12. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 501-541

Eddard

Ned is wakened from a bad dream by the king's steward, who tells him that he has been summoned by the king. He hadn't known that Robert had returned from the hunt, but when he arrives at the king's chambers he learns the terrible truth: Robert has been mortally wounded by a boar. "They had done what they could to close him up, but it was nowhere near enough. At his bedside are Cersei, Pycelle, and Renly, but when Ned arrives Robert orders them to leave.

In broken speech, the king tells Ned that he was right about not killing Daenerys, and then orders paper and ink. He dictates to Ned his orders that Ned should act as regent after his death until Joffrey comes of age. Ned wants to tell him that Joffrey is not really his son, but decides to to add to the king's torment. "So Ned bent his head and wrote, but where the king had said 'my son Joffrey,' he scrawled 'my heir' instead. The deceit made him feel soiled. The lies we tell for love, he thought," unknowingly and ironically echoing Jaime Lannister's comment before he shoved Bran from the window. Ned finishes the letter and hands it to him to sign, commenting, "The seal should be witnessed." Before Ned calls the others to return, the king says, "Daenerys. Let her live."

Cersei has returned to her room, and Renly and Pycelle witness the seal on the letter. Pycelle gives the king the opiate, and Robert says, "I will give Lyanna your love, Ned. Take care of my children for me." The words are painful for Ned, who thinks of the king's real children, the bastards, and wishes again that he didn't have to lie to the king when he vows to "guard your children as if they were my own."

Outside the king's chamber Ned talks to Ser Barristan, and Varys silently approaches to ask who gave the king wine on the hunting trip. Ser Barristan says it was his squire, Lancel, who Varys observes is "Ser Kevan Lannister's son, nephew to Lord Tywin and cousin to the queen. I hope the dear sweet lad does not blame himself." Ned mentions Robert's "change of heart concerning Daenerys Targaryen," and asks that the arrangements made for her death be canceled. But Varys says it may be too late: "I fear those birds have flown."

As Ned is returning to his quarters, being helped by his guards because of his broken leg, Lord Renly approaches and asks to speak to him privately. "Give me an hour, and I can put a hundred swords in your hand," Renly says. He proposes to "get Joffrey away from his mother and take him in hand," and to seize the queen's other children. "Once we have her children, Cersei will not dare oppose us." Ned refuses the offer, saying he will not "dishonor [Robert's] last hours on earth by shedding blood in his halls and dragging frightened children from their beds." But after Renly leaves, Ned wonders if he had done the right thing, remembering Cersei's statement, "When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die."

When he returns to his room he sends for Littlefinger, and makes sure that arrangements for the ship to take Sansa and Arya away are in order. He tells the guard that he wants a letter delivered to Stannis Baratheon on Dragonstone, informing the king's brother what has happened. He expects Stannis to make his claim on the throne. "The new king would choose his own Hand. Ned would be free to go home."

Littlefinger arrives, already having heard from Varys the rumor that Robert has named Ned regent. Ned tells him what he has learned about the parentage of Joffrey and the other children. Littlefinger says he is shocked without looking shocked, and then elicits from Ned the conclusion: "The throne by rights passes to Lord Stannis, the elder of Robert's two brothers." But Littlefinger observes, "Stannis cannot take the throne without your help. If you're wise, you'll make certain Joffrey succeeds." He points out that Stannis is "hard and unyielding" and that he "cannot rest easy on the throne until Cersei and her bastards are dead." This will mean war. "Seat Stannis on the Iron Throne and I promise you, the realm will bleed." On the other hand, if Ned makes peace with the Lannisters, makes Catelyn release Tyrion, marries Sansa to Joffrey, Arya to Prince Tommen, and Robb to Myrcella, and finds a way to get rid of Stannis, "Then should Joffrey prove troublesome, we can reveal his little secret and put Lord Renly on the throne."

Ned is appalled and calls this plot "treason." "Only if we lose," Littlefinger replies. But Ned can't forget the murders of Jon Arryn and Jory Cassel, and the attempt to kill Bran. Littlefield sighs at Ned's naïveté. "For a moment I did not remember that I was talking to a Stark." Ned also reveals that he is counting on the support of the City Watch, which "is two thousand strong, sworn to defend the castle, the city, and the king's peace." Littlefinger says, "Ah, but when the queen proclaims one king and the Hand another, whose peace do they protect." He gives the dagger on the table a spin, and the blade points at him: "They follow the man who pays them," he says.

Littlefinger has just given Ned a clear warning of the outcome of what he proposes to do, but Ned is too angry to see it. So Littlefinger leaves, saying that "For the sake of the love I bear for Catelyn," he will go to Janos Slynt, the commander of the watch, and offer six thousand gold pieces for his support for Ned.

Jon

Jon's visit to Maester Aemon has paid off: Samwell comes to him excitedly and tells him that he is to be made a brother with Jon and the others, and that he is to be a steward for the maester. So they go to the sept together where the officers of the Night's Watch assemble for the oath-taking. But Lord Commander Mormont asks the brothers-to-be if any of them worship the old gods. Jon says that he does, and the commander gives him the option of taking the oath in a godswood, as his uncle Benjen had done. The only weirwood in the vicinity is beyond the Wall.

To Jon's surprise, Sam speaks up and asks to say his oath there too. He admits that his family worships the seven gods of the sept, but "The Seven have never answered my prayers. Perhaps the old gods will." So Mormont agrees. Then he proceeds with their assignment to the various orders: rangers, builders, and stewards. Sam's appointment the stewards has already been agreed on, but Jon, who had expected to become a ranger, is also assigned to the stewards. When he looks at his old enemy Ser Alliser, he knows what has happened: "Jon had never seen the master-at-arms look quite so happy." He learns next that he is to be personal steward to Lord Commander Mormont. When he protests, "Do you take me for a servant?" Maester Aemon, before whom he had pleaded so eloquently for Sam, says, "We took you for a man of the Night's Watch ... but perhaps we were wrong in that."

Outside, Jon rages that Ser Alliser had wanted to shame him and has succeeded. But Sam has a different view of things:

"The old man is Lord Commander of the Night's Watch," Sam reminded him. "You'll be with him day and night. Yes, you'll pour his wine and see that his bed linen is fresh, but you'll also take his letters, attend him at meetings, squire him in battle. You'll be as close to him as his shadow. You'll know everything, be a part of everything ... and the Lord Steward said Mormont asked for you himself!"

Sam recalls how his father used to take him to events of importance, but when his more favored younger brother got old enough, his father would take him instead: "He wanted his heir at his side, don't you see? To watch and listen and learn from all he did. I'll wager that's why Lord Mormont requested you, Jon.... He wants to groom you for command!" Jon admits that Sam may be right, recalling how Ned Stark had made his heir, Robb, part of his councils.

That afternoon they set out for the forest on the other side of the Wall, accompanied by the Lord Steward and an escort of rangers. Ghost goes along with them, though he quickly vanishes into the forest. The sun is behind the trees when they reach the weirwoods and say their oaths. The forester who had come with them urges them to return, "Dark is falling, and there's something in the smell o' the night that I mislike."

Ghost appears from the forest, carrying something in his mouth. It's a hand.

Eddard

Ned is having breakfast with his daughters, still expecting them to leave that day. Arya pleads for one final lesson with Syrio Forel before their departure, and Ned agrees. Which then makes Sansa plead to see Joffrey, which he forbids. She leaves the table in tears.

An hour later, Grand Maester Pycelle enters to tell him the king has died. Ned tells him to summon the members of his council. Ser Barristan, Littlefinger, and Varys enter, but when he says they should wait for Lord Renly, Varys informs him that Renly has left the city with Loras Tyrell and his retainers, headed south. This is disturbing news: Ned had counted on Renly's support.

Ned then asks Ser Barristan to produce the king's letter, the seal of which Barristan and Renly had witnessed. Barristan then reads, "Lord Eddard Stark is herein named Protector of the Realm, to rule as regent until the heir comes of age." Ned, who doesn't mention that the heir -- i.e., Stannis -- is already of age, then asks them to confirm him in the office, but before they can do so, the royal steward enters and tells them "the king demands the immediate presence of his small council in the throne room." Ned isn't really surprised that the summons has come so quickly, so he agrees.

In the throne room, Joffrey is seated on the Iron Throne. Cersei is there with her other two children, and at the foot of the steps leading to the throne is Sandor Clegane. There are twenty Lannister guardsmen behind the throne, but Ned takes heart from the presence of the City Watch in their gold cloaks. "They outnumbered the Lannisters five to one."

Joffrey rises and announces that he wants the coronation to take place within a fortnight, and that today he wants his councilors to give their "oaths of fealty." Ned produces Robert's letter and tells Varys to take it to Cersei, who reads out the words "Protector of the Realm," asks, "Is this meant to be your shield, my lord? A piece of paper?" and rips it to pieces. She tells Ned to swear fealty and he can resign as Hand and return home. But Ned stands his ground: "Your son has no claim to the throne he sits. Lord Stannis is Robert's true heir."

Joffrey screams, "Liar!" and Cersei orders Ser Barristan to "seize this traitor." The Stark guardsmen surround Ned, the Hound draws his sword, and the men of the Kingsguard and the Lannister men move in to support him. Joffrey screams out, "Kill all of them. I command it!" So Ned tells Janos Slynt to have the City Watch take the queen and her children into custody.

Instead, the nearest man of the watch pierces Fat Tom with his spear, and others move in to kill Ned's guards.
Then Littlefinger steps forward, grabs Ned's dagger, and puts it under his chin. "His smile was apologetic. 'I did warn you not to trust me, you know.'"

