13. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 498-532

Bran

Bran/Summer (in his dream they are one) hears a faint sound of steel scraping on stone, and he howls. Shaggydog joins him, his fur bristling at the hint of danger. He throws himself against the chained gate that keeps him in the godswood, but to no avail. He hears a shout in the night, and looks for a way over the wall. There is a tall tree, and the boy part of him remembers how to climb it, but the wolf part is unable. Then he hears the dogs in the kennels begin to bark: "They smelled it too; the scent of foes and fear." He hurls himself up the tree and gets a foothold so he can climb, but "suddenly he was sliding, stumbling. He yowled in fear and fury, falling, falling, and twisted around while the ground rushed up to break him...."

The falling wakes Bran, who realizes what is happening: "The sea has come. It's flowing over the walls, just as Jojen saw." He calls for help, but no one comes because Ser Rodrik has taken the guard off his door, needing every able-bodied man he could find to go to the defense of Torrhen's Square, which "was under attack by some monstrous war chief named Dagmer Cleftjaw." Bran calls for Hodor, but suddenly the door crashes open and a strange man carrying a dirk and with an axe strapped to his back enters, followed by Theon Greyjoy.

The sight of Theon is a welcome one, until Theon tells him, "I've taken your castle, my prince." Bran is confused: "But you're Father's ward." Theon replies that Bran and Rickon are his wards now, and that his men are gathering all the residents of the castle into the Great Hall. "You and I are going to speak to them. You'll tell them how you've yielded Winterfell to me, and command them to serve and obey their new lord as they did the old."

Bran refuses, but Theon insists that he will. He leaves, saying that he will send someone to dress Bran and bring him to the Great Hall. Bran waits, expecting to see Hodor or one of the servants, but it is Maester Luwin who comes to him. He explained that Theon's men swam the moat and climbed the walls. They killed Alebelly at the gate. Luwin sent off two ravens, but one was shot down.

Luwin helps Bran dress and tells him there is no shame in yielding the castle. One of Theon's men comes to carry Bran, and Luwin gathers Rickon on the way. They meet Meera and Jojen and the Freys as well. When they reach the Great Hall, Rickon says, "Theon's sitting in Robb's chair," and Bran tells him to hush.

Maester Luwin explains to Theon that the Freys are Catelyn's wards, and that Jojen and Meera had come to Winterfell to renew the oath of fealty the Reeds had sworn.  The last of the staff are driven into the hall, followed by the prisoner called Reek, who explains to Theon why he is there, and says that his real name is Heke.

Bran notices that there are only twenty of Theon's men there, and assumes that if he left guards on the gates and the armory there were only thirty of them in all. He tells the group that he has yielded Winterfell to Theon and that they should do what he asks. But the smith, Mikken, shouts out, "Damned if I will!" One of Theon's men silences him with a blow from the butt of his spear. When Theon speaks again, however, Mikken shouts something, then is silenced forever when he is stabbed through the throat. Hodor begins to shout "Hodor hodor hodor hodor," and is beaten by two of the men when Theon orders them to "shut that halfwit up." Theon continues to address the crowd.

"Torrhen's Square and Deepwood Motte will soon be ours as well, and my uncle is sailing up the Saltspear to seize Moat Cailin. If Robb Stark can stave off the Lannisters, he may reign as King of the Trident hereafter, but House Greyjoy holds the north now."

Reek speaks up and volunteers his services in support of Theon (and promises to "wash some" if needed), so Theon has one of his men give Reek a spear and has him swear "obedience to House Greyjoy and King Balon." Then Osha surprises Bran by stepping forward and saying she will fight for Theon too if he'll give her a spear. The man who killed Mikken grabs his crotch and says, "I've got a spear for you right here." But when Osha knees him in the groin and grabs the spear away from him, then knocks the man down with it, Theon tells her to keep the spear and swear her loyalty.

Hodor, bleeding and weeping, carries Bran back to his room.

Arya

Arya is in the kitchens, trying to persuade Hot Pie to give her a tart, when she hears the sound of a warhorn and the portcullis being raised. She swipes a tart and runs off to see what is happening. The mercenaries known as the Bloody Mummers are entering with cartloads of looted goods and a train of prisoners. There are at least a hundred of them, and she recognizes from their sigils that they're all men allied to Robb. Ser Amory Lorch appears and asks the leader of the Mummers, Vargo Hoat, what's going on. Hoat explains that his group attacked the forces commanded by Roose Bolton, and captured their commander, Robett Glover and Ser Aenys Frey. Lorch orders them sent to the dungeons.

Arya slips away from the crowd and finds Gendry in the armory. She tells him about the captives, and asks him to help her free them. The castle is poorly defended now, and there are almost as many men among the captives as there are among Ser Amory's men. "We just have to get them out and we can take over the castle and escape." Gendry is uninterested: He's a smith, he says, and it doesn't matter who he works for. "A sword's a sword, a helm's a helm, and if you reach in the fire you get burned, no matter who you're serving. Lucan's a fair enough master. I'll stay here." Arya reminds him that the queen is after him, and there must be some reason why she wants him, but he is unmoved.

Then she thinks about finding Jaqen, who still owes her a death. She remembers Old Nan's stories about people who had been granted wishes, and how "you had to be especially careful with the third wish, because it was the last. Chiswyck and Weese hadn't been very important. The last death has to count." She goes to the godswood and finds the sword she had made herself out of a broomstick and practices the moves Syrio Forel taught her. She climbs a tree and dances out onto the limbs to practice keeping her balance.

When she tires, she climbs down and tries to pray to the old gods, but thoughts of how they have never made her prayers come true anger her. Her father prayed to them often, she recalls. "I don't care if you help me or not. I don't think you could even if you wanted to." A voice behind her says, "Gods are not mocked, girl." It is Jaqen. She begins to ask him questions: How did he know she was there? How did he make Weese's dog kill him? Are Rorge and Biter human or demons? "Is Jaqen H'ghar your true name."

"Some men have many names. Weasel. Arry. Arya," and adds, "My lady of Stark." She is surprised that he has uncovered her identity, but asks him to kill the guards and help the men in the dungeons escape. He reminds her that he owes her only one more death. Killing one guard won't be enough, she says, but he persists: "Three lives were snatched from a god. Three lives must be repaid. The gods are not mocked." She thinks for a moment and asks if he will kill anyone she asks for, and when he says yes, she makes him swear. He replies, placing his hand in the mouth of the face in the weirwood, "By all the gods of sea and air, and even him by fire.... By the seven new gods and the old gods beyond count, I swear it."

They kneel face to face and she whispers in his ear: "It's Jaqen H'ghar."

He is surprised and upset, but suddenly there is a knife in his hand. "A girl will weep," he says. "A girl will lose her only friend." She replies that he's not her friend. "A friend would help me.... I'd never kill a friend." He asks, "A girl might ... name another name then, if a friend did help?" And when she says she might if he helps, he puts the knife away and says, "Come." She is startled that he wants to act so soon, and he replies, "A man hears the whisper of sand in a glass. A man will not sleep until a girl unsays a certain name. Now, evil child."

