19. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 690-728

Theon

An army is gathering outside Winterfell, and Maester Luwin has come to advise Theon to yield. There have been no responses to the birds Luwin sent to Theon's uncle and his father. Theon insists that there's enough food in Winterfell to last out a year's siege, but he is so outnumbered that resistance is pointless. He orders Luwin to send more ravens, to tell Wex to polish his armor, and to have the garrison assemble.

He tells the assembled men that Ser Rodrik Cassel and the Stark bannermen will attack before night, but that he intends to stay and resist the assault. "Those who would stay and fight, step forward." No one moves for a few moments, but finally seventeen men join him. The ten men his sister had brought are not among them.

Black Lorren tells him that the people of the castle will join the side of the attackers once the fighting begins, which Theon already knows. He has a deterrent planned. He goes to the watchtower and examines the banners of the gathered troops. There are no Glovers or Boltons or Umbers among them, he notes.

Then words comes that Ser Rodrik wants "to parley with Theon Turncloak." The epithet stings, though it's accurate: His mission had been to get his father's ships to attack the Lannisters. He calls down to the messenger that he will be coming out by himself. Ser Rodrik is waiting for him in the market square, and spits on the ground when Theon addresses him, and reminds him that Eddard Stark "raised you among his own sons, the sweet boys you have butchered, and to my undying shame I trained you in the arts of war." He orders Theon to surrender. "Those who murdered no children shall be free to walk away, but you shall be held for King Robb's justice."

Theon presents his terms: "You have until evenfall to disperse. Those who swear fealty to Balon Greyjoy as their king and to myself as Prince of Winterfell will be confirmed in their rights and properties and suffer no harm. Those who defy us will be destroyed." Ser Rodrick replies that he has two thousand men to his fifty. "Seventeen in truth," Theon thinks, then says, "I have something better than men." He gives a signal, then watches Ser Rodrik's face: "He is not surprised, he thought with sadness, but the fear is there."

The anger is, too. Ser Rodrik calls Theon a "Viper," and declares, "I ought cut you down here and now and put an end to your lies and deceits." Theon replies, "Forswear your oath and murder me, and you will watch your little Beth strangle at the end of a rope." Ser Rodrik offers to take his daughter's place as hostage, but Theon refuses. "If this host is still in arms before my gate when the sun sets, Beth will hang." He rides back through the gate, above which Beth Cassel, a noose around her neck, stands between the small heads of the miller's boys whom Theon had killed in place of Bran and Rickon.

Theon goes back to Ned Stark's chambers, aware that the attack will still take place and that they are outnumbered. He has Wex bring his bow, and he goes to practice firing arrows. "If I hang the girl, the northmen will attack at once, he thought as he loosed a shaft. If I do not hang her, they will know my threats are empty. He knocked another arrow to his bow. There is no way out, none." But then Maester Luwin appears with a way out: "Take the black." Ser Rodrik, he tells Theon, will let him join the Night's Watch if he surrenders. Theon seizes on the idea and begins to persuade himself to do it.

He has almost made up his mind to follow Luwin's advice when one of his men appears: "More men came up, hundreds of them, and at first they made to join the others. But now they've fallen on them!" When he hears the description of the new men's banners, Theon knows who they are.

The flayed man of the Dreadfort. Reek had belonged to the Bastard of Bolton before his capture, Theon recalled. It was hard to believe that a vile creature like him could sway the Boltons to change their allegiance, but nothing else made sense.

He goes to see this battle, followed by Luwin. The Dreadfort men had taken Ser Rodrik's men by surprise and are prevailing over them. It begins to grow dark and smoke from the burning inn hides what is happening. Then a column of horsemen emerge from the smoke and ride toward the main gate of Winterfell. It is led by a knight in dark armor and a red helmet. Three bodies are dumped before the gates: Ser Rodrik's, Leobald Tallhart's and Cley Cerwyn's. Maester Luwin falls to his knees in dismay and is sick.

Theon orders the gates opened for the Dreadfort men. The knight removes his helmet and Theon identifies him as Reek. But in fact he is the Bastard of Bolton, Ramsay Snow, who changed clothes with the real Reek, who was killed. He reminds Theon that he was promised a girl if he brought two hundred men, and instead he brought his father's garrison. Theon orders the kennel girl, Palla, brought out, but the Bastard wants Theon's own bedmate, Kyra. When Theon angrily protests, the Bastard backhands him with a mailed fist and Theon blacks out.

When Theon wakes up he finds that the Dreadfort men have taken Winterfell and are slaughtering his men. He sees Maester Luwin stabbed from behind. "'Save me the Freys,' the Bastard was shouting as the flames roared upward, 'and burn the rest. Burn it, burn it all.'" The last thing Theon sees is his horse, Smiler, running from the stables with his mane on fire.

Tyrion

In his delirium, Tyrion dreams of death and the dying. "My work, thought Tyrion Lannister. They died at my command." There are so many corpses that he thinks, "Why did I kill them all? He had known once, but somehow he had forgotten." There are silent sisters in gray moving among them, removing their armor and their clothes, and he tries to speak to them but realizes he doesn't have a mouth. "Smooth seamless skin covered his teeth. The discovery terrifies him."

When he wakes again he finds himself in his own bed under a heap of blankets and furs. He is sweating profusely. "Fever, he thought groggily." He tries to remember the battle, and when he sees Ser Mandon, fear causes him to wet himself. He calls out for help but no one comes, and he falls back to sleep. He sees Cersei and his father standing over him, but thinks it must be a dream because Lord Tywin is supposed to be off fighting Robb Stark. Others appear, such as Varys and Littlefinger. He hears them talking but can't understand the words.

He realizes that they must have won the battle. "We must have, else I'd be a head on a spike somewhere. If I live, we won." He can sense that he is regaining control of his senses. The next time he wakes, Podrick Payne is standing over him but runs off when he sees Tyrion open his eyes.  He tries to call out but can't. Then he feels his face and realizes it is covered with bandages and plaster.

Podrick returns with a maester and asks if he wants something to drink. He sips through a copper funnel inserted through a hole in the plaster and bandages, but realizes that is is milk of the poppy and he's asleep before he can object. This time he dreams he's at a feast and his bravery is being celebrated. He kneels before Jaime and is made a knight. Shae is there, too.

When he wakes this time the room is cold and empty, and he feels the pain in his face and the right side of his body. He remembers that Ser Mandon Moore had tried to kill him and that Podrick had saved him. The room isn't his, and he gives out an angry moan. "They have moved me here to die." He dreams that he is in a seaside cottage with Tysha, his wife, but remembers how angry he was when he discovered the trick that had been played on him.

He wakes from another drugged sleep to see the maester's "soft pink face" over him, urging him to drink more of the opiate. He reaches and grabs the maester's chain and starts to choke the man. When the maester gets his breath back, Tyrion motions for him to remove the bandages on his face. The man protests, "You are not yet healed, the queen would...." That Cersei has had a hand in this infuriate him and he threatens the maester with a fist. Through the mask Tyrion orders, "Do. It."

The maester removes the bandages, and Tyrion feels the fiery pain as his faces is uncovered. The maester says it would have been wiser to keep the bandages on longer, but adds, "Still, it looks clean, good, good. When we found you down in that cellar among the dead and dying, your wounds were filthy." He tells Tyrion one of his ribs was broken and they were afraid he'd lose an arm because of the arrow wound in it, but "now it seems to be healing clean."

Tyrion asks the maester's name and learns that it's Ballabar. He asks for a looking glass, which the man is reluctant to provide. He also asks for wine. "No poppy." After two cups of wine, Tyrion feels ready to look at his face. There is a long gash starting under his left eye and extending to the right jaw. "Three-quarters of his nose was gone, and a chunk of his lip." He remembers Ser Mandon Moore extending his left hand and then a sword blow aimed at his head that he had dodged, though not enough to avoid the cut. "Cersei must have paid him to see that I never came back from the battle.... Another gift from my sweet sister."

He asks where he is, and learns that he is in Maegor's Holdfast over the Queen's Ballroom. "Her Grace wanted you kept close, so she might watch over you herself," Maester Ballabar tells him. He says he wants to be taken to his own chambers, but is told that the King's Hand has taken them over. He learns now that his father has been named Hand, and that it was Tywin's arrival with Lord Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers and Littlefinger that turned the tide of battle. "The smallfolk say it was King Renly's ghost, but wiser men know better."

Tyrion thinks who he can send for that he can trust, and finally asks for Podrick Payne. When Pod arrives, Tyrion tells him to send for Maeser Frenken, not Ballabar, and have him make dreamwine. He wants his own guard, and learns that Bronn has been knighted. Then he asks about Ser Mandon. "The boy flinched. 'I n-never meant to k-k-k-k-" All Tyrion wants to know for certain is that Mandon is dead, and when he's assured of that, he says, "Good. Say nothing. Of him. Of me. Any of it. Nothing."

Jon

They are trapped, and Qhorin Halfhand sends Jon for some brush to build a fire. He wonders if Ghost will howl for him when he's dead, the way Bran's wolf did when he fell. Only Jon and Qhorin remain of the five rangers in the party. Dalbridge, Ebben, and Stonesnake had been sent off on reconnaissance, and they had heard a horn that let them know that Dalbridge had been killed. Ebben had been dispatched back to Mormont and the rest of the expedition. Stonesnake's horse had been frightened by a shadowcat and broke its leg, so he remained behind to try to pick off the pursuers. "At every dawn and every dusk they saw the eagle soaring between the peaks, no more than a speck in the vastness of the sky."

One night Qhorin asks Jon to repeat the oath of the Night's Watch with him. Their horses are worn out, and Jon doubts that Qhorin's will last another day. Then Qhorin tells him, "If we are taken, you must yield." Jon refuses, but Qhorin says, "You will. I command it of you."