Arya

Arya's swordsmanship has improved to the point that the "almost" touches him with her sword in one of their practice duels. He tells her that when they get to Winterfell, he may start letting her practice with Needle. But just then the doors of the hall open with a crash and a member of the Kingsguard with four Lannister guardsmen enter and order Arya to come with them. When Arya asks why, they say her father wants to see her, but Syrio asks why he is sending Lannister men, and Arya realizes something is wrong. She refuses to go.

The guardsmen move in, and when one of them draws his sword, Syrio breaks his hand with his wooden sword. Then Syrio tells Arya to run to her father. As she does so, she looks back to see Syrio taking out five guardsmen with his wooden sword, poking one man's eye out with it, and using his dexterity so that they are killing one another. "'Arya child,' he called out, never looking at her, 'be gone now.'" But as she leaves she sees the final remaining knight cut Syrio's stick in two.

As she races through the palace, she remembers all of the things that Syrio has taught her, but especially "Fear cuts deeper than swords." When she finds herself on the way to her father's chambers, she remembers another, "Never do what they expect," and goes another way. When she hears the sound of fighting, she realizes that she can't go back. Then she comes across Hullen, the master of horse at Winterfell, who has been stabbed numerous times. With his dying breath he tells her to warn her father. She finds more bodies, and decides the best thing to do is take a horse and ride north on the kingsroad until she gets to Winterfell.

Then she finds the wagons that had been loaded to take her clothes and her sister's to the ship. She retrieves some clothing and a silver bracelet she might sell, and gropes into the chest for Needle. As she finds it, a stableboy appears and recognizes her. She asks him to help her saddle a horse and her father will reward him, but he says her father is dead and the queen will reward him for capturing her. As he grabs her, she forgets everything Syrio has taught her and remembers only the one lesson "Jon Snow had given her, the very first. She struck him with the pointy end, driving the blade upward with a wild, hysterical strength." When she pulls the blade out, he dies.

As she starts to saddle the horse she realizes that the gates will be closed and that the guards will recognize her. But she knows there is another way out of the castle if she can find it. She makes her way to the sept, where she takes some prayer candles, and then finds her way into the dungeons, going to the room where the monsters were. She remembers when Robb took her and Sansa and Bran into the crypt and Jon had scared them by pretending to be a ghost. "The memory made Arya smile, and after that the darkness held no terrors for her."

10. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 424-461

Eddard 

Ned wakes from a dream of an old battle to find his steward, Vayon Poole, standing over him. He has been unconscious for six days and seven nights, Poole tells him, since Maester Pycelle gave him "milk of the poppy" for the pain of his broken leg. Poole tells him that the king has asked to see him as soon as he wakes up. In the meantime, Jaime Lannister has returned to Casterly Rock and the news has spread further about Catelyn's abduction of Tyrion.

The king and the queen are there to see him, but Cersei's words are not designed to ease his discomfort: "A man in your place should count himself fortunate  that his head is still on his shoulders." Robert snaps at her to be quiet, but he admits he's not happy about Catelyn's actions. He wants her to release Tyrion immediately and Ned to make peace with Jaime. Ned protests that three of his men "were butchered bfore my eyes, because Jaime Lannister wished to chasten me. Am I to forget that?" Cersei has it that "Lord Stark was returning drunk from a brothel. His men attacked Jaime and his guards, even as his wife attacked Tyrion on the kingsroad." Robert tells him that Littlefinger "admits you were returning from some whorehouse."

Ned retorts that he went there to see Robert's daughter. "Her mother has named her Barra. She looks like that first girl you fathered, when we were boys together in the Vale." Cersei's expression betrays nothing at this news, but she tells the king, "This man dishonors you with every breath he takes, and yet you stand there meekly, asking if his leg pains him and would he like some wine." Robert sends "a vicious backhand blow to the side of the head. She stumbled against the table and fell hard, yet Cersei Lannister did not cry out." She says of the bruise, "I shall wear this as a badge of honor." Robert calls for a guard and has her escorted back to her room.

When she is gone, Robert expresses his contempt for her, tells Ned that he is going hunting the next morning, and forbids him to resign as Hand, threatening to make Jaime Lannister Hand instead. Ned reluctantly agrees.

Catelyn

Ser Rodrik brings Catelyn the news that Tywin Lannister is massing his troops and that her brother, Edmure, is preparing to defend the land ruled by the Tullys. There is no news of how her father, Lord Hoster, is handling matters, which makes Catelyn worry that he is sick and has handed over matters to her brother.

Meanwhile, plans are going forth for the trial by combat, and Catelyn reflects on the change in her sister: "The shy girl she had known at Riverrun had grown into a woman who was by turns proud, fearful, cruel, dreamy, reckless, timid, stubborn, vain, and above all, inconstant."

In the hall where the combat is to take place, Lysa is surrounded by her knights. "Most of them still hoped to wed her, bed her, and rule the Vale of Arryn by her side. From what Catelyn had seen during her stay at the Eyrie, it was a vain hope." She tries to dissuade Lysa from going through with the trial. "Alive, the Imp has value. Dead, he is only food for crows." And, she adds, suppose his champion should defeat hers.

Lysa's knights assure Catelyn that Ser Vardis will prevail. Catelyn has her doubts, however. She has seen Bronn fight. But Lysa will not be persuaded: "'Lord Robert wants to see him fly,' she said, as if that settled the matter." When Tyrion is brought forth, Lord Robert says, "The bad little man.... Mother, can I make him fly? I want to see him fly." Lysa promises him that he will.

The champions appear. "Ser Vardis Egen was steel from head to heel, encased in heavy plate armor over mail and padded surcoat.... Bronn was so lightly armored he looked almost naked beside the knight." But he is taller and has a longer reach, Catelyn observes, "and Bronn was fifteen years younger, if she was any judge."

There is some ceremony before the fight begins, which only makes Lord Robert more petulant. The combatants kneel, and afterward Ser Vardis is so encumbered by his armor that he has to be helped to his feet. He is given "a triangular shield almost four feet tall, heavy oak dotted with iron studs," but when Bronn is offered a similar shield he declines it. The sword Ser Vardis is handed was made for Jon Arryn, Lysa boasts. Catelyn observes that the knight "might have been more comfortable with his own sword," but she doesn't tell her sister that. Lord Robert keeps urging, "Make them fight," and when finally the time has come, he screams out the order, "Fight!"

Bronn's tactic is to wear the armored Ser Vardis out, enraging the crowd, which calls him a coward. Ser Rodrik, however, explains to Catelyn what Bronn is doing. She remembers the duel between Brandon Stark and Littlefinger, when the latter challenged him for her hand. It was a brutal mismatch that ended with Littlefinger being seriously wounded. Because her father forbade her seeing him, it was Lysa who nursed Littlefinger back to health. She did not see him again until her secret return to King's Landing. Littlefinger also nursed a grievance against her brother Edmure, who had been Brandon's second in the duel.

Her mind comes back to the duel at hand, and she notices that Ser Vardis is unable to lay a blow on Bronn, but Bronn has already put a dent in the knight's armor. The fight has taken them to the vicinity of a marble statue of a weeping woman meant to be Alyssa Arryn, a legendary ancestor whose tears for her dead husband and children are supposed to be the source of a waterfall near the castle. Bronn ducks behind the statue just as Vardis lunges, so the sword hits the statue instead. Lord Robert whines that they're "not fighting good," and Lysa assures him that they will: "The sellsword can't run all day."

Bronn lands more blows on the knight's armor and he hacks chips off of the shield. He ducks a blow from the knight's sword, and Vardis crashes into the statue. He is having trouble keeping the agile Bronn in his sights: the slit in his visor limits his vision. From behind, Bronn lands a blow on Vardis's sword arm, which begins to bleed. Vardis is moving slower and his breaths are audible. Lysa is oblivious to this, however, and orders him, "Finish him now, my baby is getting tired."

Vardis seems to respond to her command, and charges at Bronn, who almost loses his footing and has to grab the statue to regain his balance. Vardis drops his shield and uses both hands to raise his sword, but the blow misses Bronn and hits the statue, breaking the sword. Bronn shoves the statue and it topples onto the knight. Then Bronn moves in for the kill.

Lord Robert asks if it's over. "No, Catelyn wanted to tell him, it's only now beginning." But Lysa says, "Yes," and when the boy asks, "Can I make the little man fly now?" Tyrion speaks up. "'Not this little man,' he said. 'This little man is going down in the turnip hoist, thank you very much," meaning the basket that hoists provisions from below. Lord Robert is furious at his mother. "You promised I could make him fly." But Lysa remains true to her word and sets Tyrion free, giving them the horses and supplies they need as well, once they reach the high road.

Catelyn realizes what this means as "Lysa allowed herself a faint, satisfied smile. It was another sort of death sentence," exposing them to the same sort of attacks they had encountered on the way to the Vale of Arryn.

Jon 

Ser Alliser Thorne has assembled the trainees in the yard for an announcement: Five new boys are on their way to the Wall for training, so he has decided to send eight of Jon's group to the Lord Commander for assignment to their duties as men of the Night's Watch. He calls out their names, and the last one he mentions is "the Bastard." But he says they aren't really fit yet, "and when winter comes you will die like flies."

The promoted boys celebrate, but then "Jon noticed Samwell Tarly standing by himself beneath a bare dead tree in the corner of the yard." When he goes to offer Sam a drink from the wineskin being passed around, Sam declines. He says he is happy for Jon and the others, but when Jon is swept up again in the horseplay of the celebrating boys, Sam disappears.

At dinner they talk about what they hope their assignments will be. Most want to be rangers, but others want to be builders, tasked with maintenance of the Wall. They agree that Jon will be a ranger, since his uncle Benjen, whom Jon is still unwilling to believe is dead, was First Ranger. But Jon is upset because Sam is not at dinner. He has realized what is likely to happen to his friend: With him and the other boys who have protected him gone, Sam will be exposed to the sadism of the master-at-arms.

