31. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 814-834

The Sacrifice

The storm has not abated, and Stannis's troops are snowbound on the edge of a pair of frozen lakes in which they have not even been able to catch fish through holes cut in the ice. Now the followers of R'hllor have determined that a sacrifice needs to be made to the red god and are erecting stakes for "An offering of blood and fire, the queen's men called it." The victims are to be four starving men who had turned to cannibalism.

As he is led to the stake, one of them men begins to hurl obscene insults at his captors, but is finally silenced by having his throat cut. Asha Greyjoy realizes that the man intentionally brought about his death to be spared the torment of burning.

Stannis arrives for the burning, accompanied by Arnolf Karstark, who had joined them with his own small army eight days earlier. He is expected to hold Winterfell once it is taken. Stannis gives the word for the sacrifice to proceed, and Asha forces herself to watch. When the screaming has stopped, Stannis withdraws. One of the queen's men, Clayton Suggs, approaches Asha and threatens that she'll be next to burn: She has "king's blood" that will please R'hllor. Justin Massey approaches as Asha is responding to Suggs, and laughs at her suggestion that the red god might prefer "one of his own. A faithful man who will sing his praises as the flames lick at his cock." Suggs smirks at the burned men chained to their stakes and leaves.

Massey invites Asha to share some horsemeat with him, noting that it may not be available much longer: "We had eight hundred horses when we marched from Deepwood Motte. Last night the count was sixty-four." She accompanies him to the longhall, where she takes a look at the men: The southerners are pale and sickly, obvious victims of the ordeal, while the northmen are healthier, better prepared for the cold. One of the men says they will resume the march in three days, but Massey replies, "If we march, we will die by the hundreds." And assuming they reach Winterfell, the men are too weak to mount an attack.

An argument arises, "the same argument as last night and the night before. Press on and die, stay here and die, fall back and die." Arnolf Karstark, at the high table, proclaims that they will take Winterfell and "be bathing in the blood of Freys and Boltons," which gets a noisy assent from the northmen, but only silence from the southerners. Massey is having none of it: "Gods be good, are all you Karstarks mad?" He stalks out.

Asha decides to follow him, as one of the few who would defend her if they took a mind to burn her at the stake, but when she gets outside she finds herself lost in the snowdrifts. She makes her way back by accident to where the men were burned, hearing only the sound of a frightened horse somewhere. There she is accosted by Clayton Suggs again. He threatens again to burn her, but as they are exchanging words she hears the sound of the horse. She asks him if he hears it, and he says, "Bloody hell. Riders," and draws his sword.

Suddenly the riders are on them. Suggs stands his ground and tells her to run and warn Stannis, but she notices that two of the riders are wearing the black of the Night's Watch. She calls out, "Who are you?" and a voice she recognizes answers, "Friends." It is Tristifer Botley, who says, "We looked for you at Winterfell, but found only Crowfood Umber beating drums and blowing horns." The Maid is with him, along with others from the dungeons at Deepwood. They had been ransomed by Tycho Nestoris, the representative of the Iron Bank of Braavos, who needed a guide to find Stannis.

The banker then tells Asha that he has "brought a gift" for her. "A girl and an old man, thought Asha, as the two were dumped rudely in the snow before her." She is disgusted at the sight and smell of the old man, until he speaks and she recognizes him as Theon.

Victarion

Victarion's ships capture a Ghiscari galley whose captain has the latest news from Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen is dead, he says. But Moqorro assures Victarion that she is alive; he has seen her in his fires, so Victarion has the captain's tongue cut out. The galley is renamed Red God's Wroth and added to Victarion's fleet. Three ships go missing in a storm that comes up, but they capture another one a few days later and change its name from Dove to Shrike.

The crew fears and hates Moqorro, but Victarion has anyone who speaks against the wizard flogged, and increasingly relies on Moqorro's visions. Sure enough, his prediction that they will encounter and capture two more vessels comes true. They also learn that dysentery has been widespread among the troops besieging Meereen, but the story that Daenerys is dead persists. This time Victarion has the storytellers beheaded.

The hand Victarion healed feels stronger than ever, though it looks like "pork crackling from elbow to fingertips" and sometimes gives off smoke. Then the three ships that had gone missing are found, as Moqorro had predicted they would be, so Victarion's faith in him grows. "Two gods are with me now," he boasts to the dusky woman -- his own Drowned God and the red god R'hllor.

They capture more ships, and this time hear that Daenerys "flew away upon her dragon, beyond the Dothraki sea." Victarion demands to know where this sea is, and plans to sail it, but the fisherman who tells him about it makes the mistake of saying, "The Dothraki sea is made of grass, fool." Victarion throttles him with his burned hand.

They continue to encounter and seize ships, slaughtering their crews and freeing the slaves who rowed them. One ship carries "twenty perfumed boys and four score girls destined for the pleasure houses of Lys." Victarion has the boys bound in chains and thrown into the sea: "They were unnatural creatures, and the ship smelled better once cleansed of their presence." He picks the seven most beautiful girls, and puts them aboard a fishing boat they had captured, cutting it loose and then setting it on fire, saying, "With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods."

That night he brings out the great horn inscribed with Valyrian glyphs, which had been sounded at the kingsmoot. He tells Moqorro,

"The sound it made ... it burned, somehow. As if my bones were on fire, searing my flesh from within. Those writings glowed red-hot, then white-hot and painful to look upon. It seemed as if the sound would never end. It was like some long scream. A thousand screams, all melted into one." 

Moqorro asks what happened to the man who blew it, and Victarion tells him that he seemed to have been burned to death from within. Moqorro says it is named Dragonbinder and reads one of the inscriptions: "No mortal man shall sound me and live." Another inscription reads, "Blood for fire, fire for blood."

Victarion mustn't sound the horn himself, Moqorro tells him, for it doesn't matter who blows it. "The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood."

21. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 549-578

The King's Prize

Stannis and his army set out from Deepwood Motte bound for Winterfell, with Asha Greyjoy a prisoner in the baggage train. The snow has not yet begun to fall, and the march is expected to take perhaps fifteen days. Only nine of her people from Deepwood remain, including Qarl and Tris.  She had yielded, and is his hostage, having gotten Stannis's vow to spare the others, who are imprisoned at Deepwood. But she knows she is worth little as a hostage. Euron couldn't care less about her.

Ser Justin Massey, who is in charge of the baggage train, has told her that the only woman Stannis respects is Melisandre. He wishes she were with them now, as he is opposed to the attack on Winterfell. The northmen were insistent, however: "Ned's girl must be rescued from the clutches of [Roose Bolton's] bastard."

Asha finds Ser Justin attractive, and it becomes obvious that he feels the same about her. Alysane Mormont, known as the She-Bear, tells her, "He wants you." Asha replies that he wants her lands, since he had lost his own in the south of the kingdom. "Stannis had frustrated Ser Justin's hopes of marrying the wildling princess that Asha had heard so much of, so now he had set his sights on her."

On the third day she begins to recognize landmarks from her earlier journey to try to persuade Theon to abandon Winterfell and come with her to Deepwood Motte, and thinks, "I failed in that as well." That night, Stannis sends for her, and she finds him staring into the fire outside his pavilion. She kneels and asks him to remove her manacles, and vows to join forces with him -- knowing that she has little in the way of forces to offer. But she makes the mistake of referring to his brother Robert, who "was renowned for turning fallen foes into friends." Ser Justin tells her later that was an error: Stannis never likes to be compared to his brother.

The snow begins to fall on the fourth day. By the third day of snow, the army begins to fall apart. The southerners are unaccustomed to it, and their big warhorses are unprepared for it, needing more food than the small horses of the men of the northern hills. The northern men also have snowshoes, and bear paws that they attach to the feet of their horses. But the warhorses shy away from attempts to attach them to their hooves. The baggage train also begins to sink into the snow.

On the fifth day, they lose five men and four horses when the baggage train tries to cross a frozen pond concealed by the snow. Asha hears the "queen's men" accompanying Stannis, the worshipers of R'hllor, talking about a sacrifice to end the storm. The wind and cold worsens, and provisions begin to run low. Any horse that collapses is slaughtered for food. The southerners begin to plead with Stannis to make camp until the storm ends, and the queen's men continue to urge a sacrifice, but Stannis ignores them both. They make less and less progress, sometimes as little as two miles a day.

By the fifteenth day of the march, they were less than half of the distance to Winterfell. Ser Justin comes to release Asha from her ankle chains, telling her that she must walk from now on. She had broken an ankle during the fight at Deepwood, but the cold numbs the pain. But by the end of the day she is so exhausted that she falls asleep at the supper table. But then there is little to eat anyway: They run out of vegetables on the twenty-sixth day, and eat the last of the grain and fodder on the thirty-second. "Asha wondered how long a man could live on raw, half-frozen horse meat."

Finally they reach an abandoned village between two frozen lakes, where fish can be taken through holes cut in the ice. Stannis agrees to the fishing, but orders them to march at first light. But Asha wakes in the morning to silence: Snow has fallen so heavily during the night that "Stannis Baratheon's host sat snowbound and unmoving, walled in by ice and snow, starving."

