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

The Sacrifice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victarion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King's Prize

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daenerys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 203-231

Daenerys

Daenerys is entertaining Xaro Xhoan Daxos of Qarth, who has brought with him a company whose dancers, male and female, perform naked, the men with full erections. The dance ends with copulation set to music. Daenerys is somewhat distracted by the performance: She is hoping to initiate a trade agreement with Xaro, but her mind is really on the imminent return to Meereen of Daario Naharis and his Stormcrows.

Xaro is full of compliments for Daenerys, but he also knows her predicament: "It is said that your enemies have promised wealth and glory and a hundred virgin slave girls to any man who slays you." He also notices the absence of Jorah Mormont. Once again, he presents her with the idea of marrying him, but she's wise to him: "I saw which dancers you were watching," she tells him.

He is open to the prospect of resuming trade with Meereen, but on his own terms: gold for slaves. Daenerys is insistent that the city remain free, but she recognizes the truth in Xaro's characterization of the city she rules: "A poor city that once was rich. A hungry city that once was fat. A bloody city that once was peaceful." He also informs her that her enemies are buying up sellswords: "The Company of the Cat, the Long Lances, the Windblown. Some say that the Wise Masters have bough the Golden Company as well." She counters that she has her dragons, but he notes that he hasn't seen them since he has been there.

But he offers her ships: "There are thirteen galleys in the bay. Yours, if you will have them. I have brought you a fleet, to carry you home to Westeros." In short, he wants to get rid of her. He tells her to inspect the ships, and "When you are satisfied, swear to me that you shall return to Westeros forthwith, and the ships are yours. Swear by your dragons and your seven-faced god and the ashes of your fathers, and go." She will not live long, he tells her, if she stays in Meereen.

When Xaro is gone, she asks Barristan what he thinks of the offer, and he admits that with the ships, "we might be home before year's end." He offers to take Admiral Groleo and inspect "every inch of those ships." She agrees, but worries about what will happen to Meereen when she leaves.

The next morning she hears Lord Ghael of Astapor plead with her to supply some of her Unsullied to defend his city, and when she declines he spits in her face. Strong Belwas seizes him and knocks him to the marble floor, breaking out some of his teeth. She tells Belwas to take him away, but spares his life. That afternoon, Barristan and Groleo return from the inspection of the ships to tell her that they are old but well-maintained. Reznak complains that her followers will be killed if she leaves, so she offers to take anyone with her who wishes to go. Barristan chides them for cowardice: "Her Grace freed you from your chains. It is for you to sharpen your swords and defend your own freedom when she leaves."

The argument grows heated, and finally Daenerys has had enough: "I will not abandon Meereen to the fate of Astapor. It grieves me to say so, but Westeros must wait." Groleo and Barristan are aghast at the decision, but she sticks to it. She calls for Xaro and tells him that she intends to stay. He is angry, and warns, "When your dragons were small they were a wonder. Grown, they are death and devastation, a flaming sword above the world." And he adds, "I should have slain you in Qarth." She tells him to leave the city immediately.


The next morning, Xaro has gone, but his ships remain. And a messenger from the ships brings her "a black satin pillow, upon which rested a single bloodstained glove." It is a token of war.


Jon


Jon is touring the "wormways," the tunnels beneath the wall, and the vaults where food supplies are stored. He is impressed with how much food is there, but Bowen Marsh, the Lord Steward, who is with him, cautions that these supplies were sufficient to sustain the watch for three or for years of winter, but now that the wildlings and the queen's and king's men are there, "We'll be down to turnips and pease porridge before the year is out. After that we'll be drinking the blood of our own horses." Marsh also warns about sickness and malnutrition and advises that they go on winter rations now.


Jon reflects on the difficulty of obtaining supplies, and considers asking for aid from the Eyrie. He "wondered how Lady Catelyn's sister would feel about feeding Ned Stark's bastard. As a boy, he often felt as if the lady grudge him every bite."


When they return to the surface he finds Devan Seaworth, Stannis's squire, waiting for him, stiff with fright at the presence of Ghost. Jon sends the direwolf away, and Devan tells him that the king wants to see him. In Stannis's solar he finds Ser Richard Horpe and Ser Justin Massey, who had been sent south on a mission whose nature Jon hadn't been told. Also present are Sigorn, the new Magnar of Thenn, and Rattleshirt, who gloatingly shows him a ruby that he says was a present from Melisandre, who is also there.


Stannis surprises Jon by saying that he is presenting Rattleshirt to him as a gift: "You did say you wanted men, Lord Snow." Jon protests that he can't trust Rattleshirt, but Melisandre says a few words in a language Jon doesn't understand, and both the ruby at her throat and the one on Rattleshirt's wrist begin to pulse with light. She tells Jon that as long as he wears the ruby he is bound in her service. And Rattleshirt says he will obey, as long as he doesn't have to wear the black.


Stannis then asks Jon to tell him about Mors Umber, who has offered his allegiance to Stannis for a price: "He wants Mance Rayder's skull for a drinking cup, and he wants a pardon for his brother, who has ridden south to join Bolton." Jon advises him to accept the terms, telling him that if the brother, Hother Umber, has joined the Boltons, it is because the Lannisters hold Greatjon Umber captive.


There is some blustering from the queen's men about the value of Jon's advice, but Stannis silences it. He then tells Jon that he plans to march on the Dreadfort, the seat of the Boltons. Ramsay, he says, has gone south, apparently to strike at Moat Cailin, and to clear the way for Roose Bolton to return north. He plans to take the Dreadfort unaware, but Jon says he can't. This causes outrage among the queen's men, but Stannis silences it. Jon explains that they must cross Umber lands to reach the Dreadfort, and their movements will be reported. And even if they reach the Dreadfort, Ramsay Bolton will cut off their retreat. "Moat Cailin will fall before you ever reach the Dreadfort. Once Lord Roose has joined his strength to Ramsay's, they will have you outnumbered five to one."


