30. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1027-1061

Arya

They come across an inn that Arya reconizes: She and Sansa had been there, with Septa Mordane. Once again, as Sandor Clegane tells her to take care of the horses and goes inside, she thinks of escaping, but doesn't.  And in the inn are some faces she recognizes: Polliver and the Tickler, men on her list. They recognize the Hound, and Arya worries that they will recognize her, too. They don't, although the Tickler gives her a long, scrutinizing look.

With them is a boy, a squire, who recognizes the Hound as Gregor Clegane's brother, and begins to mock him: "Is this the lost puppy Ser Gregor spoke of? ... The one who piddled in the bushes and ran off?" He is referring to Sandor's desertion during the fiery battle at King's Landing. The threat of conflict makes the innkeeper and the local customers disappear from the barroom.

Polliver tells the Hound that if he's looking for Gregor, he has been summoned to the city. "King Joffrey's dead, you know.... Poisoned at his own wedding feast." Arya hears this and wants to be happy, "but if Robb was dead, too, what did it matter?" Polliver goes on to say that Tyrion and "his little wife" killed Joffrey, and when he explains that Tyrion had married Sansa, Arya doesn't believe it. He goes on to tell of the capture of Harrenhal, and that Edmure Tully is being held hostage to force the surrender of Riverrun. He also says that Arya Stark has been found and is going to marry "Bolton's bastard," which is certainly news to Arya.

Sandor laughs at this last bit, of course. Then he asks if there are ships at Saltpans, which they can't answer. The Tickler, however, wonders if Sandor is planning to leave the country without seeing his brother, and suggests that they should take him to Harrenhal with them. Suddenly the fight begins. Sandor has drunk too much wine on an empty stomach, but he holds off Polliver. Arya beans the squire with a wine cup, and when she sees the Tickler pull a dagger tries to throw one at him, too, but misses.

As Polliver and the Tickler close in on Clegane, Arya looks around for another weapon, but her arm is seized by the squire, who has recovered. He has a sword in one hand and her arm in the other, but her hands are free and she pulls his knife from its sheath and stabs him in the belly. Clegane has been backed into a corner, but he manages to break free and kill Polliver. The Tickler is taken off guard for a moment. His weapon is smaller than Clegane's, but he ignores Arya, who stabs him not once but repeatedly, while asking the questions that the Tickler had asked while torturing his victims: "Is there gold hidden in the village? ... Is there silver? ... Is there food? Where is Lord Beric?" and so on until  Clegane has to pull her off of him.

The Hound is bleeding profusely and dragging one leg. But he seizes the squire, who has pulled the knife from his belly and now begs for mercy. Clegane observed that the squire is as good as dead with his stomach wound, though it will take a long time for him to die. He turns to Arya and says, "This one is yours, she-wolf. You do it." Arya goes to Polliver and undoes his swordbelt, in which she finds Needle, the dagger he had taken from her. The Hound asks if she remembers where the heart is, and she stabs the squire in it.

He tells her they need to head to Saltpans and find a ship that will take them to the Vale. "Maybe Lady Lysa will marry you to her little Robert. There's a match I'd like to see." But his laugh ends in a groan, and he needs her help to mount his horse. They ride to the banks of the Trident, whose flood has ebbed, and find a place to camp. He has her boil some wine and find a clean stick that he can bite down on while she pours it into his wounds: first his neck, then his thigh, and finally "over the raw red flesh where his ear had been." He faints from the pain.

She binds his wounds while he's unconscious. Then she sits and recites the list of names, this time leaving out Polliver and the Ticker -- and, she realizes, the Hound. She tries to remember Mycah and what he had done to him, but can't even remember what he looked like. Finally she whispers, "The Hound," and then, "Valar morghulis." She falls asleep and dreams that she is "a wolf again, chasing a riderless horse up a hill with a pack behind her." But Clegane wakes her "just as they were closing for the kill."

He is weak and can barely stay on his horse, and soon stops for rest and falls asleep. He is feverish and the wound in his thigh smells funny to her. She thinks again of killing him, and draws Needle. But he wakes, and asks her if she remembers where the heart is. He tries to provoke her: "I killed your butcher's boy. I cut him near in half and laughed about it afterward." But she realizes that instead of laughing he is sobbing.

"And the little bird, your pretty sister, I stood there in my white cloak and let them beat her. I took the bloody song, she never gave it. I meant to take her too. I should have I should have fucked her bloody and ripped her heart out before leaving her for that dwarf." A spasm of pain twisted his face. "Do you mean to make me beg, bitch? Do it!" 

She saddles her horse as he calls out, "A real wolf would finish a wounded animal." She replies, "You shouldn't have hit me with an axe.... You should have saved my mother." She turns and rides away.

At Saltpans there are three ships, but she realizes she doesn't have the money. She sells the horse for less than it's worth, and heads for one of the ships. She finds the captain and tells him she wants "to go north, to the Wall." But he tells her she doesn't have enough money, and even if she did, the ship is heading for home, to Braavos.

She suddenly remembers the iron coin Jaqen H'ghar had given her, and presses it into his hand and says "Valar morghulis." "'Valar dohaeris,' he replied, touching his brow with two fingers. 'Of course you shall have a cabin.'"

Samwell

Gilly is nursing Dalla's baby. On their long trek, Gilly and Sam had been overtaken by a company of black riders coming from the Shadow Tower to the west, and among them had been survivors of the attack on the Fist of the First Men. Sam had been so glad to see Dywen and Dolorous Edd among them that he wept.

They brought with them the news of the victory of Stannis's forces over the wildlings and the capture of Mance Rayder. But Sam was shocked when they reached Castle Black and witnessed the destruction and death, even though the towers bristled with banners from House Baratheon, House Florent, and many others, including one with a fiery heart that Sam didn't recognize.

Pyp and Grenn greeted him with delight, and explained that Stannis had arrived with Melisandre, having left the queen at Eastwatch with the fleet. Jon greeted him as well, and was pleased to see Gilly. But there is a sadness to him that Sam quickly learns the cause of: "He grieves for his wildling girl, an for his brothers." And although he has captured the Horn of Winter, Ser Alliser and Janos Slynt still regard him as a turncloak.

Jon observes the irony: "Craster had no love for Mance, nor Mance for Craster, but now Craster's daughter is feeding Mance's son." Val, who is with them too, says, "I've heard the queen's men saying that the red woman means to give Mance to the fire, as soon as he is strong enough." Jon tells her that Mance's desertion from the Night's Watch was a capital offense, and the Watch normally would have hanged him for that by now. But the decision now lies in Stannis's hands because "he's the king's captive, and no one knows the king's mind but the red woman."

Val wants to see Mance, but only Maester Aemon, who is treating his wounds, is allowed to be with him now. Jon promises to try to persuade them to let her visit. Sam follows Jon when he leaves, and Jon says, "You're more than fond of Gilly, aren't you?" Sam admits as much: "She ... she made me braver, Jon. Not brave, but ... braver." But when Jon reminds him of his vows, he knows that she can't stay with him. He wonders if he could write to his father and say that he had gotten Gilly pregnant, and ask if she could stay with his mother and sisters at Horn Hill. Jon approves of the idea in theory, but adds that Gilly had better be able to carry off the pretense convincingly: "From what you've told me of Lord Randyll, I doubt he would take kindly to being deceived."

Jon is heading to the practice yard, and Sam worries that Jon's leg is not healed enough for the exercise. But Jon has nothing else to do because he has been removed from duty under suspicion of being a turncloak. Sam protests that he should be treated as a hero for seizing the Horn and capturing Mance's son. Jon replies, "All I did was protect Val and the babe against looters when the wildlings fled, and keep them there until the rangers found us." Ser Alliser blames him for not killing Mance when he had the opportunity.

Ser Alliser's continued animosity toward Jon is exacerbated by his inability to become Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. "With his noble birth, his knighthood, and his long years in the Watch, Ser Alliser Thorne might have been a strong challenger for the Lord Commander's title, but almost all the men he'd trained during his years as master-at-arms despised him." In the voting for the title, he had placed sixth on the first day and lost votes on the second. He has withdrawn in support of Lord Janos Slynt.

So Jon is now just "the bastard who killed Qhorin Halfhand and bedded with a spearwife." They call him a warg, too, but he says, "How can I be a warg without a wolf, I ask you?" Ghost is still missing, and Jon doesn't even dream of him anymore. "All my dreams are of the crypts, of the stone kings on their thrones. Sometimes I hear Robb's voice, and my father's, as if they were at a feast. But there's a wall between us, and I know that no place has been set for me."

Sam has taken a pledge not to reveal that Bran is alive, and at times like these, he wishes he could console Jon with that information: "He's with friends, and they're going north on a giant elk to find a three-eyed crow in the depths of the haunted forest." But it sounds so crazy to him now that he almost doesn't believe it himself. Still he swore three times to keep that secret: once to Bran, once to Jojen Reed, and once to Coldhands. So he changes to subject to the Lord Commander's position, assuring Jon that Janos Slynt will never be named to it. Jon is convinced otherwise, however, and takes out his frustrations in sword practice. He tells Sam to excuse him: "I need to his someone very hard with a sword." He spends his days in the practice yard training the younger recruits because no one has named a new master-at-arms.

Sam hopes that he is right and Jon is wrong. A candidate must receive two-thirds of the votes of the Sworn Brothers to be named Lord Commander, and no one has come near. Slynt is still behind Ser Denys Mallister of the Shadow Tower and Cotter Pyke of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea, though he has been gaining votes steadily. Sam has been keeping careful track of the vote count.

There is another vote that night after supper, before which another candidate, Bowen Marsh, withdraws his name in favor of Janos Slynt. Sam looks around for Jon, but he isn't there. Sam assists Maester Aemon in counting the votes. Slynt is third, behind Ser Denys and Cotter Pyke, but the former's count is down ten votes from the previous day, and the latter's is down twenty votes. Later, Sam tells Pyp and Grenn that they should try to persuade one of them to withdraw, to prevent Slynt from winning. Pyp points out that Sam is "A lord's son, the maester's steward, and Sam the Slayer." He should be the one to do the persuading. But Sam says he's "too craven to face them."

