25. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 661-686

Daenerys

The peace treaty between Meereen and the Yunkai'i is being signed, and the fighting pits have been reopened as part of the celebration. Daenerys is not happy: Though she married Hizdahr to bring about peace, she feels defeated. Hizdahr assures her that it's only temporary: When the Yunkai'i leave, they will "have all we desired. Peace, food, trade. Our port is open once again, and ships are being permitted to come and go."

But she objects that the Yunkai are trading in slaves outside her own walls, mocking her as powerless. She tries to console herself that by agreeing to the peace terms she has saved thousands of lives: "This is the price of peace, I pay it willingly. If I look back, I am lost."

At the feast, she notes how unimpressive the Yunkish commanders are, and how the sellswords they had hired are swaggering bravos. Brown Ben Plumm has appeared, but only after an exchange of hostages to keep Daenerys's men from killing him. Among the hostages sent to the Yunkish camp are her bloodrider Jhogo, her admiral Groleo, and Daario Naharis. The last was furious at the wedding and at the peace terms, so it was just as well he wasn't present at the feast.

When the party goes out to the terrace to look at the city, she encounters Brown Ben Plumm, who is insouciant about his deserting her, arguing that he didn't want to be on the losing side and advising her, "Never trust a sellsword." Ser Barristan, who has overheard their conversation, tells Daenerys, after Plumm has left, that it's good advice. She talks with him about ways of getting rid of Brown Ben, and wonders if there is a way to use the Dornishmen who include Prince Quentyn. "The three Dornishmen had been at the feast, as befit Prince Quentyn's rank, though Reznak had taken care to seat them as far as possible from her husband," who might see Quentyn as a rival suitor.

Barristan reminds her that House Martell had been a loyal ally to the Targaryens, and that Quentyn had been stubbornly insistent about his plans to marry her. So she tells him to bring Quentyn to her: "It is time he met my children." She and Quentyn descend to the place where the dragons are caged.

One of the elephants trumpeted at them from his stall. An answering roar from below made her flush with sudden heat. Prince Quentyn looked up in alarm. "The dragons know when she is near," Ser Barristan told him.

Viserion has broken and melted his chains and clings "to the roof of the pit like some huge white bat." Rhaegal is still chained, and is eating the carcass of a bull. When Quentyn asks about the third, she tells him just, "Drogon is hunting." Quentyn is terrified, but she assures him that they frighten her too. Still, she tells him, she intends to learn to ride one of them.

Then she advises him to return to Dorne. "My court is no safe place for you, I fear. You have more enemies than you know. You made Daario look a fool, and he is not a man to forget such a slight." He stubbornly insists that he is a prince of Dorne and "will not run from slaves and sellswords." She reflects that he is a fool.

That night, Hizdahr makes drunken love to her, after which he whispers, "Gods grant that we have made a son tonight." But she can only remember Mirri Maz Duur's prophecy of her barrenness. When he falls asleep, her thoughts turn to Daario. Then Missandei enters to say she thought she heard Daenerys crying. Daenerys denies it, but asks Missandei to stay and talk to her about happy things until she falls asleep, "to dream queer, half-formed dreams of smoke and fire."

Theon

The horns and drum of Stannis's troops are still heard, but the attack hasn't yet materialized. Theon waits for it in the Great Hall and keeps an eye on Abel, Rowan, and another of the washerwomen who is known as Squirrel.  Seeing Ramsay Bolton enter the hall, Theon is filled with fear and whispers to Abel that his escape plan won't work. But Abel insists that Stannis is just outside the walls of Winterfell, and that Theon needn't worry.

Just then the doors of the hall burst open and Ser Hosteen Frey enters, carrying the body of Little Walder Frey. Theon instantly assumes that the washerwomen are responsible for the murder, but Rowan assures him that they weren't. In any case, Ramsay Bolton is enraged at the loss of his favorite, and Hosteen accuses Wyman Manderly of ordering the killing. Wyman asks how old the boy was, and when he is told Little Walder was nine, says, "So young.... Though mayhaps this was  a blessing. Had he lived, he would have grown up to be a Frey."

Hosteen attacks Wyman with his longsword: "The blade slashed through three of his four chins in a spray of bright red blood." The room erupts in turmoil as Manderly slumps to the floor and his men come to his defense. By the time Roose Bolton is able to restore order, six of Manderly's men and two of the Freys are dead. A maester arrives with a raven, and Bolton reads the message it has brought: Stannis's company, "snowbound and starving," is three days' away. He orders Hosteen to gather his troops and leave by the main gate, and Manderly to dispatch his by the east gate. Hosteen vows that when he returns with Stannis's head, he will finish cutting off that of Manderly, who is being treated by a maester. Ramsay Bolton orders them all to prepare to fight Stannis, and Roose echoes his son: "There will be time enough to fight one another once we are done with Stannis."

Abel is called on for a song as the Freys begin to lead their horses out of the hall, and Rowan grasps Theon's arm to tell him it is time to put the plan they have discussed in effect: "Bolton is sending forth his swords. We have to reach King Stannis before they do." Theon thinks what they have planned is madness, but he gives in and goes with Rowan to the godswood. They are joined there by Squirrel, Holly, and three more of the washerwomen.

The plan is to engineer an escape for Jeyne Poole by disguising her as Squirrel, who is almost the same size. Squirrel will exit by a window and scale down the tower wall while Jeyne exits with the other maids. Theon's task is one he does regularly: to fetch the water for Jeyne's bath. The washerwomen, pretending to be Jeyne's maids, will carry it to her chambers.

Jeyne is huddled in terror in her room when they make it past the guards with the bathwater. Rowan addresses her as "Lady Arya" -- Theon hasn't revealed her true identity to his co-conspirators. They tell her that they are going to take her to her brother, which confuses Jeyne, who says she has no brothers. Theon realizes that the horribly abused girl isn't entirely sure who she is anymore, but Rowan explains that they are going to get her to Jon Snow at the Wall.

Jeyne resists, terrorized as she has been by Ramsay, and the women tell Theon to handle her. He gently persuades her to go along with the plan. They quickly dress her in Squirrel's clothing, and to Theon's surprise and relief they make it past the guards outside the door. His fear returns as they go down the stairs, but even the guards outside the doors barely look at them. Theon feels sorry for them: "Ramsay would flay them all when he learned his bride was gone, and what he would do to Grunt and Sour Alyn" -- the guards outside the bedchamber door -- "did not bear thinking about."

The snowstorm continues to conceal them as they make their way through the paths through the snow, which in places is higher than their heads. At an intersection, Rowan sends Theon and Jeyne on with Holly and Frenya, while she and the others go to fetch Abel. When they reach another pair of guards, Holly and Frenya kill them both, but Jeyne screams when she sees what is happening. Theon puts his hand over her mouth and pulls her along with him as they run.

They reach the steps to the battlements, and Theon slings Jeyne over his shoulder as he begins to climb. Halfway up, he slips on the ice and hurts his knee, but Holly helps him back to his feet and together they get Jeyne to the top of the battlements. Frenya remains behind to attack any pursuers. But when they reach the top, Holly realizes that Frenya has the rope they need to climb down. Then she is pierced by arrows and falls.

Realizing that they have been discovered, and that there are crossbowmen on the inner wall and men racing toward them with drawn swords, Theon does the only thing he can do: He grabs Jeyne and jumps.

23. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 605-631

Let's see, where were we...?

A Ghost in Winterfell

The body of one of Ramsay Bolton's men is found, buried in the snow at the base of the inner wall, with a broken neck. Though the consensus is that the death was accidental, it stirs talk that Stannis may have already found a way to get his men inside Winterfell. The snowstorm has raged for days, making it impossible to see what is happening outside the walls. Ramsay is merciless in prosecuting dissent, including suggestions that Stannis is anything but starving and frozen out there in the wilderness beyond Winterfell. But as supplies dwindle, morale worsens.