Others join in arguing against Jon's position, and Stannis says he will also have the support of the wildlings, under the command of the Magnar. "He means to plunder our armory, Jon realized. Food and clothing, land and castles, now weapons. He draws me in deeper every day." Jon also informs Stannis of the hatred of northerners for the wildlings. "Taking them will only serve to turn my lord father's bannermen against you."


Stannis grinds his teeth, then dismisses everyone except Jon. And Melisandre. Stannis tells Jon that both Horpe and Massey want to be Lord of Winterfell, and that Massey "wants the wildling princess," meaning Val. Jon replies that Winterfell belongs to Sansa, but Stannis doesn't want to hear  of that, because of Sansa's marriage to Tyrion Lannister. He offers Jon another chance to "amend your folly, Snow. Take a knee and swear that bastard sword to me, and rise as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North." Jon refuses again.


Stannis then informs Jon that he intends to proceed with the attack on the Dreadfort, "Despite the counsel of the great Lord Snow." Jon observes that the attack might not be necessary to gain the allegiance of the north if he could persuade Wyman Manderly, who controls White Harbor. But Stannis hasn't heard from Davos, and is persuaded that White Harbor isn't going to be his. The only way he can persuade the north to his side is by a successful battle against the Boltons.


Jon then presents a bargain: If Stannis will give him the wildlings, he will show the king where he can find the men he needs. He indicates on the map where the mountain clans live. "Your Grace will need to go to them yourself. Eat their bread and salt, listen to their pipers, praise the beauty of their daughters and the courage of their sons, and you'll have their swords." Once he gains their support, Stannis should attack Deepwood Motte. Stannis realizes what Jon is proposing: "If I can smash the ironmen ... the north will know it has a king again."

And I will have a thousand wildlings, thought Jon, and no way to feed even half that number. 

5. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 112-147

Tyrion

Tyrion awakes to find luggage being unloaded and readied for transfer to the river part of his journey. He is introduced to Haldon, who is known as Halfmaester, and to Ser Rolly Duckfield, known as Duck. Illyrio calls Tyrion Yollo, but Tyrion knows that's a Pentoshi name, and it's clear he isn't from Pentos, so he says he's called Hugor Hill.

Leaving Illyrio behind, Tyrion and the two men ride cross-country. They ride all night, Tyrion seated in front of Duck on the horse, and reach the Rhoyne the following day. As they near the river they are hailed by a boy standing on the roof of the cabin of the Shy Maid, their riverboat. It is Young Griff, "a lithe and well-made youth, with a lanky build and a shock of dark blue hair. The dwarf put his age at fifteen, sixteen, or near enough to make no matter." Also on board are an older couple and "a handsome septa in a soft white robe."

But when Griff himself makes an appearance, Tyrion thinks, "This one will be trouble." Griff immediately demands an explanation for the dwarf's presence, and Haldon gives him a letter that Illyrio had sent. In the cabin, Griff reads the letter, which tells about Tyrion's killing Tywin. Tyrion notices that although Griff claims to be a sellsword, he can read, which most of the mercenaries can't. In response to Griff's surprise at Tywin Lannister's death, Tyrion says,

"Lord Tywin was sitting on a privy, so I put a crossbow bolt through his bowels to see if he really did shit gold. He didn't. A pity, I could have used some gold. I also slew my mother, somewhat earlier. Oh, and my nephew Joffrey, I poisoned him at his wedding feast and watched him choke to death.... I mean to add my brother and sister to the list before I'm done, if it please your queen." 

Griff asks why Daenerys "should welcome the service of a self-confessed kingslayer and betrayer," and Tyrion points out that the king he killed -- or rather, claims to have killed -- was sitting on her throne. He asks if he can see the letter, but Griff burns it instead.

Tyrion has already begun to figure out the true identity of Griff and Young Griff, but he only hints at his suspicions now. When Griff asks how he plans to serve Daenerys, Tyrion says he knows how Cersei thinks ("if you call it thinking"), that he understands how one can beat Jaime in battle, and that he is well-acquainted with the loyalties of Tommen's court. Griff tells him to hold his tongue, and Tyrion replies, "As you say, my lord." Griff replies that he isn't a lord, and Tyrion thinks, "Liar."

Griff agrees to take Tyrion as far as Volantis, and beyond if he proves "obedient and useful."

Davos

In the town of Sisterton, where he is seeking passage to White Harbor, Davos has been taken prisoner and is escorted to see Godric Borrell, Lord of Sweetsister. The fleet that Stannis dispatched has been wrecked and scattered by storms, enraging Salladhor Saan, whose fleet it was. Saan had sent Davos ashore in a small boat, then set out to regroup his fleet.

Godric brings Davos up to date on the news of Tywin Lannister's death, but refuses to let Davos send a raven to Stannis to inform him. "I'll not have it said that I gave Stannis aid and comfort." But he accepts Davos as a guest and has food brought for him. This pleases Davos, because "even robber lords and wreckers were bound by the ancient laws of hospitality." He is less pleased when Godric tells him that Lord Wyman Manderly, whom Stannis has dispatched Davos to see, tells him that Wyman intends to cast his lot with the Lannisters. A contingent of Freys is on their way to White Harbor to bring Lord Wyman the bones of his son, who was killed at the Red Wedding, in atonement. "Lord Wyman and Lord Walder have made a pact, and mean to seal it with a marriage."