Daenerys

Each day brings her closer to her wedding to Hizdahr, and she is so anxious to postpone that eventually that she can't sleep. Daario shares her bed, and urges her to marry him, but they both know that's impossible. On the morning of the day before her wedding, he asks her if she is going to hold court. He has new recruits, former members of the Windblown, who want to see her, he says. "Bred and born in Westeros, most of them, full of tales about Targaryens." One of them, known as the Frog, has a gift for her. He is "Some Dornish boy. He squires for the big knight they call Greenguts." So she tells him to bring the Westerosi to court.

After he leaves, she goes out on her terrace and sees the ships of the Yunkai'i in the harbor. They are bringing wood for catapults, scorpions, and trebuchets. "Hizdahr will bring me peace," she thinks. "He must." The next day, she holds court, as Daario had wanted, but it is almost sunset before he arrives with his Westerosi, who are, she thinks, "a scruffy bunch." "Pretty Meris" is presented to her, and a series of others, equally unprepossessing, then finally the Dornishmen, Greenguts, Gerrold, and Frog. The last "was the youngest of the three, and the least impressive, a solemn, stocky lad, brown of hair and eye."

Then they reveal that they are all three knights, traveling under assumed names. They would prefer not to reveal them in such a public forum, however, so Daenerys tells Skahaz to clear the court. Then they reveal themselves as Ser Gerris Drinkwater and Ser Archibald Yronwood, but "Frog" asks if he may present his gift first. He unlaces his boot and pulls out a parchment concealed in it. Daenerys unrolls it and studies it until Ser Barristan asks if they might know what it is.

"It is a secret pact," Dany said, "made in Braavos when I was just a little girl. Ser Willem Darry signed for us, the man who spirited my brother and myself away from Dragonstone before the Usurper's men could take us. Prince Oberyn Martell signed for Dorne, with the Sealord of Braavos as witness." She handed the parchment to Ser Barristan, so he might read it for himself. "The alliance is to be sealed by a marriage, it says. In return for Dorne's help overthrowing the Usurper, my brother Viserys is to take Prince Doran's daughter Arianne for his queen." 

Ser Barristan says Robert Baratheon would have attacked Dorne if he had known, and Daenerys observes that Viserys would have sailed for Sunspear as soon as he was old enough to marry. It was wise of Doran to keep this pact a secret, she observes, and Barristan agrees.

So does Quentyn, who reveals himself now: "My father was content to wait for the day that Prince Viserys found his army," he says. Daenerys laughs, then explains she remembers a children's story about "frogs who turn into enchanged princes when kissed by their true love." But she thinks of Quentyn, "Neither enchanted nor enchanting, alas. A pity he's the prince, and not the one with the wide shoulders and the sandy hair" -- i.e., Gerris Drinkwater.

She tells Quentyn that he has come too late, that she is about to marry Hizdahr, but she orders Reznak to provide accommodations for him and his companions suitable to their station. As Barristan accompanies her to her quarters, he says, "This changes everything." But she disagrees; nothing has changed. Then she asks him what the arms of House Martell are. "A sun in splendor, transfixed by a spear," he tells her. And she remembers Quaithe's prophecies, "The pale mare and the sun's son." And "Beware the perfumed seneschal." She wishes prophecies weren't always in riddles.

That night, she and Daario have sex in every possible way. Then she gets ready for her wedding. As she is going to the sedan chair that will carry her through the streets, Quentyn appears and makes a final plea. She tells him, "One day I shall return to Westeros to claim my father's throne, and look to Dorne for help. But on this day the Yunkai'i have my city ringed in steel. I may die before I see my Seven Kingdoms. Hizdahr may die. Westeros may be swallowed by the waves."

As they are going to the Temple of the Graces, she asks Barristan, who is riding beside her, whom her father and mother would have married if their marriages had not been arranged. Barristan is embarrassed by the question, and says that her mother was "smitten" with a knight who won a tournament "and named her queen of love and beauty," but was too lowly born to marry her. As for her father, he tries to get out of telling the story by saying it's only gossip, but she insists. Prince Aerys was taken with the lady who married Tywin Lannister. Aerys drank too much at their wedding feast "and was heard to say that it was a great pity that the lord's right to the first night had been abolished. A drunken jape, no more, but Tywin Lannister was not a man to forget such words, or the ... the liberties your father took during the bedding."

Fortunately, Barristan is relieved of his embarrassment by the appearance of Hizdahr zo Loraq in his sedan chair. At the temple they are welcomed by Galazza Galare, and four hours later they are married.

13. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 332-371

The Wayward Bride

At Deepwood Motte, which Asha Greyjoy had conquered, she receives a message sent by raven from Ramsay Bolton. "A scrap of leather" falls out of it. Bolton has taken Moat Cailin, she reads. Bolton also warns her, "I send you a piece of prince. Linger in my lands, and share his fate." She burns the piece of her brother Theon's skin in a candle, and thinks, "If my father still lived, Moat Cailin would never have fallen."

Her uncle Euron is not interested in any of the conquests her father, Balon, had inspired. If Moat Cailin has fallen, Torrhen's Square will be next, and then Deepwood Motte. She takes her mind off of the problem by having rough sex with her lover, Qarl, but afterward the reality returns: "My father's dead, my mother's dying, my brother's being flayed, and there's naught that I can do about it. And I'm married. Wedded and bedded ... though not by the same man." The one possibility that comes to her is some sort of alliance with Stannis, who had conquered Balon during his first rebellion against the Iron Throne but is now the enemy of her enemy, Bolton.  

Euron had forced her to marry Erik Ironmaker, known as the Anvil-Breaker, who is ruling the Iron Islands while Euron went off on his quest for Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons. "With one stroke, Euron had been turned a rival into a supporter, secured the islands in his absence, and removed Asha as a threat." She had been married by proxy, and the union had not been consummated.

She leaves Qarl asleep and goes to the kitchens to find something to eat. The sound of the wind in the trees unnerves her -- she is used to waves crashing. Tristifer Botley, a former lover, finds her there. He had sailed away from Euron's fleet and followed her to Deepwood, which means he can never return to the islands. He urges her to run away with him and become a trader. She can't go back to the islands either, he tells her, unless she wants to submit to Erik.

She tells him she could return to Pyke and find her uncle Aaron Damphair, join forces with him and retake the islands. Her uncle had disappeared after Euron was crowned. But Tris believes Damphair is dead, killed by Euron. Erik Ironmaker is supposedly searching for him, and has imprisoned and killed the Drowned Men, Damphair's followers. Tris thinks "Ironmaker's search is just to make us believe the priest escaped. Euron is afraid to be seen as a kinslayer."

Tris comments that it's too bad Asha participated in the kingsmoot that selected Euron. Otherwise she could declare it unlawful, as an ancient king named Torgon the Latecomer did. He succeeded in overthrowing the illegitimate king and then ruled for forty years. Asha kisses Tris for reminding her of this, but then hears a warhorn sounded by the watch. "The Drowned God loves me after all," she tells him. "Here I was wondering what to do, and he has sent me foes to fight."

She finds the guards with two northmen, one dead and the other dying. The guards tell her they killed three others. She questions the dying man and he tells her there are thousands more behind him. She kills him, and thinks of what the maester at Deepwood had told her, that "the mountain clans were too quarrelsome to ever band together without a Stark to lead them. He might not have been lying. He might just have been wrong."

She sends for Lady Glover and the maester, then addresses the ironmen preparing to do battle. The warhorn sounds again. She goes to the watchtower and sees the woods moving toward the castle: The northmen have cloaked themselves with branches. Some of the men propose that they stand and fight, but Asha knows they can't win. She says, "Let the wolves keep their gloomy woods. We are making for the ships." Tris says the enemy may already have taken the ships, and Asha replies, "at least we'll die with our feet wet. Ironborn fight better with salt spray in their nostrils and the sound of the waves at their backs."

A battering ram attacks the north gate, so she orders the south gate opened and they ride out. She hears the sound of trumpets, which puzzles her, but keeps going. The ships are to the north of them, and Asha commands them to ride west, then turn north. She sends scouts ahead to find the position of the northmen. They find a place to camp and wait for the dawn, but the head of one of the scouts is flung into their midst before the northmen attack.

"Somewhere in the ebb and flow of battle, Asha lost Qarl, lost Tris, lost all of them." She is fighting with a northman when her feet get tangled in the roots of a tree and he lands a glancing blow on the side of her head. Before she passes out, she hears a trumpet. "She dreamt of red hearts burning, and a black stag in a golden wood with flame streaming from his antlers."

Tyrion

Tyrion's captor is, of course, Ser Jorah Mormont, who has lashed him to a saddle and ridden to Volantis. Mormont tells him, "I have done things I am not proud of, things that brought shame onto my House and my father's name ... but to kill your own sire? How could any man do that?" Tyrion shrugs the question off, however. He still has the poison mushrooms hidden in his boot, and thinks of eating them himself: "Cersei will not have me alive, at least," he thinks, still under the impression that Mormont is taking him back to Westeros.

As they ride through the city, they see crowds of slaves moving in one direction. When Tyrion asks where they're going, Mormont tells him that there are sunset services at the Temple of the Lord of Light, where the High Priest Benerro will be speaking. They have to pass the temple, which Tyrion estimates to be three times the size of the Great Sept of Baelor. Benerro is on the steps, and the plaza in front of it is jammed as Mormont guides his horse through the throng.