They leave the godswood and hear a noise of celebration in the castle. Jaqen asks her again to say another name "and cast this mad dream aside," but she refuses, so he orders her to obey his instructions. She is to go to the kitchens and ask Hot Pie to make broth for a hundred men. "A girl will help make broth, and wait in the kitchens until a man comes for her. Go. Run." She does what he tells her, and when the kettles are hot, Jaqen arrives with Rorge and Biter. Jaqen and Arya carry one of the kettles between them, Rorge takes one, and Biter carries two.

They take them to the Widow's Tower, where the men are imprisoned, and the guards let them pass. They descend into the dungeons where there are eight men guarding the prisoners. They gather around the table, and first Rorge and then Jaqen and Biter heave the scalding broth in the guards' faces.

Arya pressed back against the wall as Rorge began to cut throats. Biter preferred to grab the men behind the head and under the chin and crack their necks with a single twist of his huge pale hands. Only one of the guards managed to get a blade out. Jaqen danced away from his slash, drew his own sword, drove the man back into a corner with a flurry of blows, and killed him with a thrust to the heart. The Lorathi brought the blade to Arya with heart's blood and wiped it clean on the front of her shift. "A girl should be bloody too. This is her work." 

The prisoners are freed quickly, and Arya notices that that the wounded ones don't seem as badly wounded as they had when they arrived. And Robett Glover asks if the broth was Hoat's idea. He also asks if they are members of the Brave Companions (i.e., the Bloody Mummers). Jaqen introduces himself as "once of the Free City of Lorath," and his "discourteous companions" Rorge and Biter. Since Biter is currently nibbling on the fingers of one of the dead guards, he doesn't need to say which one he is. When he turns to Arya, she says, "I'm Weasel."

When Rorge and Biter have left with the freed men, Jaqen H'ghar stays behind with Arya. He realizes that she is confused, and he explains, "A goat has no loyalty" -- the Bloody Mummers switched sides on the road, and the imprisonment was only a ruse. Eventually, the prisoners would have been freed to take over the castle without Arya's intervention. Jaqen still wants to "hear a certain name unsaid."

"I take back the name," Arya says, and then asks if she still has a third death coming to her. Jaqen points out the eight bodies: "The debt is paid." She agrees that it has been. And then he says, "A god has his due. And now a man must die." She protests that she has unsaid the name and he doesn't need to die, but he says, "My time is done."

Jaqen passed a hand down his face from forehead to chin, and where it went he changed. His cheeks grew fuller, his eyes closer; his nose hooked, a scar appeared on his right cheek where no scar had been before. And when he shook his head, his long straight hair, half red and half white, dissolved away to reveal a cap of tight black curls.

Arya is "too astonished to be afraid," and asks how he did it, and if she could learn to do it too. She would have to come with him to learn, he says. But she still wants to go home to Winterfell. "Then we must part," he says, and presses a small iron coin in her hand. "If the day comes when you would find me again, give that coin to any man from Braavos, and say these words to him -- valar morghulis." She repeats the words, but begs him, "Please don't go, Jaqen." He replies, "Jaqen is as dead as Arry." He has her repeat valar morghulis once more, and walks off into the darkness.

The castle has been taken by morning, and Arya returns to work, "mopping up dried blood." She sees "people looking at her strangely" and hears jokes about "weasel soup." That evening the new master of Harrenhal, Roose Bolton, arrives. He is an ordinary-looking man except "for his queer pale eyes." The fool Shagwell pulls her over to him and introduces her as "the weasel who made the soup." Bolton asks how old she is, and it takes Arya a moment to remember that she is ten. He asks what her real name is, and she says it's Nymeria, but that her mother called her Nan. He asks if she's afraid of leeches, and she says, "They're only leeches. My lord." He indicates that his squire is afraid of them, but that he believes "Frequent leechings are the secret of a long life. A man must purge himself of bad blood." He makes her his cupbearer for as long as he's at Harrenhal.

The banners of the Lannisters and Ser Amory Lorch are hauled down and the "flayed man of the Dreadfort and the direwolf of Stark" are raised in their place. Ser Amory is paraded naked to the bear pit and kicked in by Shagwell.

Daenerys

Continuing her quest for ships and sailors, Daenerys visits the palace of the warlocks, which is "a grey and ancient ruin" that Xaro Xhoan Daxos calls the Palace of Dust. Everyone advises her not to enter it, but Daenerys is stubborn, and when Pyat Pree appears, she takes his arm. He warns her to follow his instructions carefully, "The House of the Undying Ones was not made for mortal men."

Inside it, she will find herself in a room with four doors, counting the one she entered through. Always take the door to the right, he says. If she comes to a stairwell, go up. Never go downstairs. Some doors will be open, and inside them she will see things, some horrible, some wonderful; some will be visions of the past, and some of the future, and some of things that will never be. Don't enter them until she comes to the "audience chamber." People may speak to her as she proceeds, and it's up to her whether she answers them or ignores them. "When you come to the chamber of the Undying, be patient. Our little lives are no more than a flicker of a moth's wing to them. Listen well, and write each word on your heart."

At the entrance, which is a door shaped like a mouth in a wall shaped like a face, a dwarf no taller than her knee holds on a tray "a slender crystal glass filled with a thick blue liquid: shade of the evening, the wine of warlocks." Pyat Pree tells her to drink it and it will open her eyes and ears to the truths revealed inside. The first sip tastes like "ink and spoiled meat," but as it comes to life in her when she swallows it becomes "all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them."

She enters, and keeps moving through rooms, always taking the right-hand door, until she reaches a long hallway in which the only doors are on the left; on the right are a row of torches mounted on the wall. Drogon, who has been perched on her shoulder, unfolds his wings and flies "twenty feet before thudding to an undignified crash." The carpet underfoot is moldy but had once been gorgeous, and there are sounds like rats scurrying in the walls, which attract Drogon's notice.

Most of the doors on the left are closed, but strange sounds come from them. Daenerys tries not to look in the ones that are open, but she can't help it. One room contains mutilated corpses. "In a throne above them sat a dead man with the head of a wolf. He wore an iron crown and held a leg of lamb in one hand as a king might hold a scepter, and his eyes followed Dany with mute appeal." The next open door showed her the house where she had lived in Braavos, a house with a red door that was one of the few pleasant memories of her childhood remaining.

Another door shows her a man whom she at first takes for Viserys and a woman nursing a baby they have named Aegon, "What better name for a king?" The woman asks if he will make a song for the baby, and he says, "He is the prince that was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire." His eyes meet Daenerys's and he says, "The dragon has three heads."