One evening, as Theon is finishing his meager ration of porridge, a woman named Holly, one of the "washerwomen" accompanying the singer Abel, accosts him and asks to see the crypts. Theon suspects that Abel is looking for a way to get out of the castle, and since Theon is known to have found his way in to conquer Winterfell, he surely must know the escape route. He tells Holly to leave him alone.

He goes outside, and decides to take a look from the walls where Bolton had punished one of the dissenters by having him thrown off into a snowbank. The man broke a leg and was shot by a bowman, left to freeze to death. Theon thinks briefly of jumping, of taking his chances, but knows that Ramsay would hunt him down and inflict worse torments.

The next day, another man is found naked and frozen to death, and then a crossbowman is found with his head bashed in. The former death is attributed to drink, the latter to a kick from a horse, but Theon has his doubts. And the deaths begin to unnerve Bolton's lords, who argue that they should stop waiting for Stannis and go out to meet him, while others argue the opposite, pointing out that the scouts they have sent to reconnoiter have all disappeared. Lord Wyman Manderly even seems to go out of his way to pick a fight with Ser Aenys Frey, and when Roose Bolton is forced to make peace between them, Theon thinks he sees a glint of something like fear in Bolton's eyes.

That night, the roof of the stable collapses under the weight of snow, killing twenty-six horses and two men. Lord Bolton orders the remaining horses brought inside the Great Hall, compounding the stench and filth. And when the men have finished digging out the dead horses and butchering them for food, another body is found.

This one could not be waved away as some drunken tumble or the kick of a horse. The dead man was one of Ramsay's favorites, the squat, scrofulous, ill-favored man-at-arms called Yellow Dick. Whether his dick had actually been yellow was hard to determine, as someone had sliced it off and stuffed it in his mouth so forcefully they had broken three of his teeth.

Roose Bolton tries to hush this death up, but the story spreads, and Ramsay Bolton vows to flay the murderer and have him eat his own skin.

Escaping from the stench of the hall and the taunts of Ramsay's men, Theon goes outside into the snow, walking the pathways cut through snowbanks that now loom chest high. There he encounters a man in a hooded cloak who addresses him as "Theon Turncloak. Theon Kinslayer." Theon denies the epithets: "I'm not. I never ... I was ironborn." The man persists in his denunciation, and all that Theon, who wonders if this might be the murderer stalking Winterfell, can offer in his defense is that he is at Ramsay Bolton's mercy now: He shows the man his maimed hand and says, "Lord Ramsay is not done with me." The man laughs and says he will leave Theon to him.

Theon climbs to the battlements and looks out on the nothingness, thinking,

The world is gone. King's Landing, Riverrun, Pyke, and the Iron Islands, all the Seven Kingdoms, every place that he had ever known, every place that he had ever read about or dreamed of, all gone. Only Winterfell remained. He was trapped here, with the ghosts. The old ghosts from the crypts and the younger ones that he had made himself, Mikken and Farlen, Gynir Rednose Aggar, Gelmarr the Grim, the miller's wife from Acorn Water and her two young sons, and all the rest. My work. My ghosts. They are all here, and they are angry. He thought of the crypts and those missing swords.

When he returns to his chambers, he is summoned by Lord Bolton, whom he finds with Lady Dustin, Roger Ryswell, and Aenys Frey. Roose Bolton comes to the point: Theon has been seen wandering the castle. Theon explains that he can't sleep, and that he is familiar with Winterfell from childhood. When Bolton points out that someone has been killing his men, Theon says he wouldn't do such a thing. Then Lady Dustin asks him to remove his gloves. He hesitates, but shows them that his left hand is missing two fingers and his right one. Aenys Frey observes that Theon could still hold a dagger with his right hand, but Lady Dustin scoffs, "He hardly has the strength to hold a spoon." Ryswell agrees that Theon isn't the killer, and Roose Bolton is inclined to agree.

They proceed to discuss who might be behind the murders, including Lord Wyman Manderly. Lady Dustin and Ryswell point out that almost everyone in the north, their own houses included, has a grudge against the Freys for the Red Wedding. Finally, Roose dismisses Theon, who goes out to walk the walls some more, trying to get tired enough to sleep.

Suddenly there is the sound of a horn, followed by the beat of a drum. But no one can see through the veil of falling snow. When one of the Freys suggests they ride out and meet the enemy -- everyone assumes the horn and drum have been sounded by Stannis -- Theon hopes they will: "Ride out into the snow and die. Leave Winterfell to me and the ghosts." Then he hopes that Roose Bolton will give him a sword and let him fight: "Then at least he might die a man's death, sword in hand."

Theon makes his way to the godswood, where the hot springs have continued to melt the snow. He can hear the drumming, but he also hears the leaves of the trees whispering his name. He kneels and begs to be allowed to "die as Theon, not Reek." A leaf falls and brushes his face: "It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. '...Bran,' the tree murmured." The face carved in the tree suddenly seems to be Bran's, and he begins to plead aloud that it hadn't been Bran and Rickon that he killed. "They were only miller's sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water."

Then someone speaks: "Who are you talking to?" He turns around and sees three of the washerwomen: Holly, Rowan, and an older woman whose name he doesn't know. They repeat the words he has spoken, his confession that he needed two heads to prove that he had captured Bran and Rickon, because otherwise he would have been laughed at. He sees that Holly has a knife, and he asks her to kill him. He realizes that they are the killers.

Rowan says, "You prayed, and the gods sent us. You want to die as Theon? We'll give you that. A nice quick death, 'twill hardly hurt at all.... But not till you've sung for Abel. He's waiting for you."

Tyrion

Tyrion and Penny are being sold at slave auction as "A pair of dwarfs, well trained for your amusement." The dog and the pig are being thrown in as part of the deal. When the bidding for them slows, they are ordered to put on a show for the bidders, and Tyrion takes a pratfall from the back of the pig that renews the competition. Finally, they are sold to an enormously fat man in yellow.

They are in the Yunkish camp within sight of the walls of Meereen. The overseer tells them that they are now "the property of the noble and valorous Yezzan zo Qaggaz, scholar and warrior, revered amongst the Wise Masters of Yunkai." The overseer himself, says that they should call him "Nurse," because he looks after the "special treasures" of Yezzan the way a nurse does the children under her charge.

Then Jorah Mormont is brought to the block, struggling against the handlers. He has been so badly beaten that he is almost unrecognizable, and the auctioneer suggests he should be bought as a contender in the fighting pits which were being reopened after Daenerys's marriage to Hizdahr. The bidding is not going well -- no one seems to want the obviously untamed Ser Jorah -- and he is about to be sold to an old woman who buys up fighters cheaply when Tyrion decides to intervene. He tells Nurse that Jorah is part of the act: He plays a bear in an act in which Tyrion is a knight who saves the fair maiden Penny. "I dance about and hit him in the balls. Very funny." So Nurse goes to tell Yezzan, who offers the winning bid.

Mormont is brought to the cart and thrown in with Tyrion and Penny, but he is no longer struggling. "All the fight went out of him when he heard that his queen had wed, Tyrion realized." They are taken to Yezzan's pavilion in the Yunkish camps, which form a crescent around the city of Meereen. Ships had brought the lumber for six giant trebuchets that tower over the camps. But Tyrion also sees evidence of the disease that has spread through the camps: "Disease could wipe out an army quicker than any battle, he had heard his father say once," and he resolves to try to escape as soon as possible.

Tyrion and Penny are housed inside Yezzan's vast pavilion, which is covered with lemon-colored silk. They are fitted with collars around their necks, and Penny cries because hers is so heavy. There are also bells attached to the collars. Mormont is chained to a stake outside the tent. Tyrion and Penny join "Yezzan's other treasures: a boy with twisted, hairy 'goat legs,' a two-headed girl out of Mantarys, a bearded woman, and a willowy creature called Sweets who dressed in moonstones and Myrish lace," and who demonstrates her private parts for them: "I'm both, and master loves me best." She warns them that Nurse "is the only true monster here." As for their master, Yezzan, he is slowly dying, and anyone who can make him forget that elicits his generosity.