Tyrion asks what Benerro is saying, and Mormont interprets: "That Daenerys stands in peril. The dark eye has fallen upon her, and the minions of night are plotting her destruction." Tyrion thinks that the prophecy doesn't bode well for Prince Aegon. They make their way to a stable, where Mormont sells the horse and saddle. Then he takes Tyrion to a smithy, where he is cut loose from his bonds and fitted with heavy iron manacles.

He clumsily follows Mormont across the Long Bridge over the Rhoyne to a place called the Merchant's House, the city's biggest in. Tyrion is glad to see this, hoping that he'll run into Griff and the others, who will set him free. They go to one of the cheap rooms on the top floor, the fourth, where Mormont chains him to an iron ring set in the wall. Tyrion takes this opportunity to tell Mormont that he knows who he is, and that they are both acquainted with Varys, who had sent him on this journey. Mormont doesn't care: "I took the Spider's coin, I'll not deny it, but I was never his creature. And my loyalties lie elsewhere now." He leaves to get some food.

When Mormont returns with a roast duck and two tankards of ale, Tyrion asks if some sort of festival is going on. Mormont says it's the third day of the city's elections, which go on for ten days. He tells Tyrion that he had spent most of a year here after he was exiled from Westeros, first going to Lys to please his second wife, who got so deeply in debt that he was threatened with being sold into slavery. She had taken a lover, and he fled to Volantis.

He tells Tyrion that he will look for a ship tomorrow, and falls asleep. Tyrion is unable to lie down on the floor because of his chains, but finally succumbs to fatigue. In the morning they go down to the common room, where Tyrion sees another dwarf. When the dwarf reacts with surprise, Tyrion realizes that he has been recognized. As they eat, Mormont says, "Last night the talk here was all of Westeros. Some exiled lord has hired the Golden Company to win back his lands for him." It is Tyrion's turn to be surprised, and he wonders if Mormont knows about Connington and Aegon, and whether Aegon has taken his advice about returning to Westeros instead of pursuing Daenerys.

A serving girl comes to their table and tells Mormont "The widow will see you next, noble ser." When Tyrion asks, Mormont says she is "The widow of the waterfront," and points out a woman sitting in the corner of the courtyard. She has a "vulpine" and "reptilian" look to her, and thin white hair. Mormont tells her, "We need swift passage to Meereen." Tyrion is startled: "Deliver me to the queen, he says. Aye, but which queen? He isn't selling me to Cersei. He's giving me to Daenerys Targaryen. That's why he hasn't hacked my head off. We're going east, and Griff and his prince are going west, the bloody fools."

She comments that all the other ships are going west, and suspects that he is in quest of dragons: "I have heard it said that the silver queen feeds them with the flesh of infants while she herself bathes in the blood of virgin girls and takes a different lover every night." Mormont suppresses his anger and tells her she shouldn't "believe such filth."

Tyrion is distracted by voices behind him and turns to see two men and the dwarf, "who was standing a few feet away staring at him intently. He seemed somehow familiar." He turns back to listen to Mormont and the widow, but when he glances back at the dwarf again he has moved closer and seems to have a knife in his hand. The widow wants to know why Mormont is going to see Daenerys, and he says, "To serve her. Defend her. Die for her, if need be." She laughs at this, and asks if he is taking the dwarf to please her. Then she says she knows who Tyrion is: "Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, turncloak, Lannister." When she asks Tyrion what he offers Daenerys, he replies, "I will lead her armies or rub her feet, as she desires. And the only reward I ask is I might be allowed to rape and kill my sister."

She smiles at his honesty, but tells Mormont she has no help to offer him. Then all of a sudden there is a scream and Tyrion sees the dwarf rushing toward him. "She's a girl, he realized all at once, a girl dressed up in man's clothes. And she means to gut me with that knife." Tyrion grasps a flagon of wine and throws the contents into her face, then falls to the floor, where he rolls to avoid her knife. Mormont grabs her and lifts her into the air, and snatches the dagger from her hand.

Tyrion asks the girl what he did to her, and she says sailors from the Seven Kingdom had seen her and her brother jousting and they took him and cut his head off. Suddenly Tyrion realizes that she was one of the dwarfs performing at Joffrey's wedding. He asks if she rode the pig or the dog. "'The dog,' she sobbed. 'Oppo always rode the pig.'" He tells Jorah to put her down, but she continues to urge someone to kill Tyrion because of what happened to her brother.

The widow asks the girl what her name is, and she says it's Penny. Then she tells the landlord to take her to her rooms and find some clothes for her. And she looks at Tyrion and says, "I think I had best help you after all. Volantis is no safe place for dwarfs, it seems." She tells them to go to the Selaesori Qhoran which is sailing for Qarth by way of New Ghis. Mormont says that Qarth isn't their destination, but she tells him, "She will never reach Qarth. Benerro has seen it in his fires." And if they see Daenerys, she says, touching the scar where her slave tattoo had been removed, "Tell her we are waiting. Tell her to come soon."

10. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 255-279

The Iron Captain

Victarion Greyjoy arrives at the kingsmoot, ready to challenge his brother Euron. His other brother, Aeron Damphair, tells him that Euron "surrounds himself with godless men and monsters, worse than before. In him our father's blood went bad." Victarion sets himself to winning the support of other ironmen.

Then he sights Asha, who says, "I am pleased to see you at my queensmoot." He is not happy with the idea, but she presses the point: Euron is the elder brother but she is "the child of King Balon's body, so I come before you both." But a sudden hush falls over the assemblage as Euron enters with his supporters.

Victarion acknowledges his brother as "Crow's Eye," but Euron corrects him: "King Crow's eye, brother." Aeron insists that the kingsmoot will decide that matter, and reiterates his insistence that no "godless man" may sit in the Seastone Chair. Euron replies, "As it happens I have oft sat upon the Seastone Chair of late. It raises no objections." And he twits Aeron by saying that he has encountered all sorts of gods in his travels: "Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray."

When Euron asks Asha about her mother, she suggests that he is the one who made her mother a widow: "Three years you were gone from us, and yet Silence returns within a day of my lord father's death." He asks his crew if he commands the winds, and they all agree that he doesn't. She exchanges insults with them, and brandishes her throwing axe until Victarion puts a stop to the quarrel.

Asha asks Victarion to take a walk with her, and asks him why Euron had gone away so suddenly. She had been away when he left. "When I came home, Euron was gone and your new wife was dead." He says he doesn't want to talk about this source of the bad blood between the brothers, and again tries to dissuade her from making a play for the crown. She admits that the odds are not good, but offers to support him if he will agree to share the throne: "Let me be your Hand, Nuncle." He asks why she would want to do that, and she says, "To end this war before this war ends us. We have won all that we are like to win ... and stand to lose all just as quick, unless we make a peace."

He is not ready to make peace, however, and implies that her wish to do so is feminine. She says that she can deliver House Harlaw to his support, but he reveals that Hotho Harlaw has already suggested that Victarion marry his daughter, and that Hotho will be Lord Rodrik's heir. He is convinced that he can defeat Euron at the kingsmoot. But she has been listening to what the others at the kingsmoot are saying, and says that the talk is all of Euron's victories.

Then she says that Euron "killed your wife ... did he not?" He admits that Euron "put a baby in her belly and made me do the killing. I would have killed him too, but Balon would have no kinslaying in his hall. He sent Euron into exile, never to return.... She gave me horns. I had no choice."

Had it been known, men would have laughed at me, as the Crow's Eye laughed when I confronted him. "She came to me wet and willing," he had boasted. "It seems Victarion is big everywhere but where it matters." But he could not tell her that.

Asha goes away to make her try for the throne anyway.

The Drowned Man

Aeron has his followers summon the people to the kingsmoot. Seeing Victarion standing tall in the crowd, Damphair is sure of it: "He shall be our king. What man could look on him and doubt it?" He opens the kingsmoot by asking "Who shall be king over us?" but gets no response at first. Finally, when he repeats the call, an eccentric named Gylbert Farwynd steps forth with his vision of traveling to some distant land where "every man shall be a king and every wife a queen," but he has the support only of his family. After him, another oddball candidate appears, and then another.

Finally, Aeron gives up and calls for Victarion to step forth. He does, and after a brief speech his men open chests full "of silver, gold, and gems, a wealth of plunder. Captains scrambled to seize the richest pieces," and shout out his name. Aeron keeps his eye on Euron, wondering when he will step forth, but it is Asha who does. She meets the taunts that she is a woman by baring her breasts and joking bawdily, and says,

"Nuncle says he'll give you more of what my father gave you. Well, what was that? Gold and glory, some will say. Freedom, ever sweet. Aye, it's so, he gave us that ... and widows too, as Lord Blacktyde will tell you. How man of you had your homes put to the torch when Robert came? How many had daughters raped and despoiled? Broken towns and broken castles, my father gave you that. Defeat was what he gave you. Nuncle here will give you more. Not me." 

She asks what they have to show for their recent victories, and her men bring out chests. "I give you the wealth of the Stony Shore," she says, and they open a chest full of pebbles. The "riches of Deepwood" are pine cones, and "the gold of Winterfell" is a trunk full of turnips. She proposes to give them peace instead, and an alliance with the northmen to protect them against the Iron Throne.