She walks on until she reaches a staircase that descends into darkness. She knows she's not supposed to go down them, but all the doors are on the left, and behind her the torches are going out. In the darkness she hears something "shuffling and dragging itself slowly along the faded carpet." Drogon hears it too, she realizes, and she is panicked about what to do when she realizes that the last door on the left is the first door on the right. She plunges through it into another room with four doors, and keeps going through room after room, always to the right, until she starts getting dizzy.

Finally she reaches another room, and the door facing her is open. It's round and shaped like a mouth, and she can see Pyat Pree outside. He says it's too soon for her to have reached there and she must have taken a wrong turn. He reaches out a hand and says he'll show her the way. But then she notices a closed door on the right and opens it. He calls out to her, "Stubborn child. You will be lost, and never found," and when she goes through the door she can hear him screeching, "No, to me, come to me, to meeeeeee."

There is a stairwell inside, climbing upward, though she remembers that from the outside the building had no towers. On the right, a set of beautiful but "somehow frightening" doors made of ebony and weirwood, with "strange interwoven patterns" in the grain, have been thrown open. She goes into a great hall where there is a gathering of wizards, male and female, in a variety of costumes, and the sound of "the most beautiful music she had ever heard." A man rises and welcomes her: "Come and share the food of forever. We are the Undying of Qarth." Others join in the welcome.

She starts to go forward, but Drogon leaps from her shoulder and perches on top of the ebony-and-weirwood door and starts to bite it. She goes to the door, which is very heavy, and finds behind it a hidden door, to the right of the one through which she had entered. The wizards call out to her to come to them, but she goes through the door that had been hidden, which is "old grey wood, splintery and plain," and finds herself in "a chamber awash in gloom."

There is a long stone table in the room, and above it floats "a human heart, swollen and blue with corruption, yet still alive." There are blue shadowy figures around the table, but "no sound but the slow, deep beat of the rotting heart." Then she hears voices saying "mother of dragons ... dragons ... dragons ... dragons." She sits in the empty chair at the foot of the table and introduces herself as "Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros." She asks them to speak to her "with the wisdom of those who have conquered death."

She begins to make out the figures around the table, old men and women, "wrinkled and hairless," dressed in rotting clothing. Gradually she begins to hear them whisper that they live and know.  She says she saw visions of things in the hall and asks what they meant. She begins to hear their voices: "mother of dragons ... child of three ... three heads has the dragon ... three fires you must light ... one for life and one for death and one to love ... three mounts you must ride ... one to bed and one to dread and one to love ... three treasons will you know ... once for blood and once for gold and once for love ..." She tells them she doesn't understand, and asks them to show her. She sees Viserys screaming as the molten gold kills him. "A tall lord with copper skin and silver-gold hair stood beneath the banner of a fiery stallion, a burning city behind him." A "blue-eyed king who cast no shadow" raises a red sword. There is a cloth dragon carried on poles through a cheering crowd. A stone beast flies from a tower that is smoking. Her horse trots through grass to a stream under a sky full of stars. A corpse stands smiling at the prow of a ship. A sweet-smelling blue flower grows from a chink in a wall of ice.

The visions keep coming faster and faster: The shadows dancing in the tent, a little girl running to a house with a red door, Mirri Maz Duur shrieking in the flames, "a dragon bursting from her brow." A silver horse dragging the corpse of a naked man. A white lion running through tall grass. Naked crones emerging from a lake and bowing to her. Slaves with bloody hands calling out to her, "Mother!" She opens her arms to give herself to them.

Then suddenly Drogon's wings are beating around her and the dragon is screaming as she realizes that the Undying surround her, reaching for her, "licking, sucking, biting." She can't move until there is a sudden glare in the room and she sees Drogon tearing at the heart, shredding its flesh, "and when his head snapped forward, fire flew from his open jaws, bright and hot." Around her the Undying are on fire. She pushes through them to the door and calls for Drogon, who flies to her. She finds herself in a serpentine passageway with no doors but only stone walls until she reaches "a door like an open mouth" and runs through it into the sunlight.

Behind her, smoke is rising from the roof of the Palace of Dust and coming through the cracks in the walls. "Howling curses, Pyat Pree drew a knife and danced toward her, but Drogon flew at his face." Jhogo's whip sends the knife flying, and Rakharo wrestles the warlock to the ground. Jorah Mormont is there and puts his arm around her shoulder.

10. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 404-430

Theon

In an attack on a village, Theon's men have captured a former ally of his, Benfred Tallhart, who spits in Theon's face and denounces him as a traitor to Robb. Theon's Uncle Aeron insists that this is a mortal insult and that Tallhart must die. But when Theon orders Tallhart beheaded, Aeron insists it must be done in accordance with the worship of the Drowned God: Tallhart must be drowned in salt water. So Theon acquiesces and Tallhart is hauled off to the shore.

The village has been destroyed, the men killed, the young women claimed as "salt wives" -- i.e., concubines -- and the old and ugly women raped and killed, unless they have useful skills as servants.

His thrice-damned sister was sailing her Black Wind north even now, sure to win a castle of her own. Lord Balon had let no word of the hosting escape the Iron Islands, and Theon's bloody work along the Stony Shore would be put down to sea raiders out for plunder. The northmen would not realize their true peril, not until the hammers fell on Deepwood Motte and Moat Cailin. 

But Theon is determined not to let Asha, his sister, get all the glory. So he takes Dagmer Cleftjaw aside and tries to win him over. He calls these raids on villages "child's business" and "no work for Lord Balon's best man." He knows that his father's men are suspicious of him because he has been away for ten years with the Starks, but he insists to Dagmer, "I am a Greyjoy, and I mean to be my father's heir. How can I do that unless I prove myself with some great deed." But, he tells Dagmer, he needs his help "to do a deed that the harpers will sing of for a thousand years."

He wants Dagmer to take his men and march to Torrhen's Square, the seat of the Tallharts, which will be defended by a small garrison because most of the men have gone to fight for Robb. There, they will mount a siege. Dagmer protests, "That is not the Old Way. Have you forgotten? Ironmen fight with swords and axes, not by flinging rocks. There is no glory in starving out a foeman." But Theon explains this is only a distraction: When they see the siege towers being built, the Tallharts will send a raven to Winterfell. Theon assumes that Ser Rodrik Cassel will withdraw some of his men from Winterfell "and ride to Tallhart's aid. It is his duty. Ser Rodrik is nothing if not dutiful."

But Dagmer protests, "Any force he summons will be larger than mine.... You set us a battle we cannot hope to win, Theon. This Torrhen's Square will never fall." Theon replies, "It's not Torrhen's Square I mean to take." Which sounds like he plans to bring the sea to Winterfell.


Arya

Tywin Lannister is on the move, and Harrenhal is bustling with activity. Weese has Arya on the move too, running errands, carrying messages, and sometimes even letting her outside the walls of the castle. She thinks of making a break for it somehow, but Weese has threatened to cut off the feet of anyone who dares attempt to escape. He doesn't know she can read, so she often reads the messages she is given, though they are usually nothing but orders to send carts to this place or another.

