6. A Dance With Dragons, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 148-178

Daenerys

Daenerys has been dreaming of Daario Naharis when she is awakened by Irri. Grey Worm, Reznak and Skahaz have brought word of more murders conducted by the Sons of the Harpy. Nine of her followers have been killed, including Missandei's brother. Daenerys demands a strengthening of the guard and hostages from the noble family of Meereen. Then she comforts Missandei.

Filled with anger and longing for Daario, she is unable to go back to sleep. She goes out to the pool on the terrace to bathe, but she hears a sound and sees a woman wearing a lacquered wooden mask: Quaithe. Daenerys pinches herself, but she isn't dreaming.

"Hear me, Daenerys Targaryen. The glass candles are burning. Soon comes the pale mare, and after her the others. Kraken and dark flame, lion and griffin, the sun's son and the mummer's dragon. Trust none of them. Remember the Undying. Beware the perfumed seneschal." 

The last-named is Reznak, Daenerys knows, but she asks Quaithe to "speak plainly" if she has something to tell her. She remembers Quaithe's other advice, to "go north to go south, east to go west, back to go forward. And to touch the light I have to pass beneath the shadow." But she's tired of riddles, she tells Quaithe. Then Missandei appears to ask whom Daenerys is talking to, and Quaithe vanishes. Daenerys wonders if she is going mad, like her father.

After breakfast, for which Daenerys finds she has no appetite, Reznak and Skahaz appear, stirring her memory of Quaithe's warning. She takes her seat in the council hall, where Ser Barristan has thoughtfully provided cushions for her, and tries to fight off sleep as she hears about the city's problems. Hizdahr zo Loraq returns, once again to plead for the reinstatement of the fighting pits. He brings with him prominent fighters, all of them freed slaves -- "it had been the fighting slaves, freed from their shackles by her sewer rats, who led the uprising that won the city for her." She feels obliged to listen to their arguments for reopening the pits. She tells them she will consider their arguments, and the meeting is adjourned.

Ser Barristan accompanies her back to her chambers, and she asks him to tell her about how Joffrey dismissed him from the kingsguard and how he fled the country. He says he watched the beheading of Eddard Stark, which convinced him to leave. When Daenerys objects that Stark was a traitor, Barristan objects:

"Your Grace," said Selmy, "Eddard Stark played a part in your father's fall, but he bore you no ill will. When the eunuch Varys told us that you were with child, Robert wanted you killed, but Lord Stark spoke against it. Rather than countenance the murder of children, he told Robert to find himself another Hand." 

Daenerys reminds him of the murder of Princess Rhaenys and Prince Aegon, but Barristan says that was done by the Lannisters, not the Starks. Daenerys sees no difference between the two houses, and then asks Barristan to take her to see her dragons. She senses his disapproval, but he obliges.

Rhaegal and Viserion are chained there, and she notes how they have grown. "What sort of mother lets her children rot in darkness?" she asks herself. But she knows that she must keep them there after meeting with the man whose child was eaten. It was a four-year-old girl called Hazzea, he told her. She had questioned his story, thinking that the child's death might have been faked by the Sons of the Harpy to discredit her, but she observed that the man had come forward after the hall had emptied. "If his purpose had been to inflame the Meereenese against her, he would have told his tale when the hall was full of ears to hear." She had paid him handsomely not to spread the story.

Drogon had presumably been the dragon responsible, and he is still at large. Daenerys is conscience-stricken, but feels responsible for the dragons, too. "Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I."

Reek

Ramsay Bolton has imprisoned him after torturing and mutilating him, and now he is reduced to capturing rats and eating them raw. But now two boys have come to his cell, and he is terrified that he is about to be taken back to Bolton for more abuse. The boys "were squires, both were eight, and both were Walder Frey. Big Walder and Little Walder, yes. Only the big one was Little and the little one was Big, which amused the boys and confused the rest of the world."

He thinks of overpowering them and taking the keys, but knows that he'll be caught and that Bolton "will take another finger from me, he will take more of my teeth." He had escaped from Ramsay Bolton before, but discovered that it was only a trap: "Lord Ramsay loved the chase and preferred to hunt two-legged prey."