There are cheers for her, and Aeron is shocked by the strength of the support of men "for a woman!" But there are other shouts for Victarion, and the competing shouts turn into an uproar. "The Storm God is amongst us, the priest thought, sowing fury and discord." And then the sound of a horn draws everyone's attention. An enormous man is blowing a horn "taller than a man" and "bound about with bands of red gold and dark steel, incised with ancient Valyrian glyphs that seemed to glow redly as the sound swelled." The piercing sound makes Aeron cover his ears and he prays "for the Drowned God to raise a mighty wave and smash the horn to silence, yet still the shriek went on and on."

Finally the tattooed hornblower runs out of breath and staggers. "A thin wisp of smoke was rising from the horn, and the priest saw blood and blisters upon the lips of the man who'd sounded it." Euron Greyjoy climbs the hill and addresses the crowd. He says "that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days." He calls for conquest:

"I shall give you Lannisport, Highgarden, The Arbor, Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the Marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all!  I say, we take Westeros." He glanced at the priest. "All for the greater glory of our Drowned God, to be sure."

For a moment even Aeron responds to the boldness of his brother's vision. But Asha asks, "If we cannot hold the north -- and we cannot -- how can we win the whole of the Seven Kingdoms?" And Euron promises to do it as Aegon Targaryen did it: "with dragons." Asha protests that there aren't any dragons anymore, but he says she's wrong: "There are three, and I know where to find them." With the horn, "a dragon horn, bound with bands of red gold and Valyrian steel graven with enchantments," he "can bind dragons to my will."

The crew of Euron's ship, the Silence, open his chests and spill out their treasures, and cries of "EURON!" begin to echo.   

6. A Feast for Crows, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 145-171

Sansa

Marillion, in one of the sky cells, is keeping everyone awake at night by singing, and she begs Littlefinger to make him stop. He assures Sansa that he promised the minstrel that he could sing, but it won't last much longer, because Lord Nestor Royce is ascending to the Eyrie tomorrow to investigate the supposed murder of Lysa Arryn by Marillion. Littlefinger has persuaded the singer to go along with the story.

Sansa is nervous about the possibility that Marillion will turn on them nevertheless, fearing that "if Lord Nestor looks in my eyes and sees how scared I am" he will suspect her. But Littlefinger tells her to "tell Lord Nestor the same tale that you told Lord Robert," Lysa's son. The problem is that Sansa (rightly) doesn't trust Littlefinger, even though he saved her from being pushed out the Moon Door by Lysa:

He saved Alayne, his daughter, a voice within her whispered. But she was Sansa too ... and sometimes it seemed to her that the Lord Protector was two people as well. He was Petyr, her protector, warm and funny and gentle ... but he was also Littlefinger, the lord she'd known at King's Landing, smiling slyly and stroking his beard as he whispered in Queen Cersei's ear. And Littlefinger was no friend of hers. When Joff had her beaten, the Imp defended her, not Littlefinger. When the mob sought to rape her, the Hound carried her to safety, not Littlefinger. When the Lannisters wed her to Tyrion against her will, Ser Garlan the Gallant gave her comfort, not Littlefinger. Littlefinger never lifted so much as his little finger for her.

But on the other hand, he was the one who got her away from King's Landing, and she has no place to go and no one to turn to but him. So she resigns herself to lying, especially about Marillion, who had tried to rape her.

Lord Nestor arrives in the afternoon, and after greeting him, Sansa is sent by Littlefinger to fetch little Lord Robert. The meeting is being held in the High Hall, which Sansa hasn't entered since Lysa's death. She "could hear the wind rattling at the Moon Door. I must not look at it, she told herself, else I'll start to shake as badly as Robert." When Lord Nestor asks about his mother, Robert says, "Marillion hurt my mother. He threw her out the Moon Door." And when asked if he saw it happen, he says, "Alayne saw it.... And my lord stepfather." Lord Nestor looks at her, and she tries to keep from shaking. Littlefinger says, "She still has nightmares of that day. Small wonder if she cannot bear to speak of it."

But she does speak of it, telling him that she was with Lysa "when Marillion ... pushed her." Robert interrupts to say, "He killed my mother. I want him to fly!" and begins to have a seizure. When it ends, Littlefinger says he should be taken to bed and bled, and Maester Colemon accompanies him. Lord Nestor says he had never liked Marillion and advised Lysa to get rid of him, and others accompanying him recalled that he sang songs that mocked them. Littlefinger says, "I should have been with her, but I never dreamt ... if I had not insisted ... it was I who killed her."

Sansa is surprised by this statement, not realizing that Littlefinger is claiming guilt to remove suspicion from himself. And succeeding: Lord Nestor's son, Albar Royce, says, "No, my lord, you must not blame yourself." His father asks for Marillion to be brought before him, and soon the jailer, Mord, appears with Marillion. "White silk gloves covered his hands, while a white silk bandage spared the lords the sight of his eyes." He falls to one knee and begs forgiveness, saying, "If I had eyes I should weep." He says he loved Lysa so much that when he found that she was pregnant with Lord Petyr's child, "a ... a madness seized me."

Sansa stares at Marillion's hands. One of the maids had said that Mord had chopped off three of his fingers, but the gloves make it impossible to tell. She wonders if the story is true. Marillion says that Littlefinger had let him keep his harp and his tongue. "Lady Lysa dearly loved my singing...." Lord Nestor orders him taken away: "It sickens me to look at him." Mord complies, and when he speaks, Sansa is surprised to see that the jailer has teeth made of gold. (Tyrion had promised to reward him.) Littlefinger says he has been too gentle with him: "If truth be told, I pity him. He killed for love." Lord Nestor says, "No man lingers long in the sky cells. The blue will call to him."

Littlefinger has Lord Nestor's retinue shown to their rooms, but invites him to have a cup of wine in his solar, and asks Sansa to serve. Lord Nestor tells him that his cousin, Bronze Yohn Royce, wants to question Marillion too, and others may accompany him. "My cousin means to remove you as Lord Protector," Nestor says. Littlefinger says he accepts that fact and can't stop him. Then he opens a chest and takes out a document that he says Lysa wanted Lord Nestor to have. It proclaims House Royce the hereditary Keepers of the Gates of the Moon, and Sansa is startled to see tears come to Nestor's eyes. Littlefinger tells him it's "a token of the love my lady bore you." Nestor observes that the signature is Littlefinger's, though the seal is that of House Arryn. "Lysa was murdered before the document could be presented for her signature," Littlefinger tells him, "so I signed as Lord Protector."

After a good deal of wine, Lord Nestor goes off to bed, and Littlefinger asks Sansa if she understands what happened. "You gave Lord Nestor the Gates of the Moon to be certain of his support," she says. He did, he says, and he did it because Nestor is aware that he is considered inferior to his cousin, Bronze Yohn. "He wants to believe that Lysa valued him above all her other bannermen," especially Bronze Yohn. She observes that Lord Robert could have signed and sealed it, but that he did, as Lord Protector, and when prompted by Littlefinger she says he did it because if he's removed as Lord Protector.... "...Lord Nestor's claim to the Gates will suddenly be called into question." He compliments her on seeing his plan, though it's "no more than I'd expect of mine own daughter."

Sansa is proud of herself for figuring it out, but still bothered by posing as Alayne. He tells her that they must keep up the fiction even in private, lest they be overheard by a servant or a guardsman. "I am tempted to say this is no game we play, daughter, but of course it is. The game of thrones." She says that Oswell Kettleblack knows the truth, because he rowed her from King's Landing when she escaped. He adds that his captain of guards, Ser Lothor Brune, does too, but both have been in his service for a long time and each of them keeps watch on the other. "Trust no one, I once told Eddard Stark, but he would not listen."

She goes off to bed, and in the middle of the night is wakened by Lord Robert climbing in bed with her. He asks if she is his mother now. "'I suppose I am,' she said. If a lie was kindly meant, there was no harm in it."

The Kraken's Daughter

Asha Greyjoy has just arrived on Harlaw, and is at Ten Towers, the castle of her uncle Lord Rodrik Harlaw, her mother's elder brother. "Lord Rodrik was seldom seen without a book in hand, be it in the privy, on the deck of his Sea Song, or whilst holding audience." And Asha finds him now in the Book Tower, which is "the fattest of the ten." He loves "written words, which so many ironborn found unmanly and perverse."

She gets quickly to the point: "Was my father murdered?" Her mother believes he was, he says, but all he knows is what they have been told: "Balon fell to his death when a rope bridge broke beneath him. A storm was rising, and the bridge was swaying and twisting with each gust of wind." She notes that her uncle Euron's ship had been away for three years and that it had returned on the day her father died. He corrects her: "The day after, we had heard. Silence was still out to sea when Balon died, or so it is claimed. Even so, I will agree that Euron's return was ... timely, shall we say?"

She had asked Rodrik to summon the ships of houses loyal to her, but there are only a few in the harbor. He says the rest have gone to Old Wyk: "I thought you would have heard. Aeron Damphair has called a kingsmoot." The other priests of the Drowned God have joined him. She asks if Euron has gone along with it, but he says Euron "does not confide in me." Nor does he know if Victarion, Aeron and Euron's other brother, has gone to the kingsmoot.

"I shall not go to Old Wyk," he tells her. "Nor should you." But she says she doesn't want to miss the first kingsmoot in ... "Four thousand years," he says, citing an old history, though another historian has said it may be half that.