Jon

Jon is in the midst of sparring with Satin when Melisandre, accompanied by half a dozen soldiers, appears and tells him that Stannis wants to speak with him. He excuses himself, changes into fresh clothes, and meets her at the base of the Wall. As they ride up in the cage, he senses how warm she is. "She even smells red," he thinks. And when the wind blows her robes, he asks if she is cold. She touches his cheek with her hand and he feels the warmth: "'That is how life should feel,' she told him. 'Only death is cold.'"

She presents him to Stannis as "the Bastard of Winterfell," and Jon notes how gaunt and clenched his manner is.

Jon found himself remembering something Donal Noye once said about the Baratheon brothers. Robert was the true steel. Stannis is pure iron, black and hard and strong, but brittle, the  way iron gets. He'll break before he bends. Uneasily he knelt, wondering why this brittle king had need of him.

Stannis addresses him as "Lord Snow," eliciting Jon's usual protest, "I am no lord, sire," and adding that he is aware of the reputation as turncloak, coward, murderer and oathbreaker that has preceded him. Stannis adds that he is supposed to be a warg and a skinchanger, too. Jon admits that he had a direwolf named Ghost, but he hasn't seen him for a long time. He explains about Qhorin Halfhand and Ygritte, too, "but I swear to you on my father's name that I never turned my cloak."

Stannis says he believes him, which startles Jon into asking why. "I know Janos Slynt. And I knew Ned Stark as well. Your father was no friend of mine, but only a fool would doubt his honor or his honest. You have his look." He also tells him he knows about the dragonglass dagger and that Jon held the gate at Castleblack. Jon says that Ghost found the dagger, and Donal Noye held the gate. Stannis persists in his attempts to praise Jon, noting the seizing of "this magic horn" and the capture of Rayder's wife and son. Again, Jon demurs: Rayder's wife died, and Val is her sister, and she and the baby didn't need capturing after Stannis's troops succeeded and the skinchanger "went mad when the eagle burned." He turns to Melisandre and says that the last is said to have been her doing.

He presents Stannis with Val's request to see Mance. Stannis says, "You rode with these wildlings. Is there any honor in them, do you think?" Jon says it's "their own sort of honor." Stannis quizzes him on Rayder, whom Jon believes to have honor, and on Rattleshirt, whom Jon calls "Treacherous and blood-thirsty," and on Tormund, who escaped. "Tormund Giantsbane seemed to me the sort of man who would make a good friend and a bad enemy, Your Grace," Jon replies.

Then Stannis asks, "What of you?" and when he answers, "I am a man of the Night's Watch," replies, "Words. Words are wind." Then he asks, "Why do you think I abandoned Dragonstone and sailed to the Wall, Lord Snow?" Again Jon protests that he is no lord, and says that he must have come because they sent for him, although he doesn't know why he took so long about it. This amuses Stannis, who gives the credit to Davos Seaworth, who said "I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne." And this is where he'll find his foe, he says.

But he needs Jon's help, he now says. The north is in chaos after Robb's death. "What is needed is a Lord of Winterfell. A loyal Lord of Winterfell." There isn't a Winterfell anymore, Jon says, after Theon Greyfoy destroyed it. But Stannis says the building can be rebuilt. What he needs now is "a son of Eddard Stark" to win the northmen to his banner. Jon realizes what Stannis is proposing, and protests that he is a Snow, not a Stark. But Melisandre points out, "A king can remove the taint of bastardy with a stroke, Lord Snow." When she uses the epithet Alliser Thorne had given him, it suddenly sounds real. But he protests that he made his vow to the Night's Watch. "I knelt before a heart tree and swore to hold no lands and father no children." Melisandre protests, "R'hllor is the only true god. A vow sworn to a tree has no more power than one sworn to your shoes."

The temptation begins to take hold, and he recalls when he was "too young to understand what it meant to be a bastard," that he used to dream of being Lord of Winterfell. But later, he realized that Winterfell would go to the legitimate descendants of Eddard Stark, and to dream of having the title himself "seemed disloyal, as if he were betraying them in his heart, wishing for their deaths." Robb, Bran, Rickon, Sansa and Arya are gone now, he thinks. And all he has to do is break his vows to the Night's Watch, and one other thing: "To claim his father's castle, he must turn against his father's gods."

Stannis continues: Melisandre has seen the revival of the scattered wildlings in her fires. "This Tormund Thunderfist is likely re-forming them even now, and planning some new assault. And the more we bleed each other, the weaker we shall all be when the real enemy falls upon us."  Jon is aware of that, too. And now Stannis tells him that he has been talking with Mance Rayder and with Rattleshirt and others of the wildling captives. And he proposes to let the wildlings settle on this side of the Wall if they will "swear me their fealty, pledge to keep the king's peace and the king's laws, and take the Lord of Light as their god." Together, they will form an alliance against the Others.

Jon is aware of the realities, of the volatility and unruliness of the wildlings as subjects and neighbors. "Yet when he weighed Ygritte's red hair against the cold blue eyes of the wights, the choice was easy." He agrees to Stannis's plan. But then Stannis proposes to seal the new alliance with a marriage: "I mean to wed my Lord of Winterfell to this wildling princess," meaning Val. Jon laughs at the idea of any of the free folk entering into an arranged marriage. But Stannis insists that "she is part of the price you must pay, if you want your father's name and your father's castle."

Jon asks for time to think it over. Stannis agrees, impatiently, and tells him not to discuss it with anyone else. "But when you return, you need only bend your knee, lay your sword at my feet, and pledge yourself to my service, and you shall rise again as Jon Stark, the Lord of Winterfell."

25. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 857-893

Davos

Davos watches as Melisandre leads a sunset ceremony glorifying R'hllor. Queen Selyse and Ser Axell Florent join in the responses enthusiastically, King Stannis not so much. "He is with them, but not of them, Davos thought." As for Davos, he is silently praying to the Mother to keep his son Devan safe.

Now Ser Andrew Estermont gives him the signal that it is time for them to move. A plot is afoot, and Davos thinks of his companions in it, "they will all be dead men soon, if this night's work goes badly." He has warned them that Melisandre may have foreseen their plans, and one of them advises killing her. But Davos knows from experience that this is precisely the sort of thing Melisandre sees first. When another protests about the clandestine nature of what they are about to do, Davos says, "I don't need men of honor now. I need smugglers."

Davos and Ser Andrew go to Maester Pylos's schoolroom, where the maester tells Edric Storm that he is to go with them. Pylos helps Edric into a hooded cloak, but when Davos asks if Pylos is going with the boy, he says no. Davos admires the maester's courage. When Edric is told that he is being taken to a ship, he asks if Princess Shireen is coming with them. When he's told she isn't, he asks to see her, but Davos explains that there isn't time.

Edric protests that he wants to see King Stannis, but Davos replies, "I am his Hand, I speak with his voice. Must I go to the king and tell him that you would not do as you were told? Do you know how angry that will make him?" And he shows Edric his lopped-off fingers as a demonstration of what happens when the king gets angry. Edric agrees to go with Davos.

The conspirators have tied up the guards, and all goes smoothly as Davos escorts Edric to the waiting boat, telling him, "It's the start of your life's great adventure. May the Warrior defend you." Edric replies, "And may the Father judge you justly, Lord Davos." He goes with the men to the boat that will take him to the ship.

Davos now steels himself and goes to see Stannis, not knowing what the king's reaction will be. The Chamber of the Painted Table is empty when he enters, so he lights a fire and waits. Finally Stannis arrives with Melisandre. They are arguing about Melisandre's vision of the deaths of the three kings, and Davos is able to tell Stannis that her vision has come true: Joffrey is dead. The news had been brought by Lyseni traders.

"They must send for me now," Stannis says, but Melisandre reminds him that Tommen will succeed to the throne, and that now is the time to wake the dragons. "'Give me this boy,' she whispered, 'and I will give you your kingdom.'" But Davos tells Stannis that the boy is gone: "He is aboard a Lyseni galley, safely out to sea." He watches Melisandre's reaction and "saw the flicker of dismay there, the sudden uncertainty. She did not see it!"

Melisandre says, "You will bring him back, my lord. You will." But Davos replies, "The boy is out of my reach.... And out of your reach as well, my lady." She glares at him, but Stannis sounds "more tired than angry" when he questions Davos's loyalty. Davos replies,

"Four of my sons died for you on the Blackwater. I might have died myself. You have my loyalty, always." Davos Seaworth had thought long and hard about the words he said next; he knew his life depended on them. "Your Grace, you made me swear to give you honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend your realm against your foes, to protect your people. Is not Edric Storm one of your people? One of those I swore to protect? I kept my oath. How could that be treason?"

At Stannis's prompting, Melisandre argues once again that Edric Storm had "the power of kingsblood in his veins." But Davos persists in his contention that a king protects his people, causing Stannis to ask, "Must I learn a king's duty from an onion smuggler?"

Davos kneels and offers his head, asking Stannis to hear him out first. Stannis draws the sword Lightbringer and tells Davos to be quick about it. So Davos produces the letter about the attack on the Night's Watch and begins to read it "by the light of the magic sword."

Jon

Jon has a dream in which he is rejected by the dead in the crypt at Winterfell,who tell him, "You are no Stark." He hears sounds of feasting in the Great Hall, and knows that he isn't welcome there. He calls out to Ygritte to forgive him as the crypt grows darker, and he sees "only a direwolf, grey and ghastly, spotted with blood, his golden eyes shining sadly through the dark." He wakes to remember that the wolf had been gray, not white like Ghost, and wonders if the Thenns had hunted Bran down and killed him.

Then he hears a horn, and goes out to see his fellow members of the Watch heading toward the Wall. "It is Mance, he thought. He has come at last. That was good. We will fight a battle, and then we'll rest. Alive or dead, we'll rest." He goes to wait for the winch to take him to the top of the Wall with others. When Satin asks him if it's Mance Rayder, Jon says, "We can hope so," knowing that a battle with wildlings was preferable to an encounter with the Others and the wights.

When he reaches the top of the Wall he can tell that it's Mance and his forces because of the torches. "The Others did not light torches." Donal Noye orders the trebuchets to fling barrels of flaming pitch, and Jon sees the mammoths moving below, a hundred of them. When the sentry's horn sounds, the wildlings answer with their own horns, as well as drums and pipes.