Little Walder asks if they should bathe him before taking him wherever he was going, but Big Walder says that Ramsay "likes him stinky.... That's why he named him Reek." We remember now that when Ramsay Bolton was still a bastard named Snow, he had disguised himself as the filthy creature known as Reek. The new Reek has to remind himself of his name constantly with mnemonics: "My name is Reek, it rhymes with bleak," he tells himself now. So he submits to the Freys, who guide the ragged Reek out of the dungeon.

As he goes with them, he wonders how long he has been imprisoned. "The boys were still boys. If it had been ten years, they would have grown into men," he reasons. They take him to the great hall, where the garrison is dining. Bolton is sitting at the high table, and he tells the men sitting beside him that "Reek has been with me since I was a boy. My lord father gave him to me as a token of his love." One of the men says he thought Reek was dead, that he had been killed by the Starks, but Bolton says, "The ironmen will tell you that what is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger."

But the other man sitting there tells the first one to take a good look at Reek: "His hair's gone white and he is three stone thinner, aye, but this is no serving man." And the first man recognizes Reek as Theon Greyjoy, though he doesn't speak his name: "Stark's ward. Smiling, always smiling." Bolton says he doesn't smile much anymore since he broke Theon's teeth, and he notices blood on his mouth and asks if he has been "chewing on your fingers again, Reek?" (Bolton's late wife had starved to death, eating her own fingers to try to stay alive.) Reek/Theon swears that he hasn't been doing that, though he had tried to bite his ring finger off after Bolton had flayed the skin from it.

He confesses to having eaten a rat, which brings a reprimand: "All the rats in the Dreadfort belong to my lord father. How dare you make a meal of one without my leave." Reek doesn't know how to reply to avoid further mutilation: "Thus far he had lost two fingers off his left hand and the pinky off his right, but only the little toe off his right foot against three from his left." But Bolton is more interested in giving him some news: "I am to be wed. My lord father is bringing me a Stark girl. Lord Eddard's daughter, Arya. You remember little Arya, don't you?"

Theon remembers the real Arya -- we know this one is an imposter -- and recalls "a time when he had thought that Lord Eddard Stark might marry him to Sansa and claim him for a son, but that had only been a child's fancy." Now Bolton tells him that he is to serve him at the wedding, and that he will be cleaned up and fed to get his strength back. Though he fears a trap, Theon says he will be glad to serve him. Bolton tells him, "I ride to war, Reek. And you will be coming with me, to help me fetch home my virgin bride."

Bran

They are traveling again through deep snow and bitter cold, and they are afraid. "Even Summer was afraid." Coldhands tells them they have to climb, and it will be dark soon. The entrance to the cave they are headed for is halfway up the hill, and Bran sees ravens flying in and out of it. Meera estimates it's about a thousand yards away, but Bran recognizes that "all those yards are upward." Still, it's his destination, the place where he is to meet the three-eyed crow, the greenseer. 

It had been twelve days since the elk had collapsed for the third and final time, since Coldhands had knelt beside it in the snowbank and murmured a blessing in some strange tongue as he slit its throat.... As gaunt and starved as the elk had been, the steaks the ranger carved from him had sustained them for seven days, until they finished the last of them huddled over a fire in the ruins of an old hillfort.

Hodor begins the ascent with Bran on his back and Coldhands beside them. Summer follows, and then Meera, who has been carrying Jojen for quite a while.  Bran loses sight of Meera and Jojen as they fall behind. Only a dozen of the ravens that had been accompanying them remain, and Bran sees one of them fly into the cave. "Only eighty yards now, Bran thought, that's not far at all."

But Summer stops suddenly and snarls and backs away. Bran tells Hodor to stop, but Coldhands continues the climb, so Hodor follows. When they are sixty yards from the entrance, Bran sees the flicker of a fire in the cave's mouth. But suddenly Hodor screams and falls, and Bran realizes that something has hold of Hodor's leg. A wight bursts from under the snow. They are rolling down hill, and wights are bursting from beneath the snow.