"If we are taken, you will go over to them, as the wildling girl you captured once urged you. They may demand that you cut your cloak to ribbons, that you swear them an oath on your father's grave, that you curse your brothers and your Lord Commander. You must not balk, whatever is asked of you. Do as they bid you ... but in your heart, remember who and what you are. Ride with them, eat with them, fight with them, for as long as it takes. And watch."

Jon agrees reluctantly. Then Qhorin has him build the fight "bright and hot," and ride away with him. They reach a place for the night that is hidden behind a waterfall, and Qhorin takes the first watch. The next morning they ride through a narrow passage that they have to persuade the horses through, and Jon thinks that they have lost their trackers. But when they emerge they see the eagle perched on a tree a hundred feet above them. Ghost tries to catch it but the bird flies off.

When he sees the direction the bird took, he tells Jon that this is where they will make a stand. They hear a hunting horn and know that they'll be there soon. They see the wildlings appear on a ridge a half mile away. Jon counts fourteen, with eight dogs. Qhorin and Jon draw their swords. The wildlings halt ten yards away and their leader, wearing armor made of bones, comes forward alone. Qhorin addresses him as "Rattleshirt," which provokes the wildling. He is joined by a woman, one of the wildlings' "spearwives," who reaches into a sack and pulls out Ebben's head. Rattleshirt calls for the bowmen to aim.

"No!" The word burst from Jon's lips before the bowmen could loose. He took two quick steps forward. "We yield!" 


"They warned me bastard blood was craven, he heard Qhorin Halfhand say coldly behind him. "I see it is so. Run to your new masters, coward."

Jon goes down the slope to Rattleshirt, who says, "The free folk have no need of cravens." But behind him one of the archers removes her sheepskin helmet and says, "This is the Bastard of Winterfell, who saved me. Let him live." Rattleshirt, however, says he doesn't trust him, and the eagle "split the air with a scream of fury." Ygritte says the bird was a man before Jon killed him. Rattleshirt tells the spearwife, "Ragwyle, gut him." But she suggests they put him to the test first.

Jon says he'll do whatever they order him to do, and Rattleshirt orders him to kill Qhorin Halfhand. So Jon fights Halfhand, remembering, "You must not balk, whatever is asked of you." Halfhand almost overcomes him, and Jon "could feel his arms growing numb" when Ghost moves in and seizes Qhorin by the calf. Then Jon sees his opening and slashes at Halfhand's throat, cutting it with the very tip of the sword.

Jon thinks, "He knew what they would ask of me." He thinks of his companions on the Wall and wonders if he has lost them the way he lost his family at Winterfell. Rattleshirt still wants to kill him, but others remind him that he yielded and that he killed his brother of the Watch. Rattleshirt insists that he couldn't have done it without the wolf's help and that "He is a warg ... and a crow. I like him not." The others prevail, however. "These are a free folk indeed, thought Jon."

They burn Halfhand's body, and Rattleshirt claims some of the bones. Jon asks Ygritte if they are going back through the Skirling Pass, but she tells him, "There's nothing behind us.... By now Mance is well down the Milkwater, marching on your Wall."

Bran

Through the wolf's eyes, Bran sees the burning of Winterfell, "and in the sky he saw a great winged snake whose roar was a river of flame." He hears the barking of dogs and the screams of horses and men, but he and his brother stay hidden in the forest. In the morning, when the fire has died, they prowl through the ruins, frightening the crows away from the corpses. He and his brother find a dying horse and fight over it. He wins, and feeds first, then lets his brother feed.

Then he feels himself being pulled back into the darkness, as a voice whispers, "Bran, come back." "He closed his third eye and opened the other two, the old two, the blind two." Meera asks what he saw, and he tells her "It was Winterfell. It was all on fire. There were horse smells, and steel, and blood. They killed everyone, Meera." He drinks some water eagerly, and asks, "How long?" Jojen tells him that he has been away for three days. Jojen says that's too long, and when Bran insists that he ate, tells him, "The wolf ate.... Not you."

He asks for Osha, and she speaks to him out of the darkness. He tells her that he saw Winterfell burning, and she says it was a dream. But he insists that they have to go see if it was true. Osha is afraid that Thoren will catch her and flay her as he had threatened, so Meera tells Bran she'll go. Osha lights a torch, and Bran can see the tombs of the Starks. "And in the mouth of the empty tomb that waited for Lord Eddard Stark, beneath his stately granite likeness, the six fugitives huddled round their little cache of bread and water and dried meat."

Bran assures them that he has seen the ruins of the castle, so they prepare to go above. Bran is hoisted into the basket on Hodor's back, and they make their way past the effigies of the old Kings in the North. Osha goes first and is away long enough for them to grow uneasy. Finally she returns to say that something is blocking the door to the crypt and she can't budge it. Bran says, "Hodor can move anything."

When they reach the door, they take Bran from the basket as Hodor pushes and shoves at the door until finally it gives way. They emerge into the ruins of the First Keep. "Nearby some crows were pecking at a body crushed beneath the tumbled stone, but he lay facedown and Bran could not say who he was." Osha observes that they "made enough noise to wake a dragon," but no one has come to see what it was. And then they hear a sound, and Summer and Shaggydog appear.

They explore the ruins and discover Theon's men among the corpses, and one with the sigil of the Dreadfort. Summer gives a howl and runs to the godswood. They follow and find Maester Luwin lying prone by the pool under the heart tree. He is still alive and pleased to find that Bran and Rickon are, too, though he had known that neither of the boys Theon had killed was Bran because of the muscles in the legs. Bran tells him that they had doubled back and hidden in the crypt.

Osha wants to make a little so they can carry Luwin to get help, but he insists that he's dying. He tells Osha that the boys must be separated and taken to different places. He warns them that many of the people friendly to the Starks are dead, including Ser Rodrik. He tells Bran that he must be strong, and all of them but Osha to leave him now.

When she joins them shortly, she says Hodor should take Bran, and she will take Rickon. Meera and Jojen say they will go with Bran. They find some still-edible provisions in the kitchens. Bran watches Osha and Rickon and Shaggydog leave by the East Gate, then they go out through the Hunter's Gate. It is Jojen who decides which way to go: north.

Bran looks back at Winterfell and reflects, "It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought. I'm not dead either."

14. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 533-563

Tyrion

Tyrion sends the last of his mountain men off to harass Stannis's oncoming troops, leaving his with only Bronn and his mercenaries among his personal guard. He now gives Bronn the task of burning the buildings along the waterfront that have attached "themselves to the city walls like barnacles on the hull of a ship." But he's aware that even the walls are not adequate protection. He has heard of the fall of Winterfell to Theon's band, and reflects, "They had given the Starks Harrenhal and taken Winterfell, a dismal exchange." He feels a twinge as he recalls his visit to Winterfell, and especially when he remembers the godswood, where he had felt alien. "He wondered if the Greyjoys would feel it too. The castle might well be theirs, but never that godswood. Not in a year, or ten, or fifty."

He returns to his quarters where angry merchant ship captains are waiting to protest his seizure of their ships. He promises to compensate them after the war. Then he goes to the installation of Ser Balon Swann and Ser Osmund Kettleblack as members of the Kingsguard. Balon is an honorable and courageous man, he thinks; on the other hand, Osmund is being paid by Bronn to tell him Cersei's secrets. He had replaced Ser Boros Blount on the Kingsguard after Jacelyn Bywater and his men had surprised them on the road and taken Tommen into their custody. Blount has been imprisoned.

After the investiture he takes the new High Septon aside and asks him to tell the gods that Stannis plans to burn the Great Sept of Baelor if he takes the city. The septon, who was Tyrion's choice, asks if it's true, and Tyrion replies, "It may be. Stannis burned the godswood at Storm's End as an offering to the Lord of Light. If he'd offend the old gods, why should he spare the new?"

Back at his chambers, he meets with Maester Frenken, who has taken over some of Pycelle's duties. Frenken has received a raven from Balon Greyjoy, who is calling himself King of the Isles and the North and requests that Joffrey send an envoy to discuss the boundaries between their kingdoms as well as a possible alliance. Then he talks to Hallyne the Pyromancer, who tells him they have nearly thirteen thousand jars of wildfire. He explains that for some reason the alchemists' spells have been working better than they once did, and recalls an alchemist who once commented that "magic had begun to go out of the world the day the last dragon died." Tyrion observes that he hasn't seen any dragons lately, so he doesn't think that could be an explanation for the magic working so much better.

Then he meets with Jacelyn Bywater, who says that Prince Tommen is happy at Rosby. "He has adopted a fawn some of my men brought home from a hunt. He had one once before, he says, but Joffrey skinned her for a jerkin." Tyrion asks what arrangements have been made for Tommen's safety if Stannis should be victorious, and Jacelyn replies, "You commanded me to tell no one, my lord." Tyrion is pleased with the answer: If King's Landing falls and he's taken alive, he'd rather not know where Joffrey's heir is.

Finally, Varys brings him a list of wealthy men who have been discovered to be plotting against Joffrey and intend to go over to Stannis during the attack. Tyrion orders their arrest.

Theon

Even though he is sleeping in Eddard Stark's bed with a tavern wench named Kyra, Theon is restless and hears noises. He goes to the window and looks out, but there are no unusual sounds. Then he realizes that the wolves aren't howling as they usually do. He sends one of his men to check on them, and then wakes his squire, Wex, and tells him to see if Bran and Rickon are in their beds. Wex returns first, shaking his head in a no, then his man returns to say the wolves are gone too.

Theon orders the castle awakened and summoned to the yard. Then he learns that the two men who were guarding the Hunter's Gate, which opened onto fields and forests, have been killed. One of them seems to have been savaged by wolves, while the other has been found with his pants down, as if he was with a woman who killed him.