Pyp cries out that they're at the gate, which is the only way the wildlings have of breaching the Wall. The gate is only the entrance to a crooked and narrow tunnel, with three locked and chained iron grates within, each "protected by a murder hole." The gate itself is wood, nine inches thick, but the mammoths and giants could demolish it.

As the wildlings gather at the base of the Wall, jars of lamp oil are set ablaze and tipped over the edge, followed by a big barrel of pitch. They can hear the screams from below. Noye commands the archers to release arrows into the darkness. Then he calls for two bowmen and two spearmen to join him in the tunnel below, to defend it if they break through the gate. And he puts Jon in charge of the Wall, to Jon's surprise.

The battle rages through the night, and the trebuchets do so much work that one of them finally breaks down. Jon takes up a longbow, feeling how stiff his fingers are. "His fever was back as well, and his leg would tremble uncontrollably, sending a white-hot knife of pain right through him." Dawn breaks, and then they get a glimpse of the foe.

Beneath the trees were all the wildlings in the world, raiders and giants, wargs and skinchangers, mountain men, salt sea sailors, ice river cannibals, cave dwellers with dyed faces, dog chariots from the Frozen Shore, Hornfoot men with their soles like boiled leather, all the queer wild folk Mance had gathered to break the Wall. 

Then the mammoths, ridden by giants, begin their attack on the gate, pushing a ram mounted on wheels.

The sheer numbers of the wildlings frighten the men on the Wall, so Jon calls out to them, "The Wall will stop them. The Wall defends itself.... Mance wants to unman us with his numbers. Does he think we're stupid? ... The chariots, the horsemen, all those fools on foot ... what are they going to do to us up here? Any of you ever see a mammoth climb a wall?" The laughter that follows the question gives him the impetus to carry on with his speech, and he has the men with the warhorns "sound for battle." He calls on the archers to aim for the giants with the ram. He laughs, "like a drunk or a madman, and his men laughed with him."

He gives out orders to various men as the wildlings begin to show their lack of discipline. The wildling archers waste their arrows shooting at the men atop the Wall, seven hundred feet above. Jon keeps control of his archers, telling them precisely when to shoot. He gives similar orders to the men at the catapults which fling "a hundred spiked steel caltrops." The wildlings are caught in a death trap. "The ram was down and done, he saw, the giants who'd pushed it dead or dying." A mammoth is running loose, trampling wildlings. Jon orders Grenn and Pyp to drop barrels of burning oil on the men below.

The mammoths begin to flee, and the center of the attack collapses, causing the flanks to fall back too. Cheers go up from the men of the Watch, and suddenly Jon feels the pain and weariness. He asks Pyp to help him to the lift, and puts Grenn in charge of the Wall. He wants to eat and to rest, and to get something for the pain, but when they reach the ground he first wants to check on the tunnel and Donal Noye.

He waits as Pyp goes for Maester Aemon who has the key to the grates. They make their way through the narrow tunnel until they can see light on the other side, which Jon realizes is bad. Pyp observes that there is blood on the floor. The last twenty feet of the tunnel had been the scene of a bloodbath. The door had been torn from its hinges and a giant had crawled through, killing Donal and his four men. But Donal had stabbed the giant in the throat before dying. Jon recognizes the giant as "Mag the mighty. The king of the giants."

Jon squeezes through the carnage and finds a dead mammoth and three more dead giants. He returns to tell them that they need to block the tunnel with rubble and ice and anything else they can find. "Ser Wynton will need to take command, he's the last knight left, but he needs to move now, the giants will be back before we know it."

But Maester Aemon says that Ser Wynton is too old and senile to remember even this crucial advice. Jon must be in charge until the garrison returns.

"Donal chose you, and Qhorin Halfhand before him. Lord Commander Mormont made you his steward. You are a son of Winterfell, a nephew of Benjen Stark. It must be you or no one. The Wall is yours, Jon Snow."

Arya


The grief is so profound that it overshadows everything, even the lump on her head left by the flat of the Hound's axe. She wants to curl up and sleep through her depression, but he won't let her do it. When she does sleep, she dreams of wolves: "A great pack of wolves, with her at the head." But he continues to wake her and force her to take part in their travels. They have found another horse, that she has named Craven "because Sandor said she'd likely run off from the Twins the same as them."

He no longer keeps a close watch on her, though she still tells herself, "One night I'll kill him in his sleep," and could easily ride away on the new horse. But she has no place to go unless she can find her way back to Lady Smallwood's or rejoin Beric's outlaws. But she has decided "None of them wanted her around. They were never my pack, not even Hot Pie and Gendry. I was stupid to think so, just a stupid little girl, and no wolf at all."

She has asked Clegane where they are going, but he said only "Away."

She could feel the fury in him, she could see it in his face, the way his mouth would tighten and twist, the looks he gave her. Whenever he took his axe to chop some wood for a fire, he would slide into a cold rage, hacking savagely at the tree or the deadfall or the broken limb, until they had twenty times as much kindling and firewood as they'd needed.

One day they come across a survivor of the massacre of the northmen at the twins. He is feverish and dying of an infected wound in his shoulder. He asks for wine, but the Hound tells him, "I can give you water, and the gift of mercy." He accepts, and Arya brings him water in the Hound's helmet, and the Hound provides the mercy with his dagger, gently driving it through his heart. Arya asks if they will bury him, but the Hound says, "Leave him for the wolves and wild dogs. Your brothers and mine." On his body, Clegane finds some money and a dagger. He keeps the former and gives her the latter.

They reach the Mountains of the Moon, and turn eastward. He tells her, "You have an aunt in the Eyrie. Might be she'll want to ransom your scrawny arse, though the gods know why." But Arya wants to go back to the Twins, arguing that they don't know if her mother is dead and they should rescue her. The Hound refuses. When Arya falls asleep that night she dreams that she is with the wolf pack. They are feasting on the bodies of the dead at the Twins, and she picks up her mother's scent. Then she sees her: "something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag." She drags the body to the shore. "Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us." But men arrive and she and the other wolves flee.

The next morning, Clegane says, "This thing about your mother...." But Arya answers, "I know she's dead. I saw her in a dream." He looks at her for a long time, then nods and they ride on. They find a village where they get food and shelter. But the villagers tell him that the way to the Eyrie is too dangerous. "If you don't freeze or starve, the shadowcats will get you, or the cave bears. There's the clans as well." The ones that went away to the war are back, and more fierce than ever.

The Hound decides that they should stay there, but the village elder tells him he can't. They will only be extra mouths to feed when winter sets in. And he has been recognized as "King Joffrey's dog," so they don't want him there to attract trouble. So they leave and turn south. He decides that they'll go to Riverrun. "Maybe the Blackfish wants to buy himself a she-wolf." But she doesn't really know her uncle, and "Every time she made for Riverrun, she ended up someplace worse."

She suggests they go to the Wall because her brother is there, but he argues that it's a thousand leagues away, and they would have to fight their way through "thousands of bloody buggering northmen." She responds, "Have you lost your belly for fighting?" He looks like he is going to hit her, but the rabbit they are roasting is done and he eats instead. "I don't give a rat's arse for you or your brother. I have a brother too."

21. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 693-721

Catelyn

The noise of the music and the drums is getting to Catelyn. The rain continues outside and the hall in which the feast is being held is overheated and smoky. The guests are packed into the hall, and she is wedged between Ser Ryman Frey and Roose Bolton. The food is heavy and unappealing, and she eats sparingly, though "Robb ate it uncomplaining, and her brother was too caught up with his bride to pay much attention."

Catelyn notices the fixed smile on Roslin's face, and sympathizes with her discomfort, remembering her own wedding. She sees Robb's guards, Smalljon Umber and Robin Flint, seated near him, and Patrek Mallister and Dacey Mormont not far off. "A wedding feast was not a battle, but there were always dangers when men were in their cups, and a king should never be unguarded." She thinks, "Was there ever a wedding less joyful?" and then remembers Sansa's marriage to Tyrion.

Some dogs start to fight over a scrap of meat, and Catelyn is reminded that Grey Wind is not in the hall. Lord Walder had forbidden him, even though Robb assured him there was no danger from the direwolf. Walder had cited the attack on the party he sent to meet them, in which Petyr Pimple had fallen from his horse. "Have your wolf or have your wedding, sire. You'll not have both." Catelyn had seen Robb swallow his anger.

The noise in the hall grows worse when Greatjon Umber stands and starts to bellow a song while the musicians are playing an entirely different and incompatible tune. Roose Bolton murmurs his excuses and leaves the hall, so Robb comes over and sits down next to Catelyn in his place. He turns to Ser Ryman and inquires about Olyvar Frey, saying he wanted him to be his squire at they march north. Ser Ryman says Olyvar is not at the feast. "Gone ... gone from the castles. Duty." Robb then asks him about one of his cousins, Alesander, noting that he is a singer. He is away too, Ryman says, then begs their excuse and leaves.

Robb goes to dance with Dacey Mormont. Then Lord Walder gives a signal and others among the Freys begin pounding on the tables for silence. The patriarch announces that it is time for the bedding. "Roslin had gone white. Catelyn wondered whether it was the prospect of losing her maidenhead that frightened the girl, or the bedding itself." She recalls her own bedding and the men who helped strip her naked, many of whom had died after Ned rode south to become Hand. "Catelyn wondered how may of the men here tonight would be dead before the year was done. Too many, I fear."

Robb signals his agreement to the bedding, and there is a flood of bawdy jokes. The men surround Roslin and the women Edmure. "She knew she should join the throng of women round her brother, but she would only ruin their fun. As the throngs leave the hall, she sees that Robb has remained behind as well. She worries that Lord Walder might take that as another insult, but she sees that others have remained: Petyr Pimple and Ser Whalen Frey are asleep, Jinglebell is wandering around picking food off of plates, and Ser Wendel Manderly was still eating from a leg of lamb.