"This dream of kingship is a madness in our blood. I told your father so the first time he rose, and it is more true now than it was then. It's land we need, not crowns. With Stannis Baratheon and Tywin Lannister contending for the Iron Throne, we have a rare chance to improve our lot. Let us take one side or the other, help them to victory with our fleets, and claim the lands we need from a grateful king."

Asha says she'll consider it, "once I sit the Seastone Chair." Her uncle gives a discouraging sigh and warns her, "No woman has ever ruled the ironborn." But the more he tries to dissuade her, the stubborner Asha gets. She wants him to come to what she calls "my queensmoot," and tells him it will be living history. "I prefer my history dead," he says. "Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood."

The conversation turns to Theon, and she says she isn't certain that he is dead. "We found parts of many bodies.... It seemed as though the northmen fought amongst themselves." He observes, "We had one king, then five. Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros." Once again, he pleads with her not to go to Old Wyk. If she stays, he says, he will name her heir to the Ten Towers. Ser Harras Harlaw will inherit the title of Lord of Harlaw, but he can rule from his castle at Grey Garden. "Do fealty to him for the castle and Ser Harras will protect you." But she persists: "It's my father's seat I want, not yours." He sends her away and turns to his book.

Outside, she is approached by a childhood boyfriend, Tristifer Botley, now Lord Botley. He tells her that Euron "has been buying friends at every hand" with the treasure he brought back in the Silence. And although Tristifer has the right to the title of Lord Botley, his uncle Germund calls himself by that name, with Euron's support. She promises to restore his lands when she takes the Seastone Chair. "He had not been the first boy she had ever kissed, but he was the first to undo the laces of her jerkin and slip a sweaty hand beneath to feel her budding breasts." He had been fostered at Pyke after Theon was taken hostage at Winterfell, but had been sent away when their maester "found them at their play."

She asks if he will come to the kingsmoot and support her, and he agrees, though Lord Blacktyde has said Euron will attack the people who attend. "I am your man forever, Asha. I would wed you. Your lady mother has given her consent." She tries to discourage him, but he swears that he has "never touched another woman." She tells him, "Go touch one ... or two, or ten. I have touched more men than I can count. Some with my lips, more with my axe." She tells him that she lost her virginity at sixteen and that he's "a sweet boy and always were, but I am no sweet girl."

When he pleads with her and seizes her arm, she pulls out her dirk and puts it at his throat. "I am your queen, not your wife. Remember that." And she leaves him "with a fat drop of blood slowly creeping down his neck."

16. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 589-629

Catelyn

Riverrun is celebrating the thwarting of the attempt by the Lannister troops to cross the river, but Catelyn is in no mood to celebrate. She has received terrible news that she doesn't want to share.

Only Brienne is there to keep her company, and Catelyn urges her to join the others at the celebration. She hasn't told anyone of the news from Winterfell, but now she tells Brienne, "Bran and Rickon tried to escape, but were taken at a mill on the Acorn Water. Theon Greyjoy has mounted their heads on the walls of Winterfell. Theon Greyjoy, who ate at my table since he was a boy of ten."

Brienne is shocked, and tries to comfort Catelyn: "Your sons, they ... they're with the gods now." But Catelyn has lost her faith: "What god would let this happen? Rickon was only a baby." And she shows Brienne the scars on her hands that she received defending Bran from the assassin. She remembers how Summer saved Bran and wonders if Theon killed the direwolves. She talks to Brienne about Sansa and Arya, and then says, "I want them all dead, Brienne. Theon Greyjoy first, then Jaime Lannister and Cersei and the Imp, every one, every one."

Brienne says that the queen has children, and when she hears what happened to Bran and Rickon she may be moved to release Sansa and Arya. But Catelyn sadly dismisses the thought as naive, and then thinks about vengeance. "The Starks do not used headsmen. Ned always said that the man who passes the sentence should swing the blade, though he never took any joy in the duty. But I would, oh, yes." Then she says, "I've sent him wine."

Brienne is confused until Catelyn explains: She sent wine to Jaime Lannister, as she had sent wine to Cleos Frey to loosen his tongue. She asks Brienne to join her at midnight, then leaves to see her father. Maester Vyman is there and offers to give her something to help her sleep, but Cersei says, "I will not sleep away my grief." She tells him to join the celebration and sits by her father, who is asleep.

At midnight, Brienne comes to her and they go to Jaime's cell. Catelyn posts Brienne outside the cell as she goes in to confront Jaime. It's a sordid cell, with an overflowing bucket for a toilet. Jaime hasn't touched the wine she sent. He hasn't shaved or washed since he was confined there after the escape attempt, and he blinks in the unaccustomed torchlight. "He was fettered at wrist and ankle, each cuff chained to the others, so he could neither stand nor lie comfortably."

He is proud and defiant, however. And he mocks her by offering to have sex with her, and then by claiming that Robb is afraid to meet him in combat and is hiding behind her skirts. She says she has come to ask him questions, and he says he'll answer them if she'll answer his. Then he asks for the wine, takes a sip, and asks for her first question.

"Are you Joffrey's father?" she asks. And he admits that he is, and of "the rest of Cersei's brood." When she asks if he is his sister's lover, he admits that, too, and then says she owes him two answers. He asks first if all of his kin are still alive, and she tells him that his uncle Stafford Lannister was killed in battle, but that Cersei, Tyrion, and their father are still alive.

Then she asks about Bran's fall, and he tells her that he threw him from the window. She wants to kill him at that moment, but remembers that her daughters are still hostage. He says that Bran saw something he shouldn't have, and that he tried to kill him. So she accuses him of sending the assassin to finish the job.

"Did I now?" Jaime lifted his cup and took a long swallow. "I won't deny we talked of it, but you were with the boy day and night, your maester and Lord Eddard attended him frequently, and there were guards, even those damned direwolves ... it would have required cutting my way through half of Winterfell. And why bother, when the boy seemed like to die of his own accord?"

She has him swear that he didn't send the assassin, and he does so "On my honor as a Lannister." She shows him what she thinks of his honor as a Lannister by kicking over the waste bucket. As the brown filth flows across the floor toward him, he vows, "I have never yet hired anyone to do my killing. Believe what you will, Lady Stark, but if I had wanted your Bran dead I would have slain him myself.

She realizes to her surprise that he is telling the truth. He adds that he would have known if Cersei had hired the assassin, and as for Tyrion, he's "as innocent as your Bran. He wasn't climbing around outside of anyone's window, spying." So, she asks, what about the dagger Tyrion won from Littlefinger? Jaime he remembers the dagger because Robert showed it to him at the feast after the Knight of Flowers unhorsed Jaime. Whoever won the dagger had been betting on the Knight, and not on Jaime. Catelyn remembers that Tyrion had said the same thing, and that he never bet against his brother. She wants to believe Littlefinger's version of the story, but her doubts increase, especially when Jaime says, "I've admitted to shoving your precious urchin out a window, what would it gain me to lie about this knife?"

He then asks her about Renly and Stannis, and she tells him that Stannis is marching on King's Landing and Renly is dead, murdered by Stannis with "some black art I do not understand." Jaime is drinking as they talk about Robb's campaign against the Lannisters, and when he finishes the wine she realizes that he is drunk. He asks if Ned ever told her how his father and his brother Brandon, to whom Catelyn was betrothed, were killed by Aerys Targaryen, whom Jaime slew. She says she assumes they were strangled or beheaded, but he tells her the full story.

After Rhaegar Targaryen killed Brandon and Ned's sister, Lyanna, Brandon went to the Red Keep and issued a challenge to Rhaegar. He wasn't there, and Aerys took Brandon and his men hostage, ordering Rickard Stark and the fathers of the other men to court to answer the charge of treason against Brandon and the others. "Lord Rickard demanded a trial by combat, and the king granted the request," Jaime tells her. Rickard went in armor prepared to fight, but instead Aerys had him suspended over a fire. "The king told him that fire was the champion of House Targaryen. So all Lord Rickard needed to do to prove himself innocent of treason was ... well, not burn."

While Rickard was hanging over the fire, Aerys had Brandon brought in, his hands chained behind him, "and around his neck was a leathern cord attached to a device the king had brought from Tyrosh." Brandon's sword was placed just out of reach, and Aerys challenged Brandon to free his father. But as Brandon struggled to reach the sword, the cord grew tighter and strangled him. Lord Rickard's armor grew red hot as he died. So when Jaime killed Aerys, he brought about the revenge that the Starks wanted. "As for your Ned, he should have kissed the hand that slew Aerys, but he preferred to scorn the arse he found sitting on Robert's throne." 

When he asks if she doesn't find these ironies amusing, she says, "I find nothing about you amusing, Kingslayer."

"That name again. I don't think I'll fuck you after all, Littlefinger had you first, didn't he? I never eat off another man's trencher. Besides, you're not half so lovely as my sister." His smile cut. "I've never lain with any woman but Cersei. In my own way, I have been truer than your Ned ever was. Poor old dead Ned. So who has shit for honor now, I ask you? What was the name of that bastard he fathered?" 

Catelyn calls for Brienne, and when she enters, tells her, "Give me your sword."

Theon

Theon is dreaming that he is pursued by "great wolves the size of horses with the heads of small children." "They're dead, dead, I saw them killed, he tried to shout, I saw their heads dipped in tar." And then he is awakened by Wex and by Reek, who tells him that his sister has come to Winterfell with the reinforcements he wanted.