She looks for Jaqen H'ghar, since he has promised to kill two more people for her, but he is hard to find in all the confusion. One of the guards tells her that he will be staying at Harrenhal with Ser Amory, who has been named castellan, charged with holding the castle in Tywin's absence. The creepy Bloody Mummers will also be staying. Gregor Clegane will be going with Tywin, however, which means that he and others of the men on her list will be out of her reach "unless she could find Jaqen and have him kill one of them before they left."

Weese sends her to the armory to tell one of the armorers that Ser Lyonel needs a new sword, and she sees Gendry there. He pulls her aside and tells her that Hot Pie had overheard her cry out "Winterfell," during the fighting back at the holdfast. He says he covered up for her by telling Hot Pie that he heard her yell "Go to hell!" and that she should say the same if he asks her. She says she will, though she thinks for a moment that she ought to tell Jaqen to kill Hot Pie.

As she returns with the sword, she feels its weight and it reminds her of how she felt when she was practicing with Syrio Forel. She thinks of telling the stablehands that she was sent to fetch a horse for Ser Lyonel, then of riding out with horse and sword, but she remembers Weese's threat. When she returns to him with the sword he complains about how long she had taken and slaps her with the back of his hand. Then he sends her off on another errand, threatening to beat her if she's too slow this time.

On her way, she encounters the noseless Rorge, who makes obscene jokes about her. She tells him she's looking for Jaqen, and his reaction makes her realize that Rorge is afraid of Jaqen. He tells her Jaqen is in the bathhouse. She finds him there and whispers "Weese" in his ear.

That evening at dinner, Weese calls her over, grabs her throat, and slaps her twice, backhanded, just for looking at him. When she trips and tears her dress, he tells her to mend it before she goes to sleep. As she sews up the tear, she recites the names on her list with every stitch, and wonders how much longer Weese will be on the list. But it is Weese who kicks her awake in the morning, and at breakfast he threatens that they will only have to work harder while Lord Tywin is away.

As Tywin and his men leave that morning, Arya watches from a window in the Wailing Tower. The procession concludes with Gregor Clegane with Polliver riding beside him, wearing Gendry's helmet. Arya thinks that she has ordered the wrong men killed. It should be those two instead of Chiswyck and Weese. And she should have told him to kill Lord Tywin. She decides to find Jaqen and change her order, but as she hears the portcullis being lowered there is "a shriek of pain and fear."

Weese was sprawled across the cobbles, his throat a red ruin, eyes gaping sightlessly up at a bank of grey cloud. His ugly spotted dog stood on his chest, lapping at the blood pulsing from his neck, and every so often ripping a mouthful of flesh out of the dead man's face.

Someone brings a crossbow and kills the dog. Arya sees Jaqen leaning against the tower; "he lifted a hand to his face and laid two fingers casually against his cheek."

Catelyn

When they reach Riverrun, Catelyn hears of Robb's victory, but also that Lord Tywin is on his way and will reach them in three or four days. Brienne asks Catelyn to let her leave -- she means to return to Storm's End and kill Stannis. Catelyn argues that she would be riding into certain death, and that to do so would serve on purpose. Brienne says that she doesn't understand how she feels about Renly's death.

"You're wrong," Catelyn said sharply. "Every morning, when I wake, I remember that Ned is gone. I have no skill with swords, but that does not mean that I do not dream of riding to King's Landing and wrapping my hands around Cersei Lannister's white throat and squeezing until her face turns black."

Brienne asks if Catelyn would ever make peace with Stannis, knowing that he killed Renly, and Catelyn admits that she doesn't know. But she urges Brienne to "fight ... but for the living, not the dead. Renly's enemies are Robb's enemies as well."


To Catelyn's surprise, Brienne asks to serve her, saying that Catelyn has "a kind of woman's courage." She asks only that, if the opportunity comes, Catelyn will not hold her back from killing Stannis. Catelyn remembers Stannis's threat against Robb and says, "When the time comes, I will not hold you back." Brienne kneels, unsheathing the longsword she took from Renly's body and laying it at Catelyn's feet, then vows, "I am yours, my lady." And Catelyn vows "that you shall always have a place by my hearth and meat and mead at my table, and pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you into dishonor."


Catelyn's brother, Edmure, is at the castle, and he tells her that ravens have come from Storm's End with word that Ser Cortnay Penrose still holds the castle, though "Stannis has him surrounded by land and sea. He offers his allegiance to whatsoever king will break the siege." Penrose also says that he is afraid for "the boy," whom Brienne identifies as Robert Baratheon's bastard, Edric Storm. Catelyn wonders why Penrose would risk so much "for a baseborn boy whose blood is not even his own." Edmure says he hasn't sent an answer to Penrose because they have nothing to offer him.


Edmure and the others at Riverrun are eager to hear an account of Renly's death, but Catelyn prefers not to talk about it in the open, so she changes the subject to the bodies they found hanging from the battlements of the castle. Edmure says that they came with Ser Cleos when he delivered Cersei's response to Robb's peace offer. Catelyn is shocked that they should kill envoys, but Edmure explains that they were assassins posing as envoys -- the ones Tyrion had sought out and included in the guard. They had tried to free Jaime Lannister. One of them killed two guards, another picked the lock to Jaime's cell, and the mummer imitated Edmure's voice to command the guards to open the gate.

This was the Imp's work, Catelyn suspected; it stank of the same sort of cunning he had displayed at the Eyrie. Once, she would have named Tyrion the least dangerous of the Lannisters. Now she was not so certain.

They plot was foiled only by accident. Edmure had been returning to the castle just before dawn and the mummer's deception was revealed. Jaime had a sword, and killed two men and seriously wounded a third. After he was recaptured, he was put in the dungeon and chained to the wall. Cleos Frey is still under suspicion for his part in the escape attempt, and is in the cell Jaime formerly occupied in the tower.


Robb has told them to send Catelyn to the Twins, the castles of Lord Walder Frey, to help him choose a bride from the Frey daughters, but Catelyn "had no intention of leaving Riverrun and her dying father to pick Robb's wife for him." Edmure wants to fight Tywin, but Catelyn argues that he has only half as many men as Lannister does. He outlines his plan to get reinforcements from the Tallharts and Roose Bolton's army at the Twins. He has told Bolton to take Harrenhal. Catelyn is deeply skeptical about her brother's plan, and wishes that Robb hadn't taken her uncle Brynden, who "was the veteran of half a hundred battles; Edmure was the veteran of one, and that one lost." But she swallows her misgivings and goes to see her father.


Lord Hoster Tully doesn't know who she is: He thinks she is Lysa. He mutters to her about "That stripling ... wretched boy" and about Lysa's marriage to Jon Arryn. When the maester gives her father a sleeping potion, he tells her that he won't live much longer and that they should send for Brynden and for her sister. Catelyn knows that Lysa won't come, but agrees to write to her. "She wondered who Lysa's 'wretched stripling' had been," and why her father had been so opposed to him.