In the yard, he confronts the residents of the castle, and asks how many of them are missing. Reek tells him that six are gone: "Both Starks, that bog boy and his sister, the halfwit from the stables, and you wildling woman." No horses are missing, so Theon assumes they are on foot, with Bran on Hodor's back and Rickon being carried by Osha.

He decides to search when it gets light, and orders the kennelmaster, Farlen, to ready some hounds for the search. Farlen asks, "And why would I care to hunt down my own trueborn lords, and babes at that." Theon reminds him that he is the one who rescued Palla, the girl who works in the kennels, from the rapists among his men, and punished the men as well, indicating that he might not be so protective next time, so Farlen backs down. He also orders Maester Luwin to go along because he doesn't trust the maester not to send messages with ravens while he's absent. One of the Freys also volunteers because he wants a "wolfskin cloak."

They follow the tracks of the wolves and the people on foot into the wolfswood, which makes Theon uneasy. As they ride, Maester Luwin makes a case for sparing the lives of Bran and Rickon, arguing that they have value as hostages, and pleads for mercy for Hodor. Theon says he'll consider it, but he won't spare Osha. "She swore me an oath, and pissed on it."

The dogs find a dead elk, which appears to have been killed by the wolves, but not butchered to feed the humans. But they lose the scent when they reach a brook. And the footprints at the brook are only those of the wolves. Theon realizes, "Osha must have turned aside back of us. Before the elk, most likely. She sent the wolves on by themselves, hoping we'd chase after them." But he decides to follow the wolves along the stream, knowing that eventually they will return to the boys. He sends a small party back to where they lost the trail.

By noon, there is no more sign of the wolves, and Theon fears that the boys have found a village that will shelter them. When all of the search parties reunite, they have no news to report. By dusk, they have to give up the search. But then Reek comes up with a suggestion. He remembers an old mill that the party bringing him as a captive to Winterfell had stopped at. Theon knows the mill, but doesn't understand why Reek should single it out. Then Reek takes him aside and shows him something he has brought with him: "a wolf's-head brooch, silver and jet." Theon suddenly understands what Reek is suggesting. He calls some of the men he trusts and sends the rest of the search party, along with the hounds, back to Winterfell, telling them, "I know where Bran and Rickon are hiding now."

Before he leaves, Maester Luwin reminds Theon of his promise to be merciful. "'Mercy was for this morning,' said Theon. It is better to be feared than laughed at. 'Before they made me angry.'"

Jon

The scouting party led by Qhorin Halfhand also includes, in addition to Jon, the rangers Squire Dalbridge, Ebben, and Stonesnake. They have spotted a campfire on the side of a mountain, "Half a mile ahead and two thousand feet up, Jon judged, and perfectly placed to see anything moving in the pass below." They are surprised to see the fire, which gives away the wildlings' position, since they have been careful not to light any fires themselves.

Stonesnake volunteers to make the climb, and Jon follows. Qhorin suggests that Ghost stay behind: "White fur is seen too easily by moonlight." When they reach the wildlings and capture or kill them, they are to throw down a brand from the fire as a signal to join them.

The Skirling Pass was really a series of passes, a long twisting course that went up around a succession of icy wind-carved peaks and down through hidden valleys that seldom saw the sun. Apart from his companions, Jon had glimpsed no living man since they'd left the wood behind and begun to make their way upward. The Frostfangs were as cruel as any place the gods had made, and as inimical to men.

As he makes his way up the mountain, Jon thinks, "Bran used to love to climb. I wish I had a tenth part of his courage."

They find the wildlings' camp "in a shallow depression above the narrowest part of the pass, with a sheer drop below and rock behind to shelter them from the worst of the wind." Stonesnake and Jon climb to just a few feet above them. One of them is asleep, another is feeding the fire, and a third, who wears a horn, is looking out into the pass. Jon is surprised to find that there are three of them, but at least one is asleep.

Stonesnake points at the one with the horn, indicating that he belongs to Jon.  Stonesnake leaps down first, and Jon draws Longclaw and follows. The wildling reaches for his horn to sound the alarm, but Jon knocks it from his hand with the sword. The man then grabs a burning stick from the fire and thrusts it at Jon, but Jon takes hold of his sword with both hands and cuts him down. The falling man grabs the sword from Jon's hand, just as the sleeper awakes. Jon pulls out his dirk and grabs the now-awake man by the hair, putting the point under his chin -- and then realizes that it's not a man but a girl. "A wildling," Stonesnake says. "Finish her."

Jon is reminded of Arya, and asks if she will yield. She says she does, but Stonesnake says, "Qhorin said nothing of taking captives." Jon replies, "He never said not to." Jon asks her name and she says it's Ygritte. When he tells her his name is Jon Snow, she says, "An evil name." He tells her he is the bastard son of Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell. Stonesnake says, "It's the captive supposed to tell things, remember?"

Ygritte says they should burn the men they killed, and Jon realizes why, remembering the undead who attacked at the Wall. Instead, Stonesnake flings the bodies over the edge of the cliff. Jon realizes that Ygritte is older than he thought, perhaps twenty. He asks if they were sent to watch them, and she says, "You, and others." Stonesnake asks what's beyond the pass, and she says, "The free folk.... Hundred and thousands." But when they ask what is in the Frostfangs that Mance Rayder wants, and whether they plan to march on the Wall, and whether she knows anything about Benjen Stark, she remains silence.

There is the sound of the growling of a shadowcat, then another, but she says they won't attack them. They were attracted by the smell of blood and will seek out the bodies. As they sit there, she tells them the story of Bael the Bard, who "was King-beyond-the-Wall a long time back." The Stark in Winterfell "called Bael a craven who preyed only on the weak," so Bael climbed over the Wall and walked into Winterfell posing as a singer named Sygerrik of Skagos. "Sygerrik means 'deceiver' in the Old Tongue, that the First Men spoke, and the giants still speak."

Bael entertains Lord Stark with his songs, and is told he can name his reward. Bael says he wants "the fairest flower that blooms in the gardens o' Winterfell." So Stark has a rare winter rose brought to Bael. "But when morning come, the singer had vanished ... and so had Lord Brandon's maiden daughter. Her bed they found empty, but for the pale blue rose that Bael had left on the pillow where her head had lain."

Jon asks which Brandon this was, but Ygritte asks if he wants to hear the story, so he tells her to go on. She says that Lord Brandon had no other children, so he sent searchers out for his daughter. They couldn't find her, however, and it looked like the line of Starks had reached its end. But on his deathbed he hears a baby cry, and he finds his daughter in her chamber with a baby at her breast. She had been hiding in the crypt beneath the castle and "the boy grew to be the next Lord Stark. So there it is -- you have Bael's blood in you, same as me."

Jon says, "It never happened." Ygritte replies, "Might be it did, might be it didn't. It is a good song, though." The song ends with the baby being found,  she says, but the story goes on. Thirty years later, Bael had become King-beyond-the-Wall and met his son, Lord Stark, in battle. And Stark killed Bael, who "would not harm his own son when they met sword to sword." But, she adds, "the gods hate kinslayers, even when they kill unknowing." Stark returned to Winterfell with Bael's head, and when his mother saw it, she jumped from the top of a tower. And one of Stark's lords flayed him and wore his skin for a cloak.

Jon says Bael was a liar, but Ygritte insists "a bard's truth is different than yours or mine."

At dawn, they are joined by Qhorin and the others. Ghost runs to meet Jon, and he plays the game he and the direwolf play, in which the wolf closes his jaw around Jon's wrist and tugs his hand back and forth. Ygritte watchs "with eyes as wide and white as hen's eggs." Jon explains that she yielded to him, but Qhorin says there isn't enough food for her and they can't spare anyone to guard her. He tells Jon that since she yielded to him, he "must do what needs to be done."

The others leave Jon with Ygritte, who says, "You never killed a woman before, did you?" and asks if he will burn her body afterward. When he says he can't risk the smoke being seen, she says, "Well, there's worse places to end up than the belly of a shadowcat." She bares her neck and kneels before him. He raises Longclaw to strike, but then lowers it and says "Go." She does.

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.

9. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 372-403

Catelyn

Catelyn has gone to a sept to pray before the battle between Stannis and Renly, and she finds the faces of the gods as portrayed in the charcoal drawing on the walls of this simple place of worship remind her of people.

The Father's face made her think of her own father, dying in his bed at Riverrun. The Warrior was Renly and Stannis, Robb and Robert, Jaime Lannister and Jon Snow. She even glimpse Arya in those lines, for just a moment.... When she looked up at the Mother again, it was her own mother she saw.... She was always so calm, Catelyn thought, remembering her mother's soft hands, her warm smile.... She wondered what Lady Minisa would make of her eldest daughter, kneeling here before her.... I have lost my daughters, Robb does not want me, and Bran and Rickon must surely think me a cold and unnatural mother. I was not even with Ned when he died....

And then she thinks of Cersei, who is also a mother, and wonders if she prays to the Mother as well. If Cersei had killed Ned and Jon Arryn because they learned her secret, Catelyn wonders, "Would I do any less for my own?" And then she remembers Bran's fall and the attack on him and realizes that he must know something too. "Gods be good, he must have seen something, heard something, that was why they tried to kill him in his bed."

She returns to Renly's pavilion, where Brienne is helping him put on his armor, and tells him she needs to talk with him. He is arguing with two of his knights, who urge him to attack before daybreak, but Renly maintains that would be "unchivalrous." Finally he agrees to speak with Catelyn, who tells him of the attack on Bran. There had been a hunt on the day when Bran fell, and most of the men had gone, but Jaime had remained behind at Winterfell, as had Cersei. Renly gets the point: "you believe the boy caught them at their incest." She begs him to let her go tell Stannis as well. She says Robb will set aside his crown if Renly and Stannis will too. Then they can call a Great Council at which "the assembled lords of the Seven Kingdoms choose who shall rule them."