That night they are called on to entertain Yezzan and his guests who include Yurkhaz zo Yunzak, the Yunkish supreme commander, and Brown Ben Plumm, whom Tyrion had seen at the auction. Plumm had in fact bid on the dwarfs against Yezzan, and although Tyrion knew that Plumm might be planning to take him back to Westeros and to Cersei, he figured he would rather take his chances with him than with Yezzan.

The act goes over well, and afterward the dwarfs are called on to serve the guests, Tyrion pouring wine and Penny water. Then someone mentions that Tyrion had boasted of his prowess at cyvasse, and he winds up playing against Brown Ben Plumm, who first wagers that if he wins, Yezzan should give Tyrion to him. But Yezzan says that if he can defeat Tyrion, he will pay Plumm the price he paid for him, in gold. Tyrion wins easily, but Yezzan has fallen asleep. Nevertheless, he was pleased by their performance, Nurse tells them. "To celebrate the signing of the peace, you shall have the honor of jousting in the Great Pit of Daznak. Thousands will come see you! Tens of thousands! And, oh, how we shall laugh!" 

20. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 524-548

Tyrion

He has given in, and is riding the pig, whose name is Pretty, jousting against Penny on the deck of the Selaesori Qhoran. The ship has been becalmed in the Gulf of Grief for twelve days, and the crew is restless and looking for a scapegoat. Penny has begged him to help her entertain the crew, lest they turn on them. But Tyrion has also decided that he and Penny will perform the jousting act as a means to approach Daenerys.

Ser Jorah scoffs at this idea: "Daenerys Targaryen is no silly child to be diverted by japs and tumbles. She will deal with you justly." But Tyrion, who knows the history of Jorah's relationship with Daenerys, asks how he intends to approach her. "You think Daenerys will execute me and pardon you, but the reverse is just as likely. Maybe you should hope on that pig, Ser Jorah."

Jorah gives him a blow that knocks him across the deck, and tells Tyrion to stay away from him for the rest of the voyage. Tyrion is rinsing the blood out of his mouth when he feels the ship move: The wind has come up. But when he goes on deck he looks to the west and thinks, "I have never seen a sky that color." Moqorro joins him and says it is "God's wroth."

Banished from Jorah's presence, Tyrion joins Penny in her cabin as the storm begins to hurl the ship about. To his surprise, Penny kisses him. He has no desire for her, and when he looks at her he realizes that she really has none for him. She tells him that she was afraid they would drown, and she has never kissed a man before. In case she is hoping for more, he tells her he is married. The excuse works because, he realizes, she is "still young enough to believe such blatant lies."

The storm lasts into the night, sweeping three members of the crew overboard, blinding the cook when hot grease is tossed in his eyes, and breaking both of the captain's legs when he falls from the sterncastle to the main deck. When it dies down, Tyrion goes to the deck and discovers that they are in the eye of the storm. The wind returns and this time it splits the mast. Tyrion clings for life to a rope, as splinters from the mast stab him in the neck and the thigh.
The
When the storm is over, the ship is just barely afloat, and nine men have died, including Moqorro, who had been on deck praying to R'hllor. The next day the captain dies and three days later the cook. They drift for nineteen days until a ship is sighted. Unfortunately, Ser Jorah informs him, it's a slaver.

The Turncloak

Snow begins to fall heavily at Winterfell, which puts Stannis's troops at a severe disadvantage, as Roose Bolton cheerfully announces. Theon has been considering escape, now that his usefulness to the Boltons is over, but he has no place to go. "The nearest thing to a home that remained to him was here, amongst the bones of Winterfell. A ruined man, a ruined castle. This is my place."

Jeyne/Arya hasn't been seen in the hall since the wedding, but Theon goes in every night to help her bathe, since she has no handmaids. He has seen the bruises Ramsay has left on her, and would like to help her escape, but he knows that when Ramsay tires of tormenting his wife, he will turn on Theon again.

He eats by himself, since no one cares for the company of Theon Turncloak. But one evening a woman sits down by him. She is one of the women accompanying the singer Abel. She asks him to tell her how he captured Winterfell, and if he had a secret way to get in. He doesn't tell her anything, but she persists, telling him her name is Rowan. Instantly he suspects that this is one of Ramsay's tricks: "He wants me to run, so he can punish me." So he gets up and leaves.

He walks through the ruins of Winterfell and finds his way to the battlements on the inner wall where he sees the snow piling up everywhere. "Stannis Baratheon is out there somewhere, freezing," he thinks. He makes his way to the godswood, where the hot springs keep the snow from accumulating. Even though they are not his gods, he finds himself praying but he isn't sure for what: "Strength? Courage? Mercy?" He hears the sound of a faint sobbing, and thinks it must be Jeyne: "Who else could it be? Gods do not weep. Or do they?" There must be ghosts in Winterfell, and he is one of them.

In the kitchen, cooks are making stew and the dogs are gathered for the scraps. He has some stew, and listens in the hall as Roose Bolton's scouts report that Stannis's march has slowed. Then Lady Barbrey Dustin enters and calls for him. She wants to know how to get to the crypts. He leads her there, and on the way he recognizes the place where Bran Stark had fallen. He had been hunting that day, and when they returned they were told that Bran wasn't expected to live. He thinks, "The gods could not kill Bran, no more than I could."

It takes half an hour for Lady Dustin's men to uncover the entrance to the crypts and to batter down the frozen door with an axe. As he descends into the crypts, Lady Dustin comments that Lady Arya is weeping. Theon tells himself to be careful of another trap, but she says, "Roose is not pleased. Tell your bastard that." The northmen "love the Starks," she says, and they haven't forgotten how Ramsay Bolton's previous wife ate her fingers to keep from starving. "What do you think passes through their heads when they hear the new bride weeping? Valiant Ned's precious little girl."

Theon keeps silent until they reach the first level of the crypts. She asks if he knows the names of the lords buried there, and he recalls some of them. She asks for Ned Stark's tomb, and he tells her it's at the end. As they pass one tomb she notices that the king buried there is missing his sword. Theon is "disquieted" at this fact: "He had always heard that the iron in the sword kept the spirits of the dead locked within their tombs."

Suddenly he finds himself asking, "My lady, why do you hate the Starks?" She replies, "For the same reason you love them." He stumbles trying to answer, protesting that he took their castle and had Bran and Rickon killed, but she persists, "Why do you love the Starks?" And he admits, "I wanted to be one of them." And she replies, "We have more in common than you know."

When they reach Lord Rickard's tomb, she observes that his sword is missing too. And he points out that Brandon's is gone as well. "He would hate that," she says, and then tells Theon that Brandon, Ned's brother, had taken her virginity. She had hoped to marry him, but Rickard Stark pledged him to Catelyn Tully, ambitious to unite his house with one in the south. Her father had though she would marry Eddard, but after Brandon's death, he married Catelyn. So she married Lord Dustin, but he died when Ned Stark called out his banners in support of Robert Baratheon's rebellion.

"He told me that my lord had died an honorable death, that his body had been laid to rest beneath the red mountains of Dorne. He brought his sister's bones back north, though, and there she rests ... but I promise you, Lord Eddard's bones will never rest beside hers. I mean to feed them to my dogs."

Theon doesn't understand, and she explains that Catelyn had Eddard's bones sent north, but when Balon Greyjoy took Moat Cailin, their progress to Winterfell had been interrupted. "I have been watching ever since. Should those bones ever emerge from the swamps, they will get no farther than Barrowton."

When they return from the crypt, she warns him that he must repeat nothing of what she has said. He says, "Hold my tongue or lose it." And she replies, "Roose has trained you well."

18. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 473-499

Daenerys

Daenerys has come out to see the Astapori refugee camp, and is nauseated by the filth and disease. Ser Barristan urges her to turn back, but is, as usual, resolute. The refugees, many of them calling her "Mother," cry out for her help, but she has done all she can, sending out healers and even attempting a quarantine of the sick, but to no avail. Over the protests of Barristan and others in her retinue, she decides to nurse as many as she can, and they grudgingly join her. She also sends for the Unsullied, who have no fear of illness or death, to aid in the task.

Eventually, she returns, weary and depressed, to her pyramid, where Missandei helps her bathe before Reznak mo Reznak and the Green Grace arrive to discuss the wedding plans. She balks at some of the traditional rituals, including an inspection of her "female parts" by the women of Hizdahr's family, but agrees to be married in the Temple of the Graces instead of in a Westerosi ritual. At first she refuses to wash Hizdahr's feet, but agrees to do so if he will wash hers. But as it turns out, Hizdahr claims no more allegiance to tradition than she does.

However, he tells her that to establish peace, Yunkai will have to resume the slave trade. She observes that this is already a fait accompli: "The Yunkai'i resumed their slaving before I was two leagues from their city," and she didn't turn back. But he says the people of New Ghis don't trust her: "They would see us wed, and they would see me crowned as king, to rule beside you."

She is pondering how to reply when Barristan brings the news that the Stormcrows have returned and that the Yunkai'i are marching toward Meereen. Hizdahr protests that she is dining, but Daenerys tells him that she must speak with Daario and has Barristan show Hizdahr out. Then she changes into something more attractive to greet Daario.

He describes for her the strength of the forces moving toward Meereen by land and sea, but mentions that they have also gained some supporters: "Some Westerosi too, a score or more. Deserters from the Windblown, unhappy with the Yunkai'i." On the other hand, Brown Ben Plumm and the Second Sons have turned their cloaks and now support the Yunkai'i. Daenerys wonders if Plumm is one of the three treasons she was to experience, and if marrying Hizdahr will put an end to all of these attacks.

The news of Plumm's desertion causes an uproar, but Daenerys silences it. Then she orders the gates of the city closed, which means leaving the Astapori refugees to fend for themselves. She dismisses everyone but Daario, using the pretext that he has a wound that needs to be seen to.

Her handmaids tend to his wound, and then she sends them away, leaving her alone with Daario.

The Prince of Winterfell

Theon is helping Jeyne Poole prepare for her marriage to Ramsay Bolton. When she tells him that she "will be a better wife than the real Arya could have been," he recognizes the danger that she faces if she doesn't think of herself as Arya, just as he forces himself to think that he is Reek. He tells her that she is "Arya Underfoot. Your sister used to call you Arya Horseface." But Jeyne tells him that she is the one who made up that nickname. "Her face was long and horsey. Mine isn't. I was pretty."

She asks if Ramsay thinks she is pretty, and Theon lies, saying, "He's told me so." But she knows whom she's marrying: "They say he likes to hurt people," she says, and that he hurt Theon. But Theon claims he made him angry and that "Lord Ramsay is a ... a sweet man, and kindly." Then she begs him to help her: They could run away together, she says desperately, "I could be your wife, or your ... your whore ... whatever you wanted. You could be my man." But Theon begs her to try to please Ramsay and not to talk "about being someone else." He thinks, "Jeyne, her name is Jeyne, it rhymes with pain." He notices that her eyes are brown whereas Arya's were gray, and worries that someone will notice.

He has been chosen to give the bride away because, as Lady Dustin tells him, "You were her father's ward, the nearest thing she has to living kin." He realizes that if he is seen to accept her as Arya, the northmen gathered for the wedding "would have no grounds to question her legitimacy." And even those who suspected that she wasn't really Arya "would be wise enough to keep those misgivings to themselves." He is part of the deception, which is why he has been dressed as a lord instead of in his usual rags. When it's over, he will become Reek again, he realizes. "Unless the gods were good, and Stannis Baratheon descended on Winterfell and put all of them to the sword, himself included. That was the best he could hope for." 

The ceremony is taking place in the godswood, which Theon remembers from childhood. The hot springs make it a warm oasis in the midst of the snow, and it shrouds the faces of the guests in mist. The trees are full of ravens, and Theon thinks, "Maester Luwin's birds. Luwin was dead, and his maester's tower had been put to the torch, yet the ravens lingered." Ramsay Bolton is standing by the heart tree as he delivers Jeyne/Arya to him. She gives him a final look, pleading for him to do something, before she gives herself to Bolton.

Theon lingers as the wedding party leaves, and he hears a voice whisper, "Theon."

His head snapped up. "Who said that?" All he could see were the trees and the fog that covered them. The voice had been as faint as rustling leaves, as cold as hate. A god's voice, or a ghost's. How many died the day that he took Winterfell? How many more the day he lost it? The day that Theon Greyjoy died, to be reborn as Reek. Reek, Reek, it rhymes with shriek.

He hurries away from the godswood to the Great Hall.

In the yard, among the ruins of Winterfell, dead men were hanging from ropes. The castle had been full of squatters when Bolton and his company arrived, and those who resisted had been hanged. Those who agreed to help repair the gates and put a new roof on the Great Hall were told they would be spared. But after the work was finished, Bolton hanged them anyway. "True to his word, he showed them mercy and did not flay a one."

He makes his way into the warmth of the hall, where a bard named Abel is singing. As he passes through the crowd, he hears someone call him, "Theon Turncloak," and someone spits. "He was the traitor who had taken Winterfell by treachery, slain his foster brothers, delivered his own people to be flayed at Moat Cailin, and given his foster sister to Lord Ramsay's bed. Roose Bolton might make use of him, but true northmen must despise him."

Nevertheless, he has a seat on the dais at the high table, next to Lady Dustin. He looks at Jeyne and sees the fear in her eyes, and thinks, "I could beg her for the honor of a dance and cut her throat. That would be a kindness, wouldn't it?" And then, if the gods are kind, Ramsay would kill him. "Theon was not afraid to die. Underneath the Dreadfort, he had learned there were far worse things than death. Ramsay had taught him that lesson, finger by finger and toe by toe, and it was not one that he was ever like to forget."

Lady Dustin notices that Theon isn't eating, which is hard for him since Ramsay had broken so many of his teeth. She points out Wyman Manderly, who is wolfing down his food, "the very picture of the jolly fat man." She calls him "craven," and observes, "His son died at the Red Wedding, yet he's shared his bread and salt with Freys, welcomed them beneath his roof, promised one his granddaughter." But she knows Manderly would betray them all, and so does Roose Bolton, she says. She points out how Roose doesn't eat or drink anything until Manderly has taken some of it first. And she tells Theon, "Roose plays with men. You and me, these Freys, Lord Manderly, his plump new wife, even his bastard, we are but his playthings."

Some maesters enter the hall, and deliver news to Roose Bolton, who rises to tell the assembly that Stannis has left Deepwood Motte and could be at Winterfell in a fortnight, while Crowfood Umber is traveling down the kingsroad and the Karstarks are on the way from the east. He tells the lords to join him in his solar while Ramsay and his bride consummate the marriage.

When Lady Dustin leaves, Theon decides it is time to go, but one of Ramsay's attendants grabs him: "Ramsay says you're to bring his bride to his bed." Theon is terrified, but knows he has to obey. Jeyne is sitting alone, and Theon goes to her, realizing that she has drunk a good deal of wine. "Perhaps she hoped that if she drank enough, the ordeal would pass her by." Accompanied by some of Ramsay's men, he leads Jeyne up the stairs to the bedchamber.

Lord Ramsay is seated there when they enter, and he tells everyone but "Reek" to leave them. Then he tells Theon to undress "Ned Stark's little daughter." Theon starts to unlace her gown, but Ramsay tells him it will take too long: "Cut it off her." With the dagger in his hand, Theon thinks of killing Ramsay, but fears that he will fail and that Ramsay will flay the hand that held the dagger. Jeyne is trembling and he has to hold her still. When the gown falls, Ramsay tells him to take off her underclothes as well. When she is naked, he realizes how young she is. "Sansa's age. Arya would be even younger."