Jon goes back to his quarters to fetch Ghost, then saddles a horse and rides away from Castle Black on the road leading south. He lets Ghost run free and hunt while he reflects on the fact that the road leads to Winterfell and to the places beyond that he has never seen. "The world was down that road ... and he was here." He hasn't sworn his vow to the Night's Watch yet, so he could still just keep riding down the road to Winterfell and his brothers. But he corrects himself: They are his half-brothers, and Catelyn Stark will not be pleased to see  him return. So he turns and goes back to Castle Black, followed by Ghost, whose muzzle is red with blood from whatever he has killed.

When he gets back to the castle, Jon goes and asks to see Maester Aemon. The two stewards, Clydas and Chett, tell him that the maester is asleep and can't be disturbed, but Jon gets his foot in the door and insists that it is important. So they let him in reluctantly and tell him to make a fire in the library. When Maester Aemon enters, Jon apologizes for waking him, but the maester tells him he wasn't asleep and is curious why he has "a midnight visitor." Jon tells him that he has come "To ask that Samwell Tarly be taken from training and accepted as a brother of the Night's Watch." Aemon says that training is under the purview of Ser Alliser Thorne, but Jon argues that the Lord Commander listens to the maester, "And the wounded and the sick of the Night's Watch are in your charge" -- and Sam will be both if he doesn't get the maester's help.

He explains that Sam is completely incompetent as a fighter, and "If Ser Alliser makes him fight, it's only a matter of time before he's hurt or killed." Chett argues that "The Wall is no place for the weak," and the maester should just leave it in the hands of the master-at-arms who will "make a man of him or kill him, as the gods will." Jon says, "That's stupid." And he tells how Maester Luwin once explained that the chain a maester wears around his neck is made up of a variety of metals, each of which symbolizes a different kind of learning. "A chain needs all sorts of metals, and a land needs all sorts of people.... The Night's Watch needs all sorts too. Why else have rangers and stewards and builders?" No one can make Same into a warrior, so why not make him a steward? 

Chett protests that the work of stewards is hard, that they have to hunt and farm, cook and make clothing and fetch supplies from the south. Aemon asks if Sam is a hunter or a farmer or a butcher, and Jon is forced to answer no. But he argues, "He can do sums, and he knows how to read and write. I know Chett can't read, and Clydas has weak eyes. Same read every book in his father's library." He's good with animals, too. "The Night's Watch needs every man. Why kill one, to no end?"

The maester says, "Your mind is as deft as your blade, it would seem." And he tells Jon he'll think about it.

Tyrion

Tyrion and Bronn have reached the high road and are preparing to camp for the night. But when Tyrion starts gathering firewood, Bronn is astonished: "A fire will bring the clansmen down on us from miles around. I mean to survive this journey, Lannister." He argues that they should ride fast by night and hide during the day. But Tyrion observes, "Riding hard and fast by night is a sure way to tumble down a mountain and crack your skull." And as their journey to the Vale demonstrated, the horses tend to die if ridden that way. Besides, "I think the clans will find us no matter what we do."

Bronn threatens to take Tyrion's horse and go on without him, taking his chances by having an extra mount. "Make no mistake, dwarf. I fought for you, but I do not love you." To which Tyrion replies, "It was your blade I needed, ... not your love." He had taken a chance that Bronn would come to his aid because he knew the mercenary does things for gold. He took Catelyn's side in the abduction because he figured he'd get paid. So when the challenge came for the trial by combat, "I was counting on your being smart enough to know where your best interest lay. Happily for me, you did." Then he adds, "What do you want, Bronn? Gold? Land? Women? Keep me alive, and you'll have it." And if he dies, Tyrion says, "I'll have one mourner whose grief is sincere.... The gold ends when I do."

Bronn goes in search of food and comes back with a goat, which they roast and eat. Bronn asks where they'll go if they survive the journey, and Tyrion says either to Casterly Rock or to King's Landing. "I have some questions that want answering concerning a certain dagger." After dinner, Tyrion observes, "Our friends are taking their sweet time," and Bronn suggests that they're being so open about their presence in the territory of the hill people that maybe they think it's a trap. Tyrion begins to whistle a tune, "The Seasons of My Love." He tells Bronn, "The first girl I ever bedded used to sing it, and I've never been able to put it out of my head."

When he was thirteen, he was out with Jaime one night and rescued a girl being attacked by two men. As Jaime pursued them, he watched over the girl who said she was the daughter of a crofter who had died. He took her to an inn where Tyrion lost his virginity. They located "a drunken septon" who married them, and he set the girl up in a cottage, where they were man and wife for a fortnight. Then the septon sobered up and told Tyrion's father, who made Jaime tell him the truth: "The girl was a whore, you see. Jaime arranged the whole affair, the road, the outlaws, all of it. He thought it was time I had a woman." So Lord Tywin made Tyrion watch as his guards had sex with the girl, each of them paying her in silver. Then Tywin made Tyrion go last. "And he gave me a gold coin to pay her because I was a Lannister, and worth more."

Bronn says, "I would have killed the man who did that to me." Tyrion says, "You may get that chance one day. Remember what I told you. A Lannister always pays his debts." Then he says he'll try to get some sleep. "Wake me if we're about to die."

And Bronn does, waking Tyrion from a dream in which he is the jailer and his father is the prisoner in a sky cell. Shadowy figures are creeping up on them, and Tyrion invites them to share their fire and some of their goat. A voice replies that it's their mountain and their goat. A man who calls himself Gunthor son of Gurn of the Stone Crows steps into the light, followed by Shagga son of Dolf, and others who call out their names. "I am Tyrion son of Tywin of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock," Tyrion replies, and offers to pay them for the goat. Gunthor replies that since they have them surrounded, everything Tyrion and Bronn have is already theirs, "You have nothing to give us but your lives. How would you like to die, Tyrion son of Tywin?"

"In my own bed, with a belly full of wine, and a maiden's mouth around my cock, at the age of eighty," he replied. 

They laugh, and Gunthor orders his men to kill Bron and take Tyrion so "He can milk the goats and make the mothers laugh." Bronn leaps to his feet, but Tyrion restrains him, telling Gunthor, "If the Stone Crows will see us safely through these mountains, my lord father will shower you with gold." And he stands his ground when they threaten him, after he says of their weapons, "My father's smiths shit better steel." Gunthor stills the others: "What would you give us for your lives, Tyrion son of Tywin? Swords? Lances? Mail?"

Tyrion replies that he'll give them more than that: "I will give you the Vale of Arryn."

8. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 324-377

Tyrion 

Tyrion's horse is being butchered because the party that abducted him from the inn is running out of food. He had protested, "You're making a sad mistake, Lady Stark. I had no part in any attack on your son." But Catelyn had held up her hand, showing the wounds she suffered when she grabbed the blade of the dagger during the assault on Bran. "His dagger left these scars," she said. "The blade he sent to open my son's throat." That was enough to turn the crowd against him. His men were not enough to hold them off, and as a member of the Night's Watch, Yoren was prohibited from taking part in "quarrels of the realm."


Catelyn had saved him from being killed there, announcing, "We are taking him back to Winterfell." Ser Rodrik told the crowd to remain quiet about the events, which Tyrion knew was impossible: "the word would begin to spread the instant they were gone." He was confident that supporters of the Lannisters would soon be on their trail. Then a hood was pulled over his eyes and he was put on a horse. They were joined by the singer, Marillion, who saw an opportunity to chronicle these events in song.


But after a long ride, when they stopped for a rest and the hood was removed, Tyrion realized that Catelyn had outwitted him: They were taking the eastern road, not the one to Winterfell. They were going to the castle of Jon Arryn's widow, and Catelyn's sister, Lysa.


The journey is difficult, and Tyrion's is the third horse they've had to slaughter. He argues against going further, pointing out that if he dies, Catelyn will have no advantage in taking him hostage. He repeats his claim of innocence in the attack on Bran: "'it was not my dagger,' he insisted. 'How many times must I swear to that? Lady Stark, whatever you may believe of me, I am not a stupid man. Only a fool would arm a common footpad with his own blade." He sees "a flicker of doubt in her eyes," but she asks him why Littlefinger would lie about such a thing.


"Lying comes as easily as breathing to a man like Littlefinger," he says. "You ought to know that, you of all people." She asks what he means, and he replies, "Why, every man at court has heard him tell how he took your maidenhead, my lady." She proclaims that a lie, Marillion is shocked, and Kurlecket, one of the men who joined them at the inn, threatens to cut out his tongue. Petyr Baelish loved her, she says, and wanted to marry her. "You are truly an evil man, Lannister."

"And you are truly a fool, Lady Stark. Littlefinger has never loved anyone but Littlefinger, and I promise you that it is not your hand that he boasts of, it's those ripe breasts of yours, and that sweet mouth, and the heat between your legs."

Kurlecket repeats his threat to kill Tyrion, but Catelyn says, "Let him talk." So he asks her what Littlefinger said when he told her the dagger was Tyrion's.  She says that Littlefinger claimed Tyrion won it from him on a bet on the joust between Jaime Lannister and the Knight of Flowers on Prince Joffrey's name day.


But the conversation is interrupted by a lookout's cry of "Riders!" They are being attacked by one of the mountain clans, who owe no allegiance to any of the great houses. Catelyn orders the men to mount up and to guard the prisoners, but Tyrion urges her to arm him and his servants. "You will need every sword." She realizes he is right: To lose one man guarding the three prisoners would put them at a disadvantage. Bronn, one of the "sellswords" (il.e. mercenaries) who had joined up with Catelyn at the inn, gives Tyrion a double-bladed axe. Tyrion protests that he's never fought with an axe, but Bronn says, "Pretend you're splitting logs."