But Renly laughs at the idea. "The time for talk is done. Now we shall see who is stronger." Brienne kneels to buckle the belt that holds Renly's longsword. Suddenly there is a gust of wind that opens the entrance to the tent. When Catelyn turns to look, she sees what she takes to be Renly's shadow on the walls of the tent, lifting his sword. But she realizes that Renly's sword is still sheathed.

"Cold," said Renly in a small puzzled voice, a heartbeat before the steel of his gorget parted like cheesecloth beneath the shadow of a blade that was not there. He had time to make a small thick gasp before the blood came gushing out of his throat.

Brienne cries out when she sees the blood, and screams when he collapses into her arms. Catelyn recognizes that "Something dark and evil had happened here," but all she knows is that "Death came in that door and blew the life out of him as swift as the wind snuffed out his candles." Ser Robar Royce and Ser Emmon Cuy come rushing in, and when they see Brienne covered with Renly's blood they assume that she has killed him. Emmon picks up a battle-axe and starts for Brienne as Catelyn cries out. But Brienne swiftly pulls Renly's sword and parries the attack, then pivots and cuts off the hand of a man who has moved in behind her with a torch. Brienne holds off the attackers, and Catelyn tries to persuade Ser Robar that Stannis had killed Renly.

It was sorcery of some kind, she argues, as Brienne kills another guardsman. Hearing shouts from outside, Catelyn says, "She is innocent, Robar. You have my word, on my husband's grave and my honor as a Stark." Robar believes her, and tells Catelyn to get Brienne away. Emmon is still fighting with Brienne, but Catelyn knocks him down with an iron brazier, and she and Brienne escape into the darkness outside.

They move slowly to avoid attracting notice, but already the word has spread and there is disarray among the troops. Brienne asks Catelyn what had happened, and Catelyn tells her about the shadow that she first thought was Renly's but then recognized as Stannis's. "I felt him. It makes no sense, I know...."

Catelyn's escort is waiting for her, and she persuades Brienne to ride with them. "We were both with the king when he was killed. That will not be forgotten." As they ride away, Catelyn realizes that "Stannis has won all with a single evil stroke. I am the rightful king, he had declared, his jaw clenched hard as iron, and your son no less a traitor than my brother here. His day will come as well."

Jon

They have reached a hill that rises above the forest. It's known as the Fist of the First Men because of its shape. At its top there is a space enclosed by "a chest-high wall of tumbled rocks" that was said to have been "a ringfort of the First Men in the Dawn Age." Lord Mormont thinks it a good site for their encampment, but Jon is concerned because of the lack of water. And when he finds Ghost, the wolf won't enter the circle of stones. "It was not like him to be so unsettled." When the darkness comes on, Jon finds his own "sense of foreboding" increases, but he tells himself to "Stop acting the boy."

Mormont proposes to settle in and fortify the encampment, then wait for the wildlings to pass by. Jon protests that if the rangers don't move from sight of the Fist, then it will be hard for them to find his Uncle Benjen. But Mormont provokes him to think for a moment and Jon realizes, "it might be easier for one man to find two hundred than for two hundred to find one." Mormont concurs: "If Ben Stark is alive and free, he will come to us, I have no doubt." But they also acknowledge the possibility that he might come to them if he's dead, too.

Jon is not the only one feeling uneasy. The forester Dywen says, "I know this wood as well as any man alive, and I tell you, I wouldn't care to ride through it alone tonight. Can't you smell it?" He says it "smells ... well ... cold." The others scoff, but Jon agrees, remembering the night the undead man attacked in the Lord Commander's chambers. "It smells like death." He hears the sound of wolves howling, and then sees Ghost's red eyes glowing -- the wolf has decided to come inside the ringfort, but he is still uneasy. Jon follows him outside and down the hill, wondering why he is doing this.

When he reaches the stream, Ghost is drinking, but then he is off again. Jon calls on him to stay, but Ghost doesn't obey. Jon thinks of returning to the fort, but he follows Ghost into the forest where he finds the wolf digging into what Jon thinks at first is a grave. Two feet beneath the loose earth he finds a bundle. It contains a dozen knives, as well as spearheads and arrowheads, carved from "Dragonglass. What the maesters call obsidian." There is also a warhorn filled with more arrowheads.  When Jon examines the cloth in which all of this was wrapped he finds that it is "the black cloak of a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch."

Bran

Bran is summoned to Maester Luwin's quarters where Rickon and the Frey cousins are already gathered. A raven has arrived with news of Robb's victory. Though he is pleased by the news, he feels uneasy because Tywin Lannister remains undefeated, and he remembers Osha saying that Robb was "marching the wrong" way when he left. There is also news that the Freys' uncle Stevron Frey was killed in the battle, but the two Walders are unmoved by it and fall to arguing about who will be their grandfather's heir. Luwin scolds them for not grieving for their uncle, but Bran has a sudden revelation: "They like the taste of this dish better than I do."

He returns to his room, where he asks Osha if she has ever seen a three-eyed crow. She laughs and says she hasn't. Then Jojen and Meera come to his room, and Bran admits that he has seen the fulfillment of Jojen's dream about Maester Luwin serving him some delicious meat that he doesn't enjoy, and serving the Freys inferior meat that they relish. Bran's muted response to the news of Robb's victory and the Freys' gossiping after the news of their uncle's death are parallel to what Jojen had dreamed. "The green dreams take strange shapes sometimes," Jojen says. So Bran now wants to hear about the dream of the bad thing coming to Winterfell.

"It is the sea that come," Jojen says. He dreamed that the castle had flooded, and among the drowned men floating in the yard are Alebelly, the septon, and the smith, Mikken. Bran says they must warn them, but Jojen says it won't make any difference, and Meera argues that they won't believe him. As he agreed he would, he now tells Jojen and Meera what he dreams: the wolf dreams, the crow urging him to fly, the tree that calls his name, and the nightmares about falling. Meera asks if that's all, and he lies and says yes, omitting the ones in which Jaime Lannister appears.

Jojen says people will call him a warg, a shapechanger, if they hear about the wolf dreams. "Some will hate you if they know what you are. Some will even try to kill you." Bran insists that he doesn't want to be a warg; he wants to be a knight.

"A knight is what you want. A warg is what you are. You can't change that, Bran, you can't deny it or push it away. You are the winged wolf, but you will never fly." Jojen got up and walked to the window. "Unless you open your eye." He put two fingers together and poked Bran in the forehead, hard.

Bran is left more confused by this, and he keeps poking at his forehead to try to find the third eye. He also tries to warn Mikken and Septon Chayle about Jojen's dream, but as Jojen predicted, they don't believe him. Alebelly does, however, and refuses to bathe until the other guards gang up on him and wash away his stink.

Ser Rodrik returns from his task, which was to rescue Lady Hornwood, who had been kidnapped by Roose Bolton's bastard son. They had killed the bastard, but failed to rescue Lady Hornwood, who had starved to death in the tower the bastard had locked her in after their wedding. He had forced her to sign a document naming him her heir, which means that Roose Bolton has a claim to her lands. This has touched off a battle between other factions claiming the inheritance. Ser Rodrik has taken prisoner the bastard's servant, "a fleshy young man with fat moist lips and long hair who smelled like a privy," and who is consequently known as Reek.

Bran tells Ser Rodrik about Jojen's prophecy that Winterfell is going to be attacked by the sea. Luwin says he has "spoken to Bran about the uncertainty of such prophecies, but if truth be told, there is trouble along the Stony Shore. Raiders in longships, plundering fishing villages. Raping and burning." Since there is a possibility that Ser Rodrik might have to deal with these sea-dwellers, he asks if Jojen saw him drowned, and Bran says no.

That night, Bran and Jojen and Meera are playing a game, and Bran suggests that if they don't go near the sea, the prophecy might not come true, but Jojen insists, "The things I see in green dreams can't be changed." Meera asks what's the point of a prophecy if you "can't heed it and change what's to come," but Jojen insists that's the way it works. She blurts out that Bran should fight to change things, and then realizes that she's said too much. Bran sees that she's hiding something from him and asks, "Was I drowned?"

"Not drowned." Jojen spoke as if every word pained him. "I dreamed of the man who came today, the one they call Reek. You and your brother lay dead at his feet, and he was skinning off your faces with a long red blade.... I saw you and Rickon in your crypts, down in the dark with all the dead kings and their stone wolves.... The dream was green, Bran, and the green dreams do not lie."

Tyrion

News has arrived of Renly's death, and Varys is sharing it with Cersei, Littlefinger, and Tyrion.  "Most of the lords who rode with Lord Renly to Storm's End have gone over banner-and-blade to Stannis, with all their chivalry." Storm's End hasn't fallen, however, and Loras Tyrell has left for Bitterbridge with his sister, Renly's wife, and other soldiers. Renly's body has disappeared. Tyrion sees an opportunity to gain the Tyrells and their bannermen. They should arrange a marriage between Joffrey and Margaery Tyrell.

When Cersei objects, "Joffrey is betrothed to Sansa Stark," Tyrion says, "What advantage is there in wedding the king to the daughter of a dead traitor?" And Littlefinger adds that the Tyrells are richer than the Starks, and that Margaery is beautiful "and beddable besides" -- Sansa is not yet old enough to marry. Cersei says that Joffrey is not old enough to think about "such things" as sex, but Tyrion knows better. He "had spoken with Varys about how they might arrange for Joffrey to visit Chataya's. A taste of honey might sweeten the boy." Cersei argues that Joffrey would never consent to the marriage, but Tyrion points out that until he comes of age in three years, he has to do what the regent and the Hand tell him to do.

So Cersei gives in. "Make your offer then, but gods save you all if Joff does not like this girl." Then they argue about who should go to Bitterbridge and persuade the Tyrells to the marriage. Littlefinger volunteers to do so, to Tyrion's surprise: "What gain does he see in this?" He doesn't trust Littlefinger and would rather keep him around where he can control him, but the only other option is to go himself, and if he left King's Landing, "all that he had managed to accomplish would be undone." Then Littlefinger argues for a large contingent of guards and a commission in writing signed and sealed by Joffrey and all the members of the council.