As he dresses, he remembers his other dreams, of being in the mill, dressing the dead boys, and of fucking the miller's wife and then having her killed. He goes to the Great Hall with his guards, which he needs because three of his men have been killed. In retribution he killed Farlen, the kennelmaster, who reminded him, "M'lord Eddard always did his own killings." Not wanting to "look like a weakling," Theo had to behead Farlen himself, but it took four attempts to sever the head, and Theon was sick afterward.

He finds Asha in the hall with only fifty men, most of them his, and Reek tells him that she only brought twenty. She says, "I saw the heads above your gates. Tell me true, which one gave you the fiercest fight, the cripple or the babe?" He recalls the hostility when he mounted the heads on the castle. Maester Luwin had asked to sew the heads back on the bodies and put them in the crypts with the other Starks, but Theon refused the request. He had burned the bodies, and kept only the "slag of melted silver and cracked jet, all that remained of the wolf's-head brooch that had once been Bran's."

He asks Asha how she expects him to hold Winterfell with the twenty men she brought, and she replies that only ten are his. She needs to keep ten to protect her through the woods where direwolves are prowling. She asks to speak with him privately, so they go to Ned Stark's old meeting room. He tells her that Dagmer Cleftjaw was unable to keep Torrhen's Square, and she says she knows. This means that Leobald Tallhart has been able to leave to join Ser Rodrik, and that there are other forces gathering to take Winterfell back.

She points out that if he had razed the castle and taken Bran and Rickon back to Pyke with him as hostages, he might have won the war. But by mounting the heads on the walls he has turned all of the neighboring families against him. "How could you be such a bloody fool? Children...." He shouts, "They defied me!" at her, and claims that he has revenged the deaths of their brothers, Rodrik and Maron. But she urges him to torch Winterfell and go back to Deepwood Motte with her. He refuses, so she takes half of the men she brought with her and leaves.

Reek appears quietly. "Theon had not heard him approach, nor smelled him either." He wishes he had had Reek killed after he murdered the others. Reek can read and write, so he has to trust him not to spread the word of what they have done. But he offers to help Theon find some more men, perhaps two hundred, so he agrees to give him whatever he wants if he does. Reek says he wants Palla, the kennel girl, who was raped by Theon's men before he could put a stop to it. "Reek was gone before the sun went down, carrying a bag of Stark silver and the last of Theon's hopes."

That night he dreams of corpses: King Robert and Lord Eddard, men like Jory Cassel who had died at King's Landing, the men who had been killed at Winterfell, the miller's wife, Farlen, and the wildling Theon had killed while saving Bran's life. Then others he can't identify, and finally the doors open and Robb Stark enters with Grey Wolf, "and man and wolf alike bled from half a hundred savage wounds." He wakes screaming, and orders the guards to send for Maester Luwin. But by the time Luwin arrives, Theon has had a cup of wine, so he pours the sleeping potion the maester leaves him down the privy shaft. "He wants me to sleep, yes ... to sleep and never wake. He'd like that as much as Asha would." He sends for Kyra and fucks her brutally, but still can't sleep.

At dawn he goes outside and looks at the heads on the wall.

The miller's boys had been of an age with Bran and Rickon, alike in size and coloring, and once Reek had flayed the skin from their faces and dipped their heads in tar, it was easy to see familiar features in those misshapen lumps of rotting flesh. People were such fools. If we'd said they were rams' heads, they would have seen horns.

Sansa

She sees Joffrey off to battle, dressed in crimson and gold armor. "Bright, shining, and empty, Sansa thinks." Tyrion is riding off with Ser Mandon Moore by his side, and when Tyrion sees her he calls out, "surely my sister has asked you to join the other highborn ladies in Maegor's?" She replies that Joffrey had wanted her to be there to see him depart, and that she would join the queen after visiting the sept to pray. "I won't ask for whom," Tyrion replies. He tells her that he should have sent her with Tommen, but that she should be safe at Maegor's.

Then Joffrey calls her over to kiss his new sword, which he has called Hearteater. "He'd owned a sword named Lion's Tooth once, Sansa remembered. Arya had taken it from him and thrown it in a river." He tells her proudly that he is going to "command the Three Whores" -- the catapults -- and smiles. "His plump pink lips always made him look pouty. Sansa had liked that once, but now it made her sick."

She goes to the sept and prays to each of the seven gods, and joins in the hymns. She sings the prayers for her family and the people she has known, living and dead, "and finally, toward the end,  she even sang for Tyrion the Imp and for the Hound. He is no true knight but he saved me all the same, she told the Mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him." But when the septon called on them to pray for the king, she leaves, pushing her way through the crowd. "Let his sword break and his shield shatter, ... let his courage fail him and every man desert him."

As she joins the highborn crowd in Maegor's Holdfast, she comes across Lady Tanda and her daughters. Lollys is crying and saying, "I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to." She is clinging to Shae, whom Sansa sees only as "a slender, pretty girl with short dark hair who looked as though she wanted nothing so much as to shove her mistress into the dry moat, onto those iron spikes."

As she is going to the dais to join the queen, Sansa sees Ser Ilyn Payne standing in the shadows and asks Osfryd Kettleblack what he's doing there. He replies, "Her Grace expects she'll have need of him before the night's done." She wonders whose head Cersei might want chopped off. When Cersei enters and sits by her, Sansa asks the queen the same thing, and she replies, "To deal with treason, and to defend us if need be." Won't the guards protect them, she asks, and Cersei asks, "And who will protect us from my guards?" If the city falls, they'll save themselves and rob their masters and mistresses in the process. She laughs at Sansa's naïveté.

Davos

Commanding Black Betha, Davos is sailing into Blackwater Bay. Stannis has remained with the army and put the fleet under the command of Ser Imry Florent, his wife's brother, who is on Fury. The galleys are proceeding by being rowed, the sails being too good a target. Davos has suggested different tactics than Ser Imry, but because of his low birth he isn't being listened to.

They are heading for Blackwater Rush, which Stannis has already reached and is encamped on the shore across from King's Landing with twenty thousand troops, waiting for the naval forces. On the way they have taken some fishermen captive, and they have told them that Tyrion has had something constructed to seal the mouth of the river. Ser Imry and the other captains are outfitted in glittering armor, but Davos has only a leather jerkin and a helmet. "At sea, heavy steel was as like to cost a man his life as to save it, he figured."

As they near the mouth of the river, Davos can't see any sign of Tyrion's protective barrier except for two "squat towers of raw new stone that stood opposite one another at the mouth of the Blackwater." He knows that these won't mean anything to Ser Imry, but Davos was born in King's Landing and "to him it was as if two extra fingers had sprouted from his knuckles." And then he sees a flash of light off of steel at the base of the tower. "A chain boom ... and yet they have not closed the river against us. Why?"

But now they have spotted the enemy ships blocking the river. To reach them and the harbor and the city, they have to pass below the walls of the castle. Davos recognizes most of the ships but there are some  important ones not there. He senses a trap, but there's no sign that the biggest of the city's ships have come in behind them, and the chain boom has not been raised.

Some pots of burning pitch have been launched from the tower, and arrows are falling. Davos's son Matthos hands him his helmet. On the shore, Davos sees Stannis's troops flying the flag with the fiery heart of Melisandre's god. He wishes they had flown Robert Baratheon's crowned stag instead. It would have attracted more sympathizers from the city. But he's glad that Melisandre has been sent to Dragonstone along with the bastard Edric Storm. Stannis had been talked into it by the argument that "men will say it was her victory, not yours. They will say you owe your crown to her spells."

Ships begin to land, but the city's defenders are quick to attack. Davos recognizes the Hound among them. He can see the three giant trebuchets beyond the gate. He hears the crash of two galleys colliding, and he commands the bowmen on his ship to fire on an enemy ship. The catapults send hundred of stones through the air.

Davos and another ship find one of the Lannister ships to ram, and it begins to sink. But then he hears a cry: "Wildfire!" Flames erupt all around. "Through black smoke and swirling green fire, Davos glimpsed a swarm of small boats bearing downriver: a confusion of ferries and wherries, barges, skiffs, rowboats, and hulks that looked too rotten to float." The barrage of boats only adds to the confusion of the battle. Black Betha is almost rammed by the White Hart, but turns at the last minute and the two ships wind up alongside each other. The crews meet in hand-to-hand combat.

Davos fights through in search of the captain of the White Hart but finds him dead. As he is bending over the captain's body, he is struck a glancing blow to the head by an axe, but his helmet protects him and he kills the attacker with his sword. A crewman comes to tell him that the White Hart is theirs. The battle rages on around them, but Davos thinks, "Ser Imry will have his victory, ... and Stannis will bring his host across, but gods be good, the cost of this...."

But then Matthos points out Swordfish about to ram a Lannister ship, and Davos sees unignited wildfire leaking from the ship. He cries out as the Swordfish splits the ship. "From inside her Davos saw green gushing from a thousand broken jars, poison from the entrails of a dying beast, glistening, shining, spreading across the surface of the river...." He orders the oarsmen to reverse and push off from the White Hart. But there is "a short sharp woof," and then a roar and the ship vanishes beneath him. He plunges into the water and when he makes his way to the surface he sees green fire towering fifty feet above him. On all sides, ships are going up in flames.