A wight grabs Bran, but Summer attacks and tears off its arm and bites into its throat. Bran begins to drag himself uphill toward the cave, as Coldhands slashes out at the wights surrounding him and Summer continues his assault on the one that grabbed Bran. He hears Hodor call out, and Bran slips inside Hodor's body, drawing Hodor's sword. "Deep inside he could hear poor Hodor whimpering still, but outside he was seven feet of fury with old iron in his hand." Meera arrives and jabs at the wight attacking Hodor with her frog spear. Through Hodor's eyes, Bran sees Jojen lying helpless, and he guides Hodor to rescue the boy.

Up ahead, wights are burning, and Bran realizes that someone has set them on fire. He sees Summer snarling at a burning wight and realizes that he -- Bran -- is lying on the ground and Summer is protecting him. He wonders if Bran dies, will he remain Hodor forever. He feels Hodor stumble as ravens pour from the mouth of the cave and he sees "a little girl with a torch in hand, darting this way and that." For a moment he thinks the girl is Arya. Then the snow falls from a tree and buries him.

He wakes inside the cave and sees Hodor, Summer, Meera and Jojen with him, tended to by the girl. When she speaks he knows she isn't Arya, and he notices that her eyes are "large and liquid, gold and green, slitted like a cat's eyes." He realizes that she is "A child of the forest," as he tells Meera when she asks. The girl says that the First Men called them children, but they aren't. "Our name in the True Tongue means those who sing the song of earth. Before your Old Tongue was ever spoken, we had sung our songs ten thousand years."

She tells them that the ranger, Coldhands, can't enter the cave, and when Bran protests that the wights will kill him, says, "They killed him long ago." They must follow her now to meet the greenseer. As they descend into the cavern, Bran sees what seems to be giant white snakes in the walls of the cave, but he realizes that they are weirwood roots. There are passages off to the side, and in them Bran sees, by the light of the girl's torch, the shining eyes of other children of the forest. Hodor's feet begin to crunch on something and he stops suddenly. Bran realizes that they are walking on bones, and in niches there are skulls of animals, men, and giants, as well as of the children of the forest.

The last part of the journey is the steepest, and Hodor slides down in on his buttocks. He sees the girl waiting by a natural bridge across a chasm, and he hears running water. Bran is afraid that he will have to cross the bridge on Hodor's back, but the girl tells him no, and lifts her torch, telling him to look behind.

Before them a pale lord in ebon finery sat dreaming in a tangled nest of roots, a woven weirwood throne that embraced his withered limbs as a mother does a child. His body was so skeletal and his clothes so rotted that at first Bran took him for another corpse, a dead man propped up so long that the roots had grown over him, under him, and through him. 

His hair is white and so long that it reaches the floor, leaves sprout from his skull, and mushrooms from his forehead. Bone pokes through his desiccated skin.

Bran asks, "Are you the three-eyed crow?" The pale lord answers slowly, in a dry voice, and says that he was one once. "I have been many things, Bran," he says, but he has been this for a very long time. "I have watched you for a long time, watched you with a thousand eyes and one. I saw your birth, and that of your lord father." He had witnessed Bran's fall. "And now you are come to me at last, Brandon Stark, though the hour is late."

Bran asks for the thing he wants most: his legs.

"You will never walk again, Bran," the pale lips promised, "but you will fly."

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 Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, pp. 628-664

Eddard

Cast into the dungeon and given only water, Ned loses track of time. Finally, a jailer appears, but with wine, not food. It is Varys in disguise, and unlike the real jailers, he is willing to talk with Ned, to tell him that Arya has escaped and can't be found, and that Sansa is under the control of the queen. He also says, "I trust you realize that you are a dead man, Lord Eddard?" When Varys tells him that Caetlyn no longer controls Tyrion, who could be held hostage to obtain his release, Ned says Varys might as well kill him now and be done with it. "Your blood is the last thing I desire," Varys says, so Ned asks why he stood back and watched as his guard was slaughtered. Varys replies, "I seem to recall that I was unarmed, unarmored, and surrounded by Lannister swords.... A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord."

