

Jorah dismisses the visions she had as meaningless: "A dead man in the prow of a ship, a blue rose, a banquet of blood.... A mummer's dragon, you said." She explains that a mummer's dragon is a cloth dragon carried on poles by mummers for mock combat. And she remembers the vision of the man she thought was Viserys but is now convinced was her brother Rhaegar: "His is the song of ice and fire.... He had a harp with silver strings." Jorah admits that Rhaegar had a harp like that. As for the woman with the baby whom Rhaegar said should be named Aegon, Jorah acknowledges that "Prince Aegon was Rhaegar's heir by Elia of Dorne," killed by the Lannisters. As for the song of ice and fire, Jorah says he's never heard such a song.

They are nearing the waterfront, and Jhogo smells what he calls "the poison water" -- the Dothraki don't like the sea. "Water that a horse could not drink was water they wanted no part of." But Daenerys thinks that if she could make it through their sea of grass, they can make it through hers. They ride for several miles through the buildings on the harbor toward the part "where the ships from the Summer Islands, Westeros, and the Nine Free Cities were permitted to dock."

Daenerys is dressed in Dothraki clothing but Jorah wears "his green wool surcoat over chainmail, the black bear of Mormont sewn on his chest." But their attempts to obtain the ships and men they need are unsuccessful. As they are walking from quay to quay, Jorah tells Daenerys that they are being followed, cautioning her not to look behind her, he stops at a brass-seller's stand, picks up a large, highly polished platter as if showing it to her to buy, and directs her attention to the men reflected in it: "a fat brown man and an older man with a staff."

The merchant steps up and offers it to her for "thirty honors," though they all know it "was worth no more than three." Daenerys says he is trying to rob her, and whispers to Jorah that the two men may just be ogling her. The brass-seller lowers the price to twenty, and as they continue to haggle, Daenerys wonders if they have been sent by "the Usurper," Robert Baratheon, to kill her or if they are "creatures of the warlocks." The merchant lowers the price to ten, then eight. Daenerys turns to walk away and gets a better look at the men.

The brown man appears to be a eunuch. He carries an arakh in his waistband. "Old scars crisscrossed his tree-trunk arms, huge chest, and massive belly, pale against his nut-brown skin." The other man has long white hair and a white beard, and doesn't wear a sword. "Only fools would stare so openly if they meant me harm," Daenerys thinks. The merchant pursues them as they walk away, offering five, then four, then finally two. Jorah points out that the staff the old man carries can be a deadly weapon. Daenerys tells him to pay the merchant two honors just to get rid of him, then turns to confront the two men.

Just then a Qartheen steps up, addresses her as "Mother of Dragons," and presents her with a carved wooden jewel box. She opens it and sees a carved green scarab of onyx and emerald. She thinks, "This will help pay for our passage," and thanks the man. But as she reaches into the box, the scarab turns into a creature with "a malign black face, almost human, and an arched tail dripping venom." She hears a hiss, and suddenly the box is knocked out of her hand and she feels a pain in her fingers. Ser Jorah rushes forward and Daenerys falls to one knee as she sees hears the hiss again and sees the old man drive his staff into the ground. There is a commotion around her as Aggo rides forward and jumps from the saddle, and Jhogo's whip cracks. Jorah takes the brass platter and crashes it onto the head of the eunuch.

The old man kneels before her and begs her pardon, telling her that he had to knock the box away and hopes he hasn't broken her hand. Jhogo and Aggo are on him and have a dagger at his throat, but Daenerys tells them to release him and to sheathe their weapons. Jorah protests that the men were trying to kill her, but Daenerys says it was the Qartheen. She recognizes him as one of the hired killers known as "Sorrowful Men" because he had said, "I am so sorry" after she opened the box. "There was a manticore in that jewel box he gave me. This man knocked it out of my hand."