Dacey Mormont goes up to Edwyn Frey and asks him if he wanted to dance, but Edwyn rejects her so rudely that Dacey walks away looking pale. Catelyn wonders what's wrong. Even Ser Wendel senses something amiss. Then the musicians begin to play the song "The Rains of Castamere," which was written about the destruction of a house by the Lannisters. She sees Edwyn leaving, and hurries over to him. When she grabs his arm, she feels the rings of chain mail underneath his sleeve.

She slaps Edwyn, thinking about all of the Freys who are missing from the wedding. He pushes her aside, but Robb steps forward to block his way -- and is pierced by an arrow through one shoulder and then another through his leg. She looks toward the gallery and sees that half of the musicians have crossbows instead of instruments. As she runs toward Robb, something strikes her in the back and she falls.

Smalljon Umber overturns a table and throws it over Robb to protect him as arrows lodge in the tabletop. Robin Flint is being stabbed by Freys, and Ser Wendel is pierced by an arrow through his open mouth. Catelyn sees other defenders being cut down. The door flies open and "Ser Ryman Frey pushed into the hall, clad in steel from helm to heel. A dozen Frey men-at-arms packed the door behind him. They were armed with heavy longaxes."

Catelyn sees a dagger on the floor and crawls toward it, determined to kill Lord Walder. She sees Robb push aside the tabletop and rise to his knees. He has been pierced by three arrows, one of them through his chest. The music stops and Catelyn hears the howling of Grey Wind. Lord Walder cackles out, "Seems we killed some of your men, Your Grace. Oh, but I'll make you an apology, that will mend them all again, heh."

Catelyn grabs Jinglebell Frey by the hair, and cries out to Lord Walder, "Enough.... You have repaid  betrayal with betrayal, let it end." She presses the dagger to Jinglebell's throat and begs Walder to spare her son. Robb rises to his feet and she pushes harder on the dagger at Jinglebell's throat as Ser Ryman and Black Walder move in on her. She vows to Lord Walder, "I will trade your boy's life for Robb's. A son for a son." But the old man says, "that's a grandson ... and he never was much use."

A man in dark armor and a pale pink cloak spotted with blood stepped up to Robb. "Jaime Lannister sends his regards." He thrust his longsword through her son's heart, and twisted.

Catelyn cuts Jinglebell's throat. And as tears and blood run down her face, she feels someone grab her by the hair and hears someone say, "Make an end."

"Then the steel was at her throat, and its bite was red and cold."

Arya

They have passed the tents and are nearing the castle when Arya realizes that the drawbridge is down and the portcullis is being raised, removing the last impediments to their entrance. But the Hound knows something is wrong, and he halts the wagon and shoves her bodily from it, then reaches for the sword he has hidden beneath the front seat. A stream of armored riders, many of them carrying torches as well as weapons, pours forth from the gate.

Through the sound of the horses, Arya hears a wolf howling. "The sound shivered through Arya like a knife, sharp with rage and grief." Behind her the feast tents are going up in flames. From the castle she hears the music of "The Rains of Castamere," which Tom Sevenstrings had sung.

Three riders have spotted the wagon and are heading their way. Clegane cuts loose his horse, Stranger, and leaps on it, then heads toward the riders. Arya picks up a rock and for a moment wonders whom to throw it at. When she sees him outnumbered, she thinks for a moment of the butcher's boy, Mycah.

The third rider is heading for her, and she sees the two towers of the Frey sigil on his surcoat. "She did not understand. Her uncle was marrying Lord Frey's daughter, the Freys were her brother's friends." She cries out, "Don't!" but when the rider continues to charge she throws the rock at him, hitting his helmet glancingly but slowing him only for a moment.

She runs and the knight pursues, but suddenly he is felled from behind by an axe. The Hound rides up and Arya sees one Frey trapped beneath a dying horse, the other already dead. Clegane tells her to get his helmet and she retrieves it from a sack of apples in the wagon and throws it to him. She wants to go to the castle to see about her brother, but he says, "Do you think they'd slaughter his men and leave him alive?"

She looks toward the camp and sees the burning tents and the unarmored men fighting for their lives against the armored knights. A barrel crashes from the sky and bursts into flames, and she realizes that it was flung by a catapult. Clegane reaches out a hand for her and tells her to come with him. But she shouts out, "Robb's just in the castle, and my mother. The gate's even open."

Clegane rides at her, trying to keep her from heading to the castle. "You go in there, you won't come out. Maybe Frey will let you kiss your mother's corpse." But she eludes him and runs toward the castle, where the drawbridge is already rising.

She heard loud splashing and looked back to see Stranger pounding after her, sending up gouts of water with every stride. She saw the longaxe too, still wet with blood and brains. And Arya ran. Not for her brother now, not even for her mother, but for herself. She ran faster than she had ever run before, her head down and her feet churning up the river, she ran from him as Mycah must have run. 


His axe took her in the back of the head. 

Tyrion

He suffers through an uncomfortable dinner with his unhappy wife, who then excuses herself and goes to the godswood. When he suggests that he might accompany her and find out more about the old religion, Sansa tells him that she goes there only to pray silently and he would be bored. "He was tempted to ask what she prayed for, but Sansa was so dutiful she might actually tell him, and he didn't think he wanted to know."

He is working over the ledgers that Littlefinger left behind when his father summons him. He finds Cersei, Ser Kevan, Pycelle, and Joffrey there. Joffrey is "almost bouncing," and Cersei is smiling, which makes Tyrion a little uneasy. His father hands him a roll of parchment, and Tyrion reads: "Roslin caught a fine fat trout.... Her brothers gave her a pair of wolf pelts for her wedding."

Joffrey chortles, "He's dead!" Tyrion thinks of Sansa praying in the godswood. "The old gods paid no more heed to prayer than the new ones, it would seem." Cersei observes that Riverrun can't hold out now "against the combined power of Highgarden, Casterly Rock, and Dorne." And Tywin adds that "so long as Walder Frey holds Edmure Tully hostage, the Blackfish dare not mount a threat." The other northmen can be contained, and he intends "to offer generous terms" to any house that submits. He has also told Gregor Clegane to rid Harrenhal of the Brave Companions.

Joffrey wants everyone killed, of course: "They're traitors. I want them killed. I won't have any generous terms." And he wants Lord Frey to send him Robb's head so he can serve it to Sansa at his wedding feast. Ser Kevan protests that Sansa is now Joffrey's "aunt by marriage," and Cersei says Joffrey was only joking. But Joffrey wasn't: "He was a traitor, and I want his stupid head. I'm going to make Sansa kiss it."

Tyrion says, "Sansa is no longer yours to torment. Understand that, monster." Joffrey retorts, childishly, "You're the monster, Uncle." Tyrion replies that if he's a monster, Joffrey should remember, "Monsters are dangerous beasts, and just now kings seem to be dying like flies."

Sometimes you almost feel sorry for Lord Tywin, having to deal with the dysfunctions of his family. Finally he puts a stop to the quarrel but not before Joffrey talks back to him. Joffrey bristles at what he sees as his grandfather's weakness in not allowing him to serve up Robb's head to Sansa or cut out Tyrion's tongue for calling him a monster, and when Cersei tells him to apologize, he says, "My father won all the battles. He killed Prince Rhaegar and took the crown while your father was hiding under Casterly Rock."

Tywin responds "with a courtesy so cold it was likely to freeze their ears off." He sends Joffrey off to bed and tells Pycelle to prepare "some gentle potion to help His Grace sleep restfully." When Joffrey is gone, Tywin tells Cersei, "I did not fight a war to seat Robert the Second on the Iron Throne. You gave me to understand the boy cared nothing for his father." Cersei protests, but he sends her away, too.

Left alone with his father, and delighted that Cersei and Joffrey made him angry, Tyrion asks how long he has been plotting with Walder Frey to get rid of Robb Stark. Tywin dislikes the word "plotting," but implies that he had indeed done so. Then he says he is now wondering what to do about Oberyn Martell, who "has always been half-mad." Tyrion is inclined to agree. "The Red Viper is not going to be pleasant, I fear ... nor will he content himself with Ser Gregor's head alone." Then Tywin shocks his son by saying, "All the more reason not to give it to him."

Tyrion starts to protest that Oberyn knows Gregor Clegan killed Oberyn's sister Elia and her children, but Lord Tywin says Oberyn has no proof. If asked, he will tell Oberyn they were killed by Ser Amory Lorch -- who is, conveniently, dead -- and that Tyrion should tell him that, too. As for who gave the order, the story should be that Ser Amory acted on his own, expecting to be rewarded by the new king.

As for the carnage at the Frey wedding, Tywin says, "The blood is on Walder Frey's hands, not mine." Frey had planned to keep Catelyn a prisoner after assassinating Robb, "but perhaps something went awry." He continues,

"The price was cheap by any measure. The crown shall grant Riverrun to Ser Emmon Frey once the Blackfish yields. Lancel and Daven must marry Frey girls. Joy [illegitimate daughter of Tywin's brother Gerion] is to wed one of Lord Walder's natural sons when she's old enough, and Roose Bolton becomes Warden of the North and takes home Arya Stark." 

Tyrion is startled at the last: "Arya Stark is surely dead," he protests. But Tywin implies that Littlefinger knows of her whereabouts, and that she will be married to Lord Bolton's bastard son. And, he adds, "The north will go to your son by Sansa Stark ... if you ever find enough manhood in you to breed one."

Tyrion acidly replies, "And when do you imagine Sansa will be at her most fertile? ... Before or after I tell her how we murdered her mother and her brother?"

20. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 659-692

Jon

In acute pain and feverish from the leg wound, Jon rides on toward Castle Black. He reaches the kingsroad and follows it to Mole's Town, where he gets a fresh mount and some bread and wine, and warns the villagers that there are wildlings south of the Wall and that they should gather their things and retreat to the castle.

Dawn is breaking as he arrives, but there are no sentries to challenge him and few signs of life. In the armory he finds Donal Noye at the forge. Noye tells him that Jarman Blackwell had returned from a scouting trip and had spotted Jon among the wildlings, riding with them. He admits that it was true, but tells him that he was acting on orders from Qhorin Halfhand.