Ramsay asks what he thinks of her. She is pitiful, and there is "a spiderweb of faint thin lines across her back where someone had whipped her." But he says she is beautiful. Ramsay asks if he'd like to fuck her first: "The Prince of Winterfell should have that right, as all lords did in the days of old." He tells her to get on the bed and spread her legs, and then orders Theon, "Get her ready for me." Theon stammers, "I ... do you mean ... m'lord, I have no ... I...." (Although never stated outright, it is evident that Theon has been castrated.) Ramsay tells him to use his mouth. "And be quick about it. If she's not wet by the time I'm done disrobing, I will cut off that tongue of yours and nail it to the wall."

Theon does as he's told.

16. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 420-447

Reek

Bolton is returning with his fellow hunters, and the hounds almost knock Theon off his feet as he hurries, as fast as his fetters will allow him, to greet his master. Bolton comments on how bad Reek smells, and he apologizes. But then Bolton says he has brought him a gift and throws him a rotting, maggot-covered head.

He is left to take care of Ramsay Bolton's horse, and Little Walder commands him to do the same for his and his cousin's horses. But Big Walder (actually the smaller of the two) says he can take care of his own: "Little Walder had become Lord Ramsay's best boy and grew more like him every day, but the smaller Frey was made of different stuff and seldom took part in his cousin's games and cruelties."

In the stables, Theon asks Big Walder whose head it was. He is told it had belonged to an old man driving some goats on the road, and Bolton had killed him because he called him "Lord Snow," a reminder of his bastard name.

A feast is being held after the sixteen-day hunt, and Reek is kept chained outside the hall because his smell would spoil the feasters' appetites. He is able to watch Ramsay through the doors. The dogs have the run of the hall, however. He has been told that the dogs are "all named after peasant girls Ramsay had hunted, raped, and killed back when he'd still been a bastard, running with the first Reek."

In the middle of the feast, Roose Bolton arrives and orders everyone out. Ramsay orders Reek unchained and taken out, but Roose says for him to stay. He is left alone in the hall with Bolton father and son, and listens as they discuss the coming wedding, and Wyman Manderly's slow progress toward it. Ramsay complains that the feast he had been holding "should have been in Barrow Hall, not this pisspot of a castle," which belongs to a petty lord named Harwood Stout. But his father reminds him that Barrow Hall belongs to Lady Dustin, who "cannot abide" Ramsay. He has to stay on the good side of Barbrey Dustin, and he is concerned about what might happen if Bran or Rickon Stark is discovered.

Hearing of this last possibility, Theon struggles to think like Reek:

Ned Stark's sons are all dead, Reek thought. Robb was murdered at the Twins, and Bran and Rickon ... we dipped the heads in tar.... His own head was pounding. He did not want to think about anything that had happened before he knew his name.

But Ramsay and Roose Bolton know the truth, and are determined to conceal it and to make sure that Theon continues to be blamed for the murder of the Stark boys. Roose also warns his son to try to act like a Bolton: "Tales are told of you, Ramsay. I hear them everywhere. People fear you." Ramsays says, of course, "Good," but Roose insists that he conceal his cruelties better: "A peaceful land, a quiet people. That has always been my rule. Make it yours."

Then he delivers his news: Stannis has taken Deepwood Motte and restored it to the Glovers, and the mountain clans have joined in supporting him. Ramsay is delighted to hear of this opportunity to crush their foe, and urges his father to let him attack Deepwood. Roose says he must marry first, and Ramsay wants to proceed with it: "We have a girl, we have a tree, and we have lords enough to witness. I'll wed her on the morrow, plant a son between her legs, and march before her maiden's blood has dried."

But Roose wants the wedding to take place at Winterfell. That will get Stannis's attention, and that of the clansmen who are following him, who "will not abandon the daughter of their precious Ned to such as you." They will march on Winterfell, and the Boltons will conquer them there. And Roose wants to take Reek from him: "if you have not ruined him beyond redemption, he may yet be of some use to us."

Ramsay reluctantly unchains Theon and rides with Roose to Barrow Hall, which is less than a mile away. As they ride, Roose Bolton comments on Reek's stench, and tells him, "I knew the first Reek. He stank, though not for want of washing. I have never known a cleaner creature, truth be told.... The smell was something he was born with." Ramsay's mother had asked for a servant for her son, and he had given him Reek as a joke, "but he and Ramsay became inseparable. I do wonder, though ... was it Ramsay who corrupted Reek, or Reek Ramsay?"

He tells Theon the story of Ramsay's conception: Roose had been hunting a fox and come upon the beautiful young wife of an old miller. He hanged the miller for getting married without his permission, and raped the wife "beneath the tree where he was swaying." A year later she appears at the Dreadfort with the baby, saying that her husband's brother had turned them out of the mill. So he cut the brother's tongue out and gave her the mill. Roose also tells Theon that he had a legitimate son, Domeric, but that Ramsay poisoned him. Theon observes that Roose has a new wife, Walda Frey, who could give him sons, but Roose predicts that Ramsay will kill them, too.

Theon asks why Roose wanted him. "I'm not even a man, I'm broken and ... the smell." Roose says he'll smell better after a bath and change of clothes, but this terrifies Theon: "I have ... wounds, I ... and these clothes, Lord Ramsay gave them to me, he ... he said that I was never to take them off, save at his command." Roose says, "I mean you no harm, you know. I owe you much and more." Theon thinks, "This is a trap, he is playing with you, the son is just a shadow of the father," but he can't help asking what Roose owes him, and gets a reply: "The north. The Starks were done and doomed the night that you took Winterfell."

When they reach Barrow Hall, Roose takes him inside and introduces him to its mistress, Lady Barbrey Dustin, who is appalled at the smell. Roose tells her, "He has been with Ramsay. Lady Barbrey, allow me to present the rightful Lord of the Iron Islands, Theon of House Greyjoy." Terrified that Ramsay will hear this, Theon falls to his knees:

"I'm not him, I'm not the turncloak, he died at Winterfell. My name is Reek." He had to remember his name. "It rhymes with freak." 

Tyrion

He and Ser Jorah have booked passage on the Salaesori Qhoran, and so has the dwarf Penny, along with her dog and her pig. Jorah has removed his chains as long as they are on the ship, whose passengers include a red priest, Moqorro, who holds sway over most of the crew.

Penny has stayed below for a week, and when Tyrion spots her peeking out at the deck where Moqorro is holding a service to R'hllor, she shies away. Though the crew thinks rubbing a dwarf's head is good luck, they also think having a woman on board is bad. Tyrion pities her because of the fate visited on her brother, being mistaken for him and having his head chopped off, but she keeps her distance from him.

When Moqorro finishes his services, Tyrion goes to talk to him. The high priest, Benerro, had specially chosen Moqorro as a kind of missionary to Daenerys. Tyrion asks him what he sees in the flames, and Moqorro tells him, "Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all." Tyrion is flattered by being important enough to be part of Moqorro's visions.

He asks Moqorro about the ship's name, and the priest tells him that "Qhoran" is the title of a counselor or steward, and that "selaesori" means "fragrant." So the ship's name means "fragrant steward." (Tyrion is unaware, of course, of Quaithe's warning to Daenerys, "Beware the perfumed seneschal.") 

When he goes below, he tells Jorah that he had caught sight of Penny, whose name Tyrion hates because she and her brother, Oppo, had taken as their stage names the two smallest coins, Penny and Groat. But Jorah reveals to us that it was Tyrion who insisted that they bring Penny with them, afraid of what might befall her if she stayed in Volantis. Otherwise, Jorah is indifferent to her fate, and tells Tyrion that she is his responsibility. Tyrion thinks, "The man is cold, brooding, sullen, deaf to humor. And those are his good points." But he has learned of Jorah's passion for Daenerys, and feels some sympathy for him.