The man identifies himself as Arstan, though his companion, the eunuch, calls him Whitebeard. The eunuch is Belwas. They have been sent, they say, by Magister Illyrio. They had been following Daenerys because they weren't certain she was the woman for whom they had been sent. Belwas is originally from Meereen, and has been sold as a pit fighter several times. Arstan is originally from  the Dornish Marshes and as a boy had been squire to a knight in the house of Lord Swann. He recognizes Ser Jorah, having seen him fight in tournaments.


Daenerys asks why Illyrio sent them, and Belwas says he wants dragons. Arstan says, "The Seven Kingdoms have need of you. Robert the Usurper is dead, and the realm bleeds." It's just what Daenerys wants to hear. Illyrio has hired three ships for her, and Daenerys thinks, "Three heads has the dragon." She tells them to rename the ships, and Arstan agrees, asking for the new names.

"Vhagar," Daenerys told him. "Meraxes. And Balerion. Paint the names on their hulls in golden letters three feet high, Arstan. I want every man who sees them to know the dragons are returned."

Arya

There are fresh heads on the walls of Harrenhal now that Roose Bolton is in charge, but word that King's Landing has been held with the aid of Tywin Lannister has reached them, and now the news has it that Lord Tywin is on his way to take back the castle. Gendry has told Arya that he hates the forces that hold Harrenhal even more than he did Ser Amory and his men. She doesn't disagree: the Brave Companions/Bloody Mummers are just mercenaries, and they have given Rorge and Biter free rein.

"Sometimes she wished she had gone off across the narrow sea with Jaqen H'ghar. She still had the stupid coin he'd given her, a piece of iron no larger than a penny and rusted along the rim." But she doesn't believe it's as valuable as he said it was, and has even tried to throw it away but thought better of it and retrieved it.

She is carrying a pail of water to Roose Bolton when Bolton's squire, Elmar Frey, calls her over to help him roll a barrel of sand which is used to clean Bolton's chainmail. Elmar is her age and "liked to boast how he was the son of the Lord of the Crossing, not a nephew or a bastard or a grandson but a trueborn son, and on account of that he was going to marry a princess." (Arya doesn't know of Robb's vow to marry her off to one of the Freys as part of the deal made for their help against the Lannisters.) She tells him that the mail isn't clean enough yet, and he tells her she can roll the barrel herself. But she is carrying the water to Lord Bolton because he is being leeched, and Elmar is terrified of leeches, so he lets her go.

Bolton is lying there covered with leeches, and as she fills the basin with water she listens to what's being said. Ser Aenys Frey is fretting about the imminent arrival of Tywin Lannister, but Bolton assures him that Tywin has business to conclude in King's Landing before marching on Harrenhal. Frey disagrees: "You do not know the Lannisters as we do, my lord. King Stannis thought that Lord Tywin was a thousand leagues away as well, and it undid him." Besides, he argues, even if Robb and the forces from Riverrun come to their aid, they'll still be outnumbered, and the forces once pledged to Renly Baratheon have gone over to the Lannister side.

And then Hosteen Frey mentions that Winterfell has fallen and that Robb's brothers are dead. Arya is stunned, but she musters her strength not to show it. When the Freys leave, Bolton calls her over to remove the leeches. She hears him order the castle of the Darrys burned, which pleases her because that's where she'd been taken after the fight with Joffrey and where the queen had ordered Sansa's wolf killed. And speaking of wolves, Bolton announces his intention to go wolf-hunting. Apparently the local wolves have grown bold and killed two of Septon Utt's horses.

After Bolton leaves, she cleans his quarters and thinks about Bran and Rickon and the vengeance Robb will wreak on the Lannisters, who she assumes killed them. "If Winterfell is truly gone, is this my home now? Am I still Arya, or only Nan the serving girl, for forever and forever and forever?" As she is tidying she finds a map, THE LANDS OF THE TRIDENT, that shows "everything from the Neck to the Blackwater Rush." She finds Harrenhal on the map, and then Riverrun, and thinks, "It's not so far...."