The garrison, Noye tells him, is scattered because wildlings have been sighted everywhere along the Wall. Jon tells him that Mance Rayder wants to spread them thin, but the attack will be there at the center. Bowen Marsh has done what Rayder wanted by scattering the forces. The aged Ser Wynton Stout was left as castellan, and there are only about forty men, the old, the infirm, and some trainees, left to defend against the attack from the south.

Noye takes him to Maester Aemon to be treated for his wound. Aemon tells him of Mormont's death at the hands of his own men, and that only a dozen men have returned, including Dolorous Edd and Grenn. As Maester Aemon and Clydas work on his wounded leg, he tells them and Noye about Styr the Magnar and his men, the Thenns. Mance, he tells them, was looking for the Horn of Winter, the legendary horn that can destroy the Wall. And he lets slip Ygritte's name, then finds it hard to explain about her.

Finally, when the wound is being cauterized, he faints. When he wakes he finds Pyp and Grenn there. Grenn tells about Sam killing the Other with the dragonglass knife, and Jon is amazed to hear his friend called Sam the Slayer. But they know only that Sam was left behind with Mormont. Aemon returns to tell Jon that he must rest and let the wound heal: They have rinsed it "with boiling wine, and close you up with a poultice of nettle, mustard seed and moldy bread." (Penicillin was around long before Fleming.) But Jon, of course, is unwilling to rest, and asks, "has word been sent to Winterfell? To the king?"

Maester Aemon breaks the news of the fall of Winterfell and Theon's treachery and the supposed death of Bran and Rickon. But Jon remembers the gray direwolf at Queenscrown. "If Bran was dead, could some part of him live on in his wolf, as Orell lived within his eagle?" When Grenn gives him something to drink, Jon falls asleep with his head full of questions, and dreams of naked Ygritte saying, "You know nothing, Jon Snow." They are in the hot pools at Winterfell, but suddenly he sees "her skin dissolving in the hot water, the flesh beneath sloughing off her bones until only skull and skeleton remained, and the pool bubbled thick and red."

Catelyn

They are nearing the Twins, where the rains have swollen the river and turned the moats into lakes. Catelyn cautions Robb again about offending Lord Frey, and advises him to ask for food and wine as soon as they arrive: "Once you have eaten of his bread and salt, you have the guest right, and the laws of hospitality protect you beneath his roof." Robb scoffs that he has an army to protect him, but he'll do as she says.

They are met by a contingent headed by Ser Ryman Frey, Lord Walder's grandson, and three of Ryman's sons: Edwyn, Black Walder ("a nasty bit of business," Edmure observes), and Petyr, known as Petyr Pimple, for reasons that are obvious. Grey Wind leaps forward with a snarl and Petyr's horse throws him. Catelyn moves her horse between the Freys and the direwolf, and Robb calls Grey Wind to his side. Black Walder asks, "Is this how a Stark makes amends?" Robb dismounts and offers Petyr his own horse, since Petyr's has run away.

Ser Ryman says, "I do not see the woman," by which he means, insultingly, Jeyne Westerling. Catelyn offers her apologies, but Black Walder says that Lord Walder will be displeased. They have rooms prepared for Robb, Catelyn, and Edmure, and for the lords bannermen, but they say they can't feed or shelter the troops, who will be housed in three large tents on the far bank.

Edmure tells Catelyn that he is offended that Lord Walder himself didn't come to greet his future son-in-law, but she reminds him that Walder is ninety-one, which is old to go riding in the rain. Though she thinks to herself that Lord Walder usually travels in a covered litter, and wonders, "A deliberate slight? If so, it might be the first of many yet to come."

When they reach the gatehouse, Grey Wind stops and howls and bares his teeth. Catelyn thinks, "He does not like this place." But Robb persuades the wolf to enter, and Walder Rivers says, "It's the sound of the water her fears.... Beasts know to avoid the river in flood." Lothar suggests summoning the master of hounds to find a kennel for him, but Robb points out that he's not a dog, and tells Ser Raynald to stay with Grey Wind. "I won't take him into Lord Walder's hall like this." Catelyn thinks this is a good idea, because it "keeps the Westerling out of Lord Walder's sight as well."

The aged and toothless Lord Walder, who has "something of the vulture about" him, "and rather more of the weasel," is seated in the hall with his eighth wife. At their feet is a man of fifty with "large, amiable, and vacant eyes," and Catelyn remembers "that one of Lord Walder's brood had fathered a halfwit long years ago." He is Aegon Frey, known as Jinglebell, and Catelyn wonders if he is there to mock Robb.

After greeting them, none too courteously, Walder sends for Edmure's bride and asks about Queen Jeyne. Robb delivers his apology for the marriage, but Walder doesn't exactly accept it. Instead, he summons his daughters and granddaughters to parade before him as evidence of what Robb could have chosen from. Then Robb is expected to apologize to them, saying, "I come before you to ask forgiveness, that the Freys of the Crossing and the Starks of Winterfell may once again be friends." But the phrase in the apology that Lord Walder picks up on is, "No words can set it right."

Then Ser Benfrey enters with Roslin, who is small, pretty and shy. Catelyn notices, "Her brother's face had lit up at the sight of her." Edmure asks why Roslin is crying, and she assures him, "I weep for joy, my lord." Lord Walder puts an end to any sentiment, and tells Lame Lothar Frey to show his guests to their quarters. Robb says he needs to see to his men, and Catelyn suddenly remembers the bread and salt, so she says, "Some food would be most welcome. We have ridden many leagues in the rain."

Lord Walder orders some food and drink. "Catelyn tasted the wine and nibbled at some bread, and felt much the better for it. Now we should be safe, she thought." Their rooms are comfortable, too, and Edmure is pleased with his bride-to-bed. Catelyn worries that she is "Too small and delicate. Childbirth will go hard on her," but she reassures her brother. After changing her clothes, she goes back downstairs "in search of some Freys."

She finds them in the hall, drinking. Lame Lothar introduces her to his "Brothers, half-brothers, good brothers, and nephews." Then she asks to see the maester, explaining, "A woman's complaint." She is shown to Maester Brenett, whom she consults about Roslin's fitness for childbearing, which he assures her is all quite in order. Next she goes to see Robb, who is there with Roose Bolton, among others. She "could feel gloom in the room," and Bolton tells her more about the fall of Winterfell.

"Some of your people were taken back to the Dreadfort by my son, Ramsay," Bolton tells her. She points out, "Your bastard was accused of grievous crimes.... Of murder, rape, and worse." But he assured her that Ramsay is determined to atone for his past and "swears that he shall not sheathe his sword so long as a single Greyjoy remains in the north." Robb asks about Theon Greyjoy, and Bolton produces "a ragged strip of leather" that he claims is "The skin from the little finger of Theon Greyjoy's left hand." He presents it as a "small token of revenge." As for the rest of Theon, he is "now rightful King of the Iron Islands. A captive king has great value as a hostage."

Catelyn is outraged at the idea that they might "free the man who killed my sons," but Bolton continues to defend the notion of holding Theon as a bargaining ploy. Robb reluctantly agrees: "Keep him alive, then. For the present. Hold him secure at the Dreadfort till we've retaken the north." And after talk about the movements of the Lannisters and of Gregor Clegane south of the Trident, Robb announces his intentions "to start for the Neck as soon as my uncle has been wedded and bedded. We're going home."

Arya

The Hound has commandeered a wagon and some salt pork and pickled pigs' feet, pretending to be a farmer on the way to the wedding at the Twins. When they are stopped on the road, he claims that he is delivering them on the order of Lady Whent, who is also sending Stranger, Clegane's stallion, as a wedding gift for Lord Tully. They send him on his way.

Arya goes along with the ruse because she is getting closer to a reunion with her mother and her brother. "There was nothing between her and her mother but a castle gate, a river, and an army ... but it was Robb's army, so there was no real danger there. Was there?" On the other hand, Roose Bolton, whom she had fled at Harrenhal, killing one of his guards to escape, would be there.

What would he do if he saw her? He probably won't even know me. She looked more like a drowned rat than a lord's cupbearer these days. A drowned boy rat. The Hound had hacked handfuls of her hair off only two days past. He was an even worse barber than Yoren, and he'd left her half bald on one side. Robb won't know me either, I bet. Or even Mother. She had been a little girl the last time she saw them, the day Lord Eddard Stark left Winterfell.

They begin to hear the music as they draw near the castle, and Clegane says they've missed the wedding but the feast is still going on. "There were hundreds of horses and thousands of men, most of them milling about the three huge feast tents." The musicians in the two castles are playing different tunes, "so it sounded more like a battle than a song."

It is dark, so Arya is unable to single out the banners for the various houses. When they reach a checkpoint, the guards stop them, and tell them the castle's closed, but they can unload the goods by the feast tents. The drinking has been going on for hours, and Arya hears all sorts of noises, mixed with the music from the castles as they grow nearer. She keeps hoping to see someone she knows from Winterfell.

When they reach the feast tents, she hears someone shout, "Here's to Lord Edmure and Lady Roslin" and then, "Here's to the Young Wolf and Queen Jeyne." Arya wonders who Queen Jeyne is, but the mention of the Young Wolf makes her realize that these are northmen, so she suggests that they stop.

Clegane reminds her, "Your brother will be in the castle.... Your mother too. You want them or not." She agrees that she does, and he whips the horses to speed up, saying, "It's your bloody brother I want."

19. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 620-658

Catelyn

Jeyne rides up to bid farewell to Robb as they set out for the wedding. Catelyn had insisted that she stay behind: On the one hand, Lord Walder Frey might be insulted by her absence from the festivities, but on the other, he might take it as a reminder of Robb's breach of faith. She tells Robb, "you have too much of your father in you to sit there while he insults Jeyne to your face." Of the Westerlings, only Jeyne's brother, Ser Raynald, is part of the wedding party, serving as Robb's banner-bearer. Brynden Blackfish has been left in charge of the defense of Riverrun.

The steady rain befits Catelyn's mood, in which she meditates on what is ahead for her: "two dead sons, an empty bed, and a castle full of ghosts." She wishes for news of Brienne and the mission to retrieve her daughters, but has to tell herself, "I must be strong for Robb. If I despair, my grief will consume me." Her brother, on the other hand, is fretting only about whether the daughter of Walder Frey will be pretty enough. Catelyn snaps at him, "You'd be wiser to pray that Roslin is strong and healthy, with a good head and a loyal heart."