After the meeting, Cersei tells Tyrion, "I know we do not always agree on policy, but it seems to me that I was wrong about you. You are not so big a fool as I imagined." And to his astonishment she kisses him on his forehead. He is certain she is up to something. 

7. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 299-340

Tyrion

As he approaches Cersei's chamber, Tyrion hears a singer, but the music stops when he enters. The singer is Ser Lancel Lannister, who used to be King Robert's squire, but was knighted after his death. He is sixteen years old. Ser Lancel leaves grudgingly when Tyrion says he wants to speak to Cersei privately.

He has news for her: "Lord Stannis has sailed from Dragonstone." Immediately Cersei is on him about making preparations to defend the city, but he is laughing so hard that for a moment he can't quite get the rest of it out: "He hasn't sailed against us," he tells her. "He's laid siege to Storm's End. Renly is riding to meet him."

Cersei is so delighted by this news that she even hugs Tyrion. When she is finished laughing, she asks if there is a chance the Baratheon brothers will decide to join forces instead of fighting each other, but Tyrion insists, "They are too different and yet too much alike, and neither could ever stomach the other."

He suggests that they drink to "brotherly love," and while he's pouring the wine he manages "to sprinkle a pinch of fine powder" into Cersei's cup. She is so beautiful when she smiles as they toast Stannis and Renly that "He almost felt sorry for poisoning her."

The next morning, word comes to him that Cersei is "indisposed." "Not able to leave her privy, more like," he thinks, and he goes to the meeting in the throne room with Ser Cleos regarding Robb's peace terms without her. As Hand, he has the right to sit in the Iron Throne, which at least gives him the opportunity to look down on the people in audience.

He calls for Ser Cleos and rejects Robb's terms, then presents his own:

"Robb Stark must lay down his sword, swear fealty, and return to Winterfell. He must free my brother unharmed, and place his host under Jaime's command, to march against the rebels Renly and Stannis Baratheon. Each of Stark's bannermen must send us a son as hostage. A daughter will suffice where there is no son. They shall be treated gently and given high places here at court, so long as their fathers commit no new treasons." 

As expected, Cleos says that Robb will never agree to those terms. Tyrion continues, telling him that an army is massing at Casterly Rock that will march on him from the west while Tywin's army marches on him from the east. He can't expect support from Stannis and Renly because they are at war with each other, or from the Prince of Dorne, because he "has consented to wed his son Trystane to the Princess Myrcella."

He offers an exchange of prisoners, and the return of Ned Stark's bones "as a gesture of Joffrey's good will." But when Cleos says that Robb asked for the return of his sisters and of his father's sword, Tyrion replies that he can have Ice when he concludes a peace with them and his sisters when "he frees my brother Jaime, unharmed." Until then, "they shall remain here as hostages. How well they are treated depends on him." Silently, he hopes that they can find Arya before Robb finds out that she's missing.

Then he calls on Vylarr, the head of the Lannister household guards, and tells him that he and the rest of the Lannister guards are to accompany Cleos back to Riverrun. Astonished, Grand Maester Pycelle rises to protest that "your father, Lord Tywin himself, he sent these good men to out city to protect Queen Cersei and her children." Tyrion replies that the Kingsguard and the City Watch are sufficient protection. Then he asks if anyone else has anything to bring forward.

From the back of the hall, Ser Alliser Thorne pushes forward to demand a hearing. Tyrion feigns surprise that Alliser had come to court. Alliser insists that he must speak to the king. "The matter is too grave to be left to servants." Tyrion explains that Joffrey was "playing with his new crossbow" -- which Tyrion had given him to keep him occupied -- and says, "You can speak to servants or hold your silence."

Alliser reluctantly agrees, and begins to tell the story of the attack on the Watch and the Lord Commander by the undead rangers. The story sounds so preposterous that someone sniggers, and Tyrion begins to suspect that a trick is being played on him by Varys or Littlefinger or Pycelle. "A dwarf enjoyed at best a tenuous hold on dignity. Once the court and kingdom started to laugh at him, he was doomed." But at the same time he remembers the sense of dread he had felt when he stood on top of the Wall with Jon and his wolf and looked out at the lands beyond the Wall.

He saves face by making fun of Alliser and his story, especially when he reveals that the dead man's hand he brought with him has rotted away. And he tells Littlefinger to supply Alliser with a hundred spade to take with him on his return. "If you bury your dead, they won't come walking." The court laughs. He tells Ser Jacelyn Bywater to round up more prisoners to send to the Night's Watch, and when Alliser protests that "The Wall must be held," points out that he has done just that by ordering more men. He adds, "Give my warm regards to Lord Mormont ... and to Jon Snow as well."

Afterward, Varys expresses his admiration of Tyrion's tactics: "You appease the Stark boy with his father's bones and strip your sister of her protectors in one swift stroke. You give that black brother the men he seeks, rid the city of some hungry mouths, yet make it all seem mockery so none may say that the dwarf fears snarks and grumkins. Oh, deftly done." Littlefinger is less generous in his praise, and confesses, "I do not relish being played for a fool. If Myrcella weds Trystane Martell, she can scarcely wed Robert Arryn, can she?" Tyrion offers a mild apology, but Littlefinger leaves unappeased.

Tyrion asks Varys to walk with him. The eunuch says that Cersei will not part with her guard, but Tyrion says she will if he explains that it's part of his scheme to free Jaime. Varys says, "This would doubtless involve the four men your man Bronn searched for so diligently in all the low places of King's Landing. A thief, a poisoner, a mummer, and a murderer." Tyrion, unsurprised that Varys has sniffed this out, says that he has been looking for a way to get them into Riverrun, and by disguising them as guardsmen, "They'll ride in by the main gate, flying Lannister banners and escorting Lord Eddard's bones.... So I must send the true guardsmen as well as the false ... as you'll tell my sister."

Tyrion then finds his men Timett and Shagga and tells them to come to his chambers at midnight. Shortly after midnight, Shagga kicks down the door of Grand Maester Pycelle's room, and Timett tears the curtains from around the bed, revealing a naked serving girl and the naked Grand Maester. Pycelle protests, "I am an old man, your loyal servant...." Tyrion replies that it wasn't very loyal to send only one of the copies of the letter to Doran Martell and to give the other to the queen.

Pycelle tries to blame it on Varys, but Tyrion says that he told Varys he was sending Tommen to Prince Doran to foster. He told Littlefinger that he was going to marry Myrcella to Lord Robert. "I told no one that I had offered Myrcella to the Dornish ... that truth was only in the letter I entrusted to you." Pycelle persists in trying to blame first Varys and then Littlefinger, but Tyrion says, "Shagga, cut off his manhood and feed it to the goats."

Pycelle screams and wets the bed, and Shagga hacks off three-quarters of Pycelle's beard with his axe. "How long have you been spying for my sister?" Tyrion demands, as Shagga takes hold of what's left of Pycelle's beard. Pycelle confesses that he has always served Tywin Lannister, and surprises Tyrion by saying that it was he who told King Aerys Targaryeon to open the gates, leading to the Sack of King's Landing. He had hoped that Tywin would take the throne, he says, "but Robert was too strong, and Lord Stark moved too swiftly...."

Tyrion confronts Pycelle  about the poisoning of Jon Arryn.  "I saw the tears of Lys among your potions. And you sent away Lord Arryn's own maester and tended him yourself, so you could make certain that he died." Pycelle denies it, but when Shagga's blade draws blood from his throat he admits that he sent away Maester Colemon because he was trying to counteract the poison with purgatives. "It was not me who gave him the poison, though, I swear it.... Varys will tell you, it was the boy, his squire, Hugh he was called, he must surely have done it, ask your sister, ask her."

Tyrion orders Pycelle taken off to the black cells.

Arya

After eight days in the storehouse by the Gods Eye, Arya and the other prisoners have been marched to Harrenhal. Each day a prisoner was called out and questioned by a man known as the Tickler. The questions were always the same, centering on Lord Beric Dondarrion and his followers and helpers. "No one ever survived the Tickler's questioning; no man, no woman, no child. The strongest lasted past evenfall. Their bodies were hung beyond the fires for the wolves."

On the march, Arya loses all sense that she might be the "water dancer" that Syrio Forel had tried to teach her to become. "The direwolf was the sigil of the Starks, but Arya felt more like a lamb, surrounded by a herd of other sheep. She hated the villagers for their sheepishness, almost as much as she hated herself." She has lost Needle and her wooden sword was broken over the knee of one of the Lannister men. She has revealed herself as a girl when she has to urinate in sight of the others, surprising Hot Pie. Gendry had been spared because "smiths, even apprentice smiths, were too valuable to kill."

As they march, Arya begins compiling a list of hates: Dunsen because he has taken Gendry's helmet, Polliver because he has Needle, Chiswyck because he hides his cruelty behind a façade of jolliness, Raff the Sweetling because he killed Lommy, Amory Lorch for killing Yoren, Meryn Trant for killing Syrio, the Hound for killing the butcher boy Mycah, Ser Ilyn and Joffrey and Cersei for her father and all the others, including Lady, Sansa's wolf. She repeats their names every night as if praying.

Finally they reach Harrenhal, which is immense. Hot Pie doesn't want to enter it because he's heard that it's haunted, but Chiswyck gives him a choice: "Come join the ghosts, or be one." Inside they are made to strip and bathe. When they ask her name, she says it's Weasel, "naming the first girl she could think of." When they say she is being sent to work in the kitchen, she says she'd rather tend the horses, thinking she might be able to steal one and escape. But she gets slapped for insolence, and told that the grooms and squires take care of the horses. "The kitchens are snug and clean, and there's always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat," but since she mouthed off, she's being assigned to Weese, the understeward for the Wailing Tower, who says, "I can smell defiance, I can smell pride, I can smell disobedience. I catch a whiff of any such stinks, You'll answer for it. When I sniff you, all I want to smell is fear."