She goes to the godswood where she practices her swordwork, slaying the enemies on her list one by one, concluding with Joffrey. Then she salutes the heart tree: "'Valar morghulis,' she told the old gods of the north. She liked how the words sounded when she said them." When the hunting party returns with nine dead wolves, Bolton orders hot spiced wine and his dinner, and Arya goes off to prepare it. In the kitchen she finds Hot Pie, who rebuffs her when she tries to help spice the wine.

She takes the food to Bolton, who tells her he doesn't need her anymore that night. But she asks him if he will take her with him when he leaves Harrenhal. He rebukes her for speaking without leave and tells her that when he leaves she will remain there to serve Vargo Hoat. She starts to protest, but he says, "I am not in the habit of being questioned by servants, Nan. Must I have your tongue out?" She says, "No, my lord," knowing that he is capable of doing it, and he says he will "forget this insolence."

As she passes the Wailing Tower, where the Freys reside, she finds Elmar weeping outside. He tells her that he won't marry a princess after all, because the Freys have been dishonored. "My lord father says I'll need to marry someone else, or be a septon." She thinks that's not so bad and tell him that her brothers might be dead. When he says, "No one cares about a serving girl's brothers," she hits him and runs off to the godswood, where she prays to the gods to tell her what to do.

She hears a wolf howl, and remembers her father's words: "When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives." But she thinks that she no longer has a pack: "Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall." She hears her father's voice saying, "You have the wolf blood in you," and she thinks, "I'll be as strong as Robb. I said I would." She takes her broomstick sword and breaks it over her knee: "I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth."

Lying in her bed, she hears the wolves howling and thinks, "They are calling to me." She slips on a tunic and goes to the forge where Gendry and the other apprentices are asleep. She wakes him and tells him she wants a sword, and that he should escape with her: "Lord Bolton is giving Harrenhal to the Bloody Mummers, he told me so." She tells him that Vargo Hoat plans to cut the left foot off of every servant to keep them from running away. He should go to the kitchens and tell Hot Pie the same think. "We'll need bread or oakcakes [sic] or something. You get the swords and I'll do the horses." She'll meet them at the postern in the Tower of Ghosts, which is abandoned and only lightly guarded.

She goes back to her room and dresses warmly, then slips into Bolton's quarters and steals the map as well as his dagger. In the stables, she wakes a groom and tells him that Lord Bolton needs "three horses saddled and bridled." She is wearing Bolton's livery, with a sigil of a flayed man. The groom gets the horses ready. "She hoped they would not hurt him afterward, but she knew they probably would." She leads the horses to the Tower of Ghosts without being seen.

Hot Pie arrives with bread and cheese and Gendry with swords. Gendry tells her there is a guard at the postern, but she tells them to stay there with the horses and she'll howl like a wolf when they should join her. She approaches the guard as if on official business and tells him that she has come "to give all his guards a silver piece, for their good service." She hands the man the iron coin Jaqen had given her, but lets it drop, and when he bends over to pick it up she slits his throat. "'Valar morghulis,' she whispered as he died."

She picks up the coin and gives out a wolf howl. It has started to rain by the time Hot Pie and Gendry arrive with the horses. "'You killed him!' Hot Pie gasped. 'What did you think I would do?'" she replies. Her hands are bloody, but as they ride off she thinks, "The rain will wash them clean again."

Sansa

The court has gathered in the throne room, beautifully dressed, and Sansa arrives just in time for Lord Tywin Lannister's entrance. He rides his horse right up to the Iron Throne.

The Lord of Casterly Rock made such an impressive figure that it was a shock when his destrier dropped a load of dung right at the base of the throne. Joffrey had to step gingerly around it as he descended to embrace his grandfather and proclaim him Savior of the City. Sansa covered her mouth to hide a nervous smile. 