So Ned asks if he will take a message for him. Varys says he will, but whether he will deliver it depends on whether it serves his ends. What ends are those, Ned asks, and Varys replies, "Peace."

"If there was one soul in King's Landing who was truly desperate to keep Robert Baratheon alive, it was me." He sighed. "For fifteen years I protected him from his enemies, but I could not protect him from his friends. What strange fit of madness led you to tell the queen that you had learned the truth of Joffrey's birth?"

"'The madness of mercy,' Ned admitted." Varys observes that Ned is "honest and honorable," and now he knows why he has met so few men like him.

The king, Varys tells him, would have died on the hunt somehow even if the boar hadn't killed him: "a fall from a horse, the bite of a wood adder, an arrow gone astray ... the forest is the abattoir of the gods." Cersei will visit him tomorrow, he says, and tells him that Robb is leading an army against the Lannisters. Ned is "aghast" that Robb, "only a boy," should be doing such a thing. Varys continues,

"So here is Cersei's nightmare: while her father and brother spend their power battling Starks and Tullys, Lord Stannis will land, proclaim himself king, and lop off her son's curly blond head ... and her own in the bargain, though I truly believe she cares more about the boy."

He urges Ned to confess to treason, tell Robb to call off his attack, accept Joffrey as king, denounce Stannis and Renly Baratheon, and vow to Cersei that he'll keep the secret of her children's parentage. "I believe she will allow you to take the black and live out the rest of your days on the Wall, with our brother and that baseborn son of yours."

Ned asks whom Varys truly serves. "I serve the realm, and the realm needs peace," he declares. And when Ned says, "My life is not so precious to me" that he could do the things Varys suggests. Then Varys reminds him that Sansa is still under the control of the queen, and that the Lannisters were not above killing the Targaryen children. "The next visitor who calls on you could bring you bread and cheese and the milk of the poppy for your pain ... or he could bring you Sansa's head."

Catelyn

An obstacle stands in the way of Robb's army: Walder Frey, who controls the bridge they must cross. Catelyn feels the urgency of moving forward more intensely when word reaches her of the capture of her brother and the sieWge of her father's castle. The problem, as Catelyn tells Robb, is that "The Freys have held the crossing for six hundred years, and for six hundred years they have never failed to exact their toll." They must find out what that toll is, she tells him.

David Bradley as Walder Frey

Lord Walder sends word that Robb must meet with him to discuss terms, but others fear that he would be walking into a trap: "he can sell you to the Lannisters, throw you in an dungeon, or slit your throat, as he likes." So Catelyn volunteers to meet with him. She has known him since she was a girl, she says. "He would never off me any harm," though she silently says to herself, "Unless he saw some profit in it."

Sir Walder is ninety, and he receives her with suspicion. She asks to speak with him privately, and he agrees. She reminds him that he is a sworn bannerman to her father, but this carries no weight with him. On the other hand, he has no love for Tywin Lannister, and when Catelyn hears this from him she presses this advantage. He continues to resist, saying, "The Tullys and the Starks have never been friends of mine," but he is willing to haggle.

Finally, Catelyn rides back with the terms: Lord Walder will grant the crossing and lend his troops. In return, she has agreed to take two of his grandsons -- "It would seem they are both named Walder" -- as wards at Winterfell. They are Bran's age.  Lord Frey's son Olyvar is to be Robb's squire, and "if your sister Arya is returned to us safely, it is agreed that she will marry Lord Walder's youngest son, Elmar, when the two of them come of age." Robb comments, "Arya won't like that one bit." And then, she says, Robb is to marry one of his daughters when the fighting is over. Robb can choose which one. Robb agrees.

Jon

Jon's right hand was badly burned when he flung the flaming curtains over the attacker, but the maester has said that it will recover though it will be scarred. Lord Commander Mormont tells him that news has arrived of Ser Barristan Selmy's dismissal from the Kingsguard, and that Selmy is now wanted for treason. He killed two men who were sent for him, and has escaped. There was no mention in the message, however, of Jon's father and sisters. Jon knows that Robb has called on the bannermen and has taken the army south, but only because Samwell, who reads letters to Maester Aemon, told him.