Daenerys

They have arrived at Qarth, which the warlock Pyat Pree acclaims as "the greatest city that ever was or ever will be." It is surrounded by three walls, the outer of red sandstone carved with figures of animals. The middle one is grey granite with scenes of battle, and the innermost is black marble covered with scenes of sexual coupling. She is greeted by small children scattering flowers in her path. The architecture of the city is rich and fanciful and the people are tall and pale and dressed in "linen and samite and tiger fur." The merchant prince Xaro Xhoan Daxos says that she can have anything she sees that takes her fancy.

Daenerys replies that all she wants is ships and swords to win back the red castle at King's Landing. Ser Jorah, who is riding at her side, advises her, "You would do well to avoid both these men, Your Grace." Daenerys tells him that she hopes to use Xaro's wealth and Pyat Pree's power to get her crown. But Jorah says, "I would not linger here long, my queen. I mislike the very smell of this place."

They show her to immense and opulent lodgings and take their leave. "Last of the three seekers to depart was Quaithe the shadowbinder. From her Dany received only a warning. 'Beware,' the woman in the red lacquer mask said." When Daenerys asks whom she should beware, Quaithe says, "Of all." Jorah agrees, though he says he doesn't like her any more than he does the others. It bothers Daenerys that she has never seen the woman's face, and she is reminded of the treachery of Mirri Maz Duur. She tells her bloodriders to keep watch, especially on the dragons. Then she sends Rakharo to check out the parts of the city they haven't been shown yet, and Jorah to the waterfront to find out about the ships and if there has been any news from Westeros.

She is feeding the dragons when Jorah returns with Quhuro Mo, a ship's captain who wears "a cloak of green and yellow feathers and had skin as black as polished jet." He was in Oldtown half a year ago and he tells Daenerys of the death of Robert Baratheon. Jorah adds that Joffrey has taken the throne, but the Lannisters are in charge. Quhuru Mo adds that Lord Stark has been seized for treason. "'Ned Stark a traitor?' Ser Jorah snorted. 'Not bloody likely. The Long Summer will come again before that one would besmirch his precious honor.'" But Daenerys is not willing to concede any honor to anyone who betrayed the Targaryens.

When Quhuru Mo takes his leave, she tells him, "Come to me in King's Landing when I am on my father's throne, and you shall have a great reward." But after he leaves, Jorah warns her not to broadcast her plans. And since Joffrey is on the throne, he thinks nothing has changed. She disagrees. She has "the blood of the dragon," she proclaims. He warns, "Even dragons can die." She admits that dragons die, then kisses him on the cheek: "But so do dragonslayers."

Bran

Bran watches Meera as she captures Summer with a net. When she releases the wolf, Bran calls him and they wrestle, with the wolf snarling and yapping. Meera asks if the wolf ever gets angry, and Bran says, "Not with me." Sometimes he tears Bran's clothes, but never draws blood. She says he would have drawn her blood if he'd gotten free of the net, but Bran insists that he wouldn't because "He knows I like you."

Meera and Jojen have stayed on at Winterfell and have become Bran's "constant companions," though they are both older than he is -- Bran has just turned nine, and Meera is almost sixteen. When Bran begins to struggle to sit up against a tree, Meera starts to help him, but he tells her not to, and finally rolls and pushes his way upright. He asks her if the master-at-arms at Greywater Watch taught her to fight with a net, but she says they don't have any knights, or a maester. When Bran asks who keeps their ravens, she says they don't have any because ravens can't find Greywater, "Because it moves." He asks if he could visit them, and she says he would be welcome, so he decides to ask Ser Rodrik when he returns from settling a dispute that has arisen.

Jojen says that it would be good if Bran left Winterfell soon. Meera tells Bran that Jojen "has the greensight.... He dreams things that haven't happened, but sometimes they do." Jojen protests against the "sometimes." Bran asks Jojen to tell him what's going to happen, but Jojen says he will if Bran will tell him about his dreams.

Bran denies that he has dreams, though of course he does. And Meera says, "All of Winterell knows you wake at night shouting and sweating, Bran." Jojen asks what frightens him so much, but Bran refuses to admit anything. So Jojen tells him, "I dreamed of a winged wolf bound to earth with grey stone chains.... It was a green dream, so I knew it was true. A crow was trying to peck through the chains, but the stone was too hard and his beak could only chip at them." Bran asks if the crow had three eyes, and Jojen says it did. "When I was little I almost died of greywater fever. That was when the crow came to me." Bran blurts out that the crow came to him after he fell.

"'You are the winged wolf, Bran,' said Jojen. 'I wasn't sure when we first came, but now I am. The crow sent us here to break your chains.'" They tell him that the crow is beyond the Wall, and that when Jojen told their father what he'd dreamed, he sent them to Winterfell. Bran asks how he can break the chains, and Jojen says he must open his eye: "You have three [eyes]. The crow gave you the third but you will not open it."

Bran decides not to pursue the subject any further, but Jojen persists: "Did you dream of a wolf?" Bran gets angry: "I don't have to tell you my dreams. I'm the prince. I'm the Stark in Winterfell." And when Jojen asks if the wolf in his dream was Summer, Bran yells, "Stop it!" Summer has grown agitated too, and is moving toward the weirwood, baring his teeth. Jojen continues, "When I touched Summer, I felt you in him. Just as you are in him now." Bran protests, but Jojen says, "I felt you. I felt you fall. Is that what scares you, the falling?"

Bran admits to himself that he is afraid of the falling, and of "the golden man, the queen's brother, he scares me too, but mostly the falling." But he doesn't want to tell anyone. "If he didn't talk about it, maybe he would forget." Jojen asks, "Do you fall every night, Bran?"

Summer begins to growl and bare his teeth, stalking toward Jojen. Meera steps between the wolf and her brother, who tells Bran that it's his anger and fear that is animating Summer. "Part of you is Summer, and a part of Summer is you. You know that, Bran." Meera pleads with Bran to call Summer back. Bran calls, but gets no response. Then Shaggydog appears from the weirwood, responding to his brother's anger. Both wolves threaten the brother and sister, though Jojen remains calm. Meera calls to her brother to climb a tree, and they do so, as Shaggy snaps at her foot and Summer howls.

Bran calls for Hodor, and asks him to chase away the wolves. Shaggydog disappears into the wood and Summer comes back to Bran and lies down beside him. Meera and Jojen leave, though Jojen promises, "We'll talk again."

Bran has Hodor take him to see Maester Luwin, whom Bran tells, "Meera says her brother has the greensight.... You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember." Luwin admits that he did, but the children of the forest are gone. Bran tells him that Jojen has dreams that sometimes come true. Luwin says that's true of all of us, and reminds him that both he and his brother Rickon had dreamed of their father in the crypt before they knew that he was dead. But most dreams don't come true.

Then he talks about the maester's chain collar. Each link is forged from a different metal to represent the various disciplines the maester learns at the Citadel in Oldtown. "Black iron is for ravenry, silver for healing, gold for sums and numbers." He shows Bran the one of Valyrian steel. "Only one maester in a hundred wears such a link. this signifies that  have studied what the Citadel calls the higher mysteries -- magic, for want of a better word." He studied magic, and tried to practice it, but to no avail. "Sad to say, magic does not work."

But Bran objects that it does sometimes, as in the dream he and Rickon had. "And there are mages and warlocks in the east...." Luwin says that they call themselves that, but if there ever was real magic it has died out. "The dragons are no more, the giants are dead, the children of the forest forgotten with all their lore." He says, "Jojen Reed may have had a dream or two that he believes came true, but he does not have the greensight. No living man has that power."

Bran repeats what Luwin said to Meera that night, but she holds out the possibility that Luwin is wrong. Then she tells him about a dream Jojen had about Bran and the Frey brothers.

"You were sitting at supper, but instead of a servant, Maester Luwin brought you your food. He served you the king's cut off the roast, the meat rare and bloody, but with a savory smell that made everyone's mouth water. The meat he served the Freys was old and grey and dead. Yet they liked their supper better than you liked yours." 

Bran says he doesn't understand, but she says her brother says he will, and they'll talk again when he does. That night he persists in his conviction that Luwin is right: "'There's no magic, and the stories are just stories.' And he would never walk, nor fly, no be a knight."

Tyrion

It is midnight, and Lancel Lannister has come to see Tyrion with an order from Cersei to release Pycelle. Evidently Cersei has asked Ser Jacelyn Bywater to release the Grand Maester and he has refused, so she wants him arrested for treason. Lancel tries to threaten Tyrion by putting his hand on his sword and calling him "Imp," but Tyrion sees the threat and raises it: "One cry from me and Shagga will burst in and kill you. With an axe, not a wineskin."

The reference to the doped wine that Lancel, as squire, gave to Robert Baratheon during the boar hunt causes him to redden. And Tyrion goes further: "Tell me -- did Cersei have you knighted before or after she took you into her bed?" Tyrion can see from Lancel's reaction that what Varys had told him was true.

Lancel tries to bluff his way by telling Tyrion to "withdraw these filthy accusations," but Tyrion goes on: "Have you given any thought to what Joffrey will do when I tell him you murdered his father to bed his mother?" And Lance breaks down: "The queen gave me the strongwine! Your own father Lord Tywin, when I was named the king's squire, he told me to obey her in everything."

"Did he tell you to fuck her too?" Tyrion replies, and continues to rub it in. When he says, "Wait here. His Grace will want to hear this," Lancel falls to his knees and begs for mercy. He promises he will end the relationship with Cersei. But Tyrion, finding it "hard not to laugh," has other plans:

"My father told you to obey my sister? Very well, obey her. Stay close to her side, keep her trust, pleasure her as often as she requires it. No one need ever know ... so long as you keep faith with me. I want to know what Cersei is doing. Where she goes, who she sees, what they talk of, what plans she is hatching. All. And you will be the one to tell me, won't you?"