And then she rides off, though she regrets losing patience when she remembers how disappointed she was at first sight of Ned Stark, who was shorter and plainer than his brother Brandon, to whom she had first been engaged. "Even when he took her maidenhood, their love had more of duty to it than of passion. We made Robb that night, though, we made a king together."

Their path takes them through the Whispering Wood, which had been the site of Robb's first great victory, and the signs of that battle still remain, including "a face peering out at her, the shape of the skull beginning to emerge from beneath the melting brown flesh." She wonders if Ned's bones had ever reached Winterfell before the war sealed off all roads leading there.

Five days along the route, word arrives that the continuing rain has washed out the bridge they had planned to cross, sweeping away two of the horses and one of the riders who had gone ahead to scout. This means an even longer and slower route, and Catelyn frets that Lord Walder "may take this delay as a deliberate insult." After eight more days they reach Oldstones, where the rain stops briefly. She recalls camping there once with her father when she was twelve. Petyr Baelish, Littlefinger, was with them too.

She finds Robb alone except for Grey Wind, and they talk about the history of the place. He tells her that he had hoped to leave Jeyne pregnant, but is uncertain if he did. She says he is still young.

"Young, and a king," he said. "A king must have an heir. If I should die in my next battle, the kingdom must not die with me. By law Sansa is next in line of succession, so Winterfell and the north would pass to her." His mouth tightened. "To her, and her lord husband, Tyrion Lannister. I cannot allow that. I will not allow that. That dwarf must never have the north." 

She agrees, and says that he must name another heir. She talks of some distant family connections, but he reminds her that his father had a son who is still alive. She returns to her old antipathy to Ned's bastard, but Robb persists, "Jon's more a Stark than some lordlings from the Vale who have never so much as set eyes on Winterfell." She reminds him that as a member of the Night's Watch Jon has sworn a lifelong vow neither to take a wife nor to own lands. And he replies that the Kingsguard take a similar oath, yet the Lannisters had no compunction about taking away the white cloaks from Barristan Selm and Boros Blount. "If I send the Watch a hundred men in Jon's place, I'll wager they find some way to release him from his vows."

She persists, "A bastard cannot inherit." But he has an answer for her: He can be legitimized by a royal decree. She argues back, "I know you trust Jon. But can you trust his sons? Or their sons? ... If you make Jon legitimate, there is no way to turn him bastard again. Should he wed and breed, any sons you may have by Jeyne will never be safe." And she reminds him that Theon Greyjoy had been raised with him, and that he killed Bran and Rickon. Robb protests that Jon is no Theon, but she continues: What about Arya.

Arya, he says, is dead. "Why do you lie to yourself? Arya's gone, the same as Bran and Rickon, and they'll kill Sansa too once the dwarf gets a child from her. Jon is the only brother that remains to me. Should I die without issue, I want him to succeed me as King in the North." She tells him, "Do not ask it." And he cuts off the discussion: "I don't have to. I'm the king." And he walks off with Grey Wolf following.

The rain returns, doing nothing to lift Catelyn's gloom. But one day news arrives that lightens everyone's mood: Balon Greyjoy is dead. He had been crossing one of the bridges on the Pyke when a storm came up and blew it to pieces, carrying him with it. And shortly after his death, his pirate brother Euron had returned and taken the throne. Robb points out that Theon is the rightful heir, and that Balon's brother Victarion, who now holds Moat Cailin, commands the Iron Fleet. And someone else mentions Asha, who has taken and holds Deepwood Motte. "What's true for the brothers is even more true for her," Robb says. "She will need to sail home to oust Euron and press her own claim." He begins to plot a strategy that involves joining forces with Roose Bolton and the Freys.

Then he turns to Catelyn. She will go with Lord Mallister to Seagard until the war is over. She thinks, "Is this my punishment for opposing him about Jon Snow? Or for being a woman, and worse, a mother?" She realizes that she has been under suspicion since she released Jaime Lannister, and says she would rather return to Riverrun. But Robb has an answer for that: "I left my wife at Riverrun. I want my mother elsewhere. If you keep all your treasures in one purse, you only make it easier for those who would rob you. After the wedding, you shall go to Seagard, that is my royal command."

And then he picks up a sheet of parchment, saying that he doesn't want to leave matters as chaotic as Balon Greyjoy did at his death. He commands them "to fix your seals to this document as witnesses to my decision."

"A king indeed, Catelyn thought, defeated." She hopes that the military campaign he has just mapped out is a trap that works "as well as the one in which he had just caught her."

Samwell

Exhausted, Sam has reached an abandoned village that he desperately hopes is Whitetree, the one closest to the Wall and Castle Black. He and Gilly and the baby have been traveling for days, and one of their horses has died. Weak from childbirth, she needs the remaining horse more than he does. Leaving her and the baby in the village's longhall, he goes to search the houses. The weirwood in the village is not as large as the one at Whitetree, he decides, but he prays at it, hoping for guidance to the Wall.

When he returns, she has a fire going. He talks to her about the Wall and the castles beyond it, remembering the food and the warmth and the friends. When she asks him to sing a "southron song" for the baby, he remembers one that he and his mother used to sing about the Seven to his younger brother, until his father made them stop, fearing that the songs would make his brother as much of a sissy as Sam.

They have only a few sausages left, and after they eat he goes outside to relieve himself and take care
of the horse. He decides that it's too cold to leave the horse outside, so he brings it into the longhall and then beds down with Gilly and the baby. He dreams that he is back home at his father's castle, but that it's his own castle now, and his friends from the Watch are there: Jon, Lord Mormont, Grenn, Dolorous Edd, Pyp, and Toad. They are feasting, and after the feast he goes up to bed where Gilly is waiting, "wearing nothing but a big shaggy fur, milk leaking from her breasts."


He wakes suddenly to bitter cold. The horse is whinnying and the room is full of dark shadows. One of the shadows moves, and Gilly says, "He's come for the babe." Sam recognizes the shadow as Small Paul, though his "hands were coal, his face was milk, his eyes shone a bitter blue." On his shoulder sits a raven, who is pecking at Paul's cheek.


Sam tells Gilly to quiet the horse and take it out of the room. He assures her that he has the dragonglass dagger that he had taken from Lord Mormont's body before leaving Craster's Keep. He keeps talking to Paul, trying to distract him from what Gilly is doing, but the horse rears and Paul turns toward it.


Sam lunges at the wight and stabs at it again and again, but the blade shatters on the chain mail that Paul is wearing, and seems to have no effect on him. The wight grabs him by the throat, its hands "so cold that they seemed to burn." Sam finds his steel knife and stabs again, but loses his grip on the blade. He squirms and kicks in the wight's grasp but to no avail until he begins to fall forward. "Small Paul was big and powerful, but Sam still outweighed him, and the wights were clumsy, he had seen that on the Fist."


When they fall, the wight loses his grip with one hand, and Sam desperately grabs for a chunk of smoldering wood from the fireplace, which he thrusts into Paul's mouth, shattering his teeth. The wight's grip doesn't loosen, but as Sam is beginning to lose consciousness he sees smoke coming from the mouth and then Paul bursts into flames.


Sam heads for the door and calls out for Gilly. She stands there by the weirwood, holding the baby.

The wights were all around her. There were a dozen of them, a score, more ... some had been wildlings once, and still wore skins and hides ... but more had been his brothers. Sam saw Lark the Sisterman, Softfoot, Ryles. The wen on Chett's neck was black, his boils covered with a thin film of ice. And that one looked like Hake, though it was hard to know for certain with half his head missing.

They have killed the horse and are tearing out its entrails. Gilly screams, and the raven echoes her. And then the weirwood and the other trees suddenly come alive with ravens, "hundreds of them, thousands." Sam sees them spread their wings and suddenly attack the wights, pecking at their flesh. "All around him the wights flailed at the black wings and sharp beaks that assailed them, falling in an eerie silence with never a grunt or cry." They ignore Sam, however, and he runs to Gilly, pulling her after him.


Then there is a shout: "Brother!" And a man dressed in the blacks of the Watch rides up on an elk, "ten feet tall at the shoulder, with a rack of antlers near as wide." The elk kneels, and the man reaches down to pull Gilly up and then Sam. "Only when he grasped the offered hand did he realize that the rider wore no glove. His hand was black and cold, with fingers hard as stone."


Arya


They have reached a broad, swollen river. Arya is seated on the horse in front of the Hound, and they have ridden so long in rain and darkness that she has no idea where they are. "It's a river we need to cross," he tells her, "that's all you need to know."


The first time they made camp she had waited until she thought he was asleep and tried to smash his head with a rock, but he had taken it away from her. After that, he tied her up at night. He had also caught her trying to leave signals for the outlaws by scratching her name on tree trunks, and put an end to that. Once she tried to steal his horse while Clegane was taking a piss, but the horse would respond only to its master and had tried to bite her.


The Hound recognizes the town, which is flooded so that only chimneys and upper stories appear above the waters. But there is a ferry that agrees to take them across. Arya wonders what he intends to pay with, since the outlaws have taken his gold, and the ferrymen say it will cost him three dragons to cross, payable in advance. But Clegane shows them his longsword and says, "Gold on the north bank, or steel on the south." After getting a good look at him and realizing that he could easily kill three or four of them before they overpowered him, the ferrymen agree.


"There's a brazier in the cabin if you and your son want to get warm," one of them says, which provokes Arya to protest, "I'm not his stupid son!" and Clegane to shake her so hard her teeth rattled. But the warmth from the heater is enough to make her stand by it and dry off, though once the boat gets under way she goes back outside again.


The current is so strong that they can't cross directly but go some ways downstream. And so much debris is being driven so fast that men with poles are kept busy keeping it away from the boat. Nevertheless, she persuades herself that swimming would be the best way to escape, and that even if she drowns, that fate would be better than what awaits her if Clegane is taking her to King's Landing. But just as she is about to jump overboard, a huge uprooted tree rushes toward the boat, and the attention of everyone on board is directed toward preventing the collision. One man is knocked overboard and swept away. Arya thinks better of trying to swim for it.