Jerome Flynn as Bronn

"'Logs don't bleed,' Tyrion said to no one in particular," then he looks for a hiding place and finds Marillion behind a rock. He kicks the singer until he moves over. The battle rages on. Then Marillion shrieks as a horse jumps over them, then the rider turns and comes toward them. Tyrion swings the axe and cuts the horse's throat. The horse and the rider collapse on top of Marillion, and Tyrion kills the rider. As Marillion tries to grope his way out from under the dead horse, Tyrion steps on the singer's hand and feels "a satisfying crunch."


Tyrion dodges his way through the confusion of the battle, and when he comes across Kurlecket's body he takes the dead man's dagger. Then he hears Catelyn scream and finds her trapped by three men. He takes down the first one with an axe blow behind the knee, then as the second attacks he ducks, lashes out with the axe, and as the man stumbles, Catelyn moves in with a dagger and cuts his throat. The third man rides away.


The battle is over, and they discover that nine of the mountain men are dead, but only three of theirs, including one of Tyrion's servants. Catelyn wants to stay and bury their dead, but is persuaded not to do so, for fear of another attack. As they get ready to ride on, one of the men starts to take away Tyrion's weapons, the dirk and the axe, but Catelyn says to let him keep them. Tyrion thanks her, but she says, "I trust you no more than I did before."


As they ride on, Tyrion returns to the question of the dagger that Littlefinger claims Tyrion won from him by betting that the Knight of Flowers would unhorse Jaime Lannister: "there is a serious flaw in Littlefinger's fable. Whatever you may believe of me, Lady Stark, I promise you this -- I never bet against my family."


Arya

Arya is catching cats, an exercise prescribed by Syrio to develop stealth, cunning, and quickness. And her chief prey is a one-eared black tomcat. She has chased him around the castle, "in and out of strange buildings until Arya didn't know where she was." Finally, she has him cornered and has just grabbed him when a voice says, "What's he doing with that cat?"

At the end of the alley stood a girl with a mass of golden curls, dressed as pretty as a doll in blue satin. Beside her was a plump little blond boy with a prancing stag sewn in pearls across the front of his doublet and a miniature sword at his belt. Princess Myrcella and Prince Tommen, Arya thought.

When they continue to refer to her as a boy, "A ragged dirty smelly boy," she realizes that she hasn't been recognized and makes her escape. The septa with them calls for a guardsman who gives pursuit. When she eludes him, she doesn't know where she is, but she finds herself in a room with monsters -- huge skulls with sharp teeth that we recognize as the Targaryen dragon skulls that King Robert had stored in the cellars. Finding a door, she opens it just enough to slip through into a dark hall. "If the room with the monsters had been dark, the hall was the blackest pit in the seven hells." But she summons up the things that Syrio has taught her, such as Fear cuts deeper than swords, and keeps her head as she feels her way through the dark.


When she begins to see a faint flickering light, she is on the edge of "a great black well, a shaft twenty feet across plunging deep into the earth." She begins to hear voices coming from the pit, and soon can make out the shadows of two men, one of them carrying a torch. They are climbing some steps out of the shaft. One of the men says something about finding a bastard, and then as they grow closer he says, "The fools tried to kill his son" and "I warn you, the wolf and the lion will soon be at each other's throats." The other man speaks with "the liquid accents of the Free Cities," and he says, "What good is war now? We are not ready." The first man says, "Do you take me for a wizard?" and the man with the accent says, "No less."


As they emerge from the shaft, Arya hides in the shadows. The first man, who carries the torch, has "A round scarred face and a stubble of dark beard showed under his steel cap.... It seemed to Arya there was something oddly familiar about him." The man with the accent says, "If one Hand can die, why not a second?" He has a "forked yellow beard" and is hugely fat but light on his feet, and his fingers are covered with rings that glitter in the torchlight. Arya has never seen him before. He says to the first man, "The princess is with child. The khal will not bestir himself until his son is born."


The man with the torch pushes something and a huge slab of rock slides out of the ceiling and fills the space where the well had been. He says, "Stannis Baratheon and Lysa Arryn have fled beyond my reach, and the whispers say they are gathering swords around them." And that the Knight of Flowers has a fourteen-year-old sister that he and Lord Renly want to marry the king and become the queen. And that Arya's father "has the bastard, he has the book,, and soon enough he'll have the truth. And now his wife has abducted Tyrion Lannister, thanks to Littlefinger."


The man with the accent calls the other "a true sorcerer." But the torchbearer says, "I must have gold, and another fifty birds." And as they walk away she can only hear snatches of their conversation. She follows them at a distance, but eventually loses sight of them, and finds herself  "knee-deep in foul-smelling water." Eventually, she reaches the end of the sewer where it flows into the river. She strips and tries to wash the stink from her body and clothes, then makes her way back to the castle, where she has to plead for admittance.


Two guards escort her to her father's rooms, where he tells her half his guard has been searching for her and Septa Mordane is praying for her return. She begins to spill out her story, about monsters and two men who "were talking about killing you" and about a bastard, which she takes to be Jon, and a book. She sees the one he has been reading and asks if that's it. "The fat one said the princess was with child. The one in the steel cap, he had the torch, he said that they had to hurry. I think he was a wizard."


Ned tries to persuade her they were mummers -- "There must be a dozen troupes in King's landing right now." He turns his attention to the scratches on her arms, and says he needs to talk to Syrio Forel about her training. But he is interrupted by a steward who says "there's a black brother here begging audience. He says the matter is urgent." He admits Yoren, who takes Arya for Ned's son, to her indignation, and she begins to ask him about Jon and her brothers. Ned apologizes for Arya's eagerness and asks if his brother Benjen had sent him.


No one sent him, Yoren says. He is there to recruit men for the Wall. But he is there because of the incident at the inn. He wants to speak to Ned in private, so Ned has the steward, Desmond, take Arya to her room.


Eddard

The council is meeting about the news that Daenerys Targaryen is pregnant. Robert wants her dead, and Ned is arguing against it. But in the end, only Ser Barristan Selmy agrees that killing a child and possibly provoking a war would be dishonorable. The argument ends with Ned resigning as Hand.


Returning to his chambers, Ned tells his steward, Vayon Poole, to prepare for a return to Winterfell. Poole tells him it will take a fortnight to get everything ready for the journey, but Ned says the king is so angry with him that they may not have that long. Among his concerns is "the business with Catelyn and the dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night.... Robert might not care a fig for Tyrion Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen might do."


So he proposes to leave now with Arya and Sansa and a few guardsmen, and let the rest follow. Then he thinks of returning to Winterfell by sea. As he's pondering all this, Littlefinger is announced. Ned greets him coldly, but Littlefinger chatters on about the council's discussion of the ways to kill Daenerys. They decided to "make a lord of whoever does in the Targaryen girl," instead of hiring a killer from the Faceless Men. Littlefinger claims that he came up with the idea and that by doing so he may have saved Daenerys's life: A sellsword will probably "make a botch of it, and afterward the Dothraki will be on their guard. If we'd sent a Faceless Man after her, she'd be as good as buried." Ned is annoyed at Littlefinger's amusement at murder, but he replies, "It's not murder I find amusing, Lord Stark, it's you. You rule like a man dancing on rotten ice. I daresay you will make a noble splash. I believe I heard the first crack this morning."


But then Littlefinger plays his high card: "if perchance you're still here come evenfall, I'd be pleased to take you to this brothel your man Jory has been searching for so ineffectually."


Catelyn

They are making the arduous climb into the mountains toward the castle of the Arryns, and Catelyn is reflecting on her hostage.

The little man was more cunning than she liked. When they had entered the mountains, he had been her captive, bound and helpless. What was he now? Her captive still, yet he rode along with a dirk through his belt and an axe strapped to his saddle, wearing the shadowskin cloak he'd won dicing with the singer and the chainmail hauberk he'd taken off Chiggen's corpse.... Could I be wrong? Catelyn wondered, not for the first time. Could he be innocent after all, of Bran and Jon Arryn and all the rest? And if he was, what did that make her? Six men had died to bring him here.

But she stifles her doubts and rides on. They reach the Bloody Gate, a portal into Arryn lands, and a knight rides out to challenge them. He turns out to be Catelyn's uncle, Brynden Tully, who gives them entrance to the Vale of Arryn. He tells them that they can be at the mountain by nightfall, but the ascent to the Eyrie will take another day. Ser Rodrik, who was wounded, can't travel farther, so Catelyn says that her uncle will take her and Tyrion the rest of the way while the others stay behind and gather their strength. But Marillion speaks up and says he wants to go so he can write the end to the story he plans to sing. And Bronn wants to come too. Catelyn isn't happy about this, even though Bronn has shown courage and strength, because "she had seen him riding beside Lannister far too often, talking in low voices and laughing at some private joke." But she agrees that the singer and the sellsword can come with them.

Along the way, Brynden confides his worries about Lysa and her son, describing the latter as "Six years old, sickly, and prone to weep if you take his dolls away. Jon Arryn's trueborn son, by all the gods, yet there are some who say he is too weak to sit his father's seat." As for Lysa, he tells Catelyn she will find her sister changed. "Two babes stillborn, twice as many miscarriages, Lord Arryn's death.... Catelyn, the gods gave Lysa only the one child, and he is all your sister lives for now." He also expresses doubt that bringing Tyrion to Lysa was a good idea.

As they reach the base of the mountain from which the Eyrie rises, Tyrion comments. "The Arryns must not be overfond of company. If you're planning to make us climb that mountain in the dark, I'd rather you kill me here." Brynden tells them that there are "three waycastles, Stone and Snow and Sky," that guard the path to the Eyrie. Mules will take them as far as Sky and beyond that they go on foot, or a basket can be let down for them.