White Harbor is essential to Stannis's plans: "If Winterfell was the heart of the north, White Harbor was its mouth." So Davos pleads for Godric's help in getting there to compete with the Freys. Godric is stubborn, so Davos begins to play on his doubts about the stability of Cersei's rule. "This child king will not prevail against" Stannis, Davos argues. Godric points out that Tommen has the wealth of Casterly Rock and the support of Highgarden and the Boltons and Freys, but he admits that "in this world only winter is certain. Ned Stark told my father that, here in this very hall."

At the beginning of Robert's Rebellion, with a price on his head, Lord Eddard had been on his way home but was shipwrecked. A fisherman's daughter rescued him. "They say he left her with a bag of silver and a bastard in her belly. Jon Snow, she named him, after Arryn." Ned had made it to Sisterton and met with Godric's father, who saved him from being captured and beheaded.

Jon

Jon has tried to persuade Stannis not to execute Mance Rayder because of the King-Beyond-the-Wall's knowledge of the lands north of the wall and of the people who remain there. But Stannis and Melisandre are unmoved, and now she is presiding over his burning. He is placed in a cage over "a deep pit filled with logs, leaves, and kindling." When he sees this, he pleads, "This is not right. I'm not the king, they --" but a rope around his neck chokes off the words. The queen's men also bring out the Horn of Joramun, which was supposed to destroy the Wall.

Melisandre proclaims to the gathering, which includes a thousand captives in the stockade, "If the Wall falls, night falls as well, the long night that never ends. It must not happen, will not happen! The Lord of Light has seen his children in their peril and sent a champion to them, Azor Ahai reborn." She gestures toward Stannis.

The horn is set afire, and in the cage Mance Rayder "screamed incoherently of treachery and witchery, denying his kingship, denying his people, denying all that he had ever been." The wood in the pit catches fire and Mance's "screams become one long, wordless shriek of fear and pain." Jon notices that Val doesn't betray any emotion or look away. He gives an order and his men shoot arrows into Mance, cutting short his agony. Stannis looks displeased.

Then Melisandre commands the watchers, "Your false king brought you only death, despair, defeat ... but here stands the true king. BEHOLD HIS GLORY!" Stannis draws his sword, Lightbringer, which glows like "the sun made steel." He promises "food, land, and justice" to those who bend the knee to him, and orders the gates of the stockade opened. Queen's men hand each of the wildlings as they approach the fire pit a piece of weirwood: "A piece of the old gods to feed the new," Jon thinks.

A few people flee back toward the woods, but most come forward. "Behind them was only cold and death. Ahead was hope." Sigorn, the new Magnar of Thenn, is the first to kneel before Stnnnis, then Rattleshirt, who, Jon thinks, is "A small, malicious, treacherous man, as stupid as he is cruel." Others follow, and a deputation of Night's Watch show them the way through the Wall. But Jon wonders whether they will stay loyal to Stannis when Tormund Giantsbane and his followers arrive. Ser Alliser Thorne mutters his disapproval of this union with the wildlings.

Melisandre leads a chant of "One realm, one god, one king!" but Jon notices that Val doesn't join in the chant. Neither do the Night's Watch, who are sworn not to take part in political matters. A few wildlings, including four giants, remain at the stockade, and then disappear into the forest, leaving only corpses, which Jon orders burned. Bowen Marsh asks Jon if he really thinks the wildlings "will keep faith," and Jon admits that some will and some won't. "We have seen the face of our real foe, a dead white face with bright blue eyes. The free folk have seen that face as well. Stannis is not wrong in this. We must make common cause with the wildlings." But Marsh worries about letting "tens of thousands of half-starved savages through the Wall."

Marsh also warns Jon that there has been talk that he is "too friendly with Lord Stannis." Jon knows what he's been called: "A rebel and a turncloak, aye, and a bastard and a warg as well." He tells Marsh that Stannis helped them when they needed it, but Marsh worries that Stannis is a rebel and that they may have found themselves on the losing side. Jon says he isn't choosing any side, but that Tywin Lannister's death has changed things. He remembers his meeting with Tyrion, who had called him a friend, and finds it "hard to believe the little man had it in him to murder his own sire." He leaves Marsh to supervise the burning and tells him he will think about what he has said.

In the dining hall, Jon finds his old friends, Pyp and Grenn and Toad, making fun of Melisandre and her rituals, but he scolds them, remembering, "A lord may love the men that he commands, he could hear his lord father saying, but he cannot be a friend to them. One day he may need to sit in judgment on them, or send them forth to die." He goes outside, where he sees Val walking the battlements of the tower she is held in, and thinks of the choice Stannis had offered him: to become Lord of Winterfell and to take Val as his wife. "Instead he had chosen a black cloak and a wall of ice. Instead he had chosen honor. A bastard's sort of honor."

Ghost appears, and Jon tastes the hot blood in the wolf's mouth, but reminds himself, "I am a man, not a wolf." He goes to see Aemon's steward, Clydas, who talks to him about the cowardice Mance Rayder had shown. He drinks a cup of wine with Clydas and talks about Stannis brandishing Lightbringer. He had read about Azor Ahai in the book Maester Aemon left him, The Jade Compendium, and remembers Azor Ahai fighting a monster with Lightbringer, which made the creature's blood boil "and its body burst into flame." He wishes he could see how Stannis's sword performs in battle.