Life on the open sea bores Tyrion, who hates to sleep because of his bad dreams. He thinks of ending it all by jumping overboard, "But what if there is a hell and my father's waiting for me?" There is nothing to do but read and reread the three books on board, and he's rereading one of them, "about the erotic adventures of a young slave girl in a Lysene pillow house," at his table in the galley where he dines, when Penny enters.

He asks her to sit down and eat with him, but she apologizes for interrupting and starts to leave. He asks, "Do you mean to spend your whole life running away?" This causes her to get angry, and to say that he is the reason she and her brother had to run away. If he had obeyed Joffrey's command and jousted with them at the wedding feast, she says, thinks might have turned out differently. When he says that people would have laughed at him, she retorts, "My brother says that is a good thing, making people laugh." But speaking of her brother makes her cry.

Tyrion's apology only makes her angrier. She says that they fled King's Landing because her brother had been afraid they would be blamed in Joffrey's death. They went to Tyrosh, where they knew a juggler, another dwarf, but he had been murdered and his head taken too. Tyrion apologizes again, but she insists, "His blood is on your hands."

It is Tyrion's turn to get angry, and he says, "His blood is on my sister's hands, and the hands of the brutes who killed him." He admits that he has "killed mothers, fathers, nephews, lovers, men and women, kings and whores. A singer once annoyed me, so I had the bastard stewed. But I have never killed a juggler, nor a dwarf, and I am not to blame for what happened to your bloody brother." Penny picks up a cup of wine and throws it in his face, then leaves.

Days pass without seeing her again, but then a storm comes up. Remembering the misery of being below in his cabin during the stormy crossing of the narrow sea, he determines to stay on deck. "If the gods wanted him, he would sooner die by drowning than choking on his own vomit." He winds up soaked but exhilarated, especially when he goes to the cabin and finds Jorah Mormont lying in a pool of vomit. After drinking a good deal of rum and playing several games of cyvasse with the ship's cook, he goes on deck where he finds Penny.

He turns to leave her alone, but she speaks to him and apologizes for throwing the wine in his face and for her accusations that he killed her brother and the man in Tyrosh. She says that she thought she wanted to die, but the storm made her realize that she wanted to live. He thinks, "I have been there too. Something else we have in common."

She asks if he really did stew a singer. He says he doesn't cook, but she asks why he wanted him dead. "He wrote a song about me," he says, remembering the words. He asks about her family, and she says that her mother was not a dwarf but her father was. They're dead now, and she has no family left. She worries about what will happen to her now. "I have no trade, just the jousting show, and that needs two."

Tyrion flinches from what he perceives to be a suggestion that he might team with her in the act. But she continues to reminisce, telling about how the Sealord of Braavos once "laughed so hard that he gave each of us a ... a grand gift." He asks if Cersei had found them in Braavos, but she says it was a man, "Osmund. No, Oswald. Something like that." He came to them in Pentos. He tells her that now they're going to Meereen. She corrects him, "Qarth, you mean. We're bound for Qarth, by way of New Ghis." No, he insists, she will be performing for the dragon queen in Meereen. He assures her that Daenerys is kind-hearted and will find a place for her at court. "And you will be there too," she says. He agrees, "I will."

They strike up a friendship, and she introduces him to her pig, Pretty. They start taking meals together. He tries, and fails, to teach her cyvasse. And finally she asks him "if he would like to tilt with her." He turns her down, and later wonders if she meant something else by "tilt." He would have turned her down for that, too, "but he might not have been so brusque."

That night he can't sleep and goes on deck. The sky is red in the northeast, and he asks Moqorro why. "The sky is always red above Valyria," Moqorro tells him. They are closer than the crew would like to the volcanic region where the ancient kingdom had been destroyed. Tyrion's uncle Gerion Lannister had sailed for Valyria when Tyrion was eighteen, and never returned.

There is supposedly a curse on the Valyrian coast that afflicts any ship that sights it. But Moqorro tells Tyrion that he has ordered the captain to sail the shortest course: "Others seek Daenerys too." Tyrion wonders if Griff has changed his plans about sailing west, and asks Moqorro if he has seen them in his fires.

"Only their shadows," Moqorro said. "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood." 

It sounds like the kraken, the sigil of Euron and House Greyjoy.

10. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 253-275

Reek

Still clinging for dear life to the persona of Reek, Theon sets off for Moat Cailin. He no longer reeks and is dressed warmly for the first time in many months, but he still suspects that he is going to be the butt of some horrible trick played by Ramsay Bolton. Lord Ramsay had reminded him, even as Theon was being bathed, "You'll always be Reek, no matter how sweet you smell."

Moat Cailin had been taken by the ironmen, but it is in ruins. Its strategic value remains: "The only dry road through the Neck was the causeway, and the towers of Moat Cailin plugged its northern end like a cork in a bottle." As Theon draws nearer to it, the number of rotting corpses he encounters increases.

"The garrison will never know me," he thinks. Even if some of them knew him as a boy before he went to Winterfell as Lord Eddard's ward and hostage, he is unrecognizable: His hair has turned white and he has lost much of it. He is feeble and thin from his ordeal in the dungeons. And although he is wearing gloves, a close observer can see that he has lost three of his fingers.

A voice calls out from the castle, challenging him. Theon raises the peace banner and signals that he is unarmed. Even if the men in the castle fill him with arrows, he thinks, it would be a swift death compared to what Ramsay would deal out to him if he returned a failure. And an arrow does fly, but it pierces the banner, which he drops as he falls from the saddle. The voice tells him to get inside, quickly. Another arrow flies as he scrambles through the gate.

The man grabs him and puts a knife to his throat. Tyrion quickly says he is ironborn, and Lord Balon's son, which the man doubts. He continues, "Lord Ramsay took me captive after Winterfell. He's sent me here to treat with you. Do you command here?" The man tells him he only guards the door, and that Ralf Kenning is in charge.

On the floor next to the guard is a corpse, and Theon learns that he died of drinking the water. So many have died that they no longer take the trouble to cart them off but just leave them where they are. When Theon asks how many of the garrison are left, the man doesn't know. He says that in one tower there were only two men left alive, and they were eating the dead. The man sent to find out about them killed them, too.

"Moat Cailin has fallen, Reek realized then, only no on has seen fit to tell them." He asks to see Kenning, but the man says he hasn't seen him in a while. He was dying, and may be dead. But he agrees to take Theon to him. Kenning is feverish and covered with oozing sores and his own vomit. The guard tells him that Kenning was shot with a poisoned arrow by one of the people who live in the swamps. Theon decides that the only thing to do is put Kenning out of his misery, so he takes the captain's sword and cuts his throat. Then Theon and the guard fleet the awful stench that issues from the body.

He asks where the rest of the men are and is taken to the great hall. He remembers being there once with Robb and the Greatjon and Roose Bolton. There are about two dozen men in the hall. He tells them that Kenning is dead, and asks who was second in command. They just stare at him, so he tells them that he is there on Ramsay Bolton's orders, and that they are caught between his forces and that of his father. "Lord Ramsay is prepared to be merciful if you yield Moat Cailin to him before the sun goes down." He has letters to that effect that he shows them, but no one seems interested.

One  of the men stands up and says, "Dagon Codd yields to no man." And the guard says, "Victarion commanded us to hold, he did. I heard him with my own ears." Theon tells them that his uncle isn't returning to Moat Cailin. "The kingsmoot crowned his brother Euron, and the Crow's Eye has other wars to fight." They have been "left behind to die." He can see that they have already realized this fact, and he tells them Ramsay Bolton will treat them honorably, though he thinks: "He has only taken toes and fingers and that other thing, when he might have had my tongue, or peeled the skin off my legs from heel to thigh."