They plan to spend the night and make the ascent the next morning, but word arrives that Lysa wants to see Catelyn at once. Brynden protests that a night ascent is "an invitation to a broken neck," but a girl of seventeen or eighteen speaks up and says that she can safely guide Catelyn. Her name is Mya Stone, which troubles Catelyn because Stone is a surname given to bastards in the Vale, "as Snow was in the north.... Catelyn had nothing against this girl, but suddenly she could not help but think of Ned's bastard on the Wall, and the thought made her angry and guilty, both at once." But she agrees, and leaving Tyrion, Marillion, and Bronn for the night, she begins the ascent with Mya.

All goes well until they reach the point at which the mules have to be led across a pathway twenty feet long and three feet wide, with a sheer drop on either side. Catelyn panics, but Mya tells her to close her eyes and carefully leads her, "blind and trembling," across the pathway. They reach the waycastle called Sky as dawn is breaking, and the final ascent involves something "more like a stone ladder than proper steps," as Mya describes it. Catelyn remembers the basket option and chooses it.


Finally, she is in the Eyrie and is taken to see Lysa. She hasn't seen her sister for five years, and they haven't been kind to Lysa, who was two years younger than Catelyn but looked older. "She had the blue eyes of the Tullys, but here were pale and watery, never still. Her small mouth had turned petulant." Lysa greets her sister with a show of affection, but when she dismisses the attendants, she snaps, "Have you taken leave of your senses? ... To bring him here, without a word of permission, without so much as a warning, to drag us into your quarrels with the Lannisters...."


Catelyn is astonished at this outburst, but at that moment the boy, Robert Arryn, enters, "a painfully thin child, small for his age and sickly all this days." Lysa introduces him to his aunt Catelyn, and gushes, "Isn't he beautiful? And strong too, don't you believe the things you hear. Jon knew. The seed is strong, he told me. His last words." Catelyn tries to return to the topic of the Lannisters, but when she says, "Ned thinks it may come to war," Lysa snaps at her to be quiet: "You're scaring the boy." And then, "She opened her robe and drew out a pale, heavy breast, tipped with red. The boy grabbed for it eagerly, buried his face against her chest, and began to suck."


Catelyn is reminded of "three-year-old Rickon, half the age of this boy and five times as fierce." She tries to bring up the topic of the Lannisters again, but Lysa covers the boy's ears. Then she asks, "what am I to do with this Imp you have brought me?" The boy asks, "Is he a bad man?" And when his mother says he is, "'Make him fly,' Robert said eagerly." She responds, "Perhaps we will.... Perhaps that is just what we will do."

Lino Facioli as Robert Arryn and Kate Dickie as Lysa Arryn

7. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 272-323

Eddard

References to "the Hand's tourney" keep bugging Ned, who insists it's "the king's tourney." Now he has to deal with an overstretched constabulary that's having to handle the influx of visitors for the event, and the accompanying criminal activity. He orders the Commander of the City Watch to add fifty men to the force, and then retires to his room to read the book that Jon Arryn had been reading before he died: The Lineages and Histories of the Great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms, With Descriptions of Many High Lords and Noble Ladies and Their Children. He hasn't yet figured out what connection, if any, it may have with Lord Arryn's death.

Jory Cassel arrives with reports on the remaining servants to Lord Arryn, none of which seem to have any significance. "The serving girl ... said Lord Jon had been reading more than was good for him, that he was troubled and melancholy over his young son's frailty, and gruff with his lady wife." A former potboy remembered kitchen gossip, including that Arryn and Lord Stannis, the king's brother, had been together to an armorer to order a new suit of plate. A former stableboy, now a watchman, told him that "Lord Jon was as strong as a man half his age. Often went riding with Lord Stannis, he says." Ned reflects that Stannis had never close to Arryn before, and and that Stannis now seems to have absented himself from court and the council on which he sits, staying at his home on Dragonstone, "the Targaryen island fastness he had conquered in his brother's name. And when Jory adds that the boy said Arryn and Stannis went to a brothel, Ned is incredulous: He has just come from a council meeting in which he was reminded that Stannis once tried to outlaw brothels.

Ned decides to visit the armorer, Tobho Mott, himself. He is welcomed effusively, but when he asks if Arryn had ordered work from him, Mott replies, "The Hand did call upon me, with Lord Stannis, the king's brother. I regret to say, they did not honor me with their patronage." Instead, he says, "They asked to see the boy." Ned has no idea who "the boy" might be, but asks to see him. He is taken to "a tall lad about Robb's age, his arms and chest corded with muscle," and told the boy's name is Gendry.

Joe Dempsie as Gendry and Andrew Wilde as Tobho Mott

 The boy shows Ned a helmet he made, but when Ned offers to buy it, he snatches it away. "'I made it for me,' the boy said stubbornly." Mott is embarrassed and apologizes for Gendry's rudeness, but Ned says it's fine. He wants to know what he talked about with Lord Arryn. Gendry says he asked about his mother, "Who shewas and what she looked like and all." He tells Ned, "She died when I was little. She had yellow hair, and sometimes she used to sing to me, I remember. She worked in an alehouse." But Stannis, he says, "just glared at me like I was some raper who done for his daughter."

Ned touched the boy's head, fingering the thick black hair. "Look at me, Gendry." The apprentice lifed his face. Ned studied the shape of his jaw, the  eyes like blue ice. Yes, he thought, I see it. "Go back to your work, lad. I'm sorry to have bothered you."

As he leaves, he asks Mott who paid Gendry's apprentice fee. At first the armorer claims he took him on without a fee, but Ned doesn't believe this for a second. He insists on the truth, and Mott admits that a lord came to see him, paid twice the usual fee, "and said he was paying once for the boy, and once for my silence." Ned listens to the description of the lord, and presses Mott still further for what he knows. The armorer stands his ground. "Why he was before he came to me, that's none of my concern."

Ned leaves, asking himself, "What had Jon Arryn wanted with a king's bastard, and why was it worth his life?"

Catelyn

Catelyn and Ser Rodrik are plodding northward in the rain, heading for an inn at the crossroads between the Kingsroad that takes them to Winterfell and the road that goes westward to her family's home in Riverrun and eastward to the Eyrie, where her sister Lysa lives. The inn is crowded with travelers heading south to the tournament, but they are able to take the last rooms available.

Fortunately, no one seems to recognize them in the common room, where they decide it is safest to pose as father and daughter. Across the table from them is a young singer on his way to King's Landing to try to make some money performing for the crowds at the tournament. His name is Marillion, he tells them.

Emun Elliott as Marillion

Then a servant bursts into the room and calls out, "my lord of Lannister requires a room and a hot bath." Ser Rodrik says, "Oh, gods," before Catelyn can silence him. She sees a man in the black of the Night's Watch, two servants, and Tyrion, They're told that the inn is full, but Tyrion pulls out a gold coin and flips it in the air, and one of the guests volunteers to give up his room.

Tyrion invites Yoren, who is the man in black, to have supper with him, and when they go to sit down Catelyn breathes a sigh of relief because they are at the other end of the room. But Marillion suddenly stands up and calls out to Tyrion, offering to sing him "the lay of your father's great victory at King's Landing!" Anything concerning his father is bound to turn off Tyrion, but as he looks at the singer his eyes suddenly fall on Catelyn. "'Lady Stark, what an unexpected pleasure,' he said. 'I was sorry to miss you at Winterfell.'"

Her identity exposed, Catelyn decides to take a chance. She calls out to several men she can identify by the emblems on their clothing as belonging to families allied with her father.

"This man came a guest into my house, and there conspired to murder my son, a boy of seven," she proclaimed to the room at large, pointing. Ser Rodrik moved to her side, his sword in hand. "In the name of King Robert and the good lords you serve, I call upon you to seize him and help me return him to Winterfell to await the king's justice." She did not know what was more satisfying: the sound of a dozen swords drawn as one or the look on Tyrion Lannister's face.

Sansa

Riding to the tournament with Septa Mordane and Jeyne Poole, Sansa is dazzled and excited by the romance of it all. The jousting goes on all day, and while "Jeyne covered her eyes whenever a man fell, like a frightened little girl, ... Sansa was made of sterner stuff. A great lady knew how to behave at tournaments. Even Septa Mordane noted  her composure and nodded in approval." Jaime Lannister, called "the Kingslayer," is unbeatable, as are Sandor Clegane and his brother, Ser Gregor, who is known as "the Mountain That Rides."

Conan Stevens as Gregor Clegane

Then a man is killed, "a young knight from the Vale," when Ser Gregor's lance pierces his throat and he falls, "not ten feet from where Sansa was seated." Jeyne collapses in hysterics and has to be taken away by Septa Mordane, "but Sansa sat with her hands folded in her lap, watching with a strange fascination. She had never seen a man die before."

The jousts resume, however, and another knight falls to Ser Gregor, and Sandor unhorses Renly Baratheon. In the end, only four are left: the Clegane brothers, Jaime Lannister, and Ser Loras Tyrell, who is known as the Knight of Flowers.

Finn Jones as Ser Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers

At sixteen, he was the youngest rider on the field.... Sansa had never seen anyone so beautiful. His plate was intricately fashioned and enameled as a bouquet of a thousand different flowers, and his snow-white stallion was draped in a blanket of red and white roses.

After each victory he had stopped before a young woman and plucked a white rose from the blanket and given it to her. After the last one, he stopped before Sansa and gave her a red rose. After he rides off, she finds a man standing over her. He says, "You must be one of her daughters.... You have the Tully look." Septa Mordane introduces him as "Lord Petyr Baelish, of the king's small council." Littlefinger tells her, "Your mother was my queen of beauty once," then turns and walks away.

It has grown late, and the last three matches are postponed to the next morning. At the feast that night, Prince Joffrey sits beside her. They haven't spoken since the incident at the river, and she has been dreading seeing him again, but he smiles and kisses her hand, "handsome and gallant as any prince in the songs," and comments, "Ser Loras has a keen eye for beauty, sweet lady." As the feast goes on, Joffrey remains courteous and attentive. "She could see from the way he moved that his right arm was still troubling him, yet he uttered not a word of complaint."