He returns to his room with Ghost, and reads a letter Ser Denys Mallister had written from the Shadow Tower asking for more men. He writes to Ser Denys and to Cotter Pyke, telling them that he is sending his friends Halder and Toad to the Shadow Tower and Grenn and Pyp to Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. "This is my lot, he realized as he undressed, from now until the end of my days."

4. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 83-111

The Merchant's Man

Quentyn Martell is on a stinking ship, pretending to be the servant of Gerris Drinkwater, who is playing the role of a wineseller. Gerris fits the role of master better: He is tall and handsome, with an arrogant swagger. Prince Quentyn, on the other hand, is plain and stocky. Gerris is attempting to find passage from Volantis to Meereen, in support of Quentyn's plan to win the hand of Daenerys.

They have been in Volantis for twenty days, trying to persuade the captains of various ships to take them, but no one wants to brave the war being waged in Slaver's Bay. Finally, the captain of the ill-smelling Adventure agrees to take them for thrice his usual fee. Quentyn is suspicious of the captain, and they make no commitment. Their voyage started off badly: They lost three of their company aboard the Meadowlark when it was attacked by pirates.

As they walk through the market square in Volantis, they come upon a pair of dwarfs, putting on a show: They are dressed in wooden armor and jousting, one riding a pig, the other a large dog. Gerris wants to stop and watch this amusement, but Quentyn is in no mood. They go to the Merchant's House, where a quartet of sellswords are trying to recruit men for their army, the Windblown, which has been hired by Yunkai.

At their room, they are admitted by the third surviving member of the party, Ser Archibald Yronwood, an enormous man, who has been urging them to make the journey overland. Quentyn is still considering the possibility of the Adventure, but Gerris has turned against it after considering the prospect of having to "endure that stench for months on end." He says a new idea has just occurred to him.

Jon

Jon has summoned Gilly, to whom he says, "I have something hard to tell you." She asks if it's about Mance Rayder, who is threatened with execution, but he says that it's about Mance's son, whom Gilly is nursing. She pleads with Jon not to let Melisandre burn the child, as she has threatened to do in part of her dragon-summoning ritual. He says that the only way to do that is for her to leave with Mance's child, but she must leave her own behind: "Take both boys and the queen's men will ride after you and drag you back. The boy will still burn ... and you with him." He promises that he will find a wet nurse for her son and raise him at Castle Black.

She leaves, and Samwell Tarly appears a few minutes later, carrying a stack of books. Jon shows him a letter that Maester Aemon has drafted for him to King Tommen. He remembers Tommen, heavily padded, as a little boy fighting Bran with wooden swords: "Yet Bran's dead, and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne, with a crown nestled among his golden curls." Sam observes that Jon hasn't signed the letter. Jon admits that he is worried about the implications: "No letter will make the Lannisters love us better. Not once they hear that we've been helping Stannis." But in the end he agrees to sign it.

Sam says that he saw Gilly almost in tears as he was arriving, and Jon says he is sending her and "the boy" away -- not indicating that the boy is Mance's son, not hers. He asks Sam about what he has learned from his reading about the Others. Much of it is what they already know: The Others are vulnerable to obsidian, or dragonglass, and their thralls must be burned. "Some accounts speak of giant ice spiders too. I don't know what those are." But he has also read an account that speak of Others being slain by "dragonsteel." Jon wonders if this means Valyrian steel, and Sam says that was his guess, too. He needs more time to research it.

Jon breaks the news that Sam doesn't have more time: He is going with Gilly, along with Maester Aemon. If Melisandre needs royal blood for her spells, Aemon Targaryen fits the profile. Sam is to take Aemon to Oldtown, and either send Gilly on to his family at Horn Hill or Aemon will find a position as servant at the Citadel, where Sam is to study to become Jon's new maester. Sam's various fears come rushing out, but Jon shuts him up, forcing himself to be stern with his friend and with himself: "Kill the boy, Jon thought. The boy in you, and the one in him. Kill the both of them, you bloody bastard."  Sam leaves in distress, and Jon reflects on how difficult it was to follow the advice Maester Aemon had given him: "Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born." He goes outside, where he hears that Stannis has sent a pair of men, Ser Richard Horpe and Ser Justin Massey, south on the kingsroad. He decides to let Stannis have his secrets.

In the morning he sees off Sam, Aemon, and Gilly before dawn. When they have left, he goes to meet with Bedwyck, a small man facetiously known as Giant, whom he has sent for. He tells Giant that he is garrisoning Icemark, one of the castles on the Wall, and putting him in charge of it, particularly to watch for climbers. When Giant asks if he is garrisoning all the castles he says yes, "but for the moment, it will just be Icemark and Greyguard." He intends to put Janos Slynt in charge of Greyguard.

Slynt, whom Jon had commanded to meet him at first light, doesn't show up until half the morning is gone. And when Jon tells him he is putting him at Greyguard, he is surprised, and then angry:

Slynt's face had turned the color of a prune. His meaty jowls began to quiver. "Do you think I cannot see what you are going? Janos Slynt is not a man to be gulled so easily. I was charged with the defense of King's Landing when you were soiling your swaddling clothes. Keep your ruin, bastard."

Jon tells him, "That was a command, not an offer," but Slynt continues to refuse.

Jon bides his time, and the next morning finds Slynt at breakfast with Ser Alliser Thorne. Jon enters accompanied by his supporters, and tells Slynt that he has had Slynt's horse made read for his ride to Greyguard. When Slynt defies him again, Jon asks if he is refusing the order, and Slynt replies, "You can stick your order up your bastard's arse." Jon orders Slynt taken to the Wall and hanged.