When she goes to her chambers, she finds "two women clad in grey, their faces cowled save for their eyes," and she realizes that they are there with Ned's body. She is told that Cleos Frey had brought his bones from King's Landing, and she asks to see them. But when she views the skeleton, she is surprised to see that the sword he has with him is not Ice. It was not returned with him, she is told.


After ordering that the bones be taken to Winterfell, she spends the night sitting up with them.

8. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 341-371

Arya

Being a servant in the Wailing Tower at Harrenhal has the advantages of a dry place to sleep, soap and water, and bread and barley stew every day. Hot Pie, in the kitchens, has better food. Gendry has been sent to work in the forge. Arya's job is primarily to clean, but occasionally Weese has her run messages, bring water and food, and serve at table in the Barracks Hall. As for the ghosts of Harrenhal, she doesn't fear them, and figures that it is the sound of the wind through the cracks in the stone walls that make people believe in them. She is more afraid of the living: Weese, and Gregor Clegane, and Tywin Lannister. Weese has been added to her list of enemies that she mentions in her nightly prayers.

Harrenhal has "turned her into a mouse, scurrying about trying to avoid notice. "And as lords and ladies never notice the little grey mice under their feet, Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties." She hears that Stannis and Renly have declared themselves king in opposition to Joffrey, and "Even Lannister men questioned how long Joffrey would hold the Iron Throne," given that he is "ruled by a eunuch, a dwarf, and a woman."

One day a sinister group known as "the Bloody Mummers" arrives, though Weese warns her not to have anything to do with them, and explains that "They're sellswords, Weasel girl. Call themselves the Brave Companions," and "they'll hurt you bad" if you call them the Bloody Mummers.  Arya overhears one of them saying that "a northern army under Roose Bolton had occupied the ruby ford of the Trident" but won't cross until "the Young Wolf marches from Riverrun with his wild northmen and all them wolves." This is the first time Arya has heard that her brother is at Riverrun, which is nearer to Harrenhal than Winterfell is. She begins to think about escaping, perhaps with the help of some of the captives now housed in the Tower of Dread. They are being held for ransom.

One day Ser Amory Lorch arrives at the castle, and Arya is surprised to find among the men with him the three chained prisoners whom she saved by tossing them the axe when Lorch burned the holdfast. They seem to have joined up with Lorch's raiders. Rorge has a helmet that conceals his missing nose, and Biter has been further disfigured by the burns he suffered. The only one who looks her way is Jaqen H'ghar, and she isn't sure if he recognizes her. But that night she is awakened by him when he puts his hand over her mouth and whispers that he wants to talk.

"A man pays his debts," he says. "A man owes three." And she realizes that he is offering to repay her for saving him and the others. "Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done." He is offering to kill three people on his list, and she has to choose. She thinks of Joffrey and Cersei, of course, but they are too far away, and Gregor Clegane is out foraging with Raff and Chiswyck and the Tickler. But Amory Lorch and Weese are there.

Then Gregor and his men return, and Arya is sent by Weese to see if they have clothes that need mending. She enters without being noticed, and overhears Chiswyck telling a story about a woman Clegane raped and how the others followed his example. Horrified, she forgets to ask the men about the clothes, and Weese canes her until she bleeds. Two nights later, she sees Jaqen H'ghar when she is serving at table in the Barracks Hall and whispers "Chiswyck" in his ear. Three days later, she hears a woman in the kitchen say, "One of the Mountain's men fell off a wallwalk last night and broke his fool neck.... Some are saying it was Harren's ghost flung him down."

"She had killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I'm the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought."

Catelyn

She and Ser Wendel Manderly have gone with Renly and the troops to Storm's End, where she will try to fulfill her mission of bringing about a truce between Renly and Stannis, and to persuade them to join forces with Robb. Stannis rides out for the parlay accompanied by Melisandre. Catelyn meets with Stannis before Renly joins them, and he expresses his determination to win over the lords who now support Renly. "This one will never bend, she thought, yet she must try nonetheless."

Renly arrives accompanied by Brienne, though her armor gives no indication of her sex. Catelyn continues her plea: "Let us hope there will be no battle. We three share a common foe who would destroy us all." But Stannis insists, "The Iron Throne is mine by rights. All those who deny that are my foes." And Renly says, "The whole of the realm denies it, brother." She persists in trying to make them see that while they are feuding, Tywin is at Harrenhal with a force of twenty thousand, Jaime's followers are regrouping, and another Lannister army is forming at Casterly Rock, while Cersei and her son are defending King's Landing. "You each name yourself king, yet the kingdom bleeds, and no one lifts a sword to defend it but my son."

But Stannis and Renly continue to quarrel until Catelyn interrupts again to assert that neither of them has a claim to the throne as long as Robert's son is alive. "Prince Joffrey is his rightful heir, and Tommen after him ... and we are all traitors, however good our reasons." But Stannis plays his trump card: Joffrey isn't Robert's son, or Tommen, and Myrcella isn't his daughter. "All three of them are abominations born of incest." Catelyn, who hasn't received Stannis's letter, is astonished: "Would even Cersei be so mad?" she thinks.

But Renly doesn't believe the story, and challenges Stannis to prove it true. Stannis says that he had voiced his suspicions to Jon Arryn and not to Robert because he didn't want to be accused of plotting to change the succession: "I believed Robert would be more disposed to listen if the charges came from Lord Arryn, whom he loved." And he asserts that Cersei had Jon Arryn poisoned when he confronted her with the accusation. Catelyn remembers Lysa Arryn's letter to her accusing the queen of killing her husband, and her later accusation that Tyrion did it.

Renly then says that Stannis can have Storm's End if he wants it, but he's not giving up his challenge to the throne. Stannis retorts that it isn't Renly's to give, and Renly says to Catelyn, "he refuses my castle, he even shunned my wedding...." Stannis retorts that Renly's wedding was a "farce," and that a year ago Renly was trying to make Margaery "one of Robert's whores" -- a plot to supplant Cersei as queen. Renly replies that it doesn't matter now. "The boar got Robert and I got Margaery. You'll be pleased to know she came to me a maid." Stannis says, "In your bed she's like to die that way." (The homosexuality of Renly has only been hinted at in the novels; it was made explicit in the HBO adaptation.) Renly says he expects to father a son within the year, and mocks Stannis not only for having no sons but also throws back at him the scurrilous rumor concocted by Littlefinger that the fool Patchface is the father of Stannis's daughter by his ugly wife.

Stannis is naturally enraged, and he draws his sword, which "gleamed strangely bright in the wan sunlight, now red, now yellow, now blazing white. The air around it seemed to shimmer, as if from heat. Catelyn's horse whinnied and backed away a step, but Brienne moved between the brothers, her own blade in hand." Catelyn thinks, "Cersei Lannister is laughing herself breathless." (As indeed she had, when Tyrion brought her the news that the Baratheon brothers had turned against each other.)