So Lancel swears he'll spy on Cersei for Tyrion. And Tyrion tells him he'll release Pycelle, but he won't restore him to the council. As for Ser Jacelyn, he tells Lancel to say he believes he can win him over to her from Tyrion's side. He also warns Lancel not to get Cersei pregnant: "I want no more nephews, that clear?"

When Lancel leaves, Tyrion regrets what he and Cersei are doing to the boy, who "was unlikely to live out the year." He summons Bronn and they ride to Chataya's brothel and the secret passage that takes him to Shae. On the way he thinks, "The only way to defeat my sister is to play her own game, and that was something the Lords Stark and Arryn would never do. Small wonder that both of them were dead, while Tyrion Lannister had never felt more alive."

When he sees Chataya, he reflects on her "elegance and dignity" even though she was a prostitute, and remembers that she regards herself as a priestess and not a whore. "Perhaps that is the secret. It is not what we do, so much as why we do it. Somehow that thought comforted him." And after having sex with Shae, he reflects:

It is real, all of it, he thought, the wars, the intrigues, the great bloody game, and me in the center of it ... me, the dwarf, the monster, the one they scorned and laughed at, but now I hold it all, the power, the city, the girl. This was what I was made for, and gods forgive me, but I do love it.... And her. And her.

 

4. A Clash of Kings, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 142-196

Daenerys

Like everyone else, Daenerys believes the comet has a special personal significance. In her case "It is the herald of my coming, she told herself as she gazed up into the night sky with wonder in her heart. The gods have sent it to show me the way." But the way it points to is, her maid Doreah tells her, "the red lands, Khaleesi. A grim and terrible place, the riders say."

But given that the only other options meant encountering other Dothraki who would murder or enslave her, Daenerys chooses to head in the direction indicated by the comet. Given that she  has only a handful of followers left, including four guards, three handmaidens and a contingent of people who are too old, too sick, or too young to do anything else but follow her also limits her options.

But, as she says, she has her dragons. Ser Jorah is not so sure that's much help. For one thing, they're still tiny and vulnerable. For another, they could attract thieves: "Your dragon eggs were more precious than rubies. A living dragon is beyond price. In all the world, there are only three. Every man who sees them will want them, my queen."

Still, they're hers, she insists, and so they set out into the desert lands, traveling by night. People and animals start dropping dead as they move through the barren plains with their scant water sources. Even the dragons start to show signs of debility until Daenerys remembers something her brother once told her: "Only dragons and men eat cooked meat." From then on, the dragons get their share of charred horsemeat, and they start to get bigger and stronger. She names them: "The green one shall be Rhaegal, for my valiant brother who died on the green banks of the Trident. The cream-and-gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not." As for the black one, he is called Drogon.

Things get worse for the humans, however, and finally Doreah, the handmaiden who had coached Daenerys in the art of pleasing Khal Drogo, dies. Ser Jorah admits that the journey is harder than he had expected, and even he is suffering from it. But finally a scout returns with news that they have sighted a city an hour's ride away. She sends out more scouts to find out whether they will have a friendly reception there.

But the city turns out to be deserted, with buildings that are falling down, and signs that it had been looted by Dothraki. Still, they camp out in the ruins, and soon people return with news that there are trees laden with fruit in the city, and cisterns full of good water. There are also human bones, which cause the maid Irri to warn Daenerys that there are ghosts in the city. Daenerys scoffs, "Dragons are more powerful than ghosts."

When Ser Jorah brings her a peach, she asks him to tell her more about his life. He tells her he grew up on Bear Island, which "lies far to the north, and our winters are more terrible than you can imagine." He married young, a marriage arranged by his father, and his wife suffered two miscarriages before dying of a third. His father, Jeor Mormont, joined the Night's Watch, leaving Jorah Lord of Bear Island. Then Balon Greyjoy rebelled against Robert Baratheon, and Jorah responded to Ned Stark's call to join in putting down the rebellion.

After the victory, there was a tournament near Lannisport, and there he saw a beautiful woman named Lynesse. He asked to wear her favor in the tournament and after defeating all comers and breaking nine lances in competition with Jaime Lannister, he was named champion. He asked for Lynesse's hand and they were happy, he tells Daenerys, for a fortnight, which was how long it took for them to sail for Bear Island.

She was miserable there, and he spent enormous sums trying to keep her happy. Finally he "did things it shames me to speak of," which led to his being exiled. "Nothing mattered but our love, I told myself. We fled to Lys, where I sold my ship for gold to keep us." But it didn't last, so he turned mercenary soldier, and while he was away fighting someone's battle, she became the mistress "of a merchant prince named Tregar Ormollen. They say she is his chief concubine now, and even his wife goes in fear of her." When Daenerys asks what Lynesse looked like, he tells her, "Why, she looked a bit like you, Daenerys." She realizes that Jorah is in love with her, but when she tries to imagine making love with him, she can only envision Drogo.

The next day, she calls her bloodriders and sends them out on a scouting expedition. "When I leave this place, I do not mean to strike out blind again. I will know where I am bound, and how best to get there." Days pass and finally Rakharo returns to say that due south there is only desert. "He had passed the bones of a dragon, he swore, so immense that he had ridden his horse through its great black jaws. Other than that, he had seen nothing."

Aggo returns from the southwest, where there are only the ruins of some small cities. Jhogo is gone so long that Daenerys thinks he must be dead, but when he returns from the southeast he is accompanied by three strange figures riding camels -- or at least, "ugly humped creatures that dwarfed any horse." Daenerys asks them to introduce themselves.

The first, a pale man with blue lips, says in Dothraki, "I am Pyat Pree, the great warlock." The second, a bald man with jewels in his nose, says in Valyrian, "I am Xaro Xhoan Daxos of the Thirteen, a merchant prince of Qarth." The third, a woman wearing a lacquered wooden mask, says in the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms, "I am Quaithe of the Shado. We come seeking dragons."

"Seek no more," Daenerys Targaryen told them. "You have found them." 

Jon

The expedition has reached a deserted village called Whitetree, which is dominated by a gigantic weirwood, eight feet in diameter. It has a face with a cavernous mouth in which there are human bones. It is the biggest tree Jon has ever seen, and he feels its power. There are ashes along with the bones, and Mormont comments that the wildlings always burn their dead. "Now I wished [sic] I'd asked them why, when there were still a few around to ask." Jon, remembers the undead wight and thinks he knows why.

Mormont sends the men in teams of two to explore the houses, and Jon is partnered with Eddison Tollett, known as Dolorous Edd. But they find nothing of value in the house, which fits the pattern. This was the fourth deserted village they'd come across. "The people were gone, vanished with their scant possessions and whatever animals they may have had."

A small man named Bedwyck, nicknamed "Giant," has climbed the tree and tells them that there's what appears to be a lake to the north and some flint hills to the west, but otherwise nothing to report. There are three more hours of daylight, so Mormont decides they should go north to the lake, where they might be able to catch some fish. Then he asks Jon to give him some paper so he can send a message to Maester Aemon. He gives the report to Jon and has him find Sam to dispatch a raven with it.

Jon finds Sam watering horses and gives him the message. Sam has been teaching the ravens to talk, and he tells Jon that three of them can say "snow." "One bird croaking my name was bad enough," Jon says, and besides, snow is a bad word in the north because it often means death. Sam tells Jon that he's not as frightened as he was, and holds out his hand to show Jon how steady it is. "The world is strange, Jon thought. Two hundred brave men had left the Wall, and the only one who was not growing more fearful was Sam, the self-confessed coward."

Ghost appears from the woods, but doesn't seem to have had any luck finding game. Jon decides that it has all been frightened away by the noise the expedition was making on its march. He rejoins Mormont and comments that if his uncle had found deserted villages,

"-- he would have made it his purpose to learn why," Lord Mormont finished for him, "and it may well be someone or something did not want that known. Well, we'll be three hundred when Qhorin joins us. Whatever enemy waits out here will not find us so easy to deal with. We will find them, Jon, I promise you."

Or they will find us, thought Jon.

Arya

They reach the river that flows south out of Gods Eye, but there is no easy place for the wagons to cross, and there is smoke to the north and west. So Yoren decides they will stay to the  east of the lake. He remembers a town with a holdfast and a towerhouse, so he proposes to follow the river north to the town and get a boat they can sail across the Gods Eye.

They reach the town and find it deserted. Yoren divides them into search parties, and Arya is grouped with Gendry, Hot Pie, and Lommy. She wonders what would frighten the people so much that they would leave. They reach the lake, but there are no boats. When they return to Yoren he says there are no horses and pigs but he saw a goose and some chickens, and there are fish in the lake. Gendry suggests that they could build a raft, and Yoren takes it into consideration. He proposes that they spend the night in the holdfast. Arya thinks they should leave, like the people who lived there, but Yoren argues that since they are Night's Watch and they have no allegiance to any side in the conflict, they have no enemies. Arya thinks, "And no man's our friend."

The holdfast has ten-foot-high walls and encloses a barn. Underneath the straw in the barn there is a trap door leading to a tunnel that comes out by the lake. Yoren has a wagon placed over the exit to hide it. They retreat inside it and cook the goose and the chickens for dinner.

Arya dozes off and comes awake with a start when she hears the howling of a wolf -- or dreams that she does. She wakes the others, and they realize that it was the sentry, Kurz, who had been given a hunting horn to sound an alarm. Arya scrambles up to the catwalk just below the top of the wall and sees men with torches, setting fire to the houses. Gendry joins her and sees men on horses heading toward the holdfast.