Slynt is dragged out, protesting, as the residents of Castle Black, including Stannis, come out to watch. Then Jon calls out, "Stop." He orders Dolorous Edd to fetch a block, and draws Longclaw. When he chops off Slynt's head, he looks at Stannis. "For an instant their eyes met. Then the king nodded and went back inside his tower."

2. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 31-59

Daenerys

Despite the insistence of Ser Barristan that she doesn't need to do so, and the fears of her handmaids Irri and Jhiqui that "It is bad luck to touch the dead," Daenerys insists on seeing the body of one of the Unsullied who has been found dead. He is a victim of the assassins known as the Sons of the Harpy, who are waging a guerrilla war against Daenerys's regime. The dead man is known as Stalwart Shield, and although he is a eunuch, his body was found in a brothel. Grey Worm, the captain of her Unsullied, tells her that eunuchs often go to brothels just to be held by the women: "Even those who lack a man's parts may still have a man's heart."

Ser Barristan informed Daenerys that this is a type of warfare for which even the Unsullied are ill-trained, being used to the battlefield rather than to terrorist acts. She realizes that maintaining her hold over Meereen will be more complicated than she had thought. She returns to her quarters in the Great Pyramid and walks restlessly on her terrace, pondering this face. Her dragons Viserion and Rhaegal are there, but they have been growing wilder lately -- and growing in size as well. She thinks, "I have left them too much to themselves, but where am I to find the time for them?"

Irri and Jhiqui help her prepare for an audience with the Meereenese public, which involves donning the Ghiscari tokar, a clumsy fringed garment that is wound around the body and makes walking difficult. "It was not a garment meant for any man who meant to work. The tokar was a master's garment, a sign of wealth and power." It also includes a headdress that looks rather like a pair of floppy rabbit ears. Daenerys wanted to get rid of the tokar, but Galazza Galare, the high priestess known as the Green Grace advised her that it would be a public relations disaster to do so. "These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn," so Daenerys conceded this point.

She is attended by her seneschal, Reznak mo Reznak, a flattering, perfumed courtier, and by the head of her city watch, Skahaz mo Kandaq, who has shaved his head as a sign of acceptance of Daenerys's new regime. He is known as the Shavepate. Daenerys doesn't fully trust these advisers: "The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?"

In the meeting hall, she is announced by Missandei, the scribe she had rescued from slavery in Astapor, and the first person to present his request to her is an Astapori, "a former slave who called himself Lord Ghael, though no one seemed to know what he was lord of." He gives her a pair of slippers from the current king at Astapor, Cleon the Great. She puts them on, but they pinch her feet. He urges her to join in an attack on Yunkai, which reverted to slavery after Daenerys left. But Daenerys knows that Astapor is no better, and suggests that Cleon find a way to feed his people before making war.

Reznak next introduces a wealthy merchant named Hizdahr zo Loraq. When she conquered Meereen, she closed the fighting pits where men battled to the death; Hizdahr owns most of them, and want her to reopen them. She has already refused the request five times, and makes it a sixth. She repeats Hizdahr's earlier arguments to him: The pits are historic, they are part of the religious ritual of blood sacrifice to the gods of Ghis, they are a demonstration of athletic skill, reopening them would win her good will, they draw visitors and trade to Meereen, they satisfy people's innate blood lust, and they serve as a venue for trial by combat as part of the system of justice.

Hizdahr compliments her recital: "I see that you are eloquent as well as beautiful." Reznak also whispers to her that they are a significant source of tax revenue. But Daenerys refuses him again. Still, she observes to herself that Reznak and the Green Grace had been urging her to marry a Meereenese noble to solidify her authority over the city, and she thinks it might be worth taking a good look at Hizdahr.

The next petitioner is Grazdan zo Galare, a cousin of the Green Grace. "The priestess was a voice for peace, acceptance, and obedience to lawful authority," so Daenerys knows she should be careful in listening to and answering him. He wants a share of the profits of some of his former slaves, women who had been trained in weaving at his household and who now have opened a shop of their own. Daenerys asks him the name of the slave who taught the women to weave, and he can't remember it. She orders that he not only have no share in their profits, but that he buy them the finest loom available: "That is for forgetting the name of the old woman."

She tells Reznak to call on a freedman next, and to alternate between former masters and former slaves from now on. The cases she hears are a parade of grievances, and Daenerys thinks, "I am queen over a city built on dust and death." She grows tired, her crown grows heavy, and the bench she sits on grows hard: "I have too many councillors and too few cushions." Finally, there is a throng of claimants for compensation for livestock killed by her dragons.

Some claims were false, she did not doubt, but more were genuine. Her dragons had grown too large to be content with rats and cats and dogs. The more they eat, the larger they will grow, Ser Barristan had warned her, and the larger they grow, the more they'll eat. Drogon especially ranged far afield and could easily devour a sheep a day. "Pay them for the value of their animals," she told Reznak, "but henceforth claimants must present themselves at the Temple of the Graces and swear a holy oath before the gods of Ghis."

The claimants file out, grumbling, but one man, holding a sack, remains behind. Missandei proclaims an end to the hearing, but Daenerys notices the man and asks what he wants. He opens the sack and empties the bones, saying, "It were the black one...." Reznak tells him to get his compensation tomorrow, but Barristan tells him to shut up. Those aren't sheep bones, he says.

"No, Dany thought, those are the bones of a child."

Jon

Jon is dreaming he is Ghost, racing through a moonlit forest. As he races, the moon calls out, "Snow."

Once they had been six, five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard dead nipples whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained ... and one the white wolf could no longer sense.