He feels himself being swept out to the bay, and knows that he's strong enough a swimmer to make it to shore. But as he looks downstream he sees that the chain has been raised and the flaming ships are all being swept toward it. "A wall of red-hot steel, blazing wood, and swirling green flame stretched before him. The mouth of the Blackwater Rush had turned into the mouth of hell."

6. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 244-298

Bran

Seated on Dancer in his special saddle, Bran rides down the center aisle of the Great Hall, welcoming the visitors to the harvest celebration. After his welcoming speech, Ser Rodrik and Maester Luwin praise him, and the servants begin bringing in an abundance of food -- a sharp contrast to the starvation down in King's Landing.

As the feast goes on, and the crowd gets noisier and more drunken, Bran feels the heat of the room and grows drowsy. He drifts into a "waking dream," in which he is a wolf in the cool of the godswood, until Ser Rodrik brings him back to reality by observing that he isn't eating. He sips some wine and recalls that the cup he is using once belonged to his father. He thinks of the happier time when his father was alive and they were all together at the harvest banquet -- except Jon, who didn't sit at the high table. He recalls all of those who were there and are no longer alive, or else are out fighting the war.

Some late guests arrive from the marshes of the Neck, and Little Walder dismisses them scornfully as "Frogeaters" and "Mudmen." They include the children of Howland Reed, Jojen and Meera. They swear their loyalty to the Starks. The girl, Meera, says that her brother would like to see the direwolves, and Rickon tells them they are in the godswood. Bran assures them that Summer won't harm them if he's there, and that he'll keep Shaggydog under control.

Finally, Bran is ready to go and signals that he wants to be lifted into the basket on Hodor's back. "The folk of Winterfell had seen this sight half a hundred times, but doubtless it looked queer to the guests, some of whom were more curious than polite. Bran felt the stares." In bed, he thinks about the knights among whom he once hoped to be counted, and about his father's story of Ser Arthur Dayne, whose sword, Dawn, was "forged from the heart of a fallen star." His father had said that Howland Reed saved him from being killed by Dayne.

But though he really wants to dream of knights, he dreams once again of the wolves,  who hear the noise of the banquet and are restless. Then in the dream he senses the approach of Jojen and Meera. She carries a knife for protection, but Jojen says, "He won't hurt me. This is not the day I die." When Jojen reaches out and touches the wolf's muzzle, "the wood dissolved and the very ground turned to smoke beneath his feet and swirled away laughing, and then he was spinning and falling, falling, falling...."

Catelyn

She is on her way with twenty of Robb's best men and five noblemen to talk with Renly Baratheon, traveling overland and staying clear of towns. She hadn't wanted to undertake this diplomatic mission, but Robb had persuaded her that it's necessary. It has become clear that they are not going to receive any help from her sister, Lysa, so he needs to know as much as he can about Renly and whether they can make common cause against the Lannisters. She wishes that she were riding north to Winterfell instead of south.

A half-day away from Renly's encampment they are met by a party of his outriders, led by Ser Colen of Greenpools. She tells him, "I come as envoy from my son, Robb Stark, the King in the North, to treat with Renly Baratheon, the King in the South." Ser Colen corrects her: "King Renly is the crowned and anointed lord of all the Seven Kingdoms, my lady." She wonders if she is being escorted to Renly or if she has been captured, but she sees no option but to trust him.

When they get nearer to Renly's camp she is surprised by the great number of men and the weaponry under his command. "Near all the chivalry of the south had come to Renly's call, it seemed." But even more surprising to Catelyn as they get closer is that a tournament is going on. "This is madness, Catelyn thought. Real enemies on every side and half the realm in flames, and Renly sits here playing at war like a boy with his first wooden sword."

Then she sees Renly himself, "a ghost in a golden crown" because of his resemblance to the young Robert Baratheon. Next to him is his queen, Margaery. Their marriage cemented the alliance between the Baratheons and the Tyrells -- Lord Mace Tyrell was her father. She was Robb's age, and Renly was only twenty-one.

The melee is drawing to a close, and only four combatants are left on the field, one of whom is Loras Tyrell, the queen's brother, known as the Knight of Flowers. Finally there are only two: Loras and a knight in cobalt blue armor. They are well-matched, but in the end they collide and fall from their horses.

Loras Tyrell, on the bottom, took the brunt of the impact. The blue knight pulled a long dirk free and flicked open Tyrell's visor. The roar of the crowd was too loud for Catelyn to hear what Ser Loras said, but she saw the word form on his split, bloody lips. Yield. 

King Renly summons the blue knight before him, and the knight kneels. But the crowd is mostly silent, and Catelyn hears a man say, "A vile trick, pulling the lad down." Catelyn asks Ser Colen, "who is this man, and why do they mislike him so?" Colen informs her that the blue knight isn't a man: "That's Brienne of Tarth, daughter to Lord Selwyn the Evenstar." She is also known as Brienne the Beauty, he says, but nobody calls her that to her face.

Renly proclaims Brienne the champion and offers her any reward within his power to give. She asks to be named one of the seven in Renly's Rainbow Guard, and he grants her request. She removes her helmet and Catelyn gets a good look at her:

Beauty they called her ... mocking. The hair beneath the visor was a squirrel's nest of dirty straw, and her face .... Brienne's eyes were large and very blue, a young girl's eyes, trusting and guileless, but the rest ... her features were broad and coarse, her teeth prominent and crooked, her mouth too wide, her lips so plump they seemed swollen. A thousand freckles speckled her cheeks and brow, and her nose had been broken more than once. Pity filled Catelyn's heart. Is there any creature on earth as unfortunate as an ugly woman?

But Brienne doesn't seem to think she's unfortunate. She's delighted at the king's gift, and she smiles as she looks down on him -- she's taller than he is.

Ser Colen takes this opportunity to present Catelyn to the king, though she corrects him when he says she is the envoy of the Lord of Winterfell: "Lord of Winterfell and King in the North, ser." Renly presents her to Margaery, who expresses her condolences on the loss of her husband. Renly promises, "When I take King's Landing, I'll send you Cersei's head." Catelyn replies, "It will be enough to know that justice has been done, my lord." Brienne interrupts here to correct her: "Your Grace.... And you should kneel when you approach the king." Catelyn retorts that there's not much difference between "lord" and "grace," and that anyway her son is a king, too. Though some of Renly's court don't like that, he just laughs, and asks when Robb plans to march on Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal.

Catelyn knows better than to give away Robb's plans, and just says that she isn't on his war councils. When she mentions that Jaime Lannister is being held prisoner at Riverrun, there is some comment on the fact that he is still alive, and Lord Randyll Tarly suggests that it reveals weakness that Robb hasn't killed Jaime and that he doesn't come to pay homage himself, "rather than hiding behind his mother's skirts. Catelyn retorts that Robb is at war, "not playing at tourney." Renly takes this in good humor and suggests that Randyll is "overmatched."

Catelyn is shown to an opulent pavilion. "He does not stint himself, this Renly, she thought as she looked about. Small wonder this host moves so slowly." She changes for the king's feast, which takes place in the castle of Lord Caswell. She sees Brienne again, seated at the high table. "Out of armor, her body seemed ungainly, broad of hip and thick of limb, with hunched muscular shoulders bur no bosom to speak of. And it was clear from her every action that Brienne knew it, and suffered for it." The food is so rich that Catelyn eats sparingly. She observes that "From time to time, King Renly would feed Margaery some choice morsel off the point of his dagger, or lean over to plant the lightest of kisses on her cheek, but it was Ser  Loras who shared most of his jests and confidences."

Most of all, she notices how young the lords of Renly's court are. "It is all a game to them still, a tourney writ large, and all they see is the chance for glory and honor and spoils. They are boys drunk on song and story, and like all boys, they think themselves immortal." Then Renly asks her to walk with him a while. Brienne says she will accompany them for protection, but Renly tells her that he doesn't need protecting as long as they're at Lord Caswell's castle. She appears to be hurt by this.

Outside, he asks if Ser Barristan Selmy is with Robb at Riverrun. This surprises Catelyn, who hasn't heart of his ouster by Joffrey and his replacement by the Hound. Renly says Barristan has disappeared, and that he had hoped he might join his service. "I thought perhaps he had gone to Riverrun instead." He also tells her that he had offered Ned his support if he would depose Joffrey, but Ned told him he had sworn to protect Robert's children. When Renly heard this, he says, he knew that he had to flee. Catelyn reflects that if he had stayed to support Ned, he would be alive.

He takes Catelyn to the top of the castle tower and shows her the campfires in all directions. He has heard that Robb commands forty thousand troops, and boasts that he has twice that here, plus another ten thousand at Highgarden, a garrison at Storm's End, and expects the Dornishmen to join forces with him too. And he tells her not to forget the sailors commanded by his brother Stannis.

She reminds him that Stannis has made a claim to the throne himself, but Renly dismisses this. "Men respect Stannis, even fear him, but precious few have ever loved him." As for Stannis's claim as elder brother, Renly observes that the Baratheon claim to the throne was obtained by Robert through force, not through kinship. And he gestures toward the troops below as evidence of his claim. Then he tells her that if Robb will support him, he'll let him "go on calling himself King in the North if he likes, so long as he bends the knee and does me homage as his overlord." If Robb will join him, the war will be over quickly.

Then they interrupted by a messenger from Storm's End. Stannis is laying siege to the city.