Stannis back off a little and says he doesn't "wish to sully Lightbringer with a brother's blood," but he will give Renly until dawn to acknowledge his claim, and if he does he'll give him Storm's End and name him his heir until he fathers a son of his own. "Otherwise, I shall destroy you." Renly mocks him, and points to the banners of his troops and names the houses that are following him, which even include House Florent, Stannis's wife's family. Stannis replies, "'We shall see, brother.' Some of the light seemed to go out of the world when Stannis slid his sword back into its scabbard. 'Come the dawn, we shall see.'" He rides off with the red priestess behind him.

Catelyn felt very tired. It had all been for nothing. The Baratheon brothers would drown each other in blood while her son faced the Lannisters alone, and nothing she could say or do would stop it. It is past time I went back to Riverrun to close my father's eyes, she thought. That much at least I can do. I may be a poor envoy, but I am a good mourner, gods save me.

But when she asks Renly's permission for her to return to Riverrun he denies it. He wants her to witness the battle so she can tell Robb about it.

Sansa 

Sandor Clegane has come to take Sansa to see the king, who has ordered her presence because he is angry about something, so she takes special care to dress to please him. She asks the Hound what she's done to offend Joffrey, but he says, "Not you. Your kingly brother." She replies, "Robb's a traitor," but Clegane only snorts at the words, which he knows to be insincere.

They find Joffrey at the archery range, where he has just killed a cat with his crossbow. Ser Dontos is there, too, riding on his broomstick horse in his enforced guise of a fool. Sansa kneels before Joffrey, who tells her, "Stand up. You're here to answer for your brother's latest treasons." He orders Lancel to "tell her of this outrage." Lancel proclaims that, "Using vile sorcery," Robb led "an army of wargs" in an attack on Ser Stafford Lannister, butchering thousands of men while they slept, and "After the slaughter, the northmen feasted on the flesh of the slain."

Joffrey says he hasn't "forgotten how your monster savaged me." She protests that it was Arya's wolf, and that her own wolf didn't harm him, though he killed her anyway. "'No, your father did,' Joff said, 'but I killed your father.'" He boasts that he killed a man the night before who was part of the crowd begging for food. "I'd shoot you too, but if I do Mother says they'd kill my uncle Jaime," so instead he's going to punish her.

Ser Dontos intervenes and offers to beat her. He has a weapon whose head is a melon, so he rides on his broomstick around her and whacks her on the head with the melon until it bursts, covering her with its juice. She recognizes what Dontos is doing, trying to spare her from real punishment, and hopes that it makes Joffrey laugh. But he doesn't. He summons Ser Boros and Ser Meryn Trant, and tells them, "Leave her face.... I like her pretty." Boros punches her in the stomach, and she doubles over. Then he takes his sword and begins to beat her on the back of the thighs. She hears the Hound say, "Enough," but Joffrey says it isn't. He orders, "Boros, make her naked." Boros sticks his hand down her bodice and rips it, baring her breasts, then orders, "Beat her bloody."

"What is the meaning of this?" shouts Tyrion angrily. He is followed by Bronn and Timett. He calls for someone to give Sansa something to cover herself with, and Sandor Clegane tosses her his cloak. "'This girl's to be your queen,' the Imp told Joffrey. 'Have you no regard for her honor.'" Joffrey says he's punishing her and that "She has the blood of a wolf." Tyrion responds, "And you have the wits of a goose." When Joffrey says, "The king can do as he likes," Tyrion replies, "Aerys Targaryen did as he liked. Has your mother ever told you what happened to him?" Ser Boros protests that this is a threat against the king. Tyrion says, "Bronn, Timett, the next time Ser Boros opens his mouth, kill him.... Now that was a threat, ser. See the difference."

When Ser Boros grumbles, "The queen shall hear of this," Tyrion asks Joffrey, "shall we send for your mother?" Which of course is the last thing Joffrey wants to do. "Wanton brutality is no way to win your people's love ... or your queen's," Tyrion advises him. "Fear is better than love, Mother says," Joffrey replies, pointing at Sansa. Tyrion comments, "A pity Stannis and Renly aren't twelve-year-old girls as well," and orders Bronn and Timett to escort Sansa as they leave.

In the Tower of the Hand, servants bathe and dress Sansa and Maester Frenken tends to her wounds, then gives her a sleeping potion. When she wakes, she realizes that she has been put in Arya's old room. Tyrion comes to see her there and explains why Joffrey was so angry. "Six nights gone, your brother fell upon my uncle Stafford, encamped with his host at a village called Oxcross not three days ride from Casterly Rock. Your northerners won a crushing victory. We received word onlhy this morning."

Sansa mouths the usual words, "My brother is a vile traitor," which only makes Tyrion smile. He tells her that the northmen crept into the camp and cut the horse lines, then Robb sent his wolf in to frighten the horses, who panicked and trampled men in their pavilions and frightened the recruited foot soldiers away. Ser Stafford was killed by Rickard Karstark with a lance, and four more knights were killed, and more taken prisoners. When Sansa says, "there was no sorcery?" Tyrion says, "Sorcery is the sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence."

He asks how she feels about Joffrey now, and she proclaims, "My love for His Grace is greater than it has ever been." Tyrion laughs. "Well, someone has taught you to lie well." Then he tells her that he has no intention of making her marry Joffrey. She hesitates to respond, fearing that it's a trick, and says, "I only want to be loyal." He asks why she visits the godswood every day, and she thinks, "I pray for Robb's victory and Joffrey's death ... and for home. For Winterfell." But she says, "I pray for an end to the fighting." Tyrion says that will happen soon, when there's a battle between Robb and Tyrion's father, which "will settle the issue." He knows what she's hoping for, and warns her, "A battle is not a war, and my lord father is assuredly not my uncle Stafford. The next time you visit the godswood, pray that your brother has the wisdom to bend the knee. Once the north returns to the king's peace, I mean to send you home."

He then suggests that she stay there, and he'll give her some of his men as guards, but she protests, "the wildlings frighten me." "Me as well," he admits. She says she would rather return to her own room, and he agrees and escorts her there.

2. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 52-92

Bran

The wolves, Summer and Shaggydog, are howling so much that others at Winterfell are complaining. No one can explain to Bran why they are howling, though Maester Luwin theorizes that they are howling at the comet, which produces its own theories from Osha, who thinks the comet means "Blood and fire, boy, and nothing sweet." And from Septon Chayle, who interprets it as "the sword that slays the season," and when the white raven arrives bringing its prophecy of winter, his theory seems to have been validated. Old Nan thinks the comet means dragons.

Bran, remembering the howls of the direwolves when his father died, is worried that their howling signifies a death. "Had some enemy slain the King in the North, who used to be his brother Robb? Had his bastard brother Jon Snow fallen from the Wall? Had his mother died, or one of his sisters?" He wishes he could think like a direwolf so he could interpret their howls, and he begins to howl himself. The sound brings the guard Hayhead to see what's wrong, and he tells Bran to stop. Bran continues, so Hayhead goes to fetch Maester Luwin, who thinks he should sleep.