The moon continues calling out, "Snow, snow, snow!" until finally Lord Commander Mormont's raven wakes Jon. His steward, Dolorous Edd Tollett enters to ask if he wants breakfast. Jon asks him if there has been any trouble with the wildlings penned in the stockade, many of whom were women who were being sneaked out by the guards to sleep with them. Dolorous Edd says no, but there were more wildlings arriving.

Jon remembers his wolf dream, which like others of its kind had been stronger than ever before. Ghost knows of Grey Wind's death, he realizes, but he also knows that Summer and Shaggydog, Bran and Rickon's direwolves, are still alive. It was Summer who saved his life at Queenscrown, and he wonders "if some part of his dead brothers lived on inside their wolves."

On his way to the King's Tower, he meets Samwell Tarly, who has just delivered a letter to Stannis. Jon asks Sam about his longbow practice, and Sam says he's been reading up on it, but he gets blisters when he practices. At the entrance to the king's quarters, he is forced by the guards to surrender his weapons. Inside, Stannis is poring over a map; Melisandre is sitting by the fire. Stannis is angry because he has sent out ravens to all of the Stark bannermen asking for their support, but only the Karstarks have come around to his support. Jon knows this is because Rickard Karstark has no choice, having alienated both the Starks and the Lannisters.

Stannis angrily probes Jon about ways to enlist the support of the bannermen and of the wildlings, but receives no satisfactory answers from him. He is already vexed with Jon for refusing his offer to make Jon legitimate and the lord of Winterfell. Jon now tells him that he is sending Gilly and her baby south from Eastwatch, and he continues to refuse to cede the abandoned castles along the Wall to Stannis. In fact, he asks Stannis for men to garrison them. They don't need to join the Watch, "so long as they obey my officers as they would your own."

Stannis retorts that Jon is "only lord commander by my sufferance. You would do well to remember that." When Jon replies that he was chosen by his brothers, Stannis says that Alliser Thorne and Janos Slynt dispute that. "Your Grace knows that I was fairly chosen," Jon replies. "The Wall is mine." Stannis threatens that if any of the castles on the Wall fall to the enemy, Jon's head will follow, and orders him out.

Melisandre says she will accompany Jon to his chambers, and as they go down the steps says, "His Grace is growing fond of you." Jon replies, "I can tell. He only threatened to behead me twice." She tells him that she has seen Jon in her fires, and that he has enemies:

"It is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear, but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark. Blood frozen red and hard, and naked steel. It was very cold."

And her final words to him are the same as Ygritte's: "you know nothing, Jon Snow."

31. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 1062-1097

Tyrion

There is a rattling of keys at his cell door and he thinks that the time has come. But it's Jaime, whom he hasn't seen since his brother returned, gaunt and mutilated. Tyrion's shock at the sight of him turns into "hysterical laughter," for which he apologizes: "Jaime, I am so sorry, but ... gods be good, look at the two of us. Handless and Noseless, the Lannister boys."

After some fraternal banter, Jaime tells him that he's to be beheaded tomorrow. But now it's 3 a.m. and Jaime has come to rescue him, with the help of Varys, who has provided a potion to put the guards to sleep. "Varys has agents in the Free Cities who will see that you do not lack for funds," Jaime says. Cersei will send agents after him, no doubt, and Tyrion should probably take a different name. This makes Tyrion comment that "when the Faceless Men come to kill me, I'll say, 'No, you have the wrong man, I'm a different dwarf with a hideous facial scar.'"

When Tyrion thanks him, Jaime says he owed it to him. He's reluctant to say why, but when Tyrion presses him on the nature of the debt, Jaime confesses that Tyrion's first wife, Tysha, was not a whore. She was in fact the daughter of a crofter. Their father had objected that she was lowborn, and that she had only married Tyrion for his money: "he said that you required a sharp lesson. That you would learn from it, and thank me later...."

Remembering how Tysha was raped by the guards, Tyrion is infuriated by Jaime's "I never knew he would do that. You must believe me." He snarls back, "Why should I believe you about anything, ever? She was my wife!" And he slaps Jaime backhanded, as hard as he can. Cursing Jaime and Cersei and their father, he walks away, but is forced to stop and let Jaime open the gates for him. "Give me the keys and go," he says. "I will find Varys on my own." Then he turns and asks Jaime if he can fight with his left hand. "Rather less well than you," Jaime replies. Tyrion says, "Good. Then we will be well matched if we should ever meet again. The cripple and the dwarf."

But Jaime has one more question for Tyrion: Did he kill Joffrey? His brother's doubt eats at Tyrion, who tells him, "Joffrey would have been a worse king than Aerys ever was. He stole his father's dagger and gave it to a footpad to slit the throat of Brandon Stark, did you know that?" Jaime admits that he had guessed as much, but still wants to know the answer to his question.

"You poor stupid blind crippled fool. Must I spell every little thing out for you? Very well. Cersei is a lying whore, she's been fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and probably Moon Boy for all I know. And I am the monster they all say I am. Yes, I killed your vile son."

Jaime turns and walks away, and Tyrion goes to find Varys. When he does, he tells the eunuch he should kill him for not helping him before the trial, but Varys points out that he would never find his way out of the tunnels. So Tyrion asks what has become of Sansa, and Varys is forced to confess that he has found no trace of her, and that Ser Dontos has disappeared as well. (Given Varys's powers as a spy, it's more likely that he is in on Littlefinger's plot.)