Dagon Codd remains defiant, and draws his longsword. But he is felled by a throwing axe from one of the other men, and Theon has won. In the end there are fifty-eight men who are strong enough to march and to carry five others as they accompany Theon back to Bolton. When they reach the castle Lord Ramsay appears, and he orders them fed and the wounded among them taken to the maesters.

Bolton praises his "old friend Reek," and asks what he wants as a reward. Theon knows enough to be very careful. "Give him the answer that he wants," he tells himself, so he fawningly says, "my place is here, with you. I'm your Reek. I only want to serve you." But he asks for "red wine, the strongest that you have, all the wine a man can drink." Bolton laughs and says, "You're not a man, Reek. You're just my creature. You'll have your wine, though." And he tells him he can sleep with the dogs instead of returning to the dungeon.

Theon drinks himself into a stupor, but when he wakes briefly, "Somewhere in the night, men were screaming." He goes back to sleep. The next morning, Ramsay sends word to his father that Moat Cailin is no threat. Along the road, "wooden stakes were driven deep into the boggy ground; there the corpses festered, red and dripping." Theon knows that there are sixty-three of them, the men he had promised honorable treatment.  

Three days later, Roose Bolton arrives with a huge contingent of Freys and other northmen. "Collared and chained and back in rags again, Reek followed with the other dogs at Lord Ramsay's heels when his lordship strode forth to greet his father." Theon remembers how he used to make fun of Roose Bolton to Robb Stark, mimicking his soft voice and making fun of his use of leeches. Now he looks at Bolton and realizes "that he had more cruelty in his pinky toe than all the Freys combined."

Then Bolton has two women descend from the coach in which they had been riding. One is very fat, Roose's new wife, Walda Frey. The other is Ramsay Bolton's intended bride, the fake Arya Stark. Theon knows immediately that this can't be Arya, and he thinks for a moment and realizes, "That's Sansa's little friend, the steward's girl. Jeyne, that was her name. Jeyne Poole."

She makes a deep obeisance to Ramsay, and Theon thinks, "The real Arya Stark would have spat in his face." But she promises to make him a good wife and give him strong sons. "'That you will,' promised Ramsay, 'and soon.'"

Jon

Stannis has  marched south, and Jon now leads a contingent southward to talk with the wildlings, though not before Bowen Marsh has registered his complaint about such dealings with the former enemy. On the way, Dolorous Edd points out that the wildlings have begun to carve faces into trees: "The wildlings brought their gods with them after all," he thinks, defying Melisandre's attempt to demonstrate the power of her red god.

The faces that the First Men and the children of the forest had carved into the weirwoods in eons past had stern or savage visages more oft than not, but the great oak looked especially angry, as if it wee about to tear its roots from the earth and come roaring after them. Its wounds are as fresh as the wounds of the men who carved it.

They reach Mole's Town, where the buildings above ground were torched by the Magnar of Thenn before his attack on Castle Black. But the underground dwellings and tunnels are more alive than ever, with a new population of free folk. They begin to emerge from the tunnels when Jon's contingent arrives, and he notes that there are three times as many women as men, but very few infants. "The babes in arms died during the march, he realized, and those who survived the battle died in the king's stockade."

There are many men with visible wounds, such as missing legs, arms, and eyes, but Jon recognizes some fighting men among them too. The black brothers in his contingent begin distributing food, but immediately there are scuffles and disputes and complains that it's not enough. He calls on one of his men to sound the horn, which quiets them. Then he addresses the crowd, telling them that they're giving them what they can, and pointing out that the Watch needs its share to defend the Wall. He talks about the wights, and says, "It's us that keeps you safe, the black crows you despise."

If they want more food, he says, they need to join in the defense of the Wall: "The food's for fighters. Help us hold the Wall, and you'll eat as well as any crow." But he thinks, "Or as poorly, when the food runs short." Sigorn, the new  Magnar of Thenn, says they should kill the Watch instead, but Jon reminds him that if they do, there will be no one to defend the Wall. "Winterfell's walls were strong as well, but Winterfell stands in ruins today, burned and broken. A wall is only as good as the men defending it."

A confusion of voices rises, but Jon speaks up again, telling them that they don't have to join the Watch and take the black, or worship any particular god or gods to help defend the Wall. "It's spears we need. Bows. Eyes along the Wall." He'll take any boy over twelve who can hold a spear or use a bow, and he needs help just maintaining the Wall and doing ordinary tasks. "I will take as many spearwives as will come," he adds. A girl who reminds him of Arya asks about girls, and he says he'll take them sixteen or older. When she protests that he's taking boys as young as twelve, he realizes that he's talking to wildlings: "As you will. Boys and girls as young as twelve. But only those who know how to obey an order." And he warns them that he'll have the head of anyone who disobeys an order and that his brothers have seen him do it.

The girl is the first to volunteer, and gradually others come forward, led by Halleck, the brother of Harma Dogshead: "'I don't like you, crow,' he growled, 'but I never liked the Mance neither, no more'n my sister did. Still, we fought for him. Why not fight for you?'" This breaks down the barrier, and a flood of others follows. But not the Thenns. Sigorn turns and leaves, and his contingent follows him.

In the end, there are sixty-three volunteers. Bowen Marsh still grumbles, worrying about feeding them, and whether they can be relied on if the Wall is attacked by Tormund Giantsbane and his followers instead of by the Others. Jon can only say he hopes that won't happen.

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

Catelyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


His axe took her in the back of the head. 

Tyrion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catelyn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

15. A Storm of Swords, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 503-529

Jaime

Jaime finds himself sharing a tub in the Harrenhal bathhouse with Brienne, who is none too happy about it, of course. When she angrily gets out of the tub, he is surprised that the sight of her naked arouses him, but he also apologizes for insulting her. "I'm a maimed man, and bitter. Forgive me, wench. You protected me as well as any man could have, and better than most." But she misinterprets this sign of humility from him as mockery, and fails to accept the apology, angering him again. "Are you as thick as a castle wall? That was an apology. I am tired of fighting with you. What say we make a truce?"

"Truces are built on trust," she says, but before she can throw the epithet "Kingslayer" back at him, he protests that they don't call Robert Baratheon "oathbreaker": "He tore the realm apart, yet I am the one with shit for honor." He proceeds to tell her the reason why he killed Aerys Targaryeon.

"His Grace commanded his alchemists to place caches of wildfire all over King's Landing. Beneath Baelor's Sept and the hovels of Flea Bottom, under stables and storehouses, at all seven gates, even in the cellars of the Red Keep itself. Everything was done in the utmost secrecy by a handful of master pyromancers." 

Aerys even named his favorite pyromancer, Rossart, his Hand. When Rhaegar was defeated at the Trident, Aerys began his preparations. Jaime had become the member of the Kingsguard kept closest to the throne because Aerys wanted to keep his eye on him. "The traitors want my city, I heard him tell Rossart, but I'll give them naught but ashes. Let Robert be king over charred bones and cooked meat.... Aerys meant to have the greatest funeral pyre of all," though Jaime suspected that Aerys really believed the fire would turn him into a dragon.

Rhaegar's defeat brought Tywin Lannister into the rebellion on the side of Robert Baratheon and Eddard Stark. Aerys sent a message to Jaime to bring him Tywin's head, and the messenger told him that Aerys was in conference with Rossart. Jaime realized that Aerys knew he was defeated, and was planning to put his final plan into action. So when he encountered Rossart, "dressed as a common man-at-arms, hurrying to a postern gate" to make his escape before the burning of the city, Jaime killed him, and then killed Aerys, "before he could find someone else to carry his message to the pyromancers."

Brienne asks, "If this is true, how is it no one knows?" Jaime responds sarcastically, "The knights of the Kingsguard are sworn to keep the king's secrets. Would you have me break my oath?" Besides, he says, "Do you think the noble Lord of Winterfell wanted to hear my feeble explanations? Such an honorable man. He only had to look at me to judge me guilty." His pride was wounded by Ned Stark's contempt, so he refused to provide an explanation. He now stands and starts to climb out of the tub, but he strikes his stump on the edge of the tub and faints from the pain.