When he sleeps, he turns into a wolf, he tells Luwin, who thinks Bran should spend more time with the other children in the castle. But Bran tells him he hates the other children, referring particularly to the two boys named Walder Frey whom Catelyn has taken in as wards -- part of the agreement with Lord Walder that earned his support of Robb in the fight against the Lannisters. There has been an incident involving one of the Frey boys and Rickon's wolf Shaggydog that has led to the wolves being banished to the godswood. Luwin fully supports this restriction on the wolves: "The truth is, those sweet pups you and your brothers found in the snow have grown into dangerous beasts. The Frey boys are wise to be wary of them."

But Bran resumes his howling, so Luwin leaves, "With a look that was part grief and part disgust." Bran grows quiet when he is alone again, and reflects on the incident that led to the direwolves' banishment. The two Walders, known as Big Walder and Little Walder, are cousins. When they arrived at Winterfell they were given Jon Snow's old room, which Bran resents. The boys had devised a game that involved one of them standing on a log in the pool in the godswood and trying to keep others from crossing the log. The children of the various castle servants and and officials join in the game, and the sound of their laughter and splashing made Bran bitterly resent that he was unable to join in. But then Rickon joined the game, and when Little Walder knocked him off the log, Shaggydog attacked Little Walder. The wolves and the children were separated after that.  To make matters worse for Bran, Rickon and the Walders became good friends after that, scandalizing Bran by taking the Frey boys into the family vaults.

Maester Luwin returns with a sleeping potion, and Osha carries Bran to the bed. After he drinks the potion, Osha stays behind and asks, "Is it the wolf dreams again?" Bran nods yes, and she tells him, "I see you talking to the heart tree. Might be the gods are trying to talk back." And Bran falls asleep and dreams that he is a wolf, prowling the grounds of Winterfell. "Beyond its sky-tall man-cliffs the true world was calling, and he knew he must answer or die."

Arya

As they travel northward, the group of recruits for the Wall encounter hundreds of people fleeing southward from the conflicts, heading toward King's Landing. Some of these refugees warn them that they're going the wrong way, and one man, a merchant, tries to buy the supplies Yoren is carrying. "It's war, they'll take what they want, you'll do better selling to me, my friend." They begin to come across graves by the roadside, and one day a member of their own party, a sellsword named Praed, is found dead. Yoren distributes Praed's belongings to the recruits, giving his longsword to the boy known as the Bull.

They stop at an inn that has a bathhouse, but though she smells bad and is covered with lice and fleas, Arya doesn't dare strip for a bath. Again they are warned by the southward travelers at the inn: "There's no going north. Half the fields are burnt, and what folks are left are walled up inside their holdfasts." Yoren reminds them that the Watch is neutral in civil conflicts: "Tully or Lannister, makes no matter. The Watch takes no part." Arya resents this because her grandfather is Lord Tully, but she keeps her silence, even when she hears, "And the Starks are in it too, the young lord's come down, the dead Hand's son...." She is startled to realize that he must mean Robb.

Another man says, "I heard the boy rides to battle on a wolf," though others scoff. And a man says, "It's been a bad year for wolves.... Around the Gods Eye, the packs have grown bolder'n anyone can remember." A woman chimes in that the pack leader is "a she-wolf, a bitch from the seventh hell." Arya wonders, "Was the Gods Eye near the Trident? She wished she had a map. It had been near the Trident that she'd left Nymeria," driving her wolf away with stones. "She probably wouldn't even know me now, Arya thought. Or if she did, she'd hate me." But when a man says he'd heard that the she-wolf had walked into a village and taken a baby from its mother's arms, Arya can't contain herself, and blurts out, "Wolves don't eat babies." Yoren intervenes to keep her from attracting more attention, and kicks her out of the inn.

Outside, one of the men chained in the wagon calls to her. "He was the youngest of the three, slender, fine-featured, always smiling. His hair was red on one side and white on the other." His fellow prisoners are a man with a hole where his nose should have been, and a bald man who hisses at her. When he opens his mouth she can see he has a stump where a tongue should have been. The first man apologizes, "A man does not choose his companions in the black cells." He tells her his name is Jaqen H'ghar and he is from the Free City of Lorath. The one without a nose is Rorge, and the other is Biter. "Biter cannot speak and Biter cannot write, yet his teeth are very sharp, so a man calls him Biter and he smiles." Remembering Syrio's maxim, "Fear cuts deeper than swords," Arya gets closer to the trio. Biter lunges for her, and she hits him between his eyes, driving him back temporarily. He strains forward again, but to no avail and sinks back.

Jaqen H'ghar says, "A boy has more courage than sense." Suddenly Arya feels a hand on her shoulder, and turns around, raising her stick sword. But it's the Bull, who reminds her that Yoren said they should stay away from the three. She tells him they don't scare her, but he says, "Then you're stupid. They scare me." As they walk back toward the inn, she asks him, "Want to fight?" He is surprised by the challenge, but as she moves into a fighting position he looks beyond her at something. It is a group of men from the City Watch. She pulls the Bull with her into a hiding place.

The leader of the group dismounts and tells the recruits in front of the bathhouse that he has a warrant for a boy. Arya whispers to the Bull, "It's me they want." Yoren comes out and the officer shows him the warrant, which has the queen's seal on it. Yoren looks at the warrant and says it's not valid because the boy is in the Night's Watch. Any crimes he may have committed have been superseded by that. The officer draws a sword and says he has five men to back him up. Yoren replies that he has thirty, and the boys begin to produce weapons.

Arya emerges from hiding and draws Needle. The officer scoffs at her, "Put the blade away, little girl, no one wants to hurt you." Arya protests that she's not a girl, but realizes that something's wrong. She insists, "I'm the one you want." But when the Bull comes forward to join her, the officer proclaims, "He's the one we want."

Yoren has intervened, however, and has his sword at the officer's throat. The officer drops his sword and the six gold-cloaked riders retreat, but their leader vows, "The next time I catch you, I believe I'll have your head to go with the bastard boy's." They ride off, and Yoren tells his recruits to get ready to ride all night to put some distance between themselves and the gold cloaks. Then he tells the Bull, "Queen wants you bad, boy."

Arya wants to know why the queen wants the Bull, and she asks him his name. "'Gendry,' he said, like he wasn't quite sure." Yoren tells Arya and Gendry to take the two fastest horses and if the gold cloaks show up to head for the Wall as fast as possible.

Jon

Samwell is in the library searching for maps in preparation for an expedition beyond the Wall to search for the still-missing Benjen Stark. Jon has gone to fetch him because the Commander has grown impatient for the maps. Sam is in awe of the collection: "Jon, the books, have you ever seen their like? There are thousands!" Jon is indifferent, however, and hustles the reluctant Sam away.

Sam's reluctance stems from the fact that he is part of the expedition. Jon assures him that the expedition's forces are so numerous, "You'll be as safe as if you were back in our lord father's castle at Horn Hill," which is no comfort to Sam: "I was never very safe in my father's castle either."