Tyrion must descend deeper into the dungeons, Varys tells him., and Tyrion thinks, "I arrived here a King's Hand, riding through the gates at the head of my own sworn me, ... and I leave like a rat scuttling through the dark, holding hands with a spider." Finally they reach a place with a mosaic of a three-headed dragon on the floor, and Tyrion recalls that Shae had described it to him once. They are, he realizes, under the Tower of the Hand. He sees a ladder, and realizes that it must lead to the Hand's bedroom. He insists on knowing the way, and Varys reluctantly tells him. Tyrion begins to climb.

When he reaches the top, he can hear the guards talking about his coming execution, and realizes how Varys's "little birds" gain their information. Finally he reaches the entrance to the Hand's chamber and discovers that it is through the fireplace. As he enters the room, a woman calls out, "M'lord?" It is Shae, who begins to apologize when she sees him: "I never meant those things I said, the queen made me. Please. Your father frightens me so." She is wearing his father's chain of office, the linked golden hands. He asks her whether she ever really enjoyed being with him, and when she answers, "More than anything ... my giant of Lannister," he thinks, "That was the worst thing you could have said, sweetling." He strangles her with the chain.

Then he takes Lord Tywin's dagger from the bedside table and a crossbow that was hanging on the wall. He slips into the hallway and goes to the privy, where he knows his father must be. Tywin betrays no surprise or fear when Tyrion opens the door, but tries to persuade him to put down the crossbow and go with him to his chambers, where he will arrange for Tyrion to take the black instead of being executed. Tyrion declines, but asks his father what he did with Tysha.

Tywin says he doesn't really know. "I suppose the steward sent her on her way. I never thought to ask." Tyrion asks where that would be, and when his father answers, "Wherever whores go," he fires the crossbow. At first incredulous that Tyrion has shot him, Tywin gasps, "You ... you are no ... no son of mine."

"Now that's where you're wrong, Father. Why, I believe I'm you writ small. Do me a kindness now, and die quickly. I have a ship to catch."

Samwell

Stannis is losing patience with the process of choosing a Lord Commander. "I have captives to dispose of, a realm to order, a war to fight," he tells the assembled Night's Watch. Janos Slynt tries to wheedle Stannis into endorsing his candidacy, but Stannis is having none of it, recalling Slynt's reputation for corruption. But what Stannis really wants is for the black brothers to cede their control of the Gift to him, and they are shocked by the request. And further shocked when he says he wants all of the abandoned castles along the Wall for his garrisons, leaving them only Eastwatch, Castle Black, and the Shadow Tower. "Garrison them as you always have, but I must take the others for my garrisons if we are to hold the Wall."

Melisandre proclaims that Stannis is the return of Azor Ahai, "the warrior of fire. In him the prophecies are fulfilled. The red comet blazed across the sky to herald his coming, and he bears Lightbringer, the red sword of heroes." Sam notices that Stannis looks "desperately uncomfortable" with this proclamation, but he doesn't contradict it. Then he dismisses the brothers, all except for Maester Aemon and Sam.

As uneasy as Sam usually is in Stannis's presence, he becomes more so when Stannis singles him out as "the one that killed the creature in the snow," and Melisandre calls him "Sam the Slayer." When Sam confirms that the dagger that killed the Other was dragonglass, Stannis says, "On Dragonstone, where I had my seat, there is much of this obsidian to be seen in the old tunnels beneath the mountain." He has ordered his castellan to begin mining it. Sam mentions that the dragonglass shattered when he tried to use it on the wights, and Melisandre says, "Necromancy animates these wights, yet they are still only dead flesh. Steel and fire will serve for them. The ones you call the Others are something more." Stannis calls them "Demons made of snow and ice and cold.... the ancient enemy."

Stannis also asks about their passage through the Black Gate at the Nightfort, which he plans to make his seat. Sam tells him that it would only open for a member of the Night's Watch, and Stannis says Sam will show him the gate. Sam is not even certain that it's still there. Then Maester Aemon asks if he can see the sword Lightbringer, with Sam serving as his eyes. Stannis agrees.

"It glows," said Sam in a hushed voice. "As if it were on fire. There are no flames, but the steel is yellow and red and orange, all flashing and glimmering, like sunshine on water, but prettier. I wish you could see it, Maester."

The maester assures Sam that he has seen it as "A sword full of sunlight." When Stannis sheathes it, it is as if the room grows dark, even though the sun is shining through the windows.

When Sam and Maester Aemon return to the maester's quarters, Aemon comments that he felt no heat from the sword. Sam says, "The air around it was shimmering, the way it does above a hot brazier." But the scabbard is wood and leather, the maester says, having heard it when the sword was drawn, and Sam confirms that it wasn't burnt or blackened. When the maester tells Sam he has no need of him until the time for voting, Sam brings up the danger of Janos Slynt's winning. Maester Aemon says that his position prevents him from favoring one contender over another, but he hints that Sam is under no such obligation. So Sam summons up his reserve of bravery and decides to try to sway the voting.

He goes first to Cotter Pyke, because he is "the scarier of the two commanders," and Sam wants to face him before his courage weakens. Pyke thinks Sam is doing the maester's bidding, and Sam doesn't disabuse him of the notion, but he insists that there's no way he will give up his candidacy in favor of Ser Denys Mallister, though he doesn't really want the job. "I fight best with a deck beneath me, not a horse, and Castle Black is too far from the sea. But I'll be buggered with a red-hot sword before I turn the Night's Watch over to that preening eagle from the Shadow Tower."

So Sam goes to Ser Denys, who is courtly and elegant, and also falls under the impression that Sam is speaking for Maester Aemon. But he also refuses to consider his chief rival: "No, loath as I am to disappoint Maester Aemon, I could not in honor stand aside for Pyke of Eastwatch," whom he regards as ill-bred. As for the other candidates, he also considers them inferior, describing Janos Slynt as "venal and corrupt."