When he comes to, Brienne is standing there with the guards and Qyburn, who says that Lord Bolton expects Jaime at dinner. Brienne says she will help him finish washing and dressing. The clothes that have been brought for her are ill-fitting, the only women's clothes in the castle that are large enough. Jaime observes that her neck and shoulders are thicker than his, and she looks terrible in pink. "A dozen cruel japes leaped into his head, but for once he kept them there. Best not to make her angry; he was no match for her one-handed."

He is still weak, and she helps him walk to the vast empty hall where Bolton is waiting for them at a table. He tells Jaime that "Edmure Tully has offered a thousand golden dragons for your recapture." Jaime says that Cersei will pay ten thousand. Bolton replies that Lord Karstark had offered his daughter in marriage for Jaime's head, but fortunately for Jaime, he has already married Lady Walda Frey -- "Fat Walda. My lord of Frey offered me my bride's weight in silver for a dowry, so I chose accordingly."

Brienne says that she has heard Bolton is giving Harrenhal to Vargo Hoat. He says yes, and that he is leaving soon to attend the wedding of Edmure Tully to Roslin Frey. Jaime hasn't heard about Robb's marriage, nor has Brienne, who expresses surprise that Robb would break his promise to marry a Frey. "Jaime almost felt sorry for Robb Stark. He won the war on the battlefield and lost it in a bedchamber, poor fool."

Bolton adds that Elmar Frey is upset because this means he won't marry Arya Stark. Brienne asks if there has been news of Arya, and Bolton says that she has been found and he means "to see her safely returned to the north." Brienne says that Tyrion had promised that Arya and Sansa would be returned in exchange for Jaime, but Bolton only laughs and tells her, "Lannisters lie." Jaime takes offense, but the only weapon he has is the cheese knife, which he threatens to put through Bolton's eye. Bolton replies, "In the north, we hold the laws of hospitality sacred still." But Jaime points out that he's not a guest, he's a prisoner.

Brienne insists that they must be freed so she can continue on her mission to take Jaime to be exchanged for Sansa and Arya, but Bolton says, "The raven that came from Riverrun told of an escape, not an exchange. And if you helped this captive slip his bonds, you are guilty of treason, my lady." Brienne rises in protest: "I serve Lady Stark." But Bolton replies, "And I the King in the North. Or the King who Lost the North, as some now call him. Who never wished to trade Ser Jaime back to the Lannisters." Then he urges her to sit, telling her, "I hope to send Ser Jaime on, just as you and Lady Stark desire."

However, he says, Vargo Hoat's amputation of Jaime's hand presents a problem. Hoat "meant to remove your sword as a threat, gain himself a grisly token to send to your father, and diminish your value to me." Since Hoat is Bolton's man, Bolton is incriminated in the mutilation. Jaime assures Bolton that if he'll send him to Cersei, he'll "sing as sweet a song as you could want, of how gently you treated me." He'd put it in writing, he says, if he had a hand to write with. But Bolton says he'll trust his word, which causes Jaime to reflect, "There's something I don't often hear."

Bolton says Jaime will leave as soon as Qyburn says he's well enough to travel, and that his captain, Walton Steelshanks will get him to King's Landing. Brienne says she will take charge of the girls when they are released, but Bolton says she needn't bother with them anymore: Sansa is married to Tyrion. Jaime will be on his way, he says, but "It would be unconscionable of me to deprive Lord Vargo of both his prizes.... Were I you, my lady, I should worry less about Starks and rather more about sapphires."

Tyrion

His father has sent him out to meet the contingent of Dornishmen who are arriving for the wedding. As they approach, Tyrion observes that "Nine of the greatest lords of Dorne were coming up the kingsroad, them or their heirs, and somehow Tyrion did not think they had come all this way just to see the dancing bear." But the leader of their company is not Prince Doran, as expected, but his brother Prince Oberyn Martell, who is fiercer and fitter than Doran, which leads Tyrion to think that trouble is brewing. And when he introduces the others in his company, one of them is "Ellaria Sand, mine own paramour." Tyrion thinks, "His paramour, and bastard-born. Cersei will pitch a holy fit if he wants her at the wedding.... Did Prince Doran mean to provoke a quarrel?"

So it would seem, when Prince Oberyn addresses his contingent and says, "Ellaria, lords and ladies, sers, see how well King Joffrey loves us. His Grace has been so kind as to send his own Uncle Imp to bring us to his court." Tyrion pretends to be amused, and then introduces his own retinue, realizing that its members "were nowise near as distinguished nor formidable a company as those who accompanied Prince Oberyn, as both of them knew full well."

Tyrion is familiar with Prince Oberyn, who is known as the Red Viper of Dorne because when he was sixteen, he was found in bed with the wife of Lord Yronwood. They fought a duel in which each was blooded, but Lord Yronwood died of his wounds, and the rumor persists that Oberyn's sword was poisoned. Now he was past forty and "had traveled in the Free Cities, learning the poisoner's trade and perhaps arts darker still." He had also "studied at the Citadel, going so far as to forge six links of a maester's chain before he grew bored." And "it was said that he bedded men and women both, and had begotten bastard girls all over Dorne" -- but never a son. He had also crippled Willas Tyrell.

There is no man in the Seven Kingdoms who will be less welcome at a Tyrell wedding, thought Tyrion. To send Prince Oberyn to King's Landing while the city still hosted Mace Tyrell, two of his sons, and thousands of their men-at-arms was a provocation as dangerous as Prince Oberyn himself. A wrong word, an ill-timed jest, a look, that's all it will take, and our noble allies will be at one another's throats.

As they ride to the city, Oberyn tells Tyrion that they had met before. "Your brother and sister were eight or nine, as I recall, and you had just been born." He says that he was disappointed when he discovered that Tyrion was not the monster that he had been told to expect: The stories were that he had been born with a pig's tail, that his head was twice the size of his body, that he'd been born with a full head of black hair and a beard, that he had lion's claws and his teeth were so big he couldn't close his mouth, "and between your legs were a girl's privates as well as a boy's."

Tyrion maintains his composure and jokes about the rumors: "Life would be much simpler if men could fuck themselves, don't you agree?" It was Cersei who showed Tyrion to him, Oberyn says. "When I commented that you seemed a poor sort of monster, your sister said, 'He killed my mother,' and twisted your little cock so hard I thought she was like to pull it off." It was Jaime who made her stop tormenting him, but when she stopped she said, "Everyone says he's like to die soon. He shouldn't even have lived this long." Tyrion thinks, "My sweet sister," but wonders why Oberyn is telling him all of this.

They talk of other things, such as the tax Lord Tywin has imposed on the brothels -- "a penny for each, ah ... act," Tyrion explains. His father had thought it would "improve the morals of the city," but the chief result is that Tyrion has been blamed for the tax, which has become known as "the dwarf's penny." Then Oberyn asks, "when will the justice be served?" -- the punishment for the murder of his sister Elia and her children. Tyrion tries to say that they have been preoccupied with "Wars and weddings," but Oberyn insists "I did not come for some mummer's show of an inquiry. I came for justice for Elia and her children, and I will have it. Starting with this lummox Gregor Clegane ... but not, I think, ending there."

Tyrion thinks it time to point out that Oberyn has brought only three hundred men whereas the city numbers half a million, and there are five thousand gold cloaks and his father's twenty thousand guards, not to mention the troops of House Tyrell. He also mentions the prowess of Loras Tyrell, though Oberyn scoffs at it. And he advises Oberyn to visit Chataya's brothel, recommending that he keep Dancy or Marie "by your side at all times." When Oberyn asks why, Tyrion replies, "You want to die with a breast in your hand, you said."

Then Tyrion rides on ahead, hoping to be present when Prince Oberyn meets King Joffrey.