Jon

It has been raining for six days and everyone is miserable and hungry. But they have received good news: Although every village they have seen has been deserted, Craster is still at his keep. "Thoren Smallwood swore that Craster was a friend to the Watch, despite his unsavory reputation." He presides over an all-female household: his wives and daughters, and some of them are both.  So Mormont sends Jon to ride down the line of the expedition and remind all of the officers that Craster's women are off-limits.

Midway down the train he finds Samwell, and tells him that "Craster's Keep is just ahead. If the gods are good, he'll let us sleep by his fire." But Sam has heard sinister things about Craster and his wives, and is not looking forward to the visit. On the way back Jon is joined by Ghost, who has been foraging on his own.

Craster's Keep is "a midden heap, a pigsty, an empty sheepfold, and a windowless daub-and-wattle hall scarce worthy of the name. There isn't enough room in the hall for the two hundred men on the expedition, but Jon estimates that from thirty to fifty of them can sleep inside. The rest will have to pitch tents in the compound yard, which is half "ankle-deep puddles" and half "sucking mud. Another dismal night was in prospect." But even the hall is "squalid" and "foul-smelling."

Craster himself doesn't fit Jon's imagining of what the wildlings are like from "Old Nan's tales of the savage folk who drank blood from human skulls. Craster seemed to be drinking a thin yellow beer from a chipped stone cup. Perhaps he had not heard the stories." He tells Mormont that he hasn't seen Benjen Stark for three years, though he had seen Ser Waymar Royce, for whom Benjen had been searching. Mormont offers to provide Craster and his wives with an escort to the Wall, but Craster is content to stay. What he really wants is some "good southron wine" and a new axe.

Mormont tells him of the undead men who had attacked them, but Craster scoffs and says he doesn't have that kind of trouble. "If wights come walking, I'll know how to send them back to their graves." Jarmen Buckwell asks about Mance Rayder, and Craster says that he's the one behind the empty villages. "Might be that I could tell you where to seek Mance Rayder. If I had a mind." He asks if they have someone who can draw a map, and Jon suggests Sam. Mormont tells Jon to send Sam in after he's eaten and to ask someone else to bring him his axe as a gift for Craster.

Jon delivers the message about the axe, and goes in search of Sam. He hears a cry of "Wolf!" and runs to find Ghost with a rabbit in his mouth and one dead on the ground. He tells the woman not to be afraid as Ghost bolts down the rabbit, which he realizes came from a small wooden hutch that Ghost must have broken into. He asks the woman, who turns out to be a girl about his age, if she is one of Craster's daughters. "Wife now," she says, putting her hand on her pregnant belly. She says she was going to breed the rabbits because they don't have any sheep left. He promises that he'll ask Lord Mormont to make good on the loss.

Two of Jon's enemies appear: Lark the Sisterman (meaning that he comes from the islands known as the Three Sisters) and Chett, whom Sam replaced as steward to Maester Aemon. They scare off the girl, but Lark slips in the mud when he tries to take the remaining rabbit. Ghost brings it to Jon. He finds Sam feeding the ravens, and tells him that he's wanted to draw a map. But first he shares the rabbit with Sam.

In the morning the rain has stopped and everything is covered with ice. As he's reflecting on the beauty of it, he hears a voice call him. It is the girl from last night, wearing Sam's cloak. He said she should see him and gave her his cloak so no one would question her. She tells him that Craster is still passed out from all the wine he drank last night and will probably sleep through the day. He says she should go back; they were forbidden to talk to the women. But she asks him to take her with him. Her name is Gilly, she says, and she fears for her baby. "Nella says it's to be a boy, and she's had six and knows these things. He gives the boys to the gods."

Jon asks what gods. "'The cold gods,' she said. 'The ones in the night. The white shadows.'" He asks what color their eyes are, and she tells him, "Blue. As bright as blue stars, and as cold." She wants to go as far as the Wall, but he tells her that they're going in the other direction. "We ride north, after Mance Rayder and these Others, these white shadows and their wights. We seek them, Gilly. Your babe would not be safe with us." He can't even promise that they will come back this way. Disappointed, she runs off, as Jon curses Sam for sending her to him.

He goes to the hall where Mormont tells him that he means to leave within the hour. Behind the hall he finds Sam with Gilly, who is giving him back his cloak. She runs away when she sees him. Jon tells him what a bad idea it was to send her to him, but when he walks away he feels "as confused as he was angry."

As he rides beside Mormont, Jon brings up the fact that Craster has no sons. "He gives his sons to the wood," he says. After a pause, Mormont says, "Yes." He admits that all the rangers know. "But the wildlings serve crueler gods than you or I. These boys are Craster's offerings. His prayers, if you will." Jon admits that one of Craster's wives told him because she was frightened and thought he could help.

"The wide world is full of people wanting help, Jon. Would that some could find the courage to help themselves. Craster sprawls in his loft even now, stinking of wine and lost to sense. On his board below lies a sharp new axe. Were it me, I'd name it 'Answered Prayer' and make an end."

On the other hand, the rangers had always depended on Craster's Keep for shelter when they needed it. But Jon should take it as a lesson, he says. "We cannot set the world to right. That is not our purpose. The Night's Watch has other wars to fight."

The reason the villages are empty, Craster told him, is that Mance Rayder is gathering his people in the Frostfangs, "a wilderness of stone and ice." And the only reason Mormont can see for that is that he's planning to invade south of the Wall. The Night's Watch, he says, is weaker than it has ever been, and Winterfell has been left vulnerable because of the war to the south. "The wildlings may never again have such a chance as this." They must find him and stop him.

"Three hundred, thought Jon, against the fury of the wild."

Theon

Theon is inspecting his new longboat, but he's also inspecting the beautiful woman who is there admiring it. She is a few years older than he is, he guesses, and he begins to flirt outrageously with her. "My cock's gone hard as a mast for you," he tells her, and she feels him through his breeches to confirm the fact. But she tells him that she's married and expecting a child. That's no impediment to Theon, and evidently not to her, for they continue to exchange bawdy witticisms. She is Esgred, she says, daughter of Ambrode and wife of Sigrin. He recognizes the names as those of shipbuilders. They talk about the ship, and she says, "She's a sea bitch, this one." So he tells her he'll name the ship Sea Bitch.

Even though she has claimed to be newly wed and carrying a child, she grows even bolder, at one point going so far as to undo the lacing of his fly. He asks her to come back to Pyke with him, and she agrees. "Esgred is yours, sweet prince. Take me to your castle." As they walk to the inn where he has left his horse, he notices the respectful bows of people as they pass. "They have finally learned who I am, he thought." She too, seems to be well known and respected, for she exchanges ribald comments with a seafarer about his pregnant wife. She also gives him advice about choosing a crew for his ship.

On the way, they pass the Myraham, and the captain's daughter whom he bedded on the voyage calls out to him plaintively, but he ignores her. At the inn, he calls for his squire, Wex, who is mute, which pleases Theon since the boy can't gossip about him. He orders Wex to saddle the horses, and they mount his stallion, which he has named Smiler: "I knew a man once who told me that I smiled at the wrong things." She rides in front of him, but she keeps removing his hand from her breast.

She asks if his father will welcome her, and he says, "He scarcely welcomed me, his own blood, the heir to Pyke and the Iron Islands." "Are you?" she asks, saying that she has heard he has uncles, brothers, and a sister.

"My brothers are long dead, and my sister ... well, they say Asha's favorite gown is a chainmail hauberk that hangs down past her knees, with boiled leather smallclothes beneath. Men's garb won't make her a man, though. I'll make a good marriage alliance with her once we've won the war, if I can find a man to take her. As I recall, she had a nose like a vulture's beak, a ripe crop of pimples, and no more chest than a boy."

As for his uncles, they're no threat. "Aeron is drunk on seawater and sanctity" and "Victarion is like some great grey bullock, strong and tireless and dutiful, but not like to win any races." And his uncle Euron, he says, may be dead.

When they reach the castle, the hounds come running out and greet her, not Theon. And when the stableman comes out he says, "Lady Asha. You're back." Theon is, of course, floored. "Why didn't you tell me?" he says. She replies, "I wanted to see who you were first. And I did."

Miserably embarrassed, he has to face her at dinner, where she throws back at him everything he said and did. She isn't married to Sigrin, and Esgred was the name of the first ship he built. As for being married and with child, she calls for someone to throw her an axe, which she uses to split the plate he is eating from in two. "'There's my lord husband.' His sister reached down inside her gown and drew a dirk from between her breasts. 'And here's my sweet suckling babe.'" The Great Hall echoes with laughter at his expense, and even his father smiles.

When the meal ends, Lord Balon summons them to discuss plans. When he ventures, "I have some suggestions --" his father cuts him off with "When I require your counsel I shall ask for it." He tells Theon that he is to take eight longships and "harry the Stony Shore, raiding the fishing villages and sinking any ships you chance to meet." He will be accompanied by Aeron and Dagmer Cleftjaw. Theon realizes that he is being assigned a lowly task and that his father doesn't trust him to do that without help. Asha is the one who is to command thirty longships and attack the castle at Deepwood Motte.

After they have done this, Balon says, the main thrust will be up to Victarion. The other attacks will have drawn a response from Winterfell. "Robb the boy will find himself caught like a rat in a bottle."