And then Sam introduces another possibility: "Lord Commander Mormont trusted him. So did Donal Noye and Qhorin Halfhand. Though he's not as highly born as you, he comes from old blood. He was castle-born and castle-raised, and he learned sword and lance from a knight and letters from a maester of the Citadel. His father was a lord, and his brother a king." Ser Denys recognizes that Sam is talking about Jon Snow, and says, "He is very young, but ... mayhaps." And then Sam slips in a lie: If they don't reach a decision tonight, he says, Stannis will name Cotter Pyke.

When he leaves Ser Denys, Sam is struck by the audacity of what he has just done, and has a moment of terror. But then he realizes how foolish his fear is: "How could he be so frightened of Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister, when he had seen a raven eating Small Paul's face?" So he returns to Pyke and drops the hint about voting for Jon, and the lie that Stannis plans to name Ser Denys if the vote doesn't succeed.

Jon

Stannis's offer to make him Lord of Winterfell has kept him awake all night, and now he gets a clout on the head from the trainee with whom he is sparring. It makes him remember when he was a little boy sparring with Robb. They had pretended to be famous heroes, but one time Jon had proclaimed himself Lord of Winterfell, and Robb replied, "You can't be Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born. My lady mother says you can't ever be the Lord of Winterfell." The memory so enrages him suddenly that he goes berserk on his opponent and has to be pulled off of him by two other trainees.

He comes to his senses and apologizes, then retreats to the armory by himself. But there he remembers Lady Catelyn's habitual coldness toward him. He tries to soak away the physical pain in a hot stone tub, but that reminds him of the hot pools in the godswood at Winterfell.

The weirwood was the heart of Winterfell, Lord Eddard always said ... but to save the castle, Jon would have to tear that heart up by its ancient roots, and feed it to the red woman's hungry fire god. I have no right, he thought. Winterfell belongs to the old gods.

And then he hears voices: Alliser Thorne and Bowen Marsh, discussing with Othell Yarwyck whom Tywin Lannister would prefer as Lord Commander, with Thorne putting in his plea for Slynt. He sits up in the bath, alerting them to his presence, then dries, dresses, and leaves. He realizes that the possibility is strong that Thorne will persuade others to decide for Slynt, "And what does that leave me, if not Winterfell?" He sits down to ponder his dilemma, realizing how deeply he had always wanted Winterfell, and imagining himself with Val, raising Mance's son and Gilly's there.

And then he senses a hunger: "It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought." Suddenly he realizes what is happening, as Ghost appears out of the woods, "leaner than he had been, but bigger as well," and races toward him. "When he reached Jon he leapt,and they wrestled amidst brown grass and long shadows as the stars came out above them."

He looks into the direwolf's eyes, and finds the answer to his dilemma.

He takes Ghost with him to the hall, thinking that they will but eat, but he finds the turmoil of electioneering going on instead. "His brothers crowded the benches and the tables, but more were standing and shouting than were sitting, and no one was eating. There was no food." He is puzzled, but then Pyp spots him and ghost, and gives out a shrill whistle. The hall grows quiet as Jon and the wolf enter.

Thorne breaks the silence: "The turncloak graces us with his presence at last." And Slynt says, "Look! The beast that tore the life from Halfhand. A warg walks among us, brothers, A WARG! This ... this creature is not fit to lead us!  This beastling is not fit to live!" Ghost bares his teeth, but Jon just asks what's going on. Maester Aemon is the one who tells him that his name has been put forth for Lord Commander."

Jon thinks it's a joke, and asks who nominated him. Dolorous Edd confesses to having done it. But Slynt sputters more of his outrage as both Cotter Pyke and Ser Denys Mallister speak up to say that Jon's candidacy is legitimate. Ser Alliser jumps on a table and calls for quiet, saying that Stannis has posted men at the doors to keep them there until they choose. He says that Othell Yarwyck, whom he and Bowen Marsh had been lobbying to vote for Slynt earlier, has something to say.

Yarwyck announces that he is withdrawing his candidacy, and was going to say they should vote for Slynt, which gets a hearty endorsement on Thorne's part. But now, he says, "I don't recall why I thought Slynt would be such a good choice," especially since Stannis had expressed his distaste for him. So he shrugs and says, "Pick who you want, just so it's not me." Slynt turns purple.

There is a call for the kettle, a big black pot into which the voting tokens are deposited by the voters. Sam and Clydas haul it out, but when the lid is removed a huge raven flies out of it. Sam shouts, "I know that bird! That's Lord Mormont's raven!" The raven flies to the table near Jon and caws, "Snow, snow, snow," then perches on Jon's shoulder. Ser Alliser speaks up to claim that Sam had trained the raven to do that trick. "They all say snow, go up to the rookery and her for yourselves. Mormont's bird had more words than that." Whereupon the raven asks Jon for corn, and when it doesn't get any, says "Kettle? Kettle? Kettle?"

The voting takes place, and when the results are announce, Jon is surrounded by friends. Cotter Pyke says, "if you muck this up, I'm going to rip your liver out and eat it with onions." Ser Denys says, more graciously, "Do not make me die regretful. Your uncle was a great man. Your lord father and his father as well. I shall expect full as much of you." The raven screams "Supper," and it is brought in. Pyp asks Sam how he got the raven to do the trick, and Sam says he didn't do it. "When it flew out of the kettle I almost wet myself."

Jon has a swallow of wine. "But only one. The Wall was his, the night was dark, and he had a king to face."

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."