Then there's a disturbance at the king's table. He "had grown louder with each course," and now Sansa is "shocked to see the king on his feet, red of face, reeling. He had a goblet of wine in one hand, and he was as drunk as a man could be." He screams at the queen, "I am king here, do you understand? I rule here, and if I say that I will fight tomorrow, I will fight!" The queen leaves in silence, followed by her servants, and when Jaime Lannister tries to calm the king down, the king shoves him and he falls. Robert mocks him: "The great knight. I can still knock you in the dirt. Remember that, Kingslayer." Lord Renly comes forth and tells his brother, "You've spilled your wine, Robert. Let me bring you a fresh goblet."

Joffrey then tells Sansa it's getting late and asks if she needs an escort back to the castle. She says no at first, but then realizes that Septa Mordane, who has been drinking wine all evening, has passed out. So she says she would be grateful "for some protection." Joffrey shouts, "Dog!" and the Hound, Sandor Clegane, appears. Joffrey tells him, "Take my betrothed back to the castle and see that no harm befalls her." Then he walks off without even saying good night.

It's not what Sansa was expecting, and the Hound knows it. "'Did you think Joff was going to take you himself?' He laughed. He had a laugh like the snarling of dogs in a pit. 'Small chance of that.'" He tells her to hurry because he needs his sleep. "I've drunk too much, and I may need to kill my brother tomorrow." As he takes her back to the castle, she tries to compliment him: "You rode gallantly today, Ser Sandor." But he snarls, "Spare me your empty little compliments, girl." First of all, he's not a "ser":  "I am no knight. I spit on them and their vows. My brother is a knight. Did you see him ride today?" She tries to find something to say: "He was..." "Gallant?" he says, mocking her. She finally says, "No one could withstand him." This only leads to further mockery: "Some septa trained you well," and he compares her to "A pretty little talking bird, repeating all the pretty little words they taught you to recite."

Then he stops her and squats in front of her, taking her chin in his hand and forcing her to look at his mutilated face. People believe that the left side of his face was burned in a battle. But he tells her the truth. He was six or seven, and a woodcarver sent him and his brother some toys. "I don't remember what I got, but it was Gregor's gift I wanted. A wooden knight, all painted up, every joint pegged separate and fixed with strings, so you could make him fight." Gregor, he says, is five years older and even then was "near six foot tall and muscled like an ox." So when Sandor stole the toy and Gregor found out, "There was a brazier in the room. Gregor never said a word, just picked me up under his arm and shoved my face down into the burning coals and held me there while I screamed and screamed."

Four years later, Sandor says, his brother was made a knight. Sansa  realizes that she isn't afraid of him anymore, and says, "He was no true knight," which makes him roar with laughter. The rest of the way he is silent, but when they reach her room and she thanks him, he grabs her arm and says, "If you ever tell anyone, ... I'll kill you."

Eddard

The knight from the Vale killed by Gregor Clegane is none other than the former squire to Jon Arryn that Ned has wanted to talk with. "Eddard Stark looked at his face and wondered if it had been for his sake that the boy had died. Slain by a Lannister bannerman before Ned could speak to him, could that be mere happenstance?" He is especially distressed that it happened at a tournament in his name. "This was needless. War should not be a game."

Now Ned turns his mind to the fact that the king has announced his intention to fight in the melee. Ser Barristan Selmy suggests that perhaps the king has forgotten his announcement, but Ned knows Robert Baratheon better than that. They find the king in his pavilion trying to fit into his armor and cursing his squires. Ned tells him the problem isn't with the squires: "You're too fat for your armor, Robert." After a flicker of anger, the king says, "Ah, damn you, Ned, why are you always right?" So he sends the squires for a "breastplate stretcher." Ned observes that the squires are Lannisters, and "it troubled him to see Robert surrounded by the queen's kin, waking and sleeping."

Barristan speaks up and suggests that if he fights in the melee, "It would not be a fair contest. Who would dare strike you?" Ned sees that Barristan has hit the mark: "There's not a man in the Seven Kingdoms who would dare risk your displeasure by hurting you," he adds, knowing that this approach touches the king's pride. "Are you telling me those prancing cravens will let me win?" They indicate that this is so. The king throws his breastplate at Barristan and orders him out of the tent, but calls Ned back.

He tells Ned that his marriage to Cersei is miserable, and "More than once, I have dreamed of giving up the crown." But what stops him is "The thought of Joffrey on the throne, with Cersei standing behind him whispering in his ear. My son. How could I have made a son like that, Ned?" He wishes he had a son like Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers. "Now there's a son any man would be proud to own to." And he falls to reminiscing about their boyhood days, as Ned thinks about his investigation:

If he could prove that the Lannisters were behind the attack on Bran, prove that they had murdered Jon Arryn, this man would listen. Then Cersei would fall, and the Kingslayer with her, and if Lord Tywin dared to rouse the west, Robert would smash him as he had smashed Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He could see it all so clearly.

Ned goes to watch the final jousts with Sansa. The first combat is between Sandor Clegane and Jaime Lannister, and in the first pass, the Hound is almost unseated. But on the second pass, Sandor unhorses Lannister, whose helmet is so twisted and dented in the fall that is unable to get it off, and the crowd bursts out into laughter at his efforts, the king laughing loudest of all.

Next, Gregor Clegane is up against the Knight of Flowers. Gregor "was huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen.... He was well over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees." The crowd is delighted by the appearance of Loras Tyrell "in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots" that drew a gasp when the crowd realized "that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires." Tyrell is riding a grey mare, and "Ser Gregor's huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent." When Gregor kicks the horse to try to control it, the horse almost throws him. And when the joust begins, he continues to have trouble controlling the horse, so that "suddenly Loras Tyrell was on him, placing the point of his lance just there, and in an eye blink the Mountain was falling. He was so huge that he took his horse down with him in a tangle of steel and flesh."

The crowd cheers the Knight of Flowers, whose lance isn't even broken, but Gregor is so enraged that he calls for his sword and kills his horse, "with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the animal's neck." Then Gregor attacks Loras Tyrell, knocks him from his horse, and is about to kill him when his brother, Sandor, intervenes. The two brothers do battle until the king calls a halt to their combat and a dozen knights do their best to break it up.

There is one joust left, between the Hound and the King of Flowers, but "Ser Loras Tyrell walked back onto the field in a simple linen doublet and said to Sandor Clegane, 'I owe you my life. The day is yours, ser.'" Once again the Hound denies that he has the right to be called "ser," "but he took the victory, and the champion's purse, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, the love of the commons." Afterward, Ned hears Littlefinger suggest that Tyrell knew the mare he was riding was in heat and chose it because "Gregor has always favored huge, ill-tempered stallions with more spirit than sense."

The melee is a bloody mess, which makes Ned happy that he was able to persuade the king not to take part in it. Arya joins them at the feast, and when Sansa asks how her dancing lessons are going, shows her "a huge purple bruise on her leg." "'You must be a terrible dancer,' Sansa said doubtfully. Later, Ned talks to Arya alone and suggests that maybe Syrio is a little too hard on her, but she stands her ground, insisting, "I want Syrio."

He returns to his room, and ponders all of the things he has learned, trying to put them all together into a pattern. He is sure that Gendry is Robert's son: "The Baratheon look was stamped on his face, in his jaw, his eyes, that black hair." But Robert has had other bastards as well, including "a daughter born in the Vale when Robert was scarcely more than a boy himself.... The girl would be seventeen or eighteen now, he realized, older than Robert had been when he fathered her." But "none of them could threaten Robert's trueborn children."

The steward enters to tell him he has a visitor who will not give his name. Ned admits a man whose face is covered with a cowl, and when the steward has left, the man reveals himself: Varys. He says he has disguised himself because he doesn't want the queen to know that he is speaking to him in private, and has come to tell Ned that there was a plot to kill the king during the melee. Ned protests that the queen had asked Robert not to fight, but Varys replies, "She forbade him to fight, in front of his brother, his knights, and half the court. Tell me truly, do you know any surer way to force King Robert into the melee?" Ned concedes the point.

Ned protests that Varys should have told him sooner, but Varys says if Ned had told the king of a plot that would have only provoked him to fight. Besides, Varys says, he wasn't sure if he could trust Ned. But now, "I comprehend why the queen fears you so much." Doesn't the king have other friends, Ned asks, like his brothers?

"His brothers hate the Lannisters, true enough, but hating the queen and loving theking are not quite the same thing, are they? Ser Barristan loves his honor, Grand Maester Pycelle loves his office, and Littlefinger loves Littlefinger.... No, my lord, when the swords come out in earnest, you will be the only true friend Robert Baratheon will have."

As Varys starts to leave, Ned asks the question that he's been trying to solve: "How did Lord Arryn die." It was a poison called "The tears of Lys," Varys says. As for who gave him the poison, Varys says it must have been "Some dear friend who often shared meat and mead with him."

"There was one boy. All he was, he owed to Jon Arryn, but when the widow fled to the Eyrie with her household, he stayed in King's Landing and prospered. It always gladdens my heart to see the young rise in the world." The whip was in his voice again, every word a stroke. "He must have cut a gallant figure in the tourney, him in his bright new armor, with those crescent moons on his cloak. A pity he died so untimely, before you could talk to him...."

It was the new-made knight, the former squire to Jon Arryn, killed by Gregor in the tournament. But then Ned asks why Jon Arryn was killed: "What was he doing that they had to kill him?"

"'Asking questions,' Varys said, slipping out the door."

4. A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 109-159

Eddard

Robert Baratheon wakes Ned before dawn and tells him to ride out with him, away from the camp, to talk about "matters of state." They are followed by a company of guards, and travel southward along the kingsroad, then take off across open country. Robert stops when he is sure they are out of earshot of the guards.