Lord Tywin is made both regent and Hand of the King. Then there is a procession of heroes: Mace Tyrell, the Lord of Highgarden; his sons, Ser Loras and Ser Garlan the Gallant. Ser Loras is made a member of the Kingsguard, and Ser Garlan offers Joffrey the hand of their sister, Margaery, who was married to Renly but the marriage was not consummated. Joffrey says that unfortunately he is "promised to another," but Cersei rises to say that "in the judgment of your small council, it would be neither proper nor wise for you to wed the daughter of a man beheaded for treason, a girl whose brother is in open rebellion against the throne even now." There are shouts of "Margaery" in the hall, but Joffrey say, "I took a holy vow." This is the cue for the High Septon to say that the crimes of the Starks invalidate the "marriage contract 'twixt you and Sansa Stark."

There are more cries of "Margaery, Margaery" in the hall, and Sansa waits, hoping that Joffrey will not go against counsel again as he did when he had her father beheaded. To her relief, he doesn't, and accepts Margaery as his betrothed. Sansa reminds herself not to smile. Cersei has threatened her, "I will not have my son humiliated." When Sansa asked what would become of her, Cersei said, "That will need to be determined. For the moment, you shall remain here at court, as our ward."

There are more honors to be awarded to those who distinguished themselves defending the city, including lordships for Hallyne the Pyromancer and Ser Lancel Lannister, who was seriously wounded and is not present "to accept the title; the talk was, his wound might cost him his arm or even his life. The Imp was said to be dying as well, from a terrible cut to the head."

Lord Petyr Baelish is next to be honored, though "Sansa had not heard of Littlefinger doing anything especially heroic during the battle." Ser Kevan Lannister announces that "Lord Baelish is granted the castle of Harrenhal with all its attendant lands and incomes, there to make his seat and rule henceforth as Lord Paramount of the Trident." Then more than six hundred knighthoods are conferred, and Joffrey goes visibly restless as the ceremony goes on.

Then the captives are led in, including some "great lords and noble knights." Some of them had changed allegiance during the battle and only needed to swear fealty to Joffrey, but the ones who had stayed loyal to Stannis until the end are forced to speak, usually to beg forgiveness and have their lands and rights restored to them. But a few, true believers in the Lord of Light, remained defiant. Joffrey orders one of them dragged away to be beheaded by Ser Ilyn Payne.

Then "a knight of solemn mien with a fiery heart on his surcoat shouted out, 'Stannis is the true king! A monster sits the Iron Throne, an abomination born of incest!'" Ser Kevan Lannister orders him to be silent, but the knight continues, "Destroy them all, queen whore and king worm, vile dwarf and whispering spider, the false flowers." Joffrey can't restrain himself and shouts "I'm king! Kill him! Kill him now! I command it." And then he slams down his hand on the Iron Throne and cuts it on one of the protruding blades. As the blood starts to flow, he wails, "Mother!"

The defiant man snatches a spear from one of the guards. "'The throne denies him!' he cried. 'He is no king!'"

Cersei was running toward the throne, but Lord Tywin remained still as stone. He had only to raise a finger, and Ser Meryn Trant moved forward with drawn sword. The end was quick and brutal. The gold cloaks seized the knight by the arms. "No king!" he cried again as Ser Meryn drove the point of his longsword through his chest.

Joffrey is hustled away, and Lord Tywin takes charge.

Sansa returns to her chambers where she can rejoice, and that evening she goes to the godswood. She is puzzled, however, that Ser Dontos looks so sad. He explains the reality of her situation: "The queen will never let you go, never. You are too valuable a hostage.... And if [Joffrey] wants you in his bed, he will have you, only now it will be bastards he plants in your womb instead of trueborn sons." But, he tells her, he has made arrangements for her to escape on the night of Joffrey's marriage to Margaery. "For a little while, you will be forgotten, and the confusion will be our friend."

Then he gives her a gift: "a hair net of fine-spun silver, the strands so thin and delicate the net seemed to weigh no more than a breath of air when Sansa took it in her fingers." It is set with small stones that Dontos tells her are "Black amethysts from Asshai.... It's magic, you see. It's justice you hold. It's vengeance for your father.... It's home."