The gods play cruel jests, Jon thought. Pyp and Toad, all a lather to be a part of the great ranging, were to remain at Castle Black. It was Samwell Tarly, the self-proclaimed coward, grossly fat, timid, and near as bad a rider as he was with a sword, who must face the haunted forest. The Old Bear was taking two cages of ravens, so they might send back word as they went. Maester Aemon was blind and far too frail to ride with them, so his steward must go in his place.

As they emerge from the library, Jon notices how empty the grounds seem. Many of the men are off in Mole's Town at the brothel, having a last indulgence before the journey, while others are in the sept. "Some men want whores on the eve of battle, and some want gods," Jon thinks. He sees the new master-at-arms, who replaced his enemy Ser Alliser Thorne, training some new recruits that the armorer Donal Noye describes to him as "A brigand, a barber, a beggar, two orphans, and a boy whore. With such do we defend the realms of men." Jon talks with Noye about the surprising news that his brother Robb has become a king.

They find Lord Commander Mormont impatiently waiting for the maps and arguing with jThoren Smallwood, a ranger who had been an ally of Ser Alliser Thorne, and is no friend of Jon and Sam. Smallwood is arguing that Mormont should remain at Castle Black and name him First Ranger and let him lead the expedition, but Mormont is having none of  it. Smallwood leaves, though "On the way out, he frowned at Jon, as if it were somehow his fault." Mormont says he'd sooner name Sam First Ranger than Smallwood.

Mormont is disappointed with the maps Sam has located, complaining that they are old. Jon points out, "The villages may come and go, but the hills and rivers will be in the same places," which Mormont agrees is true. He asks Sam if he has picked out the ravens for the journey, and Sam, who is terrified of Mormont, stammers that Maester Aemon is going to select them. Mormont wants the best ones: "If it happens that we're all butchered out there, I mean for my successor to know where and how we died." The reminder of the danger of the journey "reduced Samwell Tarly to speechlessness." Mormont dismisses him, and Sam gladly leaves.

Mormont asks Jon if the hand that was burned in the encounter with the undead Othor has recovered enough for him to handle the sword Longclaw, and Jon removes his glove to show him the scars. Maester Aemon has given him some salve and advised him to exercise the hand every day. Mormont commends Aemon, and asks Jon, "Do you know that he might have been king?" Jon knew that Aemon was of the Targaryen royal family, but hadn't realized that he was that high in the line of succession. Mormont discusses the Targaryen lineage and says that it was the political infighting that caused Aemon to come to the Wall.

Jon asks why Mormont raises the subject, and Mormont observes, "Your brother Robb has been crowned King in the North. You and Aemon have that in common. A king for a brother." He and Aemon both took vows, Jon says, but Mormont scoffs, "Give me a man for every vow I've seen broken and the Wall will never lack for defenders." He then describes the contrast between the life Robb will lead as a king and the one Jon will lead as a member of the Watch. "Tell me that none of this troubles you, Jon ... and I'll name you a liar, and know I have the truth of it." Jon retorts that even if it troubles him, what can he do about it, "bastard as I am?"

"What will you do?" Mormont asked. "Bastard as you are?"

"Be troubled," said Jon, "and keep my vows."

Catelyn

A crown has been made for Robb from bronze and iron, "the metals of winter, dark and strong to fight against the cold," and Catelyn observes that Robb finds it heavy and uncomfortable. He is holding court, and Ser Cleos Frey has been brought before him. Robb, sitting with his unsheathed sword across his lap, tells Ser Cleos to rise. "Ser Cleos had been taken during the battle in the Whispering Wood, where Grey Wind had ripped out the throats of half a dozen men," so he exhibits fear when the wolf comes forward and sniffs at him. He addresses Robb as "my lord," and is loudly corrected by Lord Umber, the Greatjon: "Your Grace."

Robb tells him that he has been brought from his cell to carry a message to Cersei Lannister in King's Landing. It contains the terms of a peace between him and the queen: She is to release Sansa and Arya and send them home; cancel Sansa's betrothal to Joffrey; when they reach Winterfell he will release Willem Lannister and Cleos's brother Tion, who are Cersei's cousins; she will return Eddard Stark's bones and the remains of the members of his household guard; she will also return his father's sword, Ice; she will command Tywin to release the knights and bannermen he took captive; when he does so, he will release his own captives, except for Jaime Lannister; and finally "King Joffrey and the Queen Regent must renounce all claims to dominion over the north."

There are cries, led by Greatjon Umber, of "The King in the North!"

He adds that he's sending a map of borders beyond with Tywin must withdraw, and release his people from taxes and his lords and knight from any oaths of fealty to the Iron Throne and the houses of Baratheon and Lannister. And the Lannisters must "deliver ten highborn hostages," who will be treated as "honored guests" as long as the peace holds, and two of these hostages will be released every year for the duration of the peace.

More cries of "Stark, Stark, King in the North!" and a howl from Grey Wind.

After it's over, Catelyn tells him that he did well, though she thought "that business with the wolf was japery more befitting a boy than a king," and she noticed that Lord Rickard Karstark walked out when the talk of peace began. Catelyn's brother, Edmure, says he is also uneasy with the talk of peace as long as the Lannisters are out pillaging and slaughtering. He says they should be marching on Harrenhal instead, and worries that "Lord Karstark is a northman. It would be an ill thing if he were to leave us."

Catelyn sides with Robb, though with reservations: "An offer had to be made -- though a wiser man might have offered sweeter terms." Robb retorts, "Any sweeter and I would have gagged." Catelyn reflects that "he was still a youth of fifteen," and it had been hard to persuade him to make even this offer. She "was finding that kings do not listen half so attentively as sons." She is still concerned about Arya and Sansa and that if any harm comes to Jaime Lannister, "Cersei will pay us back blood for blood."

When Robb suggests that she might retreat to a safer place, or even return to Winterfell, Catelyn becomes more aware of how strained their relationship is becoming. She is worried about his reliance on Theon Greyjoy, whom she does not trust. So she goes to visit her father, who is on the brink of death, and finds her uncle, Ser Brynden Tully, the Blackfish, there. He gives her news of the fighting and unrest that is spreading across the land, and of the disintegration of the alliances forged during the war. Gregor Clegane has been doing Tywin Lannister's dirty work everywhere.

"Lannister wants to provoke us to battle," Brynden says, and Catelyn worries, "Robb is like to give him that wish." He replies, "My first rule of war, Cat -- never give the enemy his wish." What Tywin most wishes, he says, is for Robb to attack Harrenhal, Lannister's fortress. But even worse, he says, is that "a new host is gathering at Casterly Rock," commanded by Ser Stafford Lannister, a cousin of Tywin's and the brother of Tywin's deceased wife.

The only way to prevail, Brynden suggests, is by drawing Tywin out of Harrenhal. And one way to do that would be to stir Renly Baratheon to attack.