"We are not the boys we used to be," Ned says, sending Robert into a moment of nostalgia in which he tries to recall the name of the woman by whom Ned fathered Jon. Ned says her name was Wylla, and that he doesn't want to talk about her. "I dishonored myself and I dishonored Catelyn, in the sight of gods and men." Robert, who doesn't understand Ned's moral scruples, reluctantly drops the topic.

What he really wants to talk about is a message he has received from Lord Varys, a eunuch who is "the king's master of whisperers." It concerns the marriage of Daenerys to Khal Drogo and the fact that Ser Jorah Mormont is now aligned with the last of the Targaryens. The Mormonts of Bear Island, off the northern coast, had been bannermen to the Starks, but five years ago Ser Jorah had "dishonored the north" by selling some poachers into slavery instead of sending them to the Wall to be part of the Night's Watch -- the usual punishment of lawbreakers. Ned had gone to Bear Island to confront Ser Jorah, but he "had taken ship beyond the reach of Ice and the king's justice." Now Ser Jorah has turned informant, sending Varys news about the activities of Viserys and Daenerys.

Ned asks facetiously if they should send a wedding gift, and Robert suggests, "A knife, perhaps. A good sharp one, and a bold man to wield it." Ned reflects on the king's hatred of the Targaryens: When Tywin Lannister had sent Robert the bodies of the wife and small children of Rhaegar Targaryen, the heir to the throne, Ned regarded it as murder, whereas Robert saw it as only the consequence of war. Now Ned protests Robert's desire to murder Daenerys; he hesitates to murder children, which the thirteen-year-old Daenerys is. But Robert sees her as only a breeder of more Targaryens. He reminds Ned that Aerys Targaryen killed Ned's brother Brandon and their father, and Rhaegar raped Ned's sister Lyanna: "I will kill every Targaryen I can get my hands on, until they are as dead as their dragons, and then I will piss on their graves."

Robert also observes, "This Khal Drogo is said to have a hundred thousand men in his horde," to which Ned replies that they're no threat: "The barbarians have no ships. They hate and fear the open sea." But Robert is concerned that if Viserys should manage to persuade them to invade, he would have the support of the houses that supported the Targaryens in the war.

Ned assures him that they will be strong enough to repel an invasion once Robert names a Warden of the East to replace Jon Arryn. But Robert refuses to name Robert Arryn, the "sickly child," to the position, so Ned suggests that Robert name his own brother, Stannis. The uneasy look on Robert's face makes Ned realize that he has already promised someone else the position, namely Jaime Lannister. Ned tactfully tries to point out that Jaime is already the heir to the position of Warden of the West, now held by Tywin Lannister. "He left unsaid his real concern; that the appointment would put half the armies of the realm into the hands of the Lannisters."

Ned's concern about Jaime is that he killed the king, Aerys Targaryen, though he was a member of the Kingsguard. "He swore a vow to protect his king's life with his own. Then he opened that king's throat with a sword." He also reminds Robert that it was the Lannisters, who had remained neutral through most of the war, who gained the city of King's Landing by treachery: "Lord Tywin Lannister appeared before the gates of King's Landing with an army twelve thousand strong, profession loyalty. So the mad king had ordered his last mad act. He opened his city to the lions at the gate."

Robert argues that the Targaryens obtained power through treachery, so he's not bothered by the Lannister deception. Ned, who "had lived his lies for fourteen years" (presumably a reference to the birth of Jon, he secrets of which he continues to keep), insists, "There was no honor in that conquest." Robert denounces the idea of honor: There was no honor in the death of Lyanna, he says, who was really all he wanted. "I ask you, Ned, what good is it to wear a crown? The gods mock the prayers of kings and cowherds alike."

Ned recalls riding his horse into the throne room and finding Aerys dead on the floor and Jaime Lannister seated on the throne. He said, "Have no fear, Stark. I was only keeping it warm for our friend Robert. It's not a very comfortable seat, I'm afraid." Robert roars with laughter at this. Jaime was only seventeen, he says. That's no reason to worry about him. But his reaction fills Ned "with a vast sense of helplessness." Robert rides off back to the camp and Ned follows, wondering "what he was doing here and why he had come."

In addition to being rather efficient background exposition, this section also helps develop the characters of the choleric and careless Robert and the troubled but dutiful Ned.

Tyrion

Tyrion is beginning to regret his decision to go north to see the Wall. The cold is bitter and the ride uncomfortable for someone with legs as short as his. They are a company of eight: In addition to Jon and Benjen, Tyrion has two of his men with him, and they have been joined by another member of the Night's Watch, Yoren, who has with him a pair of rapists who chose to be sentenced to the Wall rather than to be castrated. Tyrion notices Jon's distaste for Yoren and the rapists, and feels sorry for him.

On the eighteenth night of the journey, Tyrion goes off to a spot away from the camp with a book of dragon lore and a skin full of good wine. He is fascinated by dragons, and after Robert Baratheon had the dragon skulls of the Targaryeons removed from the throne room, Tyrion discovered them stored in a cellar. "There were nineteen skulls. The oldest was more than three thousand years old; the youngest a mere century and a half." Dragonbone is black, light in weight, and stronger than steel, and the fire-breathing creatures had been used by the Targaryens in battle, burning to death four thousand men in the battle known as the Field of Fire.

His reading is interrupted by Jon, who asks him, "Why do you read so much?" Tyrion responds that as a Lannister, much is expected of him. "My father was the Hand of the King for twenty years. My brother later killed that very same king, as it turns out, but life is full of these little ironies. My sister married the new king and my repulsive nephew will be king after him." But Tyrion is not physically capable of heroics, so "My mind is my weapon ... and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge."

When Tyrion tells him he's reading about dragons, Jon scoffs, "What good is that? There are no more dragons." Tyrion replies that when he was a boy he used to dream about having his own dragon, and would start fires and imagine that it was his father or his sister who was burning. Jon is shocked when Tyrion suggests that he too has had such dreams. But Tyrion continues,

"No doubt the Starks have been terribly good to you. I'm certain Lady Stark treats you as if you were one of her own. And your brother Robb, he's always been kind, and why no? He gets Winterfell and you get the Wall. And your father ... he must have good reasons for packing you off to the Night's Watch...."

Jon protests, "The Night's Watch is a noble calling!" But Tyrion continues to dig, pointing out that his colleagues will be like "Yoren and his boys.... Sullen peasants, debors, poachers, rapers, thieves, and bastards like you all wind up on the Wall, watching for grumkins and snarks and all the other monsters your wet nurse warned you about." But Jon protests angrily, and Tyrion feels guilty for hurting the boy. He steps toward Jon to apologize and suddenly is flattened by the wolf, who stands between him and Jon, baring his teeth but not making a sound. Unable to stand, he asks for Jon's help, but Jon just strokes Ghost's fur and says, "Ask me nicely."

Tyrion Lannister felt the anger coiling inside him, and crushed it out with a will. It was not the first time in his life he had been humiliated, and it would not be the last.

He asks politely for Jon's assistance and receives it. He offers Jon a drink from the wineskin, and Jon accepts, then says, "It's true, isn't it? ... What you said about the Night's Watch." When Tyrion nods, Jon resigns himself to the truth, whereupon Tyrion grins and says, "That's good, bastard. Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it." They return to the camp, and after dinner Tyrion sees Jon, who had the first watch for the night, standing "near the fire, his face still and hard, looking deep into the flames. Tyrion Lannister smiled sadly and went to bed."

Catelyn

Catelyn is still by Bran's bedside, eight days after Ned and her daughters have left, when Maester Luwin comes to her with some household business that needs to be dealt with. She lashes out in anger at him for bothering her. Robb steps in and says he'll handle the appointments Luwin is concerned about.

When Luwin leaves, Robb shuts the door and asks, "Mother, what are you doing?" She angrily replies that she is taking care of Bran, but he retorts that three-year-old Rickon needs her, too. And he admits, "I can't do it all by myself." She suddenly realizes that he's only fourteen.

A wolf began to howl, and Robb identifies it as Bran's, and goes to open the window. She protests that Bran needs to stay warm, and he says Bran needs to hear them, as Shaggydog and Grey Wind join in the howls. "You can tell them apart if you listen close," he says. But she covers her ears and begs him to make them stop, then collapses on the floor.

When she recovers, Robb is carrying her to a bed in the corner of the room. She pleads for him to close the window, but when he goes to it he hears the sound of the dogs barking, too. He looks out and sees the library tower on fire, then tells her to stay there while he tends to the blaze. She is thankful that the fire doesn't threaten Bran, and says a prayer to the gods, then goes to the window and watches the flames.

When she turns around there is a man in the room, "a small, dirty man in filthy brown clothing, and he stank of horses." He has a dagger in his hand. He mutters, "You weren't s'posed to be here.... No one was s'posed to be here." She struggles with him, grabbing the dagger by the blade and cutting her hand, then biting his hand. She screams and falls, and he stands over her, still holding the dagger and muttering "You weren't s'posed to be here.

Catelyn saw the shadow slip through the open door behind him. There was a low rumble, less than a snarl, the merest whisper of a threat, but he must have heard something, because he started to turn just as the wolf made its leap. They went down together, half sprawled over Catelyn where she'd fallen. The wolf had him under the jaw. The man's shriek lasted less than a second before the beast wrenched back its head, taking out half his throat.

She recognizes Bran's wolf, which licks the blood off her hand and then jumps onto Bran's bed and lies down beside him. She begins to laugh hysterically and continues until Robb, Maester Luwin, Ser Rodrick and the guards arrive. They take her to her room, bathe her, and dress the wound on her hand. When she awakes they tell her she has slept four days.