A knight rides up to the gate and orders them to open it. Yoren climbs up to the battlement with his black cloak tied to a staff and calls down that the townsfolk are gone, and that they are men of the Night's Watch. He shows them the black cloak, but the knight says that all banners look black at night. He identifies himself as "Ser Amory Lorch, bannerman to Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock, the Hand of the King. The true king, Joffrey." He orders them to open in the name of the king.

Yoren continues to defy the order, and a spear comes through the air. It was meant for Yoren, but it kills a man named Woth. Ser Amory orders them to storm the walls. A torch is flung over the wall and when a man's hand appears at the top of it, Arya stabs it with Needle. Hot Pie, who is behind Arya, yells out a warning as a man starts to climb over the wall, and Arya stabs at his eyes. The man loses his grip and falls. They don't have ladders, but the unmortared stones of the wall are easy to climb, and soon there are more men climbing over and more torches flying into the holdfast.

Soon it's apparent that the gates have been breached, and Yoren yells at her to get out through the trap door and the tunnel. She grabs Gendry and they call Hot Pie and Lommy, who is bleeding from a spear in his calf. The entrance to the tunnel is through the barn, which is burning. The horses and donkeys are terrified, and as Arya runs for the tunnel she sees the three men chained to the wagon. They plead for her to unshackle them. Arya asks Gendry where he left the axe when he split wood earlier, and she runs to get it. When she finds it, "a mailed hand grabbed her arm. Spinning, Arya drove the head of the axe hard between his legs," then runs back into the blazing barn where "she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men." She throws the axe into the wagon and hears the men using it to chop their way free. She plunges into the tunnel and begins crawling.

Tyrion

Cersei has received a copy of the letters sent by Stannis and is enraged. She wants every copy of them burned. Tyrion reflects, "It was astonishing to see how angry Cersei could wax over accusations she knew perfectly well to be true." He tries to calm her down, but when she says, "I will not suffer to be called a whore!" Tyrion says to himself, "Why, sister, he never claims Jaime paid you." Then he observes the phrase "Done in the Light of the Lord," which Davos had tried to persuade Stannis to change. Grand Maester Pycelle identifies this as a reference to "The god of the red priests." Tyrion suggests that they "can use that against him. Urge the High Septon to reveal how Stannis has turned against the gods as well as his rightful king...."

But Cersei is fixated on the charge of incest, and wants to council to "issue an edict. Any man heard speaking of incest or calling Joff a bastard should lose his tongue for it." Pycelle calls this "A prudent measure," but Tyrion scoffs: "When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say." He suggests that they shouldn't bring attention to the accusation, since Stannis offers no proof of it. "'How could he, when it never happened?' Tyrion gave his sister his sweetest smile."

Cersei is stymied for a moment, and Littlefinger jumps in on Tyrion's side. "If we attempt to silence this talk, we only lend it credence. Better to treat it with contempt, like the pathetic lie it is. And meantime, fight fire with fire." He proposes spreading the counter-rumor that Lady Selyse cuckolded Stannis and that their daughter is illegitimate. Cersei begins to see the appeal of this and to debate whom they might accuse of being Selyse's lover. Finally, Littlefinger observes, "in my experience, the more bizarre and shocking a tale the more apt it is to be repeated. Stannis keeps an especially grotesque fool, a lackwit with a tattooed face." The idea appeals to Cersei's worst instincts.

This goes beyond even Tyrion's imagination. Littlefinger, he realizes, "is more dangerous than I knew." But he points out that the story shouldn't originate with them, "'or it will be seen for a self-serving lie.' Which it is, to be sure." And Littlefinger once again agrees: "Whores love to gossip, and as it happens I own a brothel or three. And no doubt Varys can plant seeds in the alehouses and pot-shops."

This reminds Cersei that Varys isn't present for this meeting, and when Tyrion excuses himself too, she demands to know what he is up to. He tells her that he's "having a gift made for Joffrey. A little chain." Cersei is not satisfied with this answer, but Tyrion escapes without further explanation. Outside, Bronn tells him that the smiths are waiting in his audience chamber. Tyrion goes first to his room where his squire, Podrick Payne, helps him dress for the meeting.

He shows the assembled smiths, armorers, and ironmongers what he wants them to make. From a bag he produces "three immense steel links, twisted together," and tells them he wants a thousand more like them. He expects this work to take priority over anything else, even the queen's order of new armor and weaponry for the City Guard. A master armorer protests that he makes "armor such as a god might wear," not this coarse stuff, but Tyrion says, "You will make chains, or you will wear them."

Bronn meets him with a litter and some mounted Black Ears to guard him as he goes through the city. Tyrion has done what he can to alleviate the food shortage, including building more fishing boats, opening the kingswood to hunters, and having the gold cloaks forage to the south and west, but he realizes that he's not popular. As he rides, he thinks about how Cersei was so angry about the accusation of incest that she missed the real point: that Stannis has proclaimed himself king, despite the fact that his own brother has done the same thing. "They could not both sit the Iron Throne."

After a while he dozes, and awakes when they reach the destination: a brothel. Inside, he is greeted by Chataya, who takes him through the rooms to the one occupied by her own daughter: "My people hold that there is no shame to be found in the pillow house. In the Summer Isles, those who are skilled at giving pleasure are greatly esteemed. Many highborn youths and maidens serve for a few years after their flowerings, to honor the gods."

She leaves him with Alayaya, who tells him, "If my lord will open the wardrobe, he will find what he seeks." Inside the wardrobe he finds a secret panel that opens onto a shaft with a ladder that takes him below street level to a tunnel and finally to Varys, who is in disguise. Tyrion asks Varys if Chataya can be trusted, and Varys says nothing is certain. "Chataya has no cause to love the queen, though, and she knows that she has you to thank for ridding her of Allar Deem."

They follow the tunnel and finally emerge in a stable, where a horse is waiting. Varys provides Tyrion with a threadbare cloak as a disguise: "Dwarfs are not so common a sight as children, so a child is what they will see. A boy in an old cloak on his father's horse, going about his father's business. Though it would be best if you came most often by night." It is a trick that will allow Tyrion to visit Shae at the house where he has set her up.

Before he leaves, they talk about the letter from Stannis. Tyrion wonders how Stannis knew of Cersei and Jaime's incest. Varys replies, "Perhaps he read a book and looked at the color of a bastard's hair, as Ned Stark did, and Jon Arryn before him. Or perhaps someone whispered it in his ear." But Varys denies that he was the whisperer. Besides, he says, Robert Baratheon's "bastards were there for all to see." So who was the whisperer, Tyrion asks. "Littlefinger?" Varys replies, "I named no name."

Tyrion tells Varys, "sometimes I feel as though you are the best friend I have in King's Landing, and sometimes I feel you are my worst enemy." Varys replies, "How odd. I think quite the same of you."

Bran

Winterfell is crowded with guests, and Bran, as the heir apparent to the throne now held by his brother Robb, has to attend formal greetings and business sessions, though the actual business is mostly left up to Maester Luwin and Ser Rodrik Cassel. Bran would rather be participating in the games, such as tilting at quintains, but is of course unable. And even though he is the heir, he is still subject to stares when he rides in a specially made basket on Hodor's back. The Walders are particularly given to making fun of this conveyance, though when Maester Luwin overhears their jibes, he silences and scolds them.

Bran has to sit through discussions of new customs officers and coinage, though his interest is roused by talk of building warships. There is also discussion of finding a new husband for Lady Donella Hornwood, who lost her husband and her son in the recent battles, and about Tywin Lannister's offer to release Lord Wyman Manderly's son, captured at the Green Fork, in exchange for a promise that he will withdraw allegiance to Robb. Lord Wyman assures them that he remains loyal to King Robb. Other matters concern the coming winter, and whether the various lords are putting away enough of their harvest in preparation. Bran learns that the balance of power could depend on whom Lady Donella chooses to marry -- someone sworn to Robb, or someone neutral. But he is glad when he can finally be excused from the meeting.

Hodor takes Bran to the godswood where he sits by the pool with Summer. Osha surprises him by appearing from the pool, and she sits and talks with him about the conflict with the Frey boys. She asks if he has had more wolf dreams, and he says no, just because he doesn't want to talk about the dreams.

The next day brings more guests and more meetings. Mors Umber asks to marry Lady Donella, and Hother Umber wants ships to patrol the coasts and prevent more wildlings from sneaking into his lands. The following day comes another suggestion about what to do about Lady Donella, when Leobald Tallhart proposes that she take his younger son to foster -- the idea being that he would take the name Hornwood and become her heir. Bran speaks up to thank him for the idea and says they will bring it to the attention of Robb and Lady Hornwood. "Leobald seemed surprised that he had spoken ... but he saw pity in his pale blue eyes, mingled perhaps with a little gladness that the cripple was, after all, not his son. For a moment he hated the man." Afterward, Maester Luwin rather likes Tallhart's suggestion, which leads Bran to say, "Lady Hornwood can have one of our Freys.... She can have both of them if she likes."

Finally the procession of vassals thins out. One day, Bran is riding his horse in the yard when Cley Cerwyn, a fourteen-year-old friend of the Stark boys, arrives. He asks if Winterfell had received one of the letters from Stannis. Bran has heard nothing about it, so Cley tells him, "He says Queen Cersei bedded her brother, so Joffrey is a bastard." Bran is so shaken by this news that "had he not been strapped onto his saddle he might well have fallen."

That night he has a nightmare that "was worse than any wolf dream." He is being pecked at by the three-eyed crow who cries, "Fly or die!" The crow pecks out each of his eyes and then begins to peck into his skull, "but when the crow wrenched out its beak all slimy with bits of bone and brain, Bran could see again." He is miles up in the air, clinging to a tower, and his dead legs were dragging him down. He cries for help.

A golden man appeared in the sky above him and pulled him up. "The things I do for love," he murmured softly as he tossed him out kicking into empty air.