When they finally reach the other side, they are two miles downriver from the usual landing, and the ferryman demands six dragons -- "Three for the passage, and three for the man I lost." Clegane puts Arya on the horse, then thrusts a parchment into the man's hand, the note that Dondarrion had given him earlier for the confiscated gold: "A dead man's note, good for nine thousand dragons or nearabouts," he says, springing into the saddle and galloping off. Arya repeats her litany of the men she wants dead, concluding it with "And the Hound, the Hound, the Hound."


When the rain stops and they decide to call it a night, Arya is shivering with fever and sneezing. He catches her looking at his dagger as he cuts a piece of sausage for her, and says, "Don't even think about it." She lies and says she wasn't, but he knows better. "What good would it do you if you did get away? You'd just get caught by someone worse." She says, "There is no one worse," and he replies, "You never knew my brother."


She corrects him: She did know Gregor Clegane. "Him and Dunsen and Polliver, and Raff the Sweetling and the Tickler." He is surprised, and she tells him about the village by the lake where she and Gendry and Hot Pie were caught.

Clegane's mouth twitched. "Caught you? My brother caught you?" That made him laugh, a sour sound, part rumble and part snarl. "Gregor never knew what he had, did he? He couldn't have, or he would have dragged you back kicking and screaming to King's landing and dumped you in Cersei's lap. Oh, that's bloody sweet. I'll be sure and tell him that, before I cut his heart out." 

She has heard him talk about killing his brother before, but it still surprises her. "'Didn't you ever have a brother you wanted to kill?' He laughed again. 'Or maybe a sister?'" And then he senses the old tension between her and Sansa. He tells her that he saved Sansa's life and that she sang him a song, but she doesn't believe him.

Then he asks, "Where do you think we're going?" and when she says King's Landing, he mocks her: "Stupid blind little wolf bitch." He's done with the Lannisters, he says. The river was the Trident, and they're going to the Twins. "It's going to be me who hands you over to that mother of yours. Not the noble lightning lord or that flaming fraud of a priest, the monster." If her brother has any sense he'll hire him, he says. "Maybe I'll even kill Gregor for him, he'd like that."

She says Robb will never take him, "Not you." But he replies, "Then I'll take as much gold as I can carry, laugh in his face, and ride off." So he tells her to shut up "and maybe we'll even be in time for your uncle's bloody wedding."

18. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 590-619

Arya

They return to the hill known as High Heart, where Thoros builds a fire to see things in the flames, but when Arya looks at them she has the same experience that Davos had earlier: It just makes her eyes water. But Thoros fails to have any visions this time.

Gendry tells Thoros that he remembers him from when he was apprenticed to Tobho Mott, who called him "a sot and a fraud, as bad a priest as there every was." Thoros laughs and agrees that he was "no very holy priest," and that he only became one because his father sent him to the Red Temple when he was eight. He was sent to King's Landing as a missionary for R'hllor because "King Aerys so loved fire it was thought he might make a convert." It was King Robert who really liked him, especially because of the flaming sword trick that made Kevan Lannister's horse throw him. But he admits that Tobho Mott was right to complain about his setting swords on fire.

Beric speaks up behind him to say, "Fire consumes," in a way that silences Thoros. When Thoros asks what he's saying, Beric tells him, "Six times is too many," referring to his resurrections.

Later that night, Arya sees the tiny old woman return to sit by the embers of the fire and talk with Thoros, Lem, and Beric. She calls Dondarrion "the Lord of Corpses," which he tells her not to do, but asks her if she has news for them. In exchange for wine and a song from Tom (Lem refuses her request for a kiss with "a bit of tongue"), she tells them that Balon Greyjoy is dead and his heirs are fighting over the kingdom. Finally she calls out to Arya, "You cannot hide from me, child. Come closer, now." But when Arya gets closer, she says, "I thought it ws the lord who smelled of death...." And she begins to sob.

Thoros tells her not to frighten Arya, and Beric says they are taking her to Riverrun. But the old woman says that they aren't. If they want Arya's mother they should "seek her at the Twins. For there's to be a wedding." She asks for her song, so they wake Tom to sing to her. During the song, Arya asks what she meant about going to the Twins, and he promises to find out. A storm comes up, and the old woman disappears.

In the morning the rain continues, and several of the group have come down with fever and chills. One of them is Edric Dayne, known as Ned, squire to Lord Beric. Arya talks to him as they ride. He has been in battles alongside Beric, and she asks him if he has ever killed anyone. He protests, "I'm only twelve," which makes Arya think, "I killed a boy when I was eight." She reflects on the deaths she is responsible for, including the guard whose throat she cut and the ones Jaqen had taken care of for her.

Then he asks, "You have a baseborn brother ... Jon Snow?" And he tells her they are "milk brothers" -- his own mother had no milk to nurse him with, so he was nursed by Wylla, "Jon Snow's mother. He never told you? She's served us for years and years. Since before I was born." Arya is surprised by the news, and reminds herself to tell Jon that his mother's name is Wylla. He tells her his name, and that he is Lord of Starfall, which causes Gendry to snort, "Lords and ladies," so she throws a crabapple at him.

She recalls that there was an Arthur Dayne, known as the Sword of the Morning, and he tells her that he was his uncle and his wife, Lady Ashara, his aunt. "She threw herself into the sea from atop the Palestone Sword before I was born." Arya asks why she did that, and he says, "Your lord father never spoke of her?" She had met him and his brothers at Harrenhal, he says, and she died because "Her heart was broken." This strikes Arya as a stupid thing to do, though she realizes that Sansa would have thought it romantic. She asks who broke it, and Ned hesitates before telling her, "My aunt Allyria says Lady Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal--"

Arya denies that her father loved anyone but her mother, but Gendry says, "He must have found that bastard under a cabbage leaf, then." She lashes out at him angrily, but he ignores her. "At least your father raised his bastard, not like mine. I don't even know my father's name. Some smelly drunk, I'd wager, like the others my mother dragged home from the alehouse." Arya is growing upset and she spurs her horse away from them. She catches up with Anguy the Archer and asks, "Dornishmen lie, don't they?" He tells her, "They're famous for it."

She spurs her horse on ahead, but Harwin come after her, warning her not to separate from the group. He has heard the conversation and tells her that the story about her father and Lady Ashara is an old one and that he doesn't really believe it. But even if it's true, it took place when her mother was betrothed to Lord Brandon, "so there's no stain o your father's honor." And as far as her suicide is concerned, it could have been from grief over the loss of her brother, the Sword of the Morning.

They reach an abandoned village, where they take shelter. Thoros builds another fire, and this time he he has a vision. Lord Beric tells him to call her over.

The red priest squatted down beside her. "My lady," he said, "the Lord granted me a view of Riverrun. An island in a sea of fire, it seemed. The flames were leaping lions with long crimson claws. And how they roared! A sea of Lannisters, my lady. Riverrun will soon come under attack."

Arya protests that her brother will beat them, but Thoros says he didn't see either Robb or her mother in the flames. The old woman had spoken of a wedding, and "she has her own way of knowing things." Beric asks if her uncle, Brynden Blackfish, would know her, but she doesn't recall ever meeting him. He decides not to proceed to Riverrun without better information.

Furious at this delay in her plans, Arya runs away. "She wanted Riverrun, not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew." She hears people shouting her name as she runs, and suddenly "A mailed hand closed hard around her arm." It is Sandor Clegane.

Jaime

He is heading back to King's Landing, to his great relief, with an escort headed by Steelshanks Walton and with Qyburn, the de-chained maester, to look after his health. Qyburn rides up next to Jaime to let him know that he was the one who had sent a prostitute to his bed the night before: "Your fever was largely gone, and I thought you might enjoy a bit of exercise." But Qyburn doesn't know that Jaime had sent her away, anticipating his return to Cersei, so he burbles on, "Pia is quite healthy. As is your maid of Tarth." He assures Jaime that "her maidenhead is still intact. As of last night, at least."

Jaime is puzzled at this reassurance, and asked if Brienne's father had requested the examination. Qyburn is surprised that Jaime hasn't heard: Brienne's father had offered three hundred gold dragons for her return, but sent word that there were no sapphires on Tarth. Vargo Hoat turned down the amount offered.

When they stop for the night, Qyburn gives Jaime some dreamwine to ease his pain, and he falls asleep. In his dream, he has regained his sword hand and he is at Casterly Rock, but he finds himself surrounded by enemies, "a dozen tall dark figures in cowled robes that hid their faces." They are bearing spears, with which they prod him down a passageway into the darkness. He is in a watery cavern below Casterly Rock, and a thousand voices, the voices of Lannisters, but especially of his father tell him this is his place. Beside his father stands Cersei, holding a torch.

But then she turns to go, leaving him in the darkness, with a sense that there is something terrible where he is. He begs for a sword, and his father tells him he has been given one. He finds it under the water at his feet, and when he picks it up the sword glows, illuminating the gloom. He hears a splash behind him and sees Brienne, naked, bound with heavy chains. She begs him to remove the chains, and he slices through them like silk, and to give her a sword, which appears to him. It too glows with a silvery blue flame, further illuminating the dark.

He hears Cersei say in the distance that the flames will stay lighted as long as they are alive, but when he begs for her to stay with him he hears her footsteps moving away. Brienne asks what is living there in the darkness, and he tells her "Doom... Only doom." She tells him to get on her shoulders, so they can reach the mouth of the tunnel, and when he thinks that he could follow Cersei he begins to have an erection, which he tries to hide from Brienne. Then she points with her sword to show him that there are two riders coming toward them on pale horses.

He remembers how Eddard Stark rode his horse into Aerys's throne room, and he calls out asking, "Is it you, Stark?" But there is no answer, and then there are more horsemen, wearing armor made of snow. He begins to recognize them, and among them is Prince Rhaegar Targaryen. Brienne tells them that she swore an oath to protect Jaime, and he tells them that he killed the king to keep him from burning the city. But they continue to move forward, reminding him that he killed the king, and Rhaegar says, "I left my wife and children in your hands."