She now takes charge of the household again. The new captain of the guard, Hallis Mollen, tells her that no one knows the name of the assassin, but he seems to have been staying in the stables where they found a bag with a good deal of money in it. He went unnoticed because there were so many strangers in the castle during the king's visit. When Catelyn says, "It's good to know my son's life was not sold cheaply," everyone is surprised at her suggestion that the man was there to kill Bran. But she explains that he kept muttering that she wasn't supposed to be there, and conjectures that the fire was set to draw her and the guards to the task of putting it out, leaving Bran unprotected.

Later, she asks Robb if he understands what happened. "'Someone is afraid Bran might wake up,' Robb said, 'afraid of what he might say or do, afraid of something he knows.'" She tells the captain of the guards that Robb is in charge, and he orders guards to be posted around Bran's room, and that the wolf be allowed to stay with him. Ser Rodrik asks if she noticed the dagger the man used, and tells her that it was Valyrian steel with a dragonbone hilt -- a weapon too fine for a commoner.

Ron Donachie as Ser Rodrik Cassel

In addition to Robb and Ser Rodrik, Theon Greyjoy and Maester Luwin are present as Catelyn swears them to secrecy and tells them that she believes Ned and the girls are in great danger.

"My sister Lysa believes the Lannisters murdered her husband, Lord Arryn, the Hand of the King," Catelyn told them. "It comes to me that Jaime Lannister did not join the hunt the day Bran fell. He remained here in the castle." The room was deathly quiet. "I do not think Bran fell from that tower," she said into the stillness. "I think he was thrown."

Then she tells them that someone needs to go to King's Landing to alert Ned to the danger, and volunteers herself. Robb protests that he should go, but she insists, "There must always be a Stark in Winterfell." She has also realized that she has done everything she can for Bran. "As you reminded me yourself, Robb, I have other children to think of now." And so she proposes to go by sea, which should get her to King's Landing before Ned and the Lannisters arrive.

Sansa

Arya is missing at breakfast, and Sansa assumes that she has stolen off somewhere. As the preparations are being made for another day's movement along the kingsroad, Sansa goes in search of her sister and finds her trying to brush the mud out of Nymeria's fur. She tells Arya to put on something nice because they are going to be riding in the queen's wheelhouse today, but Arya has other pllans: "Mycah and I are going to ride upstream and look for rubies at the ford." The story has it that when Robert killed Rhaegar, the rubies that studded his armor broke off and fell into the river. Besides, Arya says, the wheelhouse doesn't have any windows, and she likes to see things as they ride. "When we were crossing the Neck, I counted thirty-six flowers I never saw before, and Mycah showed me a lizard-lion." (Lizard-lions float "half-submerged in the water, like black logs with eyes and teeth" -- evidently a relative of the alligator or the crocodile.) 

Sansa is vexed by this, and by her sister's habit of talking to people like "squires and grooms and serving girls, old men and naked children, rough-spoken freeriders of uncertain birth," and people like Mycah: "a butcher's boy, thirteen and wild, he slept in the meat wagon and smelled of the slaughtering block." But Sansa is particularly shocked when Arya says, "I don't like the queen." One reason is that she won't let Arya take Nymeria in the wheelhouse.

Sansa goes back to the inn, "almost in tears. All she waned was for things to be nice and pretty, the way they were in the songs." She had even asked her mother once if Arya might not be her child, but Catelyn assured her that she was. "Sansa could not think why Mother would want to lie about it, so she supposed it had to be true."

At the camp, there is great excitement because riders have arrived from King's Landing to accompany them the rest of the way. There are two knights kneeling before the queen, one of them an old man in white armor, the other a young man in deep forest-green armor. There was also "a gaunt grim man who watched the proceedings in silence. His face was pockmarked and beardless, with deepset eyes and hollow cheeks." She can't take her eyes off of him and when he turns in her direction she is frightened and Lady growls. She backs up in terror and bumps into Sandor Clegane, of whom she is frightened but not so much as she is of the other man. When Lady growls at him, someone new to the company notices the direwolf and the two knights draw their swords. She begins to cry, but the queen tells Joffrey to go to her.

When she explains to Joffrey that it wasn't the knights who frightened her but the other man, she learns that he is Ser Ilyn Payne, the king's executioner. And the old knight is Ser Barristan Selmy and the younger one Lord Renly Baratheon, the king's brother and councillor.

Ian McElhinney as Barristan Selmy

Gethin Anthony as Renly Baratheon

Wilko Johnson as Ilyn Payne

When Ser Ilyn joins them, Lady begins to growl and Sansa quiets her, then apologizes to him. She is puzzled that he doesn't answer until Joffrey explains that "Aerys Tergaryen had his tongue ripped out with hot pincers." Then the queen walks up and says she needs to confer with the councillors and suggests that Joffrey entertain Sansa.

Joffrey suggests that they go riding, but proposes that she leave Lady behind so she doesn't frighten the horses. He says he'll leave his dog, too, by which he means the Hound, Sandor Clegane. He doesn't need his protection, Joffrey brags, because he has his sword: "I don't fight with wood like your brothers. All I need is this." He says his sword's name is Lion's Tooth.

It's a wonderful day until they hear a sound, "a kind of wooden clattering, snack snack snack." Sansa is frightened and wants to turn back, but Joffrey insists they investigate. They find Arya and Mycah sword-fighting with broomsticks by the river. Sansa is embarrassed, but Joffrey challenges the butcher's boy to a fight, his broomstick against Joffrey's sword. When Mycah backs down, Joffrey bullies him, putting the sword point on the boy's cheek and drawing blood. Enraged, Arya attacks Joffrey with her broomstick, dealing a blow on the back of his head, which begins to bleed. He curses Arya and turns on her, as Mycah runs off into the woods. Arya picks up a rock and throws it, but hits Joffrey's horse, which runs off. "Joffrey slashed at Arya with his sword, screaming obscenities, terrible words, filthy words," and back her up against a tree.

Then Nymeria attacks, defending Arya, grabbing his sword arm in her jaws. He screams and Arya calls off the wolf. Then she picks up the sword and stands over him. He whimpers, "I'll tell my mother," and Arya throws the sword into the river. Then she gets on her horse and rides off, followed by Nymeria.

Sansa runs to Joffrey and tries to comfort him, saying she'll go for help. "His eyes snapped open and looked at her, and there was nothing but loathing there, nothing but the vilest contempt. 'Then go,' he spit at her. 'And don't touch me.'"

Eddard

Arya has been missing for four days when she is finally found. The queen orders her taken before the king, and when he hears this Ned hurries to the chamber in the castle where they have been staying during the search. He finds Arya standing in the middle of the room, accompanied only by Jory Cassel, the captain of the guard from Winterfell. Robert is seated at one end of the room, flanked by the queen and Joffrey, whose arm is bound with silk bandages. Ned goes to his daughter and takes her in his arms.

He asks angrily why Arya wasn't brought to him first, and Cersei snaps, "How dare you speak to your king in that manner!" But Robert tells her to be quiet and apologizes to Ned. "I never meant to frighten the girl. It seemed best to bring her here and get the business done with quickly." The queen charges that Arya and the butcher boy beat Joffrey with clubs and set the wolf on him. Arya says that isn't the way it happened, but Joffrey insists "They all attacked me, and she threw Lion's Tooth in the river!" Arya shouts "Liar!" and Joffrey yells "Shut up!"

Jamie Sives as Jory Cassel

"Enough!" the king roars, then orders Arya to tell her story first, then Joffrey will have his turn. As Arya is telling her version of the events, Ned sees Sansa enter the room. When Arya tells how she threw the sword in the river, Renly Baratheon begins to laugh, and Robert orders his brother out of the room. Before he goes, however, Renly says to Joffrey, "Perchance later you'll tell me how a nine-year-old gril the size of a wet rat managed to disarm you with a broom handle and throw your sword in the river."

Joffrey's version of the events is of course the complete opposite of Arya's, and the king confesses he is baffled at how to decide which of them is telling the truth. Ned suggests that since Sansa was there, she should give her account, which he has already heard on the night of Arya's disappearance. But when Sansa stands in front of them, she claims she doesn't remember, that everything happened so fast, and that she didn't see exactly. Arya rushes at her sister and knocks her down, shouting "Liar, liar, liar, liar." Ned and Jory pull her off of Sansa.

Cersei says Arya is "as wild as that filthy animal of hers" and demands she be punished. Robert says, "Damn it, children fight. It's over. No lasting harm was done." He decides that Ned should punish Arya and he'll take care of Joffrey. But the queen insists that the wolf must be done away with and offers "A hundred golden dragons to the man who brings me its skin." When Robert points out that the wolf has disappeared, Cersei says, "We have a wolf." When he realizes that she means Sansa's wolf, Lady, he shrugs and says, "Have Ser Ilyn see to it."

Ned protests, but Robert remains firm. And when Sansa realizes they mean to put Lady to death, she begs them not to. Arya joins in the pleas to spare Lady, and Ned joins in asking Robert to change his mind. Robert looks at his wife. "'Damn you, Cersei,' he said with loathing." He leaves, and Cersei calls for the executioner to kill the wolf. But Ned steps forward and tells Jory to take the girls to their rooms and to bring him his sword, Ice. Cersei suspects a trick, but Ned says, "She is of the north. She deserves better than a butcher."

He goes to where the wolf has been chained. "She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick fur." Afterward he tells Jory to choose some men to take the body to Winterfell and bury her there. "The Lannister woman shall never have this skin."

As he's returning to his room he encounters Sandor Clegane, who has been off with Jaime Lannister searching for Arya and hasn't heard the news. He tells Ned that they haven't found Arya but "We got her little pet." He shoves the burden on the back of his horse to the ground. Ned unwraps it, expecting to find Nymeria, but instead it's "the butcher's boy, Mycah, his body covered in dried blood. He had been cut almost in half from shoulder to waist by some terrible blow struck from above."