Then Mormont asks if Aemon told him how soon he will be able to use his hand again. When Jon says, "Soon," the commander placed on the table between them "a large sword in a black metal scabbard banded with silver. 'Here. You'll be ready for this, then.'" The fire had burned the pommel and crossguard and grip of the sword, and Mormont has had them replaced. "The pommel was a hunk of pale stone weighted with lead to balance the long blade. It had been carved into the likeness of a snarling wolf's head, with chips of garnet set into the eyes." Jon recognizes the blade as Valyrian steel.

It was his father's sword, Mormont tells him, and his grandfather's, and he had given it to his son, Ser Jorah. "My son brought dishonor to House Mormont, but at least he had the grace to leave the sword behind when he fled." Jon tries to refuse it, but Mormont insists: "I would not be sitting here were it not for you and that beast of yours. You fought bravely ... and more to the point, you thought quickly." When Jon accepts, he asks the sword's name and is told it was once called Longclaw. He decides to keep the name.

Mormont tells him that Ser Alliser Thorne has been replaced as master-at-arms and sent to King's Landing with the hand that Ghost tore from Jafer Flowers's wrist. "I have commanded him to ... lay it before this boy king. That should get young Joffrey's attention, I'd think." It also "puts a thousand leagues twixt him and you without it seeming a rebuke," though Mormont still chides Jon for what he calls "that nonsense in the common hall." Then he sends Jon off to deliver instructions for his dinner. Outside, his friends have gathered, eager to see the sword, which they already knew about. Halder had helped carve the pommel and Sam had bought the garnets in Mole's Town.

Jon learns that the other undead ranger had killed Ser Jaremy Rykker and four others before it, too, was burned. This puts him in no mood for his friends, remembering the fight with the eerie Othor, and the fact that fighting was taking place in the riverlands. So he says he needs to see to Mormont's supper and walks off. He goes to his quarters, where Ghost awaits him and shows the carved wolf on the sword to him. He recalls how he found Ghost: "He was all alone, he thought, apart from the others in the litter. He was different, so they drove him out."

Sam appears at the door. He had not been with the other boys, so Jon asks if he wants to see the sword. Sam says no. He was heir to his father's sword, Heartsbane, but he was afraid he'd hurt someone with it, and now his brother will have it. He has come to say that Maester Aemon wants to see Jon. The maester asks him to help feed the ravens, but doesn't say anything about what Jon assumes he wants to talk about: the army that Robb is leading.

Finally, the maester asks, "Jon, did you ever wonder why the men of the Night's Watch take no wives and father no children?" Jon says no, and the old man says, "So they will not love, ... for love is the bane of honor, the death of duty." And he asks Jon what his father would do if he had to "choose between honor on the one hand and those he loves on the other." Jon hesitates, thinking, "He fathered a bastard, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of his duty to her, he will not even say her name." But he says that his father "would do whatever was right.... No matter what."

"Most of us are not so strong," Aemon says. "We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy." The men of the Night's Watch, he tells Jon, not only vow to give up love of family, but they also pledge not to take part in the internal battles of the country they guard. The price of honor and duty is renunciation. That seems easy enough in the abstract, he says, "Yet soon or late in every man's life comes a day when it is not easy, a day when he must choose." 

Jon realizes that Aemon is telling him that the time has come when he will be forced to choose between the sworn duty to the Night's Watch and the love for the family that raised him. And Aemon tells him he knows that it hurts. "'You don't know,' Jon said bitterly. 'No one knows. Even if I am his bastard, he's still my father...." So Aemon tells him that he has faced the choice three times in his life, and the last time was as cruel as the first:

"My ravens would bring the news from the south, words darker than their wings, the ruin of my House, the death of my kin, disgrace and desolation. What could I have done, old, blind, frail? I was helpless as a suckling babe, yet still it grieved me to sit forgotten as they cut down my brother's poor grandson, and his son, and even the little children...."

And he reveals to Jon that he is a Targaryen, the son of King Maekar and the brother of King Aegon, and that it was members of his own family who were slain by Jaime Lannister.