"Then his sword went dark, and only Brienne's burned, as the ghost came rushing in." He wakes in terror, with Qyburn beside him and Steelshanks standing over them. When he wakes fully, he tells them he wants to go back to Harrenhal, that he left something there. When Steelshanks protests, Jaime says that unless they go back, he will tell his father that it was he who cut off his hand. But if they do return, he'll see to it that he gets "a nice fat purse of gold as thanks."

That does the trick, and by dawn they are halfway back to Harrenhal. When they enter the fortress, Jaime hears a roar, "faint but ferocious," and the sound of laughter. He knows what has happened: "They had her in the bear pit."

He finds her there with no armor, but with a sword. The Bloody Mummers are in the seats around the pit, concentrating on the spectacle. Brienne is bleeding where the bear has raked one arm. Steelshanks tells him that it's not their business: "Lord Bolton said the wench was theirs, to do with as they liked." Jaime replies, "Her name is Brienne," and descends the steps to where Vargo Hoat is sitting, his left ear bandaged but bleeding.

Hoat is surprised to see him, but tells him that Brienne bit off his ear. "Thmall wonder her father will not ranthom thuch a freak." Jaime shouts out to Brienne to kill the bear, which is eight feet tall. "Gregor Clegane with a pelt, he thought, though likely smarter." But when Brienne lands a blow on the bear, there is no blood, and realizes that they have given her a blunted tourney sword.

He leaps into the pit and places himself between Brienne and the bear, which charges. Suddenly, the bear is pierced by arrows from Steelshanks's archers. Hoat protests, "You thlew my bear!" and the Mummers cry out for vengeance. But most of them are drunk, and there are twice as many of Steelshanks's men. So Hoat agrees to haul Jaime and Brienne out of the pit.

When they are well away from Harrenhal, Steelshanks angrily asks, "Are you mad, Kingslayer? Did you mean to die? No man can fight a bear with his bare hands!" Jaime replies that he hoped they'd kill the bear, because otherwise "Lord Bolton would have peeled you like an orange, no?"

And when Brienne, addressing him as "Ser Jaime" instead of "Kingslayer," asks why he came back, he thinks of the cruel things he could say, but says only, "I dreamed of you."

16. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 530-555

Arya

The outlaws are attacking the Bloody Mummers, and Arya wishes she could handle a bow: "She loved swordfighting, but she could see how arrows were good too." The battle is quickly over, and all but two of the Mummers are killed. Dondarrion lets them escape and take the word to Harrenhal about their defeat.

One of the men they capture is Septon Utt from Harrenhal, whom Arya remembers: "Shagwell the Fool said he always wept and prayed for forgiveness after he'd killed his latest boy." He is put on trial and swiftly convicted and hanged. Arya wishes only that they had hanged the Hound, too, but his burns had been treated and he had been given his sword, horse, and armor. They had kept his gold, however.

As they eat that night, Arya reflects that she has never seen Beric Dondarrion eat, though he would occasionally take a cup of wine. Nor did he seem to sleep. He constantly wore his breastplate, which now concealed the wound the Hound had given  him. He notices Arya looking at him, and asks if he frightens her. She tells him no, but that she is surprised to see him alive. Dondarrion asks Thoros how often he has brought him back to life, but Thoros gives the credit to R'hllor for the six times Dondarrion has been revived. But he adds that "each time is harder."

Dondarrion recalls the fights that caused each of his wounds, and Arya asks Thoros if he could bring back to life a man who had lost his head.

"I have no magic, child. Only prayers. That first time, his lordship had a hole right through him and blood in his mouth. I knew there was no hope. So when his poor chest stopped moving, I gave him the good god's own kiss to send him on his way. I filled my mouth with fire and breathed the flames inside him, down his throat to lungs and heart and soul. The last kiss it is called, and many a time I saw the old priests bestow it on the Lord's servants as they died. I had given it a time or two myself, as all priests must. But never before had I felt a dead man shudder as the fire filled him, nor seen his eyes come open. It was not me who raised him, my lady. It was the Lord R'hllor is not done with him yet."

Beric knows why Arya asked the question about the beheaded man, and says, "Your father was a good man." Harwin has told him much about Ned Stark, he says, and he would forgo the ransom for returning her if the outlaws didn't need the money so much. Arya then asks, "What if my brother doesn't want to ransom me?" Dondarrion asks why she would ask that, and she says, "my hair's messy and my nails are dirty and my feet are all hard." She knows her mother would disapprove. He laughs and tells her not to worry.

That night, when one of the men complains about his horse throwing a shoe, Gendry volunteers his services to the outlaws as a blacksmith. Arya is distressed: "He means to leave me too." Lord Beric says he would be better compensated if he stayed at Riverrun to serve Lord Tully, but Gendry says all he wants is "a forge, and food to eat, some place to sleep." When Dondarrion asks why he would choose to stay with them, Gendry says he liked what he had said about being "King Robert's men, and brothers," and that he didn't just execute the Hound but gave him a trial. So after others grill him on whether he realizes that he could be executed as an outlaw and Gendry stands his ground, Dondarrion takes his sword, administers an oath "to defend those who cannot defend themselves," and proclaims him "Ser Gendry, knight of the hollow hill."

But when he finishes, Sandor Clegane appears at the door, laughing at the ceremony. He has returned, he says, for his gold. "Maybe this time they'll kill him," Arya thinks. But instead, after an exchange of words, the Hound "looked at all their faces, every one, as if he were trying to commit them all to memory," then turns and walks out into the darkness and the pouring rain. Thoros observes that the Hound has lost everything: "He cannot go back to the Lannisters, the Young Wolf would never have him, nor would his brother be like to welcome him. That gold was all he had left, it seems to me." When someone suggests that they should hunt him down and kill him, Lord Beric says, "Clegane won his life beneath the hollow hill. I will not rob him of it." And Thoros concurs: "The Lord of Light is not yet done with Joffrey's Hound, it would seem."

The threat that the Hound poses to them troubles everyone, but no one more than Arya, who takes out the coin Jaqen H'ghar had given her, and thinks how many people she has lost: Jaqen, Hot Pie, and now Gendry, and the ones who are dead, like Lommy, Yoren, Syrio Forel, and her father. She whispers the names of those on her list she would like to kill, but realizes how few of them she can now visualize. Except for the Hound and his brother, and Joffrey and Cersei, she can't summon up the faces of the others.

In the morning, as they get ready to ride off, she tells Gendry, "If you want to be some stupid outlaw knight and get hanged, why should I care? I'll be at Riverrun, ransomed, with my brother."

Bran

They have reached the grasslands of the Gift and come upon a tower in the middle of a lake. Nearby is a ruined village, the first one they have come across since leaving the foothills. Meera feels uneasy in the open land, and Jojen asks who owns it. Bran tells them that the Night's Watch owns it. This part is called the New Gift, and it was given to the Watch by Good Queen Alysanne to honor the bravery of the men of the Wall, which she visited on her dragon. Beyond it is Brandon's Gift, the original tract of land owned by Brandon the Builder, or perhaps some other Brandon.

Jojen observes that the soil is fertile, and wonders why no one lives there. Bran says it's because they're afraid of the raids of the wildlings, which have increased since the Night's Watch has grown weaker. They look for shelter in the ruins of the village, but there is no roof on any of the buildings. A storm is coming, Jojen says. Bran remembers one of Old Nan's stories, and recognizes the tower as one in which Queen Alysanne had stayed. There are traces of gold at its top, which were put there in her honor, and there is supposed to be a causeway leading out to the tower. They find it, "a stone pathway three feet wide," mostly submerged. Meera leads them out onto it, using her frog spear to test the stones in front of them. The causeway doesn't run straight to the tower, but zigzags, a defense measure: "anyone approaching would be exposed to arrow fire from the tower for a long time."

Hodor almost slips and falls into the water twice, which frightens Bran. The water comes up to Hodor's waist, and up to the chest on Meera and Jojen. When they reach the tower they find the door has warped and can't be closed, and they enter an anteroom where there are steps leading both up and down, with iron gates barring the way. Bran looks up and sees another grate overhead: "A murder hole. He was glad there was no one up there now to pour boiling oil down on them." The grates in front of the stairs are locked and rusted, and Hodor is unable to budge them. But Bran reaches up to the grate over the murder hole and easily dislodges it, though it lands on his head when it falls.

Hodor boosts Meera and Jojen up through the murder hole, and Bran tells Hodor to find some large rocks and pile them up so he can climb up too. They find a way to the stairs and begin to climb to the top. The view from the top is impressive, but Bran is disappointed because you can't see the Wall. Then he realizes that they "must still be fifty leagues away," which makes him feel tired. (A league is three miles.)

He asks Jojen how they are going to get through the Wall to find the three-eyed crow, and Jojen says maybe they can find a passageway at one of the abandoned castles along the Wall. Bran says that his Uncle Benjen said the gates at the abandoned castle had been sealed, and that perhaps they should just head for Castle Black and tell the Lord Commander to let them through. But Jojen fears that they would be recognized: "one man willing to forswear himself would be enough to sell our secret to the ironmen or the Bastard of Bolton." Bran continues to argue for going to Castle Black, hoping to see Jon again, but Jojen suddenly shushes him.

There is a rider approaching the village. Then the storm arrives and they have to leave the roof for the room below. Meera keeps her eye on the rider, and reports that he has taken refuge in the ruins of the inn and is building a fire. Bran says they should do the same, but Jojen says the smoke would attract the man's attention. They settle down to eat the remains of a duck Meera had snared and roasted the day before. Lightning and thunder begin, and Hodor grows frightened, crying out "HODOR!" whenever it flashes and rumbles. They try to quiet him, and then a lightning flash reveals to Jojen that other men have arrived at the village, "Too many to count," but not mounted.

Hodor grows more and more agitated as the storm increases, and they try to quiet him. Suddenly, he stops and sits down quietly. Bran had "reached for him, the way I reach for Summer. He had been Hodor for half a heartbeat. It scared him." Jojen says he saw one of the men pointing at the tower, but Bran reminds them that even if they tried, they couldn't get out to it unless they had a boat or knew about the causeway.

Bran then becomes Summer, crouching in the brush and watching the men. "He could hear them talking, and there beneath the scents of rain and leaves and horse came the sharp red stench of fear...."